They shook hands and he said, “Mrs. Ochs explained the situation, and I saw the apartment she had intended for me. It seems it had unexpected company. A tree dropped in. It's good of you and Robert to open your door like this. Thank you.”
Chloe had rather expected at least a touch of awkwardness on his part but he appeared completely at ease, amused even. He looked around the two rooms approvingly, then stood at the glass door to the rear deck for a moment. “Mrs. McCrutchen always had a lovely garden, as I recall. It's still lovely.”
And it still belonged to Lucy McCrutchen, who still paid for its maintenance, Chloe thought bitterly. She and Robert were house sitters. No more, no less. She turned away and said, “That door is to the rest of the house. We keep it locked, but you're free to roam the garden, of course, and please make use of the deck. Robert's gone most of the week, but I'll be around if you need anything.”
“I'm sure I won't,” he said. “Thank you, Chloe.”
She left by way of the deck, and if he thought it was a joke to keep the interior door to the house locked, while the deck was wide-open with sliding doors to other rooms, he did not mention it, or laugh out loud. But the glint of amusement had lit his eyes as he nodded.
B
arbara was sitting on Frank's porch, watching the guys install an automatic watering system in his garden. Frank was not doing much more than observing and trying to keep out of the way, while Darren and Todd were doing the heavy lifting, or in this case, deep stooping and a lot of kneeling. Their gift for a belated Father's Day, Darren had said, surprising Frank with miles of coiled soaker hoses and a bag of fittings.
Frank left the garden to join her on the porch. “Fifth wheel,” he said.
“I'm thinking of starting a new business installing watering systems,” Barbara said. “I'd advertise heavily, stressing the experience of the crew. They did Darren's garden last week. Todd's idea.”
“I'll provide a reference,” Frank said. “Several.”
“Can't have too many,” Barbara said, laughing.
Darren and Todd both stood, and Barbara was struck again by how Todd had grown over the past year. He was as tall as his father, but only half as wide. He still had a lot of catch-up in store.
“Have you decided about going with them on their trip?” Frank asked.
“I'm not going. It's their thing. I don't think Todd will be going off on those jaunts much longer. This could be the last one, in fact. He's looking into an internship for next summer. You have to be sixteen to apply. He's into anything to do with climatology.”
Todd was in advanced placement math and science classes and, after seeing the Al Gore film and reading his book on global warming, he had decided on climatology as a career. Darren had mused that he was Todd's age when he discovered he had a knack for physical therapy, and had focused on it afterward. Todd was just as focused now. They were going to spend two weeks and two days inspecting glaciers. They were allowing three weeks for the entire expedition.
Frank left her a few minutes later in order to start dinner, and she thought about the three weeks she would have alone. She was looking forward to it, she had come to realize. Sometimes she missed her privacy, and she missed her long river walks. It simply was no longer convenient; there seemed never to be a good time to get them in. She knew that Darren would never object to her going off alone for a walk, not by word, look, body language, anything, yet it didn't happen.
When she had agreed to move in with him, she'd insisted that they had to have a housekeeper, which was new for them both. Explaining that, if Darren did the cleaning, she would feel guilty, and if she had to wield a broom, she'd be as mean as a witch, she had made her case. No argument, they hired a housekeeper. Darren did most of the cooking, and Todd helped with that more often than she did, but she did a lot of the kitchen cleanup. No one complained. When she had to get off to be alone, there was the apartment over the garage, converted to an office suite for her use. Yet she was looking forward to three weeks of being alone.
For two weeks Robert McCrutchen had been accumulating every word printed about David Etheridge's appearances in Eugene. He was attracting large audiences, and an attendant unruly bunch of protesters outside Buell Hall whenever he spoke. He had given two lectures so far, two to go and then he'd be gone again. Robert was not certain he could bear to wait. The protesters might follow David home, demonstrate outside the house, have a sit-in or something, break windowsâ¦Robert brooded, hating his own reaction the times he had walked out onto his own deck at his own house, only to see David at the table at the far end. Each time, Robert had turned and retreated, with no more than a nod when David glanced his way.
He kept thinking of what Henry Elders had said, that David had gotten off easily following Jill's murder. Robert had a clear memory of seeing David join the party that night and head straight for Jill. He had passed her the key, and she had kissed his cheek. He had seen it, but he didn't think anyone else had. He asked Henry how he knew about the key and he said it had been in the newspaper accounts.
