Authors: Katia Lief
So it was done, that fast. Abe’s murder was solved. You could almost feel the reverberations of the city machine clicking over the past few days, pulling strings and favors to steer attention in an acceptable direction. See? They were not soft on the mob when it suited them. See? They were fully prepared to send a Tarentino soldier to prison.
What land deal? Whose bones?
Maybe they did have the real killer, maybe they
didn
’t, but it was such an obvious maneuver. I wondered what Courtney thought about it and dialed her cell phone to find out. It went straight to voicemail so I left a message: “I just read the front page. Start pedaling, Courtney; looks like you’ve got some ground to make up. What
do
you think about this? Call me.”
Sunday afternoon I walked Nat over to the movie theater where Henry and The Dad, Bill, were waiting with tickets in hand. When I asked what time I should pick Nat up after dinner, Bill said not to worry, that he would personally bring him home. He said it in a tone that insisted that this was how it would be and I knew in that moment that Nat had told Henry about Joe and that Henry in turn had told his parents. I thought it was kind of them to help this way when they might have forbidden their son from being involved with us at all.
“Expect us around nine o’clock,” Bill said. “Come on, boys, let’s get in there and find some seats.”
I had told Rich that I’d meet him at his place right after dropping Nat off at the movies but wasn’t surprised when he appeared around the corner from the theater.
“So now
you’re
stalking me.” I kissed him right on the lips – boldly, in public. We turned away from Court Street and walked up State, a leafy block of brownstones bathed in century-old shadows.
“I saw Joe a few minutes ago,” Rich said as we neared Clinton Street, where we turned in the direction of Verandah Place, his home, a meal, our bodies. “He must have followed you here. I’m glad I didn’t listen to you and let you meet me at my place.”
“I’m glad you didn’t, either. What was he doing?”
“He crossed the street a ways behind you, then crossed back. I think he saw me. I think he knows who I am.”
“Really?” But why wouldn’t he? He was always, always there whether I saw him or not.
“So we have to figure out how we pick Nat up later without Henry’s parents cottoning on.”
“Taken care of. The Dad’s bringing him home at nine.”
“Then I’ll get you home before that.”
Plans, evasions, strategies. I could no longer live without them. It was a leap of faith that I was out of the house at all yet I was grateful for the break from my four walls.
Although it was only my second visit to Rich’s apartment, I felt at home there. This sensation of comfort struck me as I moved through his spaces and among his things. I felt at home with Rich; that was it. It was a fresh branch, a first budding, of something new in our relationship, this sense that I belonged in his home. I remembered feeling a similar kind of camaraderie with Hugo right off the bat though being
young
there had been no pretense that a protocol of separation needed to be adhered to. Hugo and I had fallen in love and bed and life with remarkable haste, satisfaction and ultimately success. It was like an undertow, this sensation with which I surprised myself by feeling it for a brand new man. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible – yet here we were.
He had mostly prepared an elaborate meal, which he must have gotten started before returning Clara to her mother’s. He had made a complicated rice-and-nut dish and a fresh salad, and had a tray of salmon ready to cook on the grill in his yard. He poured us glasses of white wine, which I carried outside. While we waited for the grill to heat, he said, “Come here, I want to show you something.”
He led me into his studio, the old building at the far end of the yard. The waning autumn sun cast the space in dust-hovering amber light. It was beautiful. Paintings hung everywhere, just as before. But there was one change: the canvas that had previously been covered by a paint-spattered drop cloth now sat naked on the floor, leaning against the wall.
“Is it me?” I walked closer to it. “Or maybe not. Who are they?”
Though the painting was an abstract swirl of color, two entwined figures were clearly represented among the vibrant chaos: a man and a woman, embracing.
“But you were painting this before we even—”
He walked up behind me and set both his hands on my waist. “It wasn’t you, at first.”
“Someone else?” I turned to grin at him, pretending jealousy just to tease him, though I felt nothing but affection for this man.
“It was a wish, I guess, or a memory – I’m not sure. I just started painting it one day. In my mind, I was thinking of Lucy at the beginning of our relationship. It was the first non-angry image about her I’ve painted in three years.”
