River Road (18 page)

She squeezed my arm, startling me completely awake. Her eyes were wide. “Ross would have offered to drive her home. She might have gotten out of the car—he would have tried to follow her—it could have been an accident. The roads were slippery, the visibility poor. . . .”

Come back!
I heard the voice calling, only now it was Ross's voice. I closed my eyes and felt tears sliding down my face.

“She was afraid,” I said. “She knew something bad was going to happen to her. The painting she did in the boathouse—”

“She did a painting in the boathouse?”

“A self-portrait—her face shadowed. Beneath it she wrote ‘The dark is rising.' ”

“How melodramatic,” Cressida said, her voice suddenly cool and
disinterested. “No wonder it upset you. You need to rest. I bet you haven't had a good night's sleep in days.”

Dimly I was aware of her putting another blanket on me and then I heard and saw her turning off a lamp, her steps retreating from the living room.

The last thing I saw before falling asleep was Leia's face, rising out of the dark water, and then I was falling into that icy cold river. . . .

When I awoke the room was dark. Cressida was sitting on the edge of the couch. She leaned over me, her braids clicking together like icicles, and switched on a lamp. The light blinded me. When I opened my eyes again Cressida handed me a mug of coffee.

“Are you feeling better? You were really out.”

“I think so.” I sat up and inhaled the coffee to clear the fog in my brain. “How long was I asleep?”

“A couple of hours. I didn't want to wake you, but there's someone here to see you.”

“To see me? But how . . .” I was going to ask who knew I was here when I looked up and saw a broad figure silhouetted against the dark window and recognized Sergeant McAffrey. My first thought was that the lab had come back with evidence linking my car to Leia and he'd come to arrest me. “How did you know I was here?”

“Dr. Janowicz called me. She told me about what you found in the boathouse.”

Cressida squeezed my hand. “I thought the police should know. I knew you'd want to protect Ross, even if it meant not clearing yourself.”

“Protect Ross, what—”

“If you don't mind, Dr. Janowicz, I'd like to handle this.” He stood over Cressida until she got up and retreated, murmuring that she'd be in the kitchen if I needed her. Then he took her place on the couch. I could feel the cold coming off him, the way I'd felt the cold rising up from the river in the boathouse. “Can you tell me why you went to the boathouse today?” he asked me.

“I was down by Leia's shrine and I saw Troy Van Donk.” I told him what I'd overheard and how I'd followed Troy and the other man, whom McAffrey made me describe in detail. He asked me to repeat what I heard them say. Then he asked why I followed them without calling him. I told him I hadn't had a phone and I didn't want to lose them. That I thought I might find out something about what happened to Leia.

“And did you?”

“Only that she was troubled by something on the day she died. Did you see the self-portrait she painted?”

He nodded. “Did you see anything else? Or . . . leave anything there?”

“No, what would I leave—”

“Did you see this?”

He held up a plastic bag with something metal in it—something silver that winked in the lamplight. I had to focus on it to make out what it was. A silver disk with a shield etched on it, lettering inside the shield . . . “A cuff link,” I said, “with the Harvard insignia. Ross has a pair just—”

I looked closer. Snagged on the swivel bar were a few dark hairs. “Where did you find that?” I asked, although I already knew.

“You've seen Dr. Ballantine wearing a cuff link like this one?”

“Yes, but I'm sure he's not the only one with a pair of Harvard cuff links—”

“Thank you, Ms. Lewis. That's very helpful. I'll be in touch.” He got to his feet. I swung my legs off the couch and started to get up but the sudden movement made me feel nauseated.

“Wait,” I said, “it can't be Ross. He wouldn't hurt Leia. He—” I was about to say that he loved Leia, but that suddenly didn't seem like a good idea. “Anyone could have taken his car—”

“Let us worry about who was driving Dr. Ballantine's car. I can't discuss the case any further.” He was turning away, but then his face
softened. He seemed to be considering something. He leaned down, his hands braced on his knees, the way someone would lean down to talk to a child. “I can tell you that the lab has found deer hair on your car, Ms. Lewis. It looks like you hit a deer after all.”

