Resurgence (34 page)
“I encourage you to locate her posthaste, and when you do, tell her we may have to have a sworn statement pertaining to your incursions, both here and at her dwelling.”
“She’s a lawyer, she’ll know how to handle it.”
Worn thin on the officer’s plodding manner and flatulent brand of bureaucratese, Nate strains not to show it. Things could be worse; he could have been hauled off to a station house and required to compose a written statement; his interrogator could have been a lot more procedural, cynical, and insistent that Laurel Chandler be located this very minute.
“Are we done here?” Nate says.
The officer shoves a clipboard full of forms across Mrs. Floss’s Formicatop table and offers a Bic pen. “That your Beemer out there?” he says. “House monitoring and lookin’ in on little old ladies must be more remunerative than thought.” He gives a mirthless laugh and shows Nate where to sign.
Nate produces a Montblanc pen from a suit coat pocket, signs on several dotted lines. That only gets him out of here, he’s reminded when he wants to fill with relief. There’s still Laurel to deal with.
Outside, a small crowd has formed behind a stretch of police tape. No TV cameras or microphones are in sight—thank god—and his car has been moved—wisely—to the other side of the court.
Head down, he bypasses a cluster of the morbidly curious without comment, although he would like to put it to any neighbors in the group by asking what the fuck they were doing while an old lady lay dead in their midst. For four days, going by his best estimate.
Only now does it occur to him that Amanda may have been questioned separately. But she wasn’t, she assures him when he jumps in the car with that the first thing out of his mouth.
“How did it go?” she says.
“That part went as well as can be expected. It’s the next part that has me worried.”
“Does that mean we have to go to the police station?”
“No, but I have to call Laurel and fill her in before the police do. And I have the distinct feeling it would be easier to tell her that her brothers had a flirtation with coke use than tell her Mrs. Floss met with such a grisly end. She’ll take it hard. She’ll feel responsible because she didn’t do anything to prevent it. But who the hell wants to be the one to blow the whistle—have someone declared non compos mentis? That’s all she talked about that day we were stuck at the Dorchester because the nanny didn’t show—that, and refuting the appraiser’s unauthorized claims.”
“Maybe I’m still a little shaken,” Amanda says. “Maybe that’s why I don’t understand much of anything you said.”
She does look a little wan, a little peaked, but that’s not the reason she didn’t grasp what he said. He never told her Laurel was considering having Mrs. Floss placed in custodial care; there never was a reason to until now. And he never shared with her the trivial concerns of the appraiser, and there’s no reason to now.
He does, however, give her the nutshell version of Laurel’s reactions when told of Mrs. Floss’s assertions. “At the time, I assumed the old lady was off her rocker and that’s what I represented to Laurel,” he says as he maneuvers the big car out of the congested cul-de-sac.
“And why wouldn’t you?” Amanda says. “I mean, that’s how anyone would have seen her without corroborating evidence, wouldn’t they?”
They ride on in silence for a while, with him chewing on the implication he should feel responsible in some way, with her presumably mulling over the entire constellation of events.
“I could use a drink and I’m getting hungry,” he says when they reach Holbrook Road. “I overlooked lunch and I don’t remember much about breakfast. You ready for something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you know a spot around here or do you want to pick a place in the city?”
“I only know a couple places near here. There’s the Claremont Diner, where I once went with Laurel but she was driving so I don’t know if I can find it again, and Pals Cabin, where I once met Laurel and because I was driving I probably
can
find it again once I get to West Orange and Prospect Avenue.”
If her signature breathless run-on delivery is any indicator, Amanda’s back on her game. And, now that they’re nearing Valley Road, he can find the way to West Orange.
The sprawling restaurant affords an atmosphere as far removed from Old Quarry Court as can be managed on short notice. Seated in a side room heavy on dark paneling and leatherette-upholstered booths, Amanda orders a vodka and tonic with ice water on the side, and he goes for a vodka on the rocks. He has two more before he’s ready to think about food; she’s still on her heavily diluted first drink when she opens a menu.
The only criterion for his food choice is lack of resemblance to either latkes or flanken. Mushroom soup and a Cobb salad meet that requirement. Amanda chooses the house salad. As though by unspoken agreement, small talk prevails while they wait for the food to arrive. Nothing is said of the elephant crowded into the booth with them until the soup and salads are served, and Amanda—right out of nowhere—suddenly wants to know why he chose a certain simile earlier.
“Or maybe I shouldn’t call it a simile in the purest sense. You gave an extreme example of something you were loathe to do in expressing your reluctance to inform Laurel of Mrs. Floss’s death. Was that random or is there some reason to believe Laurel’s brothers dabbled—no, you said flirted—with cocaine use? Is there any truth to that?”
“You don’t miss much, do you?”
“I try not to. Is that a problem?”
“No.”
“You sound like it is.”
“Trust me, it’s not. This . . . this
cognizance
of yours is one of your greatest assets and if I sound irritable, it’s because I’m feeling overwhelmed.”
“I’m sure you are and with good reason, but—”
“But I still haven’t answered your question.” He slugs down the remains of his third drink. “If you really must know, that wasn’t a random remark, but feel free to call it a simile if you want to.”
He’d like another drink. If he has another, he’ll have to ask Amanda to drive when they leave, and that will give her even more power.
He signals the waitress and asks for coffee. After it arrives, he fills Amanda in about the substance that was first mistaken for rodenticide, then explained away as jock itch powder, and ultimately proven to be cocaine.
“I think you can see why I let that sleeping dog lie.”
“I see no such thing and I’m mind-blown that
you
don’t see.”
For a moment she appears ready to cry. He’s beyond bewildered until she blows her nose and glares at him.
