Paper Castles (14 page)

Beverly came from another generation, where good manners were the boat that could navigate you through any situation. Even funerals. Especially funerals. But Savannah wasn’t from her mother’s generation and she was tired of trying to live up to standards that no longer fit her circumstances.

“Must my entire life be a charade?” she said staring at the chasm between her and Beverly. Her mother’s hands were on her hips now, impatience tight around her mouth. Dark circles rimmed her eyes along with a few new lines.

“I don’t know about the rest of your life,” she said. “But this afternoon will be a charade if it needs to be. There’s been enough talk around here as it is. Now come downstairs.”

“God forbid people talk,” Savannah said, even as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and got up. Lessons instilled at an early age were hard habits to break. Beverly said “Come downstairs,” in that tone of voice and Savannah came.

She sat at her little dressing table, staring at her reflection. It would take more than a little freshening up to get the job done.

Beverly walked to the door with a satisfied smile. “I’ll tell them you’re coming. We’ll talk later.”

Yes, they’d talk later as long as it wasn’t about Savannah.

As she brushed her hair, she thought if she pulled up the dust ruffle and looked under her bed she’d find the stack of things she wasn’t allowed to talk about. Right where she left them all her life. Shoved up against the back wall and covered with cobwebs.

S
AVANNAH DRIFTED through the living room and dining room, moving through the crush of people and gathering up their kind words, hugs, and tears. She felt the probing, measuring eyes, judging if she was crying too much or not enough. She despised being on display this way, with snippets of conversation floating in her wake, some landing close enough to hear.

“So brave,” someone whispered. “Just like Jackie Kennedy.”

Ah yes, the Jackie Kennedy stoicism, strength and composure layered over the deadness inside. Beverly would love that one.

Other comments were less kind, sliding around a discreet hand covering a pair of lips in the perfect shade of red.

“Well, bless her heart,” a country club acquaintance cooed. “Did you hear...?”

Et tu Brute’?
Savannah kept walking, lest the dagger find its home.

She saw her in-laws, Ken and Doris Palmerton, sitting in a corner of the sun room. Huddled close together, shoulders and legs perfectly aligned. Holding one another up like weathered bookends. Savannah thought they looked much smaller than when she’d seen them a few months ago. Price had died, taking essential bits of them with him. Price was an only child, an older brother having died at birth. His parents were truly alone, now. They had that vacant look associated with shell-shocked soldiers. People who had seen one too many atrocities, their eyes refusing to see anything else.

She hesitated to approach them, only because she was so little comfort. With no strength, explanation or information to offer, she was helpless in the face of their grief. She felt like a traitor, going to console them with her mixed emotions about Price held behind her back.

Beverly’s words nudged her shoulder.

It’s not about what you feel. It’s about the proper thing to do.

Savannah took a deep breath and squeezed between the couple on the window seat, taking Doris’s hand in hers. This woman had lost her son. Savannah didn’t have any words as a grieving wife but she could connect with Doris as a mother.

“Can I get you anything?” she said, stroking the thin hands. Blue veins like live wires ran across the top of papery skin.

Doris shook her head, lips trembling. Savannah sat still, letting the moment breathe on its own and be enough. It was a relief to just sit and be quiet. No need for fake words that didn’t help anyone. The two women sat together in their misery, and it occurred to Savannah, that sadly, this was probably the most intimate moment she had shared with her mother-in-law.

Ken stretched his legs in front of him. “I need some fresh air.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Savannah said. “Take a walk around the garden, Doris. Look for the New Dawn roses growing over the back fence. Remember, I took cuttings from your garden before you moved. You won’t believe how big it is now.”

Doris nodded and Savannah watched them lean on one another as they walked away, heads bent, not the least bit interested in roses.

With a sigh, Savannah stood up and went searching for her own children. PJ was in the kitchen with some school friends. Even death unable to quell the appetite of adolescent boys. The amount of food piled up in the kitchen was vulgar. They could have opened up a pantry for the poor.

“You okay, Mom?” PJ said around a mouthful of chicken, concern on his young face. He stood tall, her centurion at the ready.

Behind him, Neenie was piling up sandwiches on a platter. Her brown eyes met Savannah’s and echoed the question.

Savannah slipped arms around her son’s shoulders, squeezing him from behind. He was so warm and alive. “I’m okay, honey. Have you seen your sister?”

PJ shook his head. “Not for a while. Want me to find her?”

“No,” Savannah said. “I will.” She squeezed him again and patted Neenie’s arm on her way out.

Back through the gauntlet. Hands from all directions. Hands on her bare arms. People pulling her into claustrophobic hugs and conversations. Distant relatives she hadn’t seen in years sidling up to her, juggling plates of potato salad and fried chicken and demanding intimate revelations they could use to repeat to their friends, with a few choice dazzling embellishments.

Savannah finally caught sight of Angela heading out the door with a cousin.

“Angela,” Savannah called out. “Hold on a minute.”

Angela turned, blonde hair tossed over her shoulder, an arm hooked through her cousin’s.

For a moment she held her mother’s approach in a cold and steady gaze. Then she turned again and walked out the door.