“But you gave her my hair and my skin tone. Lucy’s darker.”
“I changed that after the first time we …”
He kissed me and this time there was no reason to stop. I felt vaguely nervous about the grill out there heating up in the yard, but
our
heat was irresistible. We didn’t bother with the niceties of gently removing each other’s clothing and quickly stripped off our own, leaving them scattered over his studio’s dirty floor. I didn’t care about the cleanliness of this place; I cared about
him
. But he, concerned about my comfort, simultaneously drew me to the floor and maneuvered himself beneath me. We were both bursting and couldn’t wait and once he entered me my mind flew away. I was lost to this man: his body, his mind, his heart, his soul. I had fallen off the cliff of my past, dropped away from all my certainty that I would never be able to fall in love again.
And then, like kismet – just as he had read my mind before moving down onto the floor – he said it first:
“I love you, Darcy.”
And I echoed him, naturally:
“I love
you
.”
It was too soon to speak these words to each other but there it was: they had been said. Everything about this defied common sense. As had so much of my life with Hugo – moving to a remote island, focusing on work then considered obscure, eventually making a difference – until the passage of time revealed an inherent logic. That was inspiration. That was love.
Dinner was delicious and though anything might have tasted good to me in my state of mind this really
was
good. I could almost hear Courtney’s commentary:
So you’re handy
and
you can cook, too
? Courtney. I hadn’t heard a thing from her all weekend despite two messages and an email.
At eight thirty, Rich took me home. We walked arm in arm from genteel Cobble Hill, with its whispery nineteenth-century quiet, crossing Court Street where traffic zigzagged even on a Sunday night, bearing right onto Smith Street which as always was hectic with restaurants and the ambitious diners who ventured here from all over to enjoy the creations of some of the city’s best renegade chefs.
The
intersecting neighborhoods seemed magical to me tonight. It was hard to believe how much life could change in a year and a half, and yet it had, and here I was in the warm scope of a man I hadn’t even known existed.
Yes, you could love two men at once
, was the answer. A widow’s answer to a young woman’s question. An answer anyone would be better off never needing to know.
In the dark shadow of my stoop, I found the keyhole of my front gate by moving my fingertip over the face of the steel lock. The gate squealed, as always.
“I’ll oil that for you,” Rich said, and I loved him.
We kissed goodnight. I slid my second house key into the lock of the interior door, and pushed it open.
The stink hit me immediately: something noxious I couldn’t name. And then I saw Mitzi and Ahab …
PART THREE
CHAPTER 10
AHAB HAD GOTTEN
partway up the stairs but Mitzi hadn’t made it that far: she was curled on the floor in front of the bottom step as if she had suddenly decided to take a nap. Her white fur was bloodied at both ends, mouth and rear. The blood didn’t show on Ahab’s tabby-brown fur, which looked wet, soaked at either end.
“What happened to them?” I kneeled above Mitzi and lifted her side; she felt heavy and a little stiff. “They’re dead.”
Rich turned at the arched entrance to the living room, turned and stared at something and said, “What’s that?”
I followed him to a whitish lumpy spill of something on the floor by the fireplace, its gooey mess seeping into the fibers of Hugo’s family’s
heirloom
Oriental carpet. It looked like chicken stew in the kind of béchamel sauce I hated; but instead of being smoothly creamy, this sauce was pimply with something granular. A square plastic container lay overturned on the floor near the mess.
Rich reached for something on the mantle.
And my mind did a flip:
The eight by ten photo of Joe was back in the frame
. It couldn’t be. I had ripped it up and thrown it away; the garbage men had long since scattered it to the fetid winds of some landfill somewhere.
Rich picked up an envelope propped against the frame. “It’s for you,” he said. “What’s your detective’s number? I’m going to call him.”
“His card’s on the fridge.”
Rich went to the kitchen while I read the note from Joe.
