“And then he’d be so loving, take care of the hurts, give me gifts, and it seemed over. Forever.” She sighed and drank tea. “I loved him so much,” she said. “He was my hero. And he loved me, too, like in the movies. He did, you know. Couldn’t live without me, he said.”
“The thing is,” I said, “nobody knows what kind of man your husband was, am I right?”
“He’s the Chamber of Commerce’s Man of the Year. Was.”
“Then why would anybody suspect you? For all they’re concerned, you had a perfect marriage. That article in
Philadelphia
magazine
said so. Patsy said so. Maybe your safest bet is facing the police, explaining that you’re innocent.”
“How would I explain where I’ve been?”
“How about a walk? A long walk. You were sad and needed time alone.”
“Why? It’s so cold and rainy tonight.”
“Because of…because of Hugh.”
“
Hugh?
Why drag him into this?” Her voice was shrill with a lifetime of protecting her child.
“Because…he’s so far away and you never get to see him.”
“But even Patsy knows he was here Sunday.”
Right. I remembered Wynn’s reaction to my lie about Hugh needing a recommendation. He’d been surprised, said he’d thought Hugh had left town this weekend. “Say it was a sad visit,” I improvised.
“It was. Very. But I won’t involve Hugh.”
“You’ve had a rough time with him. People would accept the idea of your being upset.”
Her face darkened, making her bruises even more prominent. “I’ve had a rough time with Wynn! Hugh tried to protect me. Since he was a baby, he tried. But Wynn would brush him away. Until he was bigger, and then…” She shook her head.
“Your husband hurt him, too.”
She nodded. “So I put him in boarding school, away, safe, and he’d get crazy and run home. To save me, he said.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
She looked down at her clasped hands as if they might hold the answer. “For so long, I thought it was my fault. I made him angry. If I tried harder, I could be a better wife. Wynn was so patient with students and teachers. Everybody thought he was wonderful. Besides, I didn’t have anyplace to go, or any way to make a living or support Hugh. And then, as if he suspected what was happening in my mind, Wynn said that if I left, he’d find me and kill us both. That he couldn’t live without me. I believed him.”
“But when you read that book, didn’t you see it wasn’t your fault? That there were things you could do? Didn’t it change how you felt?”
She nodded. “It was like finding a friend. Somebody to talk to, as foolish as that sounds. I didn’t feel so alone. I wanted to keep it, but I couldn’t, not where he might find it, so I tossed it in the book box when I drove that time. I could have put it in the trash, but some part of me wanted somebody, somewhere, to know.”
“And still you stayed. You thought he’d kill you, but you stayed.”
“Not forever, no. I decided to leave, but Hugh had finished high school and he was on his own, somewhere. I couldn’t leave without his knowing where to find me or we’d never see each other again. I had to wait till he showed up, and he did, this weekend. I thought there’d be some time, a plan, but it was terrible between them and Wynn threw him out, told him to never come back. And he went.” Her eyes welled up again.
I stood up, to get some distance from the mare’s nest of the Teller family. I straightened a picture on the wall, went into the kitchen, sponged off the counter, and finally broke through the thick silence. “Let’s get back to what to do now. I still think you should go to the police. Let’s be honest. Nobody would ever think of you shooting somebody.”
She looked at me, then up at the ceiling. “I grew up with guns,” she said calmly. “It literally was a jungle out there, you know. I can shoot anything, pretty much.” She looked sad. “The odd thing is, I lived in the wilds, places people think of as scary, but I always felt safe, until I married Wynn Teller.”
“Do you—was there—in the house, do you own a gun?”
She nodded. “Several. They’re a legacy. Great-great-grandfather worked for Mr. Deringer here in Philadelphia. When President Lincoln was killed with a derringer pistol, Great-great-grandfather was so fearful that it was one he’d crafted that he became morose and never spoke again. His pistols were the beginning of a collection. Philadelphia Derringers and Colts, mostly. Some are quite ornate. Silver chasing and carved mother-of-pearl.” She yawned.
Please, I implored the god of ballistics, don’t make the murder weapon be an old and unusual gun. I thought I heard a snicker or two from above, and I looked despairingly at Lydia Teller, a woman with the best of motives for murder, plus the skill and the opportunity, and minus an alibi.
Maybe the same series of thoughts crossed her mind. “If it’s all right with you,” she said, “I’m a little dizzy. I’d like to go upstairs and lie down for a second.”
