We walked upstairs. There was a sewing room that showed no signs of use, a large and old-fashioned bath with a claw-footed tub, a pink and flouncy room that must have been Laura’s, and signs that the master bedroom had been used only by the master. A more modern bath joined it to a very feminine boudoir. There was also a guest room I was willing to bet had never been occupied. This was not a family that could welcome close contact.
We were heading back to the ruins of the living room when Mackenzie paused at the dining room window. “I’m worried about the car,” he said. “If somebody comes around that corner too fast…”
His point was well taken. However, the spot had seemed the only one between here and Manhattan. Everyone in Chestnut Hill was entertaining. I imagined rooms full of the glimmering dresses the magazines considered de rigueur for holiday parties. I didn’t think I’d ever been to a party where such costumes were appropriate—except Halloween.
Mackenzie and I stood side by side, regarding the gracious street, lined with old trees that, even in their winter undress, seemed to guard the stately homes with dignity. The windowpanes we looked through were old glass, wavy and imperfect, hazed with a film of smoke that clouded our view.
I felt uncomfortable and displaced. It was probably no more than a matter of being back in a house that had bred and nourished misery. Now, a sign in front of the door said, “Stay Away. Unsafe,” but it had been unsafe for a long time.
I wished I’d never read A Christmas Carol. Never suggested the party. I had upset the status quo, put something in motion. Without the party, maybe Laura and her family could have been saved. I could have talked to her about Icarus, found out, intervened. Nobody had to die.
The fact that I’d meant well made it sadder. “I’m going to visit that woman, my mother’s friend,” I suddenly said. “And go to that class party at Silverwood. I was pretty pious about being kind to the less fortunate—as long as it was my students’ responsibility.”
“You’ll never make it as Scrooge,” Mackenzie said. We kept looking outside.
I could understand why they brought people back to the scenes of crimes. Memories returned and clarified as if the indestructibility of matter included afterimages. All it required was a bit of on-site excavation.
The street was filled with cars, as it had been that night. But it didn’t look the same. There had been other shapes. They slowly clarified as I mentally circled past again and again. I remembered their colors and what I had mumbled to myself.
A Septa Charter, an Innercity Services Van, Palate Pleasers Caterers. A taxi. “Mackenzie!” I said. “We have a lead. Besides that teetotaling church. There must be lists of which bus went out and where the pickup points were. Something.” I was wildly proud of the discovery-memory.
“Any more?” We walked across the hallway. It had been immediately obvious to me that there was no point in digging, literally, through what had been the living room. If there was a list, and if it had been brought in here that night, it had long since met the same fate as the master of the house. I made this point to Mackenzie.
Nonetheless, he poked around with childlike delight. Instead of a mud puddle, he had a whole room of ash to muck about. He stood near what had been the bay window. Now it was blind boards. The room was dim, lit only from the far-off dining room windows. “There was the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen in front of that window,” I said. “All gold and silver and crystal ornaments, some that were pretty unusual. Antiques, probably.” No trace of the tree was left.
Mackenzie kicked through a black tangle of carpet and carbonized something. “I see bits of some. Maybe Laura’d like them?”
I hoped that Laura would turn toward the future with relief, and suspected that she wouldn’t want many souvenirs of this house and its past. But I didn’t see the harm in Mackenzie’s sifting out remnants if that gave him the illusion of accomplishing something. I watched him dive for glitter. Within minutes, he looked like he was wearing gloves and he had a broad sooty swatch from his forehead to his ear. He picked up a buckled metal wafer. “Probably a snowflake once,” he said. “Maybe.”
I looked around. My mind had been smoke damaged the last two days. Whenever I’d thought about the party, it had been a rushed and confusing blur. But now, back inside the living room, my mental landscape cleared until I could remember specifics, faces and moments. I could see where I had sat with Gladys and the porcelain figurine, and where I’d been waylaid by the man who wanted a free car. I wish I knew how Sandy Clausen had ultimately handled him. Or the spitting veteran. I could see the green-covered table rounds, the plates full of turkey and dressing, Santa with his bag of gifts.
And Marley’s ghost.
There it was, the shred of an idea that had teased and refused to be remembered until now. The old man with the cane and the loud voice.
