Love Nest (25 page)

“Is your husband home?”

“Why? Would that worry you?” The fire from the grate threw heat against her face. “I worship the memory of my son. I was awake during the birth. I felt him squeeze his way out.”

“It wasn’t suicide, was it?”

She ignored the question, gave no indication she even heard it. “Whose memory do you worship? Melody’s? She was never a proper whore, you know. She never had my moves, but perhaps she didn’t need them. People just naturally gave to her. Among other things, Alfred gave her a Mazda. What did you give her, Sergeant?”

“Not much.”

“That was bad business on her part. I married Alfred and got everything.” She removed the sweat band from her head and pointed to her left. “Something I want you to look at. It’s on the bookcase. Lovely piece of furniture, isn’t it? Alfred says it has the lines of a woman.”

He took three silent steps to the bookcase of cherry-wood and glass and lifted a photograph off the top. It was a large black-and-white glossy of a young woman in a trenchcoat and beret, blond and beautiful. He said, “Is it you?”

“When I was an artist’s model. That’s what I was wearing when I met Alfred. Outside a brownstone in Back Bay. Nothing on under the coat. He told me I looked like a big Brigitte Bardot. I come from a family of strapping women.” Her voice swam at him. “I’m glad it’s not in color. Black-and-whites, Sergeant, give a sense of timelessness. I can look at that picture and know everything my body was doing then and what was in my mind.”

Dawson returned the photo to the bookcase, feeling the heat of the fire through his trousers. She touched her hair and gave it a push back.

“I wasn’t a hooker for long, not much more than a year, but Alfred said I was the best. Tony Gardella said I was
numero uno
. Top dollar is what I got.” Her sleeves were pushed up, every movement of her arms muscled. Her fingers were tangled in the drawstring of her sweat pants. “What do you think I’d get now? What would you pay?”

“I’m not in the market,” he said, his eye jolted by a sudden glut of thigh. She slid her hand into her pubic hair, which was little more than a dusting, and brought up strands through her fingers.

“I know all the tricks, Sergeant. Though I might as well admit it, I have mileage.” Her smile was toothy, dazzling, yet wistful. “I’m not nineteen.”

The pungent aroma of Ben-Gay stuffed his nose, and he moved slightly, his back to the fire, which almost seemed to draw him into it, like arms. The heat put force into his voice. “Where’s your husband?”

“Alfred?” Her voice shot up. “Alfred, where are you?”

“He’s here?”

“He must be in the gym, Sergeant.”

It was a long walk, endless carpets. He knew he was close to it when he heard the hum of a dehumidifier and breathed in the sharp smell of chlorine. His head began to hurt when he pushed through the doors, one of them nearly hitting him because he did not move fast enough. Exercise mats were scattered about, and he tripped over one on his way to the tiled edge of the pool where Bauer waited. Bauer stared at him out of blue eyes pinpointed with hemorrhages, his open head unbalanced on a neck of loose skin. Crouching, Dawson felt for a pulse, knowing there was none. The weapon, a barbell, lay close by. Then his blood ran cold at the sound of Harriet Bauer behind him.

“Would you call my lawyer? William Rollins.” Her voice was careless. “Would you do that much for me?”

There were several telephones in the house and one nearby on the wall near the shower room, but he did not see it. All he could think of was the one back in the study. “You’d better come with me,” he said.

“I’ll be there.”

“Put something on.”

The trip back to the study seemed longer, as if the carpeting were slowing him down, pulling at his shoes. In his dreams travel was smoother and reality sharper than this. In the study he stepped over her sweat pants, plucked up the phone, and punched buttons. “This is Dawson,” he said moments later. “Notify the state police there’s been a homicide at 10 Southwick Lane. I’m on the premises. If Billy Lord’s around, tell him to get over here. Also notify the chief.”

He went back to the gym, but she was no longer there, only her husband. He called out in a voice that startled him but received no answer.

Billy Lord arrived before the state police did, almost smashing into Dawson’s car in the circular drive. His bullfrog body labored to the front door, which Dawson held open. “Jesus, Sonny, what happened?” he asked, his flat eyes expanding.

“Come in,” Dawson said and succinctly, in no more than a dozen words, told him what he knew and what he thought he knew.