Robert had left Salem early on the second week of David's stay. He stopped to buy a box of Euphoria truffles, then went to city hall, and the police-records desk, where Bette Adkins was still working. He had known her in his prosecutor's days, and she did not question his right to copy the old file of the murder of Jill Storey. She was delighted with the truffles.
When he got home, Robert read the police reports carefully. They did not include the name of the tipster concerning the key. Probably it had been an anonymous call. When David was asked about the key, he readily admitted that he had given it to Jill. He said she and her roommate intended to rent his apartment until September. David's roommate didn't want to let it go altogether, since good affordable apartments within walking distance of the university were scarce. The roommate would pay half the rent to hold it, but he would be in Forest Grove all summer working with his father, and planned to return to school in the fall and the women would move out. He and Jill's roommate confirmed David's story. The entire arrangement had been made late in the afternoon of the day of the party, and David had had the extra key made the same afternoon.
But, dammit, Robert thought, closing the file, someone had known about the key and tipped off the police. The newspaper accounts had been sketchy, as they always were, and he'd had no idea back then about the deal that had been made. He had believed Jill was moving in with David, as apparently others had believed from what little information had been released to the media.
Chloe appeared at his study door to say that she intended to serve a Greek salad and bread in ten minutes out on the deck and she had invited Henry to join them.
Robert started to object, and she said caustically, “It's safe. David's gone out.”
Robert reflected that he had been a good prosecutor, thorough and dogged in his approach, and he had followed up on hunches until he found answers, or decided that none were to be found. He took a sheet of paper from his desk drawer and jotted down the word
Key,
then underlined it.
It nagged at him all through the light dinner on the deck, something about the damn key.
“I'm going to the Hult Center tonight, remember,” Chloe said, interrupting his thoughts.
Robert nodded absently, and Henry said, “You look like a man with a thorny problem. Like perhaps a couple of really bad bills are coming that you have to vote up or down, and you're caught in the middle.”
Robert laughed. “That would be simpler. No. It's Jill Storey's murder. You brought it back to mind, and it doesn't want to leave again.”
“Any new thoughts on that old business?” Henry asked.
Robert shook his head. “No. And the way I see it right now there isn't going to be a way to learn anything new. Unlessâ” He stopped and his eyes narrowed in thought.
“For God's sake!” Chloe said, jumping up. “What are you up to? Why do you have that police file anyway? It was a nightmare twenty-two years ago. Leave it alone.”
“Go on to your show,” Robert said dismissively. “I'll clear this stuff when we're done.”
She drained her wineglass, then left without another word.
“Unless?” Henry reminded him.
“Just thought of something. Or nothing. Are you finished here?” Robert stood, suddenly impatient to return to the police file.
Chloe drove straight to Nick Aaronson's apartment. She had not called first, but he'd better be home, she thought as she jabbed the bell.
He opened the door and stepped aside, then put his arms around her when the door was closed again. “Doll, we said not when Robert was in town. Remember?”
She pushed him away. “Well, he's in town, and there's something you should know. David Etheridge is in our apartment, on our property, and Robert is poking into Jill Storey's murder case.”
Nick shook his head. “Whoa. Let's start back a step or two. Come on in.”
He was her age, forty-three, six feet two, strongly built and muscular. He was a successful business-management consultant whose clientele included half-a-dozen dot coms, a few Realtors, a medical group, some developers. Privately, he consulted with a political-action group that never acknowledged his involvement. And he was Robert's chief advisor.
He led Chloe into his living room and nodded toward a gold-colored leather sofa. She sat and crossed her arms over her breasts, as if to say this was business.
“Okay,” he said, sitting close by, “start back a little. Etheridge is in your apartment. Why?”
After explaining the situation, Chloe said, “But the important thing now is that old case. Jill Storey's murder. I saw the police file on Robert's desk. He's poking into it. Probably to try and hang something on David, but if it's opened, he'll be dragged in, too, even if he thinks it's a bonus if he comes on as a prosecutor and finds the killer, and it just happens to be David.”
“What about that old case?” Nick said. His voice had become cold and remote. “It's history.” He went to a bar across the room and poured bourbon for two, added water and ice and returned to hand her a glass as she recounted what she knew about the night of the party.