Which is what she did. I thought of settling in for the night, too, but although it felt as if enough time had elapsed to put us in the next calendar year, it was not even late enough for the movie I’d promised myself. Besides, somebody with no consideration of the kind of day I’d had, programmed an Annette Funicello beach movie, an Elvis musical, and
Tora! Tora! Tora!
I felt personally betrayed.
What I definitely did not want to do was think about Lydia Teller’s future anymore tonight, which left only the failure warnings as diversion. They weren’t a major project, merely tiresome. They didn’t make students improve scholastically, but they did provoke endless debates of why the warning was incorrect and/or unfair.
Name, grade, section. Then came the part I resent, where I have to explain the warning. I’m always tempted to write something like
Are you kidding?,
but I have to find stern euphemisms for the girl who appears lobotomized (
little class participation
)
and the boy whose textbook has never been out of his locker, its virgin pages uncut (
not working to potential
)—
My head jerked at a knock at the door. And then one at the front window. There was a large silhouette on the closed curtains. I pressed back into the sofa, but then the silhouette put its thumbs in its ears and wiggled its fingers.
“Sasha,” I said, opening the door. “What are you doing here at this hour?”
“Saw the light on. I was around the corner. At a movie.” She pulled off a Sherlock Holmes raincoat and a shiny broad-brimmed black hat meant for either rainstorms or a wet garden party. Sasha stood in front of the coffee table, looking down at two each of brandy snifters, cups, and saucers. “Dick Tracy’s here?” she asked. She looked spiffy in a rose peplum number from the early Fifties.
I shook my head.
“Left early, did he?” She slumped into my worn suede chair, legs stuck straight out in front of her. “I tell you, Mandy, I’ve
had
it with men!”
“Everybody knows that.” I poured her some brandy.
She tapped a long fingernail on the side of her snifter. “I was stood up! Me! Can you believe it? Can you?”
I could probably believe almost anything about her. “You want to talk about it?”
“I waited and waited at the damn restaurant—he had to pick a fancy one, right? Where the maître d' eyed me like I was a hooker.”
“Anybody I know?”
She shook her head. “Nobody I want to know anymore, either. Creep. I wore shoes that hurt for him, too! Waited an entire hour. Cost me twenty-seven dollars for an appetizer and a glass of wine. And then I said to hell with him and went to the movies where I didn’t see a damn thing except red. He didn’t even have the courtesy of calling the restaurant, a message.”
“Maybe there’s one at home for you.”
She shook her head even more vigorously. A silver-trimmed comb fell out and she jabbed it back in place. “I checked my machine ten minutes ago.
Men!
They’re all scum. I’m finished with the lot of them. From now on, I’m concentrating on my work and my friends and clean, healthy living.”
“I’ve heard this song before.” Maybe a thousand times.
“Ought to sing it yourself. I mean Nameless is not exactly ideal, rushing back to Evangeline.” She nodded toward the extra snifter and cup. “Trust me, the entire species is defective.”
Misery loves company, especially man-hating misery. I wasn’t worried that Mackenzie was scum, but I was concerned about what I would do about Lydia when and if C.K. shook Scarlett loose. This house is very small.
“Women can at least hope to understand each other,” Sasha was saying. “But add testosterone to the mix, and the animal becomes unintelligible, unbearable, un—”
“Would you do me a favor?” My voice was low, but perhaps my anxiety was audible, because Sasha stopped.
“Why not? You’re not a man.”
“Could somebody stay at your apartment? Until…” I had no idea for how long. Until the police caught and locked up a killer? “Until a while?”
“Very secretive,” she said. “Maybe subversive. Who is it?”
I shook my head. “Think of her as Madame X.”
“Madame,” Sasha said, and despite her anti-male ranting, she looked disappointed, as I’d known she would. “Not the mint julep, is it?”
I shook my head. “This woman’s in big trouble. I can’t really say much more.”
Sasha’s eyes twinkled. “She can’t stay here because Hercule Poirot might find her, am I right?” She’d avenge being stood up by one man by duping another. This is the way serious pathology begins, but we’d handle that later. “Fine, sure, when? She isn’t dangerous, is she?”
“Now and no.”
“She’s here? What did you do while he was over?” She looked at the duplicate coffee cup again, then at me, squinting. “Oh. He wasn’t here at all, was he? The creep! So where are you stashing her?”
