Claire and Present Danger Page 12

  Luckily, the next year we moved into a neighboring district and, like that, my bad reputation evaporated to the point where I sometimes missed it.

  But since then, I try to question labels. C. K. was right. Everything we’d read could be angry, hurt, or jealous rumors that had calcified over time, taking on weight and solidity and mistaken for historical truth. Of course, the woman had fed the negative fires with her inappropriate flirting and unpaid loans. Maybe she lacked character and was in fact a bad bet for Leo Fairchild. Or maybe she was too pretty, too delicate, too attractive to too many men, and she was the designated slut the way I had been in sixth grade, with as little basis.

  “Look at you,” Mackenzie said. “Frozen to the spot.”

  “No, I’m going to—”

  “Tell you what. I’m starving and I have a lot of reading tonight. Why don’t we both call it quits here for today and head home?”

  I was all for delaying contact with the Fairchilds. “Great. I’ll tell her tomorrow, I promise.”

  He shook his head. “We can stop off and tell her in person on the way. She’s a worried woman. Deserves to know. And the rain’s stopped. It’ll be nice—we’ll take a walk.”

  “Both of us?”

  “Like I said, we.”

  “That’ll make her happy, even if the report doesn’t. She was disappointed when I showed up, because she’d talked to you—to a man. She’ll feel she’s getting her money’s worth.”

  “Even though we did it in twenty-four hours,” he said.

  Our office is on Market Street, close to where the cityscape begins to slide off whatever downtown pretenses rule elsewhere. Almost nobody comes to us. We deliver, instead, and often, it’s completely a matter of phone calls and e-mails without any face-to-face. But if anyone did visit the office, they’d feel right at home in the old detective movie of their choice as they’d climb to the second-floor space Ozzie rented. The glass-paned office door felt like a window into the past. We were next to a dance studio—social dancing, not ballet. When business was good, the walls reverberated with Latin and swing rhythms. The proprietors, an angry couple in their fifties, often chose to bicker at the top of the stairs. They wore formal wear day in and day out, she in ridiculously high strappy shoes, and he in a tuxedo bought when he was at least two sizes smaller. The shoulder seams tended to split, and facing material popped out until his wife noticed, glared, and used one dagger-nailed finger to push the stuffing back inside. This evening, we had to circle around them. His stuffing was showing again.

  The rain, finally over, had cleansed the air, and we had a pleasant, relaxed walk to Claire Fairchild’s solid fortress of a home.

  Batya opened the cream-colored front door to the condo, her eyes once again, or still, swollen and red. She held her hands under her gigantic belly, as if to keep it from falling onto the floor.

  “Do you remember me?” I asked. She didn’t react quickly, but she finally nodded.

  “This is Mr. Mackenzie, who spoke with Mrs. Fairchild on the phone. We’d like to talk with her now.”

  “No, no.” And in case we didn’t understand those words, Batya shook her head.

  “I know she’s under the weather, but she’s expecting us.”

  “She is not. No. She can’t—”

  “Honestly, it’s okay. She won’t get mad.” The pathetic housekeeper was still terrified of her employer. I tried to calm her fears without telling her too much about why we were here. “Actually,” I said, “she’s waiting for us. She expects us. She may not have told you, because she thought we’d take longer, but—”

  Batya shook her head to the point where I feared it might wobble off its moorings. “Stop. No. She isn’t—can’t—”

  “Five minutes is all,” Mackenzie said. I was sure that would do it. He has a way of wrapping his words in Southern gauze that makes them acceptable, but no less strong. It always works.

  Obviously, distraught Eastern Europeans do not comprehend how attractive that accent is supposed to be. “No minutes!” Batya said. “Mrs. Fairchild can’t see you, can’t hear you—not you, not nobody. Mrs. Fairchild—she’s dead!”

  Ten

  BATYA’S announcement left me breathless.

  “Steady there,” Mackenzie said.

  I was astonished, but not faint. Nonetheless, “Water,” he said to Batya. “And she’d better sit down.” Before the housekeeper could respond, he steered me in, his arm around me, bracing me.

