Goldilocks

13

It was a quarter to one when I got back to the house. The lights in the study were on. Susan was sitting naked behind the desk. Her left hand was on the telephone. She said nothing as I stopped in the doorway and looked into the room.

“What is it?” I said.

A faint smile touched her mouth.

“Susan?”

“I just had a phone call,” she said.

“Who from?”

“A man named Gerald Hemmings.”

My throat went suddenly dry. In the beginning, Aggie and I had rehearsed this scene a thousand times. We knew exactly what to say in the event of a trap. Since we were both sworn to secrecy, confrontation could only be a trap. Whatever Susan or Gerald might say in accusation, we were to respond with a lie. But that was in the beginning. This was here and now. Last month, we’d agreed to tell them both; there was no need for denial now.

“Gerald Hemmings?” I said. “I don’t think I know him. What’d he want at this hour?”

“He wanted to talk to you. He talked to me instead.”

I said nothing. I waited. I knew this was not a trap. But it had to be a trap. But I knew it wasn’t. Had someone seen us? That woman on the beach this afternoon, the one collecting shells? Had she seen me going into the house? Had she recognized me? Had she called Gerald Hemmings to tell him? I waited. The silence lengthened. Susan kept staring at me.

“Well, I... who is this man?” I said. “I’ve never—”

“We met his wife at the theater.”

“His wife?”

“Agatha Hemmings.”

It was the first time her name had ever been mentioned in this house. It did not come as a surprise, but it exploded into the room nonetheless, shrapnel flying into every corner, Agatha Hemmings, ricocheting from the walls, Agatha Hemmings, maiming, blinding.

“I don’t remember her,” I said.

“Mr. Hemmings seems to think you’re having an affair with her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Agatha Hemmings. Her husband seems to think—”

“Yes, I heard you. But—”

“But of course it isn’t true.”

“Now come on, Susan. I don’t know who called you tonight, but—”

“Mr. Hemmings called me.”

“Or at least someone who said he was Mr. Hemmings.”

“Yes, someone who gave a very good imitation of Mr. Hemmings telling me you’ve been fucking his wife, yes.”

“Susan, I don’t know what this is all about, I swear to God.”

“Don’t swear to God, Matthew. He’ll send down a lightning bolt.”

“I’m glad you find this comical. A man calls in the middle of the night—”

“Oh yes, very comical.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad—”

“Hilarious, in fact. I even asked Mr. Hemmings if this was some kind of joke. That’s because I found it so sidesplitting, Matthew. Mr. Hemmings didn’t think it was funny, though. He kept crying all the while he talked to me. There were times I couldn’t understand what he was saying, Matthew. But I got the gist of it. I managed to get the gist of it. Would you like to hear the gist of it, Matthew?”

“No, I’d like to go to sleep. We’ll talk about this in—”

“We’ll talk about it now, you son of a bitch!”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Susan.”

“That’s right, Matthew. After tonight, there’s nothing to talk about ever again. But there’s this to talk about now.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“You’ll hear it, or I’ll wake Joanna and tell her about it. Would you like your daughter to hear it, Matthew?”

“What do you want, Susan? If you’re so sure that whoever called was telling the truth—”

“He was telling the truth.”

“Fine, then. You believe it, okay? I’m going to—”

“She tried to kill herself, Matthew.”

“What?”

“She swallowed half a bottle of sleeping pills.”

“Who... did he tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Call her. Ask her.”

“Why should... I don’t know her, I don’t even remember meeting—”

“Matthew, she tried to kill herself! Now, for Christ’s sake, are you going to keep—”

“All right,” I said.

“Ah.”

“When did he call?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

“Is she... is she all right?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

“Look, Susan—”

“Don’t ‘look’ me, you bastard!”

“What happened? Are you going to tell me what happened or—”

“He’d been watching television. He went upstairs at eleven and found her unconscious.”

“Did he call a doctor?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He could see what she’d done, there were pills all over the floor. He forced her to vomit, he put her under a cold shower, and then he marched her up and down the bedroom. That’s when she told him everything, Matthew. While they were walking back and forth, back and forth.” She made her voice mincingly precious on the repeated words “back and forth,” walking the index and middle fingers of her right hand across the top of the desk, across a sheaf of papers, over a pair of scissors, and then back toward the telephone again. “Back and forth, back and forth.” I watched her fingers and visualized Aggie clinging limply to her husband as he tried to walk off the effect of the pills. Her hair would have been wet from the shower, her face ghostly white, the pale gray eyes drained of whatever pigment they ordinarily possessed. And she would be talking. She would be telling.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?” Susan stopped the walking fingers, clenched her right hand into a fist, and put it abruptly in her lap. “What does that mean, Matthew, ‘okay’?”

