Blood Ties (7 page)

He picked up a newspaper from the bench beside him, folded to the story devoted to the great man. There was a photo of the woman described as his companion, come like Niobe, all tears, to grieve for her lost love. Catherine Adams. Tuttle was no more a judge of female beauty than he was of modern art. The woman's hair seemed to be worn in a crew cut, and she looked undernourished and gaunt, yet her features were praised in the press account. Perhaps, like Fleck's books, she was an acquired taste. Tuttle found her no more attractive than his secretary, Hazel.

He shuddered at the thought of the female who made his office a place to avoid. She had laughed mockingly at his suggestion that some opportunity for him lurked in these events. The memorial would be held that afternoon, in a chapel on the Northwestern campus, the alma mater of the fallen novelist. Tuttle wavered between taking a nap and attending the affair. A nap meant returning to his office and locking his door against Hazel, always a risky venture when the flood of contempt for her employer rose high in her enormous breast. The memorial it must be.

Peanuts needed help getting out of the booth. He had been thinner when he sat. Peanuts grunted negatively at the suggestion that he accompany Tuttle, so the lawyer set off alone, sleepy at the wheel of his Toyota. Burying the dead, he reminded himself, was one of the corporal works of mercy.

He stood at the back of the chapel and tried to follow the tributes spoken from the pulpit by a series of writers whose obscurity spurred them to oratorical excess. The star of the proceedings was Catherine Adams, who turned out to be tall as well as thin. Her crew cut was covered by a kind of turban, and she wore a flowing dress that almost seemed a vestment. She remembered when she and the deceased were students on this very campus. She recounted with tasteful indirection their liaison, which had spanned the years since their graduation, irregular but continuous. She said this demurely, and there was a murmur of approval for her brave defiance of bourgeois morality. She ended with a poem, and when she had finished the congregation rose as one to applaud her. Tuttle wished he hadn't come.

In his car, he got out his mobile phone and turned it on. Hazel had been trying to reach him. He called his office.

“Where have you been, you idiot? And don't say the Great Wall. I tried there.”

“I've been to a funeral.”

“Of your career? A client will be here in half an hour. Be here.”

She hung up. Tuttle turned off the phone and fought the impulse to throw it out the window. Was it for this that he had struggled through law school, taking most courses at least twice, and failed the bar exams until the third attempt, when he had come with his sleeves full of notes? But “client” is a magic word. He started the engine and headed to his office.

6

Even as he talked with Vivian, Martin had thought of Tuttle, to whom he had sold antacids for years when he kept his pharmacy. A wiser choice would have been someone like Amos Cadbury, but Martin had no wish to incur great expense. His hope was that he could get Tuttle to look into the matter of the mother of Vivian's grandchild pro bono. Unlikely, but Tuttle's fees could not be high. This thought was strengthened when he found the elevator in Tuttle's building out of service. He climbed the dingy stairs to the third floor and stood before a door bearing the legend
TUTTLE
&
TUTTLE.
He entered and found himself confronting a woman who made him wish he'd brought his stethoscope.

“Martin Sisk. I called.”

Her smile was carnivorous. “Mr. Tuttle will be free shortly.”

The door to the inner office was closed. Martin took the chair the Amazon pointed him to.

“You ran the pharmacy near the courthouse,” she said.

“Yes, I did.” He spoke warily, but he could not have forgotten such a woman.

She coughed. She smiled and coughed again. “I really ought to see a doctor about that.”

Martin assumed a professional air. “How long have you had it?”

“Would you take a look?”

He was standing beside her chair, looking into the great cavern of her mouth, when the door opened and Tuttle came in. The little lawyer seemed unsurprised by the scene he had come upon. Martin danced away from the woman.

“Still at it, Martin?”

Tuttle opened the inner door, flicked on the light, and went inside. Martin hurried after him. Tuttle sailed his tweed hat at a coat rack in the corner and it spun briefly on the top, then fell to the floor. Tuttle ignored it, sinking into an unoiled chair behind the cluttered desk.

