Misfortune (18 page)

They drove past several tennis courts, a soccer field, and rows and rows of Mercedes, Range Rovers, BMWs, and Jaguars, parked in perfect lines. “Could feed a small country for a year off the sale of this lineup,” Meaty said, chuckling. “Impressive. Quite impressive.”

“Over there,” Frances directed, pointing toward the gambrel roof of the main clubhouse. The sun shown down on its darkened shingles. Three police cars, a fire truck, and two ambulances were parked near the building. Meaty pulled up alongside one of the ambulances.

“Meaty,” Frances said grabbing his arm before he could open the driver’s-side door. “Do me one favor.”

“You bet,” he replied.

“Let me be anonymous today, just an assistant DA along for the ride.”

“It’s your stepmother.”

“I want to know what’s going on, to hear what the cops have to say.”

“You don’t need to be a professional, kiddo.”

“Just let me do it my way?” Frances asked.

“You got it.” He squeezed her hand, then opened his door. Frances felt relieved that he hadn’t resisted. She wanted to focus on what had transpired and wasn’t prepared to deal with the panoply of police officers well schooled in the removal and consolation of grieving family members.

The porch that ran the length of the clubhouse was filled with people. Most were dressed in tennis clothes, white shorts, skirts, and dresses, and held tennis rackets emblazoned with the Wilson or Prince logo. People clutched drinks in clear plastic cups as they milled about on the grass. An elderly man in a bright green blazer packed several belongings from the umpire’s chair into an athletic bag. In the distance Frances could see a group of small children chasing each other around in a circle. Beyond them a tennis game was still in progress.

Despite the crowd, the place was relatively quiet. People spoke in hushed tones. Seated in canvas director’s chairs, several women slumped forward, crying. Frances kept her eyes down, not wanting to be recognized by someone from her past. It had been more than a decade since she had set foot at the Fair Lawn Country Club, but she feared her face hadn’t changed enough to protect her anonymity. She watched Meaty’s sneaker-shod feet taking long strides toward the main entrance.

What an odd place this must seem to him, she thought for a moment. A private tennis club, impeccably groomed, filled with suntanned families dressed in white. Timeless. In fact, little had changed that she could notice since she had spent July here as a child, participating in morning tennis clinic, running drills, practicing ground strokes. She had played her share of challenge matches on the ladder, competed in the tennis tournaments year after year, even won the best sportsmanship award when she was thirteen. Her father had the small silver-plated bowl she had won engraved with her name and date: “Frances Taylor Pratt, 1973. ” Meaty could never understand a place like this. She wouldn’t believe it herself if it hadn’t been such an integral part of her childhood.

Frances felt disoriented. She wanted to reach out for Meaty, to feel his muscular arm, to have him support the weight of her body, which felt too much to bear, but she didn’t dare touch him. If he thought she was in pain, or that her emotions might hinder her objectivity, he would protect her by keeping her out of the investigation. She quickened her step to stay in stride behind him.

The interior of the Fair Lawn Country Club clubhouse was cordoned off with yellow police tape. Meaty and Frances stood at the barrier. A lean man with a buzz-top haircut and wire-rimmed glasses stood just inside, smoking a cigarette. His ash dropped onto the rose-colored pile carpeting.

“Hank,” Meaty said to the man.

“Meaty, what brings you to these parts?”

Omitting her last name, Meaty introduced Frances to Detective Hank Kelly of the Southampton Police Department. “She’s with the district attorney’s office,” Meaty added. “What can you tell us?”

“Female. Probably late forties. Apparent heart failure.” He took another drag of his cigarette. “Name’s Clio Pratt. She’s well-known around here.”

“Where is she?” Meaty asked.

“The bathroom.”

“Can we take a look?”

“Be my guest.” Detective Kelly led Frances and Meaty through a door marked “Powder Room” in gilt lettering. They stepped into a small, windowless room with green-and-pink floral wallpaper, coordinated plush carpet, a large gilded mirror, and twin marbled sinks on which sat stacks of hand towels, each embroidered with a green “FL.” The air smelled of freshener.

“This way,” Detective Kelly said, pointing into a larger room beyond.

