Return to Dust (26 page)

Chapter Thirty-five

The next morning Hank showed up as I got ready for the funeral. I opened my door to find him standing there in a double-breasted suit, something I'd never seen before. “I only dress up for the Vietnamese New Year's,” he said.

“Tet trendy.”

“Can I meet girls at funerals?”

“Yeah, catch them when they pass out from grief.”

“I hadn't thought of that.” A pause. “I spoke to Aunt Marie, Rick.”

“And?”

“I'll call her again this afternoon. She said—maybe.”

I nodded.

“You're making me nervous, Rick.”

“I do that to a lot of people.”

“C'mon. We don't wanna be late.”

We were late. But there were few mourners at the funeral. There had been no calling hours, and a priest officiated at O'Brien Funeral Parlor, housed on a side street off Main in a rambling Victorian house. We arrived in the middle of it. The priest was counting a Rosary.
Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee…
The words fell in the empty room like rain echoing on a quiet street. Uncomfortable with the chanted words, I held back, staying in the anteroom, waiting, looking in. I signed the guest book. Hank didn't.

As we walked in, Hank whispered, “No Mass for a suicide, Rick. Mom told me that.”

“I didn't know that.”

Karen sat by the casket, alone, dressed in a black dress that looked too old for her, layers of lace draped around her neck and down her arms. She wore her hair up, pulled back, severe. For a second, approaching her, I was reminded of Aunt Marta. An old woman sat nearby but periodically sat in the empty seat next to Karen, holding her hand, smothering her neck with words. Karen stared straight ahead, unmoving, never looking at the coffin.

The folding chairs held perhaps ten people. Old people. There was a youngish man I recognized as a worker with Davey at the garden shop. I craned my neck around and in the corner, sitting with his back against the wall, his eyes closed, his legs stretched out in front of him, was Ken Rodman.

Hank slipped into a chair, out of the way. The room looked spartan, and I realized why. There were scarcely any flowers. One small bouquet rested on the coffin, red and white carnations. But none of the huge gaudy sprays I was accustomed to seeing at funerals. I hadn't sent flowers, as I had to Marta's funeral—I don't know why—but others obviously felt the same way.

“Karen, I'm sorry.” I took her hand and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. She was icy cold.

She mumbled thanks but didn't look into my face. I repeated myself until, awkward, I turned away. I passed by the coffin, not even stopping, but I glanced at the calm face. The Davey I knew was gone. None of the anger, none of the fierce confusion that colored his awful days and furious nights. This was a stranger.

Ken was motioning to me, so I sat down next to him. He shook my hand. “Terrible business.”

I nodded.

We lapsed into painful silence. I didn't want to be sitting next to him. Hank glanced back at us, confused. He looked out of place, this lanky, young Vietnamese man sitting in his Sunday best, alone.

The funeral director entered, with obvious on-staff pallbearers lined up behind him, all with mask-like somber faces. Everyone stood to leave, the priest reappeared, and Karen seemed confused, turning left, then right, her hands against her face. She looked like a hurt child. Buddha talked to me:
Tears give us no peace of mind. We lose ourselves and lose our power.

The director announced that there would be no service at the gravesite but friends were invited to Karen's apartment at one o'clock for a celebration of David Corcoran's life. That announcement took me by surprise. I didn't think she'd want that.

“You going?” Ken asked.

“I guess so.”

“I
want
to. Davey and I were very close.”

“I thought you saw each other a few times.”

He gave me a weird look, as though baffled. “You don't understand.”

He was right. I didn't. Outside I introduced him to Hank. He stared at Hank, not remembering that they'd met at the house. “This your brother?”

“Yes,” I said.

Hank chose not to go to the apartment, which made sense, so I dropped him off at my apartment. “Call me later,” he insisted. “I'll try to reach Aunt Marie again.”

I nodded.

Greeting me at the door, Karen was smiling. “I'm glad you came.”

