Brad Stark wiped the steam from the mirror, peered intently at his reflection, and then adjusted his tie. He ran his finger up its center. The dimple should be tight, but obvious. Satisfied, he stepped back, turned his head right and then left, inspecting each profile out of the corner of his eyes. He ran a hand over his jaw to check for stubble, any miss by his razor. He shifted his weight forward and rose up on his toes. It made him an inch and a half taller, as tall as his wife. Judith Stark spent her life in flats because of him, although she had several pairs of high heels in the closet. She only wore them when she went out without him or when she wished to make a point after one of their fights. Then she’d wear them in his company. It usually worked, and whatever they were fighting about got resolved with an apology from him. He frowned at the thought and considered clearing the shoes from her closet, tossing them all in the trash and laying down the law, once and for all. But he knew he wouldn’t. She knew too much about him; knew how to push his buttons.
Brad’s strength lay in his ability to compartmentalize. It had served him well, had kept him sane, in fact, at a time when he could easily have crashed. He could shut one door in his mind and open another. His focus would then be wholly redirected and singular. He could even close them permanently, if he needed to.
Now he refocused. Judith and her shoes and any threat she might pose to him evaporated. In their place, he summoned up Frank Smith—Meredith Smith. If he could extract a sizable donation from him—Lord knows Smith could afford it—then the fiftieth year class gift could be a record and that would please Felix Darnell which in turn meant Brad could relax a little, his job would be secure for the time being. He had not put up the numbers Darnell and the Board of Trustees expected. He could be replaced. Baltimore had a reputation for having one of the densest populations of fund raisers and development professionals in the country. Hiring someone to replace him would pose no problem at all. He took a last quick glance in the mirror, braced his shoulders, and left the bathroom.
Last night he’d set out the place cards so that he and Smith would sit next to each other. Somehow Charles Drake ended up beside him. Drake talked his ear off about the summer camps he’d attended at the school fifty years ago, tennis camps, lacrosse camps, band camps, the gamut of summer-filling self-improvement ventures. Drake’s parents must have found him as boring a child as Stark did as an adult, and shipped him out to Scott whenever they could. He asked if Brad thought they should revive the camps.
“Some serious money there, Stark,” he’d said.
Drake lived in an antique world where hair cuts should cost a dollar and a generous tip was a quarter. Brad had no choice but to listen to his drivel and smile through it. He had a lot of nerve, changing those cards and then turning around and boring him with camp nonsense.
He wondered if an honorary diploma for the suicide, for Jack Smith, would help. A diploma, back dated, of course, and a formal apology…no, an apology and a disclaimer stating that the charges were….He shook his head. Darnell would never buy it.
“Come up with a real plan, Stark,” he’d probably say, “something that will work this time, something sensible.”
Brad chafed under Darnell. He thought that when the Board of Trustees finally found out how incompetently he managed the school, there’d be a sea change at the top levels. He had ideas and Darnell couldn’t see them.
Back to Smith. There were rumors about Smith—bad things. He couldn’t remember what or how bad. Maybe he could find them on the Internet, the mother lode of information and factoids. Maybe he could find the key to Smith’s bank account there. Not blackmail. After all, it would be from the public domain. Anybody could access it. Intelligence was not about what you knew, he believed, but how you used what you knew.
***
Meredith Smith: birth date, family information, book credits, and TV shows. Personal stuff would be harder to find, but not impossible. She surfed three more sites and then found what she was looking for.
Smith’s wife of forty years was reported missing in the fall. No evidence of foul play was ever found nor was her body recovered, and it is still unaccounted for. Smith had no explanation for her disappearance and no alibi for the time the police believe that she dropped out of sight. Speculation surrounding his possible involvement in the mysterious disappearance and presumed death continues. Police will only say he remains an investigative lead in the case.
At issue is a substantial life insurance policy taken out on Saundra Smith. Meredith Smith is the only beneficiary and its value is reliably reported to be in seven figures.
They think he did it, she thought. Did he? Could he? People change, but Frank? Rosemary tried to conjure up a murderous Frank Smith. She could not. She remembered only the boy who wept over the naked birds that fell from their nests and whose parents no longer fed them. The boy who, forlorn but dry eyed, took his nearly blind and crippled dog to the vet to be put to sleep because he couldn’t bear to see it suffer.
