Philly Stakes (23 page)

Magical incantations completed, I tossed away our lunchtime leavings, wrapping up my sandwich. I’d have the rest tonight. No—I kept forgetting that Nick was coming over, cooking dinner for Laura and me. I imagined him in my tiny kitchen, overcharged, banging pots and pans, dirtying everything at once, talking nonstop. A performance artist and, I hoped, a cook. But I would have been just as happy with the leftover steak sandwich.

Time now, however, to face the music, act like a woman. I took a deep breath and dialed long-distance, and almost immediately launched into an impassioned and, I might say, rather eloquent address on the topics of mothers, fathers, children in general, Laura, her father and mother in as much detail as I could stomach and manatees whenever I needed sweeping generalizations about innocent victims needing protectors, and God knows what else. But I was not one-fifth through when I realized that my mother understood. Her world is enviably clear and defined. There is right and there is wrong. B. Pepper’s laws are debatable, but she will never be the one to debate them. Even when she’s force-feeding me a stuttering podiatrist, she is following her most basic law which is “protect children.” It was from that central point that she spread out to protect other species and embrace other causes.

So she understood what I was doing and why and approved. “Poor child,” she said. “She’s lucky she has you.” And that was that. I was glad to share that woman’s genes.

“I’m lucky I have you,” I answered.

“And that foot man?” she said. “A real nothing. Can you believe, he brought a ‘friend’ with him. A tramp. A floozie in his mother’s house. You can do better than a man who loves bunions.”

“I’ll be there soon as I can. I promise. Kiss everybody, okay? I do miss you.”

“Be careful,” she said. Her head wasn’t out the front door, calling after me, but I felt an overwhelming kinship.

“Mom, there’s nothing to be careful about.”

“Amanda, two men were murdered.”

“I’m not involved. I’m an interested bystander, a concerned citizen. That is all.”

“I don’t know…” she murmured.

“Hey—the most dangerous thing I’ve done today was eat too much. Beginning with a cannoli. You should never have told me to buy some for Minna White. They’re irresistible.”

“So you went. I forgot to ask. That was good of you. You make me proud.”

All it took was visiting an old lady and having a child in, even a borrowed one. An entire conversation and she hadn’t once referred to my unwedded state.

“One thing.”

The muscles in my neck and upper back contracted in anticipation of the next installment of “Hunt for a Husband.”

“About your sweater,” she said. “Some of the yarn is…tired. But there’s enough for a vest. A special one. Long. That you don’t button or close, you know?”

I knew. Like the ones in style twenty years ago. I could wear it for a road tour of Hair. “A short vest would be fine, Mom.” It was worth a try.

“I don’t stint on my children. Down to your knees. And I was thinking, if I run out of your yarn, I could border it with some nice navy wool I have.”

What I had once wanted was a pink and gray short-sleeved pullover, but I was feeling so positively maudlin about how magnificently she’d handled the canceled trip, that I said that sounded fine. Maybe long, long vests would be back in style by the time she finished.

* * *

I reached Mackenzie before he left for the airport. “Jacob Donnaker,” I said. “Clausen’s mentor, employer and victim. Remember, I told you I have his picture if anybody needs it. Sasha had it.”

“Thanks for the name. Saves time. But we have a photo of the, uh, victim.”

“Yes, but he’s alive in Sasha’s.”

“I’ll let you know. But thanks all the same.”

Pity. It might have raised Sasha’s stock a few points. “It must have been Donnaker and Clausen that Laura heard quarreling, don’t you think?” I said.

“And then there was one?” Mackenzie said. “At which time, out of remorse, Clausen beat himself silly and fractured his own skull? That what you’re sayin’?”

“Well, no, a third person—”

“—came downstairs?”

“I thought you’d dropped that theory.”

“You keep mixin’ us up. You dropped it. Well, two of them are out of circulation for a while. That’s some relief.”

I didn’t choose to mention Peter’s letter to Laura.

“Of course, you’ve got the third one as a houseguest, just to even the odds. Damn but I’d feel better if you were on your way to Florida. I don’t like this. Not at all. How’d you get so involved?”

“I’m not.” Hadn’t I just said that? Wasn’t it true?

