In-Laws and Outlaws (15 page)

“I thought I'd go look at our house.”

Connie looked uneasy. “I didn't give you much chance to say, but would you rather stay there? I mean, if you want to—”

“No, Connie. I just want to look at it.”

They all understood. No one offered to accompany me, bless them.

Finally seeing the house Stuart and I had shared for two summers was something of an anticlimax. The place looked smaller than I remembered; I thought that was supposed to happen only when you went back to a house where you'd lived as a child. I wandered through the rooms, looking for some personal memento of the time I'd been staying there. There was none. I did find some clothing in a few of the closets, both men's and women's, of various sizes—kept there for guests, no doubt. It didn't feel like “my” house. It was just an extra, temporarily unoccupied building in the Decker compound.

I wondered how many people had stayed here in the ten years I'd been gone. Some of the furniture I didn't recognize, and the window furnishings were all new. The family wasn't letting the place run down; who knew, it could be used again someday, on a permanent basis. Someday. It was a good place to live—warm and comfortable and conveniently appointed, in beautiful surroundings. Maybe Mrs. Vernon had the right idea, living on the island all year round. I gave myself a little shake; no, I wasn't going to fall into that trap again.

The phone rang, making me jump. It was Elinor.

“I'm sorry to disturb you, Gillian,” she said, “but something completely slipped my mind. My assistant is flying in from Washington—in fact, her plane should be arriving just about now. We'd meant to put her up in your house, but now that you're back we don't like to do that without your permission.”

“Of course she can stay here, Elinor. I'll be staying with Connie as long as I'm here.” And Tom would have to find another place to go on nights when he couldn't sleep.

“Oh, that's very gracious of you! Thank you, Gillian. Why don't you come over and meet her? She'll be here about a week, unless problems come up that we haven't anticipated.”

I told her I would. When I'd hung up, I sat thinking for a few minutes. My lunch companions hadn't wasted any time telling Elinor where I'd be that afternoon; it was starting to feel as if they were keeping track of me. No, that was paranoid; they told one another everything. The Fergusons had plenty of room to accommodate a guest or two or six, but they'd probably grown used to putting all their visitors in my house. More convenient, not having an outsider underfoot all the time; nicer for the guest, too, having more room. It could all be explained away.

Elinor's mention of her assistant reminded me I hadn't spoken to
my
assistant for a while, so I called Leonard at the museum in Chicago. He said he was very glad to hear from me (the liar), because a sketch of the stage setting for the first production of
Ghosts
had just been found in somebody's attic and was up for auction. I forgot all about the Deckers when I heard that. Ibsen's
Ghosts
had been turned down by the playwright's own theater in Oslo, and by theaters in Sweden and Denmark as well; that stark drama was just too daring for its day. So the world premiere of this landmark play took place at Aurora Turner Hall in Chicago, of all places, in a Norwegian-language production for an audience of Scandinavian immigrants.

And now after all these years a piece of the scene design had turned up—only one page, Leonard warned me, and it looked like a preliminary sketch at that. I questioned him closely about authentication procedures and ended up as convinced as I could be that the sketch was the real McCoy. Leonard and I talked budget and decided how high he should bid; I gave him my Martha's Vineyard phone number and wished him luck.

What a find! I was dying to tell someone about the sketch … but whom? None of the family knew anything about theater history, or cared. It was probably just as well. I didn't know if Leonard could outbid the competition; and it wouldn't do to get all excited about something that could very well end up in somebody else's museum.

Frankly, I was worried. Leonard was competent enough to oversee the day-to-day operation of the museum; but the more I thought about it, the more reluctant I grew to leave the bidding at the auction to him. All the big boys would be after the sketch; that long-ago production of Ibsen's gloomy drama wasn't just Chicago theater history, it was world theater history. If Leonard let this one slip through our fingers …

I couldn't let that happen.

