Helen Hath No Fury (14 page)

I
DON’T MEAN TO ANTHROPOMORPHIZE, AND
I
KNOW
Mother Nature doesn’t program based on my moods, but the next day was as gloomy as I was. The air outside looked the color and texture of mustard, and I knew that the second I left the air-conditioned loft, the humidity would cover me with its slobber-doggy kiss. The thought was enough to wilt my hair and send me searching for excuses not to visit Susan.

Of course, I knew I would. Not visiting a friend who’s been as physically insulted as she had been wasn’t an option.

Besides, I had questions about who had seen the envelope or knew Susan had it, although their numbers were ever-increasing. Clary knew, and Ivan knew, and who knew who Ivan had told? Roxanne—and Gretchen—seemed to know whatever peeved Ivan. And Denise could easily have seen it during the evening or when we were all talking and Susan came over. Who else?

And how had it happened that the most innocuous people—my book group, readers, book lovers—now seemed a potential den of murderers? It was ridiculous and hateful. Everybody loved Helen. She’d been easy to like. I’d never heard of a squabble. But suddenly, half the group seemed to have hidden motives for murder. Roxanne to eliminate a romantic impediment. Wendy and
perhaps Clary, too, to eliminate a business impediment. And even miserable Louisa, on behalf of her overprivileged children and their preschool educations.

And while I mentally spun in circles, in mazes as tight as the ones Helen had doodled, another entire brain category said, “Are you forgetting Petra?” Where was she? How could anyone help her?

Talk about feeling useless.

The shroud my own mind cast over the day was even worse than what was outside.

I whipped through the Sunday paper, reading book reviews, the magazine, and little else. The news section had a long feature on Roy Stanton Harris. I studied his generic good-looking face. There was even a photo with his son, Zachary, and I studied that one, too. Roy Stanton smiled more than his son did, or was further along in his politicking and knew enough to twinkle for the camera.

Enough of them. I flipped past, cranky and bored.

Unable to concentrate, I began the day finally doing what Mackenzie had suggested a while back. I wrote down whatever I’d been told, and by whom. My first attempt produced an incomprehensible jumble. I pulled out a fresh piece of paper and wrote HELEN in the middle. Then I drew circles.

Beginning with the ludicrous: Louisa fought with Helen about whether she had kept Louisa’s kids out of a nursery school on whose board Helen sat. She said she repeated “rumors” to Helen, but refused to say what they were. I drew a line between Louisa’s circle and Helen. And dotted lines—possibly the rumor—to Wendy’s “news” of an affair between Roxanne and Ivan, to Louisa’s sister Clary’s suggestion that Helen had secretly borrowed funds.

Susan had said there was strife between the partners
about supporting Roy Stanton’s campaign. I drew another line between Clary and Helen.

Roxanne’s balloon said: Helen and Ivan were going through a bad time—or Helen was. Or Helen’s business was. Helen had freaked out about money. Helen had squelched a deal where Ivan would have been in a partnership with Wendy.

I drew lines from Roxanne to Helen, made a new circle for Wendy, and connected her to Roxanne and Helen and the new circle for Ivan, too.

Gretchen said her father was upset. That Roxanne was their conduit for all news. That somebody—no line to draw—in the book group made her mother uncomfortable.

Gretchen’s bubble sat out in space with a lifeline to Roxanne, but that was all. I drew wiggly, unconnected lines from her to remind me that I didn’t know who that “someone” was.

The
R.I.P. Liar
was out on its own.

Wendy’s bubble said that Roxanne and Ivan were probably an item. That Roxanne lied about her husband’s whereabouts and her own marital status. I realized, rather belatedly, that Wendy had been full of news about Roxanne, but not about Helen, and not a word about herself.

Ivan had said that Helen had a history of depression. About love, about fertility problems. Ivan’s line was short and bonded to his dead wife’s circle.

Near the Dumpster’s graffiti, I put the
RvW
and
Polly Baker
as reminders, too.

And that was about the sum of it, circles and lines and missing links. Dollar signs and hearts and tears.

“I use those little skinny notebooks,” Mackenzie said when he ambled in and found me glaring at the page,
making arrows and connector lines. “Easy to juggle the little pages.”

“I thought this would be graphic in some revelatory way.”

He studied the names and the facts while he drank coffee.

“It’s depressing to have nice, ordinary people suddenly seem suspicious,” I said.

He grinned. “Probably because they’re just what they seem—nice, ordinary people. Guilty people work at hiding the truth, maneuvering around it. They have careful alibis, but ordinary people don’t have reason to think in that direction.”

