I MAY HAVE SOUNDED UPBEAT WHEN I LEFT Chucky, but it was all bravado. The phantom pain in my heart felt more like a very real hole in the pit of my stomach. I was going to miss dialing him up any old time of the day to tell him dirty jokes. I was going to miss cuddling with him on those long weekend nights that he and I managed to steal away while Marjory was out of town. I was going to miss getting drunk with the girls and dragging Chuck bowling with us, where he'd get the slightest thrill from all the female attention lavished on him by my generous friends, who thought they felt sorry for an old guy stuck in a loveless marriage. For some reason they always took Chucky's side in the game of love. I was the tall sexy blonde, single and ready for life's roll in the hay onward and upward, whereas to them Chucky seemed stuck—gummed up in the thickest part of life, where getting free only meant a final roll on the downside of the hill. Whatever feelings of family Chucky claimed to have with Marjory were oddly similar to the feelings I had for him. Maybe because I'd never had anything close to a real family, I'd let Chucky take the roles of father, brother, and husband. It was a mistake, but as I'd said to him, mistakes didn't scare me as long as I could straddle them without permanent injury. So far so good.
It was already past three when I rolled back into the office. I thought it perhaps time to do a little legal work in case Vince decided to ask me why he was still paying me a salary to go running around town working a case he'd barred me from.
I picked up a file and went to the library to do some research on an upcoming trial. Beth was sitting at the long conference table, staring at her cell phone. She looked up at me wide-eyed as if I were an apparition back from the dead.
“What the frig's wrong with you?” I asked her.
“Shannon. Why are you here… now?”
“Shit, Sherlock. I work here.”
“Did she call you too?”
I snapped my finger in front of her eyes. “Wake up, Beth. It's only a dream. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Doogie called me.”
It took me a minute to figure out the name thing. I still couldn't understand why some people couldn't be satisfied with their birth names and had to make themselves sound like cartoon characters. I decided it had to be some kind of secret membership rite. Maybe a variation of rapper jive: Have silly name—be cool. Like Doogie and Muffie were to Virginia and Martha what Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent were to Calvin and Curtis.
“She wants to see me,” Beth continued. “I shouldn't go, right?”
“Virginia Booth called you and wants to meet with you?”
“Lolly called her and told her that you and I were there asking questions about her and Muffie. Doogie freaked when she heard you were with me.”
“Okay, so let's go see her.”
Beth shook her head. “Alone. Doogie wants to see me alone.”
“You call her and tell her you're on your way. Don't worry about the rest. I'll figure it out during the ride.”
“Are you going to have me wired?”
“No, Beth. I'm going to call up the folks from Mission Impossible and have a mask of your face made, and I'm going to wear it to fool Doogie into thinking she's talking to you, when in fact she'll be spilling her guts to me.”
“Stop making fun of me.”
“It breaks my heart to say this, but if you're going to work in this office as anything other than someone's assistant, you'd better grow up and learn how to bend the truth.”
Beth lifted a yellow legal pad from the table. “You're on the motion calendar tomorrow in the Rollins case, Shannon. His lawyer filed a ten-page motion to dismiss. I'm preparing your answer now while you run around simultaneously playing detective and footsies with Scott Boardman. So which of us is acting like the real prosecutor? You or me?”
“You're acting like a paralegal. And law school is just going to teach you more of that book stuff that you already know. I'm going to teach you how to be a hard-ass prosecutor. I'll wing the motion tomorrow morning whether you write a brilliant answer or not. Now leave your flowered tote bag behind and let's go.”
“Just like you ‘winged’ the Cohen case?” Beth held her legal pad in midair, like if she showed me concrete proof of my negligent behavior it might shock me into letting her go to Virginia Booth's alone. I took the pad from her hand, ripped off the pages she'd written, and folded them up in my back pocket. “I'll read while you drive. Call Doogie. Tell her you're on your way.”
She rose slowly from her seat.
“And the next time you want to insult me or hurt my feelings,” I said, “don't bother. It's been tried by the best, and the only person who ever came close was a rookie Providence cop when he kicked me across a room while I was handcuffed.”
On our way past the girls' bathroom, we bumped into Andy coming out. “Hey, Vincent is looking for you,” he said to me. I looked at Beth for verification. She shrugged. Andy continued. “Well, it's something about a trust fund and Virginia Booth. She was suing her daughter to get the trust fund control back. He just found out that the day the court ruled against her is the day the murders took place. Motive,” Andy sang.
