Claire and Present Danger Read online

  I suppose all that translates into a need to feel in charge of my destiny, or at least in control of something. But here I was, stained, mussed, and taken by surprise. I gave in to it. I accepted reality.

  Gabby and Boy—and C. K.—were from the land of laissez-faire. I decided to let go and enjoy the evening. Be Southern and thank you, Scarlett. Tomorrow would be time enough to be hyper-aware of what I wasn’t thinking about, but should be.

  Hoagies would be fine. Different colors of cholesterol sliced and oiled and stuffed into a roll. What’s not to like?

  “Great, then,” Gabby said. “We’re off to the races, and darlin’ “—she gave my shoulder a friendly, nonpainful pinch—“while we munch, you and I can talk about dates.”

  “Dates?” I was engaged, I didn’t date anymore, and surely she— no. Couldn’t be.

  “Here’s what I was thinking,” she said. “Lutie’s having her wedding back home, so why not combine the two? I know it’s her fourth and your first, but that shouldn’t matter, should it? It’s still a wedding, and that way, everybody’s already gathered together. His family’s rowdy, I hear, but you know, ours can get that way, too. And with your parents in Florida, almost next door, and the savings of a double wedding . . .”

  I barely heard the rest of the details, and there were lots. Gabby Mackenzie had figured it all out. My audio portion returned when I heard her say, “I already have my dress—the cutest thing. Made it myself and did a fine job, if I say so myself. I hope stripes are all right. You like chartreuse or fuchsia? You’re not going to get all fussy about color schemes and things like that? You know, when—who was it, Boy? The first of our boys to marry—”

  “Noah,” he said.

  “Right. When Noah was getting married, I read that the mother of the groom is supposed to do two things: Keep her mouth shut, and wear beige. But darlin’, do I have to tell you I do not fit that pattern?”

  I thought maybe I’d just curl up inside my head and stay there.

  “. . . how about it?” she said.

  I looked up through the skylight, wishing to lodge a formal complaint with whoever was in charge up there. The one who was laughing himself silly. I know I’d said I’d relinquish control, but I only meant about my hair and my blouse. Not my wedding—an event I wasn’t ready for, in any case.

  I half turned, and caught Mackenzie’s expression. He’s good at hiding his feelings, which served him well as a homicide detective, but either he’d changed with his new life as student, or his mother had the power to melt his adult traits the way my mother could with me. In any case, he was watching us, his mouth half open, its shape somewhere between a smile and a cry for help.

  “It sounds wonderful,” I heard myself say. “And so thoughtful of you, too! But the fact is—”

  What’s the fact? Quick, quick!

  “My sister—you’ll meet her tomorrow—is already planning the wedding. That’s her profession, you see. It’s all set.”

  Mackenzie’s mouth was now three-quarters open. “Wanted to surprise you all,” I said. “Didn’t we, darlin’?”

  He nodded. “We were goin’ to tell all of you, Amanda’s parents as well. Tomorrow.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful, then. When’s the big date, then?” Gabby Mackenzie said, completely happy about everything.

  “Christmas,” Mackenzie said.

  My turn to stare, mouth hanging open.

  “We’re both on vacation from school then.”

  “Christmastime.” I nodded, amazed I could still move my head, because it felt as if a brick had just been tossed against it.

  Not only had I started actually marching down the aisle, but worse: I’d given myself the push. I’d been intent on manning the barricades through my mother’s visit. I’d planned to spend every minute in active, alert resistance, explaining why marriage was impossible at this time. I was ready and able to defend my right to refuse, to establish my own timetable for major life steps, to hold my ground till she retreated.

  I might as well phone and tell her to cancel her trip.

  She’d already visited. She was already here.

  I had become my mother.

  Fifteen

  C. K.’S parents apparently had boundless energy, and our hoagie and Italian ice fiesta lasted too late for a working day. By the time we bid adieu and Gabby and Boy headed off for their hotel, C. K.’s voice was strained as he muttered calculations about when he could fit in the missed reading he’d intended to do this afternoon.

