Maggie Dove (5 page)

Imagine the idea of it! Maggie thought as she stepped into her car, a red Audi TT that hummed at her touch. The idea was almost amusing. The notion that the exact thing her life was missing right now was a spoiled man. Because if there was one thing Maggie knew it was that there was nothing more of a prince than a single man at a nursing home. Or an adult home, or whatever it was Winifred lived in. All the women would be fighting for a catch like that. She could see him: a neat dresser, self-satisfied, a connoisseur. She'd probably fall in love with him and then he'd dump her for a 91-year-old.

Dating at the age of 62.

What's new, my darling?

I found a body last night and my feet are killing me.

The sun now shone so bright it didn't seem possible it had been pouring only a few hours earlier. She passed three cars: two minivans and a Kia. The one great virtue of being 62 years old was that you could drive a bright red car and almost never be pulled over by the police. In an older person, speed is endearing or a sign of dementia. She'd bought the TT years ago when she'd been investigating cars for Inspector Benet. What sort of car would such a man drive, she'd asked herself, going from car dealership to dealership until she found the TT, thrilled at its sleek shape, so excited she'd bought one for herself. She still felt excited every time she got into it.

Could she come back in another life or as another person, she would race cars. Maggie's one regret, beyond anything to do with her daughter, was that she hadn't done anything adventurous. Hadn't skied or gone on safaris. Had preferred to stay home and read a book, which she supposed was an adventure of a kind.

“Frank Bowman,” she muttered.

Imagine going on a date and having to make small talk, she thought, as she raced past Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. She didn't drive that fast, but she drove fast enough. She wasn't self-destructive, she just liked feeling the road beneath her. Loved the sound of the engine running. For some reason she'd always loved the smell of oil, maybe because her father had been so handy. He'd had a workroom and he loved to putter. He wasn't a well-educated man, but he'd loved history and he'd loved Stuart Dove. “And he did not call him Dad,” she said.

Maggie didn't want to be ridiculous. Bad enough she'd been pitied for so long. She'd been the person people always spoke to gently, asked how are you doing with the frightened hope on their faces that she would not collapse on their watch. That she would just reply, “Fine, thanks.” Which she always did. She'd not wanted to be a burden.

She'd struggled so hard to reach a point that people could talk to her without flinching. Grief was so isolating. People wanted to say the right thing, but they weren't sure what it was. So better to say nothing at all. She wanted to comfort people, to tell them it was okay to say what they wanted. But she didn't have the energy and found it hard to speak without crying. Then there were the callous ones who were afraid bad luck was contagious. And those who thought you should get over it. But over the years she'd managed to reclaim her person. She was no longer an object of pity, but friendship. She would not now switch into ridiculousness by dating one of Winifred's suitors.

Anyway, if she wanted an attractive man to talk to she could talk to Inspector Benet. She'd given him silver hair and solemn brown eyes. She'd made him perfect. She'd found something appealing about a man with a thick head of hair. In the years since she'd stopped writing, the part she'd missed the most had been Benet—but then, she did still talk to him when she wanted. Occasionally he answered. Between the fictional characters and her lost loved ones, Maggie could spend a great deal of time talking to the air, and why not? Perhaps that was heaven, conversation with those you loved, real or not. Why would she want to disturb that?

Past the shops in Tarrytown, the Junior League thrift store, a church where she'd gone to a funeral, a synagogue, a park, another park, a place where a traitor had been shot during the Revolutionary War. Past Sunnyside where docents dressed in nineteenth-century clothes took you on tours of Washington Irving's home. Farther south on Broadway, entering her village, passing by the church that she loved so well. Admiring the way the steeple reached to the sky. An old-fashioned building made of stone and marble, for an old-fashioned woman with an old-fashioned life.

She'd only ever had one fight with her husband, and that had been over whether or not to have a child. Stuart thought he was too old. She'd pressed him. She wanted a child, hoped for a daughter. She knew he'd be a good father, and he was. In so many ways, more patient and loving than she was. How he'd loved walking with his beautiful little girl up and down the hills of their village, along the aqueduct that ran through it, and alongside the river, skimming rocks, fishing, sometimes swimming. He'd tried hard to split Juliet away from Peter. He'd never understood Peter's virtues, only seen his faults. Thankfully, Stuart died a year before Juliet did. Maggie's first thought, when the phone call came from Doc Steinberg about Juliet, was that she was glad he hadn't lived to see it. Glad to think that Stuart was already in heaven, waiting to welcome his daughter.

She stopped writing about Inspector Benet after Juliet died. She tried to keep going, but every time she started a new book, she found herself killing him off. She couldn't foresee an ending in which Benet lived. Every time he went out to solve a case, he got hit by a bus, or stabbed or, in its final iteration, hit by lightning. Her publisher suggested coming up with a different hero. Maybe she'd done all she could with Inspector Benet, but she didn't want to leave him. She'd wanted him to die.