The floor and walls of the larger bathroom were similarly decorated. Several pink toilet stalls lined the far wall, and the bottled smell of gardenias thickened the air. Frances saw two Tretorn sneakers, red-and-white-checkered panties, and a pair of thin crumpled legs protruding from the center stall. “We need a minute here,” Detective Kelly announced. Two police officers wearing rubber gloves stepped out of the stall and backed away.

Frances moved forward. Clio’s body lay partially draped over the toilet bowl. Her short tennis skirt was hiked up around her waist, exposing a perfect bikini-waxed triangle of dark pubic hair. Clio’s arms hung limp by her side, her manicured fingers just touching the floor. Her head tilted back on her neck, eyes wide, mouth agape. The ends of her dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail behind her head, dangled into the toilet.

Frances raised her hands to cover her mouth. She was used to the police photographs that filled the office, images of dead bodies, knife wounds, gunshots, all the gore of a crime scene captured in Technicolor, but she felt unprepared for this nonviolent death. The toilet paper had come unrolled from its gold dispenser, as if Clio had grabbed on to it for support as she slid to the floor. Otherwise, little had been disturbed. Frances stood and stared. She tried to discern what besides Clio’s awkward body position made her look different. Was it the paleness of her skin, the emptiness of her corpse? Clio would have hated the humiliation, the exposure to the gawks and gasps of her fellow club members.

Frances wanted to feel sad about her father’s wife, the woman he had loved for almost as long as Frances could remember, but the sight seemed too surreal to evoke emotion.

She felt Meaty touch her back.

“You okay?” he whispered. “Yeah.”

“Her stepdaughter, a Blair Devlin, found her,” Detective Kelly said matter-of-factly as he checked his spiral notepad. “I spoke to her briefly, but the paramedics had to take her to Southampton Hospital for sedation. The poor woman’s hysterical. As she’s getting in the ambulance, she gives me her car keys. Says just leave them in the car.” He shrugged, flipped the page, and continued, “We got the call at eleven oh-three. A guy named Jack Von Furst called it in. He said he was out on the porch watching a tournament—there was a men’s doubles match going on—and heard a scream. Von Furst said he ran inside and found Blair screaming right here. Another guy, a George Welch, arrived about the same time. He’d been doing some paperwork in the lobby of the clubhouse when he heard the screams. Nobody else was in the bathroom at the time. Von Furst knew the deceased. Said they were close friends. ‘Close’ was his word.”

“Did anyone try anything, CPR, anything like that?” Frances asked.

“Von Furst said they checked Pratt’s wrists and neck, but there was no pulse. They knew enough not to move her. Then he left to call 911, and Welch stayed with the body. That’s pretty much it. Von Furst said he would hang around in case we need him.”

“Have you talked to Welch?” Frances and Meaty said in unison.

“Yeah. He didn’t have much to add.”

“Is Forensics going to do any work here?”

“We’ve secured it for now, as you can see. We’re trying to reach Lieutenant Batchelder to find out what he wants us to do. He hasn’t returned my page. Probably playing golf with your boss,” Detective Kelly said, nodding to Frances. “If anyone asks my opinion, which they don’t, I’d say we’ve got to let Crime Scene do their stuff. It’s now or never.”

“Any reason to think there’s been a crime?” Meaty asked, echoing the question in Frances’s mind.

“Look, I don’t want to be the guy accused of botching the job if facts turn up. These are fancy people here.”

Meaty raised his eyebrows.

“I dunno,” Detective Kelly said. “But if you ask me, she looks pretty healthy. I’d sure want to know what got that specimen of a woman.”

“Has Mr. Pratt been notified?” Frances asked.

“The husband? Not yet. We understand he’s in pretty bad shape himself.”

“I’d like to talk to him,” Frances said.

“You?” Detective Kelly asked.

Meaty nodded.

“I should’ve said something earlier. I’m with the district attorney’s office, as Meaty told you, but I’m also…” She paused to clear her throat. “This is my stepmother. My sister called me at home. That’s why Meaty and I are here.”

Detective Kelly took a step back from Frances. “I’m real sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.” Then, remembering Detective Kelly’s words, Frances added, “If you don’t mind, I’ll take my sister’s car. I can find it in the lot. I need to go see my father.”

“Sure.” Detective Kelly handed her the set of car keys.

“You want me to follow you?” Meaty asked.

