Chosen for Death (32 page)

He rolled up his sleeves, knelt down beside the tub, and picked up the soap. He washed my back and massaged the tight muscles in my neck and shoulders while I told him about my trip to Augusta and my meeting with Betsy Davis. "I'm so confused," I said. "Each time I track down the person I'm sure killed Carrie, I come home convinced I was wrong. I have to find out who killed her. I have to."

"I know what you mean." The irony was unmistakable. "You're convinced Betsy Davis didn't kill your sister?"

"Not convinced," I said. "People lie so easily. But she seemed to be telling the truth. And she didn't try to kill me, she tried to kill herself. Do you think disclosure would really ruin her life?"

"It might. People around here are still pretty conservative. People like Reverend Davis especially," he said. "But I've got to go and talk to her. The connection is too important to ignore. Ready to come out?" He held out a towel.

"I suppose you do have to talk to her," I said, "but try not to let her family know, at least until you've seen her and formed an opinion. She's kept it a secret from them and she's very frightened they might find out."

I stood up and he wrapped the towel around me. He took my hand and led me into the bedroom. "Dinner is almost ready," he said, unbuttoning his shirt.

Dinner was cold by the time we got downstairs.

Chapter 25

We both slept badly. For me, it was not because I wasn't tired. I was. My feet hurt and my body ached from the effort of rescuing Betsy Davis, but sleep eluded me. My mind wouldn't be still. I lay in the dark, going over the events of the last two weeks, searching for something I'd forgotten, some last lead I could pursue. I tossed restlessly, repeatedly bumping into Andre. He was just as bad, troubled by his new case. Whenever I dozed off he would start abruptly and begin muttering. At four-thirty I gave up and went downstairs to make some tea. He appeared a few minutes later, fully dressed. Wordlessly he accepted the tea I handed him and wandered off to stare out the window. "Something bad is happening with those kids, I can feel it," he said. "I've got to get over there. Do you mind?"

The silence of our unspoken thoughts lay heavily between us. Our failure, despite our goodwill and determination, to solve the puzzle of Carrie's death. What was unspoken was not recriminations, but for each of us a sense of personal failure and shared regrets. Carrie had been our link. Now I was going home, once again to bury myself in work, and Andre was moving on to new, more immediate problems. He wasn't giving up on Carrie but she was being moved to a back burner. I wanted to scream and rage and complain but it wouldn't have done any good. Not even Andre could make something out of nothing.

"I'll be OK. If you can put the boxes I've packed into the car, I'll only have a few things to pack down here, and then I've got to go. I have an important meeting tomorrow, and I can't go unprepared." It was odd. Work had been central to my life for so long, and now it all seemed so remote. That would change when I got home.

He walked slowly back from the window, his big shoulders hunched. "I wish you didn't have to go," he said. I didn't say anything. I didn't have to. We both knew how we felt. He got his jacket from the closet, and held out his hand for my keys. He went in and out, silently putting Carrie's things in the car. "I'll call you tonight," he said, giving me back my keys, and went out into the gray morning. He was lost in fog by the time he reached his car.

I went back upstairs, dressed, stripped the bed and tied the sheets into a bundle, and carried the rest of Carrie's things downstairs. I tuned the radio to an oldies station and started packing up the last of Carrie's things, ignoring all my little aches and pains. I did fine until I got to the books. I didn't know which were Carrie's and which had come with the apartment. From what little I'd seen of her, Mrs. Bolduc didn't seem like the type whose taste ran to books, but they might have been part of her decorating scheme, bought by the foot at a yard sale.

It was too early to bother her, so I took a break and made myself some breakfast, wishing I had a paper to read. The restless feeling persisted, like a premonition of disaster. It was the feeling I'd had before exams—the knots in my stomach, the tightness in my chest. Today there seemed to be no reason for it. Too restless to sit still, I did the dishes and put on my shoes, wishing my feet didn't hurt. The only way I knew to get rid of this feeling was to get some exercise—a brisk hobble downtown to get a paper.

I grabbed my jacket, and stuffed some money in my pocket. Where was the door key? I found it in the pocket of the jeans I'd borrowed from Chris Davis, which I'd balled up and stuffed into one of the boxes. On my way out I checked Mrs. Bolduc's window, but the curtain was still. I limped off into the gloomy morning, the frost-crisped leaves crackling underfoot.

Downtown, a minor traffic jam was building as sleepy Mainiacs, trying to rush to work, found themselves in a pea soup world. I bought a copy of the
Boston Globe,
found a bench down by the harbor, and sat down to read it. There was a damp chill in the air today, but I didn't want to sit inside somewhere where I'd have to be around people. The foggy solitude suited my mood perfectly.

According to the paper, the world was in its usual state of decomposition. In the poor sections of Boston, black children were killing each other with depressing regularity. Elsewhere in the world, politicians were trying to deliver their social philosophies in thirty-second sound bites. The man who loved children unless they grew up to be women; the man who wholeheartedly embraced the AK-47 as a friend. People of all religions were fighting bitterly to prove that theirs was the one true faith. Life as usual. There sure wasn't much to be optimistic about. A few dedicated people doing good deeds while everyone else wallowed in self-righteous acquisition.

What had made me think I wanted to read this stuff? Was this restlessness a sign that it was time for a change in my life? A little voice inside reminded me that the last few weeks had been a time of immense change; maybe instead it was time for a return to normal, time to get back to business as usual. Time to put this futile quest behind me, to grow up and accept that I couldn't do everything. The fact that I wanted to fix things for Carrie didn't guarantee that I could. It was a depressing thought. I still like to believe that I can do anything, that I don't have to accept limitations.

