Thirteen

I felt like a kid being shuttled off to camp, only I didn’t have name tags in my neckband.

We progressed in silence until Mackenzie again insisted that much as he would have liked to, he couldn’t stay with me, that he had to work.

I suggested that he would show adequate interest in me only when I, too, became a corpse.

He suggested that I had a tendency toward the irrational, that I’d be safe in the suburbs, that the murderer was a childish coward.

I said something unprintable.

He said an English teacher should use the language more creatively.

I didn’t say anything. The reference to my profession shocked me. It doesn’t take much to distract me: a couple of murders, a new lover, a direct threat to my life, and zap—pedagogical duties slip my mind. I slumped down as much as the seat belt would allow. “Damn. I’m giving a test Monday, and I didn’t bring my notes.”

“Good. Your mind will be creatively occupied, then.”

We drove slowly enough. Mackenzie didn’t seem in any fierce rush to get on with his policing. He avoided the Expressway, even though there was a chance of its moving smoothly at this hour. We made our way toward Beth’s safe harbor, passing T.G.I.F. celebrants on both Penn’s and Drexel’s campuses, past unreclaimed turf with hopeless, abandoned houses, past the zoo. A camel, peering over the fence at us, chewed sideways, looking as bored as I expected to be.

This was not my idea of how to spend a weekend. I’m not ever fond of deferring gratification, and with a death-threat, it seems an even sillier way to spend the remaining time.

We finally reached Beth’s share of prime Main Line real estate. “Nice house,” Mackenzie said. “Nice goin’.” He turned off the motor. “Okay, do you have it straight?”

I nodded. It wasn’t hard to learn. “I shalt not leave the bosom of my family.”

“I believe it’s ‘shall’ in the first person. But the most important commandment is: Thou shalt not indulge in the urge to sleuth.”

“My, but those words trip right off your tongue. You have a pathological delusion about your godlike self, don’t you? Now I know what that C stands for. No wonder you didn’t want to reveal your true identity. But even He had a first name.”

“Listen, Mandy, I’ve grown fond of your body. I’d like it to stay intact. So relax and enjoy spring in the country.”

I lapsed into sulking. From necessity, not chivalry, he opened my car door and took me gently by the arm. “You know,” I said, “you could assign somebody to watch my house instead. Isn’t that what manpower is for?”

“You’d be just as hemmed in as you’ll be here, only much less pleasantly. An’ why make yourself an easy target? Our friend the note sender knows that address. At least give ’im a workout.”

He rang the doorbell. Beth was all burbling surprise and smiles. It was obvious she hadn’t seen the six o’clock news. Mackenzie introduced himself and improvised a weak story about the breakdown of both my car and my bathroom plumbing. He was heavy on the “Ma’ams” and the drawl, and another Yankee woman was suckered in.

Beth nodded, clucked, and tsked every time he said something unintelligible about my pistons or my S-curve leak. Her otherwise critical eyes went blind at the sight of anything ambulatory and male that might get me to do simultaneous carpooling with her.

Mackenzie leaned close to Beth and whispered, sotto voce. I heard his voice, heavy with concern, say words like “depressed,” “shock of Liza,” and “not to be left alone.” Beth, who adored sick strays, went on red alert. The prospect of keeping her kid sister from ending it all was visibly thrilling.

“We’ll stay with her constantly,” Beth said in a stage whisper. I again had the feeling I had evaporated, or left the premises without knowing it. “She won’t be alone for a minute.”

I’d be cushioned by my lovely relatives, and I’d die of suffocation and boredom, instead.

“Take care,” Mackenzie said. “I’ll try to stop by.”

“Listen here, Chipper—”

“Wrong.” He closed the door behind him.

“What a nice man,” Beth said. “Nice” isn’t a word I relish, not for days, not for weather, and not for what’s-his-name.

“And so attractive,” she added, my subtle sister. She liked that theme so much she played it over and over as she guarded me. Even Horse, the resident beast, was solicitous. He sat on my feet the entire night.

