Seven Minutes to Noon (14 page)

“I thought Tim was your friend.”

“He was. I mean he
is
.”

“Then why the misgivings?” It was a strange question coming from a detective. But Frannie always somehow derailed Alice’s expectations, reminding her she had no reason to expect anything in particular.

“When he said that just now,” Alice answered, “how he wanted his little girl, it just hit me. And now I need to know.”

“Okay.” Frannie lightly touched Alice’s shoulder. “I’ll ask Dr. Rose. I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thank you, Frannie.”

“Now I really have to go or I’ll be late. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Frannie turned down Court Street, walking slowly in the rain, her heels clopping along on the wet sidewalk. Under cover of the angry clouds, the afternoon was darkening prematurely. Alice watched Frannie swerve around a puddle made visible by the wavy, upside-down letters of a flashing blue neon sign.

Turning to her mother, who looked as if she was about to speak, Alice said, “Don’t. Please, Mom, just
don’t
.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Lizzie said. “Just come inside. You can still catch a cold in summer.”

Even without speaking, Alice knew what Lizzie would have said. Something about the dangers of friends turning on each other. Well, Alice didn’t suspect Tim of anything. All she needed was an answer to one simple question, which she held back, tucked behind her tongue. They proceeded in a string of cars, through the pouring rain, to Greenwood Cemetery, where Lauren’s broken, robbed body would be given to the ground.

Lizzie took Alice, Mike and the kids out to dinner that night. But no one, not even the kids, had much of an appetite. There was little to say; they were all deeply exhausted. As soon as they got home, everyone went right to bed. Alice slept without pills, thoughts or dreams.

In the morning, Lizzie made French toast for everyone, directed conversation over breakfast, then let Mike clean up the mess. Alice went downstairs to shower, and when she came back up, she found Lizzie parked at the kitchen table with a pad of paper and the phone.

Alice caught Mike’s attention and rolled her eyes at her mother’s irresistible urge to micromanage her production office from afar. But instead of responding in kind, he lifted his eyebrows and conspicuously shifted his gaze to the lined yellow pad.

Alice walked over and looked at her mother’s list. In Lizzie’s loopy scrawl, she was stunned to see an outline for Alice’s own life.
Smith Salon, Saturday 3 p.m., spa package (massage, facial, pedicure); Monday, 10 a.m.,
Pam Short, Garden Hill Realty, meet
@
office, see 3 houses.

Alice’s first reaction was outrage. But then, as soon as she thought of both Mike’s and Lizzie’s imminent departures — he was going to the workshop “for a little while,” meaning all day, and a cab was coming in just over an hour to take Lizzie to the airport — she was overcome by gratitude. Lizzie was steering Alice away from pain to her own version of California, away from the longing that had turned her the wrong way into traffic two days ago. Away from the anxiety that had made her follow Frannie out of the funeral parlor yesterday, chasing ghosts and pointing fingers at friends. Lizzie had come all this way to build her only child an entrance ramp back into her own, sane life.

It was a good list, Alice decided, and she would follow it. But it was incomplete. Another scheduling item that neither Lizzie nor Mike knew about yet hovered invisibly between the lines.

When Alice was downstairs just now, Frannie had called her cell, the house phone’s call-waiting going ignored.

“I want you to come in tomorrow,” Frannie had said. “Mike too. Everyone. We need to go over things again.”

Alice sat down on a stoop across the street from the precinct and waited her turn to be interviewed, again, by the detectives. There were still ten more minutes before her noon appointment. She didn’t want to wait inside, knowing that Tim was in there with Frannie and Giometti. They were being stacked into hour-long time slots — Simon, Tim, Alice, Maggie, and Mike — undergoing a mandated evaluation as if to find out what had gone wrong between them. As if they, as a group, had swallowed up Lauren and her baby.