“Sonny, what’s that you’re holding?”

“Her pants.”

Billy Lord’s eyes went bigger.

“I want her to put them on.”

“Where is she?”

“We have to look,” Dawson said. They moved quietly into the spacious dining area, which sparkled with crystal and china, and into the elongated kitchen, where a cuckoo clock cheerily announced the hour. Then, stopping abruptly, Dawson felt himself go sick. He gripped the back of a cane chair for support. “She’s nowhere downstairs,” he said with absolute certainty. “She’s up.”

They mounted the wide stairs. At the top Billy Lord used fumbling fingers to unlatch the holster of his service revolver. Dawson stayed his hand. “We won’t need that.” The wail of a siren could be heard, state police arriving.

“Let’s wait for them,” Billy Lord said. Dawson’s stomach bucked, then gradually behaved.

“We won’t need to do that either.”

“Where is she, Sonny?”

“Her son’s closet.”

H
e hung on her voice. Listening to it hard was like palming a lotion over his hot skin after a workout. She told him to sit down, and he chose the chair nearest the bed, where she sat on the tight-made edge. In repose, his face regressed in age. He looked ten. “How did you know I was here?” she asked, and he pushed his fists into the pockets of his athletic jacket and answered with a moodiness she was used to.

“I always know.”

“But how?” she asked, and a pointless minute passed. He cast his eyes down in his sneakers, the lace loose on one and coming loose on the other. She said, “Do you drive through the lot and look for my car?”

“Yes.”

“But I have a new one.”

“I know.” His lifted face darkened. “My dad gave it to you.”

“Does that make you mad?” she asked gently and knew the answer without his giving it. In the sunlight flooding through the window, the drapes yanked back to their tightest furls, his fine-spun hair was more white than blond, spectral like a baby’s. “I didn’t ask for it,” she said. “I didn’t even want it.”

“But you took it.”

“Have you ever said no to your father?”

“He’s not
your
father.”

“It was a joke, Wally.” She knew well enough what was disturbing him and tried to talk around it, lightly and quickly. “Your dad didn’t like the Mondale sticker on my car. He wanted me to put a Reagan one on or at least take the Mondale one off. I wouldn’t, so he bought me a new car with nothing on it except the dealer’s decal. He called it a compromise.”

“Do you and my dad still …” His voice trailed off in agony, and the large lobes of his ears colored.

“We’re just good friends now,” she said softly and got a doubtful look. “Do you want me to swear to it?”

“You don’t have to. Not if it’s true.” His eyes, which easily went dewy, glistened. “I wish we were the only ones in the world. Then nobody could …”

“You make too much of me.”

“I love you,” he said simply and frankly, and she immediately patted a space on the bed’s edge. Hands emerging from his pockets, he hoisted himself out of the chair and obediently sat beside her, though with noticeable room between them. He wedged his hands between his knees.

“Today you love me, which is good,” she said. “In time it’ll be somebody else, and that’ll be better.”

“Never,” he protested.

“Some sweet chick in school, you wait.”

He hung his head to one side, and locked his hands tighter between his knees. “I still don’t date.”

“But you will.”

“I don’t know.”

“Nothing has to be rushed.” She reached over and stroked his hair, smoothing parts that were wisping up as if to float away. “Isn’t that what Dr. Stickney keeps telling you?”

“I don’t like him. He acts like he knows you better than I do.”

“Maybe he only thinks he does.”

“
Every
body knows you better than I do.” There was a sulk in his voice, and she slid close to him, placing an arm around him, uprooting his hands. At once his nose nuzzled into the charcoal wool of her sweater, like a kitten remembering its mother. He dawdled a finger over the
M
monogrammed above the breast. “I still have it,” he whispered against her.

“What do you have?” Her head dropped forward over his. “Are you going to tell me or make me guess?”

“The garter belt my mom gave you.”

“You snitched it?” She laughed. “I wondered what happened to it.”

“I didn’t want you wearing it for anybody else,” he said, and she could feel the blood in his face. “Only for me. When I’m ready.”

His breath cutting through her sweater irritated her skin, and she said, “You’d better sit up now.” His head rose slowly, a flush still in his face, his ears bright.

“Can we lie on the bed and talk?”