Mrs. Vernon was back the next morning; she swept Connie up and away to launch the island-wide campaign to stop the infidel McDonald's from corrupting the Vineyard's chosen way of life. About midmorning I wandered through the cedar grove to the Fergusons', next door. It was a lazy sort of day, the kind that makes you want to watch other people work.

Elinor and her assistant were hard at it. The assistant's name was Nancy Younger; she was in her early twenties and was one of those women I think of as professional porcelain dolls. Delicate features, small bones, translucent skin—everything about her looked breakable. From Elinor's introduction I gathered I was supposed to know Nancy's family; I smiled and uttered something vague.

“About ready to take a break?” I asked Elinor.

“Pretty soon—we have something we have to decide first. Why don't you sit in? We'd welcome your opinion.” Uh-huh. At least she didn't say
input
. I sat down at the table with them.

Nancy handed me several sheets of paper. “These are requests for funds from two competing educational groups,” she told me in a whispery voice. “We have to decide which one to fund.”

“Why not both?” I asked. The Decker Philanthropic Foundation could afford it.

“They both want to use the same physical facility,” Elinor sighed. “A Boston high school with well-equipped shops. Both these groups have the admirable goal of teaching carpentry, wiring, and the like to adults who have no job skills. But the school is willing to allow the use of its equipment only one night a week, so we have to say which group goes in—since they both need money for supplies.” Small potatoes.

“We've tried to get the two groups to combine,” Nancy whispered, “but there seems to be some sort of rivalry between them.”

“That's the polite way of putting it,” Elinor said dryly.

I looked at the papers Nancy had given me; they were photocopies of application forms that had been filled in by hand, and they were barely literate. One group called itself the Organization for the Advancement of Street People, while the other was Jobs, Ink. I couldn't see much difference between them, but I didn't know the background. I asked about them.

It seemed the OASP was better organized and had been around longer, while Jobs, Ink. was noisier and more visible. The latter had been on television a lot, Nancy said softly, and had attracted a lot of attention to themselves with their angry denunciations of an established social order that failed to take care of the less fortunate among them. I knew right then which one would get the Decker money they both wanted, but I suppose Elinor felt she had to go through the motions of making an impartial decision. The noisy group would win, and in return they'd understand they were expected to mention the Decker Philanthropic Foundation every time they were on TV in the future. That was the one kind of publicity the family wanted.

I only half listened as the two women talked, watching Nancy's hands as she leafed through the papers on the table. They were slender hands, with long delicate fingers with pronounced pads on the tips. I could just see Nancy as a child, wearing a pretty dress and sitting at the piano obediently practicing her scales to the tick of a metronome as her mother stood by watching approvingly. Nancy was probably a good little girl who always did what she was told.

When Elinor asked me what I thought, I put in a plug for the OASP just to be perverse. Not that it made any difference; Elinor took a calculated, roundabout way of talking herself into awarding the grant to Jobs, Ink., but she ended up right where I thought she would. “Well, that's done. I think we can take a break now. Did you want to see me about something, Gillian?”

“Yes,” I said, shooting a covert glance at Nancy.

Elinor nodded and said, “Let's go check on Oscar. Nancy, perhaps you'd get us some lemonade?”

We went out on the deck and looked down to where Oscar was sunning himself on the beach and talking on a phone. “I wanted to ask about Connie,” I told Elinor. “That time she was hospitalized—right after Theo was killed.”

“Oh, yes, that was a dreadful period. Poor Connie. She just couldn't cope. She was hospitalized for only two weeks, I think it was, just long enough for the doctors to draw up a proper diet for her and make sure the medication they prescribed had no side effects.”

“Then she didn't undergo therapy?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

Instead of answering her question, I asked another of my own. “Do you think she's really recovered?”

“Gillian, no one ever really recovers from a thing like that. But Connie has accepted what happened to Theo, the same way she's now accepting Raymond's death. Why? Have you seen something in her behavior …?”

“No, nothing like that. She's just … Connie. How did she behave toward Lynn after Theo died?”

