Mr. Peanut (8 page)

“For what it’s worth,” Cady said, “they didn’t seem like they had problems. At least none beyond Alice’s health.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Alice struggled with her weight for years. And then she finally got it under control. But none of this matters,” Cady said. “There’s no way David killed his wife.”

“Was there anyone here Pepin was close with?”

“Look, Detective, a guy’s wife kills herself. He sees the whole thing. Why drag him through the mud?”

“I can ask around if you prefer.”

Cady shook his head. His e-mail pinged. “There’s Georgine,” he said, “Georgine Darcy. She’s a junior designer. She and David were working on some major projects together.”

Hastroll could tell at first glance that Darcy had been a ballet dancer simply by how she walked with her feet turned out. She was blond, full-lipped, a poor man’s Scarlett Johansson, although there was a bubble of loneliness around her, a remoteness that preceded her as she approached. He made a mental to note to get the neighbor, Rand Harper, to ID her.

“Miss Darcy?”

When Hastroll showed her his badge, all the color left her face.

“Let me see if there’s a conference room available,” she said, then led him down the hallway with her eyes to the ground. “We’ll be private here.” She turned on the light and closed the door behind her, sat down, crossed her arms over her chest, and watched as Hastroll pulled up a chair. He placed his notepad on the table and stared at her until she lowered her eyes.

“This is about David, isn’t it?”

“Mr. Cady tells me that you and Mr. Pepin worked together regularly.”

“We were developing several games together.”

“Would you say that the two of you were close?”

Georgine put a fist to her mouth and cleared her throat. “We were.”

Hastroll waited. “Did the relationship—”

“Yes.”

“How long did you and Pepin have an affair?”

“About a year,” she said. “We broke it off a couple of months ago.”

“You both agreed to?”

She looked at Hastroll impassively. “He broke it off.”

“Why?”

“He said it confused him.”

“How?”

Darcy had to blink once. It was the shock, Hastroll always noticed, of pure honesty. “He was trying to get clear on his feelings for his wife. She left him for a while and then came back, but right before she did he said that so long as the two of us were spending time together, he wouldn’t know if it was because of his problems with Alice or because there was really something between us.”

“And you agreed with that?”

At this, two discrete tears formed at Georgine’s eyes and fell. “I never seem to have a choice in these matters.” She pressed her index fingers to the bridge of her nose and wiped her eyes. Then she cleared her throat, the crying over with.

“Did he talk about Alice much?”

“No.”

“But he talked about her?”

“Very rarely.”

“You said he mentioned ‘problems.’ How would you characterize their relationship?”

“Honestly?” she asked.

“A woman is dead.”

“I think he felt abandoned. It wasn’t hard to understand. She changed on him. She’d lost weight, something they’d gone through a million times. She’d lose weight, gain it back, and then feel like shit about herself. And he was always there for her, every time, over and over, but this time she does something radical. She loses weight for good, becomes this completely different person, and what? I think he was worried she was dispensing with him in the process.”

“Did he tell you his wife was leaving him?”

“No.”

“Did he tell you he
thought
his wife was going to leave him?”

“No. But I knew she was.”

“How’s that?”

“You’d have to be a woman to understand.”

“Educate me.”

“We decide things long before we know we’ve decided. She’d decided, all right, she just hadn’t acted.”

“That sounds like something all people do.”

“Women need to feel safe before they make a move. She sounded to me like someone looking for a place to jump off.”

“I must not understand women very well.”

“I could’ve told you that just by looking at you.”

Hastroll nodded. On the pad, he wrote,
Hannah
. “Did you tell Pepin this?”

“Did I tell him what?”

“That you thought his wife was leaving him.”

“Yes.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

“Did he ever indicate that you two might have a future?”

“He never talked about divorcing Alice, no.”

“Did you talk about a future with him?”

“Sometimes.”

“Was he receptive?”

She shrugged.

“When Pepin broke things off, how did you take it?”

“I didn’t take it well at first.”

“Did you try to keep the relationship going?”

“For a short time. But I got the message pretty quick.”