But I was too tired to react. Three cups of strong coffee with Beth couldn’t stop my yawns or bring the circulation back into my limbs. I excused myself and went to the guest room, weighing the consequences of sleeping in my clothing. I couldn’t remember if my mother had warned against it—what if Prince Charming finally found you and you were fully dressed like Sleeping Slob? I wondered if Mackenzie’s given name was “Charming.” Charming Knight? I wondered if I was indeed having a breakdown.

* * *

I’ve never understood why they call this the temperate zone. It is anything but. With weather ranging from below zero to one hundred degrees, it should be called the schizoid belt.

But every so often, with totally intemperate zest, a day blooms with a nearly painful beauty. It’s a day for believing your lover’s promises, for rediscovering humanity and feeling kinship with it, for deciding not to join the Sun Belt defectors just yet.

Saturday was one of those. I looked out the guest room window at a sincerely blue sky dotted with cartoon fluffs of clouds. Such a spring day promises a mind-boggling, glorious summer. I’d lived long enough to know that this promise is a bald-faced lie. Still, days like this are so sweet, prior knowledge becomes questionable. This is a brand-new beginning, and anything’s possible.

The delicious pale-green-and-growing air was even in the shower and on my toothbrush, and I floated down to the kitchen in a euphoric haze.

Beth was all smiles. Then she looked worried. “Karen and I have to run an errand. Sam will be with you, okay?”

I was tempted to stop this nonsense about my mental health, to tell her the real reason I was here. But that would probably impair her mental health, so I drank my coffee with only a nod for comment. I was happy to be unmonitored. Sam was not the most loquacious of men, and I would be left on my own to communicate with nature and myself. It would also be a reprieve from sisterly talk about Mackenzie’s beauty and eligibility. From all talk, for that matter.

And I needed to stay undistracted. The breeze outside had cleared my mind, and I was positive that today I’d figure out what had been going on in my life and in Liza’s and Eddie’s. Maybe all those people were right and I did know something. Maybe I could even find out what it was. I happily waved good-bye to Beth and Karen before putting on a sweater and taking my coffee out to the flagstone patio behind the house.

I was, however, definitely being tailed. Sam silently joined me, settling on the wrought-iron chair next to mine. A robin hopped very close to our feet before fluttering to a more prudent vantage point.

Sam cleared his throat. “Mandy, can we talk?”

The day was filled with surprises. “Sure, Sam, what about?”

He cleared his throat again. Even in a worn-out sweater, Sam looks like a man in a vest and starched shirt. “I know about it,” he said.

At least seven recent and embarrassing possible “its” flashed across my mind, none of which I’d be eager to have my brother-in-law “know.”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” I said in my most ladylike tones.

“I know why you’re really here. I didn’t want to worry Beth with it, but while you two were having coffee last night, I watched the late news. I saw you. Another murder, Mandy?”

“Oh, God, Sam, I can’t control these impulses! What am I to do?”

The robin returned, staring quizzically. Maybe we were the first sign of spring for him, too.

Sam was also staring. “I didn’t mean to imply that you were in any way involved in the commission of the crimes!”

I wondered if Sam ever cursed, muffed a sentence, or loused up his grammar.

“It was a joke,” I said quietly. “I know you didn’t mean it that way, and I don’t know why I keep finding corpses. It’s been horrible, and I’m terrified. But I hate to ruin this glorious day by dwelling on it.”

“So, instead, you’re dwelling in it. My dwelling, that is.” Sam allowed a cautious chuckle at his own brand of witticism. For Beth’s sake, I would like to think there’s a secret, volcanic center to Sam. He’s the kind of man who could probably commit endless crimes with impunity, because nobody’d be able to describe him. He’s a lot of “sort ofs”—sort of tall, sort of sandy hair—and, now that I think of it, lots of “nices,” too—nice features, nice build, nice guy. Run that one through an Identikit, I dare you.