***
The life insurance had been Sandy’s idea from the start. They didn’t need it. Residuals and royalties still arrived quarterly. Movie options from his books and the possibility of turning
Collars
into a full-length feature film promised to bring in even more. On top of that, he had enough new material on his hard drive to keep the flow going for the next decade. He knew his limits and he recognized the possibility his brain could turn to peanut butter in the years to come, that he could follow his mother into dementia, so he wrote steadily. He had six manuscripts in various stages of completion. In his latest books, he’d made it a point to leave out anything that could date them. If he died he figured his wife could pull the next in the series from the file, have a book doctor smooth it out and ship it, and the next, and the next after that, to his publisher.
But Sandy said she wanted the insurance and she wanted it now.
“Both of my parents died of cancer, Frank. My two aunts and three cousins did too. I’m a medical disaster waiting to happen. This will make what happens bearable.”
He read the determination in her hazel eyes. He wasn’t going to win this one.
“I’d have to take a physical, see. I want to get this done while I can, while I’m still healthy, before the cancer finds me. When it comes—”
“Don’t say when, Sandy. You’re inflating the importance of your genetic pool. Your chances of getting cancer are no greater than mine.”
“You say. But I know better, and what about you and your obsession with Alzheimer’s?”
“That’s completely different.”
“Not in my book, it isn’t.”
Frank settled into the sagging end of their sectional sofa. He knew that when she got hold of an idea, there’d be no stopping her. “Okay, okay,” he said, surrendering.
“It’s like I’m being stalked, you know. Like I’ve got one of those stalkers the movie stars have, only mine is cancer.”
He started to protest but she waved him off.
“It found them and it will find me. I need to get this done now.”
He thought her overly dramatic, but gave in to appease her, not out of any sense of either impending death or financial need. If it made her feel better, she could have it. The face amount had been an afterthought. “What do you think? A hundred thousand, two?”
“A million. Let’s do a million dollars like one of those pampered athletes you’re always complaining about.”
The premium on a million dollars turned out to be affordable and she laughed.
“I’m your million dollar baby. Do you remember that song, Frank?
I found a million dollar baby, in a five and ten cent store,”
she sang.
“Nat King Cole,” he’d said, and they danced around the living room while she hummed the rest of the tune.
Dexter Light reached into the drawer in the bedside stand. Ragged light streamed through tears in the yellowed blinds on the window. Shadows and light, the story of his life, he thought. Mostly shadows. A bus accelerated outside leaving a plume of diesel exhaust which would, in a moment or two, seep into his rooms. The picture lay next to the gun. He removed the picture and squinted at its faded images.
She stood next to the front fender of an antique automobile. He never figured out what make. Probably an old Buick. She held the baby in her arms and smiled at the camera, a wide toothy smile that showed a little more gum than one might consider attractive. No
Vogue
model, but her smile always captured him, in spite of its pink surround.
“Who’s your daddy?” he said to the picture. His head throbbed. He dropped the photo back in the drawer, looked at the gun and repeated, “Who’s your daddy?” He glanced at his watch. Too late for the breakfast and the luncheon. He rubbed his temples and contemplated the disorder that he called home, at least until they tossed him out of this one-room kitchenette and bath, miserable excuse for an apartment. That could happen soon if he didn’t find rent money. If he went to work today, he’d get his pay. There ought to be enough in commissions this week to cover rent and allow him to retrieve his cleaning. There’d be enough, that is, if he could get past the Ironman Tap or Cal’s Sports Bar, or any of the half dozen taverns and tap rooms that, like bad boys, stuck out their legs and tried to trip him on his way home every day. He guessed if he promised himself a good drunk at the Scott Academy cocktail party tonight, he could avoid them, certain eviction, and his daily contemplation of a premature death.
He sorted through the clothes lying on the floor, selected a relatively clean shirt, unknotted the tie next to it and tossed them both on the bed. His slacks hung over the back of a chair in front of what would be a useable desk except for the ten inches of unopened mail, official-looking notices from various government organizations, and old newspapers.
Four aspirins and a shower later, he began to feel better. He dressed, found his sport coat behind the sagging armchair in the corner, and put it on. The thought of breakfast made his stomach turn over so he left for work. He would be on the phones early. That would make Janetta happy. She worried about him. She was the only person who did. Janetta supervised the boiler room where he and a dozen tired men and women sold things. Right now it was security systems. Business tailed off a bit after the Do Not Call list went into effect, but Secure-4-U sold burglar alarms by selling fear, and the people who responded to that, the poor and the aged, were the same group that had not figured out how to get their names on the list, so business was reasonably good, and Dexter managed to stay ahead of his landlord.
“
Tonight, tonight
…” he sang and then couldn’t remember the rest of the lyrics. He once owned the tape of
West Side Story
. She’d given it to him. She said it was her favorite show. He cherished it because she did. But he’d lost it somewhere.