“You never harassed him? Never threatened him professionally or personally?”

“No.”

“Do you remember the last time you made a private call to Mr. Pepin?”

“I haven’t called David in months.”

Hastroll got up. “Here’s my card. Call me if you think of anything else.” He turned to leave.

“Detective,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I don’t believe he killed her.”

“Why is that?”

“Because he loved her,” she said. “At least, he loved her more than me.”

Hastroll decided he’d been too passive with Hannah. He had to force her hand. He needed a new strategy. He decided to stop feeding her.

“Ward,” she said from the bedroom, “what’s for dinner?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his face hidden behind the paper. “I already ate.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s all right. I’m not really hungry.”

Hastroll snapped the paper away from his face, chuckled to himself, and went back to reading.

Later that night, when he got into his bed, he could hear Hannah’s stomach rumbling. “You
sound
hungry,” he said.

But she didn’t answer.

He made her no breakfast the next morning. He poured the milk down the drain, bagged up the eggs, bread, the canned soups and beans and vegetables from the pantry, the crackers, pasta, tomato sauce, and chicken broth—in short, everything they had—and left the garbage bags by the front door to take with him when he left for work. To make sure she couldn’t order in, he took all the credit cards and cash from her purse—even her checkbook—and stuffed them in his jacket pocket. When he came to their bedroom to kiss Hannah good-bye, she was frowning, a little perturbed, like someone who couldn’t place where she’d left her keys.

“Not a bite?” she said.

His resolve weakened slightly. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m late. I have to get to the station.”

“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

He took a final peek in the refrigerator—nothing!—and felt his confidence rise. He was sure this would work! He grabbed the two enormous garbage bags (he felt like the Santa Claus of purloined goods) and left, though all day he wondered what she’d do for sustenance.

“I’m home,” he said that night and then stood for a moment in the foyer. When she didn’t respond he went straight to her bedroom.

Hannah was watching television. “Have you ever noticed,” she said, “how many commercials there are for food? It’s amazing: Milk: It does a body good. Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Two whole-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.”

“How about that?”

“A1, it’s how steak is done.”

“Strictly speaking, that’s a condiment.”

“The incredible, edible egg. Beef: It’s what’s for dinner.
Yo quiero
Taco Bell.”

“There’s one right down the street.”

“There are even commercials for other things with food in them. Fruit of the Loom. Banana Boat sunscreen. Have you noticed?”

“No,” he said.

“Maybe you’re not hungry.”

“I am now,” Hastroll said. His wife’s list had weakened him. “You?”

She shrugged.

Hastroll thought her shoulder blades appeared prominent.

“Say,” she said.

“What?”

“What’s for dinner?”

Hastroll stood up straight and stared out the window. “You’re on your own.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, how about some water?”

“I’m busy,” he said. “Why don’t you get up and get it yourself?”

“Oh, well,” she said and slumped against the headboard.

Hastroll took himself out for Chinese.

Four days into this new strategy, Hannah’s face looked gaunt. Hastroll could see the ribs above her breasts. Seven days, and Hastroll was suffering for her, though he remained determined. He kept close tabs on their garbage for signs of takeout. Zero. She hadn’t eaten a thing. He asked the doorman if he’d seen Hannah leave the building. “To be honest,” Alan said, “I haven’t seen Mrs. Hastroll in so long, I’ve been wondering if she died.” When Hannah said goodnight that night, Hastroll noticed white spittle at the edges of her mouth.

He turned off the bedside lamp and snuck a glance at her in the light from the TV. “What are you watching?” he asked.

“
I Shouldn’t Be Alive
,” she said.

On the ninth day, she reached for a book on the bedside table, fainted, and landed on the floor.

Hastroll, terrified, revived her with a few slaps, then put her back into bed. “Hannah?” he said. “Hannah, please say something!”

“Water,” she said.

He brought her a glass that she emptied in huge gulps. “Pizza,” she said four glasses later.

He ordered a large pie with pepperoni and extra cheese. She ate six slices without pausing, then sat back, wiped the red stain of sauce from the corners of her mouth and, sleepy with so many carbohydrates, lay back and turned on the TV.

