Warning Signs

CHAPTER 27

I misled my wife in order to get out of the house after midnight. An emergency, I said. Lauren, half asleep, assumed that I meant an emergency with my practice. And now, sometime shortly after midnight, I was sneaking down the street, head down, collar up, hoping no photographers' lenses were pointed my way as I hustled into the old house on Pine Street where Lucy Tanner had a second-floor flat.

I was surprised how cold it was outside.

Lucy had been crying. A pile of spent tissues marked the place on the sofa where she'd been awaiting my arrival.

Her flat was dark, a solitary light from the kitchen spilling shadows into the living room. Even in the muted light I could tell that the room was elegant yet comfortable, a pleasant mixture of the modern and the ancient. An alluring step tansu filled much of one wall. A gorgeous old highboy secretary marked off the transition to the kitchen. The sofa where she was sitting was covered in a rich tapestry. It was the kind of room that took either serious bucks or an exceptionally high credit limit from Visa.

"Thanks for coming," she said. "I didn't know who else to call." Lucy was wearing a black robe that reached to mid-thigh. As she sat on her sofa, she had to tug the hem of the robe carefully into place to maintain modesty. She grabbed a wadded tissue from beside her and stretched out one corner of it as though she were about to use it to blow her nose. She didn't. She said, "My fiancé is in Wyoming," as though that explained why she'd called me instead of him.

"Sure," I said.

"After I left your office today, I drove around for a while. I do that sometimes. Just drive around. It helps me relax. You ever do that? Just drive around? Does that make me weird?" The last question informed me that she was aware at that moment that she was talking to a mental health professional.

She pulled on a different corner of the tissue, and it ripped. She slipped a fingertip through the hole.

I shifted my weight so that I was leaning forward, closing the space between the chair where I was sitting and Lucy.

She went on. "During my drive I went, well, I went a lot of places, but one of the places I went was the Peterson house. Susan's moved back home. Did you know that? I saw the lights on upstairs. The TV screen was flickering."

I said, "I didn't know she was back home."

"Me neither. I was kind of surprised, actually."

For a split second she lifted her eyes and looked at me. "I don't have many friends, Alan. Did Sam tell you that about me? That I don't get close to very many people?"

"I think he's told me that you're a private person, Lucy. That's all."

"Sam's nice," she said. Here in the dark with something important on her mind, her voice was almost girlish. "My boyfriend says that I seem to love it when he's intimate with me but that I don't want to be intimate with him."

Almost reflexively, I said, "You say that in a way that makes me wonder whether his words make sense to you." It was a shrink phrase. In that room at that time it was as out of place as a bright red clown nose.

She exchanged the ripped tissue for a fresh one and dabbed at her left nostril. "I've heard it before-things like my boyfriend said-from other men. But I always thought that when they were talking about intimacy, they were really talking about sex. That when they complained that I was too distant, they really meant they were unhappy that I wasn't sleeping with them. Or wasn't sleeping with them as often as they wanted."

I wondered where we were heading. I honestly didn't have a clue. I assumed the reason that I'd been summoned from my bed was weightier than this. Lucy had to be warming up for something.

"But it's not that way with Grant. Grant really wants me to be open-you know, to talk to him." She laughed. "Don't misunderstand. He wants to sleep with me, too. But he says that he wants me to tell him… things. What's going on. How I feel about what's going on. You know."

I didn't want to repeat my mistake. I said, "He sounds like quite a find, Lucy." It's something I never would have said in therapy. I know that's why I said it then-to remind myself that I was meeting with Lucy as a friend, not as a therapist. Maybe I wanted to remind her, too.

"He doesn't want me to tell him what's going on right now, I promise you that. Anyway, he's not around."

Here it comes, I thought. The reason I'm not home in bed.

She narrowed her eyes and continued. "You know what that means for you and me? It means that tonight, instead of being intimate with my fiancé, I'm going to be intimate with you."

I thought her words carried layers of meaning that weren't readily apparent, and I wasn't sure Lucy was even aware that there were stowaways on board whatever trip she was inviting me on.

Again I said something that I would ordinarily say in psychotherapy, and almost immediately I regretted it. "Intimacy isn't the same as openness, Lucy. It's not that simple."

She looked at me. Her eyes seemed smaller without makeup. She said, "What? What do you mean?"

