Michael’s Wife (18 page)

Laurel stood backed up against the sink, her hands holding onto the counter behind her. A repairman, a fireman, and Pat Patrick knelt around the back of the stove, shaking their heads. The stove had been pulled away from the wall.

Michael literally ran around the partition. “What's happened? Where's Jim?”

“Gas leak. He's at our house; he's okay.” Pat stood up. “This is Mr. Devereaux.”

“Had a close call here, Mr. Devereaux.” The fireman pointed behind the stove. “These old rentals aren't kept up like they should be. You're lucky Mr. Patrick was around and knew what to do.”

Michael looked from Laurel to Pat to the repairman. “The stove?”

“No. The compression nut between the service pipe here and the flexible connector on the stove.” The repairman was short and wiry and obviously puzzled. “That nut was almost completely off.”

Michael knelt with the others to look. “How could that happen?”

“Well”—he scratched his chin—“the best way is to take a wrench and loosen it.”

“You think someone did this purposely?”

“I didn't say that but.…” He shook his head for the hundredth time. “I've only seen this happen once before. Usually if there's a leak, it's because the stove's been moved around too much and the flexible connector gets a crack in it. But just last month, a suicide case decided turning on the jets wasn't fast enough and he loosened the compression nut. If you want it fast … that's a good bet.”

Suddenly everyone was looking at Laurel.

“I wouldn't decide to commit suicide, loosen the connection to the stove, and then go shopping for the afternoon.” Her voice sounded far away, as if she were hearing herself from the next room.

The fireman busily wrote his report as they talked and just as busily crossed it out. “Look, I've got to put something down here. Did you move the stove at all today, Mrs. Devereaux?”

“I haven't moved it since we've lived here.”

“Have you been working around the back of the stove? Or tried to retrieve anything that had fallen behind it?”

“Jimmy's truck rolled back there.”

“How'd you get it out?”

“With a broom handle, but I'm sure I didn't touch anything. It was just after lunch. Before we left.…”

The fireman brightened and turned to the repairman. “Could that do it?”

“I suppose … if it was loose and she hit it.…”

Everyone looked satisfied and relieved. Everyone but Laurel and the repairman.

“You're lucky you and your family weren't home. If you'd been awake you would have smelled it, but if you'd all been asleep … it could have been bad … real bad.” He was still eyeing the faulty connection. “Oh, and Mr. Devereaux, I suggest you have your landlord replace this stove; it's in very poor condition.”

Michael nodded and walked over to Laurel. “Are you all right?”

“No.”

He put his arms around her and held her gently, his warmth making her realize how chilled she was. “Come on. We'll treat the Patricks to dinner and then go buy our own stove.”

13

Laurel sat at the kitchen table trying to adjust the tension on Myra's portable sewing machine to handle the heavy yellow drapery material. She wished she had a mechanism to adjust the tension inside her.

In five months the blackout in her mind had lifted only slightly, giving her a peek at two meaningless images. And it was obvious where her life was heading. She'd soon be without a family as well as a memory. If she could even hold onto her sanity and her life long enough to see the end of her probation.

The new electric stove jutted out beyond the partition wall, creating a menace to the traffic pattern. It had enough dials to fill the control panel of a rocket ship.

Anyone
could have loosened that compression nut. Claire Bently and Evan Boucher had been in the kitchen recently. The patio door was unlocked, so even Janet or Paul could have come to the house, found her gone and seen their chance. Had she left it unlocked? Even Colleen or the Patricks could have loosened it at any time, waiting for her to jiggle it or bump it. For all she knew, any of them could have a motive that she didn't know about or couldn't remember. It could posibly be someone else from her unknown past. It didn't
have
to be Michael. He had the obvious motive and the most access to the stove. A man trained as a mechanical engineer and a pilot might well think of such a strange yet logical weapon. But he wouldn't jeopardize Jimmy's life as well.
Please don't let it be Michael
.

