Tuesday, August 9, early afternoon
When Hazel walked up the steps of 72 Church Road for the second time in as many days, Cathy Wiest was already standing in the doorway, looking at her with an expression halfway between exhaustion and alarm. She was in a long apron dotted with soap suds and she was wearing rubber gloves. She held up her forearms like a surgeon waiting for a patient.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Hazel said.
“Nothing important.”
“Don’t let me stop you from doing your work. I just wanted to come by and see how you were doing.”
“Are you coming in? I’m dripping on the carpet.”
Hazel stepped awkwardly into the house and removed her cap. “I won’t stay.” Cathy Wiest was walking back toward the kitchen and Hazel followed. “I just thought I’d come by –”
“You said that.” Cathy was standing with her back to her now, at the sink. There was a tower of dishes to her right, on the countertop, and she was lowering them two at a time into soapy water.
“Looks like I’ve caught you at a bad moment.”
“Not at all,” Cathy said. “You can make yourself useful if you want.” She held a towel out. Hazel took it from her. Standing beside her now, Hazel saw a curtain rod standing in the sink as well as several pairs of sunglasses.
“You are cleaning a lot of things.”
“I’m going through the house and washing everything in it. The laundry is done, including the curtains, and I did the walls this morning.” She passed Hazel a plate. “Are you trying to decide if I’m nuts?”
“No,” she said, perhaps a bit too fast. “It’s therapy.”
“Obviously.” She passed Hazel a pair of dice. She stared at them for a moment and then dried them and put them in the cutlery bin on the drying rack. “So get to the point, Hazel. You already know how I am. All the doorknobs in the house are soaking in a bucket of bleach in the mudroom. That’s how I am.”
“I’m sorry, Cathy.”
“Are you here to make me more miserable?”
“No. I’m not,” she said confidently. “I’m just wondering about a couple of things, a couple of loose ends.”
“Loose ends.” A stapler.
“You put a stapler in hot water?”
“There’s no staples in it. Just dry it thoroughly.” She watched the detective dry the stapler.
Hazel took a breath. “Did Henry mention to you where he was going to be Saturday night?”
“He was at the store until six. Then he said he had to pick up a shipment of filters. They come in huge boxes: it’s easier to go to Mayfield to get them than it is to have them shipped all the way up here.”
“The reserve is really out of the way if he was coming home with them.”
“Maybe he had a call. Or he took the 26 and stopped to buy some water.”
She heard Cathy stringing the scene together as she spoke. “No one saw him in the store,” she said. “I called down about an hour ago to see if he went in. He didn’t.”
Cathy Wiest turned her hip against the countertop. “What are you saying he was doing down there?”
“I’m asking you because I don’t know. You said he didn’t smoke.”
“So what? They did the autopsy, Hazel. I can’t ask him why he went down there now, can I?”
“What about the casino?”
“I have no idea. He never went there when I’ve known him.”
“But he did, you mean? He used to go?”
“Like I say, not while I’ve known him. Knew …” Cathy pulled the apron up over her head and walked into the hallway. Hazel followed her. Cathy was digging a pack of cigarettes out of a drawer in the hall table.
“I overheard Uncle Ed talking about a brief period of wild youth,” Hazel said.
“You don’t know about that?”
“Not in any detail.”
“It was a hundred years ago, Hazel. He had a little gambling problem at one point. As far as I understand. And he took some money from the store a couple of times. I wasn’t here, I just … oh, for Christ’s sake –”
“Cathy, what is it?”
She’d turned away and clamped her hand over her mouth.
“Cathy?”
“Wait here.” She went up the stairs behind them, leaving Hazel in a state of anticipation and confusion. She listened to the footfalls cross overhead and then back, and Cathy came down the stairs with one of those little manila envelopes banks give people their cash withdrawals in. It was bulging. She handed it to Hazel.
It was full of hundreds. Hazel said, “Ah.”
“There’s fifty-five of them.”
“And Henry didn’t normally carry around this kind of cash?”
“No.”
Hazel hefted the heavy little packet in her hand. “Cathy …”
The woman’s hand shook as she brought the cigarette to her mouth. “You’re just going to wear me down, aren’t you?”
“I want to redo the autopsy.”
“Christ.”
“Don’t you need to know? You didn’t have to show me the cash, Cathy.” She tossed the envelope onto the hall table. “You must have doubts of your own.”
“Don’t you have to keep that?”
“It doesn’t mean anything yet.”
Cathy opened the drawer in the table again and took a second cigarette. She tossed the cash in and closed the drawer. “Do I have to do anything?”
“No. But I thought I’d get your permission anyway.”
“You can just reorder the autopsy by yourself?”
“I have to ask a coroner, but it’s fairly straightforward.”
“Then why come to me? Why even tell me? Do you want my blessing or something?”
Hazel looked at a vase of flowers on the hall table. “I guess so.”
“Just do what you have to do,” Cathy said angrily.
Hazel went to the door and left it open as she descended the steps into the garden. It smelled like warm grass in the day’s heat. Cathy Wiest called to her, and Hazel turned around in the riot of flowers. Cathy’s face was burning. “How will I know when all of this is going to be over?” she said.
“The investigation?”
“No, Hazel.” She spread her arms. “This.”