“But it’s such a muddle. Missing money—”

“Real life is messy. Maybe Helen’s done that before. Maybe even Clary.”

“Why’d she mention it? Pure honesty, or something else?”

He shook his head and had more coffee.

“There are lies all over the place,” I said. “Not just on that Dumpster. To lie about whether you’re still married, for God’s sake!”

“Oh, right—Roxanne. Means we have to change the stats on the book group, switch her column.”

“I’m not keeping statistics,” I snapped. “What is it with you? You seem desperate to gather antimarriage material. You have something against the institution? These people are trying their best!”

My mother again—and now, coming right out of my mouth! Audibly!

He pulled back, looking astounded. “I think—I thought my opinion of marriage was the same as yours. I was stating facts about that particular cross section, is all. You told me they’re as bad as your mother, or you seemed less than in love with their nagging, too. That’s
why I paid attention to what their romantic lives are like. Consider the source.”

He had a gift for freeze-drying the long harangues in my mind until they were flaky bits that blew away. I’d had a whole lot to say—and now, nothing. So I looked back at my stupid chart. “What do I know about Helen?” I asked softly.

“That she was complicated. That people liked her, loved her—and probably envied her. All of that affects what they’ll say about her, or about Ivan, or about life in general.”

“Then whatever’s here”—I waved at the two pages of notes—“is pretty much—”

“Nothing. The death’s suspicious for me because of the graffiti—though God knows any crazed kid who heard what happened could do that out of spite.”

“‘Liar’?”

“Who knows what that means? Maybe she said something to one of Gretchen’s friends. Or fired somebody. Or picketed somebody. It’s as vague as the other stuff.”

“I would like to know who in the group made her so uneasy that she considered quitting, and—”

“Hold on. Those two things aren’t necessarily related. Maybe she was tired of the books you read, too busy. You don’t know enough.”

There was an understatement if there ever was one. I didn’t know anything. Not even what I’d have said I knew a few short days before. Before Helen died.

B
Y THE TIME
I
WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE FOR
S
USAN’S HOUSE
, the cloud cover was a few inches off the pavement, and midday was as dim as dusk. It was going to pour. On me, she who lacked a raincoat, and even though Helen’s house could be on the way to Susan’s, I would not willingly face the Coulters again this weekend. I was
rummaging through the closet in search of an umbrella when the phone rang. I grabbed a small red umbrella that I was afraid was broken, and caught the phone before the service picked it up.

“Amanda,” a cultivated voice I immediately recognized said. “This is Denise. I hate to bother you on a Sunday. Forgive me.”

I made all the soothing no-problem sounds I could muster.

“I wondered if we could talk at some point soon.”

“Well, I … sure. We could talk right now.”

“I wish … but we have a church service in Chester County we have to get to—a special service—and we’re already running late. I was afraid we’d get back too late for me to make this call and … I wouldn’t bother you if I didn’t think … it’s a matter of import.”

She sounded like a politician lately. The whole family was infected. “I’d like to talk with you,” she said.

“About this? About Helen?” Denise wouldn’t call without something tangible to report. Something more than rumor.

“There’s a situation. She was in touch recently.” I heard someone in the background. “I have to run. Zack’s calling. We call him our wrangler lately, herding us here, then there. An absolute slave driver!” She trilled a laugh that sounded anything but sincere. “Do you have time this evening? My schedule—this election makes life impossible. We’ll all be on Rittenhouse Square tonight. I could duck out while Roy Stanton’s speaking. Could you possibly meet me somewhere nearby for a few minutes? I think you’ll agree it’s … not trivial.”

I didn’t want to meet her at all. She worried me. Sounded furtive. “Tell me where and when,” I said.

*   *   *

I
BROUGHT
S
USAN LOLLIPOPS AND ICE CREAM. I PUT THE
ice cream in the freezer and talked briefly with Joe, who looked haggard. I told him he could trust his wife to my keeping, and after asking me half a dozen times if I was sure of that, he looked dizzy with relief, and murmuring something about a game on TV, he wandered off.

“No scars,” Susan said with minor difficulty. Her jaw was wired. In the thirty-plus hours since the injury, she’d learned to speak around it and sounded as if she had an unfortunate accent, as if she were a great deal less literate and verbal than she is. “Dey pahmise.”

With a little work and concentration, she was intelligible, which was a relief. My visit didn’t have to be a long performance monologue.

She was sitting in bed, propped at an angle with a pile of pillows that lessened the pain of the broken ribs and the bump on the skull. “What you learn?”

