Bleeding Heart (21 page)

“The case is still open. Periodically, I get calls when a new investigator comes on board or some fresh piece of evidence crops up, but nothing ever comes of it. I know they’ve given up on actively trying to find him—or I guess I should say
them
.”

“How do you feel about that?” Tom asked, looking at me from across the table. His gaze was warm and curious. “Does it still upset you?”

“No,” I said with a rueful laugh. “It infuriates me! I can’t abide
the idea of the two of them living in the lap of luxury on some exotic island off their ill-gotten gains! But you know what’s kind of funny? Richard never really enjoyed lazing around on vacation. I just hope he’s going stir-crazy wherever he is!”

“You can laugh about it, though,” Tom observed. “That’s good. And your daughters seem to have turned out wonderfully. That kind of thing can really tear a family apart. My own kids went through a bad time when Beth was so sick. My youngest is still really struggling to find his path in life.”

“How many children do you have?”

“Four altogether,” he said, looking down into his half-filled glass. “Beth had a hard time conceiving when we first got married. We finally decided to adopt two sisters from China. Then—as so often happens, apparently—Beth got pregnant a year later. So we had three all under the age of five. But it worked out great. Lily and Rose are in their late twenties now, both doing basic research in Boston. Peter’s with Apple in Cupertino doing something in content management—something way beyond my grasp. Timmy was the surprise, coming along a year or two before Beth was first diagnosed. He got the brunt of it—and he’s the one I really worry about. He dropped out of U Mass last fall and is working at some divey restaurant in Amherst. One week he’s going to be a cartoonist. The next he’s planning some indie film. But he’s just drifting, really.”

“I guess we never stop worrying,” I said. “Even when they’re doing great.” I was about to tell him about Olivia’s big news, but he went on.

“The trouble is Timmy just doesn’t
listen
! He lives in his own little world—convinced he’s some kind of great artist. But it’s all just magical thinking as far as I’m concerned. He has no idea how
to deal with reality. How to behave like an
adult.
I get so angry with him! I keep trying—” But he stopped himself in midsentence, shaking his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said, smiling at me in that self-deprecating way I’d come to know and like. “I’m venting. Which is incredibly rude and selfish of me after you’ve been so gracious. I just haven’t been able to talk to anybody about all of this in a while. At least not somebody who listens as well as you do.”

“Oh, please, no apologies needed,” I said, getting up and starting to clear the table. “It’s a relief actually to hear about someone else’s problems for a change.”

“That damn check!” he said, standing as well. “I hope it hasn’t affected your business.”

“It could have,” I told him honestly. “But my family’s helping out. Which I’m both enormously grateful for and terribly ashamed of.”

“It’s hardly your fault. And from what I’ve read, you’re not the only one Graham took to the cleaners.”

Tom helped me load the dishwasher and hand-wash the wineglasses. For some reason, doing these simple domestic chores together felt more intimate than anything else that had passed between us that evening. I was suddenly overly aware of him. He was a couple of inches taller than me. So when he turned, put down the towel, and drew me into an embrace, I had to reach up to put my arms around his neck. It felt so natural—and at the same time electric with sexual tension. What was I doing?

“This was nice,” he said, leaning over and brushing his lips against mine. Then he kissed me for real—but slowly, gently. I held back. Though my body ached for more, the rest of me wasn’t ready. But it was wonderful just to feel desire again—something I’d long thought was behind me—and perhaps even better to feel desirable.

He left soon afterward, but his presence lingered on while I closed up the house and headed upstairs to bed. Despite Tom’s disturbing news, I fell asleep that night with a smile on my face.

T
he story was on the front page of the
Berkshire Herald
Tuesday morning under Jeff Isley’s byline:
MACKENZIE
DEATH
RULE
D
SUSPICIOUS
. Isley obviously didn’t have any more information than Tom had, but the reporter managed to stretch the piece by adding rehashed segments of the article he’d written soon after Mackenzie’s passing. Though Isley had mercifully left my name out of the original story, I was horrified to come upon it toward the end of his new, lengthy feature.

Due to his outspoken advocacy of the practice of hydraulic fracturing, which helped him amass what had once been a considerable fortune, Graham Mackenzie could be a polarizing figure in our area. Several local environmental groups have criticized the danger “fracking” poses and the aggressive tactics Mr. Mackenzie’s company MKZEnergy used to obtain lease agreements from landowners in states that permit gas drilling along the Marcellus Shale. In the past several months, as MKZEnergy’s share price plummeted,
Mr. Mackenzie also came under attack for overleveraging his company and underreporting its many problems.

Locally, however, Mr. Mackenzie was not without his supporters. Alice Hyatt, proprietor of Green Acres and the landscape designer who created Mr. Mackenzie’s lavish garden, had only words of praise for her employer. Shortly before the Open Day event during which Mr. Mackenzie collapsed, Ms. Hyatt called him “a very generous human being. He has a real passion for gardening—and garden preservation. I feel that this garden has been a true creative collaboration and, in many ways, Graham Mackenzie has been my inspiration.”

