No Place Like Home (18 page)

I had lost a year of grammar school but made it up quickly and went to a local high school in Santa Barbara. In both places I was known as being “quiet but nice.” I had friends, but never let anyone get close to me. For someone who lives a lie, truth must always be avoided, and I was constantly having to guard my tongue. I also had to fiercely conceal my emotions. I remember in a sophomore English class, the surprise test was for the students to write an essay about the most memorable day of their lives.

That terrible night flashed vividly before my eyes. It was as if I were watching a movie. I tried to pick up my pen but my fingers refused to grasp it. I tried to breathe, but I couldn't pull air into my lungs. And then I fainted.

The cover story we used was that I had almost drowned as a small child, and had occasional flashbacks. I told Dr. Moran that what had happened that night had never been so clear, that for a split second I had remembered what Mother had been screaming at Ted. And then it was gone again.

The same year I moved to New York to attend the Fashion Institute, Martin reached compulsory retirement at his company, and they gladly moved to Naples, Florida, where he took a position with
an engineering firm. He has since fully retired, and now, past eighty, has become what Kathleen calls “forgetful,” but which I fear is the beginning stages of Alzheimer's.

When we married, Alex and I had a quiet wedding in the Lady Chapel of St. Patrick's Cathedral, just the two of us and Jack, Richard Ackerman, the elderly lawyer who is the senior partner of Alex's law firm, and Joan Donlan, who was my right hand when I had the interior design business and who is the closest I have to an intimate friend.

Shortly after that, Alex and Jack and I flew down to Naples to visit Martin and Kathleen for a few days. Thank God we stayed at a hotel, because Martin often became disoriented. One day when we were lingering over lunch on the patio, he called me “Liza.” Fortunately, Alex was not within earshot because he had headed to the beach for a swim, but Jack heard. It puzzled him so much that it became embedded in his memory, and from time to time he still asks me, “Why did Grandpa call you Liza, Mom?”

Once, at the apartment in New York, Alex was in the room when Jack asked that question, but his reaction was to explain to Jack that sometimes people who are old begin to forget and mix up people's names. “Remember, your grandpa called me ‘Larry' a couple of times. He mixed me up with your first daddy.”

After my outburst over the pony's name, I had followed Jack into the house. He had run to
Alex and was sitting on his lap, tearfully telling him that Mommy scared him. “She scares me too, sometimes, Jack,” Alex said, and I know he meant it to be a joke, but the underlying truth was undeniable. My fainting spell, my crying episodes, even the state of shock I'd been in after finding Georgette's body—all those things had frightened him. And the fear might as well have been stamped on Alex's forehead: he obviously thought I was having some sort of breakdown.

He listened to Jack's story about how I had yelled at him, saying he couldn't call the pony Lizzie, and then he tried to explain: “You know, Jack, a long time ago a little girl named Lizzie lived in this house and she did some very bad things. Nobody liked her and they made her go away. We think about that bad girl when we hear that name. What's something you hate more than anything else?”

“When the doctor gives me a booster shot.”

“Well think about it this way. When we hear the name Lizzie, it reminds Mommy and me of that bad girl. Would you want to call your pony ‘Booster Shot?' ”

Jack began to laugh. “Nooooooooo.”

“So now you know how Mommy feels. Let's think about another name for that pretty pony.”

“Mommy said we should call her ‘Star' because she has a star on her forehead.”

“I think that's a great name, and we should make
it official. Mommy, don't we have some birthday wrapping paper?”

“Yes, I think so.” I was so grateful to Alex for calming Jack down, but oh, dear God, the explanation he gave him!

“Why don't you make a big star and we'll put it on the door of the barn so everyone will know a pony named ‘Star' lives there?”

Jack loved the idea. I drew the outline of a star on a section of glittery wrapping paper and he cut it out. We made a ceremony of pasting it on the door of the barn, and then I recited for them the poem I remembered from childhood:

“Star light, star bright,

First star I see tonight,

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Have the wish I wish tonight.”

By then it was six o'clock, and the evening shadows were beginning to settle in.

“What is
your
wish, Mommy?” Jack asked.

“I wish that the three of us will be together forever.”

“What do you wish, Alex?” Jack asked.

“I wish that you'll start to call me ‘Daddy' soon, and that by this time next year you'll have a little brother or sister.”

That night, when Alex tried to draw me close to him, he sensed my resistance and immediately released me. “Ceil, why don't you take a sleeping pill?” he suggested. “You need to relax. I'm not
sleepy. I'll go downstairs and read for a while.”

When I take a sleeping pill, I usually break it in half, but after the day I had just gone through, I swallowed a whole one and for the next eight hours slept soundly. When I awakened, it was almost eight o'clock, and Alex was gone. I pulled on a robe and rushed downstairs. Jack was up and dressed and at the table, having breakfast with Alex.

Alex jumped up and came over to me. “That was some sleep,” he said. “I don't think you stirred all night.” He kissed me with that gesture I love, cupping my face in his hands. “I've got to be off. You okay?”

