A Novel Death (11 page)

"Smells like she cures hams too," Lance said cheerfully.

I shivered.

When neither Jane nor I moved, he edged around us and started down the stairs. I followed with Jane at my heels. The smell reached out with ghostly arms to welcome us. Finally standing on the cement floor, I saw that the whole downstairs was lit by a single bare bulb; I prayed that it would not burn out. Or that a malevolent hand would not switch it off at the top of the stairs.

But I was just as shocked by the chaos around me. As perfectly as the books were arranged upstairs, this looked like a dumpster explosion. Books crashed out of broken cartons or were tossed on the cement. A few shaky towers had collapsed.

I stared down at the books as we edged past. Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz jostled James Patterson. Most looked like book club editions, good reads but with no resale value. There were multiple copies of fad diets and celebrity biographies, mass market paperbacks and dog-eared travel guides. None of us could avoid these when we bought books in bulk. But I quickly donated mine to library sales and trashed any dangerously out-of-date.

But why did Margaret have so many? And then I understood her sad secret. Not wanting to offend the community that revered her as a village icon-or idol-she must have accepted them in trade, knowing she would never be able to resell them. A few, maybe, to walk-in customers, but never the hundreds and hundreds abandoned down here. This was a book graveyard.

Following Jane, trying to breathe through my mouth, I was sure Margaret would never have left the basement in such a mess. These books had been tossed with a vengeance, as if someone had been infuriated at finding Irving Wallace instead of Shakespeare.

Jane moved like a sleepwalker toward the barely ajar metal door at the end of the room. Margaret's climate-controlled closet.

"It's in there," Jane shrilled, then pressed her hand over her mouth and buried her face against Lance's strong shoulder.

"Why don't you go back upstairs?" I said.

"No! I'm fine!"

"You don't have to be here."

"I'm not going back upstairs by myself!"

"Well ..." I stepped forward and gave the door a push. And then I was gagging, hand across my stomach. The smell was like a blast from the devil's oven, a liquid heat pouring over us. And yet the air from inside was cool. I moved my hand up to cover my mouth and nose.

We had to get out of there. This was beyond anything we should be doing.

The overhead light moved like exploring fingers into the small rectangular space.

I knew what we'd find. But the vision of the figure sitting sideways, brown feet bare and khaki legs pushed up to his chest went through me like uncontrolled electricity. I stared at the side of his bent head, now a map of bloody lines. Something about his skin seemed to be melting.

Behind me Jane moaned, though I was not sure she could see anything.

Spinning around, I pushed her across the cement floor toward the stairs. Lance was right behind us. "Yikes," he kept saying, then added a few other words.

The odor chased us up the stairs like an angry ghost.

When we got to the front counter, I realized I was saying out loud what had been repeating in my head. "My God, my God, my God!" It was more a plea for help than anything else.

Without taking another breath I reached around the counter and pulled out my bag by its yarn handle. Then we tumbled onto the sidewalk, crashing into a group of vacationers.

"Where's your phone?" I begged Jane, when we were on the side walk in front of The Whaler's Arms. Mine was on the desk in the barn, getting charged.

"Here. Right here. Mom, you look terrible! What was it?"

So she hadn't seen.

"You don't want to know," Lance assured her.

Shaking, I fished Alex Kazazian's card out of the bottom of my bag. "Dial this number for me?" I had no idea how to use the lime green toy she was holding, and was not capable of learning now.

The phone rang four times before his voice mail came on. When the tone beeped, I gasped, "This is Delhi Laine. I found Amil. In the basement closet behind a lot of books. I'll be at-" Then I stupidly gave him my home phone.

"What's a mil?" Jane asked, puzzled. "Some kind of animal?"

"Mrs. Fitzhugh, you okay?"

He asked because I had leaned back against the restaurant wall, eyes closed, and was laughing as tears blurred my eyes. "Amil is not a pet," I gasped. "He's Margaret's assistant."

"You mean it was a person in there? And he's dead?"

"Yes. Oh yes. Look, I've got to call the real police." I waited, and then realized I was still clutching the cell phone. "Do I just dial 911?"

"I'll do it." Jane retrieved the phone and pressed in a series of numbers.

"There's a special access code," Lance explained. "So if she loses the phone, someone can't start making calls."

Jane pressed the phone into my hand.

"Police emergency," a voice intoned. "Your call will be answered by the next operator. Do not hang up." In less than thirty seconds, I was speaking to a calm voice.

"We found-someone's been killed." My voice shook.

"Where are you now?"

"The Old Frigate Bookshop. High Street. I don't know the number but they'll see it."

"Town?" She was patient with me.

"Oh. Port Lewis."

"Just a minute."

I imagined her relaying that information to the police.

Then she was back. "Your name?"

For a second I blanked it out. "Uh-Delhi Lanne." I spelled it for her.

"Did you call an ambulance?"

"No. Look, he's been dead for..

"Stay right there, Ms. Laine. A police officer will be with you shortly."

I handed the phone back to Jane and she wrapped her arms around me, her hair soft against my face. The scent of vanilla creme rinse made me gag, but I didn't want to let go of her. I swallowed down hard as Lance moved in for a group hug, his larger arms enfolding us both.

We held on to each other, swaying as people eddied curiously around us. When we finally pulled apart, Jane demanded, "Mom, what's going on? I find you working in the bookstore instead of Margaret. Then we find someone dead..."

In a series of choppy sentences I told them about everything, including my mistaken belief that Amil might have attacked Margaret.

"I was wrong," I wailed. "And he's the one who's dead."

"But it's not your fault," she said, puzzled.

Lance and Jane looked at each other. What could they say to me?