I’d brought along my yellow notepad full of the circles and lines. I not only thought it would intrigue Susan and make this convalescent visit less onerous, but I thought that given her war wounds, she deserved full knowledge of whatever had gone on—whether or not I understood it. I gave her back the copies. “You have to destroy them later. Clary’s request.”

“Copieth!” she said. “Whoth playing spy gameth now?”

“I know it’s stupid, but I promised.”

She shrugged, then winced.

“Cool it with the body language for a while,” I suggested, and she nodded, the humor momentarily gone from her face.

She spoke slowly and deliberately. “I think.” It sounded like “Uffing,” but translation was becoming easier with each word. She tapped her jaw. “Wanted kill me.” She
nodded lightly, and I could see how she was still trying to understand what had happened.

I squeezed her hand and felt tears smart on my bottom lids. “Thank goodness for the person in the car, whoever it was. Now, at your own pace, what were you going to tell me? Remember? About the notebook pages.”

She almost frowned in concentration, but those muscles also apparently hurt. “Not soo-cide.”

“Me, too,” I said. “Convinced me it wasn’t suicide.”

“Article. Polly, too.”

“Precisely! That’s amazing—we’re 100 percent in synch.”

She shook her head—very gingerly—and pointed at her jaw. “Where’s yours, then?” she asked. She pointed at my messy chart, which I’d explained, and said, “Whoth least likely?”

“Least likely what?”

“Killer.”

I sat back. It was confusing how well she’d interpreted the notebook pages, how logically, and then how her mind put her on ridiculous detours. “In real life, it’s the
most
likely who does it. Ask Mackenzie.”

Susan looked at the list, then added the rest of the book group’s names to it.
The Not Yet Heard From
she wrote in block letters beneath their names.

She pointed at Denise’s name. “Leatht likely.”

“Interesting. She called as I was leaving. I’m meeting her tonight. She has something to discuss. She said Helen had been in touch with her recently. Do you have any idea why? Aside from book group stuff, which she wouldn’t have mentioned.”

Susan’s eyes were wide. “Cweepy. Bad. Don’ you know ayfing? Perfn sayth tell you later
dieth
before can tell it.
Always.
”

“I thought you’d fulfilled that prediction already,” I said.

“I here.”

How many muggers and batterings would it take for the woman to know when enough was enough? “Get a grip,” I said. “Denise had to go to some mix of church and state. I’ll see her in a few hours. This is nonfiction, Susie. I don’t mean to be harsh, but you make a game, almost, of what is definitely not—look at you! Bashed up, in pain, can barely speak. I don’t have to tell you this is for real.”

“No game.”

I opened my mouth for another stab at introducing Susan to reality, but she—and I, perhaps—were saved by the bell. The doorbell, in this instance.

“T
ESS
!” I’
D GONE TO THE TOP OF THE STAIRS TO SEE
who’d come calling. My surprise was honest. “What—”

“How is she?” Tess looked anxious in a therapist sort of way. Concerned, but not hysterical about it. She held an artfully arranged spray of daffodils and tulips.

Joe waved up at me and returned to his game. “I thought you were at the shore,” I said as I walked downstairs to greet her. Once again, I felt that unwelcome wave of suspicion that any unexpected behavior or words by any member of the book club—or anyone associated with it—produced in me lately.

“Was. But the weather’s disgusting so we came home this morning. And there was a message on my machine from Faith.”

“Really? Did Clary start a telephone tree?”

“Guess so. And I more or less had a found day, so I thought … you know, most times you wish you could do certain things, but you can’t. Clients lined up, sick child—something. But today …” She shrugged and smiled and gave a small wave of the flowers. “Her timing worked for me, I guess. So how is she?”

“Bones broken, bumped up, but she’ll be fine.”

“Her body, you mean,” Tess said, being Tess.

“Of course. The trauma …” I shrugged. I didn’t know how I was going to be about all of this, either. “Go
on up. I’ll find something to put these in and bring them up.”

Susan’s kitchen was a lot like her, with humor wherever possible. She had a collection of perfectly dreadful cookie jars atop the cabinets. My pick was the Mona Lisa, whose eyebrows served as the lid’s demarcation. The spoon rest was Elvis, hips swiveled at an angle. The clock had its numbers running backwards. The canisters looked like haphazard arrangements of children’s building blocks.

But her vases were straightforward. I could see them through one of the cabinet’s glass panes. I wished I knew how to arrange flowers in the manner they deserved, but settled for what I could do and carried the results upstairs.

It was interesting watching Tess fill a comfortable space between friend and therapist. She was drawing Susan out—not that getting Susan, wired jaw or not, to talk required great skill. I watched as the mugging was replayed, in as much detail as its victim could summon. Tess nodded encouragingly.

