I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia (20 page)

Fat chance.

Sasha sounded annoyed. “So where is she? It’s four-thirty.” Pause. “You know what I’m talking about, right? So I’ll see you but if I don’t, soon, I’m out of here.” I’d forgotten to call her about Lydia. I would, as soon as I was finished eating.

My sister was all flutters and gasps about what had happened to Lydia’s husband and how dreadful it was, and how horrible that she hadn’t believed me when I tried to tell her.

But now she did. Believed that Lydia had committed murder. Score another one for me and my big mouth. “Call me,” Beth said. “Meanwhile, Sam wants me to tell you that he—one of his associates, actually—is speeding her through the process as much as possible. Also trying to get her a bed in a very quiet psychiatric facility. I believe she’s been there before. Call me.”

I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I had picked up
Mildred Pierce
as my dinner companion, and if her woes didn’t take my mind off mine, I always had
Hunting and Trapping the Unsuspecting Male
or whatever it was called. Given all that plus a full container of Rocky Road, I was self-sufficient.

The only mail was a circular for neighborhood bargains and an envelope postmarked Boca Raton. Bea Pepper’s clipping service in action. This time, a checklist for “planning your wedding early.”

Surely this was a premature follow-up to the dating book. Then I had a thought. A nauseating one. Beth couldn’t have actually…surely Bernard the oral surgeon fiancé was a joke between sisters. I was afraid he wasn’t. Suddenly, even an imaginary man was a pain. I had to dispose of him, but how? What would sound best to my mother’s co-players in the Greater Boca Raton Perpetual Gin Game? Should Bernard die tragically in an accident or of a rapid disease? But those options need documentation and possibly memorial services. Should he fall in love with somebody else? Turn out to be already married?

Like maybe Wynn Teller had been? Should I then blow Bernard away, as perhaps the first Mrs. Wynn Teller had?

Useless thoughts like moths inside a lampshade. I yawned, finished my eggs, and tapped my nails on the counter, amusing Macavity as I tried to decide what was the very earliest hour a grown-up person could get into bed, alone, without feeling embarrassed. I decided there was no time like the present, and was clutching the Rocky Road, spoon imbedded in its top, in one hand and the videotape in the other when the doorbell rang.

My peephole is angled toward the sky, so I did my usual verbal inquiries through the door. My caller was Neil, which fact did not make me feel comfortable, but I was also ashamed of being afraid of an old friend, so I compromised, opening the door a crack, the chain still bolted.

“I’d invite you in,” I mumbled, “but the house is a mess! Not to mention me!” Easy to hide behind big, fat, female clichés.

“I wanted to talk with you at lunch,” he said, “but you disappeared. Mandy, I feel like you don’t…” He hesitated, and met my eyes with his sad gaze. I wanted to cry for the pressure he was under and for my doubts about him. But that didn’t eliminate either of those things. It was very March winds doth blowish outside, even if it was only February, and my hand was freezing tight to the cardboard Rocky Road container.

“…like you don’t
trust
me anymore,” Neil said, each word a sharp-edged rock. I felt like an ogre and let him in.

I discreetly put the Rocky Road back in the freezer—spoon still imbedded—and pushed
Mildred Pierce
under a napkin, ashamed of my spinsterly pleasures. As if Neil would have noticed that or anything.

“You know me, Mandy!” he blurted out. “Could you imagine me killing somebody?”

Hadn’t we had a more subdued variation of this conversation at the top of the stairs this morning? And hadn’t Neil told me why I should suspect him? I wasn’t sure it would be politic or profitable to mention this change of perspective.

“I know it looks bad,” he said.

“Why? To whom?” I asked. “Everybody’s sure Lydia Teller killed her husband,” I added bitterly.

“Not everybody, or why were the police at my house?”

His look was intent and unnerving. I became preoccupied sponging off the counter, searching for errant English muffin crumbs. Neil waited. “I give,” I finally said. “Why were they?”

“You sure you don’t know?” Then he shook his head, as if his own question had been ridiculous. His hair was thin and on the verge of scraggly, and fine strands lifted in the breeze his movements created.

“Why, Neil?” I repeated. “You think I sent them? You’ve been at war with the man for days. You’ve told everybody. Maybe that’s why the police thought of you.”