Michael's attitude had softened some since the gas incident. When he took Jimmy for an outing now, he included Laurel. He was very patient, trying to teach her how to use the new stove. But this gentleness could change to the old hardness in an instant and often did.

Out on the patio Jimmy squealed as he raced his tricycle around Sherrie's. Laurel turned to watch them. Each day he grew bigger, browner, more scratched and bruised. His face and body grew leaner, his coordination astounding. All little boy now, he showed every sign of becoming a giant of a man. But when he came fresh from his bath with his hair still damp, smelling of soap and powder, to snuggle against her for his nightly bedtime story—he was her baby. The thought of losing him was so agonizing that she would sometimes cry while she read and his eyes would turn sober, the thumb he was fast outgrowing once more seek his mouth.

Michael would have to have her jailed to keep her away from her son. Or killed.…

She turned back to the sewing machine. The gas leak had heightened that sense of urgency, of time racing her toward some unknown end. It
could
have been an accident; she
could
have imagined being threatened that night in the courtyard. But her nerves told her that the two incidents were connected and that she'd need all her memory and her wits to face what was coming.

What if she went back to that double track in the desert, followed it to the spot where she'd awakened to a new existence on that morning in April? Would that jog her memory? How would she get there?

Laurel went into a little flurry of decorating, and all the beige rooms gained a little sparkle. New drapes and curtains at every window, new bedspreads and bright throw rugs, flower arrangements and wall hangings.

No amount of genius could make the little house a showpiece, but its character had changed. From a neglected cheap rental it seemed to settle with a sigh into a home that someone cared for. Laurel wondered how much longer she'd be there to care for it.

One evening she stepped out onto the patio on her way to the clothesline to take in the clothes and stopped to enjoy the relative coolness of approaching night.

It was a quiet evening and the clothes hung still on the line. Water splashed from the revolving sprinkler head. Sherrie and Jimmy played contentedly on the swing set.

Voices came to her from Colleen's kitchen. Her cooler must be off and her patio door open. Colleen's voice was followed by Myra's, and Laurel heard her own name mentioned.

“… they're married? Not just living together?”

“That's silly, Colleen. Why shouldn't they be married?”

“I don't know. They're such a weird couple. And Jimmy doesn't look like him. She doesn't wear any rings. Maybe he just moved them in to keep women like me away.”

“Are you serious?”

“Okay, laugh. But how many couples that age do you know who sleep in separate rooms?”

Myra giggled. “Maybe he snores. Oh, don't get mad. She told me they'd been separated. Maybe things aren't going too well between them. Although he did seem very considerate and worried about her that night they took us out to dinner after the gas leaked into their house. But I do think she's a little afraid of him.”

“I don't blame her, the way he looks at her.”

“Like how does he look at her, lady detective?”

“Like he wants to commit murder … or rape. Like he doesn't know which. Like.…”

Myra cut her off with a burst of laughter that made the kids look up from their play.

“Colleen, your life must be exciting with that imagination. Tell you what. If I find any bodies or ladies in distress lying around, I'll call you in on the case.”

Laurel crept back into the kitchen, squirming inside, the wash forgotten. She closed the screen, then the glass door, and then the drapes.

The last Friday in August Michael announced that he was taking Jimmy to Tucson for the weekend. She was welcome to come along if she liked. Laurel had no intention of being separated from her son, even for a weekend. So they locked up the beige house on Saturday morning and raced across miles of beige desert.

The temperature had climbed to 102 degrees when they left Glendale. The car radio announced that it was 105 degrees when they reached Tucson. Leaving the desert floor, so baked it had cracked in places, they wound along the low foothills, where only the saguaro seemed really alive, and finally rounded the bend in the road where the great white house stood above them on the hill.

The stolid saguaro still stood sentinel duty in its fenced enclosure; palm fronds peeked over the wall of the outer courtyard. And above it all the bell wall, its two empty niches staring sightlessly into the noonday sky. Sun glinted off the great bell in the center niche and the house seemed whiter, less mellowed in the summer sun.