“No. I’m okay. Just let me know if anything happens. I’ll be at home by this evening.” She turned to Detective Kelly. “We’ll want an autopsy. If you need authorization, I can get it.”

Frances turned away from Clio’s corpse and walked out of the powder room, leaving Meaty and Detective Kelly behind.

The crowd had begun to dissipate, and Frances watched as people walked to their cars. She wondered where they were going on this beautiful holiday Saturday now that their scheduled event, the tournament, was ruined by the death of a friend, an acquaintance, a fellow club member. Perhaps they’d go over to the exclusive Bathing Corporation, informally known as the Beach Club, just a quarter of a mile away. Most Fair Lawn Country Club members also belonged there. The Beach Club served lunch, and it was almost that time.

Frances found Blair’s Mazda Miata parked at an angle near a high privet that concealed a practice backboard. The door was unlocked, and Frances settled herself into the soft leather seat, adjusting it a few inches to accommodate her slightly shorter legs. In the passenger seat next to her she noticed a thick stack of papers. Instinctively she picked them up and flipped through the loose pages of what appeared to be draft legal documents and several architectural drawings. She paused to read the single-spaced text. According to the documents, the Devlin Gallery planned to lease ten thousand square feet of commercial space at an annual rent of $1 million. She looked again at this startling sum. She had no idea her sister’s gallery was doing that well. Surprise, and a pang of jealousy, distracted her momentarily. Then she forced herself to remember that she had no business snooping into her sister’s affairs and that she had more pressing matters to deal with. She started the engine.

Frances wished the drive from the Fair Lawn Country Club to her father’s house on Ox Pasture Road was longer, but the mile and a half passed quickly behind the wheel of her sister’s convertible. The sun shone on the hood of the British racing green convertible and on her blue-jeaned thighs. The wind blew in her face, cooling her flushed cheeks. Frances pulled down the visor. The motor revved, then purred, as she switched into fourth gear.

She imagined her father’s face, his large brown eyes, his crooked mouth. He would know as soon as she arrived that something was wrong, that there was another sorrow to add to his store. She visited on Fridays, not Saturdays, and she, like he, was a creature of habit. That’s the problem, she thought. Uncompromising schedules get compromised only for bad news.

Frances hadn’t been with her father when he learned that Justin, his son, had died. September 8, a date etched indelibly in her mind. How odd that she had forgotten Justin’s birthday more than once, but the anniversary of his death never passed unrecognized. Justin, only fourteen, Richard’s only son and Clio’s only child, killed on a windy day when his sailboat capsized. The boom struck his head, knocking him unconscious, and he drowned. A tragedy that could have been prevented if someone else had been in the boat or if someone on shore had seen the boat go over. But Justin fell into the black water of Lake Agawam unnoticed. He wasn’t reported missing until several hours later when he didn’t come home for supper, and his body wasn’t found until the next morning. A freak accident given Justin’s experience as a sailor, the shallowness of Lake Agawam, and the relative calmness of the water even with the wind. “Like being struck by lightning,” the medical examiner supposedly had said, but Frances had never known anyone to be struck by lightning.

Richard hadn’t called Frances until the following day to tell her of Justin’s death. Their conversation had been brief. His voice was flat. He explained what had happened as far as he knew, then asked her not to come, not right away, not until the memorial service at the end of the week. He and Clio mourned their son in private, and Frances would never know what passed between them in those sorrow-filled days. By the time Frances saw her father in church, he and Clio looked composed. Neither shed a tear in front of the mass of mourners in attendance.

Now Frances had to tell her father that Clio was dead.

Frances parked the Miata by the front door of the Pratt residence and sat for several moments with the engine off. The house was still. She heard birds chirping, saw a rabbit nibble at the newly cut grass, watched two large bumblebees buzz around a pink geranium in a stone planter at the edge of the drive. No one would ever know that something is terribly wrong, Frances thought.

She saw Lily, her father’s nurse, standing at the top of the handicapped ramp, smoking a cigarette.

“Oh, Frances, what a surprise! I saw the car and thought it was Blair,” Lily called out as Frances opened the door and stepped out onto the gravel.

“I’m using Blair’s car,” Frances replied. She knew Lily was disappointed. Blair and Lily were friends, or at least friendly in a way that she couldn’t be.