Philly Stakes (9 page)

I stopped her, put my hands on her shoulders and spoke calmly. “What do you have to do?”

She gave an exhausted sigh. “Tell them, of course.”

“Tell who?”

“The police.”

“No, wait. We agreed that we wouldn’t say anything to them yet.”

“Laura isn’t supposed to. I have to.”

“Why? What do you have to tell them?”

She looked surprised I’d ask. “That I did it,” she said. “I murdered my husband. Finally.”

I lowered my hands and sat down abruptly. I didn’t believe her, but then I hadn’t believed Laura, and I believed even less that Santa held his breath until he died.

“Laura is so used to covering for me, that she’ll say she did it. And they’ll believe her, because of…” She perched uncomfortably, tentatively on the arm of my mother’s old sofa, as if she might take flight any moment. “Because there was that…”

“Other fire?” When she nodded, I continued. “But you said it was an accident. In fact, I thought both fires were.”

She examined her manicure.

“Well, for the sake of conversation, then, how did you, ah, do it?” The room temperature plummeted forty or fifty degrees. I put another log on the fire, but it made no difference.

“I don’t remember,” she finally whispered. “I was…having a bad night. I was upstairs, asleep, hating him, and then I was downstairs, so angry, and he was dead and I was glad.” She studied her nail polish again. “Sometimes I…don’t remember. Even when I’m awake. It happens.”

“Maybe you woke up, went down and found him already dead? And you were sleepy and confused, so you thought you had done something?”

She shook her head.

“But the news said you were asleep when the fire started. I assumed—a smoke alarm woke you up, didn’t it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you and your husband quarrel?”

She shook her head.

“So for no particular reason, you—”

“I had reasons.”

“Such as?”

“You think he’s so nice. Everybody thinks he’s so nice.” She looked at me darkly. “He was evil.”

“How? In what way?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So you woke up, went downstairs and—did what?” I made a deal with myself. If Alice Clausen mentioned fireplace pokers or baseball bats or poison or knives or any weapon, if she screamed until he had a heart attack—anything that would have made her husband die before the fire, then I’d contact Mackenzie immediately. If, instead, she said she put a match to him like kindling, I’d maintain my skepticism and silence. “What did you do?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But the police will want to know.”

She shrugged.

I changed course. “If what you’re saying is true—”

“It is!”

“Then why is Laura saying that she—”

“I told you! To protect me!” The arms windmilled. “You don’t understand how it was! You don’t understand anything!”

She was right on the mark. Not only that, but with unrepentant, wobbly confessions from both wife and daughter, I wasn’t overeager ever to understand how it had been.

“Still and all,” I said, “there’s no need to talk to the police yet, is there?”

“What if she does, though?”

“Laura?”

Alice Clausen nodded woefully.

I slumped into a lethargic and heavy confusion. Alice perched like a nervous bird on the arm of the sofa, and we’d probably still be in those positions if the telephone hadn’t rung, breaking the spell.

It was Mackenzie. “Mandy?” I knew from his tone this wasn’t going to be an invitation to party.

“You’re still at work?” Maybe the thirty-six-hour shifts of medical residents are necessary, but why should homicide detectives work that way? After all, their clients are already dead.

“Again, not still. Actually, I’m supposed to be home sleepin’. I’m on four to twelve. Didn’t I tell you? I juggled it around so we’ll have Christmas Eve and Day. Didn’t I give you my schedule?”

“Schedule? You have one? I thought you were indentured.” He didn’t chuckle.

“Maybe real late?” But he was yawning by midsentence, so there went Saturday night.

“What you doin’?” he asked.

I was doing finger exercises on the scales of justice, but I saw no need to tell him.

“Remember that Clausen business?” he asked, idiotically. How could I forget it—even if its players hadn’t been rushing to confess to me? “Surprisin’ thing happened about it just now. A boy, Peter Shaw, called.”

“About…that?” I didn’t want Alice to go on alert.

“You sound weird. Is somebody there with you?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, relieved.

Mackenzie’s voice grew cold. “Didn’t realize you were entertaining. Sorry to interrupt. Get back to your guest.”

“Oh, for the love of—” I gave him three more seconds to fantasize my romantic suitor, and then I opted for honesty. “Alice Clausen’s here.”