The door slammed, and Horse galumphed over to sit on my feet. “Mackenzie thinks I’ll be safe in the bosom of my family. He doesn’t think I should be seen with him, because then the murderer will think I know something.”

“Wouldn’t the, uh, culprit, think it anyway?”

“We prefer not thinking about that possibility.”

“But still…”

HER. HIM. YOU. A sterling example of clear communication. I pulled my sweater more closely around me, then I looked up. I could blame my sudden shivers on the moody sky, which had clouded over. “The uncertain glories of an April day,” I said, noting how the colors of every new blade of grass and bud had gone dark. “Which reminds me, I have a test to write.”

Our coffee and conversation were both finished, and without a word, we went back inside.

“I won’t, of course, say anything about this matter to Beth.” Sam went into his study. I walked into the library and found a soft leather-bound edition of The Collected Works of Wm. Shakespeare. Wm.’s words were barely legible on see-through paper. I thumbed through Macbeth, trying to remember the substance of our class discussions. But all I remembered was murder and guilt and bloody hands.

I decided that perhaps more caffeine would activate my professional brain cells. I went back to the kitchen. The coffee maker was empty, and ignoring the fact that this was a four-star kitchen, I opted for instant. I turned on the burner under the copper teakettle and stared at it as if it were an oracle.

Sam walked in with his empty cup. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Making refills. Thinking.”

“It’s dangerous to think hunched over a teakettle. You could get burned.”

“Ah, lately I’ve learned that you can get burned a lot of ways. But you’re right. I’m keeping it from boiling, anyway.”

We settled down to wait for the kettle to whistle. I made table talk. “Sam, judging from your experience, why do people commit murder?”

Sam looked startled and nervous. “That’s hardly my area of the law, Amanda. Contracts are quite different.” Always cautious, he reconsidered what he’d said. “Well, perhaps not. I’d assume that people do everything, including murder, because they want something that somebody else has or controls.”

“Liza’s most valuable possession,” I said, “was Hayden Cole, if I may characterize their relationship with such unflattering terms.” I was beginning to sound like my brother-in-law. “And now, considering who else would want that possession, and want it a great deal—”

Sam shook his head disapprovingly. “Let the police handle this, Amanda. It’s fruitless for us to speculate without having all the information, isn’t it? Don’t upset yourself with—”

“I’m not upset. I’m puzzled.” Well, so it wasn’t exactly honest, but it was kind. Sam didn’t want to baby-sit for a deranged sister-in-law. And for Sam, behavior a level above comatose is dangerously out of line. “Do you like Hayden Cole?” I asked.

“I’ve told you I know the man only casually. Why?”

“Frankly, I don’t like him. He’s plastic, artificial. A good copy of something. You know how Gertrude Stein said, ‘There’s no “there” there’? That’s how he is.”

“I know what you’re suggesting, but I think you’re wrong. He’s reserved and undemonstrative, but he’s human, Amanda.”

I felt properly chastised. I know that Hayden has feelings. It’s just frustrating not to be able to fathom what they are.

I busied myself with turning powder into coffee. Sam accepted his refilled cup and smiled. “I’ll get back to work now,” he said.

“Contracts are so clean, aren’t they? People spell out what they want in black and white. Nothing’s hidden, secret, explosive.”

Sam sighed and paused at the kitchen doorway. I wasn’t sufficiently merry for him to leave me in good conscience. So I smiled and winked. “Enough of this gloom, right, Sam? You’re inspiring me. I’ll get work done, too. I’m giving a test on Macbeth Monday, and I haven’t written it yet. Now that would have been a great court case, wouldn’t it? Who, ultimately, was the guilty party? If you think Fate is directing you, are you guilty? Is anyone ever the guilty party? I think I’ll use that for my first question.”

“You’re all right, aren’t you?” Sam said, so I readjusted my manic level.

