A Most Curious Murder (22 page)

In the morning, they all visited Abigail at the hospital: Jenny, Zoe, Penelope, and Tony, since Penelope believed there was strength in numbers and at least one of them might get in to see her.

“There are already two people with her,” said a plump and tough-looking nurse seated behind the floor desk. “Sorry. You’ll have to wait.”

“Is one of the people with her a policeman?” Tony asked.

She shook her head. “The policeman’s in the hall. There’s one woman and one man with her. That’s all I can say.”

“Could you go back and ask Ms. Cane if she’ll see us?” Tony leaned heavily against the desk, taking the weight off his bad leg. Jenny noticed him wince and hurt for him. Too much going on. Of course he would be hurting.

The nurse reluctantly agreed and left them behind to wait.

When she came back, Rudkers was with her, walking fast, arms swinging beside him. His face was anything but friendly.

“Mr. Rudkers is Ms. Cane’s attorney,” the flustered nurse tried to say.

“We know who Mr. Rudkers is.” Jenny stepped up to meet him.

“You certainly do,” Alfred sputtered. “And you’ve been told to leave Abigail alone. My next step is to have you barred from bothering her, if I have to obtain a restraining order. No visits. No phone calls. There have been two murders in her family. Now an attempt on her life. Personally, I think the whole group of you should be jailed.”

Tony’s face was the best cop face Jenny had seen on him when he stepped up nose to nose with Alfred. “Abigail was on her way to see Jenny, here, about something important. It wasn’t Jenny or her mother who attacked her. And not Zoe Zola.”

“We don’t know that.” Alfred leaned back and shook his head. “The killer used one of her fairies to knock her down with. Zoe’d never hurt one of those little people.”

Tony turned to the nurse. “Did you ask Ms. Cane if she will see us?”

The nurse was flustered, caught in the middle of a dogfight. “I was asking when he interrupted.”

Alfred narrowed his eyes. “Ms. Cane has a concussion. She is not aware enough to know the danger she is in. These people are not her friends. They may be involved in her brothers’ murders. As her attorney—” He reared back and frowned as Carmen Volker came hurrying down the hall, shoes half-tripping her. The woman’s eyes bulged when she saw who stood with Alfred.

“They won’t allow them in with Abigail, will they?” Carmen demanded of Alfred, her eyes going from face to face.

Something very odd about those eyes
, Jenny thought.
More intrigue than worry
.

Carmen’s face wrinkled. “Abigail’s in pain, you know. This isn’t right. You people shouldn’t be bothering her.”

Carmen turned to Jenny. “Not right at all. Why do you want to torture poor Abigail this way? She’s lost both her brothers.”

Alfred left them, but only for a few minutes. He was back with a new nurse. A male nurse. A burly nurse.

“We want these people to go. They’re bothering Ms. Cane. I’m her guardian now.”

“Show me the guardianship papers,” Penelope demanded, standing in Alfred’s face. He backed away. His thin eyebrows shot up.

“Don’t have them? Okay, show me your power of attorney.”

Alfred frowned as the burly nurse shook his head. “I have to check with the patient anyway. Rules are rules.”

“But you don’t know—”

The nurse was on his way back down the hall.

When he returned, he said, “Ms. Cane would like to see her visitors. Two of them can go on back.”

Alfred sputtered, but Tony and Jenny were off to Abigail’s room, with Zoe and Penelope waiting behind.

***

Her head was still wrapped in bandages, but her face had color today. She sat up to greet her guests, though the welcome look quickly turned to confusion. Like the good hostess she’d been taught to be, she covered her dismay with a warm welcome.

At first there was the usual hospital talk: she was doing fine and no, she didn’t need anything. Then Jenny asked when she would be getting out, and she answered, “Oh, not long. Not long. I’m hoping to go home today. I’m fine, you know. Completely fine. Except for this . . .” She touched the bandage on her head. “I suppose I’ve been hurt. But I don’t remember a thing. Can you imagine . . . eh, you are?”

“Jenny Weston. Dora Weston’s daughter.”

Abigail smiled but couldn’t cover that the name meant nothing to her.

“Well, you’re all my guests, so please sit down. And please, what is the weather like today? Hot yet? Soon enough it will be fall, then winter, and we’ll all dream of these warm and sunny days, won’t we? And dream of things that used to be.”

Alfred and Carmen stood in the hall, listening near the door. Abigail leaned around Tony and waved at them. “My good friends,” she beamed, then looked puzzled. “Now what was I talking about? Oh yes, about things that used to be . . .”