“There was a man,” I began. Mackenzie stopped digging and looked interested again. “He was…different. Old, too. Said ‘Alexander Clausen,’ three times, as if he were tolling the name, tapped him on the shoulder with his cane. Clausen knew him. Called him ‘Jacob’—but he was very surprised to see him.”
“And?”
“I got this weird feeling. He made me think of Marley’s ghost. His name was even Jacob, like Marley’s.”
“Yes?”
“He pointed to himself, then Clausen, as if there were a bond.”
“And then?”
That was it, except for residual unease.
“Anything else happen?”
“I don’t know. It was my turn to use the powder room. There was a line.”
“You couldn’t let somebody ahead of you?”
“Mackenzie, I was eavesdropping and trying to be subtle about it. I couldn’t just stand there crossed-legged and gape, could I?”
He shrugged. “Any idea who he was? His last name?”
I shook my head. You’d think he sees a ghost, the lady behind me had said, but what’s to be made of a cliché? The more I thought about it, the less significant the whole thing became. I was filled with so-what’s and of-courses. Of course I thought of Marley—he was Jacob. A common enough name for men that age. Somebody suggested ghosts and it was a Christmas party. So what if the old man called Clausen by his first and last names? A million people felt like his familiar from his obnoxious TV ads. Of course Clausen was surprised. He probably hadn’t heard the old man’s call, and then he got bonked from behind. I’d be shocked, too, given the circumstances.
“Sorry,” I said. “That’s all there is, and the more I think about it, the less it becomes.”
Mackenzie, fine lines of disappointment around his mouth, returned to his archeological tasks.
“Tell you what,” I said, “I’ll go move the car.” I, too, needed the illusion of achieving something, no matter what.
* * *
Four blocks away, I found a better, safer parking spot, but as I walked back, I didn’t feel any particular sense of accomplishment.
I walked up the flagstone steps toward the Clausen house and suddenly faced a tall, gaunt woman, faded patrician face inside a mane of gray hair, eyeglasses attached to a thick brown cord, and pruning sheers in her hand. Sixtyish, she wore vintage slacks, a nondescript cardigan and a Chestnut Hill Academy warm-up jacket meant to be worn by a football player.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “A plainclotheswoman or something like that? What now? What on earth did that man start with his foolishness?” She pursed her lips and scowled. “I told him. I said, ‘Alexander, this is an unforgiveable mistake.’ And I was right. Advertise your house number for anyone to see and what do you expect?” She crossed her arms. The pruning sheers stuck out like a lethal beak. It was a little chilly for gardening.
She saw me eyeing the shears. “Work in the greenhouse whenever I can. Live next door. Saw you two arrive a while ago, then you left and I wondered, and now you’re back. I don’t like to pry, but has anything else happened? Lord knows, we’ve had a fire. Riffraff. A murder, the papers say. What will this do to property values? He wasn’t very considerate. Not at all neighborly. I warned you, you know.”
“Me?”
“You people. I put in a complaint the second I read about that—that event in the paper.”
“I’m really sorry, but I—”
“You’d think you’d listen to a decent citizen. I never called you pigs. Never demonstrated once. Voted straight Republican my entire life.” She assumed a chin-up, self-congratulatory posture.
“Ma’am…I’m not who you—”
“And what do I get? Blather about freedom of assembly. I said, ‘Young man, to whom do you think you’re speaking? I know my Constitution. I’m past-president of the D.A.R.’ —who did he think he was?”
“What exactly is your complaint?” I asked, as politely as I could.
“I know my unfortunates well as the next. I am on the boards of several charities. I’ve opened my house, too, when it was appropriate. But not to that kind. I warned him. I warned the police. Nobody listened.” She pursed her lips until she looked like a drawstring had pulled her shut from inside. “Gave me insomnia, it did, worrying about them being right here, right next door. Prowling around.”
“There were people outside?”
“I called you people. You think anybody cared? A patrolman came in his own sweet time, but of course by then the prowler was gone.”
“When was this?”
“During his party.” She said the last word as if she’d been talking about obscene revels. “Twice.”
“You called two times about prowlers?”
