Claire and Present Danger (16 page)

Fairchild sick like that is too much. Not my fault. Mr. Leo, he saw how tired I was and he say, go to bed, Batya. I lock up.”

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“Everybody?” I asked.

She nodded. “Mr. Leo, two times. First, he comes himself. Later, he comes again with the lady.”

“Emmie? The woman he’s engaged to?”

“Her.” She blew her nose and sat still for a while. “But the other lady, the friend, she comes, too. After him. Before them. I am good housekeeper, but with the baby and my worries right now—”

“What other lady, Batya?” Mackenzie asked gently.

“Miss Cade’s friend, Mr. Leo’s friend. She’s here before.” She looked at us. “With the animal name.”

Mackenzie glanced at me. “Ms. Baer?” I asked. “Here? Last night?” The same night I had dinner with her?

She nodded.

“Do you know why?”

She sighed. “I say Mrs. Fairchild is sick. Is late. She says not so late—is maybe nine-thirty. A minute only. Needs name. She wants make rain. Crazy.”

Mackenzie raised an eyebrow and checked to see if I knew how women affected precipitation.

“A shower,” I said. “She wanted to give Emmie a shower.” Nice.

Odd, too, because she’d said they weren’t that close. On the other hand, the timing suggested that she’d known about the wedding date and it had only been set that day. Emmie must have phoned her—maybe the call Vicky got at dinner, the one she took outside, when she gave her dog a potty break. Maybe my fabricated tale of the newcomer with no friends had prompted the desire to be kinder toward bad-luck Emmie.

I was getting lost on a side trip, and I pulled myself back to the present, in which Mackenzie was asking questions, almost as if he were still a homicide cop. Batya, perhaps used to being questioned by strangers in her homeland, didn’t seem to realize we had no right to be in the apartment, let alone to interrogate her.

“What time was Mr. Leo here?” Mackenzie asked. “The visit when he told you to go to bed.”

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She shook her head, held up her wrist. “No watch. Too swollen.

Maybe nine-thirty?”

“Was Ms. Baer still here?”

She shook her head. “Maybe ten. Too late, yes? Kills his own mother coming here middle of night.”

“And you went to sleep, yes?”

“I go to my room.”

“So you don’t know when he left.”

“You have baby. See how you sleep near end of the pregnant.

This is why I am tired.”

“Are you saying you heard them leave?”

“I leave my door open a while. I don’t sleep at all.”

I wanted to ask how that was so when she’d already said she couldn’t hear a thing from her room “back there.”

I knew Mackenzie had caught the discrepancy as well, but he was incredibly polite. He smiled and looked concerned for Batya’s welfare, and for all I know, he was. He has a way of asking a question that almost makes the words invisible, almost makes the person he’s addressing think they’ve thought them up themselves, that the topic is precisely what they want to talk about. Even when he has to ask the question several times. “Do you know what time you heard him leave?”

“I hear door. I hear them in hallway, talking, then door. Not so long after, he tells me go to bed.”

“Ten o’clock, then?”

“Something like. A little later, sure. Yes, sure, because now I remember. My show ended, so I turn off TV.”

“And his fiancée was with him the whole time.”

“This time, yes. This his second time here last night. Third time here for day. He comes first with her in day, then alone after dinner, then later, with her again. Then they leave. I didn’t trust about door. He was angry, maybe he forgets to lock. So I check.

And I check her, too.”

I was glad I hadn’t asked. Her door had been open and she’d 122

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been actively listening until she knew the door was locked and her employer was safe for the night.

“Mrs. Fairchild?”

She nodded. “She was okay. Sitting in bed, says she’s going to sleep. I thought she would cry, he is so mean to her, but no.

American children . . .” She pursed her mouth with distaste. It was hard for me to think of fortysomething Leo as a child.

“How was he mean, Batya?” I liked the way Mackenzie pulled her name in, often enough—but not too often—softening its edges so that it was a gentle and friendly tap on the shoulder.

“His own mother is sick in bed, but still, they shout. No—he shouts. Never her. It hurts too much.” She tapped her chest, showing us where it hurt Claire Fairchild. Then she tried to lean forward, toward us, as if to confide, but only her head jutted out while the rest of her stayed in place behind the belly. “I not listening. Understand? I not do the . . .” She cupped her hand to her ear.