“Sure. It’s hard not thinking about what’s happened, though. Before Monday, the only murders I knew about were in between book covers.”

“Of course,” Sam said. “Try not to let it get you, though.”

“That’s precisely what I’m trying,” I muttered as he left.

Horse lumbered in. “Does anything make sense to you, dog? What’s your theory?” He tried to sit on my feet, but I walked out to the garden and he shambled alongside. “Horse, what is your considered opinion?”

He looked up and lifted his ears in a splendid dumb-dog imitation of great concentration. He pondered the question, remained stymied, and opted for ankle-licking when I settled down in the rejuvenated sunshine. Then he gave up the pretense of thought. His weight blanketed my feet, and after a moment, I heard his light snores.

I sipped coffee and flipped through Beth’s volume of Shakespeare. I would indeed ask a question about guilt. “If you were to judge the events in Macbeth,” I began.

“I have new shoes!” Karen was suddenly in front of me.

“Did we frighten you?” Beth said. “You look startled.”

“I was concentrating. I didn’t hear you.” I considered how easily a person could sneak around a house set in green padding, protected by a dog who would only catch somebody in order to sit on his feet.

“Sorry we were so long. But we were near the shoe store and Karen needed new tennies. So, unfortunately, did every other child in the entire area. I’ll start lunch now.”

“Thanks, Beth, but I’ll pass. I’m enjoying the sunshine, and I’m not hungry.”

“Now, now, loss of appetite isn’t healthy. Unless,” she said, “it’s from love, of course.” She waited in vain for a response. “Stay where you are,” she then continued. “We’ll eat out here. Everything’s ready. Cheer up, Amanda. Life must go on.”

Her attempts to raise my spirits made me almost as depressed as I was supposed to be.

Karen filled the time by demonstrating the variety of gymnastic feats possible with her new red shoes. In between her shouts and jumps, I scribbled away at my test. “Whom would you consider guilty? Macbeth? Lady Macbeth? Both? How important was the influence of the witches’ prophecies?” I wondered how Liza would have answered the question. She’d had some interesting ideas about guilt and responsibility, as I recalled.

“Ready or not, here we come!” Beth carried a tray of food and led a small parade. I should have guessed. It wasn’t Sam, trailing her with a pitcher of lemonade and a tray of glasses, who put the flush in her cheeks.

“Karen,” she said in an unnaturally high melodic mode, “come meet Aunt Mandy’s friend, Officer Mackenzie.”

“C.K.,” he corrected her, putting a basket of homemade bread on the table.

The Wymans were too polite to question the man’s lack of names.

Lunch was delicious, if boring during the spell while Karen assumed that we had convened to see her new shoes, and consequently discussed them at length, along with who else was similarly shod in school, and what stylistic variations were possible.

But it perked up when Beth began burbling about the evening’s plans. I had more or less assumed we would gather around the tube, or do simultaneous silent reading. But no. “It’s only a local carnival, of course,” she said, “very suburban, I guess, but it’s fun. And important for a whole group of charities out here. We all combine in this one effort. I’m sure Amanda will enjoy herself. And why don’t you stop by, too, Officer—ah, C.K.?”

Mackenzie looked mildly taken aback, startled. “The, ah, Main Line Charities Carnival?” he asked.

“Yes!” She was thrilled; she was delighted. I mean I was surprised myself that he knew about some rinky-dink local fair, but Beth, looking for omens and signs that Mackenzie was my intended, was astounded. Delirious. “You’ve heard about our little event! What an amazing coincidence!”

Mackenzie nodded. “Some of Amanda’s, ah, friends—the people at the Playhouse—are helping out. Their sponsor, Sissie Bellinger, seems to have involved them as clowns, or somethin’. And Hayden Cole’s the auctioneer. Something like that?”

“Oh. Of course,” Beth said, considerably subdued. The Unmentionable Case led to the fair, and its lights had dimmed somewhat.