He stared at his shoes. He was on the opposite side of the kitchen divider, so I couldn’t see them, but they must have been fascinating. Unfortunately, I was late for a date with Mildred Pierce, and short on patience. “Neil! You’re scaring me! Stop that stupid staring, say something, and sit down!”

Maybe I sounded like his mother, or Angela, but in any case, he sat down on the sofa quickly, like something dropped from above. I suspected that he would have collapsed the same way onto the coffee table or the floor. “Why did the police come see you?” I put water on to boil.

Now he examined his hands, turning them palms up, then over, bending his fingers to examine the nails. “I guess,” he finally said, “for the reasons you said.” He sighed, letting air phut out of his partially opened lips. “Or maybe because they knew I was out there.”

“There?” I whispered. “You mean Teller’s? Last night?”

A jerked sort of acknowledgment and an open-mouthed sigh like a gasp in reverse while his head sunk so low it was nearing his knees. The teakettle shrieked and I rushed to silence it. Sometimes, the absolute best thing about cooking is that it gives you a series of emergencies that can busy your hands and divert your attention. “Why?” I remembered a phase my niece had gone through when she drove me crazy responding to every single question or remark with
why?
The entire adult world must have seemed as incomprehensible to her as Neil now did to me. “Why?” I repeated.

Neil raised his head and stared at me intently, as though I was the one who could answer the question. “If he’d just talked to me, treated me like a person…”

“Yes? What then?” I bobbled tea bags in boiling water and reminded myself that the police had visited, not held, him.

“Then I wouldn’t have had to go to his house last night.” Neil’s forehead wrinkled at my stupidity.

I left the tea steeping, walked across the living room, and assumed what I hoped looked like a lounging position close to the front door.

“I know I didn’t say where I’d been when I came to school last night.” He looked at me belligerently. “It wasn’t like you had any particular reason to know, or anything, so why should you be angry?”

“I don’t think I am.” Nervous, for sure. Angry, not really. “I wasn’t.”

He leaned forward on the sofa. “I mean I didn’t ask where you’d been before you were in the office, did I? Maybe you were out at Teller’s.”

“If you’re suggesting I killed him, that’s the most ridiculous—” I stopped myself. The lack of logic was frightening. “Neil,” I said, pushing us back on track, if not exactly onto moral high ground, “where I was is not the question. We were discussing why the police came to see you.”

“We were?” He looked honestly confused.

“So why did they?”

“Because I was there. Somebody must have told them.” He stood up suddenly, looking disoriented. “I shouldn’t have come here, you’re right, it’s not fair to dump my problems on…I’m just so on edge, I can’t think straight—but I told Angela I wouldn’t be long. Can’t talk to her about any of this, about anything, really. She’s nervous enough without it. It feels like the whole world is on my head.”

“Ah,” I said, “it can’t be that bad.”

He stared at me, openly incredulous. “It can,” he said softly. “It is.”

“Then…then I’ll get the tea.” It was herbal, and intense by now, deep green, aromatic with mint. I put his cup on the coffee table and said, as gently as I could,
“Of course
you can talk to me.”

He looked at his watch. He looked toward the door. “Angela worries,” he murmured.

“Yes.” That was a chronic condition and no excuse. Angela had been a worrier before her marriage, before her allergies, before her pregnancy, before the financial difficulties, before the fire at her husband’s TLC center, before last night. Just listing her more recent worries put me near an anxiety attack.

“Nothing happened last night.” He left the untouched tea on the coffee table. “I tried getting an appointment and couldn’t. The article said he always ate dinner with his wife. His secretary told me he had appointments that night, so I figured he wasn’t going out to eat. I went to his house and warned him that I wasn’t going to take it the way I was sure other teachers had.” He waved his long arms for emphasis, his overcoat flapping around him. We had missed the let-me-take-your-coat phase.

“At first, all I’d asked was to go over my records. I was ready, willing, to assume I’d screwed up. But he was always busy being famous, and the longer that went on, the more I was convinced it wasn’t my fault. The accounting was a scam, like they say it is with movies. Creative accounting. I told them that. They still wouldn’t go over the books with me. Then I told them I was going to the guy who wrote the magazine piece, and to the D.A., and
they’d
go over my accounts with me.”

“You told them?”

He nodded. “A jerk, huh? I wanted to be straight with them. I still thought we could work it out. Except then there was the fire. The
accident.
Which, of course, burned up all my records. I should have gone to the law without warning them, but you know, all through it, I was afraid I was maybe wrong, that they would explain things to me and set them right. When I went there, the day of the fire, the afternoon you saw me there, remember…?”