“Only hours ago you had me compiling everything known about this Hoople Jakeway creature with one of those details being Mrs. Floss’s assertion that she saw him entering and leaving the Chandler house by the grade door to the garage. “
Entering
, Nate, going
into
Laurel’s house. The bastard’s been
inside
and he may have been in there while she still lived there . . . while she was home . . . while Colin was there, god forbid. He’s probably been all through the house, including the attic, where he got careless while doing a line.
“Along with everything else I think this guy’s got to be considered a cokehead with an unlimited supply, if you take into consideration the amount left at the scene of the Sid Kaplan murder and the amount that can be presumed taken from the safe of a known drug dealer—Gibby Lester, I mean, and now Brownell Yates’s stubborn notion of a connection with Rayce’s death doesn’t seem so much like wishful thinking, and now I think we should go to the police, but not before Laurel is informed. Okay?” She takes a deep breath and eyes him expectantly.
“If I have another drink will you drive me home?”
“I already planned to.”
“Will you stay with me when we get there?”
“I already planned to stay because I want to call Laurel from your house. I want her to know—and Colin if necessary—that I am with you on this in every sense of the word and every step of the way because I’m going to tell her everything. And I mean
everything
. Nothing will be left out, no one will be spared, and if they can’t deal with it, tough toenails.”
“That’s my girl.”
Very early morning, May 28, 1987
At first, Laurel resists the sound without knowing if it’s coming from inside her head or out. For a while, she’s unsure if she’s asleep, awake, or suspended somewhere in between. The sound—a series of distant double warbles coming at regular intervals—persists once she determines she’s more awake than not.
She slips out of Colin’s loose embrace without waking him, eases out of bed and out of the room without turning on a light. Clad in an oversized T-shirt and bikini briefs, she closes the bedroom door behind her and hesitates in the hallway to verify that it’s the phone in her north wing office that she hears ringing. The sequence of four fixed rings followed by a measured pause repeats itself twice while she listens.
Wide awake now, she does a quick mental inventory of those with access to that number. Her brothers, her sister, her father’s caseworker at the nursing home, Amanda, Nate—none of whom would call at this hour without good reason. Which translates as bad news.
Putting off the inevitable, she looks in on both boys during a pause in the ringing. Along the way, the little ankle-rubbing cat shows up to hinder her progress until she picks him up and carries him along.
In the office, she flips the switch for the wall sconces left over from another era, drops the cat on a cushioned windowsill, and occupies her desk chair as though she had nothing better to do than plan another chapter of Colin’s stalled biography. Now sounding like a klaxon on a sinking ship, the phone starts up again. She answers just ahead of the fourth ring. “Yes?” she says in a small voice.
“Laurel? It’s Amanda. I am
terribly
sorry to—”
“Just get it over with! Is it my father? Has something happened to one of my brothers? My sister?”
“No, no, nothing like that, but it is serious. Things . . . have happened, there’s a great deal you need to know. Now.”
“Then tell me!”
Amanda takes an audible breath and introduces a premise Laurel would reject out of hand if she hadn’t witnessed several of the key incidents herself and didn’t know several of the contentions to be inarguable fact.
Unlike the ringing telephone, Amanda goes on without pause. For several minutes. When she does hesitate, it’s only to catch her breath. At one point Laurel takes notes, attempts to keep track of a chain of events too long and too complicated to grasp in one hearing. All she manages to write down are the names of the new players, with only one—Brownell Yates—sounding even vaguely familiar.
“I’m faxing a written statement of everything I’ve just said, along with a photo of Jakeway and charts and timelines to support these findings,” Amanda says, and picks up a new thread.
Upon absorbing news of Mrs. Floss’s hideous death, Laurel ceases to comprehend other than on a superficial level. She hears without actually processing that Nate discovered the body; she can’t quite grasp what business Nate had at the Floss house and what part the demented old lady played in this unfolding drama. She’s numb after Amanda executes an especially longwinded explanation of why Nate kept mum about the cocaine discovered in the Chandler attic last Saturday. But not so numb she can’t resist Amanda and Nate’s plan to go to the police with what they now view as primary evidence.
“No,” Laurel says with as much emphasis as she can muster, “No, you must
not
go to the police with that.” Some of her gumption returns. “I forbid it. I
absolutely
forbid it! And if you don’t understand why, you should be in another line of work.”
This produces the longest pause of the entire lopsided exchange and subdues Amanda, but only slightly. She responds from another angle, speaks of Nate’s reaction to Mrs. Floss’s death as though courting cooperation through sympathy.
“He took it pretty hard,” Amanda says. “Especially when it appeared he may have been the last person to see her alive. Did I mention that he wants to take care of the funeral arrangements once it’s cleared with social services? Oh and we’re going to need a statement from you that there are no survivors and something else confirming . . . I forget what he said exactly, something about—”
“Where are you anyway? Is Nate there now? Can I talk to him?”
“I’m at his place where I’ll be for the rest of my stay in New York and he’s here but he’s out cold because, as I was telling you, he took this all pretty hard and he drank a lot at dinner and after I drove him home he had more to drink and wanted me to wait until morning your time to call but I didn’t want to put it off so he fell asleep while I was preparing my statement and—”
“Amanda, listen to me for a minute. You were wise to let me know about Mrs. Floss right away. I’ll call the Glen Abbey police yet tonight and determine what they need from me. Tell Nate he’s kind and generous to want to pick up the tab for the funeral, but that’s my responsibility—mine and my family’s. While you’re at it, tell Nate your investigation cannot go forward if it’s dependant on the cocaine allegedly found in my attic. And that’s final. Okay?”