Extra Credit (11 page)

I drove up the long hill that led to the house and parked in the circular driveway, trying to find a space that would allow whoever else was there to leave, but also let me make a quick getaway if necessary. I grabbed the big bag next to me that held the pocketbook that Max had requested and went to the front door.

Having never had siblings or children of my own, I’m always surprised by gatherings that are loud and boisterous and include a cast of characters; hence, my loss of emotional equilibrium at the twins’ birthday party, a day that seemed like a lifetime ago. From inside Marty and Gigi’s spectacular manse I could hear the sounds of Max’s brothers—four in all—and their various broods engaged in some kind of game. Through the windows on either side of the door I could see that the children were all in stocking feet sliding from one end of the marble-covered floor to the other, stopping short as they approached the sliding glass doors that fronted the balcony that had the views. As I waited, one of the little ones slid straight into the door, but from what I could gather, that was part of the fun.

Until someone put an eye out. Maybe it was thoughts like that, often verbalized, that led Max to christen me the “Ultimate Party Pooper.”

Marty finally heard the doorbell and let me in, wrapping his arms around me in a bear hug. At five foot six, he was several inches shorter than me, but that never stopped him from trying to lift me off the ground while embracing me. Now that he was eighty, I got nervous as he attempted to do it again, managing to get my shoes off the floor by about an eighth of an inch. “Alison! It’s been too long,” he said. “Gigi! It’s Alison! I told you she’d get here!”

Max’s father was spry and still sported the red hair that he was born with, tinged with only a little gray, which gave him the look of a weathered, wizened elf. Max had inherited her diminutive stature from him; her mother was a statuesque, glamorous woman who claimed to have “dated”—a.k.a. “slept with”—Cliff Robertson while she was a featured player at some Hollywood studio back in the day. Marty and Gigi were an oddly matched couple, not unlike Max and Fred, but devoted to each other and still, at their advanced ages, the life of any party.

Gigi sashayed across the floor, all blond bouffant and massive diamonds, and grabbed my hand in hers. “So good to see you, darling.” She air-kissed both my cheeks, something I never did, but which she seemed to think was de rigueur in deference to my French heritage.

My family had been very reserved, just the three of us coexisting as one little unit, me with my never-ending supply of Nancy Drews, my father with his model airplane collection, and my mother with her ever-present
Vogue
in hand. Visiting the Rayfields always felt like I had landed on another planet where males predominated, females were coiffed, stylish, and a little quirky, and I loomed over the proceedings like a giant, silent dodo bird. It usually took me a few minutes—or a martini or two—to get acclimated, and I was out of practice. At that moment, I wished for the comforting touch of Crawford’s hand on my back or just his calming presence. I handed Gigi the big bag and took a deep breath. I did my best to insert myself into the festivities with a minimum of awkwardness. “Where’s the birthday girl?” I asked Max’s parents.

“Kitchen,” Gigi answered, gliding off with the gift.

Marty took my hand. “Come on. I made you a pitcher of martinis, and you’re late, so you need to catch up.”

Max was in the kitchen, but her back was turned to me when I got there. Fred saw me first and by the look on his face, I knew that we had a problem. I went up behind Max, who was holding what seemed to be a glass of wine that looked like it had come from a Medieval Times restaurant—large, filled to the rim with what appeared to be a full-bodied red, and set upon a metal stem made so elaborately that it almost looked alarming. It was the kind of glass that someone in a horror movie might use to serve poison. The Rayfields were nothing if not a little ostentatious. I put my arm around Max, and she turned.

“So glad you could come!” she exclaimed, but she wasn’t sincere.

“I know. I’m late,” I said. “You got my e-mail, right?”

“Yes, I got your e-mail,” she said. “How’s your dog?”

“She’s fine, I think.”

“Where’s Crawford?”

“With the dog.”

“Who’s fine.”

I knew where this was headed, and I looked at Fred for support, but he was staring gloomily out the window and at the spectacular view. “I’m sorry, Max, but I had to make sure the dog was truly better before I left.”

She softened a bit, realizing how much Trixie meant to me, but she was still a little terse. “It’s four o’clock,” she said pointedly.

“I got you that pocketbook you wanted,” I said brightly, the only diversionary tactic I had in my arsenal.

