An Illustrated Death (15 page)

C
HAPT
ER
T
HIRTY-
F
OUR

Y
ET AS SOON
as I left Bianca’s cottage and was standing outside the studio door, doubts rushed in like a crowd of anxious shoppers once the doors have opened. I closed my eyes, trying to recall the day it happened. The park had been crowded and noisy. There was the constant drone of insects buzzing, tourists laughing and photographing each other, little shrieks from my daughters as they played. Sounds from people in boats that carried over the water. Street vendors cranking out music and ringing bells. Would I really have noticed a small splash?

Making myself remember that August day brought too much pain: Colin’s despair when he realized he would never again hold his favorite child and Jane’s face, all mucus and tears. Having to call my parents long distance to let them know. The blue numbness that had muffled everything so that I barely felt Jason’s kicks. Before that I had known only sunshine, the certainty that each day would be a new adventure. Afterward every day brought fresh horrors.

Coming home without Caitlin was terrible but it made it easier to forget. Having three children under five was distraction enough. And so many details of those days had been lost to time. I reminded myself that the police had been satisfied, that our detective, an honorable man, had been satisfied . . .

But police in a different place and another time had also been satisfied that Nate and Morgan’s deaths were accidental drownings. I was still not convinced.

I opened my eyes and stared at the green studio door, with its peeling paint. What I wanted to do most was get in my van and drive. I thought best when I was in motion, my mind just focused enough on my surroundings to keep from crashing into anything, but with an alternate commentary murmuring below the surface. Every so often an unexpected idea would splash up into consciousness like a startled trout. If I was quick, I could capture and examine it.

I was tempted to leave, but I made myself go into the studio. I would stay as long as I could bear it.

Going through Nate Erikson’s fiction collection was supposed to be the icing on the cake, my reward for researching all those copies of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
and
Romeo and Juliet
in seventeen languages. I carried piles of novels to the worktable, still as shaky as a butterfly in a rainstorm. Raw life and death, the loss of a child, made books seem frivolous. But right now books were what I had.

These books didn’t acquit themselves well. Many were not first editions and a few had a book club vibe. I put those that were personally inscribed to Nate or signed by the author in a separate pile.

There’s a raging debate among booksellers as to which are more valuable, inscribed or just signed. Inscriptionists argue that the more of the author’s handwriting there is, the better, especially if what is written is clever or revealing. Signature-only first editions have gained favor in recent years, however, as an increasing number of collectors don’t want an unknown third party interfering with their experience.

Gradually the association copies worked their magic on me and calmed me down. Names like James Baldwin, William Styron, and Carson McCullers appeared like old friends. Had Nate and Eve known all of them? From the warm inscriptions, they had at least met. What was it about famous people that attracted other famous people as friends, even when they were in different spheres? They seemed to recognize that they were on similar planes of achievement and were less guarded, more receptive.

A phenomenon I could only marvel at.

A
ROUND FOUR THERE
was a knock on the door, and Bianca came in. “I thought of something.”

I smiled to encourage her to go on.

“You said you were taking pictures that day. Of people on the river—and people around you?”

“Whatever seemed interesting,” I agreed.

She waited for me to understand.

It took a beat. “You think I might have photographed someone who was involved?”

“There could have been someone on the sidelines, someone who strayed into a picture, or was watching you.”

I stared at her. I had last looked at the contact sheet from that day years ago, when I had printed up my last photo of Caitlin exchanging flowers with her twin. But I had not looked for anything else. Prickles of sorrow, oceans of guilt, had threatened to break through my fog back then, and I had stored those sheets quickly away. I wasn’t even sure where.

Could they hold the answer to what really happened that day?

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
F
IVE

B
IANCA MET ME
at my van the next morning, dressed in jeans and a white sweatshirt with a tennis club insignia. Evidently there were no committee meetings this morning.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about Caitlin again. I had spent the night ransacking stacks of photos and packed-away cartons, looking for the contact sheets. I couldn’t find them. Had I thrown away the reminders of that afternoon in a fit of despair? I prayed not. I still had three undeveloped rolls of film as well as the negative strips, but I hadn’t filed them in any order and it meant squinting at hundreds. In the end, I had fallen into bed and slept badly.

“There won’t be lunch today.”

“Okay.”

“Mama’s too upset. They’ve arrested Bessie.” She stepped back and waited for my reaction.

I didn’t disappoint her. “
What?
”

“She and Jocasta didn’t come in this morning, and we were worried. So we called. Bessie’s daughter was hysterical.”

“You’re sure she was arrested?”

“Well, I don’t think handcuffs are the latest fashion accessory. Anyway”—she eyed me reproachfully—“I thought you’d know. That your friend would have told you.”