With no sound of grinding gears, Mackenzie switched suspicions. “Why?” he demanded.

“For a chat.”

“Sure.” He grew silent, ruminating, meditating, speculating.

“You called because…?”

“Peter. Says he got my name from you. You talk to him?”

“No. But the kids at school remember you from last spring. Besides, nothing about a teacher’s private life escapes them.”

“He hasn’t spoken to you about this?”

“I haven’t seen him since…that night. Why’d he call?”

“You know him, though?” Mackenzie, unlike me, gets the answers he wants.

“Taught him two years ago, if that counts.”

“What was he like?”

“Then? Going through a rough period. Punky, arrogant. Acting out.”

“You think he’s violent?”

I took a deep breath. He had been. Definitely. Also provoked. His father had been an alcoholic who beat up his wife. Peter had intervened, attacked him back, and the father had pressed charges, trying to have Peter institutionalized. Ugly, stupid case that was eventually dropped when the mother filed for divorce. I knew of no further incidents. I chose my words carefully. “He went through a bad time, but it’s long since over. He looks scary with the hair and the muscles and the black clothing, but it’s all adolescent show. Why did he call you?”

“Said he heard I was an okay guy, so he picked me. I thought for a while he was asking me out on a date.”

“Picked you for what?”

“I told him it wasn’t my case, but he didn’t care. He was on his way over and he wanted me. Flattering, I guess.”

“Wanted you for what?”

“To wrap things up with this Clausen business. The kid says he had a fight with Alexander Clausen. Says he killed him. And says he’s not one damned bit sorry.”

Six

MAYBE CONFESSING HAD BECOME TRENDY. I’D HAVE TO ASK MY MOTHER.

What bothered me most was that while everybody seemed ready to be named a murderer, not one of them even mentioned remorse or sorrow about the act. In fact, they seemed chilly and proud of having done the deed.

That made it sound like a group effort, but nobody claimed membership in a club. Not a one of the trio had spoken of collusion or cooperation. Each had acted alone, yet nobody is killed three times.

Either one had done it and two were lying, or all three were guilty of conspiracy and were playing with the truth. Or, and this was my theory of choice because I wanted it so, all three were innocent, lying for reasons I didn’t yet know.

I wondered if anyone had found the missing guest list, or if anyone would even care about doing so now that Peter had confessed.

Alice Clausen sighed jaggedly, startling me. There was something pathetically forgettable about her, a sense that she hadn’t made much of an impression even on herself. “That was your policeman friend, wasn’t it?” she asked anxiously. “What’s happened?” She cringed in anticipation of my answer.

“I’m not sure.” That was the truth, pretty much. Besides, if Alice was confessing to protect Laura, she might react to news of Peter’s confession by retracting her own. Or, worse—if Alice was confessing because she honestly did her husband in—would Peter’s confession let her remain in unpunished, guilty silence?

I didn’t know what to tell her and, more importantly, I didn’t know what I should have told or should now tell Mackenzie. I had made a few side steps, for good reasons, and now my feet were so pretzel-twisted I couldn’t move without falling.

“Did Laura?” Alice Clausen asked. “Tell me. Did she tell him? She promised she wouldn’t, or I wouldn’t have let her out, but…that’s why he called, isn’t it?”

“He didn’t even mention Laura.”

She looked at me suspiciously, then stood up. “Laura’s probably back at Alma’s. It’s too cold to keep walking this long. And Alma’s so busy with Christmas and then they’re going to Antigua, and we’re in their way and…” She began to cry again.

I located the tissue box, patted and clucked sympathetically.

“And of course there’s the funeral…” She blew her nose. “If they ever finish those things, those tests they do.” She paused, and I could almost hear her gears shift again. “It’s so hard!” She shuddered. “Alexander took care of things, not me!”

A part of me registered, with distaste, that she was blindered, drugged, dependent and willingly ineffectual. Not my image of womanhood. But another slice of my consciousness knew that I should stop ticking off a list of character flaws. They weren’t a person. Alice Clausen was, and after watching her synapses wave idly like sea anemones, connecting only by chance, I knew she needed help. And quickly. She was out on an emotional ledge, one foot poised for a dive unless somebody skilled talked her down.