Then he was gone, leaving quickly as if he wanted to put distance between himself and the admission he'd just made. As if he was ashamed of that one act of kindness. He was letting me know I was off the hook—or at least very nearly so. I should have felt relieved. But instead I felt sick to my stomach, just as if I'd blindly come around a curve and struck some poor innocent animal.

“I
t looks like you're no longer the police's main suspect.”

Cressida's voice startled me. I hadn't heard her come back into the room. She must have been listening from the kitchen.

“You think he's going to arrest Ross?”

“You said they had traces of Leia's clothing on his car and now they have proof he was in the boathouse with Leia. I don't think it's looking very good for Ross.”

I rounded on Cressida. “Did you tell McAffrey that you thought Ross was having an affair with Leia?”

“I had to, Nan.” Her voice had turned cold. “Leia came to me in need. If I had taken her more seriously she might be alive. I'll never forgive myself for that. I suppose it must be how you feel about Emmy.”

I was so blindsided by the comment that I felt dizzy all over again. “But Leia didn't
tell
you she was having an affair . . . and even if they were it doesn't mean Ross ran her over.”

“As your policeman friend said, that's for the police to worry about. I think it's time you started worrying about yourself, Nan, and started taking better care of yourself . . . drinking less, for instance.”

“I'm not—” I began to say “I'm not an alcoholic” but then I realized how many times I'd had to say those words in the last few days.
The
problem with repetition
, I told my students,
is that words lose meaning with overuse.
“I'm not an alcoholic” was beginning to sound less like a protest and more like an admission.

Cressida gave me a pitying look. “I'm sorry, Nan, I blame myself for not saying something earlier. I've noticed when we go out for dinner and we split a bottle you usually finish it and when you come in to your office in the morning . . . well, you sometimes look hungover. Then at the faculty party—”

“You were the one topping off my wineglass, for God's sake!” I exploded.

Cressida stared at me. “Because you were holding out your glass for more,” she said with an icy calm that made me feel chilled. “But I see now that I was enabling you. Now, if you want to stay here tonight we could talk, look up support groups, go to a meeting tomorrow—”

“No, thank you,” I said abruptly. “I have to get home to”—I searched my head for a reason. For a terrible moment I had an image of Ross's bottle of Glenlivet in my kitchen cabinet—“to feed my cat.”

“If you're sure,” she said frostily. “Your clothes are dry.” She pointed to a neat pile on a teak bench by the door. “Your boots are still damp but I've got them on a drying rack. You can borrow a pair of mine. I can call a cab if you like. I'd take you myself but I'd have to dig out the car—”

“I can walk,” I told her, taking the snow boots she handed to me. They looked too big for me but were lined with something that felt so soft and delicious I didn't mind. “No need to worry I've had too much to drink.”

“Oh, Nan.” She heaved an exasperated sigh. “I'm sorry if I offended you but someone has to say something.”

“Yeah, and you're usually the one to say it.” I immediately regretted the words but I was still too angry to apologize. I went into the bathroom to change; it was surprisingly luxurious, with pink tiling and a massive tub lined with expensive bath gels. Cressida took good care of herself. When I came out Cressida was standing in the living room holding my coat. I
noticed that she'd already folded the sheepskin throw and straightened the couch cushions, smoothing away all traces of my messy presence.

“I'm sorry I got angry,” I said, trying to mean it. “I've just had a lot to take in—the idea that Ross was sleeping with Leia, that he could have been the one to run her over . . .”

“Of course,” Cressida said with a conciliatory smile. “It was the wrong time to bring up the drinking. You know that tact isn't my strong suit. But I only did it because I'm worried about you, Nan. You're so trusting . . . so vulnerable.” She helped me on with my coat, laid her hands on my shoulders, and looked into my eyes. “You need to be more careful.”

I told her I would be and turned to go, thinking it was just what Ross had said to me last night.