“It means okay, now I know what happened.”

“But you don’t know why it happened. You don’t know why she took all those pills, do you?”

“Why did she take them, Susan?”

“Because she was convinced you wouldn’t ask me for a divorce,” Susan said, and burst out laughing. Her laughter was frightening, I had the sudden premonition that another nightmare was about to start, that perhaps it had started the moment I entered the house and saw the study lights burning. Or before that, perhaps — the shrill ringing of the telephone, Susan coming down the hall naked to answer it in the study, I’m sorry, Mr. Hemmings, he’s not here just now, and the nightmare was suddenly full-blown upon her, upon us.

I came around the desk swiftly, wanting to stop her manic laughter before it woke up Joanna just down the hall. I put my hand on her shoulder, and she recoiled from it as though a lizard had crawled up her arm. The laughter stopped abruptly, but suddenly there was more to be afraid of than hysterical laughter. Without warning her hand reached out. She picked up the scissors. Her arm swung around in an arc, she came up out of the black leather swivel chair in the same instant, so that the motions were linked and seemed like one, sideward and upward.

The thumb-and finger-loops of the scissors were clutched in her fist like the haft of a dagger. She came at me without hesitation, propelled by fury, mindlessly. The twin pointed tips of the blades were an inch from my belly when I caught her wrist and deflected the forward thrust. She pulled her arm free, lunged again, and this time succeeded in ripping the sleeve of my jacket. Her breathing was harsh and ragged, I was not sure she even remembered the cause of her anger anymore. But still she lashed out with the scissors, coming at me again and again, forcing me back against the bookcase wall, causing me to sidle along it like a crab. I could not catch her wrist, her hand moved too swiftly, the tips of the scissors flicking the air and retreating, flicking again, catching the lapel of my jacket, clinging there an instant till she ripped them free with a twist and came at me again. I brought up my left hand, and a gash suddenly opened from my knuckles to my wrist. I felt suddenly faint and fell against the desk for support, knocking the telephone to the floor. She was on me again, I recalled abruptly Jamie’s description of the bedroom on Jacaranda, the blood-smeared walls, Maureen fluttering to—

There was a scream.

For a moment, I thought I was the one screaming. My bleeding hand was stretched toward Susan, my mouth was indeed open — it was possible that I was the one screaming. But the scream was coming from behind me. I spun to my left, partially to avoid the thrusting scissors, partially to locate the source of the scream. My daughter Joanna was standing in the open doorway. She was wearing a long granny nightgown, her eyes were wide, her mouth was open, the scream that came from her throat could have raised the dead. It was a scream of horror and disbelief, it hung on the air interminably, it filled the small room and suffocated murderous intent. The scissors stopped. Susan looked down at her own right hand in disbelief. It was shaking violently, the scissors jerking erratically in her fist. She dropped them to the floor.

“Get out,” she said. “Get out, you bastard.” Inexplicably, Joanna rushed to her and threw herself into her arms.

Sunlight streamed through the partially opened blinds. I cracked open my eyes and blinked at the morning. I was on the couch in my office. The wall clock read 8:15 A.M. The nightmare was over.

I looked at my bandaged left hand. The blood had soaked through and crusted the cotton gauze. I sat up. For a moment, I did not want to get off that couch; there seemed no place to go. I thought of my daughter in Susan’s arms. The image persisted. I shook my head as though to clear it, got to my feet, and looked at the clock again. My clothes were rumpled, I had slept in them. I was barefooted. My shoes were resting side by side before the desk, the socks bunched inside them. I hated the thought of showering and then putting on again the same clothes I’d worn through last night’s horror. But I’d left the house with only what was on my back. Turned, walked out of the study, through the hallway to the front door, the door whispering shut behind me, the small click of the snap lock in the strike plate. Click. My daughter in Susan’s arms. Her mother’s arms, not mine.

I crossed the office now, and opened the door, and went down the hall to the shower. I put the suit on a hanger, in hope that the steam would take out some of the wrinkles. There was nothing to be done about the shirt, I would have to wear it again as it was. The socks really bothered me, though, the prospect of putting on socks I’d worn the day before. But there was no way to wash them and have them dry in time to start the day. I wondered how to start the day. The water was hot, the steam rose around me, enveloping me. I would have to call Aggie. Gerald and the children would be gone by — but what difference did it make? Gerald knew. Was it now possible to call the house and say, “Hi, this is Matthew Hope, may I please speak to Aggie?”