“So you’re plannin’ to go and take Amanda,” Mackenzie said quietly. He didn’t sound thrilled.

“Oh, this isn’t some wild kind of event that would upset her,” Beth said with a chuckle. “Besides, we wouldn’t leave her at home alone. And I promised to man the food booth for two hours, and Sam was going to take care of Karen. Unless you, of course, would be here to keep her company.”

This was becoming fun. I waited. Mackenzie could either come clean and tell my sister that I was not suffering from depression but from danger, or be my date himself tonight.

“Tell you what,” Mackenzie said. “I’ll just clean up some paperwork and drop by the fair myself. Buy you some cotton candy, Karen.”

I couldn’t believe that he had chosen none of the above.

Sam excused himself and went back to work.

I stood to help clear the dishes. “No, no,” Beth said. “Relax. Karen will help me.”

Obviously, in Beth’s campaign strategy, it was leave-the-lovers-alone time.

“I want to show C.K. how springy my shoes are!”

Beth frowned, then erased it. In order to cleanse the world of single females, married females in the presence of unmarried males present domesticity as the most blissful and placid of stages. So when Beth spoke, her voice was rich with maternal honey. “Later, sweetie,” she told her daughter. “Right now, Mommy could use your help.” Beneath the sugar was the steel of an Oberfuehrer’s directive.

Karen is a bright child. She walked off, very springily, carrying three forks and some napkins, promising to return very soon.

Mackenzie pushed his chair back and slouched down on it. “I’ve never seen you in sunshine before,” he said pleasantly. “You should wear it more often. Bet you tan and look almost Eurasian with those cheekbones. Except for the red in your hair.”

“Cut it.”

“Ah’m complimentin’ you. Some women require artificial light. They’re limited. You aren’t.”

“Why not concentrate on keeping my skin intact instead of worrying about how it should be illuminated.”

“You mean about tonight? What was I supposed to do? I knew about the damned thing because I have to be there, along with the whole cast of characters—except you, I had hoped. I didn’t know your sister was involved.”

“In something called Main Line Charities? You could have bet on it.”

He shrugged. He seemed remarkably nonchalant about putting me in mortal peril. I wished he didn’t look so damned pretty with the sunshine bopping off the silver sprinkles in his curls, highlighting some hitherto unnoticed freckles on his cheekbones.

He rocked the wrought-iron chair dangerously. “You have a marked tendency to overreact,” he said. “Tonight’s no big deal unless suburbanites frighten you. The more I think about it, the better this sounds. You’ll be surrounded by hundreds of normal, charitable people. Maybe somebody will talk to you, say something interestin’. I’ll rede-putize you. Sam ’n’ Beth and me, we’ll never leave you alone. I’d rather you were there than here, alone. Unless you want me to see if I could get a police guard.” He shrugged.

I considered my options and chose the populated fair. “What is it you’ll do there?” I asked him.

“Lurk, menace, be stealthy. Make deductions. Maybe help Beth serve coleslaw. Raymond’s been on my back. Suspects I’m devotin’ overmuch time to tangential aspects of the case. Like you. He also does not wish to appear tonight. Says a man of his complexion cannot be inconspicuous on the Main Line.”

“I am not a tangent.”

“I’ll be officially free at eleven, but until then, it’ll be a pretty boring evening. Now—anything else you need to know? Aside from my name, of course.”

“I need to know everything, so I can behave intelligently. I want to know everything you know.”

“Oh, boy,” he said, stretching himself out so that his sitting position was more like that of a log propped against the chair. “I know lots of stuff. I know that salt was once used as currency by the Chinese. I know that you shouldn’t ignore the potential of household ammonia. I know how to convert stuff into metrics. And I know that even as we speak, Beth is considering color schemes for summer weddings and peeking out at us from time to time. I know—”

“You don’t know when to quit. About the murders, C.K. What do you know that I don’t?”