She softened even more. “Well, alright then.” Marty appeared by my side and handed me a martini. “We held dinner for you, though, and I’m starving.” She motioned toward Marty with her giant glass. “He wouldn’t hold a meal for me for anything. But for you? That’s a different story.”

Fred pulled me to the side, down the hall, across from a beautifully appointed bathroom. “What the hell happened?” he asked.

“Not a clue,” I said.

“You think it’s about Christine’s brother? The money?” he asked, but he already knew the answer to that question.

“I would say yes, but I guess we can’t be sure. Maybe the local police will turn something up?”

He snorted. “Not likely,” he said, his superiority complex regarding suburban law enforcement on full display. “I’ll be over. I’ll figure it out.”

Knock yourself out,
I thought as he lumbered away, attacking a plate of pigs in a blanket before throwing himself heavily onto the couch in the family room. I joined him and sipped my martini, knowing that it would be my only drink for the night, since I had to drive home.

Before long, Gigi called us to dinner in the dining room, a grand affair with a table that sat eighteen comfortably. I sat between Max’s nephew, Boris, and his sister, Natalia, two children who had been named during the Cold War, or so it would seem. Then I remembered that they had a Russian mother, and I spied her at the end of the table, sitting beside Marty and regaling him with some story that had his complete attention. Boris, ten, broke the ice by asking if my hair was always that frizzy.

“You mean today or just in general?” I asked.

“Your whole life.” He speared a butter pat with his steak knife and dangerously slathered it on a piece of bread while I watched, hoping that I wouldn’t have to fashion a tourniquet from my linen napkin.

“Kind of.”

His face took on a sadness that was profound in its sincerity. “Oh.”

“Hey,” I said. “It’s not so bad. Sometimes I straighten it and it actually looks pretty good.”

He wasn’t buying it. I turned my attention to Natalia, who was hoarding a bowl of peas. “May I?” I asked.

“When I’m done,” she said. I started to notice a very distinct personality gene running through the Rayfield clan: tactless honesty coupled with complete self-absorption.

Max called down from the other end of the table. “Hey, Nancy Drew. How’s your latest case coming along?”

“Which one would that be?” I asked.

“The case of the dead brother-in-law.”

“Still dead,” I said. I wondered what was happening here and why thinly veiled hostility had become the main course. I studied the pattern on my plate.

“Is that why you were so very, very late?” Boris and Natalia’s mother, a woman whose name escaped me, asked. I think. With her heavy accent, I wasn’t entirely sure.

I took a shot at an answer. “That and the fact that my dog was sick,” I said.

She grabbed her chest in horror. “Then why are you even here?”

Max answered for me. “Because she’s my best friend and she wouldn’t think of missing this party.”

I looked to Fred for some support, but he was eyeing his prime rib with a hunger that looked like it could never be satisfied.

Marty, always a gentleman, changed the subject as I caught Max’s eye and mouthed “I’m sorry,” even though I thought I had already apologized profusely for a pretty insignificant infraction against the friend code. If she wanted to have a contest about who was a better friend to whom and I trotted out my list of grievances, she would surely lose. Marty raised his glass and in a display of paternal devotion offered a lovely toast to his only daughter, a woman who was turning into a first-class shrew right before my very eyes. Fred then offered his own tribute, but the only words I could make out were “meat” and “love.” Everyone else seemed just as mystified, but nobody was classless enough to ask for a repeat performance.

Max had softened to me by dessert. We were on the back deck, the place with the best view of the river, and she looked small and weary. “I just worry about you is all,” she said.

“And that’s how you show it?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I guess.”

“Listen, I’m sorry I was late, and I’m sorry that things—that I—have been so consumed by this whole mess. It’s over now, though, and things will go back to normal and you’ll have me all to yourself again.”
Just the way you like it,
I thought, the implications of that troubling me just a little bit. “I promise that we won’t have any more weird dinners with Christine, either.” Her reaction to the latest goings-on was strange to me, even for Max, but I chalked it up to her sensitivity over her birthday, stress at work, being married to Fred, and a host of other things that wouldn’t bother normal people but that got her emotions all in a jumble.