“Ridiculous,” Beth said as she walked ahead to the elevator and punched the down button. “Doogie would never… Mothers don't kill their children. At least not where I come from.”
“The same day the decision came down?” I confirmed with Andy.
“You betcha, sweet-cakes. M-O-T-I-V-E,” he spelled.
The elevator doors swung open and I joined Beth, who was mumbling something under her breath about absurdity and the lack of understanding we had of someone like Virginia Booth. I let Beth mutter away because time would answer the question of what Virginia Booth was capable of. If I had my way, it would be sooner rather than later, because with each minute that passed, emotions cooled, fears subsided, and the edges of truth softened and blurred. I recalled my first encounter with Virginia Booth four days after the murders. She'd vacillated between gracious and jumpy, sharp-tongued and coolly dismissive. The second time we talked, at the coffee shop, she was calmer, more sure of herself. She had found her footing and had tried to knock me off mine-make me another victim of Scott Boardman.
How would this third visit find her? I was hoping the third time would be the charm.
IN HER RED SAAB, BETH DROVE US TO NEWPORT. I pulled Beth's motion response from my pocket, and while she drove, I read it in five minutes.
“Is it okay?” she asked.
“Perfect,” I said. “It's a sure win.” I tucked the pages back into my pocket and made a mental note to myself to make a real note to myself that I had to be in court at 8:00 a.m. the next morning. My biggest obstacle to winning the motion wasn't the state of the law, or how well Beth had presented it, but whether or not I could make it to court on time.
At a point between the Jamestown and Newport bridges, my cell phone rang. Marianna had tracked us down. She and Laurie were going to the Red Fez after work and wanted company.
“Maybe,” I said into the phone. “We're on our way to Newport and I'll fill you in later.”
I clicked my phone, ending the conversation. Beth tried to look at me as she drove, sneaking peeks out of the corner of her eye. “Did Mari scream at you?” she asked.
“For what?”
“Doing what we're doing, of course.”
“As a matter of fact, Beth, not only did she not scream, but she said she wished she were coming with us. Marianna and Laurie both realize that in this case, sitting around the office waiting for evidence to blow in through an open window isn't going to work, so we got to go out and reel it in.”
“But it's not normal. Prosecutors aren't supposed to act like detectives. The police should be doing this stuff, not us.”
“Beth, remember the two police officers—Kent and the other one—who arrested me the day Leo Safer was murdered? The two who would have beat the shit out of the three of us if Lucky hadn't been there?”
She snuck me another side-glance, afraid to answer, knowing that my memory of that day and night was still as raw as an open wound.
“Well, police officers like those two, and others like them, are the ones who investigate these cases. Would you trust that kind of investigating if your mother were under suspicion of murder? Or your sister? Or your brother?”
Beth didn't have a brother, but she dared not correct me. Silent, her eyes remained steady on the road ahead.
“This case is special to me because of Scott Boardman. And when I became a suspect in Leo Safer's murder, the case became personal. So I'm not leaving anything up to police officers like Kent and his redneck cronies.”
“I thought you liked cops… I mean, you date them all the time.”
“I fuck them, Beth. That's different than dating. And they're not all like Kent. Some of them are okay. The ones who shouldn't have been cops to begin with.”
“Like the chief?”
Good question. But my answer didn't take long. “Yeah, like the chief. He's a good guy, that's why he made it to the top. The ones like Kent will eventually be weeded out, but not before they've done a heap of bad shit like beat up a few suspects, plant bogus evidence, and skim drugs from a bust and then resell it to select private customers.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“Pillow talk with the chief of police for the past five years.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER BETH AND I PULLED UP to Virginia Booth's castle on the cliffs. As before, a gray-uniformed maid admitted us to the sun-filled “morning room” (as Beth called it). We had waited for the mistress of the manse for about fifteen minutes when the maid returned and said that Mrs. Booth was indisposed and couldn't make the meeting after all.
“Give her a couple of aspirin and tell her we'll wait,” I said.
The lady in gray stalled a minute before finally spinning on her heels and exiting the room.
