I was surprised when no one answered the door at my parents’, because my father’s Lincoln was sitting, big as life, in the driveway. I jiggled the doorknob, but the front door was locked. Making a mental note to ask my mother for a key, I wandered around back, along an uneven path of slate paving stones that wobbled under my weight. The path led through a side gate into a pocket garden where brownish grasses and scraggly gray weeds flourished. I bent over to pull up a clump of crabgrass and smiled, thinking, Watch out, weeds! By spring this plot would respond to my mother’s green thumb, and bloom with color.
Although I was thinking about her, I was surprised when I turned the corner to discover my mother, bundled in her purple parka, sitting at the picnic table. Her elbows rested on the sun-bleached redwood boards next to a can of Diet Coke, and she was smoking a cigarette.
“Jeez, Mom, I thought you gave that up.”
Mother exhaled a steady stream of smoke, which was snatched away by the wind. “I did.”
“Ask your father.”
I sat down on the opposite bench, facing her. In spite of the cold, Mom wore no gloves or hat, and the wind lifted her peach-pale hair and tossed it about carelessly. “Where is he?” I asked. “Nobody answered the door.”
“Gone for a walk along the beach, I suppose. It’s been a rough morning.” A column of smoke drifted into her eyes, and she kneaded them with her fingers.
“So Daddy told you about Georgina?”
She nodded and took a drag on her cigarette. “If that therapist weren’t already dead, I’d kill her myself.”
“You’d be at the head of a very long line.”
“When did you find out about it, Hannah?” She fixed her eyes on mine with such intensity that I looked away to hide my embarrassment.
I didn’t want to tell Mother exactly when I knew; I didn’t want her to discover that I’d heard about Georgina’s accusations against my father long before she did. “Scott told me,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”
Mother flipped the filter of her cigarette with her thumbnail and watched the ash particles spiral to the ground. “You’re not the first. The police were here most of the morning.”
I gasped. “Again? What did they want this time?”
“They had a search warrant.” She pointed the end of her cigarette, glowing hotly in the wind, toward the house. “Made a mess.”
“What were they looking for?”
She shrugged and dropped the remains of her cigarette through the slot in the top of the Diet Coke, where it sizzled out.
“Did they find anything?”
“As far as I know, they went away empty-handed.”
That was something, anyway. I squirmed uncomfortably on the bench. The wind was leaking between the seams of my tweed jacket, and I shivered. “Hey, Mom, it’s cold out here. Let’s go inside.”
“In a minute.” She reached for a pack of Salems that lay on the table in front of her. I wanted to snatch it out of her hand and send it flying over the neighbor’s fence. Mother had given up smoking three years ago. It broke my heart to see her resuming what had once been a two-pack-a-day habit.
She tapped another cigarette out of the pack and, by cupping her hands around it, got it lit on the third match. “I wish you wouldn’t smoke,” I told her.
She studied me with tired eyes. “I wish I wouldn’t, either, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time.” She took another drag, held it in her lungs for a long time, then exhaled slowly. “I suppose you want to know what I think.”
I laid a hand on her arm. “Mom, I don’t believe a word of what Georgina says.”
She slipped the cellophane from the pack of cigarettes, toyed with it briefly, then crumpled it into a ball. “That’s a relief. Because it isn’t true, you know.” She tucked the Salems into a pocket of her parka and zipped it shut. With the cigarettes out of sight, she seemed to notice me for the first time. “My God, you’re not dressed for this kind of weather, Hannah. Go on inside. I’ll just be a minute.”
“No, I’ll wait.” I sat and watched in silence as my mother smoked her cigarette down to the filter, then ground it into the grass with the toe of her tennis shoe. I noticed that her ankles were badly swollen and worried that she had been spending far too much time on her feet lately. I stood when she did, and when she came around to my side of the table, we linked arms and walked through the back door together.