“You still don’t get it,” she said and almost immediately passed out asleep.

“Why, Alice was wonderful with the students,” said Jesslyn Fax, fifty-four, an art teacher at Hawthorne Cedar Knolls School for emotionally disturbed and sexually abused teens. “The kids adored her.” A small, dumpy woman, Fax wore a brown dress with a white sweater draped over her shoulders. She had hearing aids in both ears and spoke loudly and cheerily—the permanent optimism, Hastroll thought, of the moderately talented. On her classroom walls were prints of Van Gogh’s
Starry Night
, Picasso’s
Guernica
, some Monet and Manet, Rothko and Rembrandt, Munch and Mondrian, an Escher or two, all the posters sharing space with charcoals by students, still lifes of fruit and self-portraits, all of them mediocre to bad, the interspersed classics grim reminders of everything the children’s works were not and never would be. There were rows of easels stacked in a corner and barnacled with oil paint, and a large, abstract clay sculpture in the corner of the classroom. “We had a memorial service for her in the gymnasium to help the kids cope with the loss, and Benny Bartlett—you see that dark-haired boy out there?”

Hastroll looked. Bartlett, a heavy-set kid no more than fourteen, was playing basketball with another kid on the court outside. The net on the hoop was made of chain link.

“Why, he spoke about her just beautifully at the service,” she said. “He told everyone the story of how Ms. Pepin taught him how to tell time on a regular clock.”

Hastroll watched the boy for a moment. His own father, a fat, unathletic
man, had never played sports with him, and he’d always vowed that when he had a child, he’d be sure to. “Why’s Benny at school here?” Hastroll asked.

“Oh, he’s terribly sick. He’s been badly abused all his life. His uncle molested him for years. His mother’s a crack addict. His father got addicted to meth and flew the coop when he was three. The boy has a third-grader’s IQ. And he raped his sister.”

“I see.”

“But he’s very sweet. That other young man out there, the handsome one, Ralph Smiley?”

He turned to look again. Smiley stole the ball from Bartlett, then stepped to the top of the key, turned around, and shot a basket.

“He was very close to Alice too. She helped him do a very ambitious social studies project on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. You should ask him about that.”

“Why’s Ralph at the school?”

“Since he was a little boy he’s demonstrated sociopathic tendencies. He’s killed a number of cats and dogs in his neighborhood, cut them up into little pieces, and buried the body parts everywhere. Plus he’s a self-flagellator. At any opportunity he takes a razor to his arms and genitals, the poor dear. He’s got stacked rows of keloid scars from his biceps to his wrists. That’s why he’s wearing long sleeves. And his poor little penis looks like the Michelin Man.”

“What subjects did Alice teach here?”

“She taught GED, mostly, and social studies, though her main area of expertise was math.”

“Did you ever meet her husband?”

“David? Such a nice man.”

“Did she ever talk about any marital problems they might’ve had?”

“Not at all.”

“Did she seem depressed in the weeks leading up to her death?”

“Depressed?”

“Withdrawn,” Hastroll said. “Antisocial.”

“She seemed quite exuberant. She’d lost over a hundred and fifty pounds this past year.”

“Thank you, Ms. Fax.” Hastroll stopped at the door. “If you don’t mind my asking, who did that sculpture in the corner?”

Fax turned to look at it. It was three small spheres contained within the gaping hole of a larger one. It loomed. It gave off a hum. It was the only piece in the room that showed any talent.

“Why, Alice did,” Fax said. She covered her mouth and began to cry. “It’s called
Hunger.”

He went to Alice’s former classroom. Her weight chart was pinned to the wall, off to the left of the blackboard, a week-to-week bar graph chronicling the whole year, the red construction paper bars marking her progress and climbing steadily like stairs (
YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING!
it read at the top), one pound lost one week, nine the next, then five, then four. Remarkable. In the drawer of her desk was a picture of the Pepins hugging on a park bench, Alice obese, the couple obviously in love, but the glass shattered in the center as if by a fist. Hastroll picked it up and looked at it, then rummaged around a little.