Caught Dead in Philadelphia Page 4

  My sister’s house was twenty minutes and a world away, insulated from the sirens and shouts of the city by a greenbelt circling its western edge. As I walked up the forsythia-lined path from Beth’s driveway, I heard only the rain and my own footsteps.

  “Mandy!” My hand was still on the bell when she pulled me into her house. “I’ve been so worried since you called!”

  I reassured her that I was fine. And I began to believe it. The grandfather clock was ticking calmly, eternally denying the possibility of shock and evil mischance. There were hothouse flowers on the hall table and a domestic tableau in the living room that was as comforting as the end of a fairy tale. It was impossible to envision violence in a house such as this.

  “I held off my appointment until you got here,” my brother-in-law said, rising from his wing chair and kissing me lightly.

  I like Sam too much to call him plodding or phlegmatic. But for Sam, a man as regular as the clapper of the grandfather clock, delaying an appointment is tantamount to hysteria.

  “Mommy let me stay up,” my niece, Karen, said. She flew at me, and we did some heavy hugging.

  Even the family dog, Horse, staggered over and licked my hand.

  “All right, everybody. Amanda’s here now, so it’s up to bed, Karen,” Beth said.

  Karen pouted, protested, inadvertently yawned, and finally agreed to go upstairs if I came and tucked her in shortly.

  “Now. What happened?” Beth asked the moment her daughter was out of earshot.

  “Why don’t we feed the poor girl while you interrogate her?” Sam asked mildly.

  “I hope the chicken isn’t dried out,” Beth said, handing me a platter.

  It wasn’t. Beth’s house is well over a hundred years old, but she doesn’t live in the past. The fireplace in the kitchen warms the heart; the microwave rewarms the food. I told my story, again gliding over the parts I couldn’t bear replaying. The difference was that Sam and Beth, unlike the police, didn’t want graphic details, so the telling became almost routine and smooth. “I think they suspect me,” I said in conclusion.

  Sam clucked. “That’s your imagination. And if so, then as soon as they know more, they’ll crawl to your doorstep and beg forgiveness.”

  I had a hard time envisioning C.K. Mackenzie either crawling or begging.

  “Poor Hayden,” Beth murmured. She picked up my plate, gesturing for me to stay put. “What a mess this will be with the Cole family involved.”

  “Do you know him?” I asked.

  “Barely,” Sam answered. “Knew him years ago, my freshman year at Franklin and Marshall. He was a junior. I was a pledge in his fraternity. But he transferred to Penn that spring. Now we’re on some of the same committees, legal associations. That’s all.” He stood up. “I really must keep that appointment now. Try to relax, Mandy.”

  Beth walked him to the door, then came back and poured two cups of coffee. “Sam won’t gossip,” she said with an imitation pout. “If he knew anything, he wouldn’t say it until he checked it out for possible libel suits. He thinks in small print.” Those traits didn’t seem to bother her one whit. “Anyway,” she continued, “you probably know Hayden better through Liza than we do.”

  “She never said much about him. Just that he was a proper gentleman of the old school. Behaved in a manner that would please Queen Victoria. I always figured she meant he was boring as hell. I don’t even know how much she cared about him. I remember, right after she got her engagement ring, she said, ‘A smart person never lets emotions interfere with her life.’ The thing is, I don’t know if those were her real feelings, a quote from something, or what. She sometimes fell into a Noel Coward mode, all clipped sentences and emotions.”

  “Or maybe she was trying to fit into Hayden’s world,” Beth said. “He didn’t seem at all emotional. At least, not in public. Family trait, from what I’ve seen. I worked on a hospital committee with his mother. A neighbor, Sissie, roped me into it. And Mrs. Cole’s the same reserved, steely type. Typical old Main Line, you know?”

  “Who’s Sissie?” I asked. I had heard that name before, but the day’s events had jangled my mental connectors and robbed the memory bank.

  “Letitia Abbott Bellinger, but nobody calls her that. She lives down the street. We carpool. Why?”