Most of those in the apartment had not been at the funeral parlor. They were neighbors, I guessed, from the looks of them. Or acquaintances of Karen's from the shopping arcade. Some old friends of Marta's perhaps. Fifteen or so people, most of them old women dressed similarly in black dresses and white sweaters, slow-moving penguins of grief, patent leather purses gripped tightly. Marta's Brown Bonnet brigade? Maybe. For Davey—I doubted that. But I was pleased to see them there. Karen had plastic trays of supermarket cold-cuts, Palmer rolls, sheet cakes, a coffee urn, and a table with half a dozen liquor bottles. Ice melted in a soup bowl.

I watched Karen wherever she was in the room. She was buoyant, lively, embracing people, her smile constant. She bounced from person to person, sharing the same laughter with each one, so many seconds long, the same pitch. Curtain call.

Sitting in a chair by the window, I talked to no one. Karen passed by me, smiled down at me, and let her fingers graze my shoulder, not affectionately, but a simple acknowledgment of my presence. She turned her face away, widened her eyes as she greeted someone else. At that moment she looked like Marta. The few times I'd spent with Marta she'd been affectionate in that impersonal way, but I recalled the way she turned her head, twisted her neck, a thin show of teeth as her eyes brightened.

Dressed in matronly black, hair pulled into that Emily Dickinson bun, Karen moved like her dead aunt. It stunned me. A conversation came back to me—Karen talking about her childhood, a time when Marta wanted her to be some replica of herself—a severe teenage matron. Here was Marta again, resurrected, down to the morning-glory blue eyes with the gray cast in them. I didn't know why I was surprised. She was, after all, her niece. But the uncanny resemblance—the awful trappings borrowed from an old woman—unnerved me.

Pouring myself a cup of coffee, I realized something else I'd not spotted—so much of Marta now inhabited the apartment. Since I was last here, Karen had done what she told me she would never do. She'd carted so many of Marta's belongings to the apartment. All the things she despised were here. A floor lamp with a stained yellow fringe shade, a gaudy ceramic urn with ivy growing in it, a small plastic ottoman that was dyed a fifties turf green. On and on. Odds and ends, her aunt's garage sale world. All the stuff she should have thrown out, flea market inventory. It alarmed me, this behavior. Here was a lost Karen. Had she added Marta's sofa and chairs, the room would have been—Marta's. Now I wondered whether those stale, faded pieces would arrive soon. This was not the Karen I'd talked to at the beginning of my investigation. The room was a museum now. This was homage to a dead woman.

I sat down near a bookshelf that now held Marta's souvenirs, especially her Russian tourist relics, all crammed together. Karen had nailed Marta's fake Russian Orthodox icon of Jesus to the wall. Nearby was a fan labeled “Atlantic City,” and a cup saying “What Happens in Vegas.” Stacks of photographs in frames were piled on top of each other, yet to be displayed. This was Marta's scrapbook of her tourist junkets with Hattie. Marta's junk wall, and it had been moved here.

Suddenly now, turning around and surveying the room, I felt closed in. Karen was across the room, bending over an old woman, and I felt my skin get clammy. Karen was disappearing from this room, and Marta was coming back. Was I imagining it? I picked up a piece of embroidery from the shelf, some cutesy cat design, and I smelled it—Marta's smell, I imagined. Certainly not Karen's. The tablecloth on which the makeshift buffet was spread looked yellowed and old. It probably came from a closet in Marta's house. There was a patina of old sensibility here, of stale talcum power and the K-Mart perfume of blue-haired ladies. I swear to God—it gave me the willies.

Karen had placed Marta's small collection of books between plaster-of-Paris Virgin Mary bookends. The leather-bound books, the odd nineteenth-century volumes, cheap reprints mostly, a battered
Ivanhoe
, all looking out of place here. I ran my fingers over the spines. The delicious feel of old books, the dusty aroma of unturned, flaking pages.

And then, in that echoey room, I found myself thinking of Vietnam. I am a young boy, sitting in the barracks-like quarters, waiting to be taken to the airport—and America. A
cyclo
driver speeds by, and I wonder why my friend Vu had to disappear. I think of his beaten father—the frozen man. Tranh Xan Tan. I am wearing frayed dress pants, a couple of sizes too big, a blue-denim shirt with the smell of too many washings in lye soap, and a small bag, like a gym bag, but made of cardboard treated to look like old leather. Sitting there, quiet, nervous now, afraid of America, I open the case. I want to be sure my
Sayings of Buddha
book is there, not because of what it says, but because I need something of my mother. I can see Sister Le Han Linh coming through the doorway, coming to gather me. I tuck the slim volume in my shirt pocket, and snap the bag shut. I wait. I am calm.