I tried to tell myself that none of last night had happened.

The steam rose obligingly, misting the shower stall and the world beyond. I thought of my daughter. Thought of her rushing into Susan’s arms. Did all of them rush into their mothers’ arms after a divorce or a separation? Karin Purchase not wanting to call her father. Called her mother from New York the minute she got Michael’s letter, and tried her again the following night, but wouldn’t call her father even though she was here in Calusa now, local call, pick up the phone, Hello, Dad, this is Karin. No. Would Joanna ever call me?

Under the shower, I began weeping.

It was ten minutes to nine by the time I finished shaving. I did not feel much better. The wrinkles had come out of my suit, but the shirt felt stale with yesterday. I had not yet put on the socks. I did not want to put on the socks. I dialed Aggie’s number. The phone began ringing on the other end. Once, twice, again, again. My hand was sweating on the receiver. I did not want to talk to Gerald Hemmings. The phone kept ringing. I was about to hang up when her voice said, “Hello?” Barely a whisper. I thought at once that he was still in the house. I thought she was answering in some secret corner, whispering.

“Aggie?”

“Yes.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“It just seemed... I’m sorry, Matthew, forgive me,” she said, and began crying.

I waited.

“Aggie,” I said.

“Yes, darling.”

She was sobbing into the phone. I saw Susan’s fingers marching across the desk again, saw Aggie in the arms of her husband as he walked her back into life.

“Tell me what happened.”

“I thought...” She gasped for breath, I was suddenly impatient with her. And angry. At her? At myself?

“Thought what?”

“That you’d... never tell her, I—”

“Aggie, I promised you!”

“I know, but...” She caught her breath on a sob. There was a silence, long and deep. I waited. She blew her nose. The sound trumpeted into the telephone, I suddenly saw her red-eyed and weepy. “Alone last night,” she said, and began crying again. I looked at the clock. It was five minutes to nine, I wanted her to get off the phone. I wanted her to tell me what the hell had happened, and get off the phone. I did not want her to be on the phone when my partner Frank walked into the office. What would I tell him? What would my cynical New Yorker friend say when I told him Susan had come at me with a pair of scissors last night? What would he say when I told him I’d been having an affair with Agatha Hemmings since May of last year?

“Aggie, why’d you tell him?”

“Because I knew it was over.”

“What was over? How could you think that? I promised you yesterday afternoon—”

“But you wouldn’t tell her.”

“I said I’d tell her!”

“But you didn’t!”

“Shit, Aggie—”

“Don’t you care that I tried to kill myself?”

“You know I do, for God’s sake—”

“I was listening to the radio.”

“What?”

“When I did it. They were playing a Stravinsky piano quartet, I don’t know which one. They have chamber music on Monday nights. He was downstairs watching television, I was reading and listening to the music when suddenly I knew you’d never do it, I just knew you’d never tell her. I went... I got out of bed and went into the bathroom — I was wearing the peignoir you gave me last Christmas, the one I said my mother sent from Cambridge, the blue one with the lace trim. There were pills I had from when Julia was sick with the whooping cough and I couldn’t sleep nights. I took them back to bed with me, I swallowed them without water, just kept throwing them way back into my mouth until...” She was sobbing again. “You see, Matthew, it all seemed so useless. My life without you. Useless.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“I don’t know, Matthew. What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“When will you know?”

“I need time to—”

“I don’t have time,” she said, and hung up.

There was a hollow click, and then silence. I pressed one of the cradle-rest buttons, got a dial tone, and called her back. The phone kept ringing. I let it ring. I was suddenly afraid that the rest of those pills—

“Hello?”

“Aggie, don’t hang up again.”

“What do you want, Matthew?”

“When can I see you?”

“Why do you want to see me?”

“We have a lot to talk about.”

“Do we?”

“You know we do.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Aggie, for the love of God—”

“Make up your mind,” she said. “Call me when you make up your mind.”

“Don’t hang up, Aggie.”

“Yes, I’m going to,” she said.

“Aggie—”

The line went dead.

I put the receiver back on the cradle, and sat there with my hand on the phone, staring at the phone, wondering how many minutes, how many hours Aggie and I had stolen on the telephone together over the past year. Secret calls from the office, calls from phone booths all over town, how would it be without those calls — Call me when you make up your mind. I lifted the receiver again, I put it down again, I rose from the desk and began pacing my office.

