The Matriarch (12 page)

Charlotte and Shelly are nearby, and I’m grateful for their presence. I’ve heard that Carla wants them to stay on at her home for a while, until her future is decided.

A few people are standing with Frank near the refreshment table waiting to see me, as if Dante Russo’s funeral has become a ‘catch-up with Cassidy party’. I shake hands with two more couples I remember from the old days. Then comes a woman I don’t remember at all. She has all the charm of icy water thrown into my face.

“How do you do,” she says, and I know this broad doesn’t give a fuck how I do. She smiles—if a grimace can be called a smile—and one corner of her mouth forms a mean, sharp hook that seems to be actually imbedded in her flesh.

“Kate Hammond,” she says. She doesn’t offer her hand.

Her short dark hair frames a wan face, its paleness heightened by rouged cheeks. Brown eyes, made larger by rimless glasses, gaze at me with clinical interest, as if measuring me for her specimen collection. I shiver, suddenly cold. There’s no light in her eyes; they’re dark and lifeless as marbles. Dressed in a short black skirt and a low-cut black blouse, she manages to look funereal and sleazily seductive at the same time.

A sullen, pallid girl of eleven or so clings to her hand. She looks and acts like her mother, but does offer a limp hand, which I shake firmly. The girl wears black shorts and a black tee shirt. These two are an obscene duo in their mother-daughter mourning outfits.

“My daughter, Molly,” Kate says.

Molly is a tall girl, almost as tall as her mother. Her hair is black and long. Her dark eyes are shaded by thick black brows that seem to sprint toward each other across her white forehead. She keeps helping herself to the figs, eating them rapidly.

“My husband,” Kate says, thrusting her chin up and back, indicating the man behind her. He looks far too normal to be this woman’s husband. “Victor,” she adds in an “I could care less” tone, and I smile at him.

“A pleasure, man,” Victor says with a friendly grin as he pumps my hand. A well-built man of around forty with healthy color; his appearance and manner are the exact opposite of Kate’s. I can see no similarity between the man and Molly. I think the girl has to be his stepdaughter.

“Good to meet you, Victor,” I say.

Charlotte appears then with two cans of cold beer. She hands me one and picks up my empty wine glass.

“What a woman,” I say smiling at her. I introduce her to the Hammonds. Her cheeks are flushed, and I know I’m not the only one finding solace in drink.

I feel something at my feet and look down to see a puddle of spilled Coke. Someone has set a plastic cup down by the cooler, and I’ve just kicked it over.

“Molly!” Kate Hammond’s voice has turned strident. “I
told
you not to put that drink on the floor! The floor is no place for drinks!”

Kate reaches for the stack of paper napkins on the table, but Charlotte gets there ahead of her and scoops up a handful. She kneels quickly and puts several on the puddle of Coke. She picks up the cup and smiles at Molly, who looks like she’ll soon burst into tears.

“No problem, kiddo,” I say and place my hand on the girl’s bony shoulder. She stands motionless, staring down at her feet. Her lower lip is trembling.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Charlotte says, getting to her feet. “This old floor’s seen worse than spilled Coke, I’ll bet.” She reaches to embrace Molly, but Kate steps in front of her. She grasps her daughter firmly by her shoulders and glares down at her.

“You apologize to Mr. Murphy,” she says.

I wonder at this girl’s chances in life with a mother like Kate Hammond.

“Sorry,” Molly mumbles.

“No problem, Molly,” I say. This puny kid already has the hangdog look of a loser.

Kate gathers a few figs into her hand and hauls her daughter off, followed by Victor who flashes Charlotte and me an embarrassed smile.

Just what I needed, Charlotte is thinking, a funeral. It’s the very thing to chase off these annoying blues.

“It’s so bizarre, you know?” She and an inebriated Shelly are seated at a small table in the Russo home. “A loving wife slaughters her beloved husband, but why? For God’s sake, WHY?”

“The thing is,” Shelly says, “we don’t know anything about their marriage. Maybe it was a nightmare, and Aunt Carla simply flipped out.”

“How could a marriage be that bad?”

“But see, that’s my point. We don’t know anything about their marriage. Or Uncle Dante himself for that matter.”

“Another thing I’m confused about,” Charlotte says, “is why you think a funeral for your uncle is actually a cocktail party and that you can come home loaded this way.”

Shelly shrugs and picks up two figs from the basket on the table. She takes a healthy bite out of the greenish one. “Because the only way I can put up with this weird custom of standing around bored silly and mourning is to get bombed just as soon as I can.”

Charlotte wads up her paper napkin and throws it across the table at Shelly. She’s fixed them a fine meal of lamb chops, hearts of palm salad, and homemade popovers but has been unable to eat a bite herself. She’s been fiddling with the popover and pushing the chop around her plate. All she wants now is to crawl under the covers and lose herself until morning.

“Funerals are a weird custom, I guess,” she says to Shelly, trying to be less judgmental. She is, after all, very grateful to her sister for coming to the Russo’s with her. “I think of them as a form of vigorish I pay to God so he won’t take me too. It’s what people do, I guess. When someone close to you dies, you pay your respects.”

Charlotte wonders again how long it will be before Shelly splits, leaving her all alone in the Russo home. Their mother has pleaded with the two girls to stay on for a while—at least until Carla’s future is known.

“But it’s difficult, you know, to live with someone who’s not really here,” Charlotte continues. “Oh you’re here, all right. I can see you. And we’ve just had this heartwarming dinner together full of bright conversational insights—”

“Charlotte, I’m sorry,” Shelly says, helping herself to more figs. Amid further apologies, Charlotte realizes what she needs. She needs to call Cass Murphy.