“No. I’ll try to find out.”

I found Frank Marselli down at the pool area, conferring with a policewoman and writing on his clipboard. He looked up when he saw me coming, then back down at what he was doing. This time the patrolman didn’t try to stop me.

I went right up to him. “You’ve arrested Bessie?”

“Hold on. I’ve got things to do here.”

“But why
Bessie
?”

“Over there.” He pointed to the grass some distance away.

I went. I knew he didn’t have to tell me anything, and he probably wouldn’t. If Bessie had smothered Gretchen, he didn’t even need my take on the family anymore.

He took his time talking to the others around the pool. Restless and tired of waiting, I started to walk away. This patch of grass, where Bianca had gotten sick and Claude had paced was too familiar.

Marselli saw me leaving and nodded at me to wait.

“Why are you listening to rumors?” he said impatiently when he reached me. “We brought Ms. Brown in for questioning. Period. There are a few things we need to clear up. Like why her fingerprints were in Ms. Erikson’s room around the bed. We matched them and she has a prior.”

“Bessie? What for?”

But he had already said more than he wanted. “It’s immaterial.”

“Was it for stealing?”
For having a granddaughter who lied about her cooking skills?

“The case was dismissed.”

“Was it recent?”

“Ms. Laine.” He let me see he was holding himself in check. He would have been good at charades. “It was something that happened over twenty years ago. And I’ll ask the questions. How did she and Gretchen Erikson get along?”

“Fine, as far as I could see. Bessie likes everyone. They seemed to respect each other for the jobs they did.”

He nodded.

“How does she explain her fingerprints?”

I doubted he would tell me, but he said, “Claims she sometimes helps out by changing the linen.”

“That’s reasonable. Are you—you know—trying to put pressure on the family by arresting her? To make someone else come forward?”

He stared at me from under his dark eyebrows. “I don’t play games, Ms. Laine.”

I
ENDED UP
driving toward East Hampton for lunch, stopping at the Sea-Shell Diner. I sat on a stool at the counter and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a vanilla egg cream.
Comfort food.
Yet why was I in need of comfort?

I answered my own question. In the past two days I had torn open my construction-paper life, and burrowed frantically through old cartons to find something that probably didn’t exist anymore. Now there was the news that Bessie had been arrested. The only thing I could imagine that would drive Bessie to hurt someone was if Gretchen had physically attacked Eve. Even then she would have done nothing more than pull them apart. It made an incongruous picture, the three women in a fistfight.

As soon as I had decided that, though, a possibility crossed my mind, faint as a curtain ruffling in a summer breeze. What if Gretchen had discovered proof that Eve had been responsible for Nate’s death? Suppose she had been planning to reveal it at the memorial but Eve and Bessie had silenced her instead? Eve could have given her a sedative during their afternoon tea, making it easier to smother her, and Bessie could have moved her to the pool in the cover of night.

Of course, I knew no reason that Eve would have to hurt Nate or, even less likely Morgan. True, she hadn’t rushed to her defense when Puck attacked her, but that didn’t mean she wished her granddaughter harm.

I picked at the coleslaw in the pleated paper cup and tried to imagine why Bessie would have been arrested years ago. Maybe she had been desperate for money and had written bad checks. Or been caught driving without insurance. Nothing like murder.

Marselli claimed he wasn’t playing games. But I wondered.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
S
IX

W
HEN
I
GOT
back to the Eriksons, Bianca was standing in the gravel circle, arms crossed like a teacher waiting for a playground straggler.
Now what?

“We’re having a family meeting. Where have you been?”

What had happened to yesterday’s closeness? “I was hungry. I wanted lunch. And I’m not part of your family.”

“Well, they want you there.”

“Is the meeting about Bessie?” I reminded myself that I was an adult, that I didn’t have to take their abuse for Eve’s aide getting arrested. Then I remembered Marselli, and how we both wanted to find out the truth, and followed Bianca into the house.

The family was once again sitting in the great room. I half expected to see Regan there too, scowling at me. Lynn and Claude sat as motionless as a Grant Wood painting in the center of one couch, but he had his arm around her and her head was on his shoulder. Eve and Rosa, more relaxed on a sofa opposite, had nonetheless left the space of a cushion between them, an eerie reminder of Gretchen’s empty seat at the memorial.

Puck had settled himself in the same striped wing chair he’d sat in the day we had lunch here, but today he had turned it away from the window and was facing into the room. He grinned at me when I came in, but I had learned not to trust his good humor.

Two Windsor chairs had been brought in from the dining room and forced into the circle. I sat down in one of them.

Miss Scarlet in the conservatory under attack.