I took the stairs double-time. I felt brilliant at having thought of this, and lucky to have a friend like Sasha. Nobody would ever find Lydia now.
She must have collapsed on the cot, and there she still lay, fully clothed, uncovered, sleeping so deeply it would have been sadistic to wake her, not to mention difficult. I watched her even breaths, remembering her smile at finally feeling safe, and I knew I’d give her this night.
I slipped off her shoes, tucked a blanket around her, and turned out the light.
“I’ll bring her over after school tomorrow,” I said when I was back downstairs.
Sasha glanced toward the stairs as she pulled on lined leather gloves. “Long as a woman sleeps alone, nothing much bad can happen to her.”
We were smug and self-satisfied at outwitting the universe. And we were wrong.
Thirteen
NEXT MORNING, ALL WAS STILL SILENCE ON THE THIRD FLOOR, EVEN AFTER MY radio burst into high-decibel rock ’n’ roll. I try to avoid the alarm itself, which sounds like warning of a nuclear attack, but music that’s loud enough to jolt me awake isn’t much better.
I washed and dressed quietly, although if “Great Balls of Fire” hadn’t penetrated Lydia’s sleep, the sounds of stockings slipping on certainly wouldn’t.
I tiptoed, shoes in hand, wondering if my stairs had always been that squeaky, and made myself coffee. Instant, and I pulled the kettle off the range before it began its train-whistle scream.
Harboring a fugitive, even a potential one, felt peculiar, but I was on the side of good, at one with the families who manned the Underground Railroad, or the people who hid Anne Frank.
I took out a large piece of paper. I’M AT SCHOOL, I wrote in letters big enough to catch her attention. I’LL BE BACK 3:30. MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME. DON’T—I had a long list of warnings, most of them obvious. Don’t answer the door or phone, don’t open the drapes, don’t go outside. Don’t panic, don’t lose faith, don’t play loud music, don’t be afraid. Don’t get caught.
Don’t treat her like an idiot, I told myself. I would simply tell her not to worry. I got as far as
WO
when I heard a scritch, familiar but upsetting. The scritch of my erstwhile beloved’s key in my doorway.
Now? After ignoring me all week?
I corrected my own irate mind. The week wasn’t over yet. We were up to Thursday morning and I’d seen him Monday evening and yesterday afternoon. The fact that both sightings were brief, impersonal, and unpleasant didn’t matter. Still, was this the time to come calling?
The front door opened. “It’s dawn,” I said. “You scared me.”
“Not as much as you’re scaring me.”
And instead of wasting time figuring out what the devil he meant, I asked the only relevant question. “Does this mean Jinx left?”
“What?” One of his shoulders shrugged. “Not till Sunday, you know that.”
Oh, yes. Airline rates improved if you stayed over Saturday. My temper did not.
“Listen, if you thought I was upset on that message—”
I looked down and for the first time noticed the blinking answer machine light.
He raised his arms in disgust or despair and turned his back, then swiveled. “Not surprisin’. Li’l things like checking messages slip the mind after a busy evening.”
I didn’t know what was eating him, but I hoped it was the aftermath of a vicious quarrel with Jinx. On the other hand, I wasn’t willing to take the brunt of his clashes with the Confederate chickadee.
“Well,” he said, slouching his tall, lean way around my living room, “if you ever do give a listen, you’ll hear me try to talk some sense into you, call you off your quest.”
“Thanks.” I wished he’d put the idea of saving me on hold until such time as I needed it. At the moment, it seemed too much like meddling, or downright oppression. I’d have to think about this sometime.
“On the other hand,” he said, “no point botherin’ with it now, is there?”
“What are you talking about?”
He looked up at my ceiling and I panicked, afraid he knew about my secret guest, but then I realized he was merely seeking divine guidance, or patience. “You tellin’ me,” he said slowly, “you don’t think it’s a tad late to try and call you off?”
“Off…what?”
“Off the sad Tellers.” His mush count was on the rise. When suffering stress, Mackenzie reverts to the language of a childhood spent in a bayou where humidity apparently rusts intelligibility the way it does iron. His words flake, disintegrate into powder, and I have to strain to hear him criticize me, which doesn’t seem fair. “I happen to think it’s too late because I watched TV this mornin’. An’ read the paper.” He looked like a curly-haired avenging angel.