Mummers' Curse Read online

  Eight

  IT WAS GOOD TO BE HOME WHERE THE COMPLICATIONS OF MY RELATIONSHIP with Mackenzie, endless though they often seemed, felt simple and clean-edged in comparison to the love-murk I’d waded through. Nobody out there was fully or adequately attached; nobody appeared to be cleaving completely unto, or forsaking all others. If I probed more, I’d probably find out that Barbs Devaney had a guy on the side and that Dolores also had a spare somewhere.

  The phone rang at dusk. “Hi,” Mackenzie greeted me. “Gonna take a food break soon, me and Billy.”

  “As in Obenhauser?”

  “Uh-huh. Yes. He says ‘hi,’ too.”

  Very cordial for a man I didn’t know, but I got the message.

  “He’s been back awhile, too, and he’s ready for a break.”

  Translation: Billy had been to see Vincent.

  “Been a long day.”

  That was the unsimple truth, not code for anything. Given that Mackenzie’s dawn had been one a.m., he’d been doing whatever he does for seventeen hours now.

  “How does pizza sound?” he asked. “Sausage and mushrooms. And how did your day go?”

  “Middling. You want a rundown before Billy’s with you?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Okay, understanding that some of what I was told might be delusional, here goes: Vincent used to be—might still be—in love with Dolores Grassi, who was engaged to the dead man. Vincent’s wife, Barbs, is a jealous woman. Dolores Grassi’s engagement to Jimmy Pat might actually have been cancelled a week ago, even though she’s not admitting it. Don’t try Pepper Pot soup. Some person named Molly, a gossip, thinks Emily Semow, the other woman in the Dolores-Jimmy Pat triangle, is pregnant, and that’s why he was about to switch brides, but Emily says they only just met up again two weeks ago and weren’t going to get married until June. She also has a murder she wants to sell me. I mean, she doesn’t want to sell me a murder, she wants me to pay her for what she knows about one so I could write about it. On the other hand, she and Dolores and Dolores’s brothers are paranoid about what I might write about them.”

  “What’s all this about writing?”

  “Give me a break. They heard I was a journalist.”

  Mackenzie, my conscience, did not say “so did I,” for which I was grateful. “So,” he said instead, “that’s how you define a middlin’ day?”

  I wasn’t sure if that was praise for all I’d found out or a polite expression of tedium, or a kind of macho joshing to let Billy O. know that Mackenzie and I never had talks of any substance. Whatever.

  *

  The telephone rang again after the constables and pizzas had arrived. We’d been doing silent munching, since Mackenzie wasn’t about to talk about the case, either his findings or lack thereof or mine, with the corpulent, good-natured, shrewd-looking Billy there.

  The official line, or an overview of it, hadn’t taken long—my whereabouts during the parade, my not having seen Vincent during that time, etcetera. I’d promised to go to headquarters and make a formal statement along those lines, and then we’d run out of chitchat and concentrated on pizza. It was an exceedingly dull dinner party, or I wouldn’t have answered the phone.

  I shouldn’t have, and I shouldn’t have been surprised that my caller was once again Renata Field. “We had an agreement, Renata.” I kept my voice calm, although I felt anything but. The girl was invading my home and my life, and I felt her as a physical presence. Nonetheless, I didn’t want Billy noticing my murderous streak. “Badgering doesn’t help anything.”

  No, she insisted. This wasn’t badgering. This was one last attempt to break through my thick-headed lack of comprehension about how a desperate person, such as she, had to bend the rules.

  Because of her, I was now the desperate person and she was still a lazy, immature wretch. I had so few rules—she had no right to bend a single one of them.

  But there was a new twist to her desperation. Unless I gave her a decent grade, she said in a quavering voice, her parents were pulling her out of Philly Prep. She thought maybe she’d kill herself or at least just die if that happened.

  I wondered what my principal would do if I cost him a tuition. In a conflict between ethics and money, I didn’t have to guess which side Havermeyer would favor.

  “I made a mistake,” Renata said in a vibrato. “I admit that, even though you never let me explain why. You never gave me a fair chance to defend myself.”