Claude cleared his throat. “Puck’s found out some interesting things about Bessie.”

He nodded to his brother, ceding him the floor.

Puck gave us his impish look, fair eyebrows raised. “It seems our Bessie has been tripped up by the law before.”

Bianca, beside me, drew in a breath, but Eve remained impassive.

“You said that. But you never told Claude why,” Lynn said.

Puck tilted his curly head. “Bessie’s been a home health aide on Long Island for years. In 1991 she was caring for a young woman in Shoreham, a woman who was in a lot of pain and kept telling everybody she wanted to die. And then, one day, she did.”

“Was she terminal?” It wasn’t my place to speak up, but the way the others were nodding in comprehension was too irritating to let pass.

“Yes, but that’s not what she died from. The coroner said she had been suffocated.” He emphasized the last word, looking as pleased as if he had baffled us with a magic trick.

That did give me a jolt. I wasn’t sure if the others knew how Gretchen had died, so they might not pick up the connection. But what were the odds of two women dying the same way when Bessie was close by?

“Did they put her in jail?” Rosa asked, alarmed.

“ ‘Ay, there’s the rub.’ Evidently the young woman was facedown in bed when they found her, with no sign of any marks. So she could have pressed her face into the pillow herself. There were other discrepancies, and in the end the DA decided not to prosecute. The case was dropped. No conviction, no jail.”

“What was wrong with the young woman?” Lynn asked softly.

Puck looked at her as if she had missed the point. “I don’t know, ALS I think, that Lou Gehrig disease. She wasn’t completely paralyzed yet, she could still talk.”

I forced myself to keep quiet.

“But Gretchen wasn’t a candidate for mercy killing,” Bianca said. “She wasn’t asking to die.”

“Well duh, Bianca. When you’ve killed once, it’s easy to kill again.”

And you know that because?
“What’s her motive? You still have to have a motive.” If they wanted me there they were going to get me.

“There’s something else.” Claude leaned forward. “Mama, do you want to tell them?”

Eve’s eyes flicked over the group, then she gave her head a shake.

“Late Saturday night, when we were getting ready for the memorial, Mama opened her bedroom door to use the bathroom. At the end of the hall she saw Bessie carrying something, going down the stairs. Isn’t that what you told me, Mama?”

Eve gave a weary nod.

“Mama thought it was laundry. But I think it must have been Gretchen.”

I felt stunned. “What did the police think?”

“That’s why we’re telling
you.
So you can tell your friend. We don’t want Mama being cross-examined by the police.”

I opened my mouth to say that the police would have to question her about something so important, then closed it again. That was Marselli’s problem, not mine.

“Poor Bessie,” said Rosa sadly. “I liked Bessie.”

“Bessie?” Bianca looked ready to jump up and shake Rosa. “Bessie killed Gretchen. She’s not ‘Poor Bessie.’ ”

“But what reason could she have?” I said.

“People do crazy things. Maybe Gretchen threatened to get her fired—you hear about disgruntled employees all the time, coming back and killing people. Maybe she wanted Jocasta to get the job cooking.”

“That would be crazy,” I agreed.

“People lose control and go berserk.” Lynn spoke as one who knew. “And Bessie’s very strong. She has to be to lift people in and out of wheelchairs.”

“I’m sure the police will find out what was behind it.” Claude swept away my question of motive with an airy hand.

“While we’re having a family meeting I want to say something,” Bianca broke in, cheeks flushing pink. “Rosa, you have to clean your place up, it’s getting worse and worse. It’s a disgrace for people who come here to have to look at.”

Rosa jerked up on the sofa as though she had been slapped. “No, it isn’t.”

“Didn’t you say some of the things were Gretchen’s anyway?” Lynn asked.

“Yes, and I’m not giving them up.”

“But they don’t belong to you,” Claude said severely, as he would to a child who had taken someone else’s toy. “What are these things, anyway?”

“I’m not telling.” Rosa hunched back down into the sofa, arms crossed.

Puck held up a hand to silence Claude, then said to Rosa, “Bigger than a bread box?”

“What?”

“Remember twenty questions? You have to answer yes or no.”

Her eyes flickered around the room for confirmation.

“Is it bigger than a chair? Or little, like a piece of paper,” he coaxed.

“Yes.”

“You mean there’s lots of things. A chair
and
some papers.”

She smiled, understanding what was expected of her. “Not a
chair
.”

“A table?”

“No!”

“Important papers?”

This was excruciating—and dangerous. “If you want me to talk to Marselli, I have to go,” I interrupted. “Rosa, come on. I have something to give you.”

She got up eagerly. I didn’t look at anyone as we left.