In the stuffed chintz chair, Beth sat primly with her hands folded in her lap. She directed her statements to the room at large, as if she were delivering protocol to a roomful of guests awaiting a sitting queen. “She'll make us wait another fifteen minutes and then she'll send the maid down again to inform us that she still isn't receiving guests. We can sit here for an eternity, and if she doesn't want to see us, she won't. And after some extended period of time, if we refuse to leave, she'll call the police to have us removed. I just want you to know that,” she said confidently “Virginia Booth will win this particular round.”
“I'm guessing she won't try to win this one. Because I'm guessing she doesn't want any more cops showing up here. So we'll just give her the fifteen more minutes she requires and see what happens.”
During our wait, I'd perused a coffee-table book on orchid forcing (imagine that kind of arrogance?) and Beth walked around the room surveying the furnishings as if she were a buyer from Christie's pricing the goods for auction. Beth was fondling a Chinese jade vase, turning it over to look for a signature, I assumed, when Virginia Booth appeared in the doorway, studying us from a safe distance as if we were bacteria on a slide.
Beth saw her first and gently replaced the vase. “I'm sorry, Doogie. That was unconscionable of me…”
Virginia Booth ignored her apology and turned her head slowly to me. “And you? Why are you here?”
“You left so abruptly from the coffee shop that day… and I thought we were just starting to bond.”
This was the first Beth had heard of a prior meeting between Virginia Booth and me. “What coffee shop?” she asked me.
I kept my eyes on Virginia Booth as I explained to Beth: “Mrs. Booth invited me for coffee. But then once we got to Starbucks, she decided she wasn't thirsty.” Still watching Virginia Booth, I said to her, “Was it something I said, Mrs. Booth?”
Virginia Booth seemed to fold in half. She held her stomach and sidled unsteadily to the nearest chair, into which she crumbled. Beth ran to her side. “Doogie?”
Virginia Booth held her hand up to Beth. Her skin had paled even whiter than its natural porcelain shade. She spoke to me. “Your police friends came back here again. They showed me the same warrant from the last time. They found something upstairs—they wouldn't say what. They removed it from my house and said they'd be returning within the next few days with another warrant. One for my… arrest.” Now she looked at Beth, who was kneeling in front of her. She took Beth's hand that had been resting within reach on the arm of her chair. Ignoring me, she spoke directly to Beth—who was the only one she'd actually invited into her house. “I thought maybe you would understand, Beth… that you would help me understand all this. And that I could explain to you what happened. And that in turn you might understand.”
I took a few steps closer to the stricken woman. “What's all this gibberish?” I said as Beth looked up at me, horrified. “What happened the night your daughter was murdered? Was it the trust money? You killed your own flesh and blood over a goddamn trust—”
“Shannon,” Beth said gently. “Let's just let Doogie talk a minute. Okay?” She turned back to Virginia Booth. “You want to tell me something? Go ahead. It'll be all right. I promise.”
Virginia Booth shook her head slowly. “No, dear,” she said to Beth. “It will never be all right again. Muffie ruined everything, as I knew she would once Pat Boardman got hold of her.”
“Oh, so now we're blaming Pat Boardman?” I said.
Beth's eyes shot me a daggered glance. I moved away and sat on the couch Marianna and I had occupied during our first visit. Beth was clearly the director of this scene, so suppressing the urge to even breathe, I let Virginia Booth continue her monologue while I bit my sharp tongue.
“You know, of course, about the outcome of my lawsuit over the trust. Those policemen told me you all knew. I'd lost the case that day… the day Muffie died. I know how that looks, as if I had something to do with her death.” She breathed deeply, switching scenes. “And upstairs, here, they found something, they said, that implicated me.” She looked closely into Beth's eyes. “Do you know what they found? I can't imagine…”
Beth turned a sour look at me and I knew what she was thinking. But she disappointed me by actually verbalizing her thoughts. “Did they plant something here, Shannon? Would the cops have planted evidence, or just be lying about it to scare her into confessing something?”
Although I knew that Beth inspired the trust that Virginia Booth needed to bare her soul to us, she still had no right to be releasing confidential information to her— information I'd told her in the privacy of a legal setting, a prosecutor and a paralegal discussing bad cops. True or not, Beth never should have opened her mouth about it to Virginia Booth.
“Beth,” I said, and shook my head at her.
She pursed her lips and nodded, realizing her mistake. “Doogie, did you see anything? What they took out?”
She shook her head slowly. “They wouldn't say. Didn't tell me. Just told me, very self-assured, that I would be arrested.” She dropped her head to her lap. “I need to explain to you, Beth. To someone who will understand when all this is over, what happened… at least part of it… and why.”