“I'm good.” And I was. As the remnants of sleep left me, I felt physically stronger than I've felt since the morning we first pulled up to this driveway. I knew what I was going to do. After I dropped Jack at school, I would go to one of the other real estate agents in town and try to find a house that we could rent or buy immediately. I didn't care how suitable it was. Getting out of this house would be the first step toward regaining something approaching normality.

At least it seemed like the best thing to do. Later that morning, however, when I went to the Mark W. Grannon Agency and Mark Grannon himself took me around, I learned something about Georgette Grove that took my breath away. “Georgette was the one who got the exclusive listing on your house,” he told me as we drove along Hardscrabble Road. “None of the rest of us wanted to touch it.
But Georgette always had a guilty feeling about the place. She and Audrey Barton had been good friends at one time. They went to Mendham High at the same time, although Georgette was a couple of years older than Audrey.”

I listened, hoping Grannon could not sense the tension rushing through my body.

“Audrey was a great rider, you know. A real horsewoman. Her husband, Will, though, was deathly afraid of them and embarrassed about it. He wanted to be able to ride with Audrey. It was Georgette who suggested that he ask Zach at Washington Valley Riding Club to give him lessons, something they agreed to keep secret from Audrey, which they did. Audrey knew nothing about it until the police came to tell her Will was dead. She and Georgette never spoke again.”

Zach!

The name hit me like a thunderbolt. It was one of the words my mother had screamed at Ted the night I killed her.

Zach: It was part of the puzzle!

O
n Friday afternoon, Ted Cartwright's secretary informed him that a Detective Paul Walsh from the Morris County Prosecutor's Office was in the waiting room and needed to ask him a few questions.

In a way, Ted had been expecting the visit, but now that it actually had happened he felt perspiration form on the palms of his hands. Impatiently, he wiped them dry on his jacket, pulled open his desk drawer, and took a quick look in the mirror that he always kept there. I look fine, he thought. In a split second he decided that showing cordiality might be construed as a sign of weakness.

“I wasn't aware that Mr. Walsh had made an appointment to see me,” he spat into the intercom. “However, send him in.”

Paul Walsh's suit-off-the-rack, slightly rumpled look immediately triggered Cartwright's contempt, which put him somewhat at ease. The round frame of Walsh's glasses reminded Cartwright of the
color of his tan riding boots. He decided to be condescendingly cordial to his visitor.

“I really don't like unexpected drop-ins,” he said. “And I'm going to be on a conference call in ten minutes, so we'd better get to the point, Mr. Walsh. It is Mr. Walsh, isn't it?”

“That's right,” Walsh replied, his firm, steely tone of voice out of sync with his mild-mannered appearance. He handed Cartwright his card and, uninvited, sat down in the chair facing Cartwright's desk.

Feeling that he had somehow lost control, Cartwright sat down again himself. “What can I do for you?” This time his tone was brusque.

“I am, as I would presume you have guessed, investigating the murder yesterday morning of Georgette Grove. I assume you've heard about it.”

“You would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to have heard about it,” Cartwright snapped.

“You knew Ms. Grove?”

“Of course I knew her. We both lived in this area all our lives.”

“Were you friends?”

He's heard about Wednesday night, Cartwright thought. Hoping to disarm Walsh, he said, “We had been friendly enough.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “In recent years, Georgette became very confrontational. When she was on the zoning board, she made it extremely difficult for anybody trying to get any kind of variance. Even when she wasn't appointed to another term, she
still never missed a meeting, and continued to be an obstructionist. For that reason, I, along with a number of other people, ended any semblance of friendship with her.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“On Wednesday night, at the Black Horse Tavern.”

“What time was that, Mr. Cartwright?”

“Somewhere between nine fifteen and nine thirty. She was alone, having dinner.”

“Did you approach her?”

“We made eye contact. She beckoned to me and I went over to greet her and was astonished when she all but accused me of being the one responsible for the vandalism of the house on Old Mill Lane.”

“The house in which you lived at one time.”

“That's correct.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her that she was turning into a crackpot and demanded to know why she would think that I had anything to do with it. She said that I was working with Henry Paley to put her out of business so that she'd have to sell the property on Route 24. She said she'd see me in hell before she sold it.”

“What was your response?”

“I told her I was not working with Henry Paley. I told her that while I would certainly
like
to develop that property by putting in tasteful, commercial offices, I had plenty of other projects I was working on. And that was the end of it.”

“I see. Where were you yesterday morning between eight and ten o'clock, Mr. Cartwright?”

“At eight o'clock I was riding my horse on a trail at the Peapack Riding Club. I rode until nine o'clock, showered at the club, and drove here, arriving at about nine thirty.”

“The house on Holland Road in which Ms. Grove was shot has wooded property behind it, all part of the acreage attached to the house. Isn't there a riding path on that property that connects to a Peapack trail?”

Cartwright stood up. “Get out of here,” he ordered angrily. “And don't come back. If I have to talk further with you or anyone from your office, I'll do it in the presence of my lawyer.”

Paul Walsh stood and walked to the door. As he turned the handle, he said quietly, “You will be seeing me again, Mr. Cartwright. And if you're speaking to your friend Mr. Paley, you can tell him that he'll be seeing me as well.”