*  *  *

It was only a ten-minute walk down Orchard Drive to my house. Really, it was strange we didn't visit each other more. Of course that might be because, as she said, tact wasn't her strong suit. An uncompromising hard-ass, John Abbot had called her. And she'd made Joan Denning cry once by telling her that adjuncts weren't allowed to use the office copy machine. And after her experience with anorexia she had a thing about support groups. Of course she'd see a few too many glasses of wine as a substance abuse problem. But she was right. I did need to cut down. I'd already realized that myself. She was just wrong about going to meetings. She was trying to make me into a cause, like her prison students. Poor Cressida, for all her independence she must be pretty lonely. I should visit her more often, offer to carpool to work—

For the first time Sergeant McAffrey's words sank in. I
would
be getting my car back. The lab had found traces of deer fur on my bumper. They had another suspect. I was, in Cressida's words, not the police's main suspect. I should have felt relieved.

Only I didn't.

The thought that Ross had been carrying on an affair with Leia was
bad enough. That they'd had a falling-out and he'd run her over and left her to die on the road made me feel ill. It might have been years ago, but Ross had been my lover—I'd almost slept with him last night!—

Last night
. I remembered how he'd asked me if I had run over Leia. Had he been trying to get me to admit to hitting Leia in my confusion so he wouldn't be accused?

By the time I got back to my house I felt like I was coming down with a cold. My feet felt leaden and clumsy in Cressida's luxurious but too big boots. My vision was blurry. As I clumped up my porch steps I tripped on something and went down hard on my knees. The sudden pain brought tears to my eyes as if I were a child who had skinned her knee on the playground.
Get a grip, Nan!
I told myself—only it was my mother's voice in my head.
Quit feeling sorry for yourself and get up.
I planted my hands on the icy steps—and touched something furry. I screamed, thinking some poor animal had crawled to my doorstep to die—
the deer I'd hit maybe
—but then as I drew back my hand it brushed something metal. In the faint light from the fanlight I made out the buckle of a collar. I gingerly stroked the cold, bony animal and recognized her worn, velvety coat and knobby spine. It was Oolong, frozen to death on my front porch.

*  *  *

I brought her inside, wrapped her in the old afghan from the couch that she had liked sleeping on, and then sat with her in my lap by the woodstove, as if I could bring her back to life by warming her up. There were little balls of ice in her matted fur that melted and soaked through the afghan into my lap.
Had I left her outside?

The thought that I had caused the death of my poor old cat was almost too much to bear. I stroked her fur and wailed, letting loose a keen that didn't sound like it was coming from me. It didn't even sound human. It sounded like the forlorn train whistle I couldn't bear to listen to at night, like the cries of revenants wailing for drowned children, like the deranged lament of old drunks—

Christ!
Had I forgotten to bring Oolong inside because I was hungover? But I'd only had a glass of Glenlivet the night before. Right?

I got up, still cradling Oolong, and opened the kitchen cabinet. The bottle of Glenlivet was there but while I remembered it as three-quarters full it was now half empty. Had I gotten up and drunk more last night? I remembered having that strange dream about Emmy. Could I have been sleepwalking during it? It was the dream that had sent me out the next morning searching the woods for a lost memory. What kind of clear thinking was that? I thought of poor Oolong crying at the door to get in as I followed Troy down to the boathouse—

Troy.

He'd known where I lived. His friend had suggested they pay me a visit.

Had he? It would be easy to break into my house. The back door had a lock so flimsy it could be opened by a credit card. Evan had meant to change it, but we lived in the country. What danger could there be? Did Troy break in—looking for money or a way to incriminate me—and let Oolong out—

Or did he deliberately kill Oolong?

I stroked her fur away from her neck to see if there were any signs of strangulation—and saw something snagged on her rabies tag. A purple thread. Troy had been wearing a purple Acheron sweatshirt earlier.

I realized that I should tell Sergeant McAffrey. I got up and carried Oolong into the mudroom and laid her gently in a wicker laundry basket. Then I found my phone to call McAffrey and noticed that there were six voice mails. The first one was from Anat. I guiltily remembered that I'd meant to call her. The second one was from Dottie, the other four were all from Ross. I scrolled to the last message and played it.