“Close that door, will you?”

Martin pulled the door shut and sat. This visit seemed a vast mistake. He had planned to condescend to Tuttle, but the little lawyer had him at a disadvantage, bursting in on him while he examined his secretary's throat.

“So what can I do you for?”

“Tuttle, I don't think even you can be of help on this.”

“Try me.”

Where to start? “Does the name Dr. Henry Dolan mean anything to you?”

“Go on.”

Martin plunged in, finding his own account garbled. Tuttle listened in silence, encouraging him from time to time with a judicial nod. When Martin mentioned that the matter had been handled by Amos Cadbury, Tuttle sat forward.

“Why didn't you go to him?”

“I decided to come to you.”

“Wise move. Cadbury would interpret your interest as a criticism. What is your interest, by the way?”

“Vivian Dolan came to me with the problem. She is greatly vexed by it. The whole family is.” He gave Tuttle as much of the story as he knew.

“So what is the point of finding the real mother?”

“To warn her off seeing the daughter she let out for adoption years ago.”

“Delicate,” Tuttle said. “Delicate.”

“Yes.”

“There has been no contact with the mother over the years?”

“Apparently none.”

“Nor any notion where she may be living?”

Martin shook his head, feeling he was contributing to the description of an insoluble problem. “Could you find her?”

“Of course. Not that it would be easy. But adoptions are legal transactions. They are recorded. Once the mother is identified, we can track her down.”

Relief came to Martin Sisk. When he had suggested to Vivian that he would find the birth mother of her granddaughter, he had been prompted more by a desire to have that lovely woman in his debt than by the prospect of success. Failure would have the opposite effect. But now Tuttle spoke of the matter as a mere bagatelle, routine.

“So you want to employ me?”

“I hope it won't be expensive.” If it were, he could always dun the Dolans.

“Let's hope not. Meanwhile, I will need a retainer.”

Martin took his checkbook from his inner pocket. Tuttle followed this action with interested eyes, then seemed to have second thoughts.

“No need for that at the moment. A token amount will make you my client. Do you have twenty dollars?”

Martin took out his wallet and passed a bill to Tuttle who, disconcertingly, held it up to the light. He pushed back his chair, retrieved his tweed hat, dropped the twenty into it, and clamped the hat on his head.

“How is Mrs. Sisk?”

Martin fell back in his chair. “Haven't you heard? She passed away.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Tuttle said, baring his head as he did so. “You have my sympathy.”

“It's been some years.”

“Time is a great healer. You didn't marry again?”

“Oh, no.”

Tuttle was on his feet. “Come, Hazel will want you to fill out a form. Just routine.”

He held the door open, and Martin went into the outer office. Hazel coughed and turned to face them.

“I will leave Martin with you, Hazel. I am going to start looking into something for him.” At the outer door, he paused. “Martin is a widower.”

Then he was gone.

7

Madeline read with stunned amazement the newspaper story about Catherine Adams's long-term relationship with Nathaniel Fleck, the slain author whose death had stirred up such posthumous pride on campus. Mark had passed the paper to her without comment. Now he said, “And just the other day…”

“Yes.”

“Have I become clairvoyant?”

But Madeline was thinking of the way Catherine had put Nathaniel down, warning her away from him. Had all that been a ruse? And, despite her liaison with Maurice Dolan, she had claimed to be smitten by Mark Lorenzo. No; Catherine had been her mainstay during the worst time of her life, someone on whom she could lean. All this business with Nathaniel must have come later. After all, a great deal of time had intervened. Madeline resolved to go to the memorial. No need to mention it to Mark, he would be in class in any case.

Catherine's performance at the memorial stole the show. How little she had changed physically, except for the hair, of course, But her head was covered at the memorial, conferring on her an air of noble suffering. Afterward, Madeline lingered, wondering if she should speak to Catherine.

“Madeline?”

She turned but did not immediately recognize the woman who had spoken her name.

