Caught Dead in Philadelphia (4 page)

“Why didn't she?”

“She was an actress trying to put together a stake so she could move to New York. So she moved back in with her mother, did modeling, and taught drama an hour or two a day.”

“New York? But you told that first policeman she was engaged to Hayden Cole.”

“Now she is. She only met him in February. She changed plans, but she was finishing out her contract at school and still doing a little modeling.”

“She was engaged to Cole after two months?”

“Whirlwind courtship. They were supposed to be married three weeks from now. Right before the May primary. Listen, Mackenzie, I'm wiped out. Let me pack and call my sister, okay?”

“Soon,” he said. “She from old money, like the Coles?”

I shook my head. “No money.” I shuffled over to the staircase and leaned against the newel post. “I feel awful.”

He looked at me sternly.

Now I felt guilty, too. How could I complain about my weariness, about how dreadful I felt when Liza…I clamped down again to stop the thick, dizzy terror that her memory provoked. I could discuss her dispassionately, but I couldn't think about her.

“Background,” he said.

“I don't know what happened to her father. But her mother worked as a baby-sitter, a sort of nanny, since Liza was little. That's all I know. I was in Liza's house only once, when I dropped her off after school. Neither she nor her mother blurted out their life stories during that visit. Can I call my sister now?”

“Strange match,” he said. “You know the Coles?”

I know defeat. I sat down on the bottom step, yawned without covering my mouth, and shook my head.

“Know about them, then?”

I shrugged.

“Can you be a little more informative, Miss Peppah?” His drawl increased with his annoyance. “I'm not from these parts, y'know.”

“I surmised. That's not your basic Philadelphia accent.”

“Good. All of you sound like you have sinus problems.”

“We do.”

“So I'd 'preciate background. Anything. Raymond, my partner, is a native Philadelphian, but he claims to know nothing about what he calls ‘those people.'”

I took a deep breath and tried to remember everything Liza had ever told me. The newspapers were more discreet about the Coles, playing down their baronial splendors. “I don't know about ‘those people,' either. They were snatching up prime U.S. real estate while my ancestors were still convinced the earth was flat. His mother's old New England shipping money. And his father's family goes back before the Civil War, maybe the Revolution. Coles had land grants. Coles built our banks and schools. Coles helped finance the Main Line, the real main line of the railroad. And then they settled on the right side of the tracks and counted their money. I guess when there was enough, they decided to start running the state. Now, is that enough?”

“You were at their house for the engagement party. Where is it? Ray's lookin' it up, but—”

“I hope not in the phone book, where it will not be. It's in Ardmore, up a winding road on top of a hill. Has some cutesy name, not a number out front. You can't miss it. It sprawls all over a hilltop. Has the columns of tall trees for the carriages to pass through. An entry hall twice the size of this house. Lovely, as long as you have a dozen servants to tidy up. They do. That's all I know. They hate publicity, anything flashy, and money that's inadequate or of the wrong vintage. And you could have gotten everything I said out of
Who's Who
.”

“Then tell me what I can't get from a book.”

I was learning about Southern men. Their sharp edges lay buried under those sweet blurred consonants. Until they cut you.

“Come on, Miss Pepper. You've had a shock, but you're strong. Tell me what Cole is like.”

“I met him only that once, at the party. He was very genial. Very cordial.”

“And? You have some impression of him?”

“It's probably wrong, or unfair. I was overwhelmed by the scale of the place. Maybe that's why his kindness offended me. I felt he was granting me an audience, that I wasn't real to him. I was one of his fiancée's friends, part of a package that would be dropped after the wedding. Or the election.”

“Did he do anything in particular to make you feel that way?”

I shook my head. “He did only the right things. Maybe that's what was wrong. And I have to say, I don't think somebody who makes you feel that way—ordinary, unimportant—is much of a political candidate. I think at heart he's sorry this is a democracy.”

