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Chapter 29

Liz drove to Wellesley and parked on the college campus. She wanted to make her way to Olga’s through the Pinetum and topiary garden. The walk would give her time to consider how to break the news.

Liz’s beautiful legs felt leaden as she left the topiary garden behind and rounded the lake to Olga’s house. And yet she strode on purposefully. Approaching the house from the lakeshore, she walked directly toward the door of the mudroom. Standing slightly ajar, the door was caught by a gust of wind as she neared it, affording her the chance to look inside while remaining unobserved. Olga could be seen standing with her back to the door. For the first time, Liz thought how odd it was for Olga to work with her back to that view. Then, she thought, perhaps it was explicable after all, since the woman’s husband had died in those waters.

On Olga’s potting bench stood not one but three flower arrangements. On the floor to the left and right of Olga stood still more. As Liz ran her eyes over the arrangements, she realized Olga had executed eight different designs representing as many schools of flower-design technique. There was a formal French arrangement, strong on big, blowsy blooms, in a gilt pedestal-style container. It would have looked at home in a French château. At the opposite extreme was a minimalist Ikebana design. Dependent on one bamboo stalk, one striking bloom of Heliconia, and a spear-like leaf Liz could not name, this was a study in proportion and balance. Olga’s technically perfect but disparate arrangements looked unlikely to be useful in any single venue.

Olga turned. She seemed unsurprised to see Liz standing there.

“I’m missing Ellen,” was all she said. She waved an arm towards the arrangements. In her hand was a pair of florist’s scissors designed for rose cutting.

Entering the mudroom, Liz removed a coat from one of the hooks near the door and held it, her arms extended, displaying to Olga the manufacturer’s label, marred with the word “Ritz” stamped on it in hot pink ink.

“I see we shop in the same place,” Liz said. “Puttin’ on the Ritz. Excellent bargains there, don’t you think? Even during the week before Christmas, one can buy a new coat, even a complete new outfit, on sale.”

Olga said nothing.

“You didn’t care about the price, though, did you, when you purchased this coat in that shop last December? It was more the convenience that attracted you. Money would have been no object in covering up what you did. No, it was the convenience that attracted you, wasn’t it, Olga? The shop is right around the corner from your hairdresser.”

Olga shifted the scissors from one hand to the other. She said nothing.

“The neighborhood around your hairdresser is one you know well, isn’t it? You could almost call it a ‘haunt.’ You’ve had the same hairdresser for years, even decades, haven’t you? You usually park your car under the Prudential Center, where Lord & Taylor is. Or, on occasion, you park it in Newton and travel into town on the Green Line with your daughter—the wife of an environmentalist, after all.

“Yes, you know the area well, in every season. Not far from Lord & Taylor are the Boston Public Library and the Copley Square T stop for the Green Line. A quick taxi ride would deliver you to Back Bay Station and the commuter rail that runs all the way out to Wellesley: a convenient route to Wellesley if you go into the city by train—let’s say, to rent a car after an accident. There’s a car rental place on Boylston Street, just doors away from Puttin’ on the Ritz.

“You also know that, in the winter when there is a snowstorm, snow gets thrown up on cars so that they are entirely covered with the stuff. Sometimes vehicles sit there for days or weeks before the city digs them out and tows them away.”

Olga set down her scissors and picked up a rose from the potting bench. Peering at Liz over its tightly closed bud she tore off a blood-red petal and cast it on the floor at her feet.

Still, she said nothing.

“You knew if you rented a car in Ellen’s name some days after she disappeared, it would suggest she was still living, that she had exited her kitchen, if not voluntarily, at least alive. And covered with snow, the car might take some time to be found. You had your daughter’s purse, Olga, didn’t you? Her credit card, her driver’s license, even her fountain pen. You must have been bundled up when you rented the car, wearing a hood, perhaps. It was an awful risk to take but you were in luck, with a clerk who was more interested in painting her nails than in taking a good look at you. Perhaps she was lax, too, in providing you with a pen. You didn’t want her to look up from her manicure so you used Ellen’s fountain pen to sign the car rental agreement. The pen Erik gave Ellen to celebrate their anniversary. Not the anniversary of their wedding, but the anniversary of their meeting: August eighteenth.”

Olga tore another petal off the rose and dropped it to the floor. And another. Then another.