I debated whether or not I should answer. Finally, I said, "Let's say you go to Denver and you meet somebody in a bar, and let's say they buy you a drink, and you tell them every deep dark secret in your soul-"

She sighed. "For me that would take more than one drink."

"Well, you do that, you open up like that to a stranger-that's not intimate behavior. That's not what intimacy is."

"I don't get it. It sounds like intimacy to me."

"Let me give you another example. You go to that same bar and meet the same guy and without telling him a thing about yourself, about what's in your heart, about what's dear to you, you go home with him. You sleep with him. Then you leave. You don't even know his name. He doesn't know yours. Well, that's not intimacy, either."

She bit her bottom lip. "Okay, I can buy that."

"But put the two experiences together, and you may-you may-have intimacy."

"You've lost me again, Alan. I'm sorry."

I sat back. "I'm not sure this is that important, Lucy. I'm digressing and you have something you need to talk to me about."

"No, go on, please. This is all part of… something."

"Intimacy requires two things to happen. Both are necessary. Neither, alone, is sufficient. One is openness. The other is vulnerability. In the first example I gave you, the openness is there, but there's no vulnerability. The guy you meet in the bar can't hurt you. He knows everything about you-every fact-but he can't really touch you in a way that could cause you any pain.

"In the second example, the vulnerability is there, but there's no openness. You're terribly vulnerable to the guy as you have sex with him. But it's anonymous; you never open up to the guy at all."

"What do you call that?"

"I don't know," I said. "Reckless?"

Lucy pulled both her legs beneath her and crossed her arms. For some reason, I chose that moment to scan the room for a cat. Lucy seemed like the type of woman who would have a cat.

She said, "I need to think about this some more."

"Of course."

It was about this time that I would be glancing at my watch and saying, I'm afraid our time is up.

Lucy stood and walked to the other side of the room. I could see her reflection in the glass doors. Her legs were exposed from mid-thigh to the floor; her robe was open from her throat to the middle of her chest.

I hoped the exposure was unintentional. But I wondered about her seductiveness. Could she be so unaware of her behavior with men?

Her lips parted as though she was going to speak, then she pressed them together again. Finally, she said, "It's starting to snow. I didn't even know a storm was coming. Did you?"

"I'd heard a front was coming through. But, no, I didn't know it was going to snow."

"I wonder if it will stick," she said.

I didn't reply. I hadn't left my wife in bed to discuss Boulder's springtime climate.

Lucy shifted her weight and lifted one leg from the floor so that it was bent at the knee at ninety degrees, like a stork. She said, "I don't know exactly how to say this. No, that's not true, I do know exactly how to say this. I just don't want to say it." Once more her mouth opened and closed.

"Take your time, Lucy." It was something I said to patients all the time in psychotherapy. For some reason, it usually made them seem to hurry.

"Susan Peterson is my mother, Alan."

I said, "What?" I knew exactly what she had said. My question expressed my befuddlement, not my failure to hear or comprehend.

Lucy returned her weight to both legs and turned and faced me. She'd pulled the robe closed at her throat with one hand. "Susan Peterson is… my mother. Or at least she's the woman who gave birth to me."

At her pronouncement, I stood. I don't know why. "Lucy, Lucy. My God. I had no idea."

"No one did. We are… estranged. That's a good word for it. Estranged. In fact, it couldn't be es-stranger."

"Royal knew?"

Again, Lucy spun and faced the glass. She'd released the shawl collar of her black robe. The reflection made it clear that it had again fallen open to the middle of her chest. "Of course Royal knew."

"Cozy and Lauren?"

She shook her head. "No one else in town knows." She found her own words humorous, or ironic, or something. "At least no one in town knew. Until tonight. Now that's about to change."

I tried to make sense of the implications of the news that Lucy had just shared. I had to assume that this was the reason she had been in the Peterson home the night that Royal had been murdered. A visit to her mother would explain all the fingerprints the police had found in the house. Lauren and Cozy could create considerable doubt with that revelation.

But Lucy had also told Cozy and Lauren that if the reason she was in the Peterson home that night was known, everyone would be convinced that she had a motive for Royal's murder.

I couldn't make sense of that.

And, of course, I hadn't heard anything yet that would account for the wet spot.

Lucy turned back toward the room. She wasn't holding the collar of her robe this time.

"We're intimate now, aren't we, Alan?"

I thought, Whoa. She saw the puzzlement in my face.

"I've certainly been open with you… and, God knows, I've never been more vulnerable in my life than I am right now."