Mackenzie raked his fingers through his hair. It bounced back to its original crinkles and twists. “Do you know what was bothering Liza Nichols?”

“No. Didn't I already tell you that? I don't even know if anything really was. She was an actress. She loved to work over an audience for the sport of it.”

“You didn't like her much, did you?”

“Please. I'm so tired. I don't know that answer.”

“That's all, then.” He gestured toward the street. “The media's still out there, cultivatin' pneumonia. I'll get you through. I'll even drive you to that parking lot of yours. Raymond should be back at the car by now. Go get your toothbrush.”

I started up the stairs.

“Call these Trinity houses, don't they?” he said, and I nodded. “Yeah, Raymond told me. Three little floors—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Although that doesn't make much sense. Raymond says these used to be servants' quarters. His folks lived near here. Then the city did some urban removal—”

“Renewal.”

“Not for Raymond's family. Houses were painted and prettied and priced out. And in came people like you.”

“Just what does that mean? You don't know what I'm like.”

He grinned and shrugged. “Observations at the scene of the crahm. Want to hear?”

“Does it matter?”

He stood up and walked around as he spoke, like a lawyer presenting his case to the jury. “This house is a perch, not a nest. A good address—not a real flighty single's place—not a
desperate
place, you know? But still portable. Open to changes of heart and chance.” He grinned up at me. The little pilot light in my cheeks ignited.

“Exhibit one, the suede chair. The single, irresistible long-term investment. Exhibit two, jelly jars for solitary juice drinking versus cut crystal for guests. The reupholstered sofa. Back to Granny's attic someday, without a twinge. But, over it, decent graphics that can be packed in a flash. Exhibit three, the practical, but not overdone bedroom. No head board. Just handsome linens and a frame—again, movable, adjustable. And not that settled-in spinster kind who lives in the bedroom. Desk is somewhere else, and I didn' see evidence that you'd had Sunday night dinner up there in bed, either. Exhibit four—you've got a coffee bean grinder in the cupboard, and beans in the freezer, but you were drinkin' and spillin' instant this mornin'. Beans are contingency fare. Like the good wine in the pantry versus the jug wine in the fridge. So…tenant is happy enough, but worried about gettin' too happy all on her own, so she's ready, but not particularly willing, to cut and run. Because she's also hoping some adventure is going to happen upon her, make things change. Fairly mixed-up type. Fairly typical. Am I right? Don't answer. I know I am.”

There was enough truth, and arrogance, in what he'd said to make me furious.

“Yay-uss,” he said. “Concern for appearance, to be sure, although you don't like thinkin' you care about savin' face. But good address, good chair, good crystal, good wine. And lots else is makin' do. Now go pack,” he said paternally. “I'll bet the suitcase is a good one. That can move with you. Wherever. Oh, yay-uss. Write down your sister's address. And you'll be at school tomorrow, won't you?”

“Mackenzie,” I said slowly, “why do you need to know my future locales? I was hoping this meeting, however sweet, would be our last.”

“Come on now, Amanda Pepper. Don't take it personally. On an off day, when you aren't scanning
Beowulf,
don't you ever sneak in a whodunit? Don't you know standard cop prose? The old ‘don't leave town without notifying me' number?” He turned and looked out the dark window facing the narrow street.

I marched up to my not-exactly-permanent bedroom, suddenly empathizing with people who called cops “pigs.”

Three

My sister's house was twenty minutes and a world away, insulated from the sirens and shouts of the city by a greenbelt circling its western edge. As I walked up the forsythia-lined path from Beth's driveway, I heard only the rain and my own footsteps.

“Mandy!” My hand was still on the bell when she pulled me into her house. “I've been so worried since you called!”

I reassured her that I was fine. And I began to believe it. The grandfather clock was ticking calmly, eternally denying the possibility of shock and evil mischance. There were hothouse flowers on the hall table and a domestic tableau in the living room that was as comforting as the end of a fairy tale. It was impossible to envision violence in a house such as this.