  The name clicked into place. Gus had mentioned her. “She’s involved in the Playhouse, I think. The one Liza…”

  Beth, always gentle, always sensitive, helped me across the name. “She’s into a hundred things. Little theater, the Museum Council, local politics, hospital charities. She’s at loose ends. Divorcing Mr. Bellinger isn’t a full-time occupation, although it’s been going on long enough. She’s always been close with Hayden. In fact, I heard it was once assumed they would marry, but then she surprised everybody with Bellinger.”

  Karen padded into the kitchen in pink-footed pajamas. “I waited and waited,” she said. “Read to me?” She held a copy of Winnie the Pooh. I didn’t feel capable of working a chubby bear into this particular day.

  “Aunt Mandy’s too tired,” Beth said. “I think she’s going to fall asleep before you do.”

  “Then will you tuck me in?” Karen asked. The girl was only in nursery school, but with her gene pool, she was destined to be a pragmatic bargainer. I capitulated and staggered upstairs.

  When I descended again, the grandfather clock was chiming. I looked at it and felt as if I had gone through a time warp. It was only eight-thirty.

  “In here,” Beth called from the living room.

  For a while we both stared at the softly burning fire in the grate.

  “So,” she said after a while, “what’s been happening?”

  “Been happening?” My mouth fell open. “Beth!”

  “Besides that.”

  I grinned in spite of myself. Corpses were trivial, fleeting items. Men were forever. “I broke up with Donald,” I answered. Beth would be pleased. His emerald eyes had never blinded her to his innumerable personality flaws, and she had become exasperated with our long, drawn-out, dithering miseries. “Also with cigarettes.”

  “I wonder if you’ll ever settle down,” she murmured. The five-year difference between us made her consider herself my mentor, and since our bona fide mother’s relocation left a vacuum, Beth, like nature, whooshed in to fill the void.

  “What could be more settled than a schoolteacher who lives with a cat?”

  “You manage to meet the most impossible assortment of males imaginable, have more complications and more problems—and now look what’s happened to you!”

  “Let me get this straight. You think I should get married because somebody…died in my living room?” I settled more deeply into the sofa cushions, admiring the extremes my family will go to in search of a rationale to end my single state.

  “Ah, well,” Beth said almost wistfully. “Maybe I’m just a lousy role model. Scaring you away with nightmares of carpools and volunteer work. Suburban clichés.”

  Every revolution has victims, and Beth was definitely a casualty of the Women’s Movement. She had been born knowing what she wanted to do with her life, and she was doing it—loving, nurturing, helping.

  In other eras, she would have been the subject of epic poems. Freud would have crowned her as the epitome of healthy womanhood. But today, Beth was depressed because she was happy at home, because her ambitions were traditional and inadequate for the contemporary heroine.

  During the great Coca-Cola switch-over, I tried to tell Beth to think of herself as the Classic form, to realize that she, like Coke, didn’t have to reinvent herself. But she didn’t see the connection.

  The doorbell rang. I looked at my watch, ready to be outraged by midnight callers. But it still wasn’t late anyplace except in my head.

  Beth left the room, and after the front door clicked, I heard the sharp rise and fall of a woman’s voice.

  “I saw the six o’clock news,” it said, “about Hayden’s—about Liza, and then the name of th
e girl whose house—and I said to my housekeeper, ‘Why that’s Beth Wyman’s sister. I met her at the engagement party. At least I think it is.’ Is it? They showed a picture of her leaving her house, but I couldn’t really tell. Is it? Wasn’t your maiden name Pepper? I’m sure your sister is that Amanda, isn’t she?”

  Maybe Beth was nodding agreement. She certainly wasn’t getting a chance to fit a word in. The other voice billowed and waved, up and down a vocal roller coaster, one sound sliding into the next. She filled the house with nervous energy, and I disliked her without knowing who she was.

  “What a horrible thing for Hayden,” she continued. “How awful for anyone to have to find. Was your sister close with Liza? The news really said nothing. It’s dreadful, isn’t it?” She stopped to inhale, or take more drugs, or whatever it was that kept her in constant motion.

  Beth seized the moment. “Sissie, Mandy’s here. Come see her. Let me take your coat and umbrella.”

