Philly Stakes (22 page)

“Yes, but I still don’t—”

“The newcomer in my story? Myson? The one who steals the horses? That was Alexander Clausen. That’s who ruined my life.”

I looped my foot around the rung of a stool and pulled it over. “How?” I asked her, sitting down. “What did he really do? What did stealing the horses really mean?”

Her sigh whooshed out of the receiver. “Cars,” she said, pausing and panting as if the word had been a desperately heavy load she had finally put down. “He got his first dealership by robbing Donnaker, his boss, well, my husband Dom’s boss, too. Just like in my story, except of course Donnaker wasn’t a king. Donnaker had a stroke, had to stop working for a year, and this nobody, this new salesman, Alexander Clausen, was suddenly supervising, keeping records, bossing. You know, everything Donnaker had done. Running the show.”

While she spoke, I rummaged through the wicker basket until I found the mimeographed newsletter with Minna’s story. I correlated her telephone narrative with the “Un-Fairy Tale.” She was rather literal, parallel for parallel.

“He got twice the commission the other men did, because of his extra work.” She sounded as if she could barely control her indignation, all these many years later.

I skimmed her story while she simmered and fumed. The horses had disappeared. “The cars,” I prompted, “where did they go?”

“You caught that, did you?” She laughed with no mirth. “Sold,” she whispered. “Not on the floor, not legally. Out of the warehouse where they kept extra inventory, where they took the ones being customized—you know, the fancy special work? The cars were sold and shipped overseas. By guess who and guess who else.”

“Clausen and Etienne?” I sounded like Peter Lorre, hunched over the receiver, whispering. I cleared my throat and sat up straight, hoping Macavity hadn’t caught the act.

“Yes.” She sounded heavy and ominous, like every old horror movie. “The inventory and the money disappeared. Salesmen like my husband didn’t get paid. It was a terrible time for us.”

She paused, but only briefly, and for dramatic reasons, not because she didn’t remember every detail and relish the telling. For years, her story had stayed alive in vivid color, always visible to her, even when she became blind to everything else, always pressing against her tongue and her heart, echoing in her ears. Now it was spilling out, and I didn’t have to do a thing in the way of prompting. “See, a man mixed up my husband Dom with Etienne and told him things so that Dom realized what was going on, but only about Etienne, nobody else. And it made sense. Etienne was a poor ignorant immigrant, from North Africa, I think. Didn’t finish high school. No diploma, just that letter jacket that he maybe stole. And suddenly, he has fancy homes, lots of cash—and the other men there not even getting paid. So my husband was real suspicious, but before he did anything, he disappeared.”

“Who did?”

“Just when Donnaker was getting better, coming back, Etienne was gone—poof!—except he didn’t tell his girl, and he left his jacket and his passport behind so you know he wasn’t on any trip like they said he was. He was dead and hidden away, even if the police never found him. They even said it was suspicious. And meanwhile, the business was bankrupt, all those cars sold in secret out of the warehouse, while the ones on the floor sold for next to nothing—‘See what Santa’s giving away’ he’d say in his ads. Called himself that even then, even though it was still Donnaker Motors. And even worse, all the cars still on inventory but missing, all those debts and unpaid bills. And my husband told Clausen about the thing with the warehouse, the customizing, Etienne, and Clausen fired Dom and made it sound like Dom had something to do with the mess the business was in, so Donnaker wouldn’t even talk to him. But it was Alexander Clausen all the time. He was the one planned it. He was the one killed Etienne.”

“How can you know something like that?”

“I know. Because Donnaker declared bankruptcy. Because Clausen suddenly had money to buy the franchise. And the old man still thinking of him like a son! So grateful, because Clausen gave him money to tide him over. It was his own money! The murderer, the liar, the cheat comes out a hero—winds up with three dealerships, plus all those buildings—the condos and office buildings and God knows what else so that they talk about maybe he should be the next mayor—and my husband, may he rest in peace, an honest man, had no job and a cloud over his name until the day he died. Is this fair? But I never said a word because I was too afraid—the man had already killed one person who knew the secret of his success.”

“You mustn’t be afraid,” I said. “He’s dead. He can’t hurt anybody anymore.” True, but even I could see how long the already inflicted hurts lasted. And as if on cue, in walked another of his victims.