  “That exam was a chance, and you know it. Besides, you admitted cheating.” On a take-home exam. She could have read the book instead. Or, at least, if she felt driven to cheat, she shouldn’t have produced a word-for-word duplication of another student’s essay. For stupidity alone she deserved to fail.

  The other girl’s record was exemplary. She’d be able to drop her lowest grade. Everybody could. She’d be fine. Renata, whose only earned grade was an F, wouldn’t.

  “There were reasons,” Renata said. “I had problems.” Renata considered life an emotional difficulty, a personal affront visited upon poor, unlucky her and her alone.

  “I was desperate.” She must have realized she had already used that line of defense in this conversation. “I was…” She paused, trying to find a synonym for desperation, but because she’d never paid attention during lessons in vocabulary building, she lapsed into silence.

  It felt fair, then, to take advantage of the opening. “Don’t do anything drastic or desperate tonight,” I said, “and we’ll deal with this tomorrow. As agreed.”

  “My life is on the line. My college career!”

  I took a deep breath and continued. “After school. Tomorrow. Right now and until then, I’m on vacation, and I’m requesting that you finally respect that.” I hung up while she continued to sputter, even though I knew she’d call back to protest my hanging up on her.

  “I wish I could arrest lawbreaking students,” I said between bites of pizza. “Lock them up the way you do. You’re so lucky.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Billy said. “It’s keen fun. A million laughs.”

  Mackenzie nodded. “We’ll give ours grades, instead. Okay, mister, this murder really pulls your average down. Clean up your act or you’re going to flunk the year.”

  The phone rang again. “I’ve had it!” I said. “If there were something lower than an F, I’d make sure she got it.” I grabbed the phone so fiercely, I nearly knocked over a small gargoyle sculpture that sat nearby. “Renata, I told you—”

  “Mandy?” My sister’s suburban voice. “Sounds like I’ve caught you at a bad time.”

  “No—sorry—that’s—there’s a student who’s been—” I took a deep breath. “What’s up?”

  “I hope this isn’t too much of an intrusion,” she said breathlessly, “but we’re going to an event downtown—a benefit for Quentin’s favorite charity and she’s speaking and then doing her show live, in front of us, and there are special presentations for the children, so we’re all going, even the baby. If you have a few minutes, we’d love to stop by and see you first.”

  “See me?” See the warehouse in which her poor sister huddled. That was okay. The place was relatively tidy. I hadn’t wanted Billy Obenhauser to think I was a slattern. Beth, The Perfect Homemaker, could come over. “Great.”

  “Only for a few minutes,” she said. “We have the guest speaker with us, so we have to be on time.”

  “Whenever you like. I’d love to see you, and I’ll be here all evening.” C.K. and Billy would be long gone by the time the Wymans made it in from the suburbs, a trek that would take thirty to forty-five minutes if they left this instant.

  “Super. How does five minutes from now sound?” Beth giggled. “We’re in the car, a block away. Finding parking is the only problem.”

  Few, if any, people were rushing to park outside closed art galleries at this hour. I wouldn’t even get car-circling time.

  The Wyman family trooped in within seconds. Alexander, of course, wasn’t yet able to troop. He might have craw
led, or even toddled, but he was swaddled to the point where he was only theoretically there, so he was carried in by Sam, who was extremely proud of having found a parking spot.

  I’d been living in the loft for four months, but Beth’s forays into the evil city are few and far between, so this was her virgin exposure to The Warehouse. Although she tried to behave nonchalantly, she couldn’t hide her amazement that bats didn’t dangle from rafters and rats weren’t snacking on our toes.

  We made introductions all around, offered pizza remains to any takers, and I sketchily briefed my older sister on our future decorating ideas. Her preference was for exquisitely crafted and maintained antiques. Neither my wallet nor my taste pointed in that direction, nor did Mackenzie’s, and I could feel Beth’s discomfort with the wide open spaces, the shades that were the only window coverings, the skylight’s openness, the broad expanses of uncovered planked floor between rugs. She was too polite to say anything except how airy and spacious it all was. Civilization in action again.

  Quentin Reed silently examined the bookshelves and CD collection, making deductions about our mental health.