Though unconfirmed, rumor has it that Mackenzie’s sprawling multimillion-dollar mountaintop estate will soon be on the market. The house has been shuttered, and the gardens partially dismantled. Driving past the site on a recent afternoon, this reporter was reminded of the similar fate of Xanadu at the end of
Citizen Kane
. The mystery surrounding Mr. Mackenzie’s death has all the makings of that rags-to-riches-to-rags-again classic, and will certainly be just as fascinating to follow as the story unfolds.

“What a piece of crap!” I said out loud, though I was alone in the kitchen. I tossed the newspaper into the trash. Yesterday, after I confirmed that the wired money had come through, Mara and I had mailed out a large number of checks. But it would take another day or two for the payments to reach their recipients. In the meantime, my already angry suppliers would be further put off by my out-of-date comments quoted in Isley’s front-page story. When the phone rang, I half suspected it to be one of them.

But it was Gwen, finally returning my call from the day before.

“Have you heard the news?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s why I tried to reach you.”

“What do you think it means?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I was told that the DA’s office is trying to keep the autopsy report under wraps.”

“I need to talk to you,” Gwen said.

“How about dinner? I’ve got—”

“No,
now.
I really need you. I’m at work. How soon can you get over here?”

Gwen was not an alarmist. She was not a taker. I couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d said she really needed me—or anybody else, for that matter. I stopped by my own office first and left a note for Mara. Then I drove into town and bought two tall coffees and some muffins at the general store. A needy Gwen would probably also mean a hungry Gwen. Thirty minutes later, I pulled into the parking area behind Bridgewater House, where Gwen worked during the summer months. From mid-October to early May, when the unheated and weather-beaten old estate was uninhabitable, she operated from her modest Cape just outside of town.

The Woodhaven Historical Society might well have had grand plans for the complete restoration of Bridgewater House, but the place was currently in a pretty sorry state of disrepair. The three-story white clapboard structure—originally Colonial with Federal and Victorian additions and embellishments—had visible signs of serious problems: flaking paint, crumbling brick, a fantail window missing panes. But I knew from the architectural report Gwen had commissioned that its unseen structural problems were even more serious. The stone foundation had eroded, and dry rot was setting in. I was careful to watch my step as I climbed the rickety stairs at the back of the house that led up to Gwen’s improvised office area. The little suite of rooms with its whitewashed walls and
wide-planked floors had been the servants’ quarters originally. Gwen’s desk, an elaborate golden oak affair that she’d borrowed from the estate’s extensive furniture collection, was the only note of ostentation in the otherwise simple and utilitarian setup.

When I pushed open the door I saw Gwen’s laptop sitting open on the desk, surrounded by papers, books, and stacks of file folders. But the room was empty.

“Gwen!” I called, putting the coffee and muffins down on the desk. “Hey, Gwen! Where are you?” Silence. I’d never actually ventured beyond Gwen’s work area when I stopped by Bridgewater House in the past, and I wasn’t sure where else to look for her. As far as I knew, the main part of the house was closed to visitors, the electricity turned off, and the furniture under protective sheeting. I opened one door to find a walk-in closet stacked with boxes of Woodhaven Historical Society letterhead, note cards, and mugs. I tried another, which opened to an ancient tiled bathroom with a pull chain toilet and a rust-stained sink. It also had a small window that offered a partial view of the backyard. The windowpanes must have been original; they were dimpled and wavy in the way that old glass can be. So the glimpse I caught of my friend—hurrying from the stables to her car—seemed distorted, as though she was moving underwater. She stashed something—a cloth bag? a rolled-up shirt?—in the trunk of her car before turning back to the house.

“Coffee! You’re a saint!” she said, closing the door behind her as she came in. “God, what a horrible morning!”

“So you read that asinine article? I could strangle Isley for quoting me like that.”

“Where? In the
Examiner
?” Gwen said, prying off the plastic top from her coffee as she sat down behind the desk. “No, I haven’t seen it. I got a call from a state police detective first thing this
morning. Before I’d even brushed my teeth, let alone had a chance to read the paper. He’s coming by here later this afternoon to interview me.”

“They’re not wasting any time,” I said.

“You didn’t
give him my name, did you?”

“What? No—I haven’t spoken to anybody yet. I just heard that the police were going to start getting in touch with people who knew Mackenzie.”

“But why am I on the top of the list? The detective told me that he wanted to ask me about my ‘relationship’ with Graham. Who would have told them about that? Who else knew?”

“Well, let’s think,” I said, pushing the bag of muffins across the desk. But Gwen ignored it. “Eleanor might have said something. She was probably one of the first people they talked to. I bet they interviewed her yesterday and she told them about you then.”