Now, sitting in Karen's crowded room, I felt the same calm the moment my mother's book rested against my bony chest. Peace—ease. Everything in harmony. Now Buddha talked to me:

Any object is an object for any subject.

Any subject is a subject for any object.

Buddha says that the relationship of all parts

Relies in the end on the one part that is missing.

Sitting there, in that magnified calm, I understood those words as though they'd been written on the spot for me. I thought of Grandma's words. “There are no holes in eternity. What's missing is already filled in.”

…
the one part that is missing
…

I sat up, jolted by the words. Buddha. Buddha. The room suddenly got narrow, then large again. Space: empty: void.

I knew the meaning of the missing part. I
felt
it in my bones. Quietly, watching Karen out of the corner of my eye, I found my coat in the hall closet. I walked back into the living room. There was no one I wanted to say good-bye to, but I had another purpose for going back inside that room. No one was looking—I hid an object in the folds of my coat. A common thief. In a rush I was out the door, standing on the landing, my heart pounding. I could be wrong, but I didn't think I was. Pieces of a puzzle. I believed I had the one part that was missing. Everything is already complete because there can be no holes in eternity. I closed my eyes. I had the answer. Or at least I thought I did.

I felt it in my bones.

I'd been asking the right questions, but not all of them. In reconstructing Marta's last day, I had left out one crucial dimension. How did other people connect with others—and not just Marta—on that last day?

Even the dead in their graves.

I reached Richard Wilcox at the hospital.

He didn't seem surprised to hear from me.

This time I asked him the question I should have asked before. Whom did
he
talk to that last day of Marta's life? After all, she'd phoned to tell him she was walking over. All along, I assumed he'd stayed home, waiting for her visit. Had he left his apartment? Had he talked to anyone? Had he told anyone about her intended visit?

Silence from him.

He held the answer now, and somehow knew it. My last conversation with him had led him to the same conclusion I was grappling with now. That was why he'd changed—called himself a murderer. He'd come to his own conclusion, realizing he held a pivotal part of the puzzle. Yes, he had talked to someone that last day. He had, in fact, pointed the murderer toward Marta and that final bridge.

Suddenly I was seeing it all from his eyes.

I asked him again, “Who did you talk to?”

Silence—he wanted to die with the guilt he felt.

I mentioned a name, and it was as though he were waiting for it. A deep intake of breath, and I had my answer. As he recalled Marta's last slurred drunken words with him on the phone, he'd put the two pieces together. He'd made sense of her drunken words—the
reason
for her visit to see him. The murderer. She had named her own murderer.

Silence.

“Good-bye,” I told him.

He was still on the line when I turned off my phone.

I needed a space to think. At McDonald's, I drank a cup of coffee. The place was crawling with school kids, teenagers, flirting and laughing and pushing. They sat across from me as I sipped my coffee. I took out my laptop and made some new connections, plugging in my new theory that at first seemed preposterous. A far-fetched hypothesis. Everything pointed in one direction now—Richard Wilcox, Charlie Safako, Hattie, even Davey himself. They all held parts of it. Not the
why
and not the
when
or
what
or
how
. But I had the
who
…
relies in the end on the one part that is missing.…

The problem was how to get to the rest of the answers.

Holes in eternity.

Finally, checking my watch, deliberate and calm, I left McDonald's, the boys and girls still cavorting and falling on each other. Time to ring a familiar doorbell.

Chapter Thirty-six

Peter answered on the fourth knock, and was surprised to see me. He looked tired, probably a little ragged from last night's failed cocktail party. Dressed in paint-stained sweats and a misshapen AMHERST COLLEGE sweater, he squinted and scratched his stomach, a dumb look on his unshaven face.

“Rick. A surprise.”