“Oh, that. Well, I know that Sissie’s divorce became final three weeks ago, after long and fierce fighting about money of hers that Mr. Bellinger had permanently misplaced.” Mackenzie stopped and concentrated on chewing ice cubes.

“So she isn’t rich, and she isn’t married.”

“And she wasn’t able to be openly on the market when Hayden went shopping for a wife. But now, she’s very able to do what she pleases. And she has a remarkable incentive to do something.”

“It’s amazing what you turn up when you do some work, Mackenzie.”

“What do you think I do when I’m not with you? Fantasize? Anyway, Sissie’s status doesn’t answer anything. There are other fat cats around for her to snare.”

“But the legwork’s been done with Hayden. And let’s be honest, Sissie would make a better running mate. She belongs in his circle, and Liza didn’t. That quarrel between Liza and Sissie last Sunday, it was probably about that. Sissie was pushing, harder and harder, to get the competition out and away. She said something to me—one of her damned half sentences—about a promise to finish the run and leave town. She meant Liza, I’m sure. But I don’t understand why at all.” I shook my head, still confused.

Beth reemerged from the house. “Hate to interrupt you—but how does a plate of ice cream sound?” She didn’t sit down. That might have slowed our courtship by fifteen minutes.

Mackenzie tipped his chair back, chewing an imaginary corn stalk. “Why, Ma’am,” he said. “That sounds amazin’ly fahn.”

“You’re overdoing it,” I whispered, but “Ma’am” beamed.

“This is a perfect day for ice cream.” He nodded agreement with himself. “That chicken of yours reminded me of the best days of home. And then we’d top it with ice cream.”

“Aren’t you mixing up your background?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be drawling about Creole goodies? Blackened redfish? Crayfish? Little French pastries?”

“Shows what Yankees know.” He stood up and smiled again at Beth. “Let me help serve it,” he said.

His accent was deepening and widening with every moment. He sounded more like Uncle Remus than a cum laude graduate of Rice.

“No, no,” Beth answered. Of course. The young lovers were never to be parted.

“You can’t carry three dishes,” Mackenzie said.

She smiled and shook her head. “Two,” she said. “Unlike my sister, I have to count calories. Besides, I have things to do about tonight.” She all but bowed out backward.

Clever Bethy. She managed to keep to her diet and remind the unmarried visitor of the Single Sister’s silhouette.

“You don’t need to coat every word in molasses, Mackenzie. Beth is already hooked. Skip the Dixie overkill.”

“Never hurts to sugar up the relatives,” he said. “A Southern accent gives me an edge. Everybody up here thinks that the brain works in slow motion. They relax their guard.”

“Listen, did we exhaust all the available information?” I asked. “I’m still more interested in what’s going on than in ice cream.”

“Like what? Ah’m an open book.”

“Like do you know when Eddie died?”

“Between ten and eleven, thereabouts, Friday morning.”

“Then I couldn’t have—I didn’t even know his last name at 10:00 A.M.” I felt a meaningless, selfish, but nonetheless real sense of relief. “Then tell me, where was Sissy on Monday and Friday?”

“You favor her as a suspect? She has the most depressing alibi I’ve heard in a while. She was: (a) carpooling her son to school; (b) being a mother-helper in Petey’s room; (c) having her hair washed. She was: (d) shopping for a green dress; (e) taking shoes to the cobblers; (f) seeing a printer about the carnival’s auction list; (g) attending a meeting of the Friends of some disease—I can’t remember… Do I have to go on? That might be out of order, but both days’ schedules are like that. Little bits of action, nothin’ related to anything else.”

“Shh!” I pointed toward the house. If Beth heard him, she’d feel even more guilty about enjoying her life. “Anything else?”

“The bear. We x-rayed it, did an assay.”

This was great, authentic cloak-and-dagger stuff. “What was inside?” I whispered.

“More bear. Nothing else.”

Beth reappeared with two dishes. Each had three small scoops of ice cream, one chocolate, one vanilla, one strawberry. Just so everyone received satisfaction and high cholesterol. “Karen’s taking a little nap,” she said. “Resting up for the big evening.”

