The Kind Worth Killing (7 page)

There was a moment of awkwardness as we each took sips of our drinks, and neither of us said anything right away.

“It's like a bad second date,” I said, to break the ice.

She laughed. “I don't think either of us expected the other one to show up.”

“I don't know about that. I thought that you would.”

“I guess that I didn't expect
you
to show up. I figured you woke up the following morning with a terrible hangover, and a vague memory of plotting to murder your wife.”

“I did have a terrible hangover, but I remembered everything we talked about.”

“And you still want to kill her?” She said this as though she were asking me if I still wanted to order French fries. But there was amusement in her eyes, or maybe a challenge. She was testing me.

“More than ever,” I said.

“Then I can help you. If you still want my help.”

“That's why I came here.”

I watched as Lily leaned back fractionally in her chair, her eyes leaving me to look around the small bar. I followed her gaze, taking in the unvarnished wood floor and the ceiling that could not have been much higher than seven feet. There was one other customer in the bar, a man in a suit who had taken over my vacated stool and was drinking an Irish coffee with whipped cream on top. “Is this place okay?” I asked.

“No one knows you here, right?”

“I've been here before, but no, I don't know anyone in Concord.”

I thought of my mother, of the year that she spent living in this town. I wondered if she had frequented this bar. Was this where she came to look for a second husband? Had she met Keith Donaldson here, the divorcé who talked her into moving to California? They hadn't married but she was still in California, with another man now. I saw her less than once a year.

“You seem nervous,” Lily said.

“I am. Don't you think it would be strange if I wasn't nervous?”

“Are you nervous about what we're planning to do, or are you nervous about me?”

“Both. Right now I'm wondering why you're here. Part of me thinks you're some sort of law enforcement and you're going to tape me saying how I want to murder my wife.”

Lily laughed. “I'm not wearing a wire. If we weren't in such a public place I'd let you frisk me. But even if I were wearing a wire, could I even arrest you for planning to kill your wife? Wouldn't that be entrapment?”

“Probably. I suppose I could just say that I was trying to seduce you by talking about killing my wife.”

“That would be a first. Are you?”

“What? Trying to seduce you?”

“Yes.”

“Are we still playing the game from the plane? Absolute truth? Then I won't lie and say that I haven't thought about you in that way, but, no, everything I said about my wife, and how I feel about the situation, is true. I was honest with you on the plane.”

“And I was honest with you. I want to help.”

“I believe you,” I said. “It's just that I don't entirely understand your motives. I understand what I get from what we're planning . . .”

“A quick divorce,” Lily said, and took a small sip of her wine.

“Yes, a very quick divorce . . .”

“But you wonder what I get out of it?”

“I do. That's what I'd like to know.”

“I thought you might be wondering about that,” she said. “I'd have been worried a little if you hadn't.” She fixed her intense eyes on me. “Remember when I was telling you how I felt about murder? How I believe that it's not as immoral as everyone thinks. I truly believe that. People make a big deal of the sanctity of life, but there's
so
much life in this world, and when someone abuses his power or, as Miranda did, abuses your love for her, that person deserves to die. It sounds like an extreme punishment, but I don't think of it that way. Everyone has a full life, even if it ends soon. All lives are complete experiences. Do you know the T. S. Eliot quote?”

“Which one?”

“‘The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree are of equal duration.' I know it's not justification for murder, but I think it underscores how so many people think that all humans deserve a long life, when the truth is that any life at all is probably more than any of us deserves. I think most people fetishize life to the point of allowing others to take advantage of them. Sorry, I'm offtrack here. When I met you in the airport lounge, and then we talked on the plane, you chose to tell me that you fantasized about killing your wife, and that allowed me to tell you about my philosophies of murder. That's it, really. I like talking with you, and if you are serious about killing Miranda, then I will help you, in any way I can.”

I had watched Lily, in the course of her short speech, become briefly passionate, her face pushing toward me like a sun worshiper tilting toward the sun to get the most of its rays. Then I had watched her retreat again, as though she had revealed too much. She turned the stem of her wineglass between her fingers. I wondered briefly if she was insane, and as soon as I had that thought I decided to plunge forward anyway. I knew this feeling well. It was the way I had made enormous sums of money, by taking foolish risks.

“I want to do this,” I said. “And I want you to help me.”

“I will.”

She took another sip of her wine, the light from a brass wall sconce above her making the glass glow, and reflecting onto her pale face. She looked more beautiful, I thought, with her hair pulled back, but also more severe. She reminded me of models in some of the catalogs my wife received. Catalogs full of tall, rich-looking girls in tweeds and jeans, posing next to horses, or in front of country houses made of stone. The models from those catalogs were never smiling.

“I have one question,” I said. “Exactly, how many people have
you
killed?” I wanted to phrase it as a joke to give her a way out of the question, but I also wanted to know if she had practiced what she preached.

“I'm not going to answer that,” she said. “But only because we don't know each other well enough yet. But I promise you that after your wife is dead I'll tell you everything you want to know. We won't have any secrets. It's something I look forward to.”

Her face softened as she said this, and I felt as though there were an implied promise of sex thrumming in the quiet room. My glass was empty.

“Have you been thinking about it, about how it should be done?” I asked.

“I have, a lot,” she said, and slid her wineglass away from her, so that it lined up with my pint glass. “We have a huge advantage and that advantage is me. I can help you, and no one knows that we've ever met. I'm an invisible accomplice. I could provide you with an alibi,
and since no one knows we know each other, the police would trust me. We have zero connection, you and I. And there are other ways I could help you, as well.”

“I don't expect you to do the killing for me.”