Her publisher suggested she was depressed and should get some help, but she didn't want help. She wanted to mourn.

She turned down Main Street. The river shimmered in front of her like a dream. Every color was as carefully delineated as a needlepoint: here silver blue; there midnight blue; here sky blue. Everything so clear. She couldn't get over the beauty of this river, its timelessness. It was impossible to own, to understand; it could only be appreciated. She thought of Peter. She would have to go talk to him. She prayed his conflict with Bender wasn't too terrible. Suddenly she felt weak, dizzy, couldn't go any farther. She wasn't more than two blocks from home, but she worried she'd crash the car. She pulled in to the first spot, surprised to see a crowd in front of her, even more surprised when they all turned to look at her curiously. Then they began to do something very odd. They began to clap.

Maggie assumed the crowd was applauding someone behind her, so she turned her head, expecting to see something remarkable. But all she saw was Sal Martini, slumped against a streetlamp, squinting up at the sun. She turned back to the crowd, wondering if she was hallucinating, but then the crowd parted and there was Hal Carter. He was having his annual furnace drive, she realized, and he was trying to dragoon her.

“It's our local celebrity,” Hal cried out. “Come up here, Maggie Dove.”

Hal Carter used to be considered the most romantic man in town. Not that he looked the part. He was a plumber and looked like a plumber with his overalls, ruddy face and competent hands. For almost all his adult life he'd lived with his mother, and oh what a difficult woman she'd been. She used to slam the door on Girl Scouts just on principle. Didn't approve of begging. She disapproved of any woman Hal ever went out with. Plus, her nose was always running. She liked to shove Kleenex up her nostrils so when you spoke to her it looked like she had tusks. But no matter how difficult the old lady was, Hal never complained. Ever.

People were always trying to set him up on a date because, except for the handicap of his mother, he was a good catch. But no. He didn't have time. His mother needed him. Maggie herself had gone out with him on the one and only date she'd had after her husband died, but it had been like going out with her brother.

Then, one day, the old lady died. She passed away in her sleep and not one month later Hal began dating Gretchen Anderson, who was easily the loveliest young woman in town. She worked as a docent at the Sunnyside historical site and dressed up in nineteenth-century clothes. You'd see them strolling around town, him all red and voluble and her placid in her gown. They were so tender with each other. There was such pleasure in seeing someone get what he deserved. He'd suffered and suffered for years, and then, in reward, he won a beautiful prize.

The wedding was the biggest occasion there'd ever been in the village. Winifred cried through the whole thing. The bride wore a nineteenth-century wedding dress, all ivory and beads. There were even beads in her hair. The bride's mother, who was also lovely, played the piano as Hal and Gretchen danced a minuet.

In the years since his wedding, Hal had become ambitious. People said it was because he wanted a family. It wasn't cheap living in this village anymore, especially for a plumber, however good he might be, and there was a suggestion that Hal was not so good a plumber as his father had been. Maggie noticed that since he suffered less, people had become more critical.

So, to drum up business, Hal had started up a contest to find “the oldest furnace in town.” Winner would get a free furnace, but all the runners-up would get “consultations.” Maggie knew for herself that Hal was persistent as a tick. If you were a runner-up, you were doomed to get a lot of consultations, until Hal finally harangued you into installing a brand-new furnace. She'd expected the contest to fall flat, but surprisingly, a lot of people signed up. Especially the new folk, who were sharp lawyers in the city, and then bemused by the ways of the village when they moved here. She suspected they knew they were falling for a line, and they wanted to; that's why they'd chosen to live in this beautiful town.

“It's our own celebrity,” he repeated. “Come up here, Maggie Dove.”

“I already have a new furnace, Hal,” she said. “You put it in last year.”

He guffawed at that, the crowd did too. She thought that would be the end of it, but he pressed on.

“Tell us about your new mystery.”

“It's about a plumber who gets murdered,” she said, which just about pushed Hal over the edge. He was a florid man with a loud galloping laugh, the kind of laugh you heard from blocks away. He'd put in a new furnace at Bender's house too, she remembered. She'd heard the sound of his laughter coming from inside the house.

“This lady wrote the best book I ever read,” he said. He held out his hand, inviting her to stand up front with him, but she shook her head no. She felt self-conscious talking about her books in the best of circumstances and she didn't want to be forced into endorsing his services, particularly when, now that she thought about it, her new furnace kept turning off last winter.

“Come on up, Maggie. I need your seal of approval.”

“Not right now, Hal.” She wished he'd stop. She felt something weird in the intensity with which he was pressing her; remembered then the look he'd got on his face when she'd gone out with him that one time. When she'd not invited him into her house for coffee. But surely she was being silly.

