Simple (5 page)

“A homicide, he said. At her house. She lived down in that area where your son does, in lower Oakland.”

Elinor liked to think the area was safe. Her son had insisted on moving out to be on his own. She'd listened to Mr. Connolly and let Cal buy a house there—the Connollys' firm supported a guy who had a real estate company that snagged some government financing to sell properties there with the idea of getting stable residents in.

Mrs. Connolly looked anything but ready to smile at a camera.

“I can't believe the photographers won't reschedule if you tell them what happened.”

“I don't think it's up to them. It's Cain.”

“Tell me what I can do.”

“Just be here. Keep the finger foods coming. And the wine. And let's be done with it.”

Elinor's cell phone rang. She was embarrassed to take the call while Mrs. C was in the kitchen. She said, “I'll get that later.”

It turned out to be much later when she got to her phone, almost two hours later. She'd got caught up helping the crew with what they needed for different backgrounds. The whole thing was slickly managed, like a real movie being made, and Elinor found it interesting.

It would turn out well. The glamorous couple smiled, Michael put his arm around his wife's waist, and they joked and teased. Still, if you knew them, you could see they were preoccupied.

When the crew began to pack up some of their equipment, Elinor opened her phone. Her son had called her.

*   *   *

CAL THOUGHT THE
detectives' names were something like Colton and Hanrahan, but he wasn't sure. He wanted to ask, but that felt awkward. The skinny one put a McDonald's burger and Coke in front of him. He reached for the burger. He
was
hungry.

“Take your time,” the bigger, chubbier detective with dark hair said. Colton? “When you're done we'll want to hear it again from the beginning.”

He thought he would go crazy if he told it again. He took a bite of the burger.

“Good?”

“Good but not good for me,” he chanted.

They laughed. “Why is that?”

“Everybody knows.
Fast Food Nation.
”

“What's that?”

“It's a movie,” he said miserably.

“I think it was a book, too,” said the skinny guy.

Cal shrugged. He didn't care what it was. Suddenly he got an image of poor Cassie on the floor of her living room and he couldn't swallow. He felt tears coming to his eyes. She was nicer to him than anybody ever had been. When he worked there, she made him coffee or tea. Once she made him a sandwich. But that wasn't it—it was the way she did it, like she truly liked him.

Once before last night he found her crying. “What's the matter?” he asked. “Did something happen?”

“Oh, nothing. Just life. You know. Life in the big city.”

“Someone was bad to you?”

“Oh no, no, no. Troubles with love.”

That time he didn't know what more to say, so he just patted her shoulder. Then yesterday he saw from the porch where he was working that she cried again while she moved around her kitchen, and he didn't know what to do, and he wasn't near her, so he just worked a little longer than he'd intended in order to keep an eye on her. When she made herself something to eat, he thought, Good, she's going to be okay. He listened to the crackle of meat in the skillet. He saw her take out bread and something else that looked like a vegetable. He called, “You need anything?”

“No, I'm just going to have some dinner. Thanks.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Don't ever drink a margarita.”

“Oh.” That made sense of the odd way she moved. He kept an eye out for her. When she seemed more steady, he went home.

He hadn't told about her crying or what she said, only about seeing her eat dinner.

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“I think maybe.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I don't know. Just she was pretty.”

“Anything else? You ever see the guy?”

“Never.”

“Nobody came to the house.”

“I never saw anyone.”

“Kind of funny, huh? A pretty girl like that.”

“Yeah.”

“Did she like you?'

“Yeah.”

“You were her boyfriend?”

“No, no, she liked me. She was nice to me.”

“Did you wish she was your girlfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Why wasn't she?”

He put his burger down in frustration and heaved a breath that hurt the whole way going in. “I'm just a worker. She was going to be a lawyer. Besides I have…” He pointed to his head. “I had an injury.”

“What kind?”

“Concussion and damage to my ear.”

“When did that happen?”

“Long time ago. I was a little boy.”

“Uh. I see. That must be hard.”

“No. It was a long time ago.”

“So now, tell us again about today, about finding the body. You were, what, painting?”

“Making a porch railing.”

“There's one there.”

“But it's bad. I was fixing it.”

“I thought you said you were painting up the street.”

“I was, but I wanted the white paint to dry before I put on the blue paint.”

“Okay, so then you heard something?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

He had told it eighty times by now. “Something beeping. But I heard it … sort of heard it like in the background somewhere and I wasn't sure of where.” This time he added, “Everything beeps these days. Phones. Coffee machines.”

“You're right about that.”

He was pleased to be right about something.

“And then what?”

“I noticed after a while that the back door was open, so I went in. And I found her.”

“Where?”

“In the living room.”

“Then what?

“I screamed. I went outside. I used my phone to call 911.”

“Did you touch the body?'

“Her foot, her arm. They were cold. I put a finger to her neck. No pulse.” He heaved big gasping breaths. It was horrible to remember.

“Did you think it was odd that her car was parked out back?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She didn't always take it to work. Sometimes she took a bus.”

“Any pattern?”

“I don't know any pattern.” He thought. “Except maybe more like she took the car on Thursdays or Fridays.”

“This was a Friday.”

“Not every Friday. Just sometimes. Maybe there was no pattern. I don't know.”

He was so tired. He just wanted to go home and cry in private. When they left him alone, when he needed a friendly voice, he called his mother, but she sounded so alarmed, he was sorry he'd bothered her.

*   *   *

MONICA TOLD ELINOR,
“Go ahead. Go.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can clean up.”