“What are you talking about?” Beth said. “Start at the beginning.”
“May I get some water first?” she asked.
The tide of her attitude had turned full circle. She was now asking us if she could get water in her own house. This is where I liked my witnesses—in the solemn state of scared shitless.
“No,” I said. “Talk first, and then you can drink.”
“Come on, Shannon,” Beth pleaded. “Let me get it for her.”
Virginia Booth grabbed Beth's other hand. “No, stay with me.” She hung her head again. “I don't need it anyway.”
Beth patted Virginia Booth's hand, and she began to talk again.
“My lawyer called that morning—the morning the judge said the trust transfer to Muffie was valid. That decision meant that I was under her control financially, just as her father had wished. The trust held everything we own. It might have been all right—I don't think Muffie hated me that much, to put me out of my own house-but Pat Boardman was so strong an influence on her. Muffie changed after Pat. I don't know why Pat Boardman hated me. Maybe because of Scott. Because our families had been so close. Pat always felt the outsider in our group. And Scott made sure Pat was kept in her place, as he was so fond of saying. He was so fond of telling us all how he married down.” She looked over at me with tired eyes. Raising her eyebrows seemed an effort. “Scott prides himself on keeping women in their place. I tried to tell you,” she said to me. “Scott Boardman is not a nice man, and he was a worse husband—”
“Yeah,” I interjected. “He said you'd say that. He said you'd say he was a lousy husband and a worse father.”
“Only because it's true,” she said.
“Go ahead,” Beth said to her, patting her hand again.
Virginia Booth looked up at Beth, as if renewing her faith that Beth was someone she could trust. She nodded. “Pat wanted to move into this house with Muffie. Her plan was that I would retire to the guesthouse. Imagine? After all these years in my home, to ask me to move to the guesthouse, where the servants used to live.”
I felt like telling her that her dump of a guesthouse was twice the size of my apartment, but under Beth's warning stare, I kept my trap shut.
“So I called Muffie—that day I learned the verdict—is that the right term?” She looked at me. “Is it a verdict when a judge decides against you?”
Beth responded. “No, Doogie. Only juries can render verdicts. The judge made a decision.”
She nodded. “Well, he decided against me, and I called Muffie that very evening. She was, of course, with Pat. They were staying on our boat at the harbor. In view of all those people, they carried on together.” She shivered. “At that restaurant they've built on the docks there. Forty-one Degrees North, they call it. Silly name. I went there to talk to her—to both of them—I thought we could come to some agreement—the three of us together …”
“You were on the boat that night?” I said.
Beth warned me again with a slicing glance.
“I had been here, drinking alone. To build courage… the courage to beg.”
She seemed to hiccup. Maybe a tear had lodged in her tight and proud throat.
“Go get her some water now,” Beth said to me. “The kitchen is back out the way we came in, and then to the far left.”
I was reluctant to leave the two of them alone. Would things be said in my absence that Beth wouldn't share? It never occurred to me that I would be the outsider to Beth, or any of the girls. In an implicit and unspoken trust, I never had to share them before. Even Marianna with her close-knit family had always seemed to find a special niche for the four of us that didn't impinge on her family obligations. In short, did I trust Beth as much as I trusted Marianna and Laurie?
Beth felt my reluctance in the few seconds of my hesitation. “Go, Shannon,” she ordered. “A glass of water, please.” Then she turned slowly back to Virginia Booth. “Do you want something a bit stronger—to calm your nerves?”
Again Virginia Booth shook her head into her lap, and whispered, “Water will be fine.”
I rose from the couch and walked slowly from the room, straining to hear whispered words that never came, until I was back at the front door in a large foyer where, as per Beth's directions, I turned left and started down a hall, where a gray-starched maid, a different face this time, met me. She held a basket of fresh-cut flowers to her chest. “May I help you?” she asked.
“Water,” I answered. “For Mrs. Booth in that… morning room.”
She nodded and turned back to the kitchen, hugging the basket in her arms.
Mission completed, I returned to Beth and Virginia Booth, who were silent at my entrance.
“The maid's bringing it,” I said, and resumed my seat on the couch.
Beth looked at me with wide eyes and shook her head almost imperceptibly. Something had been divulged in my absence. Eye to eye, I queried Beth, and she turned back to Virginia Booth. “Tell Miss Lynch what you told me, Doogie. Shannon's okay, really. She's a bit rough around the edges, but you can trust her. I trust her with my life. You can trust her.”