“Yesterday,” I whispered.

“God, really? Only yesterday?” He shook his head. “Schmidt accused me of burning the building for the insurance money and told me they were bringing charges.”

The telephone interrupted him, but neither of us moved.

“I went a little crazy and said I was still suing, but now it would be a class action. All the franchisers, all the teacher-saps. I said I had copies of my records. Which isn’t exactly true.” He sighed.

That was all said during the second ring and a bit of the third, by which time I was able to reach and lift the receiver.

The woman’s voice was unfamiliar. “Neil Quigley?” she shouted. I handed over the receiver. Neil flinched.

“Yes?” he asked, and then he lapsed into noise rather than language, a symphony of sound blips until he clicked down the receiver, having become even more agitated than when he’d arrived, flapping his hands, his overcoat bagging around him. It was inappropriate to notice how much he looked like a scarecrow, but I did.

“What?” I asked. “I don’t mean to probe, but…” That wasn’t true. I did mean to probe. Barge into my house, tell me about criminal acts, maybe even murder, then receive a cryptic call on my telephone, and I will definitely mean to probe. “What happened?”

“Angela.”

“What’s wrong?” Even worrywart and chronically hysterical Angela wouldn’t phone in a frenzy because a recipe had failed or Oprah hadn’t been sufficiently entertaining.

“That was our neighbor.” He was at the front door. “She—Angela, not the neighbor—she’s…we’re in labor. For real. At the hospital already. That neighbor brought her in. I should have been there. Angela’s going to be…” He looked ready to faint. “She’s just about ready to…I’m about to become a…”

“Congratulations!”

He exhaled mightily and looked happily, fearfully, dazed. “Right now,” he gasped. “She’s having our…right now—”

He grabbed onto the doorknob, but for support, not egress.

“Hey, pal,” I said softly, “you’re in no condition to drive. I’ll call a cab.”

“Oh, no. No problem!” He was becoming manic—and depressive still. “Enough money worries already, can’t afford a—wow, a baby. Tonight! I hope she’s…”

All he needed was a serious auto accident to add to his woes and perhaps somebody else’s. “I’ll drive you,” I said firmly. “Your neighbor can bring you back for your car.”

“Don’t be silly. A baby! Can you imagine?”

“What hospital, Neil?” I pulled on my down coat against the blustery night outside. “Where is she?”

“Oh—out, where…Lankenau. Out City Line, you know?”

Joan Crawford waited on my kitchen counter. Later, I promised her. Men’ll mess you up every time, she answered.

I was tempted to remind Neil that Angela was the one doing the hard work, but I was too busy steering him down my front steps. “Is that yours?” I pointed at a bland gray sedan that looked teacherly. “Better move it. Parking’s illegal on this street.”

He shook his head. “I’m around the corner. Legal until six a.m. Oh, God, it’s for real! A baby!”

By the time we reached the hospital, Neil looked ready for a Breathalyzer test. And I’d always thought goofball fathers-to-be were comic strip inventions.

A sturdy and tolerant nurse came toward us smiling, and I passed Neil over to her supportive arm. “Quigley,” I said. “His wife’s in labor, but he needs intensive care.”

Neil, hearing his name, jerked to attention. “Mandy!” he said. “You never explained why you called the police about me.”

The nurse looked from him to me and back. “The police didn’t bring you in, young man,” she said. “This young lady did.” She shook her head at me. Men! she mouthed.

“Have a great baby,” I said, and I left.

I hovered around the lobby gift shop for a moment, drooling over seven varieties of chocolate bars. I summoned all my ethical strength and turned away, out into the chill clear night. The brisk air was intoxicating, as was my wonderfulness score. I gave myself points for braving the cold, ignoring Joan Crawford, escorting Neil, and, the most moral act possible for a contemporary woman, renouncing food.

My car was parallel parked at the curb only a few feet away. I stood on the sidewalk, fumbling with my keys, and felt, more than saw, a car approach. I looked up. A missable vehicle. Generic. A narc car, Sasha would call it. Designed to not be noticed. I looked back down at my key and unlocked my door, vaguely aware that the narc car was moving too fast for any parking lot, let alone one at a hospital. Still, one foot in the car, one foot out, I froze with the knowledge that something besides its speed was wrong.