She leaned back on the pillows, her eyes drooped then flew open.

“What was I saying? Oh, yes—things that used to be. A sin. A terrible vision.”

She lowered her voice to near a whisper, then looked hard at Jenny. “Have you ever done something so terrible it cost you everything?”

Jenny didn’t answer.

Abigail fixed her eyes on Tony. She let her eyelids drift slowly closed.

They waited. It was a few minutes until she opened her eyes and motioned them as close as they could get.

“I saw it all so clearly,” she said with effort. “Just the way it was. I don’t understand how a brain can get so twisted. I was in my thirties; I should have been onto him by then. So much a dream now. More than thirty years.”

“I spied on my father one day.” She glanced at them coquettishly; in her eyes Jenny could see the little girl. She put her fingers to her lips. “I often did, you know. I never married. All my curiosity was focused on an aging man who never loved me.”

“Abigail! You should be resting,” Carmen called from the hall.

Abigail shook her head, which made her wince and put a hand up to the bandages.

She put a finger to her lips and motioned Tony and Jenny even closer, so she could whisper.

“He didn’t love my brothers, either. Nor my poor mother. My father hated and distrusted the world around him. Sad, don’t you think, that he had children who wanted to love him and he couldn’t stand the sight of us?”

She drew a few deep breaths.

“I dislike telling this to anyone. Now there’s something . . . my brothers are dead. But let me go on. I need you to understand. People shouldn’t do the things my father did.”

She rested another minute, tuning out the voices calling to her from the hall.

“I filled my life with good works and tried to stay out of Father’s way.” She tried to lean up to be closer to her listeners. “But as I said, I spied on him. As often as I could. Especially when he was in his den. My little game. Often, when he came out he would be smiling. A thing so rare, it made me uncontrollably inquisitive.”

She exhaled slowly. “One afternoon, he was sitting at his desk, but he’d left the door open, so I could see through the crack. A small wooden box, I’d seen it long before when I was spying. He sat at his desk with the box in front of him. He unlocked it with a small key on a chain he wore. He took out a sheaf of papers and read them one by one. He smiled. The papers gave him pleasure. When he was finished, he bundled the papers together, put them back into the box, and locked it with that little key. He took the box to the closet, climbed up on a chair, and set it on the shelf. When he was finished, he locked the closet. I scurried away before he came out of the room, but what had surprised me was that there were four papers this
time, where I’d only seen three when I’d spied on him before. For weeks I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I was so curious as to what could possibly give my father so much pleasure and be such a welcomed addition to his file.

“I would never have looked, not really, but I found that little key on the foyer floor one day. It must have dropped off his chain. I picked it up and held it in my palm. What a conflict in my nine-year-old soul.”

She closed her eyes at the rising commotion near the door. A nurse had come to quiet Carmen and Alfred.

Abigail cleared her throat.

“Where was I?”

“You found the key to the box.”

“Yes. Sneaky, I know. Reprehensible. Father was to be out all that morning. I couldn’t help myself. I put a chair in the open closet and climbed up. I took the box down and sat on the chair. I opened the box and found many papers, not just the four I’d recently seen him gloating over. There were deeds to forest land we still own—which made me dream of being free to run through the trees. There were signed agreements and contracts I didn’t understand. On top of the others were the folded sheets of paper that gave him so much pleasure.

“In my heart, I think I’d hoped they were our birth certificates—his three children. And maybe his wedding license. That would have been nice. He would have seemed to be a caring man even though he never showed his feelings for us. How I wished that I’d find something that made him human, something exposing a heart.”

“What were those papers, Abigail? Did you find what you were looking for?”

She lay back and closed her eyes again. Jenny and Tony exchanged a look across the bed. They wondered if she was
asleep, if they should wake her. Their fifteen minutes with her were almost up.

It was a few minutes more until her lips moved.

“I didn’t read them, only unfolded them. I looked up, and he was standing in the doorway, watching. I had no place to hide. No place to quickly stash the papers and the box. I’ve often wondered . . .” She looked above their heads, back into a place no one should ever go. “I’ve often wondered if he left the key behind to test me.”

She closed her eyes and this time dropped into a deep and soundless sleep.

Zoe’s little head was bent down into her hands. She sat atop a stack of thin phonebooks at Dora’s table, surrounded by her friends. “Terrible. Awful. ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave.’”

“Stick to
Alice
,” Jenny complained. “I have enough trouble with one writer.”

“I wonder if she suspects we have the key.” Zoe looked around the table at the others who shrugged.