“Never. But Mr. Leo is so loud.”

“Could you hear what they were saying?”

She shrugged. “Noise. Angry. Words that don’t make sense.”

“Like what?”

“About wedding. And something—crazy. I don’t know. First he asks about reader. I think he says ‘reader,’ but my English . . .”

Me. They were arguing about me, about my transparent excuse for being there. The temperature dropped precipitously, and I shuddered.

“She say something I don’t hear because I never—” Again, the cupped hand to the ear.

“Of course not,” Mackenzie said. “But sometimes, people are so loud, you can’t help but hear. Even in a big apartment like this one.”

She nodded. “I have work, always work. I don’t listen behind door. And she talks soft. Normal. But he’s so angry then, so loud, and he says ‘you’—he means his mother—‘hire’ or ‘fire,’ I can’t make out, ‘the pie.’ Fire the pie? Maybe should be bake the pie?

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Hurts my head, crazy talk, so I stop listening, finish dishes, he leaves. Then, I think I sit down, have tea—but the Rain Lady comes. The wolf.”

“Baer. Did she stay long?”

“Not very. I am so tired then from carrying trays, opening doors . . .”

“How did Mrs. Fairchild seem then?”

“She say sick. Maybe her heart hurts, she doesn’t tell me such things. I am servant.”

“Did everything seem normal about her? Did she eat much dinner?”

Batya looked at us both as if we were dangerous, as if a wrong answer might trap her. “She never eat much. I carry that heavy tray and . . . no. Not much.”

“More or less than usual last night?”

“Same.”

Either the answer was one she considered safe, or the simple truth, since Claire Fairchild had not truly been any sicker than was normal. Except: She died.

“How long do you think Ms. Baer stayed?”

“I have no watch,” Batya repeated. “Who knows? All I think is why so many people this one night when she is sick? And me—I can’t lay down until they go. My back always hurt now.”

“Did she stay a long time, or not long?”

“Maybe not so long. But then Mr. Leo is back, and Miss Emmie.

And she brings flowers!” Batya slapped her forehead as if that was mind-boggling news. “Big yellow and red flowers.”

I could picture Emmie Cade in a lace-trimmed blouse and layered chiffon skirt, nearly hidden behind a huge bouquet. Flowers signaling peace, a truce, an end to mother–future-daughter-in-law hostilities.

“Flowers make Mrs. Fairchild sick!” Batya said indignantly. “No perfume—no flowers. She knows!”

But so did Leo. Why, then, did he allow Emmie to bring them? I almost asked, but Mackenzie did something with the muscles 124

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around his eyes. Not exactly a squint, but a clear cease-and-desist message. I wondered how he did that, and whether I could successfully imitate the expression.

“I put them in kitchen, where Mrs. Fairchild never goes. Should have put outside, in trash, but my back . . .” She pulled and twisted the fabric of her sleeve and sighed. “Maybe their smell kills her?”

She snuffled, but her eyes stayed on us, deciding how we felt about her guilt.

“I doubt that,” Mackenzie said. “Too far away.” He spoke with great scientific assurance, as if the potentially lethal impact of flo-ral perfumes had been the first subject in his doctoral program, and he’d gotten an A on the final. “You did the right thing, making sure Ms. Cade went in without her flowers.”

Batya looked at him sideways, checking for expression, then at me. “I did right thing,” she repeated. “Yes.”

“And when you took the flowers, what did she do?”

She raised her eyebrows and opened her eyes till there was white all around the pupils, and put her hand to her mouth. When she was convinced we understood the gesture, she relaxed again. “Like that. Sorry, she says. Forgot. Then she goes in.”

“To Mrs. Fairchild’s bedroom,” Mackenzie prompted.

Batya nodded. “By self. Soon, he goes in, too. Both in there now. Wear her out. Too much company for sick woman. I go in and tell them no, she not well, and they say, ‘Just a minute. I be there just one minute.’ Everybody says it and nobody is just a minute except his girlfriend—”

“Emmie Cade.”

“Yes. Her. She is still upset about flowers, and when I say must leave, she does. She waits in living room. He says I should go to bed, but I listen because they make Mrs. Fairchild sicker. Then they leave and later, people bang on door and she is dead.” She wiped at her eyes again with the exhausted lump of tissue.