How generous of the two of them, I thought, to trust the shanty Irish broad with the foul mouth and rough edges.
Virginia Booth refused to look at me, still unsure of me. Maybe she knew me better than Beth did—better than I knew myself. Maybe I shouldn't be trusted. But I wasn't going to sell myself to Virginia Booth. And anything I said would make me sound like a used-car salesman hawking a hot car.
“It doesn't matter,” Virginia Booth finally said. “Everyone will eventually know the truth. It might as well begin with her.”
Beth, growing uncomfortable in her kneeling position, stood and then leaned in to perch on the arm of Virginia Booth's chair. Beth never let go of Virginia Booth's hand as she began to speak again.
“Muffie and I were never close. She was more her father than me. A carbon copy really. We were always at odds over one thing or another. Even at Christmastime, I never seemed to choose the right toys. Whereas I already had a collection by the time I was her age, she never liked dolls. She was nine that Christmas, and I had gifted her one of mine—a German bisque Kestner with real porcelain teeth. We'd had a cabinet specially built for what I thought would be the beginning of her own collection.” The longer Virginia Booth spoke in the past, the more her voice drained of its color until it was so pale and weak that it flattened into a dull monotone.
“Muffie simply had no interest in dolls. As with everything else I tried…. She never had an interest in anything but her father's sports—especially the hunting. She was an expert marksman.” She looked at Beth. “You know the Whitmores' hunting plantation? She would go with Brent.” Finally humbled by her memories, she looked at me. “Brent was my husband. Muffle's father,” she explained.
I didn't dare even nod for fear of breaking her spell of comfort.
“Oh, but this is all so unimportant now, isn't it? So insignificant …” Her voice trailed off as the maid arrived with a tray of ice water in a crystal pitcher and water glasses etched with the family initials. She walked to the table in the middle of the room and, with the tray, pushed aside the stack of gardening manuals I had looked through earlier, then placed the tray on the table. She poured a glass and brought it to Virginia Booth, who released Beth's hand just long enough to take a delicate sip and then returned the glass to the woman's waiting hand.
When the maid had walked quietly out, Virginia Booth began again, refreshed and emboldened, ready to share some cold hard facts. “I went to the boat. Announced, of course. I had called first. I would never want to… interrupt anything.” She clamped her eyes closed and breathed deeply, the thought of lesbian encounters making her almost physically sick. “But when I got there… they were like that… under the covers…” The tears she had been stoically holding back finally spilled into her lap. With her next words, her voice cracked.
“Purposely, I believe. Muffie staged that scene to shock me. Oh, how much she must have hated me then. Never had I felt her hate so strongly as that moment. I had sued my own daughter—and lost.” She pulled her hand from Beth's. The rest of the story had to be told alone; even Beth would not be privy to the sorrow running through her veins and seeping from her poreless skin.
“I don't think she had told Pat I was coming. It was Muffle's hate that bred that vengeful scene—the two of them in bed. Pat looked shocked. Embarrassed. But Muffie laughed at me. That's when my hand rose to whatever was in its reach. A glass vase. So very heavy. And I remember thinking it was not my strength that lifted it from the table, but my anger. My anger threw it. I threw it at them. A glass vase. I don't know that I meant to hit her… or either of them. I was so angry, so hurt; all the years of frustration and loss seemed to well up in that one minute of letting go… my hand around the thing closest to my reach… and then letting it go… and watching it fly across the room… as if it sailed under its own power, and hit, not Pat—who had ducked from its path—but my daughter Muffie, who had turned toward Pat, worried that it would hurt her. Muffie was worried about Pat while I watched the vase crack into the back of my daughter's head. She seemed almost to bounce-bounce across the bed as if she were a child playing on a trampoline. Or maybe that's what I thought I saw—my child jumping on a bed, laughing and playing. Maybe that's not how it was at all. Maybe what I really saw was what seemed to appear moments later when my head cleared of its fury. The bed awash with Muffle's blood and Pat screaming. Bending over my daughter and screaming. I ran out. Off the boat. I ran home, here, and sat quietly, waiting for someone to call. To tell me what I'd done and how to fix it. But no one called. I waited in my room, it seemed like hours, but no one called. Until Scott came. He came to me here, and told me…they were both dead.”
