I tried to calm myself down after Alex left and to calm Jack as well. I could see that the events of the past few days were overwhelming him—the move from the only home he’d ever known, the police and reporters here, the pony, my fainting, the first day of pre-K, and now the tension between Alex and me.
I suggested that instead of having another ride on Lizzie—how I hated that name!—he should curl up on the couch in the den and I would read to him. “Lizzie wants a nap, too,” I added, and maybe that did it. He helped me take off her saddle, and then willingly selected one of his favorite books. Within minutes he was asleep. I covered him with a light blanket, then sat watching him as he slept.
Minute by minute, I went over the mistakes I had made today. A normal wife, finding that picture in the barn, would have called her husband and told him about it. A normal mother would not have attempted a conspiracy with a four-year-old to keep his father or stepfather in ignorance. No wonder Alex had been both angry and disgusted. And what could I say to him by way of explanation that would make sense?
The sound of the telephone ringing in the kitchen did not cause even a stir in Jack. He was in the deep sleep that tired four-year-olds can achieve so easily. I ran from the den to the kitchen. Let it be Alex, I prayed.
But it was Georgette Grove. Her voice hesitant, she said that if I decided that I did not want to live in this house, she had several others in the area that she wanted to show me. “If you saw one of them you liked, I would forego my sales commission,” she offered. “And I will make every effort to sell your house also without commission.”
It was a very generous offer. Of course it did assume that we could afford to buy a second house without first having the money that Alex had put in this one, but then I am sure Georgette realized that as Laurence Foster’s widow, I had my own resources. I told Georgette that I’d be very interested in looking at other houses with her and was surprised at the relief I could hear in her voice.
When I hung up the phone, I felt more hopeful. When Alex came back, I would tell him about the conversation with Georgette, and that if she found a suitable house, I would insist on laying out the money to purchase it myself. Alex is generous to a fault, but after growing up with adoptive parents who had to watch their money carefully, and then living with a wealthy husband who never wasted money, I could understand why Alex might not want to buy another house until this one was sold.
I was too restless to read, so I just wandered through the first-floor rooms. Yesterday the movers had arranged the furniture marked for the living room before I came downstairs, and the placement was all wrong. I am not into feng shui, but I am, after all, an interior designer. Before I was even aware of what I was doing, I was shoving the couch across the room and rearranging the chairs and tables and area carpets so that the room, though still stark, no longer looked like a furniture store. Fortunately the movers had happened to place the antique highboy that had been Larry’s favorite piece of furniture against the appropriate wall. That I could never have moved.
After Alex left without having lunch, I hadn’t bothered to eat, either. I’d covered both plates and put them in the refrigerator, but now I realized I had the beginning of a headache. I wasn’t hungry, but I knew a cup of tea would help stave it off.
The doorbell rang before I could take my first step toward the kitchen, and I stopped in my tracks. Suppose it was a reporter? But then I remembered that before she hung up, Georgette Grove had told me that a mason was on his way to repair the limestone. I looked out the window and with relief saw the commercial vehicle parked in the driveway.
I opened the door, spoke to the man who introduced himself as Jimmy Walker—“The same name as a mayor of New York in the 1920s. They even wrote a song about him.” I told him that he was expected and closed the door, but not before I had to see from inches away the damage that was on the open side of the double door.
For a moment after I closed the door, I kept my hand on the handle. With every fiber of my being I wanted to open it again and shout out to Jimmy Walker and the whole world that I was Liza Barton, the ten-year-old child who was terrified for her mother’s life, and to tell them that there had been a split second when Ted Cartwright had looked at me and seen the pistol in my hand and then decided to throw my mother at me, knowing the gun might go off.
That split second had made the difference between Mother’s life and her death. I leaned my head against the door. Even though the house was pleasantly cool, I could feel perspiration on my forehead. Was that interval something I actually remembered, or merely something I wanted to remember? I stood there, transfixed. Till this moment, my memory had been of Ted turning and yelling “Sure,” then throwing Mother in a single motion.
The door chimes sounded again. The mason had a question, I was sure. I waited for half a minute, the time it would take to answer if I’d been in the next room, and then opened the door to find a man in his late thirties with an air of authority about him. He introduced himself as Jeffrey MacKingsley, the prosecutor of Morris County, and, almost witless with worry, I invited him in.
“I would have phoned if I had planned to stop by, but I was in the vicinity and decided to express my personal regrets at the unfortunate incident yesterday,” he said, following me into the living room.