Dear Darcy,
All day yesterday I shopped and cooked for you and your son. Dinner at six o’clock, remember? YOU FORGOT. Or … you remembered … but you didn’t show up. I don’t know what’s worse. I thought maybe you forgot my new address. You see? I can still give you the benefit of the doubt. But you didn’t answer any of my calls or return any of the
messages
I left. Sometimes I feel like you’re trying to pretend I don’t exist.
But I’m going to give you another chance because I care about you and because I believe you will care about me once you get to know me better. I am a good person, Darcy, which is something you will find out sooner or later.
Love, Joe
“How did he get in here?” I asked Rich.
“Detective Ramirez is on his way.”
“The door didn’t look broken into.”
“I’m going to check the windows.” Rich went from window to window, downstairs and up, avoiding poor Mitzi and Ahab on the stairs.
My sweet kitties
. They were sister and brother. Hugo and I had gotten them for Nat on his sixth birthday.
Nat. He would be home any minute. He would have to be told about his cats but did he have to see them like this? And this scene; the police coming; the smell …
In the kitchen I found the school directory and phoned Henry’s house. His mother Karen answered. Luckily, Bill hadn’t left yet to bring Nat home. Without explaining the details – I didn’t want Karen to feel too disturbed – I asked her if she minded if Nat stayed the night. She readily agreed, assuring me she had an extra toothbrush and plenty of clean
clothes
of Henry’s which Nat was welcome to borrow. So that was a relief: Nat would be spared the blunt shock of this.
The police arrived first, Jess about forty-five minutes later as he had come in from his home on Long Island. The first thing the police did was order Rich and me to stay in the living room while they searched the house. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me that Joe could still be here – it just seemed that staying would have been a really stupid thing to do. And then, as they searched in every nook and cranny of my home, I realized how logical it was that he
would
stay. Logical with the kind of illogic that drove everything he did. Joe wanted to be close to me, at any cost.
He wasn’t there. By the time Jess arrived, that had been established. A forensics specialist appeared to retrieve a sample of the chicken stew and search for evidence of Joe’s presence in the apartment. She found nothing. There was also no sign of forced entry.
Jess sat beside me and Rich on the couch and handed me some paperwork he’d brought with him. The top read “APPLICATION FOR AN ORDER OF RESTRAINT”.
“The wait’s over,” he said.
“It’s about time.” Rich’s tone was tense, almost angry. “It’s ridiculous that it took
this
to make it happen.”
“Rich, I explained all that to you.” I laid a hand
on
his knee, pressed into mine, and he covered it with his own hand.
“I know. I’m sorry. But this is getting scary.”
“I’m going to put the application in tonight, as soon as I leave here,” Jess said. “And I called a locksmith to come and change all the locks. He said about twenty minutes.”
“Thanks, Jess.”
He didn’t say “Jesus saves” like he did sometimes to lighten the mood, but I wanted him to. The atmosphere in the room felt heavy as wet cement. It was almost unbearable, this feeling of helpless slow suffocation, this onslaught of
love
Joe wouldn’t stop shoveling my way.
“And if it doesn’t stop him?” Rich asked.
“It won’t.” Jess looked tired, with purple swaths beneath his eyes. “But he’s accelerating and we’ll need it to lock him up next time he makes some kind of sicko move like this.”
“
Next
time?” That astounded me. “What about
this
time? This is pretty bad, Jess, you’ve got to admit it. He obviously meant for
me
to eat that stew. My cats must have smelled it and knocked it over …”
“I’ve got no doubt it was for you, Darcy. But the letter – it doesn’t say so. It doesn’t even say he made it. It doesn’t say he spiked it with poison.”
“It doesn’t have to,” Rich said. “Obviously it was him.”
“You’re right.” Jess nodded. “Agreed. But I’m reading it like the DA’s going to read it when they look to build a case. Sharon, forensics – she didn’t find anything, no prints or fibers or hairs in or around the stew, just cat hairs. It’s like he wasn’t even here.”
“He was here,” I said. “Who else put his picture back in this frame?”
Jess looked at it, closely, for the first time. “Nice frame.”
“It’s the one he left me before. I tore his picture into a zillion pieces and threw it out. This is a new copy.”