  “I’m fine! What are you doing?” I whispered, my back to the watching Batya.

  “Indulging my curiosity.” Mackenzie seated me in the same love seat I’d occupied the day before. I tried to look dizzy.

  Mackenzie shook his head. “You’d better sit down, too,” he told Batya. “In your condition. Rest, please. You’ve already had a bad shock. I’ll get you both water.”

  “Yes,” she said, propelling herself into a hard-backed chair against the wall. Once on it, her feet barely touched the carpet. She’d need help getting off without tumbling forward, and I wondered how she managed when she was alone. “Is awful,” she said, eyes wild. But once he’d left the room, she had no conversational bon mots to offer, so we sat in an awkward silence until I put my head back and closed my eyes, opening them only when I heard the slosh of water.

  C. K. held two glasses. I sipped mine and mimed calming myself down.

  “I’m sorry we’ve intruded at a time like this,” he said softly.

  Batya fanned the air with her hand. “You okay now?” she asked me, and I nodded. “I was afraid. Maybe I have two heart attacks here.”

  “Is that what happened?” Mackenzie asked. “Mrs. Fairchild had a heart attack?”

  She nodded and sniffled, arched back until she could reach a pocket, and extracted a crumpled lump of overused tissue, then blew her nose. “Like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  “I thought her problems were with her lungs,” Mackenzie said.

  “Mister,” Batya said. “I am not doctor. I wake up when emergency comes pounding and they say looks like heart, and later, that’s what Mr. Leo tells me. That’s what doctors tell him.”

  “Wait—paramedics arrived when you were asleep?”

  “Wakes me up, yes. Pounding, banging—they would break door if I didn’t let them in. Scared me. Like secret police, like—my own heart—” She forgot she was holding a glass, and she pressed her hand and the glass to her chest and spilled a goodly portion of it onto herself.

  “Was someone else here, too?”

  “Nobody. Me. Only me.”

  “You think Mrs. Fairchild called the paramedics, then?”

  “Who else? Except she is unconscious when they get here. They say for some time. Hour, more. Makes no sense, but is how it is. Maybe rescuers come slow, like take an hour?”

  “What time did they get here?”

  She blinked her swollen eyes, looked worried by the question, then silently debated it before nodding. “Midnight?”

  “And was she still alive?” Mackenzie asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Near the phone when she . . .”

  Batya winced.

  Mackenzie opted for euphemism. “. . . passed on?”

  Batya shook her head and looked down at her belly, not as if she wanted to gaze upon her unborn child, but as if she didn’t want to meet our eyes. “She was on bed, but half off, too.”

  Trying to reach the phone? I was over the initial shock, and now I felt her death as a great pressure on my own heart. What an ironic pity, to think you were pretending to be sick, when unbeknownst to you, you were, in fact, fatally ill.

  After a beat too long of silence, Batya looked up at us. “She said she felt bad, but I didn’t know so bad!”

  “Nobody’s blaming you,” Mackenzie said softly.

  Batya didn’t look convinced of that.

  “People have heart attacks without warning.”

  “Is not my fault,” she said. “Mr. Leo, he tells me to go to bed. H
e says everything is fine. Later—I can’t hear so much in my room, way back there. She has buzzer to get me.” She shook her head. “What am I doing now? No job, and Mr. Leo, he says I was supposed to take care of her! He says this to me today, after she is dead.”

  “Let’s back up a bit. He told you to go to bed. That was last night, correct? He was here?”

  “Everybody is here. Was train station. They come, they go . . . I don’t feel so good now and so much back and forth and Mrs. Fairchild sick like that is too much. Not my fault. Mr. Leo, he saw how tired I was and he say, go to bed, Batya. I lock up.”

  “Everybody?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Mr. Leo, two times. First, he comes himself. Later, he comes again with the lady.”

  “Emmie? The woman he’s engaged to?”

  “Her.” She blew her nose and sat still for a while. “But the other lady, the friend, she comes, too. After him. Before them. I am good housekeeper, but with the baby and my worries right now—”

  “What other lady, Batya?” Mackenzie asked gently.