“Talk to him,” she said finally. “I know they fought over her, and others might know it, too.”
“Someone would have mentioned it if they'd known,” Nick said.
“Tell him to leave it alone, to forget it. No one ever connected him and, as you said, it's history, unless he does something stupid.”
“Robert wasn't under suspicion then. What's changed? Why would it be trouble for him now?”
“Then,” she said, “we had just become engaged. You know, head over heels, all that. I had Travis six months later, and it could cause someone to ask now if the wedding was under the influence of a shotgun. I don't think it would be a secret very long that he's never stopped chasing women. He was known to have been a chaser then and had added Jill to his list. I told everyone that we went to his room together, but we didn't. After the fight on the deck, he disappeared, and Jill left in a hurry. Then, he was just the son of a loved surgeon and a well-regarded family, soon to be married, above reproach. Now he's a political figure with political enemies and a carefully created image to protect.”
Getting to her feet, she regarded him for a moment. “He won't listen to me, of course, but someone needs to head him off. They'll make this his Chappaquiddick moment if he stirs it up. How much do you have invested in him?” she asked as she walked to the door. “I'm going to the theater.”
At eight-thirty the next morning, Chloe was wakened by the sound of the landscape crew. She pulled a light cover over her face.
Out front, Petey started the lawn mower while Hal got to work on the foundation shrubs, and Netta took her tools around the house to the back flower border. There wasn't a lot to do this time of year, deadhead flowers, get rid of the rare weed that appeared, stir up the mulch a little.
Netta had worked her way through half of the border when she straightened and glanced at the house. She frowned and took a step or two closer, then dropped her pruner and ran to the deck.
Robert McCrutchen was sprawled half in and half out of the doorway, his head covered with ants. He lay in a pool of blood, dry and crusted. It was ringed with ants.
Netta screamed again and again.
“S
ometimes, when I wake up, I'm afraid to move,” Darren said softly that Sunday morning. “I'm afraid to open my eyes. I'm afraid it's been a dream, you'll be gone.”
He stroked Barbara's hair gently, then kissed her eyelids.
“I'll pinch you every morning,” she said, just as softly.
“I'll miss you terribly the coming weeks. I'll call as often as I can,” he said.
Barbara could hear pots and pans clanging from the kitchen, and smiled. “I think you're being signaled.”
“He used to have a police whistle. I'm glad he lost it.” Reluctantly, Darren got out of bed. It was six-thirty, and Todd was more than ready to leave.
They had packed the truck the night before, leaving nothing to do that morning except have breakfast and be on their way. Very quickly it seemed, they were all walking out to the truck, which, outfitted as a camper, would be home for Darren and Todd for much of the coming three weeks.
Barbara refrained from hugging Todd. She was sure fifteen-year-old boys did not want to be hugged. Darren kissed her lightly on the lips, climbed into the truck, and they were gone.
She watched until the truck was out of sight, went back inside and said to the big tiger-striped cat, “It's you and me, pal. Get used to it.” Nappy rubbed against her ankles.
Late Sunday afternoon one week later Barbara found Frank on a chaise on the back porch, with an open book on his lap. He appeared to be dozing.
Thing One and Thing Two came over to sniff her legs warily, suspicious of the alien cat smell she carried these days. She sat at the table and helped herself to iced tea.
Without opening his eyes, Frank said, “I'm not asleep.”
“I thought you were reading something that instantly caused a case of dozing.”
He heaved himself a little more upright and put the book aside. “Far from it. It's a book to be taken in small doses. A damn fine book.”
She craned her neck to see what he had been reading. It was
The American Myth Stakes.
“What do you think of it?” she asked, indicating the book.
“He makes his case,” Frank said. “He's sharp, and he makes his case point by point. I haven't finished it yet, and maybe he'll falter, but I doubt it.”
“Well, it seems that a lot of people don't share that opinion. The demonstrations have gone from ugly to uglier,” Barbara said.
“A lot of people prefer to live in their own dream world,” Frank said drily. “Just the idea of waking up to reality is too frightening to contemplate. And reality is what they have to face if they read the book with an iota of comprehension.” He swung his legs over the side of the chair and replenished his own glass of tea. “Have you been following the McCrutchen case?”