“The earlier phone call, on Veronica’s birthday, in June: Anyone could have made that call. Even a cabbie might draw that date out of a passenger while making small talk. Erik hardly dared hope it was Ellen who made the birthday phone call. But a call on August 18? Well, that was different. It had to be significant that a call arrived from Ellen’s cell phone on that date!

“But Erik and Ellen are not the only people who know that date’s import. You know it, too, Olga, don’t you?”

Olga raised the rose before her eyes and scrutinized it. Without a word, she tore off two more petals, dropping each to the floor.

“Then panic set in and you became sloppy. After you guessed I’d spoken to Ali and after you accidentally revealed that you knew his Middle Eastern background, you had to suggest Ellen was still living, didn’t you, Olga? And after you saw me looking at your coat collar, with its label stamped by a cheap discount store, you had to throw the suspicion on someone else, didn’t you?

“How convenient for you that Ellen’s husband had a cell phone that was identical in appearance to your daughter’s. One that doesn’t even reveal the phone’s own number when you consult it to find out the time. If you substituted it briefly for Erik’s, he’d never realize it was not his. And then, with your entrée to his house, you could easily retrieve the phone after you knew he’d made a call on it.”

Olga peeled another petal from the rose. She held the petal out before her on the palm of her hand and blew it off. It fell to the floor slowly, without a sound.

“You couldn’t know the bodies would be found while he had the phone in hand, though, could you? If you’d known they would be found then, you’d have made another wordless call yourself, wouldn’t you? The idea was to suggest she was alive, after all.

“And you couldn’t know he would phone me, of all people, could you? He might have called anyone, even perhaps the police. How bizarre that would have been! The most likely suspect in the murder of his wife phones the police on his wife’s cell phone—the very phone that has been used for months to suggest she is alive—to request information about the scene of the crime.

“But, in any event, he did not phone the police from Ellen’s phone. It was the trace on his line that led the police directly to the most likely suspect: the missing woman’s husband.

“You had to know the press would have a heyday with this, the perfect target. How could anyone help but think Erik had sought out the man with whom his wife presumably disappeared, and done him in? And after September eleventh, it is so easy to vilify anyone of Middle Eastern extraction. The public would support Erik’s wrath even as he was condemned for it legally.”

Removing the last three petals from the rose, Olga looked Liz directly in the eye with an expression that could only be read as challenging. Still, she said nothing.

“You don’t think I can produce any evidence, do you? Well, you’re wrong there. Remember, Erik phoned me—the one journalist who’s more concerned with the truth than with a sensational headline about a jealous husband, the one reporter who knows and cares about your daughter. When you found out he was on the line with me, you interrupted him, didn’t you? I heard him say ‘Oh!’ as if he’d been distracted. But it was the start of your name, wasn’t it? He was beginning to say ‘Olga’.”

Olga’s face came alive as she made a disdainful snort.

“You’re right, Olga. That would never convince anyone in a court of law. But, you see, there’s something else to worry about. After I received that cell-phone call from Erik, I went to see him. He showed me his cell phone. Yes, his cell phone, not your daughter’s. Sure, he might have hidden hers. But I know he didn’t, because when Ali came out to the summerhouse yesterday to revisit it after all those years, he found it in the hiding place there. He started to make a call on it—later, when he realized he’d nearly used an important piece of evidence to make a call to his boss, he said he “almost blew it.” But he stopped dialing when he recognized your voice calling to the dog.

“He replaced the phone and hid up there, behind the summerhouse. And he saw you retrieve the phone and heave it, like a dog’s toy, into the lake. Only this time you had Hershey on a leash, didn’t you? The dog strained to leap into the lake, but you did not let him.”

Olga picked up the pair of rose cutters. Centering the rose stem between two small bites in the blades, she closed the scissors and pulled the flowerless stem between them, shearing off the thorns, one by one. With little sounds like time ticking away, they hit the cold slate floor between Olga and her challenger.

“With Erik in police custody and the convincing suggestion made that he had been using the phone all along, that phone had no more usefulness to you. You’re counting on a jury to find such ramblings mere speculation. But that’s not all, Olga. I, too, was there yesterday afternoon, photographing two young women you would call ‘coeds’ in the topiary garden. You didn’t see me? Well, I saw you. And my heart went out to you when one of the young women called out the name ‘Ellen.’ But the photograph I took of those girls tells another story. You see, you and Hershey appear in that photo, too. Hershey is straining at the leash as the ‘toy’—no, Olga, the cell phone you had just tossed—is frozen by the camera in its trajectory into Lake Waban. I have no doubt police divers will be able to find it there.”