Susan’s lips looked dry, and I realized the glass next to her bed was empty. I offered something to drink—tea, ice water, whatever I could find below—and once again descended the stairs.

They’d both opted for iced tea, which needed to be made, but as I waited for the kettle to boil and pulled out the extra-thick mugs Susan had promised would not crack when hot fluid and ice were both in them, I caught myself again in the suspicion zone. It would be incredibly easy for someone like Tess to find out just how much Susan had seen or recognized. When precisely had her family left for the shore? Friday night or Saturday morning?

Which was so bizarre a thought I knew I’d gone over the top and was now as bad as Susan. Upstairs, a kind
woman was being a friend, and I was reading underhanded motives into it. I’d become warped.

On the other hand, Helen had become dead and Susan had become seriously banged up. Somebody was out there.

It seemed forever before the water boiled and I added half a mug of it to the glasses, let it steep, extracted the tea bags, added ice and sugar, found a tray—Susan was thoroughly organized. I thought of the plastic envelopes, everything in separate compartments, and realized I should have expected that.

They were laughing, Susan holding her face so as not to hurt it and making odd sounds, somewhere between a cough and a snort. “I was telling Susan about this pathetic neighbor at the shore, who—” Tess waved away her words. “Oh, never mind. I can’t bear going through the whole thing again.” Susan gave another cough-laugh-snort.

Then we grew more sober. My yellow pages were still on the bed, and Tess moved her head in their direction. “You’ve been busy,” she said. “But even if somebody harmed Helen, isn’t your—our—scope a little narrow? I mean these are all book group people.”

“Plus Ivan.”

She waved that away. “What I mean is that these are people we know. But Helen knew lots of people. She operated in the business world, and—again, this is relevant only if there’s real reason to believe somebody hurt her—”

Intriguing that the shrink who wanted Susan to talk it through couldn’t bring herself to say the word
killed.

“—then I’d think any real investigation would have to consider that world, too. Plus her social life. Old friends. Et cetera. We’re looking at her life through a very tiny
keyhole, only at the part we were in. Besides, there really is no evidence, is there?”

“The Dumpster,” I said.

“Cruel, but have you looked at most walls, corners, and street signs? Give a malicious kid a spray can, and anything is possible.”

“But
liar
is such a specific accusation.”

“Well,” Tess said, sipping her iced tea and stirring it with the straw. “Maybe that’s my point—not that the accusation’s true, but that somebody she knew socially, or in business, or even through golf—who knows?—thought she lied about something. And that somebody could have had nothing to do with Helen’s death, but could simply be spewing nastiness, saying in essence, good riddance, dreadful as it sounds.”

“But if,” I began, “if we come to believe—if there’s convincing evidence, ever, that someone pushed Helen. Murdered her.” Tess winced at the word, but it felt important that it be said. “We still have the enormous obstacle about who and why would she have gone up to the roof with anybody if there was discord between them.”

“Thumbody she liketh,” Susan said.

“Roxanne thought she saw a workman.” Except I wasn’t at all sure Roxanne didn’t have cause to lie.

“Helen’s entire crew was at my house,” Tess said. “Redoing my porch. Helen knew that. In fact, Helen arranged that when she couldn’t use them.”

“Fake workman?” Susan made a muffled sound. A strangled yawn, I thought, wired inside.

I stood. We were exhausting her. “Time to go. I’ll stop by after school tomorrow again. Have Joe call if there’s anything …”

Tess also stood. “Rest up and heal,” she said. “Maybe having visitors and talking isn’t the best thing for you, after all.”

Susan made polite if garbled protestations, but she did look within seconds of sleep.

Downstairs, we said good-bye to Joe, again made offers of help, and walked out together onto the Hilemans’ old-fashioned porch. “I didn’t mean to cut your visit short,” I said. “I thought if I left—”

“I would have gone in a minute anyway. Being slammed around that way, hurt as much as she is, exhausts the body, not to mention the emotions.” She took a deep breath and looked at me speculatively. “Besides,” she said. “Besides …”

I borrowed her act. I nodded and smiled and looked encouraging, but said nothing.

“I need to say I’m uncomfortable with this whole … investigation thing.”

“It isn’t an investigation.”

“What would you call it?”

“A … an exploration. An active discussion. A finding out how little any of us know anybody else.”

Tess’s grimace eloquently suggested that I was playing with words.

“We’re searching for the question, not the answers,” I said. “We’re trying to find what most likely happened, and if there’s reason for a criminal investigation. We’re looking for leverage, for definition, through who Helen was.”