As I mumbled, “Thank you, Mr. MacKingsley,” his eyes were darting around the living room and I was glad that I had rearranged the furniture. The slipper chairs were facing each other on either side of the couch. The love seat was in front of the fireplace. The area carpets are all mellow with age, and their muted but rich colors were caught in the rays of the afternoon sun. The highboy with its fine lacquering and intricate carving is a beautiful example of eighteenth-century craftsmanship. The room needed more furniture, and, despite the fact that there were no window treatments or paintings or bric-a-brac in place, it still suggested that I was a normal owner with good taste settling into a new home.
That realization calmed me, and I was able to smile when Jeffrey MacKingsley said, “This is a lovely room, and I only hope that you will be able to get past what happened yesterday and enjoy it and this home. I can assure you that my office and the local police department will work together to find the culprit, or culprits. There won’t be any more incidents, Mrs. Nolan, if we can help it.”
“I hope not.” Then I hesitated. Suppose Alex walked in now and brought up the photo I had found in the barn. “Actually . . . ” I hesitated. I didn’t know what to say.
The prosecutor’s expression changed. “Has there been another incident, Mrs. Nolan?”
I reached in the pocket of my slacks and pulled out the newspaper photo. “This was taped to a post in the barn. My little boy found it when he went out to see his pony this morning.” Choking at the deception, I asked, “Do you know who these people are?”
MacKingsley took the picture from me. I noticed that he was careful to hold it by its edge. He examined it, then looked at me. “Yes, I do,” he said. I felt that he was attempting to sound matter-of-fact. “This is a picture of the family who restored this house.”
“The Barton family!” I hated myself for managing to sound genuinely surprised.
“Yes,” he said. He was watching for my reaction.
“I guess I suspected that,” I said. I know my voice was nervous and strained.
“Mrs. Nolan, we might be able to lift some fingerprints from this picture,” MacKingsley said. “Who else has handled it?”
“No one else. My husband had already left this morning when I found it. It was taped to the post too high up for Jack to reach it.”
“I see. I want to take it and have it examined for fingerprints. Do you by any chance have a plastic bag that I could drop it in?”
“Of course.” I was grateful to be able to move. I did not want this man to be studying me face-to-face any longer.
He followed me into the kitchen and I took a sandwich bag out of the drawer and handed it to him.
He dropped the picture into it. “I won’t take any more of your time, Mrs. Nolan,” he said. “But I have to ask you this: Were you or your husband planning to let the police know that you’d had another trespasser on your property?”
“This seemed so trivial,” I hedged.
“I agree that it doesn’t compare with what happened yesterday. However, the fact remains that someone was trespassing on your property again. There may be fingerprints we can get off this picture, and that may prove helpful in finding who is responsible for all this. We’ll need your fingerprints for comparison purposes. I know that you have had a lot of stress, and I don’t want you to have to come down to the office. I’ll arrange for a Mendham police officer to come over in a few minutes with a fingerprint kit. He can take them right here.”
A frightening possibility occurred to me. Would they just use my fingerprints to distinguish them from any others on the picture, or would they also run them through the system? Some kid in town had admitted the vandalism last Halloween. Suppose the police decided to check the juvenile files. Mine might be on record there.
“Mrs. Nolan, if you find any evidence of someone being on this property, please give us a call. I’m also going to ask the police to ride past the house regularly.”
“I think that’s a very good idea.”
I had not heard Alex come in, and I guess MacKingsley hadn’t either, because we both turned abruptly to find Alex standing in the doorway of the kitchen. I introduced the two men, and MacKingsley repeated to him that he would check the picture I’d found in the barn for fingerprints.
To my relief, Alex did not ask to see it. Surely MacKingsley would have found it odd if he had known that I hadn’t shown it to my husband. He left immediately after that, then Alex and I looked at each other. He put his arms around me. “Peace, Ceil,” he said. “I’m sorry I blew up. It’s just that you’ve got to let me in on things. I am your husband, remember? Don’t treat me as a stranger who has no business knowing what’s going on.”
He took up my offer to get out the salmon that he had left on the lunch table. We ate together on the patio and I told him about the offer Georgette Grove had made. “Certainly, start looking,” he agreed. “And if we end up with two houses for a while, so be it.” Then he added, “Who knows, we may end up needing both of them.”
I knew he meant it as a joke, but neither one of us smiled, and the old truism rushed through my mind. “Many a true word is spoken in jest.” The doorbell rang. I opened the door, and the Mendham police officer with the fingerprint kit stepped inside. As I rolled the tips of my fingers in the ink, I thought of having done this before—the night I killed my mother.