Olga considered the rose stem. Placing it between the flattened fingers of her two hands, she rolled it back and forth. A bit of thorn must have remained on it to prick her. At long last, the flower arranger flinched. And her blood flowed.

“The place where the bodies are, near Plymouth, that’s not the scene of the murder, is it? You killed your daughter in her own kitchen when you came upon her with the swarthy-skinned man. You feared Ellen would confront you—even broadcast to others—the secret you’d hidden for decades: Her father and your husband—Karl Swenson—was a pervert. When you saw the cabbie, you thought he was the boy, all grown up now, who witnessed your husband’s masturbating over his own daughter. The same boy who phoned you on the anniversary of that awful day, year after year after year after year in December. So you killed them both, Olga.

“I wouldn’t have thought you capable of murder, Olga. Not until I realized you were cruelly capable of feeding Veronica false hope by making that call on her birthday. And not until I saw that you would stoop to implicate the only parent Veronica has left. Not until I saw you cared more about your husband’s reputation and your own freedom than about the well-being of your granddaughter. I thought you loved your granddaughter.”

In a sudden movement, and with a sound like a snarl, Olga shoved Liz into the doorjamb and reached past the several coats that were hanging on the wall. She wheeled around, training a rifle on Liz.

“Veronica!” she cried out. “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t love Veronica. That’s not true! I did what I did to be here for Veronica. You think you’re clever, don’t you? But you’re wrong about Karl. He would never behave like that. Never!”

“You may deny it and you may kill me, as I think you did your daughter, but there are still two more people who know what happened that day by this lake: Ali himself, and Ellen’s pen pal, Nadia. The police will know you murdered to hide your family secret. Count on it.”

The gun moved in Olga’s shaking hands. “I believed my husband when he told me the tongue-tied boy had exposed himself to Ellen. I still believe it! When I arrived at Ellen’s house and saw through the window a man clapping a hand over my daughter’s mouth, I knew it was that boy grown up. He was saying the same strange words, like a tuneless hum. It had to be the same person! I went out to the garden shed, where I’d hidden the skeet shooter I’d bought for Veronica for Christmas, and I loaded it. When I came back to the house the man had my daughter pinned to his side, with his bloody hand over her mouth. I wanted to stop him but I’m no killer. I aimed for his legs and pulled the trigger. I closed my eyes on what I’d done.” Olga shuddered and hugged the rifle to herself, barrel pointed upward. “But when I opened them, there was Ellen, on the floor. She was dead.”

Heedless of the rifle butt, which was now pressed against the underside of her chin, Olga sobbed. Liz stepped forward, reached for the weapon, and very slowly put her hand around the barrel. Relinquishing the gun, Olga sat down hard on the cold slate floor. She picked up some thorns and rolled them in her palms, bloodying her hands as she spoke.

“I must have killed her. It was inexplicable but I must have! The man kept up that awful humming. I had no idea what to do. I wanted to shoot the man, just to stop him humming. I wanted to run and run and run.

“Then the cookie ingredients caught my eye and I thought of Veronica. I couldn’t let her come home to this kitchen. I just couldn’t. I still had the gun. I could make the man clean the place up. First, we had to—to do something about Ellen. I looked around and saw the tree bag, the kind you use to wrap up a Christmas tree before you put it out for the trash. I made him put Ellen inside it. And I made him put the bag outside the back door. It was cold out there; it was beginning to snow. But how else could we clean up for Veronica? We came back inside the house then. I directed him to put on the rubber gloves that Ellen always keeps around. I told him to fill the dishpan on the side of the sink with water and some floor cleaner. I made him put the bottle of floor cleaner back under the sink. I made him use a sponge to wipe the floor and the wall behind where Ellen had—had been. While he was mopping, he knocked over one of the poinsettias. After it looked like he had done a pretty good job cleaning up, I made him carry the poinsettia into the living room. I wanted to keep his hands busy. I had to keep that man with me everywhere so I could point the gun at him.

“That’s when I saw Ellen’s purse in the man’s open backpack. There was no time to wonder what it was doing there. I pulled the purse out of the backpack and took Ellen’s keys out of it. Something fell out of her purse and when I bent down to pick it up, the Arab set down the poinsettia suddenly and flew across the room at me. He was reaching for the gun when the doorbell rang. Instead of grabbing the gun, he fled the room! You would have thought the man would have welcomed what we glimpsed through the window. It was two foreign-looking men, maybe Middle Eastern.

