Blameless (11 page)

Diana didn’t blame Jill for any of it: James’s illness, his fury and acting out each time Jill left, his death. From what James had told her, he wouldn’t have survived as long as he had without his sister’s support. But she knew Jill must blame herself. Diana also knew how passionately Jill loved James. And how lethal that kind of passion could be.

But Diana was confident she could handle Jill. She was a licensed psychologist, after all, trained to deal with the troubled. She would convince Jill to give the journal back. Two could play the manipulation game.

As the light ahead changed to yellow, Diana accelerated and turned hard to the left. What made her think Jill would give her the journal? Why did she even expect Jill to be home at eleven o’clock on a Friday morning? Desperation, Diana thought. Pure, unadulterated desperation. Maybe she had just discovered a new emotion in the grieving process.

But Jill was home. She buzzed Diana through the door without any of the anger or questions Diana expected, and then graciously waved her into the narrow “railroad car” apartment, the same apartment to which Diana had come that first New Year’s Day to make James vomit the tranquilizers he had swallowed in his plea-for-help suicide attempt. James had never really liked Cambridge, so when Jill left her husband and came back to Boston a year ago, he turned the rent-controlled apartment over to her and moved to Anderson Street.

Dressed in a thigh-length sweatshirt and leggings, her mass of red curls even wilder than usual, Jill leaned against the living room doorway calmly scrutinizing Diana. She was tall and lean and languorous—and she reminded Diana so much of James that Diana felt a shiver run up her back. Guilty, Diana thought, watching a slight smile flicker across Jill’s face. Guilty as charged.

“Please come in and sit down,” Jill said cordially, pointing to the couch. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“Please,” Diana answered in equally sweet tones. This must be the Jill who had charmed James’s boss and landlady, she thought as she watched Jill walk gracefully down the long hallway to the kitchen. Not a bad act. Then she remembered that Jill had started out soft-spoken and gracious at James’s funeral too. Another cold chill ran up her spine.

Sitting gingerly on the edge of the couch, Diana rubbed her damp palms on her pants and thought of the story James had told her about Jill slicing the tires of her boss’s car after he had fired her. How might a woman like that react to the person she thought had killed her brother?

Before Diana could answer her own question, Jill was back with two mugs of black coffee. Diana accepted the offered mug and, although she preferred cream and wasn’t supposed to be drinking caffeine, took a sip.

Jill sat down in the chair across from Diana and smiled. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Diana nodded. So much for the element of surprise.

“You want me to drop the charges,” Jill said, as if she were commenting on the colorful fall foliage outside the window. “That’s why you’re here.”

Startled, Diana put her cup on the table. “I would love you to drop the charges,” she said slowly. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“I’m not dropping the charges.” Jill’s tone was friendly and chatty. “People must be accountable for their own behavior. It’s my strong feeling that this lack of personal responsibility underlies many of the problems in our society today. I hate all this suing of bartenders and hosts—don’t you?” She looked over at Diana expectantly, seemingly anxious to hear Diana’s opinion on the liability of drunk drivers.

“Isn’t that just what you’re doing?” Diana asked. “Making me responsible for James’s behavior?”

Jill raised one eyebrow, an amused smile on her lips. “Oh no, you don’t understand, do you?” She shook her head. “You see, you
are
responsible for James’s death.”

Diana took another sip of coffee before she answered. “I’m confident that the facts will completely exonerate me in court,” she said with a calmness she didn’t feel. “I came here for my journal.”

“You are not only responsible in the passive sense—as I had at first believed,” Jill continued as if she had not heard Diana. “But now that I see you manipulated James into changing his will to favor you …” Her language became more formal and precise, but her tone remained cool and conversational, almost detached. “Cutting out my three dear aunts, as well as myself. Well …” She paused, sighed, and then stared sadly at her steepled fingers. “It now appears that I must congratulate you on a brilliant, carefully crafted, and almost perfectly executed murder.”

Diana watched Jill carefully. This woman was as dangerous as she was unpredictable. But, Diana reminded herself in an effort to keep her fear in check, she understood dangerous, unpredictable people. She knew how to handle them—or hoped she did. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said softly. “I know you cared deeply for James and feel his loss keenly.”