“Maybe I can get back sooner. How’d that be?”

“Wonderful. Incredible. Heart’s balm.”

“How’s that?”

“Try to.”

“Mandy?” His voice was low and intense. “One thing. Be careful.”

* * *

“Digest quickly,” I said to Laura. “Nick will be here soon, and we’ll have to eat again and act as if we enjoy it, too. Somehow, dinner sounded a lot better this morning.” Nonetheless, I set the round table again, using my favorite—also one and only—good tablecloth and my best floral-patterned napkins.

Laura looked oddly jaunty, as if she had a pleasurable secret, had somehow outwitted the adult world. I amended the impression to read Laura looked odd because she was wearing a normal adolescent expression, slightly off-putting and unnerving. The old I-Know Something-You-Don’t-That-Would-Drive-You-Up-A-Tree. Basic teenager. The mask was fracturing, crumbling off in bits and pieces. Of course it was going to take lots of time and work and help to truly destroy it, to make her feel safe while exposed, but I could see it beginning, so I knew it was possible.

She helped polish my grandmother’s silver, and carefully set three places.

I only had two crystal wine glasses. I added a rather squatty glass, one with a bank logo on it.

“Three?” Laura said.

“Think of yourself as European this evening,” I said, hoping I wasn’t committing yet another crime, letting a fourteen-year-old taste wine. “A sip, that’s all. And you cannot drive afterward.” I walked over to the fireplace and lit the kindling.

“Tell you what,” Laura said. “I’ll wait two years to sober up. And then will you give me the car keys?”

My heart lurched and expanded, and it wasn’t from my bending over the fireplace or the flash of heat as the kindling caught. I had heard a small stab at humor. No doubt about it. Laura Clausen had let a joke burp out of her. Laura Clausen could laugh a little. Laura Clausen was going to survive. I felt as if I might cry, which wouldn’t help her one bit. Instead, I scooped up Macavity, who’d been inspecting my fire building, and gave him a celebratory ruffling behind his ears until he looked like he might swoon. Then, back under control, I went to the kitchen, opening and shutting drawers, rummaging through my meager candle supply. Everything I found had seen better times.

“I stopped at Aunt Alma’s again,” Laura said.

“Which reminds me—do the people where your mom is know where you are?” I asked her.

“I called there this morning. Right before you picked me up.” She sounded old and tired whenever either of her parents was the topic. “I’ll call again later. Or tomorrow.”

I stopped shuffling through the drawers. “Listen, maybe you can’t believe this right now, but you’re strong. Strong enough to get through all of this. Let us help you, but understand that you can do it.”

For a moment, her expression was like a gulp, like someone wolfing down my words as quickly as possible. Then she grew more wary, distancing herself, and shrugged. I returned to my search for a usable candle.

“I left a note,” she blurted out after a pause. “On the door. For Peter. So he’ll know where I am.”

“Aunt Alma’s door?”

She nodded.

“That’s not the greatest idea.” There were no decent candles in the house, and I wondered why I kept these stubs, but under the theory that there must be a reason, because I was doing so, I put them back into the drawer and kept on doing so. “It’s like an ad for a thief—nobody’s home here, come in.” I also felt extremely queasy about the idea of Peter, angrier than ever, coming here. He was fine and dandy while Laura was his special project, the dragon-protector—at least I thought and hoped so—but how would he react if anything in the status quo changed, or if he felt threatened?

And more to the point—where had he been when he wasn’t in Laura’s room?

Laura settled on the sofa. I looked up, afraid that even keeping most of my reservations to myself, I had nonetheless shattered the shaky little bridge between us. But she looked serene enough. In fact, she made a lovely tableau with her legs curled under her, the firelight adding a glow to her hair and skin and the little Christmas tree behind her twinkling in the street window.

“I did it in code,” she said. “It says “P.—L. with M.P.”

“I get the Peter and Laura, but what’s M.P.? Military Police?”

“It’s Miss Pepper.”

I ducked out of sight and pawed through my junk drawer to hide my smile. Miss Pepper! I felt neutered, my first name surgically removed. Miss Pepper was a concept, a role, not a woman. If Peter deciphered the code, would Miss Pepper be impressed or depressed?