“Can I come in, Peter?”

“Yeah, sure.” He stepped back. I walked by him, and he looked over my shoulder. “We weren't expecting anybody. Selena's somewhere in the house but”—he laughed—“she won't want you to see her without her makeup.”

“I've seen her without her makeup.”

“What can I do you for?”

“I just came from Davey's funeral.”

He bit his lip. “Christ, that was bad. I feel for Karen. Two in one family…” He stopped, shrugged. He shut the door behind me. “It's cold outside.”

“I'm sorry to drop in like this, but I need some information from you. Only you can help me.”

Peter's pale face turned parchment white with a slight tinge of pink on the cheeks, the face of an unhealthy baby.

“Glad to help but…”

We were standing there in the large foyer, three feet apart. “Could we sit down?”

“Sorry. Yes. Please. I'm not used to casual visits.” He smiled. “Let me take your coat. Let's sit in the library. I was just having some coffee.”

I slipped off my coat but kept it with me. He led me through the living room and into the library. They hadn't cleaned up since last night, and foggy glasses, stained plates, and crumpled napkins lay here and there, piled high, with that forsaken look a room has the morning after a party. In the old days ashtrays with cigarette butts would be everywhere, the rancid smell of day-old tobacco permeating the room. Not so any more because smokers were banished into the backyard or patio, purgatory for sinners. Peter motioned me to a settee, and he sat across from me in a wing chair. A cup of black coffee rested by his elbow.

“Sorry you left so soon last night, Rick.” His fingers drummed a textbook on corporate law he'd been reading.

“Things to do.”

He took a sip of coffee and then held onto the cup, cradling it in his two hands, as though warming them. “You sure you don't want coffee?”

“Yeah, Peter.”

“Well…”

“You made a lot of changes here.” I pointed around the room.

“Yes, but more to do. Lord, we never realized how costly this drafty house could be. And now with winter, the heating bills, the electricity, the…”

I stood up and walked to the wall of shelves. I pointed the Elizabethan recorder at him. “I was admiring this last night. It's a beautiful piece.”

“Yes, I think I told you that Selena got it in London.”

“Yes, and this?”

I pointed at random to a terra cotta vase, clumsily thrown, with some kind of South American Indian design painted sloppily on its finish. “That's from her shop.”

I was making him jittery. When he sipped from the cup, I saw a finger twitch.

“I just came from Karen's apartment.” I reached into one of the deep pockets of the overcoat and extracted a volume.

“What's that?”

I placed the old book on a table in front of him. My fingers tapped the book. “A wonderful book, really. And a rare one. One of a thousand copies of James Fenimore Cooper's novels, from the Leather-Stocking Edition of 1895. Putnam's out of New York. Thirty-two volumes bound in half-dark green morocco, gilt spine, raised boards…” I stopped. “As I say, rare.
The Last of the Mohicans
.”

“Lovely. So what?”

“Joshua loved Cooper.”

“I know. His collection is at…”

“They are missing this one. Did they count and reach thirty-two?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Joshua naively thought he'd instruct Marta Kowalski in the classics. In fact, he lent her books that she never read. But not, to be sure, his treasures, his one case of special treasures. When I was here, he was thrilled to show me his collection, but would not allow me to touch one. I remember the bound nineteenth-century sets, so perfect, elegant.”

Peter twitched, reached for his coffee. “Everyone has old sets of the classics.”

I tapped the book again. “I hazard a guess that Marta, for whatever reason, borrowed one of the volumes, probably planning to read it—and surprise Joshua. He probably never noticed one of the series missing from the glass case. Books she dusted so lovingly. But here it is. A lovely book. Karen told me he wanted her to read
The Last of the Mohicans
and lent her a cheap copy. Maybe he told her to take one from the shelf. But such a beautiful copy must have tempted her.”

“So what?” His words sharper now.

“Joshua would not knowingly lend her this book.”

“Well, obviously he did.”

“But when he moved and packed his books, a sharp-eyed Joshua would notice it missing, no?”

“How do I know how his mind worked?” A pause as he swallowed his words. “Joshua left some of his books behind.”