“No, I know. It's just that, with me helping you, we can greatly reduce the chances of getting caught. That's the hardest part. Committing the crime is easy. People do that all the time. But most people don't get away with it.”

“So how do we get away with it?”

“The way to commit murder and not get caught is to hide the body so well that no one will ever find it. If there was never a murder, then there can't be a murderer. But there are many ways to hide a body. You can leave a body out in the open but make it look like the opposite of what happened actually happened. That's what needs to happen with Miranda, because if she goes missing the police will keep looking until they find her. When the police look at her body it needs to tell a story that has nothing to do with you. It needs to lead them down a road where you'll never be. I have a question for you. How do you feel about Brad Daggett?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have an opinion on whether he should live or die?”

“I do have an opinion. I want him to die.”

“Good,” she said. “That's going to make this a whole lot easier.”

When Chet came back out of the apartment and joined me in the yard, I was glad that he had put a shirt on underneath his overalls. He still smelled bad, like apple cider that had turned sour. I told him that I had found something in the meadow on the other side of the woods and needed his help. I told him that I would have asked my father but he was busy. Chet grunted in solidarity, as though he knew that my parents were reuniting in their bedroom.

We entered the narrow band of pine forest that separated my parents' property from the derelict property next door. “Have you been over to the meadow?” I asked. He was behind me, stumbling slightly, holding up a forearm, as though branches might suddenly lash at his face.

“I took a walk down to the old railway tracks when I first got here,” he said. The tracks were in the opposite direction of where we were going.

“The meadow's cool,” I said. “It's behind an old farm that no one lives in anymore. I go there all the time.”

“How far is it?”

“Just through the woods here.” We clambered over the toppled stone wall that lined the edge of the woods. A ghostly light from the low sun turned the meadow's scattered wildflowers into electric colors. The sky above was transforming from pink to dark purple.

“Beautiful,” Chet said, and I felt a brief, unreasonable annoyance that he was sharing my meadow.

“Over here.” I began to walk toward the well.

“You, too. You're beautiful, too.”

I forced myself to turn and look at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “I told myself . . . But, God, just look at you. You don't even know how beautiful you are, do you, little Lil? You don't mind, do you? Just if I look.” He swayed a little, one hand rubbing at his unruly beard.

“It's okay, but I need you to help me first. There's an old well and there's something down there attached to a rope and I can't pull it up.”

“Cool. Let's go take a look. How'd you find a well out here?”

I ignored his question and led him across the meadow. I'd known about the well for years. It wasn't too deep. With a flashlight you could see the bottom, nothing down there but pieces of rock, and sometimes standing water if it had rained. I wasn't even sure it was initially a well, so much as a deep hole, maybe the beginning of a well that had failed. I had come across it when I was probably nine years old, running back and forth across the meadow. One of my footfalls had made a hollow, wooden sound and I pulled away dry, yellow weeds to discover the well cover, a rotted wooden square that looked like it had been put there just to keep someone like me from falling in. It barely covered the rectangular well hole and was easily pulled off. The sides of the well were lined with layered rock. I didn't have a flashlight with me then, so I dropped rocks down to judge its depth. They hit something solid after only a second or so, so I knew it wasn't that deep. At the time, I thought maybe it was a hiding place for treasure, or a clue to a larger mystery. I raced back to get a flashlight, but I ended up
disappointed. The well hole was just that, a hole in the ground, collapsing in on itself.

When I showed Chet the well, he said, “Hey, look at that. When did you find this?”

“About a week ago,” I lied. “I spotted the rope first and then pulled off the well cover. It isn't deep, I think, but I can't pull the rope up myself. There's something heavy on the other end.”

Putting the rope down the well had been part of my preparation. I had found the rope, a weathered-looking length, in the cellar of our house, along with an old metal stake, and had brought both to the meadow days ago. I tied one end of the rope tightly around one of the larger rocks I'd unearthed from the meadow, and lowered that end down the well, then staked the other end deep into the earth. I didn't think it looked particularly genuine but it didn't matter. All I needed was for Chet to want to find out what was on the other end of that rope. That morning I'd gone into my parents' bathroom and found something in the cabinet, a small tub labeled
POMADE
. I'd brought it with me earlier to the well and rubbed the hair goop all over the first few feet of the rope, making it hard to hold. I had been worried that the rope would be too easy to pull up and that Chet could manage it from a standing position. I needed him to kneel in front of the well hole. As it turned out, I didn't need to worry. Chet, acting like an excited little boy, dropped to his knees in front of the well and took hold of the rope.

“Ugh, what's on this?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Some sort of muck.”

He put his fingers to his nose and smelled. “It doesn't smell natural. Smells like shampoo.”

“Maybe someone doesn't want us to pull it up.” I had moved so that I was standing directly behind him. He craned his neck to look at me. I could see one of his wet, puffy eyes stare at my chest. My skin tightened, goose bumps breaking out along my arms.

“You like butterflies?” he asked, his eyes still on the embroidered front of my tank top.

“I guess,” I said, and involuntarily shifted backward. I felt a sudden revulsion, plus anger at myself, that I had brought this man with me to my secret meadow. Of course he wouldn't care what was down the well. Of course all he cared about was sex. He'd want to stick his penis in me before pulling up the rope. I'd been foolish. I tried to think of something to say, but my brain had emptied out and my mouth had gone dry.

But then Chet asked, “You didn't tell your parents about this?”

“No,” I said. “They'd just get mad at me, and if they found anything cool down there they probably wouldn't let me keep it.”

“Might as well take a look,” he said and turned his eyes back toward the well hole. “Now, what's in it for me if we find a treasure chest down there?”