To Laurel this was not a coming home. The house seemed to remind her that there were less than three weeks left of her probation and then Michael would be free to hand her her hat. If something worse didn't happen before that.

“Come on, Jimmy. We're here.” Laurel pushed the seat forward and reached in to help him out. But Jimmy crouched against the back seat, sucking his thumb, staring at the giant front door of his inheritance. One of his eyes was blackened from a fall off the new tricycle. He looked slimmer now that he didn't wear bulky diapers under his shorts.

“What's the matter with him?” Michael came around the car.

“I can't get him out. Don't you want to see Consayla?”

Jimmy stared back at them—unblinking, not moving.

When Michael snapped his fingers Laurel jumped, but their reluctant son hit the floor and scrambled out of the car. He grabbed Laurel's hand and she had to drag him into the house.

The entry hall was empty and as unreal as ever. It looked cool and dark with its high ceiling, and the sunburst on the red tiled floor lay in shadow. A quiet house greeted them.

Michael looked into the library and then closed the door. He came back to the doors of the main salon. Laurel followed, Jimmy still tugging at her hand.

The heavy green drapes were open and light streamed through the two-story windows, brightening the rich upholstery and deepening the luster of the wooden tables.

“Well, here you are. And just in time.” At the far end of the room Janet stood halfway up a ladder to the side of the fireplace.

Consuela, looking monstrous and dark against the white wall, held the ladder for her.

Michael walked across to them, his feet making no sound on the thick carpets. His deep voice echoed in the high-raftered room. “Just in time for lunch, I hope.”

“Lunch right after my surprise. Consuela, get the others in here.”

The housekeeper didn't move. Janet climbed down the ladder and confronted her. “I said get the others.”

“Please, Mrs. Devereaux.…”

“Now listen, old woman.…”

Michael put an arm around the housekeeper's shoulders and said softly, “What's wrong,
Abuelita
?”

“Mr. Michael, it is awful.…”

“I'm afraid Consuela doesn't like my surprise. Do you want me to get them?” Janet's low voice had developed an unpleasant rasp.

“I will go.” But before she left, Consuela knelt in front of Jimmy and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He grinned shyly but didn't release Laurel's hand. The housekeeper disappeared through the door under the balcony.

“Well, Laurel. How are you? Not
too
many bruises, I hope?”

“What the hell kind of remark is that?” Michael towered over his sister-in-law.

“Really, Michael, your military career has done nothing for your vocabulary. Must you swear?” Janet wore her working smock; her once-molded copper curls had frizzled in the heat, the lines on her damp face no longer softened by makeup. Lines that Laurel hadn't noticed before pulled down on the corners of Janet's mouth.

Michael moved to stand in front of the fireplace where the. bulky outline of a picture frame showed through the green velvet draped on a copper rod above the mantel. “Is this the surprise? Have you turned artist now?”

“You'll see,” Janet said, flopping down on a nearby couch. “Fix us a drink, Michael. Something cold.”

If Michael noticed her commanding tone, he didn't show it. But Laurel could feel tension rising in the room as he moved to a bar under the balcony.

Janet turned to her and Jimmy. “Well, sit down, you two. Don't stand there like beggars. After all, you practically own the place.”

Laurel sat across from her, Jimmy close beside her. She wished they hadn't come, too.

“You haven't said a word since you came into this room. Does he beat you to keep you silent?”

Laurel felt anger rise up her throat, and she managed through clenched teeth, “Only on Sundays.” She caught Michael's startled glance as he bent over her to offer a tall glass on a tray and his deep-throated chuckle as he passed the tray to Janet.

Paul entered through the door under the balcony, Claire and Consuela behind him. “What is it now? You know we can't be dis … oh, Michael, Laurel. I forgot you were coming. Forgive me.”

“Deep in another book, Paul?” Michael asked, handing the tray around.

“Yes, well into the research anyway.” Paul and Claire were still in their lab jackets, and both sides of Paul's mustache quivered impatiently. He looked drawn and tired and somehow older, like a sad old bird peeking out through the magnified cages of his glasses.