I didn’t know what I would see when I entered the house—drawers and closets yawning open, clothes and papers strewn about willy-nilly—but it wasn’t what I expected. The kitchen seemed untouched, but in the rest of the house, boxes which had been neatly stacked in corners or against the walls had had their packing tape ripped off and had been moved and carelessly stacked in the opposite side of the room. Thankfully my parents had just moved in, so there hadn’t been much in the closets and drawers for the cops to paw through. Mother followed me to the office off the front hall, still wearing her parka.
“It’s not as bad as I thought,” I commented. I took in the open boxes around me and the piles of papers on my father’s desk. “Was Daddy here when they came?”
Mother nodded. She backed into an overstuffed chair next to the window and sat down, her hands pressed between her knees. “One officer sat with us in the kitchen while two others rummaged through our things.” She rested her head on the back of the chair and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe this is happening to us.”
I lowered myself into my father’s desk chair and stared at the computer monitor, busily crawling with a hungry caterpillar screensaver. “They looked there, too.”
I turned to face my mother. “Where?”
“Your father’s computer. One of the officer’s diddled around with it for an hour or so, then copied some files onto a Zip disk and took it away with him.”
“What kind of files?” I asked, although I could guess. Kiddie porn. That’s what they were looking for on my father’s computer. I felt ill.
When mother simply shrugged, I added, “Well, there couldn’t have been much to find; the computer just came out of the box. Unless some software manufacturer with more money than God is up to some funny business.”
My fingers clamped down on the arms of the chair, as if by tightening my grip I could keep the world from spinning out of control. First the police. Then my sister’s deteriorating mental condition. My mother’s smoking. Daddy’s drinking. Not to mention my own precarious health. What next? Even a merry-go-round designed by Satan has to grind to a halt sometime. Or so I hoped.
Mother eased herself out of her chair and onto her knees, then rummaged listlessly through a box of videotapes and computer manuals that I was certain had been packed much more neatly before the police had gotten their grubby mitts on them. She held up a videotape for my inspection. “Emily’s Graduation, Bryn Mawr” was printed neatly on the label in black Magic Marker. I smiled, remembering how proud we had been of our daughter on that day. Mother and Dad had flown in from Seattle. Paul and I had driven up with Connie.
Connie. Long before Dennis. Now I wondered why Dennis had never returned my call.
I fished around in my purse for my address book, then picked up the phone.
Mother heard me punching buttons and looked up. “Who are you calling?”
“Dennis Rutherford.”
She pressed a hand flat against her chest. “Can’t we keep this in the family? I just don’t know what your father will do if word of this leaks out.”
“For heaven’s sake, Mother! Dennis is practically family. I’m thinking he might be able to find out what’s really going on with the police up in Baltimore.”
She continued to stare at me without moving.
Dennis’s phone rang four times before the answering machine kicked in. I left another message, then called Connie.
Connie didn’t have much use for modern contraptions like VCRs and answering machines, so I let it ring and ring. I was just about to hang up when she picked up, sounding out of breath. “Hello?”
“Connie, it’s me. Hannah.”
“Oh, hi! Just a sec. I’ve got an armload of old newspapers I need to do something with.” The phone tapped against a table and I heard a door slam. In a minute, Connie was back on the line. “Whew! If I just took them out to the barn every day instead of once every twenty-five years, it wouldn’t be so much of a hassle.”
I got right to the point. “Connie, do you know where Dennis is?”
“That’s a slap in the face. Haven’t talked to you in ages and practically the first words out of your mouth are ‘Where’s Dennis?’ ”
“We’ve got a crisis on our hands. I really need his help.”
“Crisis? My God, is everybody all right?”
“Sort of.” Realizing that my mother was still in the room, I said, “I’ll explain later.”
Connie sprang into action. “Dennis has been out of town at a conference. Look, I’m going to hang up now and call his beeper. He should get right back to you.”
She was true to her word. The next time the phone rang it was Dennis. I nearly fainted with relief when I heard his voice—deep, sympathetic, and extraordinarily reassuring. While he didn’t offer to kiss everything and make it all better, he did promise to do what he could. Although I’m not very good at staying put, I agreed to hang out at Mother’s until I heard from him.