“Not today.”

“But something might … work. I can feel it.”

“Another time,” she said firmly, and something combative and glum passed over his face and drained it.

“You’ve got somebody coming.”

“Later.”

“Who?”

“You know better than to ask.”

“I’ve a right to know.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, wishing there was a way to spare him. Her voice mellowed. “It’s a kind of favor for somebody else. A friend has a friend who needs help.”

“What are you going to do for him?”

“Nothing more than I do with you. Just talk.”

“You promise? You swear on your honor?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes.”

“OK, I swear on my honor.” She jetted up, tossed her hair, and looked at her watch. “You hungry, Wally? I’m starving! How would you like me to buy you a Big Mac?”

He rose reluctantly, then grinned. “With fries?”

She said, “Tie your sneakers.”

• • •

“You don’t mind, do you?” he said and drew the drapes with a certain flourish, as if shutting out an audience from a stage. He raised a wrist and viewed his watch. “I only have an hour. I wish I had all afternoon.” He lobbed her a lazy smile impaired by two martinis he had had at lunch with a customer of minor importance. “Melody, isn’t it? Pretty name. Fits.” It was her last little time on earth, and she stretched an arm to extinguish one of the lamps burning harshly on each side of the bed. “Don’t,” he said, gravitating closer. “I wouldn’t want you in shadow. Nineteen, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Lovely,” he said. She did not like him. He sensed it and ignored it while removing his shoes, which smelled smartly of polish and the good leather beneath. His movements slowing, he shed his suit and sought a hanger for it, then one for his shirt. “Might as well be neat. I notice you are, everything stacked so nice on the chair.”

She smiled politely. He did not like her manner but adored her looks. Rubbing a bare shoulder, he abruptly frowned because she was staring at his stomach, not at all the ripple of muscle it was when he rowed and played squash at Andover and Harvard. “Something you don’t like?”

“Why don’t you relax,” she suggested.

“I was about to say the same thing to you,” he said and his eye went on the alert for derision, though there was none. He skinned off his black hose but kept on his loose boxer shorts, buying time to soothe his self-esteem, which he felt had been tampered with. He placed a solid pallid knee on the bed. She was under the covers, and he lifted them with a slow hand. Looking at her, he drew in his mouth. He wanted to stare to his heart’s content and told her to close her eyes, which was something Harriet Bauer had advised her never to do, a cardinal rule. Never turn your back on a John was another. He wants to blow bubbles up your ass, make sure you’re looking over your shoulder.

“You’re not being very helpful,” he said, heaving a sigh. “Do you know who I am?”

“I have an idea,” she admitted.

“Then you know you’re in good hands.”

She knew only that she was chilly and sought to retrieve the covers, but he had swept them beyond reach, even his own, as if he had cut anchor and set sail, the waters rough. He shucked off his shorts, which made his belly look bigger, and touched her for the first time, grazing the length of a leg. In no uncertain terms he wanted her open, nothing hidden from the eye, pink parts showing, and then, impulsively, he wanted her to flip over.

“I’m not an animal.”

He examined her. “Pretend I’m a doctor.”

“Mrs. Gately said you were a gentleman.”

“Not with sluts. I don’t care how gorgeous they are.”

The words did not disturb her, merely made up her mind. “I think you’d better leave.”

“Behave!” he told her in a parental tone, which triggered something within her. Her gaze unloaded too much upon him, all of it a surprise. “What the hell is it?” he asked in frustration. “My nose?” He touched it. “This?” He slapped his belly. It was a question of pride, conceit, dignity. “Maybe I remind you of somebody. Who?”

The answer was a foster father, which he had no way of knowing and never would.

“What don’t you like about me?”

“Everything,” she said with utter calm and abandon, almost with a smile of joy. Her breath blew sweet. “You’re a pig.”

His eyes tightened as if screws had been turned. Her eyes burned bright, too bright, and she shut them, squeezing the lids and breaking the rule. He made a fist without considering the strength in it.

• • •

Paige Gately took his call at her home and listened to him with anger and growing alarm, though she could not make total sense of him. “Not my fault,” he kept interjecting. Then she got the gist of it and shivered. “You fool,” she said, “you absolute fool. Will she be all right?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can she talk?”