The coast was clear. We could do what we liked. Beth, enormously pleased with her orchestration of the day, left again, beaming.

“Anything else you found?” I asked Mackenzie. I took a spoonful of chocolate and promised myself that I would not, absolutely would not, eat three scoops of ice cream.

“No, but there’s something else we didn’t find. Fingerprints. Not at Eddie’s, either. It wasn’t raining that time, so I’m not so sure about the raincoat-and-gloves theory. Also, nobody knows if anything’s missing from Eddie’s apartment. So that’s some more noninformation.”

“How about Hayden? The brunch?”

C.K. shrugged. “Far as we can tell, he was there from elevenish until three.”

“So you consider him out of the running? Really out?” I ate some strawberry, then a few spoonfuls of vanilla.

“You’re not hiding your disappointment very well. But all right. He’s not completely covered, because for almost two hours he excused himself to work on a speech while the club had its business meeting. He wasn’t feeling great, didn’t want to eat, and they had failed to give him the precise time they needed his bodily presence. He worked upstairs in an empty office.”

“Says who?”

“His campaign manager. Don’t say it—I’m not putting much weight on that. But so far, I don’t have any evidence that he left the place.”

“Where was he on Friday morning?”

“In his study. Not to be disturbed by anyone. Not even Mama.”

“That’s one weak alibi.”

Mackenzie took a break from conversation to savor his chocolate ice cream. “Raymond considers my chocolate obsession overcompensation for racial guilt,” he said when he had finished the scoop. “I wish somebody hadn’t thought it was cute to put me with Raymond.”

“I hate to interrupt again, but I thought you might like this.” Beth carried a tray with frosty glasses, a pitcher of iced tea with mint leaves, and a tray of homemade cookies. She put it on the table between us and filled the two glasses. Then, beaming, she retreated once again while we both murmured thanks. I was beginning to feel like a Strasbourg goose.

“Where were we?” Mackenzie asked.

“With the perfect Mr. C,” I finally managed. “The one who followed his infant schedule from birth, crossed only at corners, and never cheated on an exam.”

“I’m still lookin’ for some kind of motive, too. Maybe he knew about Eddie?”

“You didn’t leave! Goody,” Karen said, having completed the shortest nap in recorded history. “I want to show you my playhouse, C.K.” She tugged at him, urging him to the back of the garden where Sam had lovingly constructed a sort of earthbound tree house for his daughter. I wasn’t invited to join them.

“One second,” Mackenzie said. “Let me give your auntie something to read first.” He extracted a fat square of yellow papers from the patch pocket of his corduroy jacket. “Here’s something, maybe,” he said in his decisive way. “Mrs. Nichols’s contribution.”

“You were there, too?”

“I get around, kiddo. I was there three times this week. Found this the second time. Tuesday morning. But don’t get riled. We weren’t for sure on the same team then, remember?”

“Come on,” Karen said. I looked at the sheaf of thin second sheets, a carbon copy of a play called Never Say Forever.

There was a scrawled note about the title. “Please reconsider,” it said. “Can’t we at least try it onstage? This could help us both. Let me know soon. Please?” The last underlining was heavy enough to have ripped the tissue paper. I didn’t need to look at the author’s name typed below the title. I knew Gus’s handwriting.

The stage directions didn’t help. “Scene One: Interior of a run-down apartment. Stacks of old newspapers fill the corners. Opened cans, etc., stand on counter of Pullman kitchen. Michael Fillmore, age around forty, unshaven and homely, sits on unmade bed. He rises and crosses to small icebox, one arm hanging lifelessly and right leg dangling.”

I didn’t read the dialogue. I flipped through the pages, seeing enough that way. A young girl entered, described as “beautiful, in an earthy, unclassical way, as a Gypsy might be. Her clothing is flashy, unconventional.”