“I was afraid he would lunge at me again; I had to keep him under control. I followed him into the kitchen and kept the gun pointed at him. I wanted to stay in the kitchen and clean the counter where the cookie ingredients were, but he’s rattled me so! I was shaken. I put on my coat and grabbed Ellen’s jacket, too. I don’t know why I took the jacket. It just seemed like a good idea. Later I found Ellen’s purse and mine, and the Arab’s backpack, in the car, but I hardly remember putting them there.

“After we heard the two men drive away in their car, I made the man put the Christmas tree bag into the trunk of Ellen’s car. My head was spinning and I couldn’t think straight. I wanted it to be my car but it was too far away. Because of the snowstorm, I had parked it in the City Hall parking lot, which is always kept plowed. We got into Ellen’s Honda. I made him drive. I sat in the back seat so I could keep the gun pointed at him. It was not easy to do in the car.

“At first, I didn’t care where we drove, as long as it was away from Ellen’s house. Then I thought of Plymouth. I had picnicked there when I was a girl. I knew there were some isolated woods there.

“The drive was a blur. I was so shattered and it was snowing so hard. By the time we got to some deserted recreational area, the snow was quite deep, but not deep enough to make it easy to slide the—the Christmas tree bag into the woods. There was a lot of underbrush, and stumps, and even holes in the ground that you couldn’t see in the snow. I hung back, gesturing with the gun at him every time he seemed likely to turn on me, and made him put her in a hollow. Then I told him to cover her up with snow. I didn’t want to kill him but I was sure I must. All I could think was Veronica would not have a woman in her life—not a mother, not a grandmother—if I were turned in for what I’d done.

“When he bent over to cover Ellen with snow, I shot him. He fell down on top of the plastic bag. On top of my daughter.

“Up until then, I was a person in a daze. But that seemed to wake me up. Suddenly I realized I needn’t have done this thing. Surely, I could have explained to the police that I’d tried to protect my daughter from an attacker. After all, shooting my daughter was an accident. But then I thought, how could Veronica love the person who had killed her mother, even if I shot her unintentionally?

“There was something else. I did not feel innocent. I felt guilty about him. I told you before, I’m no killer, so I aimed at his legs, but I didn’t want to aim at his legs. I wanted to kill him point blank for exposing himself to Ellen and for all those phone calls and for putting his bloody hand over her mouth in her kitchen. I wanted him to die. And I wanted to be the one to kill him.”

Olga looked up at Liz with an expression of relief on her haggard face.

“So when those two men arrived at Ellen’s house and startled us, I felt like a guilty woman who has no choice but to flee. And I fled.

“There in the woods, in the snow, I had to move that man off my daughter. I went down into the hollow and pushed him off her. It was not so hard to slide him across the plastic. But as I pushed him, my hand encountered his belt. I realized someone might figure out who he was from his clothes, and then they would connect the boy from the Wharton School with our family. So I removed his boots, and an awful gaudy ring he was wearing, and his belt. I took his wallet, too. It fell open as I held it, and I saw a taxi driver’s I.D. card in the wallet’s plastic window. The picture matched the man’s face, but the name was not Al Leigh. It was something foreign. Seeing this, I felt I couldn’t breathe. But I could see my breath in the air, big clouds of it. I must have been gasping.

“I opened the bag and took off Ellen’s wedding ring, and her earrings, and her shoes. It was much harder to take off her sweater, but I did that, too. I think it tore as I took it off of her. I was glad she was lying on her face. I covered her up with snow then and walked back up the hill. I put the sweater, the shoes and boots, and the gun and things in the trunk, but I kept Ellen’s jewelry in my coat pocket.

“I got into the car and turned on the engine. When the heat came on I realized how chilled I was. I didn’t know where I was exactly, so I just drove. I would have loved to drive around mindlessly forever, but I knew I had to get back to Ellen’s to wipe off the counter. Silly of me, I know. It was already too late in the day for that. Veronica would have come home by then. But that’s what I thought. It was the only thought in my mind. I didn’t even think about what I would do with the car.

“Then I saw the pond and it occurred to me that I could just drive the car right into it. But there was a kind of metal edging there to prevent cars running off the road. I kept driving. Then I saw the second pond. It was set back farther from the road but there was nothing stopping me from driving in. I got out of the car first and traded my coat for Ellen’s jacket. It had a hood and it was cleaner and much drier than my coat. I took the jewelry out of the coat and put it into my purse. I also added some things from Ellen’s purse to mine. Then I put my coat and Ellen’s purse into the trunk and locked it. I got in the car and positioned it on a slope that leads toward the pond, leaving the engine running. I put on the handbrake and got out.