The fact was, there were no surviving candles. I opted for a few votive lights, and even they had seen better votives. “You know what I wish I had,” I said, making non-Peter conversation, “those squatty candles you had at the Christmas party. They smelled so good and were so solid; you didn’t have to worry about them, and…” I froze, the votive candles still in my hand.

“What?” Laura asked. “And what?”

I stared at her, seeing not this Christmas tree, firelight and sofa, but that other one. “The candles,” I said. “Do you remember them?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Do you remember where they were?”

“Pretty much everywhere.”

I walked over and sat across from her, shaking my head. “Not really. I remember thinking how clever somebody had been. They looked like they were all over the place, but they were only in safe places. Mantel, niches, windowsills and parts of tables that nobody would use. And they were so solid, and stuck onto those heavy brass holders.”

She smiled halfheartedly, humoring me.

“You don’t see, do you?” I leaned closer. “Think, Laura. That little table next to the sofa—I remember there wasn’t room for my punch glass on it. I remember thinking somebody had made sure there’d be no water rings on what had to be a valuable piece of furniture. Because it was filled to capacity with an ashtray and an arrangement of poinsettias.”

She shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “So what?”

“When you came downstairs—when your father was sleeping—was something burning on that table? Like a cigarette? You said you stared at him. Wouldn’t it have seemed odd, definitely something you’d notice if he was asleep and a cigarette were still burning? Think—during all that time, can you remember smoke coming up from the ashtray?”

She shook her head.

“Then there wasn’t anything burning there. There was never room for a candle. It would have made the poinsettia a fire hazard.” I stood up and walked the short distance to the window. I was churning inside, and she was still sitting like a still life. “You don’t understand what this means, do you?” I asked. “Laura,” I said as calmly as I could, “it means you did not have anything to do with your father’s death. Think—think what you remember! Standing over a sleeping man—then the tree in your hands and the flames.

“Where did the flames come from? That tree didn’t have a single light or electrical wire on it. It was all old-fashioned ornaments. How did it catch fire?”

“The candle—the…” She shook her head.

“What candles? Where? There weren’t any candles in the tree’s trajectory.”

“I don’t see what—”

I knelt in front of her. “Listen, this is horrible stuff, but not as horrible as believing you did something you didn’t. Your father wasn’t asleep—he was dead, or very near to it. And you interrupted whatever was supposed to happen next. And when you stood there, looking at your father, somebody else pushed the tree at you, at him, and lit it. And while you ran around, while you realized you were on fire, while your mother threw the water on your nightgown, that somebody got away.”

“How? That wouldn’t be possible without our—”

“The window. Hiding behind the drapes in the big bay behind the tree. It’s boarded over now, so I don’t know if the firemen or the—that person—broke it. But I think that’s how.”

She looked pale and ill, on the verge of tears, and she pressed her fingers to her temples. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“I almost—you say something like that, like some man went out the window, or pushed the tree, and then I see it, think I’m remembering it. I can almost see him, could almost draw him—and then it’s gone, altogether gone, and I know I made it up because you said it.”

“Do you remember anything like that? Or hearing breaking glass?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It sounded like everything was breaking. I was screaming and my mother was screaming and then Peter was shouting and, yes, there was noise—and the fire made its own noise, but I…” Her eyes were bleak and she looked even more as if she might cry.

“You didn’t do it, Laura. You did absolutely nothing except come downstairs at the wrong time.”

She kept shaking her head, unable or unwilling to assimilate this, unable to deny it, as if she needed to have killed her father. Maybe she thought she’d settled the score, shown some power, violently reclaimed control of her life. I don’t know. We’d work on that later. For now, it was important to make it clear that she was not a killer.

“Would you mind—my head hurts—I’m going to lie down,” she said.

“Of course. One question though—you said Peter was out of your room, that you talked later about hearing a quarrel.”

She nodded.

“Laura—was he back in your room when you went downstairs?”

She stared at me, mouth agape.

“Isn’t it foolhardy not to even consider—please, Laura—was he in your room when you went downstairs? Or was it only afterward, after the fire, that you compared the sounds and the events?”