  I had great pity for him, but an equally urgent need to tell him about Claire Fairchild and Emmie Cade. I’d worried earlier about whether he’d be upset about the time I’d spent with Emmie. Instead, he was upset about the time I was going to take telling him about it. But through his yawns and despite his loving looks toward his books, he made a phone call to a buddy he’d worked with in homicide.

  I heard him talking softly for a long while, with lots of half-laughs and many names, some of which I recognized, and then he said, “I’ll be here. Yeah, till late. Thanks,” and hung up.

  “Tom’s checking,” he said. Then he yawned and settled in at the oak table that serves as an auxiliary desk. It has the best light in the house with its overhead lamp, and it’s closest to the coffeepot, so it’s his main post, and at this hour and this level of exhaustion, he was going to need all the help bright light and caffeine offered.

  He tried to study while we waited, and I tried to allow him to do so, but I didn’t succeed, and therefore, neither did he. Just because we couldn’t yet talk about Claire Fairchild’s death with any assurance didn’t mean there was nothing left to discuss.

  “Do you think your parents liked me?” I asked.

  He looked unduly surprised by my question, then he pulled out all the stops and flowed with fulsome Southern praise and reassurance. “Of course they did. Wasn’t it obvious? What about all that laughing, and hugging, and literally clutching you to their bosoms? How about all that talk about your bein’ their new daughter and all? Those welcome-to-the-family lines?”

  He was so emphatic that I didn’t believe a word, which meant I had to ask for lots more words. I had to ask about how “truth” was defined in the former Confederacy, and what percentage of a Southern smile could be considered sincere.

  He finally drew a deep breath that might have also been a profound sigh, and once the air had circulated through him down to his feet and back up and out again, he said, “And should Southerners trust Middle Atlantic sincerity?”

  “We’re not as nice, Mackenzie. So sure.”

  “Like about dates? Like about weddin’ dates?”

  “Oh. That.”

  “How’s that? I could barely hear you.”

  And I could barely muster up a complete voice. I sounded like a mouse in an animated cartoon. “You think your mother took it seriously?”

  “You kiddin’? She marked the date and, like she said, she already has the dress, so I think we’re gettin’ married during winter break. An’ she absolutely cannot wait to talk with your mother.”

  Despite the warmth still clinging from the day, I felt chilled. I looked at the man under the hanging lamp and knew that I loved him, and that he was the person I wanted to be with.

  Everything up to this point felt familiar. Meeting, dating, dating more, living together. Even being engaged was more or less part of the continuum—a sort of intensified going steady.

  But marriage! Terra incognita. I had wanted to wait until I’d thought the word through long enough to fray it, make it a comfortable fit, and I would have, except for my big mouth.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Mackenzie said. “An’ why not? I mean what I’m saying, despite my roots in the South.” Even so, he looked enormously relieved when the phone interrupted further discussion of our impending nuptials, and he answered it before it completed its first full ring. This time he mostly listened, nodding, making um-hmm noises, saying things like, “An’ I thank you for that,” “W
ho could have heard?” and “Interestin’.” And then, after a pause, a chuckle, he said, “We’ll be even. No, I mean it this time,” and he clicked off the phone.

  “Yes?” I asked. “That took forever. Is the poison’s name the longest word in the English language? Or was that your mother telling you how much she really didn’t like me?”

  “It was phenobarbital.”

  “Who?”

  “It was Tom, tellin’ me the drug in the bloodstream was phenobarbital. A pretty common, legal drug.”

  “She took so many different pills—did she simply overdose on that one?” I remembered about the box and the premeasured amounts going into every cubby, but despite such aids, people get confused, disoriented, and accidentally overdose.