“I held off my appointment until you got here,” my brother-in-law said, rising from his wing chair and kissing me lightly.

I like Sam too much to call him plodding or phlegmatic. But for Sam, a man as regular as the clapper of the grandfather clock, delaying an appointment is tantamount to hysteria.

“Mommy let me stay up,” my niece, Karen, said. She flew at me, and we did some heavy hugging.

Even the family dog, Horse, staggered over and licked my hand.

“All right, everybody. Amanda's here now, so it's up to bed, Karen,” Beth said.

Karen pouted, protested, inadvertently yawned, and finally agreed to go upstairs if I came and tucked her in shortly.

“Now. What happened?” Beth asked the moment her daughter was out of earshot.

“Why don't we feed the poor girl while you interrogate her?” Sam asked mildly.

“I hope the chicken isn't dried out,” Beth said, handing me a platter.

It wasn't. Beth's house is well over a hundred years old, but she doesn't live in the past. The fireplace in the kitchen warms the heart; the microwave rewarms the food. I told my story, again gliding over the parts I couldn't bear replaying. The difference was that Sam and Beth, unlike the police, didn't want graphic details, so the telling became almost routine and smooth. “I think they suspect me,” I said in conclusion.

Sam clucked. “That's your imagination. And if so, then as soon as they know more, they'll crawl to your doorstep and beg forgiveness.”

I had a hard time envisioning C.K. Mackenzie either crawling or begging.

“Poor Hayden,” Beth murmured. She picked up my plate, gesturing for me to stay put. “What a mess this will be with the Cole family involved.”

“Do you know him?” I asked.

“Barely,” Sam answered. “Knew him years ago, my freshman year at Franklin and Marshall. He was a junior. I was a pledge in his fraternity. But he transferred to Penn that spring. Now we're on some of the same committees, legal associations. That's all.” He stood up. “I really must keep that appointment now. Try to relax, Mandy.”

Beth walked him to the door, then came back and poured two cups of coffee. “Sam won't gossip,” she said with an imitation pout. “If he knew anything, he wouldn't say it until he checked it out for possible libel suits. He thinks in small print.” Those traits didn't seem to bother her one whit. “Anyway,” she continued, “you probably know Hayden better through Liza than we do.”

“She never said much about him. Just that he was a proper gentleman of the old school. Behaved in a manner that would please Queen Victoria. I always figured she meant he was boring as hell. I don't even know how much she cared about him. I remember, right after she got her engagement ring, she said, ‘A smart person never lets emotions interfere with her life.' The thing is, I don't know if those were her real feelings, a quote from something, or what. She sometimes fell into a Noel Coward mode, all clipped sentences and emotions.”

“Or maybe she was trying to fit into Hayden's world,” Beth said. “He didn't seem at all emotional. At least, not in public. Family trait, from what I've seen. I worked on a hospital committee with his mother. A neighbor, Sissie, roped me into it. And Mrs. Cole's the same reserved, steely type. Typical old Main Line, you know?”

“Who's Sissie?” I asked. I had heard that name before, but the day's events had jangled my mental connectors and robbed the memory bank.

“Letitia Abbott Bellinger, but nobody calls her that. She lives down the street. We carpool. Why?”

The name clicked into place. Gus had mentioned her. “She's involved in the Playhouse, I think. The one Liza…”

Beth, always gentle, always sensitive, helped me across the name. “She's into a hundred things. Little theater, the Museum Council, local politics, hospital charities. She's at loose ends. Divorcing Mr. Bellinger isn't a full-time occupation, although it's been going on long enough. She's always been close with Hayden. In fact, I heard it was once assumed they would marry, but then she surprised everybody with Bellinger.”

Karen padded into the kitchen in pink-footed pajamas. “I waited and
waited,
” she said. “Read to me?” She held a copy of
Winnie the Pooh
. I didn't feel capable of working a chubby bear into this particular day.

