Helen Hath No Fury (10 page)

He grinned. Add that happy, almost catlike self-satisfied expression to that list of assets. “Isn’t a man supposed to be supportive? Aren’t those the current rules?”

I brushed that away. “A person’s history matters. Whether or not it’s admissible in court, the past helps
you decide who they are, maybe predict what they’ll do. Am I not correct?”

“You most assuredly are.” Macavity, an oversize, overweight lump of dust-colored fur, was by now on C. K.’s lap and purring so loudly he seemed a background refrain.

“Well, your history is clear on one thing—you do not approve of my curiosity.”

“Snoopin’?”

“Intellectual curiosity.”

“Not trustin’ public servants such as yours truly to do the job?”

“Whatever. You don’t approve of it. So why change now, unless you think it’s a harmless little expedition, that Helen did commit suicide and I won’t and can’t do any harm. You’re probably humoring me. Is that it?”

He smiled again. Macavity, without being able to see the smile, nonetheless upped the purr to a small roar.

“Come on,” I said. “Tell me.”

“Nope,” Mackenzie said. “That’s my secret.”

T
HE PHONE RANG
. I
F IT HADN’T, WE MIGHT STILL BE SITTING
across that oak table, eyes squinted at each other, searching for secrets that weren’t about to be found.

But the phone did ring.

“Hey, it’s Susan,” she said, sounding remarkably chipper. “Where’ve you been? You never write, you never call. What kind of a partner are you?”

“I don’t have much to offer yet.”

“How are we going to crack this if you don’t keep in touch?” Her tone made me queasy. “Guess what,” she said. “Guess what, guess what?”

“Judging by the way you sound, you must have discovered the cure for cancer.”

“The
book!
I have it!”

The
book. As if there were precisely one such object on earth? “Which book? Yours? You’ve finished your book, is that what you’re saying?”

“Helen’s
book. See, Clary’s name was on the list for this thing.”

“Back up. I’ve had wine or I’m just stupid, but Helen wasn’t writing a book, and what’s this about Clary? In fact, what’s
this thing?”

“Okay, listen. It’s Helen’s notebook—the one she wrote her suicide note in. I have it because our firm’s
doing work for—do not scream—Roy Stanton’s election campaign.”

I did not scream. I did not make a sound. Silently, I disapproved.

“I don’t like his politics either, but I do like paying the rent and keeping my job. He has this fund-raiser tonight, and our firm does that kind of thing—the lists, the celebrity speakers—you know the drill. Denise tossed the business my way, and what was I supposed to do? Say I didn’t appreciate her money? Say my boss didn’t really appreciate me more because of her money? I mean …”

At least she no longer sounded giddy. But then something else struck me. “Hold it—Clary’s name was on the list for the fund-raiser? Our Clary?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Clary supports Roy Stanton Harris?” She of the fiercely feminist views on independence, on choice, on self-determination?

“The business bought a table for his dinner. Her business.”

Used to be hers and Helen’s. I didn’t correct Susan, but I thought sadly of how quickly a person begins to disappear. I shook my head in disapproval, even though only Mackenzie could see me doing it. He pretended to be engrossed in tempting Macavity with a feathery cat toy even though the cat wasn’t having any of it. What Mackenzie was doing was eavesdropping.

“You know,” I told Susan, “if Helen weren’t already dead, this alone would kill her.”

“She knew. It was a sore point between the two of them.”

Knowing Helen, this sore would have been septic and festering. A major bad thing.

“In fact, Helen insisted that
only
Clary’s name and the name of the business be listed. Helen thought it was a
disgraceful use of their funds, but Clary thinks it’s smart to cover all possibilities, no matter her own emotions. Never hurts to have a friend in Washington, she says. Besides, he’s the probusiness candidate—”

“And the antiwomen one, as well!”

“She says, ‘Personal feelings,’ and I’m directly quoting now, ‘don’t enter into this.’ Her vote remains her vote, and private.”

I understood the pragmatism, but it still annoyed me. That’s how evil flourished, by people being “practical,” tolerating the intolerant, putting on blinders for selfishly pragmatic reasons.

But Clary’s ability to juggle opposing opinions for the sake of business—and for that matter, Susan’s—were not why Susan had phoned. “The book,” I said. “Helen’s note. You really have it?”

“I have a copy of all the written-on pages.”

“How’d you get them?”

“Clary copied them for me.”

“She has it, not the police?”