  Mackenzie shook his head. “Not possible. It’s used for a lot of things—including as a downer for overcharged speed freaks, amphetamine junkies. So it’s on the street, and anybody could have gotten some without going through a doctor. Officially, it’s used, short-term, for things like insomnia or anxiety—kind of a tranquilizing sedative—but it depresses the respiration, so somebody who already has respiratory problems—well, it’s obvious. It’d never be prescribed, because it does what it did to Claire Fairchild. Slowly stops the breathing altogether and permanently.”

  “So, it truly was murder, not a heart attack and not an accident.”

  “And not missed this time,” Mackenzie said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “The obvious. Lots of deaths like this get missed. The doctor decides it’s natural and nobody checks. Person’s buried, end of story. Pathologists love to say: ‘If there was a light burning on every grave of a murder victim, our cemeteries would be illuminated brightly at night.’ “

  I was chilled by the image and its meaning.

  “Okay, now?” he asked, and with great show, he pulled the text closer to him and picked up a highlighter.

  But it wasn’t okay yet. I replayed what he’d said and found myself stuck on something he’d skipped right over. “Insomnia.”

  “I could use some insomnia,” he said. “Maybe then I’d get this reading done.”

  “Emmie told me she can’t sleep. She takes something.”

  “Manda, there are so many sleeping pills . . . half the world can’t sleep when they want to. Now me? I could. I could right now within ten seconds, but I have to study instead. ’Sides, think about it. Would she tell you outright she was on a drug to sleep if she’d poisoned somebody with it?”

  “Have you met her?” I asked.

  He looked puzzled, and shook his head. “Why?”

  “Just wondering.” I’d been sure he was so blinded by her sweet and innocent façade that he couldn’t believe any wrong of her. I was determined not to be, but now I wondered whether my refusal to judge her on face value was pushing me in the opposite direction.

  “Tom said it’s used for kids with seizures, and far as I know, we don’t have a kid on our list of suspects. Fact is, we don’t have a list. Further fact is, whatever happened and how is none of our business. An’ Tom said he’d let me know if and when anything significant comes up. This,” he waved toward his textbook, “this, however, is now my business.”

  “Wait,” I said. “One second more is all. Something you said . . .” My tired brain tried to sift through piles and mismatched scraps, but levers and gears felt rusted out, or perhaps buried under hoagie layers, and I pawed through my mental archives at less than warp speed.

  “I really need to—”

  “There’s something I should be remembering.”

  “About phenobarb?”

  “Maybe. No. About who takes it—wait—”

  “You keep saying wait and I do, I am, but nothing happens.”

  “That’s what wait means.” I controlled the urge to say wait again, because it was so close, almost there—and then it was—“Batya’s child is sick.”

  “She had that baby today?”

  “There’s an older one. A sick one. Her aunt takes care of him. She told us, remember?”

  “What does bein’ sick mean? Kids get sick. He could have a head cold. He could have an allergy to seafood. He could have a harelip or typhoid fever. Listen, Manda, I’ve done my bit—against my better judgment. I found out what there is to know, and now, I can’t talk anymore. I either read this stuff now, or skip dinner with the folks tomorrow.”

  I ignored the threat. It was hollow, anyway. “She kept saying sick baby, or the like. It sounded more serious and chronic than a head cold.”

  “An’ Batya struck me as a hysteric.”

  “She’s got big-time problems. She’s a virtual prisoner there.”

  “Was. But about her child? Did she say he has seizures?”

  I shook my head. “She said something about the cost of his medicine.”

  “It could be nothin’ more than chicken pox.”

  “She had motive, Mackenzie. Mrs. Fairchild said she was leaving her money in her will but pretty much giving her nothing while she was alive.”

  “Stupid tactic,” he muttered.

  Batya put the pills in their proper cubbies. It would be so easy to substitute the murderous medication for a regular prescription.

  It would be easy for anyone to do so. I was back to square one. And speaking of that, “Who called 9-1-1?” I asked. “Did you ask? They have records, right? They always know who called it in.”

