Loving Time

forty-three

After April Woo’s visit to her office on Wednesday, Clara Treadwell had swung her chair around and stared out at the Palisades across the river in New Jersey. She needed to calm down and get things straight in her mind. In less than an hour she’d be meeting with Daveys, the FBI agent Arch Candel had assigned to her case on Monday but who hadn’t been able to schedule an appointment until today. Monday the situation had been complicated enough. Now with Hal’s death under investigation, it was a lot worse. Clara was disturbed, annoyed at the wasted time and further possibility of scandal. Still, she didn’t believe there was anything she couldn’t handle.

She shook her head wearily at the rippling expanse of Hudson River. For four days she’d been on the phone talking endlessly about Hal’s tragic, sudden, fatal heart attack. She’d spoken to the Dean of the medical school, the Vice President of Medical Affairs of the university, the Chancellor of the university, the trustees of the Psychiatric Centre, the chief psychiatrist of the state of New York, so vital to the Centre’s funding, who reported to the Commissioner of Mental Health. The Vice President of Medical Affairs called the Dean of the medical school, who called the Commissioner of Mental Health, who called her while she was on the phone with the Chancellor. They all knew one another well, worked together on the committees that funded and regulated the academic and medical services the university and Centre provided, both to their students and the patients they served.

There was a great deal of interest in the case because Harold Dickey had been a well-known figure at the Centre for over thirty years. A lot of people had liked him. People’s liking and respecting Harold had been one of the many problems Clara had had with him. People had been foolishly loyal to all of Harold’s outdated views. Clara thought bitterly of Harold’s influence on the Ray Cowles case. Dickey had killed Ray.

And not only had Harold been genuinely liked, he had been the head of the Quality Assurance Committee and had died under suspicious circumstances right here in the Centre. During her many talks with all of her colleagues, Clara hadn’t exactly prepared for big trouble. Never, in her wildest dreams, would it have occurred to her that there would be any. She had talked to everyone and thought she had the Harold’s-death piece of her nasty situation all nailed down. Arch had assured her that the FBI person would take care of the other piece. Boudreau.

All Clara had needed today was the Chinese policewoman, who had bungled the Cowles case, suddenly back in her life to cast suspicions on Harold’s death. It was infuriating, outrageous. Clara could feel the tic jumping in her cheek as she tried to process the information April Woo had given her, make sense of what she’d heard and not have a seizure herself. For a moment she was possessed by the fear that, like Hal’s, her heart might run amok, too.

Ray was a suicide. Did that make sense after what he told her that night? No, it didn’t make sense. Now it seemed Hal was killed by a combination of Elavil and alcohol. But everyone knew Harold didn’t like to take medicines. Clara made a steeple of her index fingers and tapped them together. Ray wasn’t depressed and Hal wasn’t depressed. Ray never talked about suicide in any real way, and Hal was much less interested in his mood than his mental processes. Hal would never have taken anything to jeopardize the way he thought. The chemical uplift was for other people, Hal’s wife, maybe. His daughter. Not for him. He was a purist.

Clara stared through the triangle of her fingers, seeing Hal so clearly even after all these years, even after his ugly death. She saw him sitting in his underwear in the old easy chair in the bedroom of her apartment, the faded quilt thrown over the chair, always the jubilant peacock after sex, a glass of Johnnie Walker in his hand. For the sex he had no apology, but the scotch he had to analyze and explain.

“Every man has his weakness and his poison. Scotch is my poison,” he’d say, holding the amber liquid to the light.

He didn’t admit to his other weakness, which was women—most particularly her. Wouldn’t acknowledge the appetite because he never had any intention of paying the bill. A little knot of bitterness still remained deep inside Clara because of that. It was like a painful lump of otherwise benign tissue that became sensitized only with strenuous exercise. Occasionally the feeling had resurfaced with Hal’s pedantry in meetings when he pretended compliance and helpfulness to some innovation of hers, then stopped the progress cold with a few modest questions that generated endless debate. Now even his death had to raise questions.

Hal was a drinker, plain and simple, an old-fashioned lush. The steeple fell apart as Clara’s fingers stopped tapping. One hand gripped the arm of the chair. The other rose to her mouth and began stroking her lips and her chin.

Someone you love is going to die. If Hal had written that note, he most certainly hadn’t meant himself. For one thing, she didn’t love him anymore, hadn’t loved him for years and years, and he had known that. Not only that, for him the cold fact of the death of her love was old news. Hal had considered her loving someone else a challenge, a hurdle he could get over. He’d been arrogant. He would manipulate her, torment her any way he could. She could see him getting a little crazy and finding ways to scare her. But she didn’t see him hurting himself. And no one else would, either. Hal’s death would simply not be written off as a suicide.

Her agitated fingers moved back and forth across her lips, rubbing the soft skin as if it were a rough surface that needed abrasion. She hadn’t loved Ray Cowles, either. And now he was dead, too. What did the story tell? Suicide and suicide? Ray because he couldn’t face coming out of the closet and Hal not because she wouldn’t love him but because he couldn’t accept her accusation of harassment, the threat of being thrown off the Centre staff.

What about accident and accident? That sounded better in both cases. Neither had left a note. Maybe neither had meant to die. It didn’t sound good enough, though. Hal had been very busy when he died. He had wanted to clear himself, keep his job. He wouldn’t have taken Amitriptyline. If he hadn’t taken the medication on purpose, could he have taken it by accident? Clara thought of Bobbie Boudreau leaning against a tree, smoking, as she returned to the Centre after Hal’s death. Boudreau knew the building well. Boudreau was a mischief-maker, a poisoner. Boudreau had killed that way before. He’d been fired under extremely unpleasant circumstances. The pieces fit. Boudreau had killed Hal because Hal had found out Boudreau was the one who was harassing her.

Clara decided it was time to take the used condom out of her freezer, where she’d put it last Friday before leaving for her meeting in Washington. She was going to nail Boudreau with his own nasty little gift. Clara leaned back and checked her watch. She had ten minutes to relax before Special Agent Daveys arrived.