“I took a plastic shopping bag that was in the car and filled it with snow—I don’t know what made me think of this—and I put the bag on the gas pedal. Then I reached in and released the handbrake. The bag of snow wasn’t very heavy, so the car only edged forward, but it kept going, right into the pond. I watched until it sank out of sight.

“I walked along the road for awhile. It seemed a long time but I don’t think it could have been. Then, in a little pull-off, I saw a car idling with no one in it. I suppose someone was walking a dog there. There were dog tracks and boot prints leading away from the car. I got in and drove the car to Boston. The radio was playing ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.’ I listened to the carol all the way through. Then the announcer told the time. I turned off the radio then.

“I realized it was too late to clean up the kitchen, but there was time to keep my hairdresser’s appointment. I don’t know how I remembered that appointment. But I knew if I kept it, it would make it look like I’d had a normal day’s outing. I parked on Boylston Street, where I saw the off-price clothing outlet. There were homeless people in there sheltering from the snowstorm. If I appeared disheveled, I looked no worse than they did. I bought the coat, new slacks, and a sweater. Then, in a Dunkin’ Donuts bathroom a few doors down, I changed my clothes. I stuffed the shopping bag of old clothes in a trash can on Boylston Street by the car rental place and went straight to the hairdresser. After that, I went to FAO Schwarz and bought a teddy bear for Veronica. I knew the Christmas shopping would help make my day look normal, but that isn’t why I bought it. I bought the bear because I love that child,” she said. She lifted her thorn-torn hands and gazed at them, perplexed, as though she had no idea how they’d been bloodied.

Sitting on the chilly slate floor, amid the rose petals and thorns, Olga said no more.

Liz was silent, too, as she mentally calculated the time it would have taken Olga to take the Green Line to Newton Highlands, pick up her car at Newton City Hall, and drive to Wellesley in the snow. She must have had to turn around immediately upon arriving at her house and drive back to Newton through the storm to collect Veronica from the Johansson house.

But it was difficult to keep her mind on matters of timing as she stood in the doorway between the distraught woman and the view of the lakeshore. So much had happened in the landscape Olga refused to look at from her home. Looking down at Olga as the woman sat, mute now, on the slate, Liz slumped against the doorjamb, staggered with pity.

“You don’t have to report what you know,” a voice told Liz, expressing the thought that was running through her mind. “You should think it through before you do. What do the police have on Erik, anyway? Just circumstantial evidence. You are in the position to let a little girl who’s lost her mom keep her grandma and her dad.”

Liz looked down at Olga. The older woman seemed utterly unmoved.

Perhaps Liz was hearing things. She moved to sit on the floor herself.

But strong hands and arms reached out and supported her. She turned and relinquished herself to Tom’s embrace.

“I followed you,” he explained, “to surprise you with a picnic lunch.” He pointed to the Mexican blanket and a small backpack from which a baguette and bottle of wine protruded. “I didn’t want you to go off with that guy Kinnaird. When you went inside, I waited out of sight here.” He pointed to a spot behind the open mudroom door. “When I heard you confront Olga, I was afraid she’d hurt you.”

“Exactly!” Liz said, stepping back from Tom’s arms—and from the temptation to let Olga go free—in one movement. “That’s just it, Tom! You see, there’s no telling how many times she would kill in order to remain a loving grandmother, in order to stay in Veronica’s life.”

“But if you don’t report it, Liz, she’ll have nothing to fear. She’s not attacking you now, even when you might still report her! Think of Veronica more than your career, Liz! She needs a loving woman in her life. Look,” he said, striding into the mudroom and picking up a framed photo of Veronica blowing out nine candles on her birthday cake, with her grandmother smiling over her shoulder.

Liz stared at Tom, stunned he would support Olga. Then she remembered that Tom had been brought up by his own grandmother in the absence of his mother.

Liz turned her attention to the photo. Hanging around Veronica’s neck was the wedding ring Olga had ornamented with a stone for Veronica—the wedding ring that she had stripped from her daughter’s lifeless finger. It was one thing to do everything possible—even to cover up a killing—to remain in a beloved child’s life. It was another thing entirely to hang a memento of that horror around that child’s neck. As Tom looked on aghast, Liz took out her cell phone and dialed the police.