  He blinked and looked up at me, frowned, and seemed to reel in my words, as if they’d missed their mark but were still hovering in the ether, awaiting delayed entry to his consciousness. “Oh, right,” he finally said. “The doctor called it in.” He put his elbows on the table and his attention on the page of his text, looking excited and challenged, like a champion swimmer about to make the plunge.

  I stood up as an act of good faith. “I promise to shut up in a minute, but you need to explain, because there wasn’t any doctor there.”

  He looked at me with distant recognition, then once again seemed to climb out of the book and rejoin me. “This is it, then?”

  I nodded. I even meant it this time.

  “There’s this gizmo people with chronic lung disease use. Circular gizmo connected to the phone line. We saw it next to the bed, remember? You thought it was a lady’s compact.”

  “She breathes into it, Batya said.”

  “She opens it up and breathes into one side of it and, through the miracle of modern medicine, the person monitoring it on the other end can analyze the velocity of her breath and know how her lungs are doing and what she needs in the way of medication.”

  “That’s amazing. I mean that seriously. It tests how well her lungs are working through the phone lines?”

  “Far as I understand these things. She has to do this a few times a day, and if the results are confusing, they’d ask her to try again, and that night, apparently the test breaths showed a downward spiral—less and less velocity.”

  “So it took a while. It took a long while for that drug to slowly stop her breathing.”

  “Guess so.”

  “And she probably didn’t fully recognize what was going on, so it wasn’t as if she called for help.”

  “But the doctor did,” he said. “When the tests come back that way, they retest, and then they call the patient, they phone, because the medication needs adjustment, but, of course, nobody answered the phone.”

  “She was probably unconscious by then.”

  “Or dead.”

  “But where was Batya? Why didn’t she answer the phone?”

  He tilted his head. “You’re really set on her, aren’t you? Tom said there isn’t a phone in the maid’s room. Apparently, Mrs. Fairchild was afraid she’d call Romania, or wherever she’s from. Plus, Batya says she was asleep by that hour.”

  “Or awake, but not interested in saving Claire Fairchild’s life.”

  He ignored that. “And Claire Fairchild always kept the ringer turned down low. She could hear it, but it didn’t
carry. When the doctor got no response, he phoned 9-1-1. Now you know everything I know and pretty much everything the police know at this point and when they know more, you’ll know, too. But that’ll be it. Tom said if I cared all this much about a homicide, why’d I leave? I’ve used up my bargaining chips for a while.” With great deliberation, he put his finger on a line of text and leaned forward to read it. But he looked up for one moment and said in a serious, weighted voice, “Let go of it. It’s a police matter now, and we don’t have any other option.” He didn’t wait for me to agree or promise or say I understood. He returned to his textbook with a relieved sigh.

  I kept my thoughts to myself, but they kept me up even after I’d said goodnight. I registered the barb about our not needing further information about Claire Fairchild, but I couldn’t understand how Mackenzie could just turn off interest in something like this, could be content to be that chapter in somebody else’s story.

  Maybe it was because I’d met everyone involved and he hadn’t. Or maybe I was too new at investigating, becoming intimately involved in someone’s life and concerns and then, at some externally determined signal, stepping back. Way back—out of sight and out of mind.

  I wasn’t built that way. Instead, I lay in bed staring at the high ceiling, thinking about Batya, Emmie, and Leo’s stack of grievances against one ill elderly woman, trying not to think how easily any one of them could have killed her, and trying as well to ignore all that and build a case for what I wanted to believe, irrationally or not, which was that none of them had done this.

  It was a long time before I could stop seeing brightly lit cemeteries and fall asleep.

  Sixteen

  I WAS exhausted the next day, and nagged by trivia such as the realization that I’d never ironed my linen suit. Even as I thought it, I also thought “who cares?” I’d already made a bad first impression. More importantly, I was surrounded by matters of life and death and love and marriage—and adolescent educations—and my wardrobe choice was a shameful concern.