“Aunt Mandy's too tired,” Beth said. “I think she's going to fall asleep before you do.”

“Then will you tuck me in?” Karen asked. The girl was only in nursery school, but with her gene pool, she was destined to be a pragmatic bargainer. I capitulated and staggered upstairs.

When I descended again, the grandfather clock was chiming. I looked at it and felt as if I had gone through a time warp. It was only eight-thirty.

“In here,” Beth called from the living room.

For a while we both stared at the softly burning fire in the grate.

“So,” she said after a while, “what's been happening?”

“Been happening?” My mouth fell open. “Beth!”

“Besides that.”

I grinned in spite of myself. Corpses were trivial, fleeting items. Men were forever. “I broke up with Donald,” I answered. Beth would be pleased. His emerald eyes had never blinded her to his innumerable personality flaws, and she had become exasperated with our long, drawn-out, dithering miseries. “Also with cigarettes.”

“I wonder if you'll ever settle down,” she murmured. The five-year difference between us made her consider herself my mentor, and since our bona fide mother's relocation left a vacuum, Beth, like nature, whooshed in to fill the void.

“What could be more settled than a schoolteacher who lives with a cat?”

“You manage to meet the most impossible assortment of males imaginable, have more complications and more problems—and now look what's happened to you!”

“Let me get this straight. You think I should get married because somebody…died in my living room?” I settled more deeply into the sofa cushions, admiring the extremes my family will go to in search of a rationale to end my single state.

“Ah, well,” Beth said almost wistfully. “Maybe I'm just a lousy role model. Scaring you away with nightmares of carpools and volunteer work. Suburban clichés.”

Every revolution has victims, and Beth was definitely a casualty of the Women's Movement. She had been born knowing what she wanted to do with her life, and she was doing it—loving, nurturing, helping.

In other eras, she would have been the subject of epic poems. Freud would have crowned her as the epitome of healthy womanhood. But today, Beth was depressed because she was happy at home, because her ambitions were traditional and inadequate for the contemporary heroine.

During the great Coca-Cola switch-over, I tried to tell Beth to think of herself as the Classic form, to realize that she, like Coke, didn't have to reinvent herself. But she didn't see the connection.

The doorbell rang. I looked at my watch, ready to be outraged by midnight callers. But it still wasn't late anyplace except in my head.

Beth left the room, and after the front door clicked, I heard the sharp rise and fall of a woman's voice.

“I saw the six o'clock news,” it said, “about Hayden's—about Liza, and then the name of the girl whose house—and I said to my housekeeper, ‘Why that's Beth Wyman's sister. I met her at the engagement party. At least I think it is.' Is it? They showed a picture of her leaving her house, but I couldn't really tell. Is it? Wasn't your maiden name Pepper? I'm sure your sister is that Amanda, isn't she?”

Maybe Beth was nodding agreement. She certainly wasn't getting a chance to fit a word in. The other voice billowed and waved, up and down a vocal roller coaster, one sound sliding into the next. She filled the house with nervous energy, and I disliked her without knowing who she was.

“What a horrible thing for Hayden,” she continued. “How awful for anyone to have to find. Was your sister close with Liza? The news really said nothing. It's dreadful, isn't it?” She stopped to inhale, or take more drugs, or whatever it was that kept her in constant motion.

Beth seized the moment. “Sissie, Mandy's here. Come see her. Let me take your coat and umbrella.”

Sissie Bellinger was beige. She walked into the living room in a café au lait silk blouse and tailored brown slacks. Her ash-blond hair framed a pale, fine-featured face. In her mid-thirties, she was not yet deeply into Main Line dowdiness. Right now, she had somewhat worn but classic good looks.

“I shouldn't stay,” she said, settling nonetheless on the pale green love seat. “Should be at the Playhouse, but I saw the news, and what are we going to do now? The place will be a madhouse, total confusion. Thank God we only do shows on weekends, but what should we do? Cancel? Does the show go on anyway?”