  Sissie Bellinger was beige. She walked into the living room in a café au lait silk blouse and tailored brown slacks. Her ash-blond hair framed a pale, fine-featured face. In her mid-thirties, she was not yet deeply into Main Line dowdiness. Right now, she had somewhat worn but classic good looks.

  “I shouldn’t stay,” she said, settling nonetheless on the pale green love seat. “Should be at the Playhouse, but I saw the news, and what are we going to do now? The place will be a madhouse, total confusion. Thank God we only do shows on weekends, but what should we do? Cancel? Does the show go on anyway?”

  I opened my mouth, ready to say hello or to try to answer her barrage of questions, but she continued on, looking earnest and agitated.

  “Liza’s the lead, for God’s sake.” She stood up, paced while she spoke, until she found a crystal ashtray. Its tiny size might have been a clue as to Beth’s feelings about smoking in the house, but it escaped Sissie’s notice. She sat down again, lit up, and brushed smoke away as she spoke. “This is the most shocking—who could have predicted?”

  “Coffee, Sissie?” Beth asked. “I have some ready.”

  Sissie waved her slender wrist in front of her eyes. There was a gold watch on it, but she didn’t read it. “I should leave,” she said. “But no point yet. Just hysteria waiting. Yes, I’d love some.”

  It was certainly easy making conversation with this woman. You didn’t even have to know the native tongue.

  “I’ll be right back,” Beth said.

  Sissie took that as a signal finally to communicate with me. In her fashion. “So you, poor thing, became involved in Liza’s—” She had pale brown eyes that flicked over my face several times. “Was it awful?”

  “It was—”

  “Do they, the police, know who did it? The television said nothing, but of course they’d never say, all those libel laws and interference by the press and things.”

  I wasn’t sure if that had been a question until Sissie puffed and waved smoke away, clearing airtime for me.

  “It had only just happened when I—”

  “When?” Sissie stubbed out the cigarette. “When did it happen? Do they know? Was anyone seen? I suppose they questioned the neighbors. Why was she at your house?”

  C.K. Mackenzie was easier to take than this interrogator. I felt battered and slow-witted as I sifted through her questions, deciding that I had no obligation to answer them, even if she’d let me.

  “I just know everybody will be talking about it at the Playhouse, you see.” She lit another cigarette. I thought about the full ashtray in my living room and tried to see what brand she smoked. Her brown leather case hid the package, so I gave up playing detective for the time being.

  “Was she your roommate?” Sissie’s lids lowered. “She said she lived with her mother.” Her cultivated voice was heavy with malice and insinuation.

  “She was visiting.”

  Beth returned and busied herself with coffee cups and cookies. “You knew Liza, didn’t you, Sissie?” she asked.

  Sissie looked offended. “Well, not really.” The question silenced her momentarily.

  “What did you think of her?” I asked in what I hoped was a sweet, somewhat indifferent voice. It felt great being the asker of questions for a change.

  Sissie sighed. “What can I say? She’s gone now.” She looked toward the ceiling for heavenly guidance, but opted to proceed without it. “I’m a frank, straightforward person. Isn’t that right, Beth?”

  There was a tiny pause, a missed beat.

  She was an insane, rich person. Rich enough so that her behavior was probably relabeled “eccentric.”

  “So, while I hate to speak ill of the dead, I see no reason suddenly to become a hypocrite.” She paused while the hall clock chimed the hour. “Oh, I’ll be late; they’ll be angry. They depend on me so much.”

  Only once in all the years that Gus had been associated with the Playhouse had he mentioned, politely, Sissie Bellinger’s name, and never his dependence on her.

  “Liza was common,” she announced. “Anyone with a mind could see that no good would come of that match. He never wanted to marry her anyway.”

  “What do you mean?” My loud voice, crashing through her barrage of words, was probably also common.

  “Mean? Well, I suppose he wanted to, but only because he hadn’t time to know her. She was a good actress, you know. I’ll give her that. He never saw what she was really like. I tried to warn him, but, well…and she! Such an inflated idea of who she was! Such a temper!” She crossed her legs and pursed her lips with distaste.

  “When did you see her last?” I asked.