I smiled. “Buddha tells me that everything depends on the one part that is missing.”

He babbled, “I mean, yeah, he left some sets behind.” Finally, looking into my face, “What do you want?”

“Joshua wanted his rare books with him.”

“So what are you saying?”

“When I first went to Marta's house with Karen, this book was resting on the kitchen table. It never registered with me that she had placed it there for a reason. She'd been thinking about it, I suspect. It was Joshua Jennings' book, and she still had it. She knew how crazy he was about books. She'd had a quarrel but wanted reconciliation. There's no way of knowing, but maybe he did spot the missing volume. Yes, he exiled her—a fight about Davey, a spat with Willie Do. But we'll never know—maybe they fought over
this
book.”

“Ridiculous, Rick. He had so many.”

“Maybe. But I talked to Richard Wilcox a short time ago. I asked him if he spoke to anyone about Marta coming to visit him that last day. A question I should have asked earlier. It was you, Peter. Richard met you in town. Excited, he blabbed the news to you about her visit, how she had something to tell him. She was bothered by something. All along it meant nothing to him because he believed her death was a suicide. But when I was with him the other day, he made a connection. I asked him about Joshua, if she'd mentioned him in that last conversation. Something dawned on him while we were talking. He was telling me about Marta's drunken phone call and her suicide plan—‘Can you bury me?' Sounds like suicide, no? That's how he heard it all along. It seemed to fit.”

Peter closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, they were wet.

“I realized an hour ago what Richard understood at that moment he was talking to me—and why he called himself a murderer. She was talking about you, Peter. She was bothered by something that happened to her in this house. She must have been mumbling your name, Peter. Not ‘Can you bury me?' but probably a slurred, garbled ‘Canterbury.' Easy to confuse, no? An old man hearing sloppily spoken words. She was telling him your last name. She knew something was wrong in this house.”

Peter picked up his coffee cup but put it down slowly. It rattled in the saucer.

“The other day he remembered talking to you the afternoon of her visit. So now he's a dying man who believes he set up a murder.”

I waited.

“My name? Come on. This is nuts.”

“Something was wrong, Marta knew, and it had to do with you. This house. Joshua. She'd cleaned here—you told me that yourself. She acted strange…”

“Rick.”

“Confused, she couldn't put it all together. So she had to tell someone. She suspected you of something, Peter. When she was in this house, something happened to her.”

“Nonsense.”

“Why you, Peter? Why did she say your last name?”

A hollow chuckle. “You said she was drunk.”

“Everything leads back to Joshua Jennings, to the house he loved. Charlie Safako told me that Joshua told him he'd changed his mind—that he wouldn't sell the place after all. He was definite about it—or, at least, he convinced Charlie. And even Davey, who gave me the answer to Marta's fight with Joshua, told me Joshua said he missed Marta, considered reconciliation. He was too lonely by himself. He had no one
but
Marta left. You know how Joshua was—afraid to leave this house. A hermit those last days. He was ready to resume his old life—visits from Marta especially. Die quietly in the town he loved.”

“It was our house, Rick.”

“Was it? The yardman, Willie Do, told me something interesting about those last days, not only Joshua banning Marta but a phone call from Joshua
after
the house sold. Joshua's words—‘My gardens miss your touch. Come back to work.” Interesting, no? ‘Come back to work.' Joshua wanted his life to go back to the way things were. Not a goodwill gesture to the new owners.”

“Of course, it was. But I did the lawn.”

“You certainly did.” I breathed in. “But Joshua, quite simply, was going nowhere. Leaving Farmington was just one more game he played. And that led me back again to this house—his house. Why would he disappear so completely? I was bothered by the suddenness of his leaving, and, as well, his out-of-state death. The mysterious Mary Powell, the niece from nowhere. Marta came back here to clean and she spotted something. What, Peter?”

Peter wasn't moving now. I was waiting for him to say something. “And another thing. You know, when I met Charlie Safako, he was crowing about Selena coming on to him, which got me thinking. Why? He's a repulsive scumbag. Even Selena wouldn't sink that low—her flirtations are with young men. She spent an evening with him after Marta died. Why? To see what he knew. She may have heard him talking of Joshua changing his mind. Charlie yammered to everyone. She had to find out what he knew. She discovered that was all he did know, so she fled his groping hands. But it gave him a juicy story to spread.”