He answers, thank God.

“I’ve got to see her,” Charlotte says, “Carla. I’m not sure exactly why; the whole thing is just too weird. I need to make some kind of sense out of it, and I want you to come with me.”

“Well …”

“I think it will help me if I see her. To understand.”

“A visit may not help you at all, Charlotte, but I’ll be happy to go with you.”

The small room is all in gray, stark and depressing. So what did I expect in a jail anyway, sunshine and flowers? Carla sits across from us at a wooden table that has been sloppily painted a too-bright green. The chairs are uncomfortable, a cold gray metal. Fluorescent tubes, dim and flickering like strobe lights, illuminate the windowless room. A deputy sheriff stands near Carla, behind her. Surreal, I’m thinking, a grim and hopeless scene.

“How are you, Aunt Carla?” Charlotte says, her voice trembling. I slide my chair closer to her and put my arm around her shoulders.

“They’re treating me well enough, I guess. Food’s terrible. But what can you expect?” She speaks with calm authority, as if commenting on a shoddy new restaurant in town. She has a rosy-cheeked look, her wild hair is combed back from her face, and she wears a dark navy jumpsuit. Her eyes have an odd milky cast to them behind her silver-rimmed grandma readers.

“Carla … why?” Charlotte asks. “Why did this happen?”

Carla’s lips part in puzzlement. “Why?” She seems at a loss, makes some kind of mental adjustment, and then flashes us a bright smile.

“Why what?”

Her yo-yo change in mood affects me like a sledge to my gut.

“Why did you kill Uncle Dante?”

“Kill …?”

Has this madwoman forgotten?

I feel Charlotte pull my hand from her shoulder, and I realize I’ve been squeezing it.

Another jarring shift then as Carla gives us a sweet, cloying smile—a naughty-little-girl-grin.

“He deserved it that’s why! Dante wasn’t what he seemed, you know.” With her tousled white hair and the light glinting off her glasses, she’s pretty … an angelic grandma of the year. “You girls can stay on for a while, can’t you?” Carla says to Charlotte. “I don’t know how long I’ll be kept here.”

“A few more days, probably. Will there be a trial … or … what?”

“I’m not sure,” Carla says. “I don’t think the idiots here know what they’re doing. When I know what’s going on, I’ll let you know.” She sighs and runs her fingers through her hair. “You ask me why. The thing is, Dante was a prick,” she says as if stating a well-known fact.

“Oh. But Carla,” Charlotte cries, “I just can’t believe—”

“Well, you believe it, dearie. A woman can take only so much.”

“What exactly did you have to take, Carla?” I ask. This woman is nothing like the kind and caring Carla I remember.

“You mind your own fucking business, Cassidy Mur—” She stops as if she’s run into a wall, her brows convulsing in an ugly frown. “How? How could I have killed him? My dear Dante?”

But her eyes cloud over and
Carla the Remorseful
is gone. She’s yanked back into her madness, and the other Carla is with us once again. The killer. What has caused this cruel change in the woman I once knew as a second mom?

“He got what was coming to him,” she says with a smirk.

“We have to go,” Charlotte says, and I know she’s shaken and close to tears.

We stand, and Carla jumps to her feet. “Bring me some figs, Charlotte, will you?” She’s almost shouting. “I need them.”

The word
need
catches my attention. Why would anyone
need
a fig?

“Okay, Carla, I’ll—”

“Carla,” I say, interrupting Charlotte. “What do you mean you
need
figs? What do they do for you, anyway?”

“They’re so sweet … they make it better,” she says, frowning. “Energy, power … like that. Will you, Charlotte?”

“Of course,” Charlotte says, and we leave.

I buy us lunch—burgers and Cokes to go—and I drive Charlotte back to the Russo home. We sit in the kitchen and eat our lunch. There’s a note from Shelly on the table there saying she’s in town at the market.

I see a saucer with a few cigarette butts in it on the counter. “You smoke?”

“No. Shelly does, but she’s trying to quit. She’s not doing too well on that at the moment.” She shakes her head. “That
thing
is not Carla Russo,” Charlotte continues. “She doesn’t even seem human.” She takes a swallow of her Coke. “Brandon Sims called yesterday, Carla’s attorney. He wanted to know if there was anything he could do. He said she had seen him about a divorce and he had been very surprised. He said another woman, a neighbor of Carla’s, had just filed for divorce as well. Two on the same day kind of threw him.”

It throws me as well. Another chill breezes across my neck. Coincidence? Carla’s murder of Dante is not only horrific but also impossible to understand. Something … something horrific had happened in their marriage. But what? What could have caused Carla to file for divorce and then brutally murder her husband?

“I wonder if there’s more? More divorces.”

“What, an epidemic?” Charlotte says with a smile.

“Well, something’s sure as hell out of whack with Carla. Maybe this other woman as well. I’ve heard of crazy stuff like that, haven’t you? A person suddenly goes nuts because of exposure to some kind of chemical additive. Maybe a pesticide of some sort?”

Charlotte rises, gathers the remains of our lunch, and tosses it into the garbage. “Are you thinking of that case where Harvey Milk was killed by a man who claimed he was unbalanced from consuming too much sugar?”

I nod. “The Twinkie defense. It’s a myth, of course, but it had a few believers a while back.” We take our Cokes and settle ourselves onto the couch in the living room. “Okay,” I say, “just for the hell of it, let’s say an overdose of some weird additive creates a negative energy in a person without him, or her, even realizing it. It builds and builds until it overwhelms the person. So then what happens? Where does it go?”