  “Last night.” Sissie’s eyes became slits, and she paused, holding a cigarette heavy with ash. “Why? What did she tell you?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I answered quickly, but Sissie stayed frozen in place. “I teach with Gus Winston. He said Liza was angry last night, after the show. When you mentioned her temper, remembering her that way, I thought—”

  “No,” she said, finally flicking her ash. “I saw her at dinner. With Hayden, before the show. Hayden had to leave to give a speech. I drove Liza to the Playhouse.” She ground out the cigarette. The ashtray now overflowed, and there were gray flecks of ash on the polished mahogany end table. “Then I left,” Sissie continued, as if establishing an alibi. “The police have no leads, is that it?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “Well, then.” She stood up. “Lovely meeting you again, Amanda.” She went into the hallway and Beth followed.

  “She isn’t real,” I said when my sister returned. “Is she always like that?”

  Beth nodded. “I don’t go out of my way to see her. We carpool, see each other on committees, things like that. She has never dropped over before. Awful, isn’t she? Wreaking havoc, hurting people, calling it frankness. Even at nursery school, she’s caused more trouble….”

  “Do you think she’s in love with Hayden Cole?” I asked.

  “I don’t think she’s ever been in love with anybody but herself. But I know she’s not in love with being single again. Maybe she resents Hayden’s marrying someone else when she’s reentering the market.”

  I walked over to the ashtray next to the love seat. The stubs in it were the same low-tar brand as Liza’s. “Tell me, Beth,” I said softly. “Do you think she resented it enough to beat his bride-to-be’s head against my fireplace wall?”

  Four

  Sunshine, exotic and delicious, woke me up. The sky through the window was freshly laundered and glowing. Someone should write a song about great days in Philadelphia. Three songs. One for each of them.

  Up the stairs came morning sounds, home sounds. Dishes chinking, soft voices. I dressed and went to meet them. By the time I reached the kitchen, I felt almost good about life. Last night’s fitful sleep and predawn insomnia didn’t matter. Yesterday was now officially over. It couldn’t be undone, but it could be cleaned up and away, following nature’s example.

  “Good morning!” Beth said with surpris
e. “But I wanted you to sleep late.”

  “Can’t, Beth. I have to go to school. The kids are going to be upset. Maybe I can help them through it a little.”

  Beth pursed her mouth, but she handed me coffee instead of advice, and I thanked her on both counts.

  Karen, wearing a train conductor’s blue striped overalls, came in dragging my pocketbook behind her. She handed it to me, then stood there, looking expectant and pleased.

  “Is there something I’m forgetting?” I asked.

  “I found it,” Karen said, breaking into giggles. “I found it and I like it. Thank you.” And from behind her back, she brought a crumple of brown paper cradling a red plush jeweler’s box.

  “What were you doing in Aunt Mandy’s purse?” Beth asked sternly. “What did you take?” She put her hand out.

  “I was getting it for her. The box…it sort of fell out.” Nonetheless, Karen reluctantly passed it and its wrapping paper to her mother.

  “This is addressed to Liza,” Beth said softly.

  “Good Lord. I forgot all about it. I thought it was some kind of sample, anyway. Like toothpaste or minipads. It was in Liza’s mailbox at school.”

  “This was in it, too,” Karen said, producing a receipt. “Is this a card? Does it say me? I can’t read writing.”

  But the delicate tracery spelled out the name of a jewelry shop downtown. One of my favorites, in front of which I have spent happy moments daydreaming. I do have aspirations beyond Jimmy Petrus’s J.V. football. This jeweler is famous for his whimsical creations. The bill in my hand was for five hundred dollars, a modest sum for his sense of humor.

  Inside the plush box, a charm was suspended from a heavy chain. Both were very gold.

  “You see?” Karen said, “It’s for me.” She reached toward the charm, a tiny bear clutching an even more minuscule bucket in his paw.

  “Sweetheart, it isn’t mine, or I’d give it to you,” I said. “Anyway, it doesn’t seem meant for a child.”

  “But it’s Winnie the Pooh,” Karen logically insisted.

  On his tiny bucket, delicate tracery spelled out “Happy Birthday, Honey.”