After that, I persuaded Mother to make us some tea while I rallied the troops. I telephoned Ruth and Paul. Paul joined us in mid-afternoon and Ruth when she closed the shop, a tad early, at four o’clock. Dad had returned from his walk shortly before then, looking more dead than alive. When we tried to cheer him up, he made it clear to everyone we should keep our distance. There wasn’t much for us to do except concentrate on unpacking the boxes—putting dishes in the cupboards, books on the shelves, and towels in the bathrooms. Ruth and Paul hung pictures while I took out my aggressions on the packing boxes, ripping off the masking tape and squashing them flat before lugging them down to the basement. As we worked, we limited our discussions to where best to put what lamp, what to do about the glassware that wouldn’t fit in the dining room cabinet, and whether to tie back the drapes or leave them hanging straight. No one mentioned Georgina or the police. It was as if an eight-hundred-pound gorilla had plopped himself down on the living room rug and everyone simply stepped around him, too polite to notice.
Around six, I opened a few cans and heated up some tomato soup, then assembled a platter of ham sandwiches. As I worked I kept praying for the phone to ring, but when the ring finally came, it wasn’t the phone but the doorbell. At the first bur-ring Mother jumped like a startled deer, then closed herself in the downstairs bathroom.
“Mother!” I stood outside, my ear pressed to the door she had just slammed in my face.
“I don’t care who it is, Hannah. I don’t want to see anybody.”
While I tried to persuade Mother to pull herself together and come out and join her family, Paul answered the door. “It’s Connie! And Dennis,” he shouted. Ruth and I nearly collided in the hallway, we were so anxious to see them.
In the several months since I had last visited Connie, she had allowed her reddish hair to grow out. I had always liked it short and curly, but had to admit that the way this new do waved smoothly under and just skimmed her shoulders was damned attractive. Dennis probably thought so, too. He stood directly behind her, his sandy hair hidden under a knit cap.
My father had never met Connie’s boyfriend, so we made introductions all around, although the pleasure-to-meet-yous rang rather hollow under the circumstances. After hanging up their hats and coats, Connie and Dennis gravitated toward the kitchen, where we arranged ourselves around the table. Paul dragged a seventh chair in from the dining room for Mother, who had finally decided to end her self-imposed exile.
Dennis rested his elbows on the table and laced his narrow fingers together. “First off, I need to explain that cops share information on a ‘need to know’ basis, even with other cops.” Disappointment must have been written large across my face, because Dennis reached over and patted my arm. “But I’ve got this buddy up in Homicide who owes me one after I nabbed a guy he was looking for last year. So I gave him a call.”
My father snorted. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Well, sir, it seems your daughter’s story kept changing every five minutes, so the officers got a warrant and searched the Cardinale home.”
“Georgina’s house? When?” My father was shouting.
“Early this morning.”
“But that doesn’t explain why they came here,” my mother complained.
“It’s what they found at Georgina’s that led them here.”
Ruth set the coffeepot down on the table with a thunk. “So, what did they find?”
“Georgina has been keeping a diary.” I heard Ruth’s sudden intake of breath.
Dennis glanced in Ruth’s direction, then continued. “The handwriting is sometimes hard to read and she rambles a good bit, but tucked between the pages they found a letter.” His green eyes settled squarely on my father. “A letter from you, Captain.”
Daddy scooted his chair back, stood, and began pacing between the table and the refrigerator. “I know what you mean.”
“George?” Mother’s eyes were wide.
“After that session with the therapist, Georgina wouldn’t talk to me, Lois! I called her on the telephone, but when she recognized my voice, she hung up. When I called back, Scott picked up and said Georgina didn’t care to speak to me.”
“So you wrote her a letter.” Ruth set a plate of Oreos down in the middle of the table along with a handful of spoons.
“I wrote her a letter.” Daddy sat down and Ruth nudged a mug of coffee in his direction, which he ignored. “In the letter I refuted her accusations one by one and ordered her to get away from that therapist. I insisted that she find a doctor who could help her. A real doctor. An M.D.”