“It isn’t evidence of a crime, Amanda. They’ve been through it a thousand times, and it’s what it seems to be—a sort of doodle pad. And it doesn’t have much that’s particularly gripping except for that so-called suicide note. Meanwhile, I asked, and she did it, once I saw her name on the contributors’ list.”

“You blackmailed her.”

“I’d prefer not to call it that. I merely acknowledged what she’d said, that business is business. Let’s be honest—neither one of us has any morals. Besides, she didn’t want the thing. Nobody does. She said even Ivan didn’t want it around. It bothered him.”

“What do you want with it?”

“I don’t think other people have read it—read into it—the way we’ll be able to.”

Now I understood the manic glee. The return of Susan the mystery fan and writer, giddily expecting clues, a hidden code that she or I would recognize and crack on the spot. I wished I hadn’t gotten myself into this.

“Anyway,” she said, “I have it with me right now, so why don’t you come over?”

I checked the clock. Seven-thirty. Dishes still to do.

“I’ve read through it,” Susan said. “Now you should. We could compare notes tomorrow. I have to be in Delaware all day, but we could have an early dinner with our men. Introduce them. Come get it.”

“Where are you?” I asked. “At home?”

“No. A short walk away from you. Come on—it’s a beautiful evening. I’ll provide the properly mysterious atmosphere. Imagine it. Night falls on the waterfront, on the river and the pier. A woman passes information. All we need is a foghorn, right? Except there’s no fog.”

“Where are you?”

“At Roy Stanton’s fund-raiser. I thought I explained. At the
Moshulu.”

Now at least the talk about rivers and piers made sense. The
Moshulu
was a handsome old sailing ship now serving time as a restaurant on the river.

“I’m making nice to the one thousand Philadelphians herein gathered,” Susan said. “You should see it—the deck’s tented and the ballroom’s splendid. Very grand. I have had worse assignments, trust me.”

“It’s too late.”

“It’s seven-thirty! What kind of slug are you? Take a romantic stroll along the river. Have a drink. We can hang out.”

“With Roy Stanton’s friends? No way.”

“We’ll go in the bar. Nowhere near them. Or don’t have a drink. I already talked a little with Clary about the stuff—”

“She’s there?”

“I told you, she bought a table.”

That didn’t mean she had to be there, did it?

“Don’t you want to see the pages? The note?”

Only mildly, to tell the truth. And not enough to rouse myself into action. Susan sounded as if she were playing a game that I had never agreed to. As for me, I was having a temporary bout of sanity. Probably the aftereffect of an overly healthy meal. But a walk in the summery evening air did sound good. I covered the mouthpiece. “How’d you like to take a walk down to the
Moshulu?”
I asked Mackenzie.

He, too, looked at the clock and didn’t find it an acceptable excuse, although I could see he wanted to. We had become stay-at-homes. Old marrieds without ever being newlyweds. “Sure,” he said with reluctance.

He hadn’t asked why. More points in his column. Or should I be suspicious of what was going on?

T
HE WALK TURNED OUT TO BE A GREAT IDEA
I
WISHED
I’
D
thought of myself. I felt a resurgence of my earlier determination to eat vegetables and live the healthy life. Now I embellished that happy fantasy with a nightly long walk after dinner. We’d walk, we’d talk, we’d grow ever closer until our glow of health and emotional perfection reached halogen intensity.

I flicked away half ideas of our various schedules, of how infrequently Mackenzie was even around, of how often it would be raining, muggy, frosty, or windy. Add to that the fact that I am an exceedingly lazy human being. For now, this was the plan, and I could see my entire future, under my control, sane and close to perfection—linear at last. Also predictable and boring.

On Market Street, we took the pedestrian walkway over 1-95. The traffic sounds receded as we neared the
waterfront, which, only steps away, felt far from the city with its own, distinct atmosphere.

There’s something about being beside a body of water that pulls the mind beyond its familiar boundaries. This works even with the Delaware River on a spring night. There should have been an ocean liner pulling out to sea, or mist above the water and the foghorns Susan had mentioned. Instead, there was a clear, but slowly thickening dusky light. And our nondistant horizon was Camden, New Jersey.

But even so, with the aroma of the water and perhaps a soupçon of drifting exhaust fumes, we walked the red brick pathway past white tents left from some recent celebration, past permanent posters, which I examined because I feel compelled to read any print in my vicinity. The reproduction of an old print was titled
Penn’s Unter-handlung mit den Indianern.
I looked all over, but there was no explanation of why a painting by George Gilbert of Penn’s treaty with the Indians was titled in German.