  “Miss Cade’s friend, Mr. Leo’s friend. She’s here before.” She looked at us. “With the animal name.”

  Mackenzie glanced at me. “Ms. Baer?” I asked. “Here? Last night?” The same night I had dinner with her?

  She nodded.

  “Do you know why?”

  She sighed. “I say Mrs. Fairchild is sick. Is late. She says not so late—is maybe nine-thirty. A minute only. Needs name. She wants make rain. Crazy.”

  Mackenzie raised an eyebrow and checked to see if I knew how women affected precipitation.

  “A shower,” I said. “She wanted to give Emmie a shower.” Nice. Odd, too, because she’d said they weren’t that close. On the other hand, the timing suggested that she’d known about the wedding date and it had only been set that day. Emmie must have phoned her—maybe the call Vicky got at dinner, the one she took outside, when she gave her dog a potty break. Maybe my fabricated tale of the newcomer with no friends had prompted the desire to be kinder toward bad-luck Emmie.

  I was getting lost on a side trip, and I pulled myself back to the present, in which Mackenzie was asking questions, almost as if he were still a homicide cop. Batya, perhaps used to being questioned by strangers in her homeland, didn’t seem to realize we had no right to be in the apartment, let alone to interrogate her.

  “What time was Mr. Leo here?” Mackenzie asked. “The visit when he told you to go to bed.”

  She shook her head, held up her wrist. “No watch. Too swollen. Maybe nine-thirty?”

  “Was Ms. Baer still here?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe ten. Too late, yes? Kills his own mother coming here middle of night.”

  “And you went to sleep, yes?”

  “I go to my room.”

  “So you don’t know when he left.”

  “You have baby. See how you sleep near end of the pregnant. This is why I am tired.”

  “Are you saying you heard them leave?”

  “I leave my door open a while. I don’t sleep at all.”

  I wanted to ask how that was so when she’d already said she couldn’t hear a thing from her room “back there.”

  I knew Mackenzie had caught the discrepancy as well, but he was incredibly polite. He smiled and looked concerned for Batya’s welfare, and for all I know, he was. He has a way of asking a question that almost makes the words invisible, almost makes the person he’s addressing think they’ve thought them up themselves, that the topic is precisely what they want to talk about. Even when he has to ask the question several times. “Do you know what time you heard him leave?”

  “I hear door. I hear them in hallway, talking, then door. Not so long after, he tells me go to bed.”

  “Ten o’clock, then?”

  “Something like. A little later, sure. Yes, sure, because now I remember. My show ended, so I turn off TV.”

  “And his fiancée was with him the whole time.”

  “This time, yes. This his second time here last night. Third time here for day. He comes first with her in day, then alone after dinner, then later, with her again. Then they leave. I didn’t trust about door. He was angry, maybe he forgets to lock. So I check. And I check her, too.”

  I was glad I hadn’t asked. Her door had been open and she’d been actively listening until she knew the door was locked and her employer was safe for the night.

  “Mrs. Fairchild?”

  She nodded. “She was okay. Sitting in bed, says she’s going to sleep. I thought she would cry, he is so mean to her, but no. American children . . .” She pursed her mouth with distaste. It was hard for me to think of fortysomething Leo as a child.

  “How was he mean, Batya?” I liked the way Mackenzie pulled her name in, often enough—but not too often—softening its edges so that it was a gentle and friendly tap on the shoulder.

  “His own mother is sick in bed, but still, they shout. No—he shouts. Never her. It hurts too much.” She tapped her chest, showing us where it hurt Claire Fairchild. Then she tried to lean forward, toward us, as if to confide, but only her head jutted out while the rest of her stayed in place behind the belly. “I not listening. Understand? I not do the . . .” She cupped her hand to her ear. “Never. But Mr. Leo is so loud.”

  “Could you hear what they were saying?”

  She shrugged. “Noise. Angry. Words that don’t make sense.”

  “Like what?”

  “About wedding. And something—crazy. I don’t know. First he asks about reader. I think he says ‘reader,’ but my English . . .”

