Death at the Wheel (43 page)

In some ways, Eve's estrangement was easy to understand. Like many psychiatrists' children, she had been extremely close to her parents as a child, sometimes, as she'd described it to me, to the exclusion of other children. That closeness had hampered her ability to make a comfortable social adjustment to her peers, and had also created an even greater distance to go when the time came to break away from her parents and become her own person. According to Eve, the struggles had been titanic. Her parents, so respected for their ability to help the troubled, had been completely baffled when it came to their own daughter's behavior. They'd reacted with an impossible combination of rules, restrictions and demands for dialogue to her every attempt to find her own identity. Even something as ordinary as a chaperoned boy-girl party had required a family meeting.

In self-defense, Eve resorted to deception, developing an agreeable facade which appeared to conform to their wishes while doing exactly as she pleased. It was probably necessary to get her through adolescence, but having to lie made her angry, and the fact that they let her get away with it—these supposedly sensitive, insightful people—made her even angrier. Maybe they saw through it and let it go because it was the only way they could cope. I didn't know. I wasn't around then. By the time I met her, lying to them had become such a habit that she lied even when she didn't have to. After our first dinner with them, when I challenged her about some things that she'd said, Eve had responded, "It's terribly sad, Thea, but I've lied to them so long I'm not sure I'd know how to tell them the truth. Anyway, I don't even think of it as lying anymore. I just tell them what they want to hear and they're satisfied. They deal with so many serious problems every day. It's important to the stability of their world that things are all right with me."

It was so sad. Eve and her family sat around like people hiding behind cardboard cutouts of themselves, looking like the perfect family, and never told each other anything risky. Eve never told her mother, who specialized in treating abused women and children, that her boyfriend, Padraig, was abusive, and she never told her father, who knew a great deal about eating disorders, that she was bulimic. She just struggled along on her own and eventually she cured the bulimia herself and dumped Padraig. Dumping him had not been easy, since in his own perverse, possessive way, he'd loved Eve and didn't want to be discarded, and because Padraig, when he wasn't being abusive, was the most charming man on earth. He'd had hair the color of fire, a lilt in his voice that could woo statues off their pedestals and a passionate way of throwing himself at life that made you want to be swept along. But he'd had a dark side, too—moods of brooding intensity when he blamed everyone but himself for his failure to make it as an artist. Then he would take out his frustration on Eve.

Part of her reason for moving to Arizona was to get away from Padraig. As long as she was near him, she couldn't resist him. It was also to get away from her family. One day at lunch she'd said, "Lying to them is such an established pattern that I can't seem to stop. I hope by going away I can put enough distance between us that when I come back I can deal with them honestly. Maybe I'm deluding myself but that's what I hope." I'd helped her pack everything into the back of her little silver Accord and she'd driven away.

I could still see her face, peering out the window at me, bottom lip caught between her teeth, and little worry lines in her forehead. We were a strange pair. Me tall, green eyed and serious, with my mop of impossibly long, curly hair, and Eve, with her merry, adorable little face, cropped, string-straight hair, and small, strong body. Together we looked like the giant and the dwarf. Eve's bulimia hadn't been a reaction to anything wrong with her body. I guess that's often the case. She had an athletic build, but she was well proportioned and slim. It was just that Helene was so impossibly beautiful that anyone would have had trouble being her daughter. As Eve, one of whose strengths was her blunt self-awareness, once observed, "I can stick my finger down my throat until hell freezes over, and I'll never look like Helene." And now Helene was dead. I hoped Eve had had a chance to establish the kind of relationship with her parents that she wanted. I didn't know.

After Eve left to work on the reservation, I'd met David Kozak, gotten married, and immersed myself in a world of domestic bliss. A year later I read in the paper that Padraig had died in a car accident. I'd written her and sent her the clipping and she'd written back that his death was the loss of an important artistic talent. By the time she came back, David had been killed, and I'd dealt with my grief by becoming a workaholic. We'd had lunch a few times, dinner with her parents once, and spent one pleasant weekend on Cape Cod, but otherwise we hadn't seen each other much. Eve was working with cancer patients, and on the weekends she was doing a lot of cycling and kayaking. She seemed very happy.

It was a beautiful May Saturday. Brilliant sunshine. A fresh cool breeze. It was a day made to be enjoyed, but I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd read. I try to avoid thinking about death and dying. I'm not a depressed or morose person, I've just seen my share of death. It's been more than two and a half years since the car accident that killed David, and almost nine months since my sister Carrie was murdered. Hardly a day goes by when I don't think about them and miss them.

They say that with time a grieving process takes place and you get over things. I know that's true. Most of the time I'm fine. But sometimes, at a certain time of day, when the light slants a certain way, or when I hear a special song, catch a faint whiff of some man's cologne, or glimpse a tall, thin, dark-haired man walking toward me, I still expect to see David. Sometimes, when the phone rings and I hear a girlish, excited voice, I expect it to be Carrie. Then the disappointment, the loneliness, and the pain are just as real, immediate, and sharp as in those first awful days. So I had some idea of how it was going to be for Eve.

Andre put a warm hand on my shoulder. "Penny for your thoughts," he said.

"I was thinking about this," I answered, tugging out the paper and handing it to him. "I knew the woman—the victim. Her daughter is a friend of mine."

He scanned the article quickly and handed it back. "The mysterious stranger lurking in the bushes with a knife, huh? Statistically speaking, it's much more likely she was killed by someone she knew."

"But she knew everybody. And people loved her."

"Only one of them killed her, though, and I doubt that it was the butler."

"No," I said, "they didn't have a butler. A maid, but not a butler. Helene was an ardent feminist. In her world, it would have been the maid who did it. It isn't something we should joke about, though. Poor Eve."

"Eve is the daughter? Your friend?"

"Yes."

"Have you called her?"

"Called her?" It sounded dumb even to me. "Isn't it too soon?"

He shook his head. "She'll need people to talk to. Maybe not right away, but it will help her to know you're there. You understand what she's going through and you're sensible and compassionate. Go on. Go call." He made little motions with his hands, like someone shooing a flock of chickens.

"Don't you start telling me what to do," I said, but it was a pro forma complaint. We both had some expertise in this area and I knew he was right. I could be helpful. I also knew why I was hesitating. I might be able to help Eve, but not without cost to myself. Talking to Eve about her loss would make me think of my own.

His arched eyebrows rose quizzically, giving him a slightly elfin look I find very attractive. That was usually the prelude to a provocative remark, but this time all he said was, "You might bring some sandwiches on your way back out."

"Andre, you just had breakfast."

"I just had you, too, and I never get enough of that, either."

I groaned and went inside to call Eve.

Kate Flora was an assistant attorney general in Augusta, Maine, before moving to Massachusetts to marry, later working in public interest law and general private practice. She retired to raise her children and to write. Flora is the author of seven Thea Kozak mysteries and two Joe Burgess police procedurals, as well as co-author of the true crime work,
Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine
. As Katharine Clark, she is the author of
Steal Away,
a suspense/thriller. She is a former editor and publisher of Level Best Books, and former international president of Sisters in Crime. She divides her time between Maine and Massachusetts. Flora teaches writing for Grub Street in Boston.