I opened my mouth, ready to say hello or to try to answer her barrage of questions, but she continued on, looking earnest and agitated.

“Liza's the lead, for God's sake.” She stood up, paced while she spoke, until she found a crystal ashtray. Its tiny size might have been a clue as to Beth's feelings about smoking in the house, but it escaped Sissie's notice. She sat down again, lit up, and brushed smoke away as she spoke. “This is the most shocking—who could have predicted?”

“Coffee, Sissie?” Beth asked. “I have some ready.”

Sissie waved her slender wrist in front of her eyes. There was a gold watch on it, but she didn't read it. “I should leave,” she said. “But no point yet. Just hysteria waiting. Yes, I'd love some.”

It was certainly easy making conversation with this woman. You didn't even have to know the native tongue.

“I'll be right back,” Beth said.

Sissie took that as a signal finally to communicate with me. In her fashion. “So you, poor thing, became involved in Liza's—” She had pale brown eyes that flicked over my face several times. “Was it awful?”

“It was—”

“Do they, the police, know who did it? The television said nothing, but of course they'd never say, all those libel laws and interference by the press and things.”

I wasn't sure if that had been a question until Sissie puffed and waved smoke away, clearing airtime for me.

“It had only just happened when I—”

“When?” Sissie stubbed out the cigarette. “When did it happen? Do they know? Was anyone seen? I suppose they questioned the neighbors. Why was she at your house?”

C.K. Mackenzie was easier to take than this interrogator. I felt battered and slow-witted as I sifted through her questions, deciding that I had no obligation to answer them, even if she'd let me.

“I just know everybody will be talking about it at the Playhouse, you see.” She lit another cigarette. I thought about the full ashtray in my living room and tried to see what brand she smoked. Her brown leather case hid the package, so I gave up playing detective for the time being.

“Was she your roommate?” Sissie's lids lowered. “She said she lived with her mother.” Her cultivated voice was heavy with malice and insinuation.

“She was visiting.”

Beth returned and busied herself with coffee cups and cookies. “You knew Liza, didn't you, Sissie?” she asked.

Sissie looked offended. “Well, not really.” The question silenced her momentarily.

“What did you think of her?” I asked in what I hoped was a sweet, somewhat indifferent voice. It felt great being the asker of questions for a change.

Sissie sighed. “What can I say? She's gone now.” She looked toward the ceiling for heavenly guidance, but opted to proceed without it. “I'm a frank, straightforward person. Isn't that right, Beth?”

There was a tiny pause, a missed beat.

She was an insane, rich person. Rich enough so that her behavior was probably relabeled “eccentric.”

“So, while I hate to speak ill of the dead, I see no reason suddenly to become a hypocrite.” She paused while the hall clock chimed the hour. “Oh, I'll be late; they'll be angry. They depend on me so much.”

Only once in all the years that Gus had been associated with the Playhouse had he mentioned, politely, Sissie Bellinger's name, and never his dependence on her.

“Liza was common,” she announced. “Anyone with a mind could see that no good would come of that match. He never wanted to marry her anyway.”

“What do you mean?” My loud voice, crashing through her barrage of words, was probably also common.

“Mean? Well, I suppose he wanted to, but only because he hadn't time to know her. She was a good actress, you know. I'll give her that. He never saw what she was really like. I tried to warn him, but, well…and she! Such an inflated idea of who she was! Such a temper!” She crossed her legs and pursed her lips with distaste.

“When did you see her last?” I asked.

“Last night.” Sissie's eyes became slits, and she paused, holding a cigarette heavy with ash. “Why? What did she tell you?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I answered quickly, but Sissie stayed frozen in place. “I teach with Gus Winston. He said Liza was angry last night, after the show. When you mentioned her temper, remembering her that way, I thought—”