  Me. They were arguing about me, about my transparent excuse for being there. The temperature dropped precipitously, and I shuddered.

  “She say something I don’t hear because I never—” Again, the cupped hand to the ear.

  “Of course not,” Mackenzie said. “But sometimes, people are so loud, you can’t help but hear. Even in a big apartment like this one.”

  She nodded. “I have work, always work. I don’t listen behind door. And she talks soft. Normal. But he’s so angry then, so loud, and he says ‘you’—he means his mother—’hire’ or ‘fire,’ I can’t make out, ‘the pie.’ Fire the pie? Maybe should be bake the pie? Hurts my head, crazy talk, so I stop listening, finish dishes, he leaves. Then, I think I sit down, have tea—but the Rain Lady comes. The wolf.”

  “Baer. Did she stay long?”

  “Not very. I am so tired then from carrying trays, opening doors . . .”

  “How did Mrs. Fairchild seem then?”

  “She say sick. Maybe her heart hurts, she doesn’t tell me such things. I am servant.”

  “Did everything seem normal about her? Did she eat much dinner?”

  Batya looked at us both as if we were dangerous, as if a wrong answer might trap her. “She never eat much. I carry that heavy tray and . . . no. Not much.”

  “More or less than usual last night?”

  “Same.”

  Either the answer was one she considered safe, or the simple truth, since Claire Fairchild had not truly been any sicker than was normal. Except: She died.

  “How long do you think Ms. Baer stayed?”

  “I have no watch,” Batya repeated. “Who knows? All I think is why so many people this one night when she is sick? And me—I can’t lay down until they go. My back always hurt now.”

  “Did she stay a long time, or not long?”

  “Maybe not so long. But then Mr. Leo is back, and Miss Emmie. And she brings flowers!” Batya slapped her forehead as if that was mind-boggling news. “Big yellow and red flowers.”

  I could picture Emmie Cade in a lace-trimmed blouse and layered chiffon skirt, nearly hidden behind a huge bouquet. Flowers signaling peace, a truce, an end to mother–future-daughter-in-law hostilities.

  “Flowers make Mrs. Fairchild sick!” Batya said indignantly. “No perfume—no flowers. She knows!”

  But so did Leo. Why, then, did he allow Emmie to bring them? I almost aske
d, but Mackenzie did something with the muscles around his eyes. Not exactly a squint, but a clear cease-and-desist message. I wondered how he did that, and whether I could successfully imitate the expression.

  “I put them in kitchen, where Mrs. Fairchild never goes. Should have put outside, in trash, but my back . . .” She pulled and twisted the fabric of her sleeve and sighed. “Maybe their smell kills her?” She snuffled, but her eyes stayed on us, deciding how we felt about her guilt.

  “I doubt that,” Mackenzie said. “Too far away.” He spoke with great scientific assurance, as if the potentially lethal impact of floral perfumes had been the first subject in his doctoral program, and he’d gotten an A on the final. “You did the right thing, making sure Ms. Cade went in without her flowers.”

  Batya looked at him sideways, checking for expression, then at me. “I did right thing,” she repeated. “Yes.”

  “And when you took the flowers, what did she do?”

  She raised her eyebrows and opened her eyes till there was white all around the pupils, and put her hand to her mouth. When she was convinced we understood the gesture, she relaxed again. “Like that. Sorry, she says. Forgot. Then she goes in.”

  “To Mrs. Fairchild’s bedroom,” Mackenzie prompted.

  Batya nodded. “By self. Soon, he goes in, too. Both in there now. Wear her out. Too much company for sick woman. I go in and tell them no, she not well, and they say, ‘Just a minute. I be there just one minute.’ Everybody says it and nobody is just a minute except his girlfriend—”

  “Emmie Cade.”

  “Yes. Her. She is still upset about flowers, and when I say must leave, she does. She waits in living room. He says I should go to bed, but I listen because they make Mrs. Fairchild sicker. Then they leave and later, people bang on door and she is dead.” She wiped at her eyes again with the exhausted lump of tissue.