There were things to do this morning, things I had to do. Michael, I had to see Michael. I wanted to talk to him about that letter he’d written to his sister, yes, and the phone call he’d made to his mother. Told her he wouldn’t intercede on her behalf. In effect, go to hell, Mom, I won’t go talk to Pop about the goddamn alimony — called his father Pop. Joanna called me Dad or Daddy, what did Karin call her father? Dad, right. Fact number one, Dad has another woman. Didn’t phone him, though, oh no, saved all the loving phone calls for Mom, never mind Dad who had another woman. Called Mom Saturday morning, planned to call her again first thing this morning because the plane — I tried to reach her last night, from New York, but she was out.

Karin had been talking about Sunday night. Sunday night — when Maureen and the two little girls were stabbed to death. Sunday night — when Betty Purchase was supposed to have been home watching television.

I tried to reach her last night, from New York, but she was out.

I was suddenly wide awake.

She was wearing a robe over her nightgown when finally she answered the door. I’d been ringing the bell for five minutes, pounding on the door for another five after that, and now she opened the door and peered out at me, blinking her eyes against the sunshine. She wore no makeup; her face was still puffed with sleep. “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but there are some questions I have to ask.”

“What time is it?” she said.

“Nine-thirty.”

“Come back later,” she said, and started to close the door.

“No, Betty. Now.”

She sighed in annoyance, and then turned her back and walked into the house. I followed her into a living room furnished in stark modern, all cool blues and whites, an abstract painting dominating the fireplace wall, angles and slashes in reds and oranges. There were two closed doors at the far end of the room. Beyond the sliding glass doors opposite the fireplace was the deck, and beyond that the ocean.

“Betty,” I said, “where were you Sunday night?”

“Here.”

“No.”

“I was here,” she said flatly. “I was watching television all night long.”

“From when to when?”

“All night.”

“No,” I said, and shook my head.

“What is this, Matt? I’ve already told the police where—”

“You weren’t here, Betty. Your daughter tried to call you from New York. She got no answer. Where were you?”

“If the police have any further—”

“Never mind the police! Your son is sitting downtown in a goddamn jail cell, and he’s confessed to murder, and I want to know where you were Sunday night. Was it you who called Michael at the marina?”

“No. Called him? What are you talking about?”

“Did you ask him to meet you at Jamie’s house? Were you at Jamie’s house Sunday night? Where were you, Betty?”

“Here,” she said. Her lips were beginning to tremble. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap. “Here,” she said again.

“Okay,” I said, “have it your way. I’m going to tell Ehrenberg you lied to him. I’m going to tell him your daughter tried to phone you Sunday night and got no answer. I’m going to ask him to find out just where the hell you were, because it might have been on Sabal Shores, killing—”

“She was with me.”

I turned abruptly. One of the doors at the far end of the room was open now. The woman who stood in the doorframe was perhaps forty years old, a tall, wide-shouldered redhead, her face sprinkled with freckles, her arms folded over ample breasts, thick legs showing beneath the hem of a baby doll nightgown.

Betty rose from where she was sitting, her hand outstretched as though to physically push the woman back beyond that open door fifteen feet across the room. “Jackie, please,” she said.

“Please, my ass,” Jackie said. “He’s trying to tie you to those fucking murders.”

“Please,” Betty said.

“She was with me, mister. She picked me up in a bar on Lucy’s Key, and we went to my place afterwards. That’s where she was Sunday night.”

I remembered what Jamie had told me about the first frigid years of his marriage. I remembered what Betty had told me only yesterday about the difficulties of finding available men in this town full of divorcées and widows. I remembered what she’d said about protecting her reputation here, about not wanting anyone snooping into her private life. And it suddenly seemed entirely plausible that she would have lied to the police about where she actually was Sunday night, rather than admit she’d been with a woman she’d picked up in a bar.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“So fuck off,” Jackie said.

Michael was sitting in his cell at the end of the corridor. It was ten-thirty A.M., he had eaten breakfast at seven, and was waiting to be transferred to the jail across the street. I’d called Ehrenberg ten minutes earlier, and he’d told me to get over there right away if I wanted to talk to him before he was moved. Michael did not seem overjoyed to see me.

“Your sister’s in town,” I said. “I talked to her last night.”

“Good,” he said, and nodded.

“She gave me the letter you wrote her. I’ll be showing it to the police.”

“Why’d she do that?”

“She was trying to help you.”

“She can help me by keeping her nose out of this.”

“I have some questions for you, Michael.”

“I don’t want to answer any questions. Why’d they let you in here, anyway? Don’t I have any say about who’s—”

“In your letter, you—”

“Jesus!”

“In your letter, you didn’t sound like someone even remotely considering murder. In fact, you even reminded your—”

“I don’t care what I sounded like in a letter.”