Again, it was as if Diana had never spoken. “What I don’t understand—truly don’t understand,” Jill said, her voice full of sincerity, “is why you need the money. You and Craig must make more than enough to cover the mortgage on that cute little town house. It
is
on the edge of Roxbury and it
does
back up to that gamy alley behind the Chinese restaurant, after all—so how much could it cost?” She looked at Diana’s stomach and smiled her best garden-party smile. “Perhaps it’s the coming expense? Little girls can put quite a dent in their parents’ pocketbooks—but I’m sure you’ll find her worth every penny.”

“I’ve come for my journal,” Diana said, fear hammer-locking on her soul at the familiarity with which Jill discussed her home and her family life, at the flippant reference to the baby’s sex. How could Jill know it was a girl? No one knew but their parents and a couple of close friends—and her peer supervisory group. Diana hadn’t meant to tell her peer group; the doctor had called right before the meeting and she was so excited that she had just rushed in and blurted out the news. But she knew she had never told James. She remembered all too vividly that James had killed himself only hours after she discovered she was carrying a healthy girl. Pushing the thoughts from her mind, Diana leaned forward, forcing her voice to be calm and authoritative. “Please get the journal for me. Now.”

For the first time Jill looked directly at Diana, shrewdness splintering her polite act. “You think I have some kind of journal?” she asked, sitting back in her chair and smiling, a smile that reached her eyes, a smile revealing true elation. “How interesting. Must be something very important in that journal to get you over here”—she looked at Diana and grinned—“begging.”

“Just go get it,” Diana said softly.

“Beg for it,” Jill said.

“I’m not begging for anything. The journal belongs to me and—”

“Beg!” Jill leaped from her chair and grabbed a poker from next to the fireplace. She waved it in the air, then stabbed it into the carpet. “Get down on your knees and beg.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Diana began.

“I said beg!” Jill ordered. When Diana didn’t move, Jill smiled slightly and slowly lifted the poker until it pointed directly at Diana’s stomach. Then, with painstaking deliberateness, she took a small step forward, bringing the poker infinitesimally, but ominously, closer to Diana’s slightly swelling abdomen.

Diana looked from the poker to Jill. She knew she could not show weakness, but she also knew that she had to diffuse Jill’s anger and get the hell out of her apartment.

Diana pushed the poker aside calmly and slid to her knees. “Please give me my journal,” she said, her voice composed and authoritative.

Jill burst out laughing. “I don’t have your stupid journal,” she said. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” Then her laughter stopped as abruptly as it had started, and her eyes narrowed. “Now get off the floor and get out of here!”

Diana did.

10

V
ALERIE’S LAW FIRM
, B
OGDANOW
, F
EDERGREEN, STARR
, and Calahane, was located on Beacon Street, just a few doors down from the State House. Diana had planned to stop by on her way home from Jill’s to drop off the photocopies of the treatment notes Valerie had requested. “The Hutchins Files,” Valerie called them, as if they were a made-for-television movie. As she slammed the jeep door behind her, Diana looked down at the mound of papers sitting on the passenger seat. The stack was well over three inches thick and held together by two large elastic bands. Diana winced; the last person she wanted to see right now was Valerie. Valerie, who had had the foresight to warn her away from confronting Jill. Valerie, who had made her promise to mind her own business.

All the emotions Diana had kept hidden in Jill’s narrow Cambridge apartment now deluged her; she felt raw and exposed and incredibly stupid. Blood hammered in her ears, and her hands began to tremble on the steering wheel. How could she have been such an idiot? She pounded her door lock down and then reached across to lock the passenger side. Furtively she looked through the rear window to see if Jill was coming out of her building. Go, she told herself. Just start the car and get the hell out of here.

Her hands did her mind’s bidding, and before she was really aware of it, she was speeding out of Jill’s neighborhood, crossing the Charles River and swinging onto Storrow Drive. She was driving herself to Valerie’s office—even if it wasn’t where she really wanted to go. Within minutes the spires of the Longfellow Bridge rose thick and squat over the river, dwarfing the brilliant death hues of the trees along the Esplanade. Diana glanced to her right at the brick Victorian townhouses marching seamlessly down Pinckney Street, gazing into the flats of Beacon Hill, an area containing some of the most expensive real estate in the city of Boston, an area that had once been primarily used for the stabling of horses. Who ever knew how things would turn out? she wondered. Who ever knew how things, or people, would shift or change or even reverse themselves? But she should have known about Jill. She had heard all the stories. About what Jill had done to James’s tropical fish and her boss’s tires and the girl at the prom. Jill might actually have hurt her. Or the baby.