“Fair enough. But whatever you’re calling it, I have reservations about it.” She gestured at the metal glider on the porch. I remembered when Susan found it in a junk store. It didn’t look much better now, even painted multicolored pastels and given homemade pillows, but it beat standing out in the rain.

“I met Helen, years ago, when we were both college-age—different colleges—but we had summer jobs waiting tables at the same seafood restaurant.” Tess seated herself
and so did I. The glider creaked and rocked slightly. I had the sense of a long story starting.

“I was a year or two older than she was,” Tess continued, “but we had more in common with each other than we had with anybody else there, and we were instant, if temporary friends, because we didn’t cross paths again for half a dozen years at least. But that summer with Helen is probably why I decided to become a psychologist.”

I waited for an explanation.

“She functioned all summer. Seemed normal. But when I got to know her, I got to know how depressed she actually was. Talking about suicide, in fact. She terrified me, and finally, I didn’t know what to do except read all I could about mental illness, then research psychologists and steer her toward one. My interest in the subject, especially depression, began with her. Until then, I thought I was an art major.”

She gazed out at the street, at a small boy in a slicker and boots. He jumped into five puddles while we watched, and each time, his mother, two steps behind, said, “Don’t jump in the puddle, Jason. You’ll get all wet.”

Tess cleared her throat. “I’m trying to say that Helen could very well have chosen to end her life, and in fact, I assume that she did. She had an unfortunate tendency to be overly hard on herself. It may have helped her succeed in the business world, but it surely didn’t help her be happy.”

“I’m not sure why you’re uncomfortable about this,” I said. “Nobody’s trying to pry into areas that would
hurt
Helen. Just the opposite!”

“But her family. She would hate it if you dredged up things she’d never want her daughter to know about.”

“Like what?” Tess wouldn’t know about the missing money. “Helen, to all accounts, was a model citizen, a
committed, good-hearted, outspoken woman. What are you talking about?”

Tess closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “What a person considers shameful isn’t taken from some table of standard shames. I’m not saying she ever did anything wrong. But she thought it was wrong. That summer, she’d just ended an affair with a married man, one of her teachers, and she was incredibly ashamed of having been involved with him. That’s all I know, nothing more specific. But she talked about it in terms of a disaster, spoke of guilt and retribution and shame. I never understood why, but that wasn’t the problem—the way she was flirting with the idea of death was the problem. What mattered was how it felt to her.

“Another sort of woman might go on national TV and joke about mistakes made in her youth, or not joke at all—might lambaste the married man for his role in it, the teacher for his unprofessional lack of ethics. But Helen wasn’t either sort. Years later, when we’d become friends again, she referred back to that summer as if it still haunted her. She always called it our secret. Even Ivan didn’t know about whatever it was, and surely, Gretchen didn’t. Under that business suit, Helen was something of a Puritan. You know how she was—when she thought something was wrong, she spoke up about it. When I first met her, she thought she herself was what was wrong, and she seemed half-ready to don the scarlet A.”

I was reminded of Helen’s notes. The words
hypocrisy
and
sin
and
honorable.
“Ivan told me she’s been depressed—seriously—twice,” I said.

Tess nodded. “Funny thing is, when we met again, she was in that second serious depression. She commented on how I seemed to appear when she was in the dumps. I never knew if that was an insult or a compliment.”

“Did she explain why she was in the dumps this time?”

“Well, this time she’d gone to get help on her own. I just think it was a hard time for her. She was trying to conceive and having a bad time of it, and that can be emotionally grinding for anyone, especially somebody as hard on herself as Helen was. She acted as if this were punishment for her sins, divine retribution. But once again, if you’d met her at a party, you’d never suspect how desperately unhappy she was.”

“Suicidal?”

“Possibly. The point is, being shocked that she jumped off her roof is one thing. Deciding it can’t be true because she didn’t give you advance warning—that’s not a logical assumption. And so pushing and probing for the secrets she kept to herself feels like a humiliation beyond the grave. A needless, futile humiliation. She had it in her to be extreme, and she had it in her to mask her desperation. Why hurt her family’s memory of her by spilling secrets she didn’t want shared?”

“No problem.”

Tess looked relieved. “Good. Nobody wants to further upset the family. And speaking of families, I’d better get home to mine, then,” she said. “Thanks for listening.”

Upset the family. I’d heard those words before. My mind tracked them—upstairs, inside the house on that sheaf of pages I’d given to Susan. The words were part of Helen’s own notes.

Nobody wanted to or intended to upset Helen’s family.

Nobody but Helen, because, according to her own notes, she’d felt obligated to do just that. Had perceived it as a necessity and the only honorable course.