And all Savannah could do was watch her go.

T
HE DETECTIVES Mueller and Fitzgerald were at the house again. Pressing Savannah for information she didn’t have. Just as they had only so many ways of asking a question, Savannah had only so many ways to say,
I don’t know
.

She’d been more than cooperative with their requests. Officers had combed through both Price’s downtown office and his study at home, looking for the tiny thread that could unravel the skein of yarn wrapped around this mystery.

Everyone had a turn being questioned. Even Angela and PJ, who were interviewed separately by a juvenile officer. The process left them shaken and rattling around the house for hours afterward.

“Why didn’t you mention you and your husband had a fight the night of the murder?” Detective Mueller asked.

“I didn’t think it was important.” Apparently this bit of news came from the kids. What else did they say? “I felt terrible about that last memory.” She looked away as she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

God, I’m despicable.

She was still finding pieces of the argument lying around the living room floor.
Get out of my life
, hiding under the coffee table.
I hate you
, cowered in the corner by the front door. She couldn’t escape them. As soon as she thought she’d cleared them all, she found,
I want a divorce
, between the glasses on the bar. Now she turned a bland face to Detective Mueller while her foot nudged,
You’re unfit to be a mother
, under the rug.

“Your guilt aside, why wouldn’t the argument be important?” Mueller asked.

“All married couples have arguments,” she said.

“What were you fighting about?”

“I thought Price was...flirting. At the dance. It didn’t sit well.” She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. She wasn’t comfortable wearing the shawl of a jealous wife.

“I see.” His pencil scratched against the paper. “Flirting with whom?”

“I don’t know.”

Mueller’s eyebrow lifted.

“I mean, I didn’t really get a good look at her.”

“So you left early. Because of this woman —”

“No. I said I wasn’t feeling well.”

“And that was what time?”

“I have no idea, really. I wasn’t looking at my watch.”

Fitzgerald flipped through the pages of his notebook. “You said earlier you thought it was about ten-thirty.”

“That sounds about right.”

“So the fight started when you got home?” His voice seemed to indicate this was important.

“Yes.”

This airing of her dirty laundry was exhausting. And distasteful. Both of them picking up each item in a pair of tweezers and holding them up to the light. Making the most innocent, innocuous remark laden with innuendo.

“Then Mr. Palmerton said he had to meet a client and he left the premises.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t find anything odd about him meeting a client at eleven o’clock at night?”

“I certainly didn’t like the idea.”

“What did you do after he left?”

She swallowed. “I left, too.”

The two men looked at one another in stunned silence.

“Mrs. Palmerton...” Mueller looked confused, scratching the back of his head with his pencil. “You left the house that night?”

“Yes.”

Confusion turned to accusation. “Can I ask why didn’t you mention this fact before?”

“I’m not sure you asked me before. I’m sorry, but this is my family’s first murder. I’m doing the best I can.”

“How much did you have to drink that night?”

The abrupt subject change coiled around her ankles and tripped her. “Excuse me?”

“How much did you have to drink that night?” Mueller repeated, as if speaking to his elderly grandmother.

“I wasn’t counting.”

“More than three? Four? Five?”

“I don’t remember...”

Mueller sighed and glanced over at Fitzgerald, clearly frustrated.

“You left the house,” Mueller said, circling back around. “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere. I just drove around, I guess.”

Fitzgerald bounced forward on the edge of his seat. “You guess?”

“I just drove.”

All this testimony was technically true. She couldn’t recall exactly where she’d been. She remembered tearing out of the house, Angela’s screams, the slamming door. She remembered a bottle of vodka tossed on the passenger seat. After that, it all faded to black. Like the final scene of a movie.

The End.

Those driving hours were lost to her now. Over and over, she sifted through the fog of her memory and came up empty-handed, unable to piece anything together. Small wonder, she was drunk. Not to mention the fact that she’d found her bottle of sleeping pills overturned on her nightstand the next morning. Pills and booze. Marilyn Monroe served up with a side of grits. Who knew what kind of mind-numbing cocktail she’d concocted?

Who knew what she’d done in the blackout?

Something sinister and malignant took root in her mind, nurtured by the detective’s incessant questions. It wanted light so it could thrive and grow.

Where did I go? What did I do?

Fitzgerald kept at her “What time did you get home?”

“I have no idea.”

“Your maid said it was after one when she heard you come upstairs.”

“I trust her word about that.”

“So you drove around for almost two hours?” Mueller looked skeptical. “Did you stop anywhere? See anyone?”

“Not to my recollection.” The hair on the back of her neck stood at attention. “Do I need an alibi?”

“How do you know Adam Vincent?” Mueller’s casual tone knocked her off balance, again.

Savannah gulped back the panic in her throat. “Adam Vincent?”

“Yes. How do you know him?”

“He taught an art class at the technical college. I took the course for a few weeks last year.”

“Did you have any other contact with him?”

“Of course not.” The lie fell from her lips, dressed in the perfect amount of outrage.

The two detectives exchanged a glance.

“The night Mr. Palmerton was murdered, you were fighting.” Mueller said.