“Lynn? The same way she always did.” Puzzled.

“She displayed no hostility toward her, or avoided her? Connie showed no resentment that your child was still alive while hers was taken from her? By violence?”

“Why, no, of course not—” Elinor broke off as she understood what I was getting at; her face fell slack with astonishment. “Oscar told me you suspected Raymond knew who the killer was … and was protecting her? Connie?”

I looked at the dismay in her face and said, “Stupid, huh?”

“More than stupid, Gillian—it's shocking! Connie is the most inoffensive person on the face of the earth! Besides, can you possibly imagine her taking all the steps necessary to kill Lynn and the others? Can you?”

“No, I can't,” I admitted readily. “I know it's a dumb idea, and I don't for one minute believe that Connie ever hurt anybody. But Raymond had to be protecting
someone
. Otherwise he'd have told the rest of you what he found out.”

“You're guessing.” I just looked at her. Elinor took a deep breath and said, “That's all any of us can do, I suppose. We'll probably never know the truth.”

“And you concede to that?” Now it was my turn to be dismayed. “Why aren't you turning the world upside down trying to find this killer?”

“What would you have us do?” she said sharply. “We've cooperated with the police. We've hired private detectives. The one thing we haven't done is start accusing one another.” I flinched. But she wasn't finished yet. “You have no idea what we've been through, Gillian. You come in here at the eleventh hour and you say why haven't you done this and why haven't you done that—you think we haven't considered
every
possibility? Do you think we haven't been over and over it time and again?” With an effort she stopped herself. “You must realize what a strain this has been for all of us. I know you're concerned—I'm sorry for my outburst.”

“Oh, Elinor, don't apologize! I know I'm butting in, and—”

“You're not butting in! You have every right to be concerned.” She tucked a lock of hair behind one ear, taking her time. “You are part of the family, after all. In fact, that reminds me. Oscar wants a family conference. We have to make a decision about announcing his candidacy.”

Ah. “When?”

“Tomorrow. We'll let you know the time.”

I hesitated. “I may be leaving tomorrow.” I told her about the
Ghosts
sketch and my reluctance to leave the bidding to my assistant.

“Can't you bid by phone?”

“I could, but I've never seen this sketch, you know. I'll need to inspect it before I can commit myself to shoot the works.”

“But you'll be back?”

I didn't answer immediately. Then I said, “Connie doesn't need me anymore. She's coming out of her slough of despond, and Mrs. Vernon is going to be keeping her pretty busy with this McDonald's thing. I think she'll be all right.”

Elinor raised an eyebrow. “You're not worrying about staying under the same roof with a possible murderer, are you?”

“Of course not,” I said, embarrassed. “I was fishing. I know Connie's no killer.”

Elinor sighed. “Well, if you're determined to be off tomorrow, we'd better hold the conference tonight. That'll give us a chance to try to persuade you to come back! Let's make it nine o'clock—is that all right with you?”

I told her that would be fine.

“There's Nancy with the lemonade.” We went back inside and each of us took a glass of the ice-cold drink Nancy had just poured. “Mm, that's delicious,” Elinor said. “Now, if you two will excuse me for a moment? I'll be right back.”

I sat down at the table across from Nancy and looked at those long thin fingers again. “Do you play the piano?”

“Why … yes, I do,” she whispered. “How did you know?”

“You have a pianist's hands.” She looked pleased. I didn't mention that the best pianists I'd ever heard had short, stubby fingers that curled into claws when they played. “How long have you been working for Elinor?”

Almost five years, she said—which meant she was older than the twenty-one or -two she looked. We made polite, bland conversation until Elinor came back and resumed her seat at the table. She picked up one of the subliterate proposals we'd been muddling over and said, “Just look at this! Whatever has happened to the teaching of the English language? Not one sentence written correctly!” She shook her head in dismay. “The spelling is abominable, the grammar is atrocious, and the punctuation—oh my. They have no
idea
what punctuation is for!”