Act One ended with them on the still-unmade bed.

“Well?” Mackenzie said when he had finally satisfied Karen and been released back to me.

“I felt like a voyeur. There are parts of a person that just aren’t for public display.”

“He was hopin’ to have the whole thing displayed.”

“Still, it’s so sad.”

“Maybe it’s more than sad.”

“I don’t care. Even if it wasn’t over for him emotionally. Even if—”

“That play could have turned his life around,” Mackenzie said. “He’d be acting again. Safely, in a tailor-made part nobody could deny him. He would have a produced play to his credit. His whole life could have changed, gone nearer to where he’d once aimed for.”

“Somebody else could have played the girl’s part if Liza declined.”

“Sure, but Winston’s obsessed with her. Did you read the ending?”

I shook my head.

“The guy gets himself together, doesn’t need her anymore. That’s the good news. The bad news is he only finds that out after she dies.”

“You’re not saying—”

“Of course not.”

“That must be what he wanted to talk to Liza about,” I said. “Sunday night, then Monday morning.” Oh, God, had he called her from school about the script? And had he gone there to reason with her and heard, instead, damning, destructive things? It wasn’t just his artistic ego on the line in this; it was his life.

“I wasn’t going to show you the script,” Mackenzie said. “It is indeed private and painful, and it may be irrelevant. But I thought you’d be safer if you understood Gus a little better.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Let’s take these plates in,” he said. I tagged along.

“You’ve got quite a daughter here,” he told Beth.

“You’ve got quite a way with children,” she answered. I knew that Beth hoped her daughter had driven Mackenzie to a feverish need for children of his own, children of the same basic gene pool as Karen. And I knew that Mackenzie knew that, and that made it bearable.

But I didn’t listen to their mutual back patting. I thought about Gus, my good Gus who saw himself as a deformed, pathetic failure. Gus, still replaying his relationship and ending it, finally, unequivocally.

Beth busied herself at the sink, and Mackenzie took his attention off the gleaming kitchen counters. “One more thing,” he said to me, too softly to be overheard. “When Winston visited Liza’s mother Tuesday night, he was nervous about this script. Told her that Liza had borrowed it and it was needed immediately. She was afraid to say that the police had it. He made her search through Liza’s room.”

Of course, he might have simply wanted to keep it private. And of course, all his questions to me about what the police knew still could have been altruistic, concerned only about my welfare.

Beth turned off the water. “Do you think your husband would mind bein’ disturbed?” Mackenzie asked her. “I have a question for him.”

Beth was ready to grant Mackenzie anything, certainly something as easy as Sam. She didn’t seem to wonder why he wanted the audience, but I did. I was sure he wasn’t asking Sam about contracts or for my hand.

But when he came out of Sam’s study, he offered a smile and farewells instead of information. He didn’t really kiss Beth’s hand and ride off on a white charger, but you couldn’t tell that from her expression.

“He’s so attractive,” she murmured.

I nodded, but I wasn’t thinking about Mackenzie; I was thinking about murder. Why does someone kill? Because he wants something, Sam had said. Power, money, love. But it all finally boils down to self-defense. A person takes another’s life because his own seems in danger. So the trick is figuring out what is seen as vital, essential to sustain life.

My flash of insight was as long-lived and illuminating as a firefly’s light. I still knew nothing.

I thought, instead, about the night ahead. Something was going to happen. Something big. My mood—a combination of fear, intense interest, and anxious excitement—felt familiar. My skin had felt this tight and tingly before; my mind had been dizzied by “what ifs.” Some other time, I had been unsteady on my feet, half running forward and half holding back. But since I’d never knowingly mingled with murderers before, what was this feeling and why was it so familiar?

And then I laughed out loud.

I’d felt this way most of my adolescence. The same eagerness and avoidance, prurient interest tinged with disbelief and fear, the same nervous, delighted speculation. I’d felt like this all that long waiting time between hearing the facts of life and getting a chance to try them out.