As we walked on, past the excursion boat docks, our talk slowly floated on its own course, lazily expanding and circling and redirecting itself in ways it seldom did at home. We passed a young girl huddling on a bench. The evening was balmy, but she looked chilly and as if she were waiting for the next bad thing to happen to her.

“She makes me think of Petra,” I said. “And Petra makes me feel so useless. What should I do? Is there anything I can do? What would
you
do? What if she were your daughter?”

Mackenzie was quiet for a while as we slowly walked; then he spoke. “I’d hope to God that by that age, she’d know she could trust me, that she was able to tell me her troubles, whatever they were. I’d hope she knew that I cared, and that I had her present welfare and future happiness at heart. And given that, when she’d talk to me,
I’d ask her what she wanted, and we’d consider all her options, find her the best way.”

His vision of parenthood floated into the night air and sweetened it. But Petra couldn’t talk to her father and expect comfort or help, and the law blocked other choices. There was no one, in Petra’s words, who was a safe adult or a safe harbor.

Our talk drifted away from the conflicts that had grown out of my work, to Mackenzie’s workday conflicts.

He doesn’t often talk about work, except in generalities. He does talk about the sillier cases he hears about—seldom if ever homicides, which are too horrible to qualify. However, there are exceptions, like the woman who filed a malpractice suit against the hospital for not saving her husband’s life. The fact that she’d worked hard to end that life—shooting him four times before calling for help—apparently didn’t seem relevant to her.

A few days ago, he’d told me about a trio of women who were robbing stores. Their modus operandi was alarmingly simple. Two of them bared their breasts. While the cashiers were thereby distracted, the third emptied the cash register. What was appalling was that it had worked three times now.

Another bare-flesh con involved a Midwestern woman who convinced men to undress in her truck, then get out and rub snow over themselves. While they did, she drove away with their clothing and cash.

Those are the crime stories I hear, the exceptions to the rule, the ones that produce at least half a smile. Those and generalities. He isn’t supposed to talk specifics, anyway. But on this walk, his talk was very specific and obviously painful, and I realized how heavily it had been weighing on him.

Tonight, by the water, he moved outside the barriers he’d set up, and talked about having to notify the parents
of an elementary schoolgirl found murdered in Fair-mount Park. I’d heard about it while I was making dinner and the TV droned behind me. A fifth grader, reported missing on a class outing and found within the hour, dead, identified by her classmates. The question of who could have been that close and have acted that quickly was terrifying. And that’s as far as I’d been willing to think about it. I’d turned off the TV.

“I can’t tell you,” he said softly. “Walkin’ up those front stairs, knowin’ what I’m about to do to their lives, their hopes, their hearts …”

“You weren’t doing it. You didn’t do it. You tried to make it as bearable as possible. I know that,” I said.

He looked sideways at me, almost with pity. “When a bomb’s dropped on your head, it doesn’t matter how delicately the bomber’s touch was on the release lever.” We walked past the retired flagship
Olympia
in silence.

“I’m goin’ stale,” Mackenzie said after a while. “They come too fast, too many … an’ I’m never going to forget that father’s face. Got there just when she would have, if she was comin’ home from school.” I heard his deep intake of breath and slow exhale.

“Maybe you need a vacation.”

“Maybe. Or maybe a more permanent change of scene.”

Was I what would be changed? Was that what the anti-marriage business was about? Or was it just his job, not that that wasn’t a major decision in itself. He’d mentioned going to law school when we’d first met, but he hadn’t mentioned it since then.

“What do you think?” he asked.

I thought … what I thought was that he cared about what I thought. Law school meant years. Years of us together?

And so it went, touching lightly on possibilities and
problems. We neither solved nor resolved a thing, but still, our voices in the evening air made the issues feel less impenetrable. And then, we were at the
Moshulu.
Susan had told me how to summon her. I handed a note to a plainly dressed man at the entry of the ballroom, and he disappeared into the crowd of elegant women and men.

We meandered into the boat itself. I looked around, orienting myself. The centerpiece of the entry was a dramatically handsome staircase with a bannister of carved brass. “Want to peek upstairs?” I asked. “I think the crew’s quarters are up there.”

We walked toward the staircase, but before we reached it, we found ourselves face-to-face with a familiar face.

“Amanda!” Denise the smiling candidate’s wife said. “I never—” She caught herself, but of course she was right. She would never have imagined I’d be at an event for her husband—unless it was celebrating his defeat.

I smiled. The truth was, I wasn’t actually there, and our jeans and cotton sweaters were surely a clue that we were passing by. “We just stopped by to get something from Susan,” I said.