Sunday, late afternoon
BACK IN HER NEWLY MEDECO-LOCKED APARTMENT, RANNIE MARINATED chicken breasts in Peter Luger sauce for dinner and pondered motives. Surely the police must realize by now that Nate didn’t have one while plenty of other people did. Danka had said her husband was a staunch believer in the “more is more” philosophy of life; well, Ross had motives for murdering Tut in spades. And Ms. Hollins? Her connections to Tut became ever more tangled and murky. Then, as penance for blowing all that money “investigating,” Rannie made herself return to Dr. Mengele.
The chapter she was proofing theorized that Mengele’s obsessions with identical twins stemmed from the possibility that Mengele may have been a twin himself, the other fetus having died in utero. The scant evidence supporting the theory was Mengele’s mother’s difficult pregnancy, one that required bed rest, as well as Mengele’s fascination with his own reflection, interpreted as “a never-ending search for his missing mirror image.” It sounded off-the-wall cuckoo to Rannie. A couple of farfetched “what if” pages ended the chapter: “There is an intense symbiotic relationship between identical twins, where normal sibling rivalries are squared, even cubed. The stronger, more able of the pair dominates the lesser ‘shadow’ twin. In Josef Mengele’s case, what if this charismatic, domineering, forceful man had grown up with a weaker, needy brother to control, to ‘torture’ in all the acceptable, if not commendable, ways of siblings? Would it have made a difference to history?”
A call from Nate made Rannie put down her blue pencil. He was at Grand Central but planning to meet up with Ben. So now a difficult question: To broil or not to broil the chicken breasts? The ringing phone interrupted the decision-making process.
“Change of plans?” she asked Nate.
“What? It’s Tim. Tim Butler.” He told her he was heading out to a movie at the 84th Street Loew’s. “Want to come? I’ll spring for super-size popcorn.”
The movie was a complicated diamond-heist thriller that Nate had already conned her into seeing. “I’ll meet you in an hour,” she told Tim.
With the chicken in the fridge, Rannie raced to Alice’s closet and tried on a cute pair of black pants and a retro beaded cardigan. Raiding Alice’s closet was so much fun—like playing dress-up, only in reverse. She was all ready to grab her coat when she caught her reflection in the hall mirror. Nix the sweater! Rannie told herself. It looked like something out of a fifties B movie. All that was missing was a torpedoe-cone bra.
Instead, she arrived modestly garbed in a pair of mom jeans and a long-sleeved striped turtleneck. As they settled into seats, she managed the bucket of popcorn and sodas while he took off his jacket, revealing a 2004 Red Sox tee shirt.
The convoluted triple-crossing plot of the movie—was Matt Damon in cahoots with the diamond thieves? once married to the gorgeous FBI agent? or both?—proved no more comprehensible on second viewing, in fact less so. This time there was the considerable distraction of Tim to deal with, his intensely physical presence right beside her in the darkened theater, a thigh an inch away from hers, a bare arm on the arm rest. Twice their hands met as they groped for popcorn, and reflexively both their hands pulled back. It rekindled memories of junior high, the embarrassed accidental touching.
After the movie, they went for coffee and dessert. Besides being rivetingly attractive, Tim had an appealing clear-sighted manner that made her yearn to spill everything she now knew or guessed about Tut and the murder. She wanted to display all the bits and pieces she’d picked up, like odds and ends at a tag sale, for his assessment. But in addition to Lieutenant Peratta’s strict command to stay mum, she didn’t want to anger Tim. Nevertheless, over a mile-high piece of chocolate cake that she ate most of, she couldn’t resist asking why he thought Tut had been murdered.
“I had a feeling somehow that subject might come up,” he said with wary amusement. He put down his coffee cup, then sat back, thinking, his arms crossed behind him around the back of the chair. “Who’s Your Daddy Now?” his tee shirt said. She couldn’t help smiling—the bleacher-seats taunt was appealing. Ditto the slight downward tilt of his dark eyebrows, the spikiness of his hair. Black Irish must have been an apt description before his hair turned silver.
“Okay. It was premeditated. That we know. The way I see it, killing somebody is a selfish act. The killer does it because he’s got something to gain. Or it’s solving a problem for him. Any murder is about self-interest.”
“You sound like a cop.” She’d noticed that before.
He frowned and shrugged. “From being around ’em, I guess. Look, this S.W.A.K. nut job, he’s killing women because it’s the only way he gets off. Other people, they do it for money, revenge. Or it could be wanting to shut somebody up who has dirt on them.”
“Come on! You think Mr. Tut was blackmailing somebody?”
“I didn’t say that. Maybe he found out something by accident, stumbled on information that somebody else didn’t want coming to light.”
She hadn’t considered that before.
“Here we are, the two of us, talking, having a nice time. Who’s to say what I’m holding back from you? Or how angry I’d be if you found out.”
The remark didn’t seem intended to carry a sting; nevertheless it did…a little. We’re strangers was the subtext and whereas a moment ago there had been a bantering easiness between them, now the distance across the table seemed to widen.
“You’re asking me about motive,” Tim went on, “and maybe that’s because the motive is more interesting to you than people’s alibis. But the police, right away they start checking out where everybody was and when. If anybody’s airtight, then that’s it.”
He saw she was finished and signaled for the check, shooting Rannie the same “Don’t argue!” look he had before when he paid for her on the ticket line.
Walking uptown to her house, Tim kept an arm on her back, his hand under the collar of her jacket. The quasi-proprietary gesture was a turn-on and while he chatted about family—he was one of seven, second-youngest in the family, his eldest brother not all that much younger than Rannie’s mother—Rannie couldn’t help fixing on his mouth, remembering that only twenty-four hours ago that mouth had been kissing hers. She filled in some Bookman genealogy for him and upon hearing about the UJA mah-jongg cruise her mother was on, he mentioned he played the game online. He also played backgammon twice a week for considerable stakes.
At Dolores Court, she refrained from inviting him up. Nor did he ask. Perhaps he wasn’t even interested in a repeat performance of last night’s feverish groping.
As the crotchety elevator door closed and clanked its way up six stories, Rannie experienced the underwhelming satisfaction of having acted prudently. “You stay out of trouble, okay?” was all he said. Tim Butler wasn’t easy to read, a complicated guy with undercurrents. Black Irish in temperament as well as in looks, she sensed. Yet pulling out her shiny new keys, she realized something startling—and vaguely disconcerting. It wasn’t just sex that she wanted.
She wanted Tim Butler.
Sunday night
FROM: alice.lorimer@yale.edu
TO: bookperson43@aol.com
Mom, it was great seeing Nate but didn’t get as much reading done for my psych paper as I hoped. I feel bad but no way can I make it down tomorrow for the Tut thing.
xxx
P.S. Stumbled on a poetry book of Tut’s I borrowed years ago. It has his name in it, written in fountain pen—I’d forgotten how distinct his handwriting was—very forceful! I’m glad I forgot to return it.
The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
A Celebration of the Life of A. Lawrence Tutwiler
Hymn….….….….….….….….……. “Oh, God, Our Help in Ages Past”
Lauren Hood, Tenth Grade….….….….……Chopin’s Piano Sonata
Griffith Handler, former Headmaster….….….….……. Old Friends
Augusta Hollins….….….. “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Chapel School Choir….….……. A Medley from Lerner and Lowe
Hymn….….….….….….….….….….….……. “Oh, Praise Him, Allelujah!”
Chapel School Orchestra….….….….…. Moussorgsky’s Promenade
from “Pictures at an Exhibition”
Chapel School Kindergarten….….….…. “Everything Is Beautiful”
and “Here Comes the Sun”