I sat holding my water glass, listening to them, admiring how Mackenzie had finessed our way into the condo and into Batya’s confidences. I remembered what he’d told me about successful con 125

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artists. He, too, could have had a lucrative life of crime because he had the ability to adopt a guileless, completely convincing persona while he lied through his teeth. I wasn’t sure that was a great trait in a prospective husband. He also made it easy to forget to question his presence, and I think that would be true even with a more sophisticated person than Batya, a person aware of niceties such as civil rights.

They spoke, but a voice inside of me did as well, and it wouldn’t stop. Claire Fairchild was nowhere near death, it said. Something is rotten here. She told me she could fool them all, and she was right. Somebody believed she was that sick, or believed everyone else would believe it, and killed her.

I heard as well a counter-voice, challenging my assumptions, asking the simple question: How? Nobody was there when she died, and there were apparently no signs of violence, or they would have been noted. How could it be anything but a natural death in that case?

Certainly, death arrived with a snap of the finger, and people keeled over taking everyone by surprise. But until proven otherwise, I was sure that a woman doesn’t investigate a shady future daughter-in-law, a possible killer, fight with people who are outraged and threatened by the investigation, intimidate and threaten her servant, then abruptly die of natural causes without provoking suspicion.

“Is there something I can do for you?” Mackenzie asked Batya.

“Are you here alone?”

“Batya is alone in this world.”

But not quite as desperately so as she’d been a day earlier. Batya was now free. Nobody was blackmailing her anymore.

Mackenzie didn’t have to prod this time. Batya answered the question. “I cannot leave house alone. No. And Mrs. Fairchild, she says . . .” She looked at us, one at a time, and bit at her bottom lip.

“Go on,” I prompted. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

“She say if she die, she leave me money. Because I take good care of her. I am poor woman . . .” She had run out of tissue and, this 126

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time, she lifted her shoulder in an attempt to blot her tears. “Two babies, one sick, please God new one should be okay, and what?

What then? My husband is disappeared and now Mrs. Fairchild, too.” Mackenzie fished around in his pockets, found a handker-chief, and passed it over to her. She looked at it, and then at him, as if he’d offered her an annuity for life instead of a piece of cloth. “I wash and clean it for you later,” she whispered.

He shook his head.

“Because,” she said, “life. I look at my life and ask, what is life, anyway, and I think, Batya, life is tissue paper. Strong, ha! Like tissue, I am protected by tissue paper.”

I imagined long nights in a smoky Serbo-Croatian café, arguing what life was. Or long days in a Center City condo.

“Thin, like tissue. Over, like this,” and once again she snapped her fingers. “My sainted mother is one minute frying breakfast and next . . .” She lifted one hand, as if to snap her fingers one more time, then she sighed, and put the hand back down.

Both Mackenzie and I nodded sagely. We agreed. Life was tissue paper, but now she had genuine cotton in her hand. Make of it what she would.

Apparently, the baby was also voting with its feet—whether on the tissue or cotton side of life, we couldn’t tell. Batya looked startled, then put her hand on her belly. “Jumping all the time.

The shock . . .” Then she looked at us. “Is not right, he shouts at his mama. My baby never will shout at me. Not allowed where I come from. Child respects.”

We both maintained our solemn expressions of agreement, but I wondered if Mackenzie, too, was considering how carefully Batya cast the shadow of suspicion on Leo Fairchild and, as an alternate, the bride-to-be who had brought the death flowers. If, indeed, there was anything suspicious about Claire Fairchild’s death, the housekeeper was making sure she was in the clear.

And why not? Her mental ledger sheet had no downside to Claire Fairchild’s demise. It was all plusses: no I.N.S., no deportation. Plus, a legacy. Death had all the advantages.

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“Help me,” Batya said, pushing forward in the chair. Mackenzie all but catapulted out of his chair and took her arms. “I mean with problem.” She nonetheless accepted the hoist. Once she was standing, she brushed off her belly and faced us.

She reminded me of the Venus of Willendorf, that Paleolithic carving that supposedly represents the first woman, or at least, the first work of art of an idealized naked woman. The exaggerated, enormous breasts resting on a very pregnant belly, and the rest of the body nearly inconsequential, mere methods of moving around that enormous fertility.