She looked at me now full-face. “Can you tell me—is that how Muffie died? From me? From what I threw?”
Instead of answering her, I said, “Is that all? You threw something at her and left? Just ran out?”
She looked away. “I did. Just literally ran away from it all.” She might have smiled ruefully at that point. But she didn't. Instead she poked her head up as if she smelled a sudden odor. “I have to excuse myself a minute.” She looked at Beth. “May I? I'll be right back.”
Beth took her elbow and helped her from the chair. She had been drained by her confessional; she was weak, and so much frailer than the last two times I'd seen her. Beth and I watched in silence as she trod unsteadily out on legs not ready for the burden she had taken on and then released to us.
Neither Beth nor I spoke, both knowing that the time for comments would be later, after the police were called, after Virginia Booth was led away in handcuffs and escorted—not by her chauffeur or a maid—but by police officers to a Newport jail cell to await arraignment for the murder of her daughter on the family yacht.
Beth turned her pale and worried face to the windows, walked to them, and stood looking out at the sage old sea that promised answers, but, of course, offered none. The ocean was just another mirage of wisdom—a body of water that so many gazed at, thinking that there lay the answers to all life's mysteries, when, in fact, all those pretty waves were only a calming solace after the bitter truths had already been uncovered. As much as I could, I empathized with Beth, as well as with Virginia Booth, who could have been Beth's own mother after too many gin gimlets, hurling a book or a shoe or a plate in anger, as we've all done, me more often than others, I admit, except this time the instrument in Virginia Booth's second of lost control was a heavy glass vase that hit, as luck would have it, the back of her daughter's head— Muffie Booth's head—and killed her.
I joined Beth in her ocean vigil, watching waves trickle over the craggy shore. The French casement windows were open to the breeze. Why was there always a perfect breeze by the water—nature's oscillating fan set on “perfect flow”? Beth walked closer to the window, looking out and lifting her head to the clean salty scent while I remained where I'd been standing, but we both succumbed to the hypnotic undulation of the sea, until, like the sudden waking from a dream, Beth turned to me, and I read the question in her eyes: How long does a bathroom visit take, or a sip of brandy, or a brief telephone call in private to friends and relatives?
Beth tilted her head at me and our eyes locked.
Muffie and her dad's favorite pastime—those weekend trips to the hunting plantation to escape the smiling faces of those freakish dolls, the embodiment of her mother's disdain—the stifling confines of Virginia Booth's relentless disapproval, Muffie knowing that her struggle with her mother would continue until their deaths. And Brent Booth, Muffle's father, knowing sooner than Virginia Booth that their daughter was different, but accepting her nonetheless—offering her a father's unconditional love. Brent Booth rescued his daughter from all those pretty dolls that Virginia Booth used like punches, smashing them into Muffle's head like a command that Muffie simply wouldn't obey.
“Oh my God,” Beth whispered.
I rose to my feet. “Where would they be?” I asked.
“Upstairs, in a locked cabinet.”
Together we ran to the oak-railed staircase and up, Beth scampering and me striding two steps at a time.
“Doogie?” Beth called. Then screamed louder, “Doogie! Doogie!”
Beth was answered by the shot itself, ringing clearly through the upstairs hallway, and deafening even through the closed door of the Booths' upstairs study.
I followed Beth to the heavy wooden door and pulled at the locked handle, while Beth talked through it. But no amount of Beth's pleading or screaming brought a sound from the silent room. I kicked, kicked, and kicked until wood from around the lock began to splinter free. Beth stood aside, wide-eyed, astonished at my strength. The same kind of mindless strength that Virginia Booth had used to hurl a glass vase at her own daughter. Passion fueled my legs, until the door finally gave way.
The body that used to be Virginia Booth—a body now faceless from the bullet that had ripped it from recognition—lay next to an open cabinet from which one rifle was missing and lay at the feet of her blood-splattered body.
Beth ran ahead to her. I was held back by a sudden déjà vu. I looked around this room at the white-shuttered windows open to a sparkling sea. The looming mahogany bookcases filled with leather-bound books, a few larger volumes splayed on round tables shining from the glow of low-lit Tiffany lamps. A puddle of Virginia Booth's blood worked its way toward the frayed ends of a rich-colored Turkish rug.
But this is the wrong room. The room in my memory is small and dark; the shades are drawn.
The shades were always down in my mother's room. She liked the darkness, especially at the end, when she began to shun the air itself as if it were keeping her alive against her will.