Alice propped her elbows on her knees and lowered her face into her hands, breathing deliberately, deeply, willing her mind to unwind a notch. The sounds of the street began to dissipate and she was transported thirty years backward into her mother’s bedroom. Scrunched into her mother’s bed, under the covers, eating a bowl of ice cream and watching
Laugh In
on TV. Her father had left them two weeks earlier for
the bimbo
with a doctorate degree. Pressed against her mother’s skin, in her parents’ bed, in her family’s house, Alice drank in the cruel loss, and held in her own pain as a policy against her mother’s dissembling. Alice’s ice cream that night was strawberry and sweet, and when it dropped from her spoon onto her mother’s pillow, nothing was said. The fear she had felt at that moment thirty years ago, in that awful silence, bloomed into her mind now as she sat on the stoop on Union Street. The sticky blossom
of memory intruded on her brief rest and her mind sizzled awake.

She thought of the risks people took with lives constructed of fragile compromises, pulling a favorite colored thread out of a whole tapestry, pulling and pulling, destroying years of well-earned love. The denuded aftermath. Her father leaving, just like that. Her mother’s pain hardening into a tough, glamorous Hollywood shell — a persona who nevertheless remembered what mattered, and cherished the love of her family.

Alice shook her head, scattering the burdened memories.

It was 11:55. She crossed the street and went into the police station. The attendant at the front desk checked her name off a list and pointed her to the waiting area. This time, she didn’t look at the wanted posters; she couldn’t bear to see those awful, twisted, needy or, worse, average faces because every one of them was Lauren’s killer. Every one of them had held Ivy in his arms. Or had not held her. The possibilities were too cruel to consider.

Alice stood in front of the fish tank and watched the big fish circle the little fish, darting through a miniature landscape of neon coral. One fish hid behind a sunken plastic pirate ship. Someone was keeping the tank meticulously clean.

A familiar voice snagged her attention and she turned to see Tim pass through the lobby. He was with a tall man in a suit and tie, presumably a lawyer. As soon as Tim noticed her, he fell silent. She waved and he waved back, but that was all. The man with him glanced her way, then at Tim, then lifted his chin toward the door and directed them out of the precinct.

Alice watched her friend leave, chilled by his cool departure. What had just happened? Had Frannie and Giometti told him
she
was the one who had pressed the issue of his baby’s gender? Had they told him she couldn’t be trusted? Was it true? Could any of the friends trust each other anymore? Were they all suspects in Lauren’s death?

“Alice.” Giometti’s soft voice startled her. “Come with me.”

He led her upstairs to the interview room, where Frannie sat at the table, waiting.

“Hi, Alice,” she said warmly. “Have a seat.”

Alice resisted the feeling they were friends. They were
not
friends. She reminded herself that she had been summoned here for what basically amounted to an interrogation.

The light in the room was gritty and dim. As before, the blinds were closed. Giometti sat down next to Frannie, who leaned forward to switch on the tape recorder. She stated the date and time, and listed who was in the room. Then she looked directly at Alice.

“The questions today are mostly routine.”

“Okay.”

They started with her whereabouts last Friday, when Lauren first disappeared. Alice repeated everything they already knew, retold it all until she was emptied of details. She recalled that day as if it were a jewel in a spotlight on a dark stage. She remembered waiting in the park for Lauren, her growing conviction that Lauren had had the baby, her excitement about Ivy. She remembered all of it with incredulity at her hopefulness that afternoon. She remembered walking along Court Street with all four children. The story of her day ended with the recollection of lying in bed and not sleeping that night or the next night or the next, the nights rolling over her in sleepless redux, until finally she crashed the car. But Alice didn’t say any of that; she simply said, “I went to bed,” and eased into a pause that ended the interview. Frannie’s eyes flicked to the wall clock, then announced the time into the tape recorder and turned it off.

“Thanks.” Giometti half stood and leaned over the table to extend his hand to Alice.

“That’s it?” Alice asked.

“You’re done.”

“All right if I ask you a question?”

Frannie smiled. “Shoot.”

“What just happened in here with Tim?”

Giometti tensed up a little. He glanced at Frannie before answering. “I’m sorry, but that isn’t a conversation we can have with you.”

Alice looked at Frannie, into her dark eyes. “What did he tell you about the baby? How did he know she was a girl? What did Dr. Rose tell you? Did you even speak with her?”

“We spoke with Dr. Rose,” Frannie said, “if it makes you feel any better.”

“And?”

“I’ll tell you what.” Frannie stood up and came around the desk to guide Alice to the door. “If you want to know how Tim found out the baby was a girl, ask your friend. Ask Maggie.”