Connie looked from Daddy to Dennis, her nose wrinkled in confusion. “I don’t understand. What’s so incriminating about that?”
“Tell her, Captain.”
My father lowered his eyes and studied his thumbnails. “I may have made a few threats.”
For some reason, Dennis turned to me. “Your father wrote Georgina that if she didn’t consult a real doctor soon, he would disown her.”
“That’s it?” I was incredulous.
“And something about making the therapist see reason.”
“Oh, Lord!” My mother began to massage her temples, a sure sign that a migraine was on the way.
“So, what were they looking for here?” I asked.
“Turner didn’t say. But I know they came away empty-handed.”
I realized Ruth had been holding her breath when she puffed air out through her lips. “Whew!”
But Dennis wasn’t finished. “Now, this is what concerns me. They found your fingerprints, Captain, on the glass door leading to the balcony from the therapist’s office.”
Daddy’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m not denying the possibility of that. I must have left them there during that god-awful session with Georgina.”
“That could well be, except the Sturgeses’ housekeeper claims that she carefully cleaned the glass, inside and out, on the day before the murder.”
Daddy frowned. “Maybe that housekeeper’s not as thorough as she thinks.”
“Turner says that Georgina told him you never went near the balcony that day.”
“She’s very much mistaken, then.” Daddy shook his head. “That office was stifling. I needed some air.”
Dennis waved a hand. “The word of the housekeeper in itself is not going to cut much ice with the detectives, so if that’s all they’ve got …” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “But I wouldn’t risk it. To tell you the truth, sir, I think you need a lawyer.”
“Wait a minute!” I croaked. “We know when Dr. Sturges died. The police were asking everyone what they were doing between the hours of noon and three on Friday.” I swiveled to face my father. “You told them what you were doing then, didn’t you, Daddy? If you were here in Annapolis, you can’t have been murdering people up in Baltimore!”
Daddy shrugged. “I was at Home Depot buying stuff for the house.”
“So you have credit card receipts!”
“I paid cash.”
“But you still would have receipts,” I reasoned.
“Hannah, I can’t find them. I’m sure they went out with the trash on Saturday.”
Mother, who had begun sobbing quietly, got up and left the room. I heard the door to the bathroom firmly close and the unmistakable sound of running water.
Connie spoke for the first time in a long while. “Dennis, even if he doesn’t have a rock-solid alibi, surely the police don’t really believe that Captain Alexander killed that woman! He’s a solid citizen. A war hero. When I think about all he went through in Vietnam …”
Using his fingers like a comb, Dennis smoothed his pale hair back from his forehead. “Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still considered a suspect.”
Daddy pounded the flat of his hand on the table so hard that the spoons jounced and clattered. “I’ll clear it up right now! I wrote that letter to Georgina and I meant every word I said. I wanted to kill that damn therapist. I could have strangled her with my bare hands for what she’s done to my little girl. Wanted to, notice, but didn’t. After that session I drove home, wrote the letter, and cooled off. End of story.”
Daddy’s face turned scarlet; crooked, purple veins pulsed in his forehead. I had never seen him so angry.
Dennis must have decided Daddy wouldn’t bite, because he stood up and faced him, practically nose to nose. “Captain Alexander, we’ve just met, so I’m going on gut feeling here, but I believe you. Now, we’ll just have to hope you come up with a more solid alibi, or that somebody else pops up on Homicide’s radar screen, because right now, sir, you are what’s behind door number one.”
“Dennis, isn’t there anything you can do?” Connie spoke softly, her voice pleading.
Dennis shook his head. “Out of my jurisdiction. And Turner has already stuck his neck out for me on this.”
“Somebody’s got to do something!” Ruth moaned.
Since she was flying to Bali come hell or high water on Thursday, I figured it wouldn’t be Ruth doing the something that needed doing. I surveyed the glum faces clustered around me. Maybe Dennis’s hands were tied, but not mine. First thing in the morning, if Georgina still refused to talk to me about Diane Sturges, I’d start trying to track down the owners of some of the other names in the doctor’s appointment book.