There was heavy pause. “Paige, I think she’s dead.”

The pause from her was heavier as she spread her fingers over her throat. Her legs went weak as if her own nerves and muscles were working against her. Then her mind, always her greatest edge, began to work.

“Paige, I’m shaking like a leaf.”

She said, to herself, Now I know why I picked Biff. To him: “Has anybody seen you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t
what
?” His voice shook.

“Don’t let anybody see you,” she said. “Get a towel and start wiping. Everything you might’ve touched.”

“I don’t know if I can. Christ, if you could
see me
!”

“Ed, you don’t have a choice.”

She made herself a small drink, nothing strong. It was to calm her thoughts, not to dull them. Ed Fellows’s voice replayed in her mind, and, though nothing in her face changed, she almost wept. She returned to the telephone and rang up the Silver Bell, surprised when the desk clerk answered in a female voice. She had forgotten that Chick was not yet on duty. “Any problems?” she asked and was told there were not. “That’s the way I like it,” she said. “When Chick comes on, tell him he can reach me at home if anything comes up.”

Almost an hour later the doorbell rang, and she let him in. She expected to see trembling hands, but he was a solemn presence in his pinstripes, though his face was ghastly. “I wiped everywhere,” he said. “Twice, to be sure.”

“You’re mistaken,” she said, and he looked at her queerly. “You were never there. You and I never had a conversation on the phone. You know nothing at all about it, so you have nothing ever to tell me. If you do otherwise, even if we’re quite alone, I’ll walk away from you.”

“I understand,” he said in the tone of somebody granted rebirth.

“What you do now is go home. Take a bath. I recommend a long soak.”

He nodded emphatically. “Yes, I will!”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Now there was a tremble to his hands. “There is one thing,” he said quickly, for she seemed prepared not to listen. “When I was driving away I spotted a car pulling into my space.”

“Who was it?”

“A big blond kid. I saw him, but he didn’t see me. He got out of the car and went in.”

She whistled softly. “I think you’ve lucked out.”

• • •

The boy crept into the room, his athletic jacket buttoned up to his chin, his sneakers tied tight. His purpose was to surprise her. The roar inside his head began when he neared the bed, and the cry from his lips was less a sound than a taste that came up on him. The nakedness, not the damaged flesh, appalled him. She seemed one with the white of the sheet, the fluff of the pillow, the ghostliness of the room. “It’s not fair,” he sobbed.

Her eyes had a lame look, as if scratched by a thorn. Her mouth was a wound. She said, “Help me, Wally.”

“You lied to me!” She was dying, he could see that through a flood of tears. “I was ready. I could have done it!” he proclaimed, and a sense of betrayal and injustice cut through him to the bone.

Her lips parted. When she tried to speak again, he hit her, a helpless blow, only half his strength, which was more than enough.

• • •

She looked at her watch and picked up the phone, knowing that Chick was bound to be on duty now. She considered his brain no brighter than a twenty-five-watt bulb, but sometimes she suspected she was wrong. He answered the ring at once, his voice crackling with irritation.

“This is Mrs. Gately,” she said. “Everything OK there?”

“Everything’s fine,” he sputtered, “except that damn Bauer boy nearly ran me down.”

“What was he doing there?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t give me time to ask.”

She made one more call, her last of the day, which was to Harriet Bauer, who listened without comment and then said, “Boys will be boys.”

“I wouldn’t even bother you with it except he did almost run Chick down.”

After a moment’s pause, Harriet Bauer said, “Can you connect me with Melody?”

“I’m not at the motel. I tried to call her myself, room forty-six, but she didn’t answer.”

“No matter,” Harriet Bauer said in a tone of unconcern. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

• • •

Twenty minutes later Harriet Bauer stepped into room forty-six. The sight of the body shocked her but did not stop her. She felt for a pulse, a beat, a throb and then did not touch it again nor look at it. She plucked a towel out of the bathroom, not the same one Ed Fellows had used, but she followed the same route and gave hard wipes to the same things.

No one saw her enter the room, and no one saw her leave. There was a roundabout way out of the lot, and she used it. The only one who noticed her pulling onto the main road was Attorney William Rollins, who had just come off the Route 93 exit ramp and was heading home.