Laura and Sasha’s noses were bright red, and the brown paper bag they carried had greasy spots. But Laura had such an unqualified smile that I began to believe that steak sandwiches, or even their aroma and excess grease, might be panaceas. Then she put down the bag and pulled an envelope out of her pocket.

“We stopped at Aunt Alma’s, and look—a letter from Peter!” She tried to open it without taking off her mittens.

Sasha gestured me to get off the phone. “The cheese will congeal,” she said, grimacing.

“I hear voices,” Minna White said. “Is she back?”

“Yes,” I answered. “So I’d better…”

“Now don’t go saying anything. Not anything, do you understand?”

“Sure,” I said. “But I have one question. How come you used—”

“Is she listening?” Minna’s obsessive concern with Laura made no sense. What did she think Laura would or could do to her? Did she believe there was a family vendetta, now that she had told her story? And who even knew the story? Mining Silver’s readership was a little more limited than, say, People magazine’s. “Where is she?” Minna demanded.

“Upstairs. Washing up.” Laura, engrossed in Peter’s letter, examining the envelope now, didn’t even look my way to figure out what I might be talking, or lying, about. “So can I ask?”

“I don’t know, she might…”

“This is about your writing style,” I said quickly, and I interpreted Minna’s little pop of an “oh!” as acquiescence. “Why did you use Etienne’s name? Only Etienne’s.”

“Because it’s so fancy. Like a fairy-tale name. And because he was dead, so he wouldn’t mind and he couldn’t sue me. I didn’t know it was really so unusual until that man said so.”

“Who?”

“You know. My secret admirer. He said he’d once known a man named Etienne. Only one. I’m sure there are more, aren’t you? It’s foreign, so maybe in Philadelphia it’s rare, that’s all. But what if there’s only maybe one more? Could the one sue me?”

I began to suspect that Minna White enjoyed being afraid of something, almost anything. Perhaps, in a constricted life, imagined enemies broadened her horizons. It might be cruel to completely release her from anxiety. “I don’t think so,” I said, therefore, and then, to give her something to quiver over now that Clausen was dead, I added, very delicately, “but of course, I’m not an attorney.”

She sighed with a mix of pleasure and pain, and then, after her promise to give me the results of the cannoli tasting very soon, we hung up.

“Time to eat,” Sasha said.

I wanted a breather to evaluate what Minna had said, to see if it was the key to anything or everything. I settled instead for steak sandwiches and joined Sasha at the glass dining table.

“He’s running away.” Laura floated toward us, holding her letter.

Sasha had set out homespun place mats, beer mugs filled with ice, a bottle of diet soda and a trio of sandwiches swaddled in white butcher paper with translucent spots where the greasy treasures had begun working their way through.

“Peter?” she asked Laura.

Laura nodded, face deep in private thought. She sat down with us, almost as if unaware of what she was doing.

“You haven’t been talking about boys, have you? Okay,” I said, “you have—but Laura, please tell me you haven’t been listening. Sasha knows about many things, but not men.” Sasha, a french fry midway to her mouth, glared. “I take that back. Sasha knows about men—but she can never remember what she knows. So she has to learn the same thing, over and over again, and—what was that? Peter ran away?”

“He’s really mad at his mother.” A triumphant, vindictive expression flared for a moment, surprising me. It was the first time I’d seen an authentic, complicated teenage girl stick her face out from behind the Laura mask.

“Eat!” Sasha said, pushing a paper cocoon toward Laura. Then in as close to a maternal act as I’ve seen from her, she unwrapped it, unveiling the fragrant, dripping roll. “Eat, skinny!” Sasha demanded again, and this time, Laura obeyed.

As did I, without prompting.

I wished I could be alone with Sasha so that I could talk everything through. Although, she needed so much catching up, maybe it wasn’t worth it. I was shocked to realize that she had been away for a long weekend, not the months it felt like.

The three of us had eaten together only five nights ago, but the party had been held in another time and world. Now the Clausen living room was gutted and boarded up. Alexander was no more, nor was Jacob. Somebody had changed into a killer that night. Alice was in an institution and Laura was living with me. The only people in the same situation now as they’d been on that night were the homeless. Their lives were still unbearable. I lost my appetite.