I wasn’t that person, but I could try coddling and the little psychological first aid that I did know. “Let me walk you back to your sister’s,” I said. Once she was settled, I would do my Christmas shopping in one wildly efficient swoop. I thought about the wind-chill factor and the Alice-induced ten-block detour, but realized that aside from humanitarian considerations, I also had no choice on a pragmatic level. If I didn’t help the woman on to her next destination, she’d sit in my living room until she became a nervous fixture, something to be fed and maintained along with the cat.

Alice Clausen looked grateful, embarrassed and suspicious. “I can’t let you…” she said. “It’s out of your way. You mustn’t…” I waited, but she didn’t finish it.

So I armored myself against the great outdoors in Sherpa chic—boots, an extra sweater, coat, scarf, hat and gloves—until I could barely move.

Macavity, the original, definitive “house cat,” jumped onto the sill, verified that the panes were still frosted and returned to the hearth. Smart cat.

Alice layered slowly, pausing in indecision and puzzlement before each new garment. I waited, thick of limb and fat fingered, temperature rising so rapidly that I began longing for the frozen tundra outside.

The telephone rang. Of course. And of course I had forgotten to switch on the machine. “Ignore it,” I announced from behind my muffler.

“It could be Laura,” Alice said. “She worries about me.” She tried to look perturbed by the idea, but it was a pose. Alice Clausen adored her own helplessness.

A mental picture of Laura, undersized in baggy clothing, listing dangerously under the weight of her mother’s leaning made me ache.

The phone rang for the fourth time. Alice Clausen begged with her eyes.

I pulled off one fur-lined glove and picked up the receiver.

“Mandy Pepper? Nick Riley.” I recognized neither the voice nor the name.

“Laura?” Alice asked.

“A telemarketer. Sorry,” I snapped. “This is a bad time and there will never be a good one. I don’t buy by phone, and I don’t do fake polls.”

“The Clausen party.”

I remembered. Late-blooming Nick of the Oxlips.

“I wanted to talk about Sandy Clausen.”

“You’re still working on it?”

“It’s only been two days! I’m writing as fast as I can!”

I took a deep breath. “I mean, does this seem a good time?”

“Well, Christmas makes getting interviews hard, but—”

“Not that! Because your subject is, ah…you know.”

“Oh!” he said. “That. Actually it’s made it a hotter topic, if I can bring it in soon. You know, who was he, how’d he live and how’d he die. In fact, it’s pretty much presold to Philadelphia Magazine.”

“Sounds promising.” I itched inside my many layers. I’d be the only Philadelphian to get prickly heat in December.

Lest I overheat to the point of spontaneous combustion, I began unbuttoning. “Remember when I said this was a bad time?” I asked. “It really was—is. So congratulations on the sale, and good luck.”

“You said I could interview you.”

I couldn’t remember. I still felt like Three Mile Island just before meltdown.

“They want it as soon as possible—while he’s news; you understand—so I was wondering if you have any time today.”

“I’m on my way out.”

“Later?”

“Don’t think so.” Frivolous as it was compared to homicide, the fact was, Christmas would arrive no matter who had done what to whom, and I had more gifts left to find than hours in which to do so.

“Then when’s good for you?”

The next few days looked just as congested. Unless Mackenzie defected once again, in which case I’d need time to kick walls, rip up his photos and recuperate. But I wouldn’t count my missing chickens until I had to. And beyond the Mackenzie days, Florida loomed. There was simply no time. I gently suggested the same.

“I know it’s Saturday and all,” he replied, “but is there any chance of your being free for dinner?”

I squelched an automatic refusal. I could spend my postshopping Saturday evening with Lean Cuisine, those unfinished greeting cards, and TV shows designed for thirteen-year-old baby-sitters. Or I could be with an attractive and very acceptable companion. Besides, somebody was ringing my doorbell. So I accepted.

After I’d hung up, I was able to untangle and remove my coat and the extra sweater as well. Then, finally comfortable, I answered the door so that the Canadian cold front could blast directly into my veins and sinus cavities.

“Laura!” Alice Clausen said, because that is who ushered the next ice age into my living room. “Where were you?”

“Aunt Alma said you were here,” Laura spoke in her classroom voice—an almost inaudible murmur. “I hope it’s all right that I came over, Miss Pepper.”