***
“Rosemary Bartlett,” she said to her reflection, “what in God’s name are you playing at?” She inspected the dark circles under her eyes. Without makeup and the flattery of dim lighting, she looked old.
“You’re an old lady, Rosemary, and you should get used to it.”
Who says so? Aren’t you only as old as you feel?
“That’s a myth foisted off on an unsuspecting geriatric public so they will not draw down their Social Security at sixty-two when they are entitled, thereby helping the politicians in Washington to keep stealing from the trust fund.”
My, aren’t we cynical this morning.
“Shut up and leave me alone.”
This is not Victorian England. You’re not required to mourn forever, you know.
“I’m not mourning. Not anymore.”
Right, so why are you feeling guilty about last night?
“I am not feeling guilty. Yes, I am. Rats!”
She spun around from the dressing table and bunched the silk of her dressing gown in her fists. She felt the tears slide down her cheeks and stamped her foot.
“This is so dumb. The kids are grown and gone. They’ve been saying for years I should go out. Men have called. One or two of them were even fairly attractive. Why am I feeling this way?”
She turned back to the dressing table and made a face at its clutter. Bottles, boxes, blush brushes, and lipsticks fought for counter space. Too much stuff, she thought.
“Who am I kidding? I’m over sixty-six years old. No amount of this stuff is going to change that, and who’d want an old bag like me anyway?” Who indeed? She left the table and its convicting mirror. She’d get dressed and work in the garden. Then she’d read and…and go to bed early.
And alone?
“Yes, and alone.” She went down the wide staircase to the first floor landing. Sunlight streamed in through the double hung security doors that were made to look like leaded glass but which would stop a bullet from a .357 Magnum, she’d been told. George used to worry about her. She paused to glance at yesterday’s mail, neatly stacked at one end of an ornate mahogany credenza. The reunion brochure winked at her.
“What do you want?”
She’d started talking to herself shortly after her husband died. Her home had always been filled with noisy conversation, even after her children left to make homes of their own. But when George died, the silence descended like fog on the Chesapeake Bay. It nearly drove her mad. So, she filled it with her own voice. Voices, actually. Sometimes when she talked she felt like the little cartoon characters who had a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. They’d argue back and forth and she’d be caught in the middle. Once, in the middle of one of her conversations, she realized the meter reader was standing ten feet away listening to her. She blushed and retreated into the house. She wondered if he had any other batty old women on his route. She hoped so.
She ran her eye over the schedule. Earlier she had checked off the events she thought she might attend: The dinner, the party Saturday at the Nichols’, and a cocktail party at the Academy tonight. She’d made her selections a week ago when it seemed more like an adventure. Not an adventure really, but a chance to satisfy her curiosity. She and Frank had been childhood sweethearts. She wanted to catch up, that’s all. Now she debated whether to close it down before she slid into a situation that could hurt. Well, maybe not hurt, what could happen really? But embarrass…?
Yeah, right.
“I told you to go away. And it could, it might.”
And so your decision is?
“I’ll decide later, not now.”
She went back upstairs and began sorting through her dresses. She laid out the red one she bought in Hawaii. George never liked it. She’d wear it tonight.
***
“I won’t be back until late tonight.” Frank watched his daughter out of the corner of his eye.
“What time?”
“Barbara, I am an adult, not your teenaged son. You do not have to worry about me. I don’t know when. I might meet up with some people and we might go somewhere.”
“Okay, I won’t worry about you. Did you know almost no one wears Arpège anymore?”
“Wears what?”
“It’s a perfume. Mom used to wear it.”
“Oh, that. ‘Promise her anything, but give her Arpège
,
’ they used to say. I didn’t do a lot of scent.”
“I picked up your shirt to wash it. It reeks of Arpège
.
”
“Reeks? Are you sure it reeks?”
“I can smell it.”
“I don’t think that qualifies as reeking. There were ladies at the dinner. One sat next to me. You probably smell cigars and booze, too.”
She made a face. “Don’t be too late, Dad. I’ll wait up.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“I have a right to worry. Why are you always so secretive about things? All the time when I was growing up, you never….I only heard about your brother Jack just now.”
“You didn’t need to know before now.”
“But I’m family. I have a right to know.”
“Did hearing about your Uncle Jack, a man you never knew, could not have known, make you feel better? Would your life have improved if you’d known about him all these years? What is the point of burdening people with the dark side of life if you don’t have to?”
“Right now I guess I want to know what else you haven’t told me. What other secrets are you keeping?”
“None you need to know about,” he said and thought about Sergeant Ledezma.