Minna’s story made blackmail a definite possibility. Known murderers were seldom elected mayor. Or heaped with civic awards. Or even allowed to build major civic projects. Assuming the story was true, or relevant to what had happened.

But why would it have waited years and years to explode at the party?

I tried to focus on the thin slices of steak, melted cheese and fried onions. But names and possibilities were what I tasted.

Peter had reason to threaten Clausen. He could have done it. I wanted to believe in him, but he was a troubled adolescent, he was powerfully made and surely, with his history, abusive fathers were a sore point and a trigger for his temper. And he’d been furious that night, righteously, justifiably furious.

And Laura could have done it, alone or with him. It made me sick to think of either one of them as killers, locked up and condemned, but the fact was, they had cause and opportunity and whatever else the entry requirements were. I bit into my sandwich and chewed on it and the theory.

Sasha was into the wise-older-woman mode. She leaned toward Laura. “Listen to your elders. Cholesterol is a public-relations ploy to boost the sales of cheesesteak and hoagies,” she explained.

Alice could have done it. God knows, she probably knew about everything, every offense and lie and crime, back to Etienne, or before. If only she were sober and assertive, or either one.

“See, cholesterol terror makes them not only delicious, but sinful. Irresistible. Not only fattening, but dangerous. Almost as bad for your heart as men are. And look how we are with men.”

Etienne could have been the one. If he were alive. Boy, could he ever.

“The only thing left to make them perfect, is to make them illegal.”

The old king—Donnaker—could, if he were alive and able bodied. I nearly choked. Laura looked terrified. Even Sasha stopped rhapsodizing as I stood up, coughing, found the phone directory, drank some water, found the number I wanted, and dialed.

“Mrs. White, please,” I said. “Minna White. She’s probably in the dayroom, where the television is.”

“Are you all right?” Sasha asked.

I nodded. I was all right and right, too. I was sure I was. The scattered pieces finally locked one into the other and made a picture.

“Mrs. White,” I said when she picked up the dayroom extension. “The old king—Mr. Donnaker—his first name was Jacob, wasn’t it?”

* * *

For a while afterward, i waved off Sasha’s questions, shaking my head. The steak sandwich sat on the table, uneaten, except for the part inside me that felt like a bowling ball lodged below my breasts.

Jacob Donnaker. The mysterious visitor who’d read Minna’s story. Who had known an Etienne who disappeared. Who’d lost his “stables.” Who hadn’t known what had happened to him, who had trusted Alexander Clausen, accepted his own ruination and Alexander’s triumphs as the way of the world until he read that story and searched out Minna White. One week ago. Last Tuesday. Two days before the party—the day somebody at Silverwood ordered a taxi at the senior citizen discount rate.

How convenient that at the same time, Santa had been making sure that his holiday act of charity was in no way anonymous, so that every newspaper in town had photographs and feature stories on the man’s benevolence. It must have seemed a gift, making it ridiculously easy to have anonymous access to him.

But the jigsaw puzzle still had gaping holes, because it was a long trip between Jacob Donnaker’s getting out of his cab and winding up dead in the Clausens’ toolshed.

Fourteen

ASIDE FROM INDIGESTION, THE NEXT FEW HOURS WENT RATHER WELL. I NEVER had my conversation with Sasha, because, hunger satisfied, she remembered the need to pack and get ready for her morning flight, and Laura abruptly decided to walk partway with her, even without the promise of viewing historical marijuana patches.

“You’ll be right back, won’t you?” I asked, unable to define what I feared might happen to her. After all, she had been least safe in her own home, not outside, and not at the hands of strangers, but I felt anxious all the same. I was a little awkward with the instant-mother role. I lacked a sense of timing, a history I could consult for guidance. I had missed fourteen years of getting used to Laura and gauging such traits as street smarts.

“Right back,” she assured me.

“It’s freezing cold out there.”

“Not so bad,” she answered, and then they were gone, and I felt like every hovering, clutching, perpetually anxious mother.

“What the hell,” I said. I opened the door again. “Be careful!” I called. Sasha turned around and shouted, “No way!” but Laura looked at me with the same confused, bemused expression I had beamed at my own mother.