“You’re right! Of course. That bitch. Well, I’m going to deny there was anything—anything romantic—between us. It was just a professional relationship. Plain and simple.”

“Gwen, you can’t do that. This is an official investigation. A homicide investigation. You can’t lie about something this important. You could find yourself in serious trouble.”

“I’m in even worse trouble if I tell the truth,” she said. “I can’t have the whole world knowing about Graham and me! Especially in light of his anonymous pledge to Bridgewater House. I think I might be able to survive as executive director if I come clean about Graham being the anonymous donor. Everyone knows now that MKZ’s probably heading for bankruptcy. But I’ll be totally sunk if my conflict of interest comes out.”

I was on the verge of reminding Gwen that I’d warned her about that very thing. She’d jumped down my throat when I told her to watch her step with Mackenzie. If she’d listened to my
advice, she wouldn’t be facing this crisis now. But I held my tongue. How many people had tried to warn me, too, about Mackenzie?

“I bet Eleanor’s already told them about the two of you,” I pointed out. “She’s the housekeeper. She was right there. She would know, wouldn’t she?”

“Yes, and I think she’s also half nuts. She turned against me with such a vengeance when Graham and I first got together. I don’t know what was wrong with that woman—whether she was jealous or just overly protective. But I promise you, she used to look at me with absolute hatred in her eyes. It was scary.”

“That said . . . she’s still telling the truth about you and Graham being involved.”

“It’s her word against mine. No one else knows about it.”

“Actually, that’s not true.”

Gwen looked over at me. She put down her coffee.

“You? Would you really say anything—if I asked you not to?”

“It’s not just me,” I told her, avoiding a question I wasn’t sure I knew how to answer. “I think Sal caught wind of it. I already told you what he said about Chloe running the foundation. But I didn’t tell you that when I asked Sal about the Mackenzie Project he hinted that he knew it was Mackenzie who had made the big pledge to Bridgewater House. And he seemed worried. About you. About what was going to happen to this place without Mackenzie’s pledge. I don’t know for sure, but there was something about his tone of voice that made me think he also knew something was going on between you two. Or at least suspected.”

“Sal would never do anything to hurt me,” Gwen said.

“That’s not the point. What I’m trying to tell you is that you can’t control the situation. Any number of people might have seen you going to or coming from Mackenzie’s late at night. For what?
A meeting about his
pledge
? You can’t bluff your way out of this, Gwen.”

“Just watch me.”

“What? Watch you go to jail? You could be convicted of obstructing justice if they find out you’re lying about Mackenzie. I know what I’m talking about. Please—just be honest about what happened, okay?”

She shrugged in reply. She had no intention of listening to me, I realized. She calmly reached over and opened the bag and began to peel off the waxy paper cup from a blueberry muffin. She’d always been so damned headstrong! So sure of herself. And it had always been a trait I admired. Until now.

“Where were you when Mackenzie died?” I asked.

“I’m sorry?” she said. “What is this? A practice run before I get grilled by the police?”

“I’m just curious. I’m pretty sure that everyone else I know who was involved with Mackenzie was at the Open Day event. I thought I saw you in the crowd once or twice, but I wasn’t sure. Were you there?”

“No, sorry,” Gwen said, brushing crumbs off her fingers. “I didn’t make it. Graham and I walked through the gardens together a number of times, though. Haven’t I already told you how fantastic I thought they were, Alice? You did an incredible job.”

“Where were you, then?” I persisted, aware that Gwen was avoiding my gaze.

“Home,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “I got up late—then I just lazed around.”

I didn’t enjoy catching her in a lie. At the same time I was hoping it would teach her a lesson. Make her realize what a mistake it was to think she could skirt the truth.

“I happen to know you were in Mackenzie’s bedroom around eight thirty or so. I was at the site early that morning to check on some final details in the garden. I came up to the house after that, hoping to talk to Mackenzie about the check that didn’t clear. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But I couldn’t help it. You and Eleanor were really going at it.”

“So what?” Gwen asked. “So what if I was there early? I left right after that. I went home and, like I said, spent the rest of the morning lazing around.”

“Gwen! You just totally changed your story! Don’t you see how suspicious that makes you seem?”

“To whom?” Gwen asked, looking me straight in the eye. “Do you suspect me of something, Alice?”

“Just idiocy,” I said. “I’ve been through this kind of thing before, remember. I can’t tell you how many times I was interviewed after Richard disappeared. How many times they made me go over every little detail of our lives together, especially those weeks just before he vanished. You don’t know what that kind of scrutiny is like.”

“You got through it,” Gwen said.

“But I had nothing to hide.”

“I don’t either,” my friend insisted. “Not really. Not anything that did anyone any real harm. I’m just trying to protect my career. My future. And I think you’d do the same thing, Alice, if you were in my position.”