Alice walked out of the police station into the bright afternoon and saw Maggie walking slowly up Union Street, late for her one o’clock appointment. She was wearing a tight yellow skirt that flared just below her knees and a pair of the dove-gray suede shoes with spiky one-inch heels that had come into the store just yesterday. Alice felt a quick bleed of irritation.

“I hope you paid for those,” she called down the street.

“What?” Maggie kept her slow pace.

Alice came down the steps. Maggie stopped three feet in front of her.

“What is it, Alice?”

“I’m a little confused.” Alice plucked a dime from her sundress pocket and ran her thumb along its ridge. “I saw Tim walk out of here an hour ago, with a lawyer.”

“I see.” The sun hit Maggie’s eyes, washing them out. “And if I pay for my shoes, that becomes easier to bear?”

Alice gathered herself. She couldn’t shrink from this. “Mags, did you tell Tim about Ivy?”

“Being a girl?”

Alice nodded.

The sun shifted, and in the sudden clarity Maggie’s gaze swung from Alice’s face to her own elegant feet. “Wonderful, aren’t they?” She leaned in to kiss Alice’s cheek. “And yes, I paid my full discounted rate, as agreed.” She winked and headed up the stairs.

“Well?” Alice asked.

Maggie stopped and twisted to look behind her. Her face became serious. “That’s a long conversation. I’ll be with Ethan the rest of the day. Meet me at the shop in the morning, okay? We’ll talk while we finish up receipts. Did you know Martin’s left us three messages to reschedule quarterly taxes?” She walked through the open doorway and disappeared into the precinct.

Walking along Smith Street the next morning, on her way to Blue Shoes, Alice heard her mother’s voice ring through her mind.
Flowers,
she thought, recalling one of Lizzie’s silly yet forceful statements when Alice had been dumped by her first teenage boyfriend. Lizzie had come home from work with an armload of African daisies, declaring, “Flowers
will
mend a broken heart.” Alice turned into the spiffy new florist just past Butler Street, smiling as she approached the counter.

“Good morning!” A man with shoulder-length brown hair tucked behind his ears stepped out from a back room. “What can I do for you?”

“Peonies,” Alice said, overlooking the stylishly presented offerings of exotic bouquets. “I know they’re out of season, but do you have any?”

“They’re not out of season in the hothouse.” He led her into a nook toward the back of the store, where a green plastic bucket was crammed with whitish pink peonies in various stages of bloom. “I just got them this morning — haven’t had a chance to separate them yet.”

“Don’t,” Alice said. Peonies had been Lauren’s favorite flower. “I’ll take them all.”

Ten minutes later, she left the store, arms loaded with two dozen peonies wrapped in clear cellophane with a sky-blue ribbon tied at the bottom. She had also selected an oversized glass vase and placed a standing weekly order for peonies, which had delighted the man so much
he gave her the vase for nothing. Alice inhaled the gentle perfume of the flowers as she walked three more blocks to Blue Shoes.

Maggie was already there, reorganizing piles of receipts along the counter into the same stacks that had been hastily dissembled five days ago, just last Monday, when Lauren’s body was found.

“Lovely!” Maggie ran over to take the large bag with the vase. She poked her nose into Alice’s armload of peonies. “Ah, yes, I see.”

“We’ll always have them,” Alice said. “For her.”

“It’s a perfect idea, Alice.” Maggie looked like she might cry. “You’re the most marvelous friend and I’ve been truly awful.” She collected herself and faced Alice, who felt some kind of betrayal coming and needed to settle in first. She hated having things thrown at her the minute she walked in a door: greetings, news, confessions. She had always felt that if she was prepared, she could handle anything.

“Help me with these,” Alice said.

Maggie filled the vase with water in the bathroom at the back of the store, then returned with it, straining under its weight. “Where do you think?”

“The counter, for now,” Alice said. “Maybe we’ll get a pedestal made at that cast iron place on Bergen Street.”

Maggie set the vase carefully on the pale green counter. Together, they cut the bottoms of each peony and arranged them in the vase. They were lush and glorious. Their perfume triggered Alice’s queasiness but she didn’t care. She pressed her nose into the soft petals and breathed. She felt a maternal swing toward the burgeoning life in her womb, and sensed her old happiness like a river at her feet.