I stopped. Everything had led to Selena and Peter Canterbury and the lovely house, all triggered by my holding that volume of Cooper. Marta, confused by something she saw when she returned to dust the Canterbury home that last time, went home and sat in her kitchen and held Joshua's book. The pristine book, orphaned from its other volumes, suggested wrongdoing. Why had Joshua fled Farmington without good-bye? What did she see in the Canterbury house that fueled her final depression?

But this was all I
did
know.

“It all came back to you and this house.” A deliberate pause. “Everything.”

Silence.

Slowly, at last, Peter spoke, his eyes flickering. “Cooper. I never counted the volumes.”

I didn't answer.

“She told me she would leave me.” His voice a whisper. “She said it would be all right. You know, Rick, we're not that kind of people. We're not.”

“Why?”

“It just—happened. An accident really.” He waved his hand around the room. “We wanted this.”

“But Peter…”

“I know, I know. But it was pure chance. Almost an accident. Believe me. It wasn't murder or anything. Never murder.”

“Tell me.”

Peter shook his head back and forth. “I'm glad it's over. You know, it's made us different people.”

“Tell me, Peter. Marta discovered something about you and this house.”

Peter nodded. “It was a mistake asking her back here.”

“Marta. To clean?”

He nodded. “We asked her to clean the place. I told you that. My parents were coming to visit, my brother, and the place was a mess. A shambles from moving. At first she said no, but then she agreed. She was the only housekeeper we knew. She cleaned our friends' homes. She'd cleaned this home for years. She didn't want to come back here. Memories of Joshua and all. We
begged
her. Selena was swamped at her store. Me with classes. God, how stupid we were. How cocky. It was a horrible afternoon. She moped around, depressed, hanging over his goddamn piano. I swear—she'd been drinking. All she blabbed about was Joshua. He moved away so fast. She said she sent a letter to Amherst but it wasn't answered. He got it, she said, but refused to answer. She had no energy to clean, pushing things around. She was only doing downstairs, the front rooms, and a guest room off the mud room, but she went upstairs for some reason, opened a walk-in closet upstairs that I thought I'd locked. She wasn't supposed to go upstairs. We
told
her not to. I'd locked
everything
. We'd filled it with books.”

“Joshua's rare books.”

He nodded. “She called to me. I rushed up the stairs and told her he'd left them behind. Everyone knew he'd take his valuable books with him—he told everyone that. The rest to the school. Not the Coopers. Some bullshit like that. She opens that door, it's jammed with books. Every inch. She kept shaking her head. ‘But he loved these books. I dusted them.' I knew there was trouble. It
looked
odd. The way they were jam-packed there—she knew they were hidden.”

I pictured Marta at that chilling moment. It must have been frightening, spotting that long-cherished collection of books in that tight closet. All those chiseled, fine bindings, all the smooth hand-tooled leather. Rare volumes encased in plastic sleeves. One of them still at her home.

“She got disoriented,” Peter said. “As I tried to shut the door, she touched the edition of Cooper's
Water Witch
, his rarest possession. Stupidly, with her cloth, she dusted it.” Peter shook his head. “Dusting a book in a damn closet. ‘Cooper,' she said. ‘He loved Cooper.'”

“So she suspected something?”

“Maybe. I don't know. She was just confused. She was so mad at him, so hurt, that all her anger went to him. ‘Bastard,' she called him. I mean, she started whimpering like some hurt animal, right there in the upstairs hallway. I could have kicked myself. All of the upstairs rooms were locked. Everything except that fucking closet. But she tried another locked door, and then stared at me. So she left after doing a sloppy job. We told her it was all right, but she agreed to return to clean up after the family left. When I called her later to tell her we didn't need her, she spoke before I did—she refused to come, too quiet on the phone. I mean, you could hear it in her voice. I asked her what was the matter, and she said she didn't want to talk. But her voice was real funny.”