“Hard to avoid it,” she said. “Anything else in the news these days? Our own homegrown saint, getting more virtuous day by day from all accounts.” She glanced swiftly at the book, and the author's name. “Ah,” she said, making the connection. “Etheridge. He seems to be in rather a spot, doesn't he?”
“He does. He's getting the bum's rush toward an accusation. And apparently for no reason other than what he's written and said. Ideas. Half the world's trying to kill the other half over ideas,” Frank said.
In his voice there was a quiet fury that she seldom heard, and she was surprised at its intensity. “Maybe there's more evidence than what's been handed out to the media,” she said.
“Maybe, but I doubt it. All we keep hearing about is what he's written, and he's damned and doubly damned for it each and every time.”
Lucy McCrutchen felt adrift that afternoon. The shock of Robert's death had subsided, leaving a residue of despondency she could not shake. She felt strangely out of place in the house she had lived in for forty years, until Mac's sudden death two years before. Now she was a guest in the guest room, trying to make sense of her son's death, of what she had to do about the house, of how she felt about Chloeâ¦She could not follow any one thought to a conclusion, but veered from one to another, back, in a hopeless loop.
She was sixty-seven, slightly built, with dark hair shot through with silver. When it all turned, she would be like a silver fox, Mac had said once. Theirs had been a good marriage, passionate for many years, and later one of comfortable companionship. But he had put in far too many hours in surgery, with patients, at the office. Little golf or vacation time had been allowed for, and it had caught up with him in the form of a fatal heart attack two years earlier. After forty-four years of marriage, it had been hard for Lucy to adjust to a new life, and she had found that she had to get out of this house, away from everything familiar for a time. She had gone to her sister in Palm Springs. Robert and Chloe had given up their town house to live here during her absence, and she had become the outsider.
She had never breathed a word about the scene she had witnessed on the deck the night of Robert's party and had managed to put it out of mind, most of the time at any rate. But he had brought it back from quiescent memory to active nightmare by having that police file in his possession when he was killed. Why? It seemed that the only explanation for having that file was connected to David's arrival.
The night of the party, had David driven that girl home, as he had offered? No one had seemed to know when anyone else left that night. Should she have told what she witnessed? The question had tormented her then, and now it was back.
The fear for her son had been overwhelming. Had Robert gone to his room, fallen asleep as he claimed? Chloe said she followed him to his room and took off his shoes. Lucy had never believed that. Chloe was not one to show that kind of consideration. But why would she have thought it necessary to lie?
Lucy was haunted by the fear that Robert had gone out after the girl, and that Chloe knew or suspected as much. Now the fear had returned with as much force and dread as before. She had accepted,
seized on,
she corrected herself, she had seized on the police conclusion that a transient, probably one on drugs, had committed the murder.
She and Mac had known Robert was promiscuous as a boy, and a womanizer as an adult, but they had never discussed it. She felt certain that Robert had been as great a disappointment to Mac as he had been to her, in spite of his successful career and his likely prospects for even greater achievements. Mac never once said as much, but Robert's public success faded in light of his private failings, in her eyes. He had become so malleable to managers, advisers, whoever was more powerful than he was, that she doubted he had believed in anything he championed. Very early she had deliberately turned her back on the positions he took publicly, refused to comment, even to talk about him in any but the most general terms, but his marriage had been too close to ignore. The marriage was a charade, a travesty, a marriage in name only, with a wife who seemed content to pretend all was well.
Lucy did not understand Chloe, and had never been able to develop any affection for her, in spite of all her good intentions. And now Chloe was a widow in Lucy's house, and she had to decide what to do about that. The loop started its paralyzing round again.
In spite of everything, she thought wearily, Robert had been the child in her womb, the infant she had adored, the son she had loved beyond all reason. In spite of everything, that was the underlying fact.
There was a soft tap on her door, and she said, “Come in. I'm not sleeping.”
Amy entered. “I thought you were resting,” she said, glancing at the bed, which had not been touched. “You didn't even lie down, did you?”
Lucy shook her head. “I can't seem to rest, or even sit still. It's all right. It will catch up with me and I'll sleep a week.”
“Not here,” Amy said. She walked to the window and stood gazing out. “You should just go back to Aunt May's place. There's nothing you have to do here now.”
“But there's so much,” Lucy said, thinking of Robert's clothes, papers, personal things, all to be sorted, stored, given away, something.