For the first time, I wondered how much my mother had known about Betsy Davis. Had she known what heartache awaited Carrie if her search was successful? Was that why she'd been so opposed? Why they'd forbidden me to search as well? It would have been comforting to believe that, but I thought not. Then the simplest thing would have been to tell Carrie the truth, or part of it, instead of flatly forbidding the search. No. Mom's motives had been more selfish, or at least more self-protective. She hadn't wanted Carrie to search because she wanted to be Carrie's only mother. After all, if what Betsy Davis had said was true, they'd bought Carrie fair and square.

I felt this infuriating helplessness and rage, remembering yesterday, knowing now what Carrie had had to go through all alone, with no one to confide in, to help her deal with her feelings. And now I was experiencing my own despair and failure. Why couldn't I just accept this dead end, give up, and go home? I wished Suzanne were here. I could have told her all this and she might have helped me make some sense of it. But Suzanne was busy running a business—our business—while I was brooding beside a picturesque harbor half-smothered in fog, watching the huge ghostly windjammers shift restlessly in the light wind, chains clinking, slapped by the waves. Sailboats are never quiet.

The chill was beginning to penetrate the parts of me that weren't protected by my leather jacket. It would be stupid to get chilled again after yesterday. I rolled up the paper, stuck it under my arm, and headed back up Mountain Street. I'd have my chat with Mrs. Bolduc, finish packing, and go home. Back to my familiar world of interviews, assessments, and reports. Back to someone else's problems—problems that had solutions. It seemed very inviting after a week and a half of beating my head against walls. Safer, too.

Sure enough, the curtain twitched as I came up the walk. I swung around, changing course, and rang Mrs. Bolduc's doorbell. It took her a while to get downstairs, and when she did open the door, her face was unwelcoming, thin mouth pursed, and her stenciled eyebrows quizzical against the yellow skin. "Yes?"

"I'm almost finished in the apartment," I said. "But there were a few things I needed to ask you about. Could you come over for a minute?" I could tell she wanted to say no, just because she hated to be agreeable, but her eagerness to have the apartment free was greater. "Just for a minute," she said. "I'm busy."

Not too busy to spy on me, I almost added, but I held my tongue as I led the way to Carrie's door. Her sharp eyes darted around, taking in what I'd already done, as she sniffed the air. "Smells like cigarettes in here," she said. "I don't allow smoking."

I sniffed, but I couldn't smell anything. No one had smoked in here since the night Lorna had been here, and that was ages ago. I shrugged. "I don't smoke," I said.

"What about your friend?" she snapped.

"Detective Lemieux? He doesn't smoke either. What I wanted to ask about was the stuff in here." I led her into the living room. "These books and knickknacks. I don't know which ones are hers and what was already here."

She walked slowly around the room, pointing to things. "That was here, and that, and that." I moved the things she indicated to the coffee table. She stopped at the bookshelf and studied the titles. She picked out about six books and handed them to me. "These stay. The rest are hers. I'll just check the upstairs, while I'm here. And I expect the place to be left clean for the new tenant, including the refrigerator."

Clean? I hadn't thought about that. She didn't really expect me to waste my time vacuuming rugs and defrosting the refrigerator? She could worry about it after I left. She came back downstairs and went into the kitchen, sticking her pointy nose into every drawer and shelf. "All the kitchen stuff was here, except these things," she said, dumping an armload of kitchen tools onto the counter. "And them blue glasses over the sink. And this ashtray." She set it down too hard on the countertop, where it broke into many pieces.

I stared at the broken ashtray, took a deep breath, and plunged back into the mystery of Carrie's death, the quest I'd put firmly behind me only an hour before. "Why didn't you like my sister?" I asked.

"Who says I didn't like her?"

"Everything you say about her. The way you touch her things," I said. "Why?"

"All those men she had coming and going," she said. "It was disgusting." She'd said the same thing when I stopped with Suzanne to get my suitcase. It hadn't fully registered then.

"How many different men?" I asked.

"Three," she said quickly. "I mean, at least three. Three that I noticed."

And Mrs. Bolduc didn't miss much, so probably there hadn't been others. "Did you tell the police about the three men?" I asked.

She nodded. Then hesitated. "Well, I told them there was some men. I don't know if I gave 'em a number."

"Did the police ask you for descriptions of the men?"

"The police," Mrs. Bolduc said pointedly, "was that guy who stayed here last night. You and your sister, you're two of a kind."

I resisted the urge to grab her by her skinny throat and shake her. "What did they look like, the three men?"

"I don't remember," she said, "and I've got to go now. You finish up here nice and quick, and don't forget to clean up before you go." She scuttled toward the door, showing her yellow rat's teeth in a forced smile.

"A moment, please, Mrs. Bolduc," I said. She hesitated, the forced smile collapsing into her usual tight-lipped frown. "You're anxious to have this apartment vacated, and I'm anxious to find out who killed my sister. So here's how it is—I'm not leaving until you tell me about the men, everything you can remember about them. We can stand here and play verbal tennis as long as you want, but if you want to speed things up, you can just tell me."

She gave me a look that was meant to be withering, but I don't wither easily. I waited patiently, once again resisting the urge to throttle her. Then, quite abruptly, she ended the glaring contest. "We better sit down, then," she said. "I ain't as young as I used to be. And you can fix me some coffee. Instant is fine." She sat stiff and silent until I set the coffee in front of her. I took the chair facing her. She stirred the coffee and tasted it before she spoke.