For just a moment her vision of him twisted, of the village twisted. There was hatred here, she thought. Hatred in her heart, hatred perhaps in Hal's heart, and who knew where else. Her expression must have changed because Hal backed off. He turned his attention to a thin young man in a suit.

The crowd's attention drifted away from her and Maggie might have drifted away herself, except that she noticed Joe Mangione standing near the front of the ambulance corps building. Now, there was a port in the storm. She made her way over to him.

“Thanks for coming so quickly last night,” she said.

“It's my job,” Joe replied, his voice sounding of Boston. “Don't forget to call 911 next time.”

“Right. Say, have you seen Peter today?”

“Nah, well, it's only three o'clock. He'll be up and around soon.”

“Three o'clock? Has he gotten that bad?”

“We've all got our demons, Mrs. Dove. Right?”

“Did he get in trouble for not calling Campbell right away?”

Mangione looked up and down the street as though Campbell might be hiding somewhere, which was laughable. The man was easily six-foot-eight. There were statues smaller than Walter Campbell, and statues with more warmth to them, Maggie suspected. He was one cold son of a gun. But he was certainly not the sort of man who lurked.

“Ah, Peter's his own worst enemy.” Joe shook his head.

“Was he having trouble with Bender, do you know? Did they have an argument?”

Joe crossed his arms. He was so small and brave, but in this society only his smallness was noticed. He was a passionate Red Sox fan and always aggrieved about them. Even when they won, he couldn't get the memory of their losses out of his head.

“Bender,” he said. “Now, there was a piece of work.”

“Why didn't you like him?” Maggie asked.

“Bend-uh,” he said. “Thought he owned this town, thought he owned everything, him and his money. His mother died of a heart attack when he was a boy, so what's he got to do? Has to make sure the village has the best emergency supplies. He donates money for the 911 system. He arranges for us all to take special certification classes. He wants the village to have New York City–caliber regulations.”

“You didn't want that?”

Joe crossed his arms. He spit into one of the begonias the gardening club had planted in front of the firehouse. “He wanted to improve the physical capacity of the firefighters. He wanted to make the requirements more standard.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wanted a height requirement. His mother died because none of the firefighters was big enough to lift her. He wanted all firefighters to be over five-foot-ten.”

“Is that legal?”

“No. He couldn't force the village to go along with his demands, but he wouldn't donate his money if we didn't comply. He gave us a month to make up our minds. We had until May first.”

He rocked back on his feet. She wondered if she'd ever seen him without his ambulance jacket on.

“The guys would never have voted you out.”

“No,” he said. “I was going to quit. I couldn't ask them to make a sacrifice like that for me. I planned to quit today. But now it's all over. He's dead.”

Yet another person who hated Bender, Maggie thought. The whole village was full of people who wanted Marcus Bender dead. She shivered. Why move to a small community and then do everything you could to make people hate you? Surely that was an attitude more suited to the anonymity of the city.

Suddenly the crowd hushed, and Maggie, following the direction of the crowd, saw the widow Bender walking down the street. Noelle wore a black dress, slightly different than the one she'd worn the night before, but equally formfitting. She sashayed as she walked, barefoot, eating the largest ice-cream cone Maggie'd ever seen. She didn't know there was anywhere in the village that sold ice creams that large. Impossible not to stare.

Impossible not to listen too, to the whispers around her.

Funeral's tomorrow.

On the river. Humanist minister. What's a humanist funeral?

Heard they took the kids away.

“I feel like we're in ‘The Lottery,' ” Maggie whispered.

“What?”

“You know, the Shirley Jackson story where they throw a rock at Mrs. Hutchison.” No sooner had the words escaped her that Maggie remembered her own rock.

There was too much darkness surrounding this man. She had to break through to the light somehow. She slipped past the crowd, following Noelle, thinking perhaps there was something she could do to connect with her, but as she turned onto her street, as the gap between them grew smaller and she yelled out her name, Noelle paused for just a moment, then turned her back on her and went into her house. Maggie followed to the door and rang the bell, but there was no answer, just as there had been no answer last night, when Noelle's husband's corpse was on Maggie's lawn. She noticed, though, when she walked toward her own porch, that Noelle had flipped the remains of her ice-cream cone onto Maggie's lawn. She picked it up, desperately wanting to do the right thing, but flipped it, instead, right back onto Noelle's lawn.

“Take that,” she said, and walked back to Main Street to retrieve her car. Then she called Peter to arrange for a meeting, to figure out what was wrong and what she could do.

“We have to talk.”

“I'll meet you at the park in an hour,” he said.

So she took a shower and washed all Iphigenia's shellac out of her hair, put on a warm sweater and jeans and made some turkey sandwiches and coffee and then headed out for the park, hoping the news from Peter would not be too bad. That her sweet boy would stay safe.