“Nothing
you
have to do,” Amy repeated. “I'm going to my apartment to get some things, and be I'll back later tonight. I'll stay here with Chloe and help take care of things. I can do my work from here as well as anywhere else.”
“Where is she?” Lucy asked.
“In her room.” Amy's voice was without inflection. “Will you make your reservation, or should I do it for you? A flight tomorrow?”
Lucy rubbed her eyes. “God, I don't know.” Amy turned to face her, a silhouette against the light. “It's a lot for you to have to cope with,” Lucy said. “It's asking too much of you.”
“Mother, no one asked me. It's okay. I'm fine. And,” she added slowly, “someone has to stay here with Chloe. Not you.”
After a moment Lucy nodded. “I'll make the reservation.” It would be good to be out of this house, back in Palm Springs with her sister, May, she thought. May had kicked her husband out when he admitted to a long-standing affair with a woman twenty years younger than May, and the two sisters got along well.
Lucy crossed the room to her daughter and embraced her. Amy was a godsend, she thought, as she often had before. Tall, with broad shoulders for a woman, but slender and muscular, more like her father than like Lucy. Her hair was dark and curly, and her eyes so dark blue they sometimes looked black. “Thank God I have you,” Lucy said. All these single women, she thought with a pang. Me, May, now Chloe, Amy. Amy and her live-in boyfriend had separated a year before. All these single women, those philandering men.
Amy kissed her cheek and drew back. “I'll tell Travis I'm leaving. There's plenty of food in the fridge, or you can order something in, whatever. It's probably going to be pretty late when I get back. Don't wait up. At least try to get some rest,” she said.
Amy found her nephew in the family room in front of the television. She doubted that he had been paying attention to it, for the sound was muted and he was staring at the sliding door when she entered. That was the doorway where his father's body had been discovered.
She sat down in a chair near him. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Travis said.
He was wearing jeans and an old T-shirt. His feet were bare, and suddenly he was the kid she had always known, not the strange young man in a uniform who had attended the funeral.
She told him her plan to go to Portland, collect a few things, make some arrangements there and return later. “I'll stay down here and help Chloe out for the next few weeks,” she said.
He nodded. “That's good. I wish I could stay. The army makes decisions for me these days.” He sounded bitter.
She stared at him, taken aback. “I thought you liked it.”
“Dad made the arrangements, you know, pulled some strings, whatever it took, and then told me. I wanted to go to medical school, but I was headed for West Point.”
“Can you get out of it?”
“Sure. In six more years. I talked to a lawyer, that's what he told me. They don't let go once you've signed that piece of paper.” He laughed, but it sounded suspiciously like a sob. “I'm government property.”
Time was doing a strange dance of speeding up incredibly fast, or stopping altogether, Amy thought, driving to Portland. This was Sunday, and a week ago, on Monday morning David Etheridge had called her and told her that Robert had been shot dead. It seemed like only hours ago, yet a lifetime ago. Simultaneously instant and distant. A disconnect in her brain. She had thrown on clothes, put a few things in a backpack and left within minutes of the call. She had returned to her own apartment for a very brief time only to pick up something suitable for a funeral, a few clothes to get her through the week.
Thank God she had not seen Robert's body, she had thought many times that week. By the time she arrived at the house, the police were there and a screen had been put up around the end of the deck. Chloe had been in a state of shock, white-faced, eyes wide with horror, and she kept mumbling about ants. Sitting at the kitchen table with coffee at hand, suddenly she had screamed and jumped up, rubbing her arms, shaking her hair, screaming that ants were all over her. Amy had put her to bed and called her doctor. It was a nightmare scenario, the shocked garden worker shaking on the deck with one of the men holding her hand, Chloe screaming in the kitchen, police everywhere.
David had called Lucy to tell her, afraid she would hear it on a newscast. He had not called Travisâhe hadn't known there was a Travisâand Amy made the call when she arrived. Henry Elders had been hovering, making coffee, trying to be useful. He went to the airport to pick up Lucy later in the day, and again to pick up Travis. She had felt both grateful for his help, and at the same time a thought had persisted that he was just a nosy, interfering old man with nothing to do except get in the way.
Resolutely, she focused on what she had to do at her apartmentâpick up more clothes, her laptop, the job she was working on. She would clean out the refrigerator, stop the newspaper delivery, put a hold on mail, call a friend or two.