“Three times.” She nodded, shaking her hair. I could suddenly see a spirited young woman whose best feature was rich long hair. The habit of using it for punctuation, of making certain everyone noticed it, had persisted.
“Not that they even responded the third time. Maybe if they had, they could have stopped the fire sooner.”
“I don’t understand.” She was going to have to get to the point, if there was one, soon, or I’d forget that I was trying to be a nice person.
“Why shouldn’t there be three prowlers when that man next door imported a herd of lowlifes?”
I was glad that she hadn’t been invited to any of the gala holiday parties in the neighborhood. Even her own kind was rejecting her, and I felt there was some justice.
“That rude man of yours talked about the boy who cried wolf, can you imagine? Told me to go back to sleep. But I saw them. I certainly couldn’t sleep.”
“Ummm,” I said. “And what was it they were doing?”
“The first time he was prowling around the front here, but of course you people waited until he was gone to arrive. The second time he was prowling all the way around back. And the third time he was rushing pell-mell down those very steps.”
“Maybe they were guests, a little confused as to where they should be.” I was sure the woman was paranoid, so afraid of “them” that she made ghosties and goblins out of stragglers.
“How will we ever know? You people—you said if I didn’t see anybody on my own property, I shouldn’t worry. Try to be a good neighbor and see where it gets you!”
“I’m sorry for your troubles,” I told the woman. “We try our best, you know.”
“Then come when I call.”
I tried to look understanding, if not repentant, and turned to go inside. And then remembered something she’d said. “What did you mean we could have stopped the fire sooner if we’d come?” I asked.
“Well, you’d have been here, then. That last one? The one rushing out? It was only minutes—less than that—before I saw the house light up. Who do you think called the fire company as it was? Not that anybody’s thanked me. Not once.”
“This person who was rushing away—was it a man or a woman?”
The long gray pageboy bobbled as she shook her head. “Wearing pants, who can tell? It was night. Dark. It’s your job to find out more, not mine.”
We seemed out of chitchat. I thanked her and looked toward the house.
“If you ask me, and nobody has, that was the one started the fire,” she snapped. “Maybe the one murdered Alexander!”
I thought so, too. Mackenzie had to talk to her, even though I was fairly sure I’d heard everything she had to say, except for more harsh opinions of the police and assorted riffraff.
“But you didn’t even answer my call!”
Despite her fine features, she resembled a hag, an out-of-season Halloween witch, gray hair flying in the chilly wind.
“And now,” she said, waving her shears at me, “it’s too late!”
She was right. I apologized once again, and meant every word of it. My feet dragged as I went into the house.
Nine
“FOUND ALL KINDS OF STUFF,” MACKENZIE SAID, KICKING UP DUST.
“There’s a woman next door,” I said. “You’d better take a statement from her.”
“The witch?” he asked, still digging around. “Servino talked to her, and so did five other guys.”
“She said nobody did.”
“She calls every day. Maybe every hour. The precinct and headquarters. She is not an easily satisfied citizen.”
I was no longer amused by his ridiculous digging. “We’re looking for a list, not liquified ornaments,” I reminded him. “And I was thinking—Sasha took pictures that night. Even if we can’t find the list, maybe some of the people in her photos could be identified. What do you think?”
“Worth asking her. Why haven’t you?”
“Because she’s out of town.”
He looked at me as if he knew she was somewhere she shouldn’t be, doing things she shouldn’t be doing, with someone she shouldn’t be with. I was tired of his attitude toward her. “I’ll leave a message tonight,” I said. “Now—enough fun and games in the dirt. Clausen had a study somewhere. He went to get something from it when I was here for a meeting. It seems a more logical place to look.”
He shrugged and sighed. He was having fun and I was spoiling it. “They aren’t all ruined. Some are real interestin’. Look over there where I put them.”
The needlepoint cover on the piano bench had become history, but its frame made a nice nest for Mackenzie’s treasures. “I know what your pockets must have been like when you were a little boy,” I said, lifting shapeless lumps and bumps of metals, precious and otherwise. The golden ornaments had been paint. I should have realized that all along, but the house had overwhelmed common sense. Now the Mackenzie collection featured hardened puddles of tin and lead.