  “Get comfortable. Want coffee or some such?” I asked.

  “No, thanks, we’re in a rush, actually,” my sister said. “In fact—Karen?”

  Karen had been stroking Macavity, who sat in a contented lump on top of my pocketbook on the table, purring.

  “She made such a fuss,” Beth said, “and now that we’re here, look at her.”

  “I left my Magic Markers,” Karen said to me.

  “You remember where?”

  She nodded, and relocated a miffed Macavity to the floor. “I took them to the parade,” she explained, “but it was cold and too fun to draw, so I put them in here.” She pointed at my bag. I sighed.

  The soft leather pouch looked like a feed bag, and was big enough to carry a horse’s or my rations, or both. Which was lucky, because it was always full. I wasn’t excited about having the contents of my messy bag excavated. Karen’s hands and face disappeared into it.

  “Kar?” Her mother turned her nickname into a question. When no answer was forthcoming, she stated the obvious. “We’re running late, sweetie. You know they’re putting on a show for you, for all the children, and we don’t want to miss any of it, do we?”

  “No.” Karen pulled her head back out into the fresh air, but continued to search with her hands.

  “I want her to have a completely happy visual and musical experience,” Beth said to me, as if Karen had suddenly become deaf. “Quentin thinks that would be best. Kar?” Beth asked again, still gently, although on the edge of shrill. No matter how irritated or tense her daughter made her, she had to keep her cool. It could be a curse being friends with the outspoken expert on psychological blunders. A childless expert, at that.

  Billy Obenhauser stood up and patted his stomach. C.K. also stood, but refrained from such actions. “We’d better be going,” Billy said.

  “Kar,” Beth said.

  “They’re my favorites, and I need them!” Karen’s voice was muffled as she searched deep within.

  “Maybe we could stop at a store and find new markers,” Quentin said, checking the time on her watch. She smiled expansively, but her radio voice was gone and soon she’d be audible only to dogs.

  “Let me help.” I tried to pull the bag toward me even though my niece was still lodged half in it. I estimated how many used tissues, receipts, and crumpled “to do” lists were about to be revealed, how much mortifying evidence of illegal snacks.

  I reminded myself that Billy Obenhauser was interested in death, not in whether I was a purse slob. My sister and mother would discuss, with superior regret, my messiness, but that would help pass their telephone time. “Karen, let go—let me—give me—”

  “Aunt Mandy!” Karen pulled her arm, head, and something else out of the feed bag. Her eyes were wide. “Where’d you get this?”

  “This” was a gun. A revolver, or maybe a handgun. I don’t know the difference, but it was definitely a thing designed to shoot and seriously injure living matter.

  Beth screamed and rushed for her daughter, from whose hand it dangled.

  Mackenzie looked at me, then at the gun. Billy Obenhauser took a deep breath and said, “Now, now, little girl. Karen, if you’ll just—don’t touch that trig—don’t press down on—here, I’ll…” And he removed it from her, holding it by the grip, not the way a TV detective would, but I didn’t correct him. He held it until C.K. retrieved a plastic bag from the kitchen and Billy dropped it in.

  During which time nobody else said a word, if you exclude Beth’s gasps and screeches and Quentin’s soothing noises.

  “A gun,” Mackenzie finally said. “Jesus! How come?”

  “For protection, I’m sure,” Beth said. “Living in this city.” She shook her head and took Alexander from Sam, as if she could better shield him from the evils of the twentieth century than his father could.

  “Perhaps it’s another attempt to emulate, become the equal of you, Detective,” Quentin murmured. “After all, you get to carry a gun.” She also twinkled a conspiratorial smile, as if to say she wouldn’t have any of those problems if she were with him.

  “But I—” I tried saying.

  Beth turned back to me. “You should have told me you had a gun in the house before I let Karen sleep here.”

  “I didn’t. I don’t. It isn’t mine,” I said emphatically. “I’ve never seen it before.”

  Billy Obenhauser made his fleshy features bland and unreadable as he looked at me. “A derringer,” he said.

  What did that mean to me? Cowboys used them, I thought. Or maybe it was gangsters in old movies. Or maybe a gangster had been named Derringer.