As she stopped at the rotary off Charles Street, the rusty-green elevated T tracks towering over her, Diana dropped her head to her hands. The worst part of the whole episode was that it had all been for nothing. She lifted her head and stared at the cars and trucks surrounding her, at the swarming crowds of pedestrians, at the concrete and glass of Mass General looming over her. She had taken a huge risk for nothing: Jill didn’t have her journal, Diana was sure of it.

Against all the odds, she found a legal parking spot on Charles Street. An omen, she told herself as she dropped a quarter into the meter. Sure, she had made a mistake going to Jill’s and had come back empty-handed, but it was over and done with. There were other ways to protect herself from the journal. There was Valerie’s motion in limine. She and Craig would come up with an alternate plan. Or perhaps it really had been some crack junkie.

Placing the bulky stack of paper under one arm, Diana headed down Charles Street toward Beacon. As she approached the Coffee Connection, she noticed two young mothers chatting on the sidewalk, their babies strapped into matching red-and-blue strollers. Soon, she thought. Soon she would be standing with a stroller discussing colic and diapers and the best time to start solid food. Soon all of this ridiculousness would be over and she and Craig and their daughter would be able to get on with their lives.

Diana smiled as she got closer and noticed that both babies were waving their pudgy little fists; the one on the right seemed to think he was carrying on a conversation with the sky. Diana couldn’t help reaching down to touch the baby’s cheek. But when she raised her eyes from the stroller and straightened up, Diana saw that the mothers had stopped chatting. Both women were staring at her—and the expressions on their faces were not friendly. Diana took a step backward, but the women didn’t avert their gazes. If anything, they seemed to intensify their scrutiny. Diana shrugged and continued on. Boston was apparently going the way of New York when young mothers were suspicious of a pregnant woman. Then she glanced down at her long coat and realized that they probably couldn’t tell she was going to have a baby.

The smell of fresh apples wafted up at her as she passed the open bins of fruit in front of DeMatteo’s. Unable to resist the display of native tomatoes, Diana reached out and squeezed one. It was perfect, so she popped it into a paper bag and reached for another. But as she was squeezing a few more, she felt that creepy, tingly sensation that told her someone was watching her. Putting down the tomatoes and shifting her stack of paper so it fit more securely under her arm, Diana slowly turned around. To her relief, she saw only the usual Charles Street traffic, two men buying yogurt, and an elderly lady completely focused on choosing between Delicious and Macintosh apples. Reaching back for the tomatoes, she suddenly had the dismaying thought that perhaps the mothers in front of Coffee Connection weren’t being routinely suspicious at all. Maybe they were just suspicious of her, Diana Marcus, “Sex Doc.”

She forced herself to pick up some milk and orange juice, reprimanding herself for her paranoia. Those women didn’t know her. Most people didn’t even read the newspaper, let alone remember what they had read three days earlier. And yet Diana was unnerved. She suddenly recalled the briefcase-toting businessman who had stared at her as she entered Jill’s building; at the time she had been vaguely flattered, but now that she thought about it, he had been far too young and good-looking to be attracted to her. And she had had that same creepy watched feeling when she had run out to get her dry cleaning that morning. Although she knew she was being ridiculous, Diana quickly paid for her purchases and made no more stops on her way to Valerie’s office.

Still shaken from her experience at Jill’s and the eyes at DeMatteo’s, Diana wanted only to drop the papers off with Valerie’s secretary and go home. But as soon she entered the conservatively subdued law suite, the young woman behind the glass partition jumped up to greet her. “Dr.Marcus?” she asked, although it was obvious she recognized Diana. “Ms. Goldman was hoping you’d come by before she left for court. She’s very anxious to see what you’ve brought and asked me to have you come right down to her office. You’ve got a moment?” Again, it was clear her question wasn’t really a question.