“No, it’s my fault. I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing my hand. “It’s just that you know how I get around my family.”

I did know how she got around her family, but if this was the only way she could apologize, I felt compelled to respect that.

“One of these days, you’re going to get in a jam that you can’t talk your way out of, and that worries me,” she finally admitted. “One of these days, if you don’t stop getting involved in things that don’t have anything to do with you, you’ll be the one getting poisoned.” Once that was said, she reverted to her regular personality, the one that could only focus on one thing at a time, that thing usually being herself. “Let’s have cake.”

I watched her hustle back inside and chewed on what she’d said.

I had to admit that she just might have had something there.

Fourteen

Crawford did something completely out of character Monday morning by calling in sick. Technically, he wasn’t sick, but he did a good enough impersonation of a sick person that he didn’t arouse too much suspicion. He wouldn’t leave Trixie alone, and he didn’t want me to incur the wrath of Sister Mary by calling in sick myself. I was relieved. I had fretted all night about leaving the dog home by herself, and the thought of something happening while we were both at work filled me with dread. I kissed him and hugged him tight before I left, grateful that I could go through my day secure in the knowledge that he was keeping close watch on my canine child.

Try as I might, the horror of the weekend still lingered in my mind, and apparently on my face. Those who didn’t know me well gave me a wide berth, and those who did know me asked if everything was okay. I assured all concerned parties that all was well and that I had just had a stressful weekend, leaving them to make up their own scenarios. With my history, I’m sure there were creative scenarios aplenty, but I didn’t have the energy to set the record straight. I kind of slogged through my day, teaching all of my classes and even getting to the cafeteria for a quick lunch with my colleague from the Religious Studies Department, Abe Schneckstein, but even his bonhomie was no match for my sullen mood.

Briggs was working the counter and the grill simultaneously, and he gave me a big smile when I approached the line. “What can I get you, Prof?”

“Surprise me,” I said, seeing Abe maneuver to a table by the window so that we would have a beautiful river view as we ate. He kept kosher and always brought his lunch to school; I watched him amble off to the men’s room to wash his hands, as he did before every meal we shared, before coming back to carefully unwrap whatever it was that the lovely Mrs. Schneckstein had packed for him.

After a few minutes, Briggs presented me with a panini, mozzarella, roasted red peppers, and pesto between beautifully grilled slices of focaccia. “Thank you,” I said. Kid had a knack. Marcus had been wise to hire him.

“Thanks!” he said, obviously pleased with his creation. “Anything else?”

I took a surreptitious look at his left hand, happy when I spotted a bare ring finger. “No, thanks, Briggs.” There was no one behind me, so I took a moment to dig. “Where did you learn to cook like this?”

“Culinary Institute,” he said.

“And you’re cooking here?” I asked. That surprised me more than the beautiful sandwich he had prepared.

“Tough market out there,” he said. “Regular hours here, pretty good pay, and Marcus is great to work with.”

I took a bite of my sandwich, too hungry to wait. “I didn’t take into account the regular hours. Must make your wife happy.”

He blushed. “Oh, there’s no wife, Professor Bergeron.”

Bingo. Next step was to get Meaghan in here. He was tall and gainfully employed, a much better match than Mr. Super Senior, in my book.

I paid for my lunch and met Abe by the window table. He asked me what was going on, and I filled him in, letting him drink in every salacious detail of the past few weeks while he ate a bagel with some kind of spread on it.

“So you’re now more involved with Crawford’s ex-wife?” he asked.

“I guess you could say that,” I said, laughing it off, even though in the back of my mind was this new relationship with Crawford’s ex and her contention that her brother had not committed suicide. Was this her way of getting over the grief of losing someone she loved? How in the heck is someone who ingested a bunch of pills not a suicide? It seemed pretty cut and dried, yet the thought of how steadfast she was in her belief was something that stayed with me.

When all was said and done, I concluded that this was her coping mechanism, and Abe agreed with me. As a rabbi, he had seen his fair share of grieving spouses, siblings, and parents and had a good handle on what could be considered a normal response to something so devastating as suicide. He assured me that Christine couldn’t possibly have known a man who had been away for almost a quarter of her life and that we needed to keep that in mind even as she asserted that her brother would never take his own life.