“Janet. Janet Owens that was.”

Suddenly the unfamiliar figure was transformed. “Janet!”

“What are you doing here?”

“After the story in the newspaper, how can you ask?”

“Shall we say hello to her?”

“Do you want to?”

Janet studied her for a moment, then shook her head. “Where can we have coffee?”

They went up the street to a student haunt and felt middle-aged as they took their coffee to a far table. For fifteen minutes, they brought one another up to date.

Janet lived in Barrington, was married to an accountant, and had three children, two boys and a girl. “And you married a professor, didn't you?”

“Mark Lorenzo. Why haven't you ever looked me up?”

“I couldn't remember his name.” Janet smiled wonderingly. “To think you never left this place.”

They got around to Catherine. Madeline said that for her the greatest surprise was this professed devotion to Nathaniel Fleck. “She always hated him.”

Janet dipped her chin and looked at Madeline. “You're kidding, right?”

“Kidding?”

“Madeline, when you went home for a semester, she and Nathaniel became a big thing. I mean big. Everyone talked about it. I assumed she had stolen him away from you.”

“Oh, we were all through by then.”

“Even so.”

“She told me she was nuts about Mark.”

“Then it's a good thing you married him.”

“Tell me more about your kids,” Madeline said, desperate to change the subject. Catherine had been a familiar stranger recounting her lifelong passion for the dead author, but Janet's remarks made Madeline wonder if she had ever really known Catherine. Catherine alone had known the reason for her supposed leave of absence from the university, and she felt odd talking with Janet, who, close as she had been, never knew.

“Madeline, we have to stay in touch.”

“Oh yes.”

“I'm sorry now we didn't talk to Catherine.”

“The chief mourner.”

Janet made a face. “As a housewife I was shocked. Shocked. Well, I guess it's the way of the world now.”

How innocent and normal Janet seemed. There was no dark secret in her past that threatened the peace of her marriage. What would she say if Madeline told her the truth about her own past, told her that Nathaniel had hunted her down and insisted he wanted to find their child? His strange death would take on an ominous significance in the light of all that. Not that she was tempted to unburden herself to Janet. Or anyone else.

Then the unsettling thought came that Catherine Adams knew her secret, that in a way she was as much a menace as Nathaniel himself. What if Catherine decided to look her up? She would remember Mark Lorenzo's name. She knew him; she had been at the wedding. The terrible news of Nathaniel's death had not seemed terrible at first. Reading of the strange incident in Fox River, Madeline's first reaction was relief. Thank God, the Monster was dead. It was not a thought she could hold on to, however, rejoicing in another's death, even someone who had treated her as he had.

The women parted outside the coffee shop, repeating their intention to keep in touch.

Mark was already home when Madeline returned. “Did you talk to her?” he asked.

“I ran into Janet, an old classmate. We had coffee. She lives in Barrington!”

“I meant Catherine. I saw you at the memorial.”

“But you had class.”

“I canceled it. In honor of our famous alumnus. What did you think of Catherine?”

“It was quite a performance. Janet and I decided not to talk to her.”

“You told me once she was your closest friend.”

“She was.”

“Beware of close friends.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just before we married, she came to my office. There was something she felt I ought to know.”

Madeline felt that the blood was draining from her body. She stared at Mark.

“She seemed to think it would change things. That I wouldn't marry you.” He ran a hand through his beard. “I always wish you had told me.”

“Oh my God.”

He took her in his arms, and at first she tried to break free. Then she submitted to his embrace, weeping helplessly.

“Oh, Mark, what can I say?”

“You don't have to say a thing.”

What a wonderful man he was, knowing all along that she had had Nathaniel's baby and saying nothing. There had never ever been anything in his manner that suggested he knew her secret. Dear God, she could have shown him Nathaniel's letter. He would have known what to do. She thought of the days when she had kept the letter, before she had burned it, days during which he might have come upon it.

“Mark, I went to Amos Cadbury, the lawyer who arranged everything. The adoption.”