She studied Elinor's face. The woman had a bony sort of good looks. Elinor was a light-skinned African American whom most people thought of as white. She worked for the Connollys because her mother had worked for them. She was about fifty-five and had been with the family for a long time. Mike had grown up with Elinor as a second mother/older sister. She'd actually lived in the house for a time. He'd had the inevitable crush on her.

When it came time to raise her son, whom everybody thought of as white, Elinor had moved out of the house to a small apartment in East Liberty. She still came to work every day, changed her street clothes to a black dress or a black skirt and white blouse. But Monica knew Elinor dressed, when she wasn't at work, in a bright, almost preppy style.

There was something wrong with the son. Cal. Monica had met him a few times. He was sweet tempered but just a little slow on the uptake. An injury, Mike told her, had done this to him.

“Take care,” Monica said to the departing Elinor, aware that the woman was very upset.

Monica took over in the kitchen. It was a comfort, doing something as ordinary as filling the dishwasher.

Her husband came into the kitchen. “What are you doing in here?”

“Putting things away.”

“Where's Elinor?'

“I let her go. Her son is the one who found the … the girl from your office.”

“Oh … I didn't see the news. All they said to us was that a neighbor found her.”

She shook her head. “It was Cal. I think he did it.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Elinor's face.”

He sat down heavily on the kitchen chair. After a while he said, “Leave that. Sit.”

“I'll just be a minute.” An ice cube skittered away from her, fell on the floor. She bent to pick it up and began crying.

“What?”

“For Elinor. For that girl.”

He got up and lifted her up and held her. They embraced for a long time.

“We'd better watch the news,” she said. Then angrily, “We should have canceled all that picture taking. I don't care about the money. I couldn't concentrate.”

“There were deadlines. Contracts with the press and video company. I'm told what to do.”

“I don't like it.”

He left the kitchen abruptly.

She could hear the twins upstairs, thumping, probably fighting, on the floor.

She left the dishes where they were and sat at the kitchen table, which held four half-full wine bottles. If only she were a drinker—

All that smiling and ridiculous hand-holding and looking at zinnias and all the while she couldn't love him. Why was it everyone else could love him? People called him day and night; the boys adored him; Elinor loved him. Monica was supposed to be thrilled with her life, the big catch, the handsome senator-governor-who-knew-where-it-would-all-end, and she didn't want any of it. She didn't love him. They were past tense.

And she was trapped.

They had sons, a life. Expectations.

She poured a glass of white wine and forced it down. Her head began to throb. Her body went numb. She had to figure out how to magically resurrect the feelings she had for Mike at the beginning—feelings stored somewhere in the bank of memories in her muddled head.

She got up and finished rinsing glasses—fast and sloppily. A glass fell into the sink as she grabbed it too hastily. Oddly it didn't break.

She took the rest of the bottle of white wine to her husband, who sat in the TV room, changing channels and talking on the phone. He ended the call.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“My father. The idea is to keep me out of any news reports or commentary. Low profile.”

“But did you know her?”

“Only a little. Passing in the hallways. I had trouble remembering her name.”

“Cassie.”

“I know it now.”

“It's very sad.”

“Yes. Totally … disturbing. I can't believe it.”

“You didn't know her?”

“No. Not really. And … you think Elinor's son…?”

“He must have said something when he called Elinor. She was very upset. This Cassie lived near him?”

He nodded. “Paul Wesson's properties. People who are willing to commit to fixing them up.”

“I remember.”

He kept switching channels. The ten o'clock news came on.

The woman was pretty. Beautiful. The police wouldn't reveal anything. They did that police-speak, saying the investigation was just under way.

Her husband cried.

*   *   *

CHRISTIE HAD DROPPED
the kids off, then Marina and various pieces of luggage, and then gone to Headquarters, where he picked up a few facts by reading the early reports on his computer. There wasn't much there yet, only the bare facts of the case: 911 call from Cal Hathaway, who'd been working on the porch, then the alarm clock beeping, then the discovery of the body.

“What's up?” he asked Janet Littlefield, who was at her desk.

“Coleson and McGranahan are questioning this guy Cal Hathaway right now,” Detective Littlefield told him. “They've been at him most of the day. They told me, ‘He doesn't play with a full deck.'”

“Which room are they in?”

“B.”

Christie fought with himself. He didn't want to intrude. He
did
want to. He passed into the viewing room and watched his men question a young man who was wide-eyed, seemingly polite, very shaken.

Coleson and McGranahan, as if they sensed Christie, announced a break. They came to the viewing room to greet him.

“It's going okay?” he asked.

“We're being thorough.”

“Tell me about the woman.”

“Getting ready to go to law school,” Coleson said. “Pretty.”

“Who told her family?”

McGranahan said, “I sent Greer to tell the parents. She's getting good at that sort of thing.”

“She's here?”

“Yeah, I have her questioning some of the peripheral people down in the conference room.”

“You suspect this Cal?”

“I do,” said Coleson. “We're checking out his house. He had a case on the girl.”

“Hmm.”

Christie found Colleen Greer in the conference room writing up notes between witnesses, so he said, “Tell me. What happened? You saw the parents? You told them?”

“Oh. Yeah. I went in the late afternoon.” She made a face.

“It was awful?”

“Yes. It turned out there were also three younger sisters to tell. It was tough going. They were nice people,” she said. She sat back in her chair, smiled at him. “If Bible thumpers are ever nice, these thumpers were nice. They fell apart, and it was … upsetting. Then they all clasped hands, kind of like a prayer circle. The younger sisters were all gorgeous. Every one.”

“That'll make the media happy.”

“Yeah. You got that right.” She gestured toward him. “Wow, are you suntanned. You got a lot of sun.”