“You reminded your sister that Maureen’s birthday was coming. You asked her to send a card. Do you remember that?”

“Yes, I remember it.”

“If you were planning to kill Maureen—”

“I wasn’t planning anything!”

“Then it was a spur of the moment thing, is that it?”

“Yes, that’s what it was. I told you what it was. Why don’t you go listen to the tape? It’s all on the tape, what the hell more do you want?”

“I want to know why.”

“I don’t know why.”

“Tell me what Maureen said to you on the phone.”

“I told you what she said. She said she was afraid, and she wanted me to come to the house.”

“What was she afraid of?”

“She didn’t say.”

“She just said she was afraid.”

“Yes.”

“But not of what.”

“She said she didn’t know what to do.”

“About what? Michael, you’re only repeating—”

“It’s what she said, damn it!”

“She said she didn’t know what to do.”

“That’s right.”

“And you didn’t ask her about what. A person says, ‘I don’t know what to do’—”

“That’s right, I didn’t ask her.”

“You weren’t even curious.”

“No.”

“But you went to the house.”

“You know I went to the house.”

“Why?”

“Because she was scared.”

“And she didn’t know what to do.”

“That’s right.”

“But she never told you what was frightening her, or what it was she—”

“Listen, you’re not going to trick me,” he said suddenly.

“Trick you?”

“You heard me.”

“Into what?”

“Nothing.”

“No one’s trying to trick you, Michael.”

“Okay.”

“Believe me.”

“Okay, then why don’t you just go home, okay? I don’t want to talk about Maureen anymore, okay?”

“Why’d you ask your sister to send her a card?”

“I just told you I don’t want to—”

“Did you plan to send a card, too?”

“No. I was going to buy her something.”

“What?”

“What difference does it make?” he said. “She’s dead.”

“Michael... when you got to the house that night, what did you talk about?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You went into the kitchen, you sat at the kitchen table. Isn’t that what you said?”

“That’s right.”

“What did you talk about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you talk about going back to school?”

“Yes. That’s right, we talked about going back to school. And about the alimony, about Pop stopping the alimony.”

He had a way of seizing upon suggestions and turning them into his own responses. A moment before, he could not remember what he and Maureen had talked about. But now that I’d provided a possible subject matter, he accepted it at once and was ready to expand upon it. Had I asked that same question of my own client in a court of law, the opposing attorney would have leaped to his feet at once, to object that I was leading the witness. I decided to be more careful with him.

“Until what time did you talk, Michael?”

“Until... late. I don’t have a watch.”

“Then how do you know it was late?”

“Well... she said it was late.”

“Who said it was late?”

“Maureen.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know what.”

“When did you reach for the knife?”

“I don’t remember. I told you I don’t remember.”

“Michael, at some point in that conversation with Maureen, you got up from the table and reached for a knife. That’s what you told Ehrenberg in your statement. I want to know why. I want to know what was said that caused you to—”

“Nothing. Go to hell. Nothing was said.”

“You just reached up for the knife?”

“Yes.”

“Just like that.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You just told me Maureen said it was late—”

“She said she was going to bed, it was late.”

“Is that what she said exactly? Can you remember?”

“She said she... she had a busy day tomorrow and... it was getting late and she was going to bed.”

“That sounds like—”

“That’s what she said.”

He was at the house only last Tuesday, he and Maureen sat at the kitchen table half the night, just talking. A real heart-to-heart talk. About my having stopped the alimony payments, about his going back to school — they’d have gone on forever if I hadn’t told them I was going to bed, I had a busy day tomorrow.

“It sounds like what your father said.”

“My father wasn’t there.”

“Not Sunday night, Michael, Tuesday night. When you and Maureen talked for hours at the kitchen table.”

“We... talked Sunday night, too.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. I told you we—”

“During all the time you talked, did you once ask her what she was afraid of?”

“No.”

“But you said that was the reason you went to the house.”

“That’s right.”

“You hitched a ride from the end of Stone Crab Key—”

“Yes.”

“Because Maureen was afraid of something—”

“That’s—”

“But then you killed her.”

He did not answer.

“Michael?”

He still did not answer.

“Michael, who called you on Sunday night?”

“Maureen. I told you it was Maureen.”

“Michael, I don’t think Maureen called you. I think Maureen was dead when you got there.”

He shook his head.

“Who killed her, Michael? Do you know who killed her?”

At the far end of the corridor, there was the sound of the door clanging open, and then hurried footsteps. I turned at once. Ehrenberg was approaching the cell.

“You’d better come upstairs,” he said. “We’ve got another confession in this damn case.”