I was downstairs alone. Why was the television off? It was too quiet in the house. It was the quiet that had first drawn me outside myself and into the lives of the two people upstairs—my parents in my mother's room. I heard the clicking sound first. A constant clicking sound. I was too inexperienced then to know the sound of a gun firing with no load. I followed the clicks to the foot of the stairs. Still waiting to hear a voice, his not hers, because hers had lost its sound long before that day. My mother's weak voice would no longer carry outside the tiny guest room where she slept all day next to a table cluttered with pill bottles and dirty half-filled water glasses.
When the clicking stopped, there was a boring silence. I waited at the foot of the stairs, and might have returned to the television, but after the crack that made me deaf except for the ringing in my ears, I ran up the stairs, watching my feet hit the steps without sound. My father had gotten to the guest room first. Or had he been there from the beginning? He stood by the bed where my mother lay, blood dripping from her lip.
There were my parents—both of them dead, but one still standing—my father, whose hand by his side held a shiny metal gun.
“She was sick,” he said. As if that explained the blood on the headboard. “Go back downstairs and wait.”
I sat in the living room until the doorbell rang and I was taken down the front steps of our house by a tall stranger. He crushed my tiny fingers in his large brown fist. He held my hand too tightly, but I knew as he talked to me that he was hurting my hand out of sympathy. He didn't know how strong he was, or how to comfort a little girl who'd just seen her mother shot and killed.
And then another white space of time passed and I was roused from bed one morning in my aunt's house by my father, who was taking me home. It's as if everything that had happened in those empty white spaces of time happened in my absence. And maybe it did.
“Shannon? Shannon!” Beth was kneeling at Virginia Booth's side. Nothing to be done, but she was dialing 911 while looking up at me. I was still standing at a distance by the door. “What's wrong with you?” she asked.
“My mother,” I said. “This is how she died.”
If Beth's eyes could open wider, they did. The call made, she tucked her phone into a side pocket and stood away from Virginia Booth's body. “Shannon?”
“I think maybe my father shot her, but she was sick. I remember the smells in the room. Alcohol, disinfectant, and something else—like the smell at the morgue that day of the autopsies—that sweet smell of decay. And Lucky wasn't there,” I muttered.
Beth walked to me and took my elbow, much the same way as she'd taken Virginia Booth's in the morning room to help her stand. Beth, holding me by that elbow, led me out and back down the stairway, where at the bottom, two of Virginia Booth's uniformed staff stood waiting for our pronouncement. Beth, still holding my arm, passed them and without looking back, said, “Don't go up. Wait in the kitchen, please.”
Beth walked me to a chair and lowered me into it. She took a few steps back and stood in front of me, waiting some seconds before speaking, within which time we heard the approaching sirens. “What happened?” she asked me. “Your mother shot herself? And what does Lucky have to do with it?”
I shrugged. “She was shot in the head, I think. The headboard was splattered red. She was sick all the time. I remember that. My father telling me she was going away soon. Cancer. The police took my father away for a while, because a black police officer took me to my aunt's house. My father never went to jail. I would know if he'd served time. And then one day he came back and got me.”
“He did it? Your father shot her?”
I shrugged. “I never wanted to know. I wanted to remember that she'd just died of the cancer.”
“Why,” Beth said, “would you ever try that Cohen case? Why didn't you pass it to someone else in the office?”
“I lost Cohen because I didn't think he was guilty. My heart wasn't in it—”
“Your heart is never in your cases, Shannon. That's why you're so good at it. Bleeding hearts mess up the blood evidence at trial. You lost the Cohen case because your heart was in it.”
Before I could respond to her statement, the knocking at the front door brought the two uniformed maids to us. They didn't want to answer the door without Beth's approval—Beth, who had now, by default, become the mistress of the house.
“Open it,” she told them. “And take them in here first.”
Police officers, one after another, lumbered into the room like salivating black bears snorting power in a pretty English garden. Beth remained seated, forcing them to hover around her, to lean into her hushed tones as she spoke softly of Virginia Booth's confession in this room by the sea, and then of her self-inflicted sentence in the study upstairs. The officers, taking Beth's cue—and the silent pleas of the elegant room—responded in whispers. Through a thick curtain of childhood memories, I watched Beth spread serenity like a blanket over a fire. But she was just the eye of this storm—the worst was yet to come.