“We didn’t get to ask her where the box was,” Tony said. “She fell asleep and our time was up.”

“Maybe tomorrow. If she goes home.” Dora filled iced tea glasses around the table. “You have to ask her.”

“My head hurts,” Zoe said. “There’s a gong inside my skull, swinging back and forth. Suitcase words: Key—a hard metal object. Key—a code to a secret. Key—the most important part of the problem.”

“No.” Jenny put up a hand. “Box. Box. Box. A receptacle for many things. A sparring match. A special place in a theatre. A small space with sides on it. A place for terrible secrets.” Zoe nodded to herself.

“Now, let me think.” Zoe screwed her face into a tortured grimace. “I think . . . I think . . . I think . . . it was about ‘time.’ Not really ‘about time,’ but it was a relative of time.”

The others thought along, though Penelope checked her watch.

“‘Time’ as days and hours,” Zoe said. “It’s about ‘time.’ I don’t have ‘time.’ I’m doing ‘time.’ Or . . .” She put a finger to the end of her nose and pushed hard. “It’s a suitcase word, all right. When I try to recall why, the words wrinkle up and slide behind the Cheshire Cat, because I worked on him today. If only . . .”

She leaned forward over the table and put her head in her hands.

Fida snored under the table. A teapot whistled on the stove. White plates and polished silverware were set awaiting goulash and other wonders Dora promised to spring on them for lunch.

“You ask me, I think the poor woman suffered horribly at his hands,” Dora said. “Maybe not because of the box and key, but because he was a terrible father. Go back to what she said, that he held it against her the rest of her life.”

Tony stared into space before asking, “But what did she really say? Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe she made it up for some reason of her own. Her brain’s pretty messed up.”

“Pretty clear, if you ask me,” Penelope snapped. “Joshua Cane laid a trap and punished her forever for falling into it.”

She looked around the table, daring anyone to say any different.

“There was talk,” Dora said. “There always is in small towns. Village sport, you know.”

“What did people say?” Penelope pushed.

Dora leaned back and sighed. “It wasn’t very nice.”

“Mom!” Jenny said. “We are
so
beyond that!”

Dora took a deep breath. “None of this is decent to talk about.”

Zoe touched the woman’s nervous hand on the table. “Murder’s not decent either.”

Dora nodded. “Well, this is what I’ve heard over the years. First there was Joshua’s wife. Her name was Abby. Abigail was named after her. She died in a . . . well . . . mental facility. People said Joshua put her there because she was depressed. But who could blame her? Talk was he had one mistress after another, sometimes invited them to the mansion. People said Joshua Cane was a cold man with a heart like Lake Michigan ice. The boys weren’t quiet about how they felt. Despised their father. I never knew about Abigail though, that she had to live the way she did. After Joshua Cane died, people in town didn’t like her much. They thought she kept the money from the boys somehow. Maybe talked the father into leaving it all to her.”

She looked from face to face around the table. “We never know about people, do we? I mean, the whole family so superior. Maybe not the boys, but you wouldn’t have called them the friendliest. Adam, mad at everybody all the time. And Aaron, a dear, sweet man, but so shy. Barely ever said a word, shuffling along in town, never looking up from his own feet. And that long hair of his. Couple of hippies, they were. That’s what started the trouble with Joshua Cane. He was disappointed in his sons, is what I was told.”

Jenny couldn’t help but feel something monumental, almost biblical, had just been laid out. The family fighting each other and the father giving up the love of his daughter because she broke a rule. Was that it?
A rule?

The room felt heavy, even dark. Jenny found herself wishing the facts behind the murders would just roll themselves out like a cleaned carpet and give them a road map leading from the past right up to the attack on Abigail.

Penelope pushed her chair back. “I’ve got to go. I’m out of time. No time for goulash. Thanks anyway.”

Zoe sat up, eyes wide open. She bounced on her phone books. “That’s it. Clang! Clang! Clang! Time. Time. Time. ‘Time’s up on that.’ Where did I hear that before? ‘Time’s up on that.’”

For all her struggles, Zoe had brought forth only another riddle.

The unaccustomed ring of the doorbell broke the tension in the room.

Dora got up to answer, following Penny across the living room. When she came back, a man followed her into the kitchen.

At first Jenny didn’t recognize him. Then she didn’t want to recognize him, and when she did, she didn’t want to introduce him to anyone: it was Ronald Korman.

She struggled up from her chair. “What in . . . ?”

He put his arms out to her, a look of joking sorrow spreading over his tanned face. “It’s so good to see you,” he said and tried to close his arms around Jenny, who pushed them forcefully away.