It seemed no time at all for the wail of sirens to begin, all in different frequencies. Two squad cars, an ambulance, and an off-duty EMT van stopped just short of each other, blocking in a row of hapless cars. Three officers in navy uniforms leaped out, racing as if there were still a life to save.

I ran toward them. "In there," I heard myself saying. "All the way to the back and down the stairs."

But the third policeman stayed with me instead. He had black hair in a buzz cut and blue eyes with amazingly dark lashes. I found I couldn't stop looking at his eyes.

"Can you tell me what happened?" he asked.

We told him, in stops and starts.

"Do you know who he is?"

"Yes." My voice died and I had to swallow. "Amil Singh. He worked here."

"Okay. I'm Matt McLand. Why don't I take your statement first?"

Leading me to the blue and white car, he settled me on the leather seat. It felt wonderfully cool, but I was dazzled by the array of lights and devices. The radio crackled to life, but he ignored it.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"Do you feel sick?"

But I could not even answer. I was afraid that moving would shake loose what I was trying to keep inside.

"If you get sick, don't worry. Just open the door. Otherwise, try and relax. No, don't close your eyes!"

I did what he said, and after a minute my system was calmer.

"Can you talk now?"

"Yes," I whispered.

I gave him Amil's full name and address and told him everything, starting with the discovery in the basement and continuing with Margaret's accident, the ladder that had been tampered with, even the attack on me. I talked without stopping, even bringing in Lily. When I mentioned that Amil's family was in India and didn't know what had happened to him, my eyes overflowed.

"So he doesn't have family here?"

I shook my head. "Just housemates."

Handing me a clutch of tissues, Matt McLand said kindly, "Suffolk Homicide will be picking this up. I'll tell them what you told me, but you'll have to make a statement to them"

"You won't be handling this? I want you to handle this!"

He patted my hand. "Homicide is specially trained."

"But why can't you do it? I want you to do it!" Woman behaving badly.

"Trust me. It will be fine."

Still blinking away tears as I eased out of the cruiser, I saw that the bookstore door had been Xed with yellow plastic crime tape. I leaned wearily against the window as Officer McLand interviewed Lance and then Jane. While I waited with Lance, two unmarked cars pulled up, the men inside quickly allowed in the building by the cop at the door. Alex Kazazian never appeared.

When Jane climbed out of the police cruiser, we loitered on the sidewalk, not knowing what to do next. "Let's walk," I suggested finally.

We drifted down the High Street in the direction of the harbor. At the corner we could see the waterfront hotels festively outlined by tiny white lights in the summer dusk. We were pulled toward the lights, drawn as insects.

Crossing Anchor Road and making our way onto the long pier, we stared at the boats moored around us. People were sitting in the open sterns of larger crafts, enjoying drinks. Silvery collisions of laughter hung in the air. How had it gotten so late? Soon people would be eating. The smell of the salt water made me think of raw clams, and from a hotel kitchen came the nauseating sizzle of beef.

It had a different effect on Lance. "I'm starved," he said brightly.

Jane shuddered, but said, "Mom?"

My stomach was pitching in small waves like the ripples beneath us, but I wanted to keep them with me. "Maybe something to drink."

We walked back into the village, to a small Mexican restaurant that Lance chose. I meant to order a Diet Coke, something that would settle my stomach, but when I next looked there was a large blue Margarita in front of me, a specialty of Cafe Rio.

Lance plunged his fork into his burrito and did most of the talking. There had been an altercation at their group rental on Fire Island that morning with two women who refused to wash any dishes or clean up after themselves. Unpleasantries had been exchanged, and Lance and Jane decided it would be prudent to spend the day on the mainland.

"We weren't that insulting," Jane said plaintively, poking at the dish of nacho chips but not eating any. "But Susan is really gross." A shudder. "She left squirts of toothpaste all over the sink!"

I grabbed a chip to calm my stomach and changed the subject. "What's new at work?" Jane had earned an MBA right after college and was now an investment counselor. She was also earning as much as Colin ever had. I listened now to the murmur of her stories as to a comforting brook just out of sight.

Yet every few minutes the image of Amil-Amil bloody and dead-crashed in, shocking me all over again. Finally I did something I used to tell the children to do when something had frightened them. I placed a soft midnight blue velvet cloth over his body and told myself I couldn't see him anymore. It actually worked-or worked well enough for me to think about other things.

Jane and Lance followed me back to the house in his Hyundai to pick up the espresso machine. After Jane's phone message, I had set it out on the counter, scrubbed and ready to travel, though its carton had been discarded long ago. Colin and I had bought it after our first summer in Italy to prolong the feeling of Sorrento. While the warm weather lasted, we made cappuccino at ten at night and sat in the back garden, pretending we were still on the Amalfi coast. Had we been as happy then as I remembered now? I had loved each new place we washed up in, each desert or college town or foreign city. And I had loved Colin too.

Jane frowned. "It's littler than I remembered"

"What?"

"The coffeemaker."

"You were expecting one of those copper steamers?" I teased.

"What do you think, Lance?"

"We could buy one, Janie. Since we have to leave it there anyway."

The conversation was taking on the unreality of one of my beloved Magritte paintings, a surrealistic juxtaposition of people chatting while a corpse lay at their feet. Someone Jane's age was a corpse, never again to joke about wanting a triple latte, never again to return to his home in India. The time he had been given on earth was over, snatched away, while Lance and Janie debated the merits of an appliance. But why not? They hadn't even known Amil.

"You could pick out a book." I gestured in the direction of the barn, hoping to keep them with me a little longer.

Jane frowned. "Why would I want a book?"