  “The current thought is that a gun of this sort killed Jimmy Pat,” Mackenzie said softly.

  “How would you know?”

  “One slug was still in him,” Mackenzie said.

  “What do you mean, a slug?” Beth asked. “That creepy snail-thing that—”

  “A bullet,” Mackenzie said. “One bullet exited, one didn’t.”

  “Hey, hey!” Billy said. Obviously, we lay people weren’t supposed to know anything, although I couldn’t see what harm it did to know Jimmy Pat had been shot twice, and I was tired of being an outsider, first in South Philly, and now in my own home.

  “We have to go,” Beth said with an edge of hysteria. “Now!” She took Karen’s hand.

  “I don’t have my markers!” Karen shouted, breaking loose.

  Billy stepped in front of her, pushed the pizza remains aside, and emptied my bag onto the kitchen table. The better to find other incriminating evidence of criminality or slovenliness. My date book-life record which theoretically holds everything important tumbled out along with a pile of detritus until the table looked like a landfill site. Amazing how many charge slips, junk mails, lipstick-stained tissues, ATM statements, and notched bus tickets a person could accumulate in a few days. Along with seven lipsticks, a bottle of nail polish, and—I counted them—thirteen ballpoint pens. Matchbooks from restaurants I wanted to remember. The paper bag with the rainbow-colored three-by-fives and pen I’d bought at Emily’s. A ring of keys to the school, to here, to doors I could no longer remember. A paperback. Two of Karen’s barrettes. A small can of hair spray and a folding hairbrush, a pressed powder compact. You’d think I would always be impeccably groomed, wouldn’t you? Sixty-four cents in loose change. And oh, yes, five Magic Markers, which Karen immediately scooped up.

  Beth put separate zippered bags inside her purse for makeup and car keys, and she probably filed receipts properly and promptly in something akin to an evidence bag. Nothing was loose or unmoored or without purpose about her, her home, or her pocketbook. Amazing that we share genetic stock.

  “How…where do you think you got that?” Mackenzie asked. He didn’t mean my ballpoint pen collection, either.

  “The…gun?” It was hard saying it. It gleamed dully and repulsively
in its plastic envelope. I shook my head “Somebody else put it in there. I didn’t.”

  “Who?” Billy asked. “When?”

  “Today, I guess,” I said slowly. “Or yesterday, at the parade. I don’t know. I didn’t know it was there.”

  My sister, her lawyer husband, and her two children stopped their rapid egress and stood like spectators at a primitive ceremony. Quentin kept clearing her throat as a reminder of where they should be headed, but Beth seemed to have forgotten about her honored guest as well as about detraumatizing Karen at the fund-raiser.

  “How could you not feel it?” My oftentimes beloved looked at me with less than full approval.

  “For Pete’s sake!” I censored what came naturally in deference to the young ears still in the room. “My bag isn’t like one of your pants pockets. It’s more like a suitcase. I wouldn’t notice a boulder if it were dropped in there. First of all, I had a coat on, a muffler—there were layers of padding separating it from me. But even without that, usually I have a roll book in there, and at least one textbook, too. I don’t always carry my briefcase, because everything fits in this. During vacation, it’s been lighter than usual, and that…” I gestured toward the table and the plastic bag with its deadly contents. “I didn’t feel it. Didn’t register the difference.”

  “It’s not heavy, anyway,” Billy said. “Lady’s weapon.”

  “Wait a minute—not this lady’s, if that’s what you’re saying!”

  “No, no,” Mackenzie said. “An expression. It’s small, see how short the barrel is? With a short range and not a lot of accuracy. Its advantage is that it can be concealed.”

  “Like in a woman’s purse,” Billy said with a sigh that was half snort. “Even a normal one. Normal purse, not normal woman, I mean.” He not only looked at me with that impassive suspicion, but now he eyed Mackenzie with something less than full trust. Afraid Mackenzie was covering up for his murderous lover. After all, I’d known the prime suspect and was, in fact, his declared alibi, and now that I apparently was holding and hiding the murder weapon, my denials of ever having seen Vincent smelled suspicious. As in…accomplice.