Ronald looked crushed.

He tipped his head and pursed his lips, letting his self-serving drama unfold as he stood in his patchwork Berluti shoes, his two-hundred-dollar jeans, and a blue Rag & Bone shirt, which was open at the throat.

Jenny ticked off the cost of his outfit in her head, well-schooled as she was in male couture. This wasn’t a maximum effort. More something in the thousand-dollar range, which meant he was sorry but didn’t want to overdo it.

Ronald’s dark hair was freshly trimmed and combed. There was an outline of white around his Guatemalan tan. He put a pout in place—just for her because he thought it brought out the motherliness in every woman. He’d said as much once, not
knowing that all she felt, the last few years, was a monumental disgust at his childish sulks. Now there was shame to go with the disgust—as he made it clear to everyone that she’d married a monumental ass.

“I forgot which house was yours.” His arms were still out to Jenny. Disappointment crossed his face. “I went next door—what a strange place. All those fairies and houses. Must be quite the odd neighbor.”

“You can say that again,” Jenny answered, not daring to look at Zoe.

Not a man to grasp nuance, Ronald looked around the gathering, stopping briefly at Tony, his eyebrows going up, then moving on to Dora.

“Dora, dear. How good to see you.”

He hurried to put his arms around a hunched-up turtle of a Dora, who buried her head and closed her eyes as Ronald kissed the rounded lump of her back.

He put his hands out to Jenny then dropped them when she didn’t respond. “I’ve been calling. You haven’t called back. I don’t understand.”

“Really?” Jenny lifted an eyebrow at him. “You don’t understand why I don’t call you back? Hmmm . . .”

No one offered him a chair. He leaned against Dora’s range and crossed his arms over his chest. He glanced at Tony again, who was playing with a kitchen knife, testing it for sharpness in the palm of his hand.

Zoe sat straight up, smiling, waiting for a chance at him.

“Where’s Chiquita? Or was it Tansy?” Jenny refused to introduce him and enjoyed the slight flush creeping up his cheeks. “I never can remember. Are you stopping on your way to Chicago? Or is this only a quick layover on the way back to Guatemala?”

Ronald threw his head back and laughed, not a hair on his head moving. “That madness is behind me. That’s why I came looking for you.” He gave a slowly circling look at the others. “But we have to talk. I mean alone. I think you’ve misunderstood . . .”

Tony leaned back and put his arms behind his head, one hand still holding the knife. He frowned as if an obnoxious car salesman had just dropped in.

“Really!” Jenny said. “Guess I misunderstood about the divorce?”

He laughed as if they shared a joke. “That’s all in the past. I’m here now. And I have to get my practice up and running again. You understand. I could use your help, of course.” He put a hand out to her. “Could we go somewhere, please, and talk? We can move beyond all this. We have before. And I’m sure these nice people would rather we air our laundry in private.”

Zoe looked at Tony. Tony looked at Dora. Dora looked at Ronald.

“We’re fine, dear,” Dora said. “You’re not bothering us.”

Zoe said, “Air away.”

Ronald hesitated, anger sparking briefly before he moved around to Jenny. With one hand on her bare knee, he squatted beside her. His voice fell to a whisper. “This is partially your fault. You know I always come back. You could’ve waited.”

“Has Marmalade left you?”

He hesitated at the name, finally giving her his sweetest smile. “It was mutual. Guatemala was a terrible place. She had family there, but they didn’t like me. And they were
poor
. Can you imagine? Lived with monkeys.”

“Awful for you.” Jenny smiled as she removed his hand from her bare knee. “But now you have to go.”

She got up, took him by the arm, and pulled him awkwardly to his feet. With one hand on his back, causing rows of wrinkles
across the expensive shirt, she prodded him toward the archway. They crossed the open rooms to the front door where he stopped to protest, asking if they could talk later. “I’m willing to hang around. Find a hotel . . .”

She smiled sincerely at the knowledge that she was free of him. There was a huge sense of kindness in her. “Oh no, Ronald. Go back to Chicago. The apartment’s gone. The furniture’s in storage—I forget where. Your office is closed. You’ll have to begin again. But you’re good at that.”

“Why are you being so cruel?” He was genuinely hurt. His face showed pain. “I love you, Jenny. You knew that when I left.”

She stopped for only a few brief seconds before shutting the door in his face.

He sang such a tired old song. The tune was fuzzy now, riddled with static. Jenny didn’t think she’d ever be able to hear it again.