Mother's Day (16 page)

“That’s ridiculous,” said Sam.

“Why is it ridiculous?”

“Look, Mary, you can’t just leave. You’re the hostess. Number two, you know that going to the police station is like going to the Emergency Room. You’ll be there all night. Besides, you’ll be getting yourself involved in something that is none of your business.”

“It is my business,” Mary protested. “Linda was a friend of mine.”

“That was light-years ago,” said Sam. “We were just kids…”

“So what? She was murdered, for heaven’s sake. What difference does it make how long ago I knew her? Somebody killed her and stuffed her body in a garbage bag and left it in a Dumpster.”

“And,” said Sam, “you don’t really know anything about it. All you know is a little piece of girl talk from thirteen years ago. Look, face it, Mary. Some sex pervert picked her up and killed her. Probably the same guy that killed that little girl they found last fall. What did they call her…?”

“Amber,” said Mary irritably.

“Right. Her. Now, I admit, it’s no fun to think about some nut on the loose here in town, but it makes more sense than what you’re saying. Read the papers, Mary. This stuff happens every day. Some drooling creep goes crazy and kills some poor woman. The police know how to handle this stuff. What do they need you sticking your nose in?”

Mary leveled a cold gaze at her husband. “You don’t care who killed my friend. All you care about is whether or not I’m manning the desk. You don’t have a life, Sam. You don’t have friends, you don’t have a family. All you have is this restaurant. Well, years ago my friend entrusted me with a secret that could have everything to do with this murder. And, if you think I’m going to let you bully me out of telling the police…”

Sam waved a hand angrily. “Do what you want,” he said.

“I will,” she said.

An old man leaning on a cane clumped up to them and poked Sam in the side, apparently ignorant of the tension between them. “Sonny, where do I sit?” he demanded.

With an effort, Sam managed not to glare at the customer. “My wife will show you to a table,” he said with a false smile.

Mary shoved the menus at him. “No, she won’t.”

“Mary,” he hissed.

But she ignored him as she headed for the door.

Greg pulled the car up onto the shoulder
of the dirt road that overlooked the local beach. The sun was almost down, although the sky still clung to the pink-and-gold lights of the waning day. Through the latticework of an old gazebo near the path, the last rays of the sun splashed a grid of shadows and light.

Jenny was curled up on the backseat, her face small and pinched-looking. She had stayed in her room most of the afternoon. “Why are we stopping here?” she asked. “I thought we were going out for pizza.”

“I thought you were too sick to eat,” Greg teased her gently. “I thought you were just going to sip a Coke.”

“I’m not faking, Dad,” she said. “I feel horrible.”

“I know you’re not, honey,” he said. “We’re going soon. I just wanted to watch the sunset.”

Karen shifted in her seat and said nothing. She felt a positive dislike for these long, long days with their endless twilights. She wanted the darkness to come. She had had enough of this day.

Greg turned to her. “Do you mind?” he asked.

Karen shrugged. “I don’t care.”

She and Jenny had hardly spoken all afternoon. The school nurse had called, and Greg went to pick up Jenny. But once they got home it was obvious that Jenny was not really sick—just a bundle of nerves. Instinctively Karen felt sympathetic, but it was hard to sustain it after that article this morning and the fallout from it. She was still angry and hurt about being dismissed by Tamara. And she found herself reluctant to do the errands she needed to do around town, for fear that people would be looking at her, pointing her out. Plus, she spent most of the day expecting the police to turn up at her door. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was go out for pizza and have people stare at them, but Greg had insisted.

“If you want pizza, why don’t we have one delivered?” she had said, but she knew very well that he wanted to get them out and doing something together. And he was not about to let it go. So she had agreed, reluctantly, to come.

“I love this beach,” said Greg. “It’s still so unspoiled.”

“It’s pretty,” Jenny agreed in a small voice. Karen stared dully out the window.

“Yes, it is,” said Greg. “You see that gazebo over there. When your mother and I were young we used to meet there, or leave each other messages.”

Jenny knew the old story by heart, but it still appealed to the romantic adolescent side of her. “Your parents didn’t want you to see each other,” she said, reciting the next line by heart.

“Well, they thought we were too serious. And too young to be serious,” he said. “But I had known from the first minute I set eyes on her that she was the one for me. I didn’t care what anybody said.”

“Did you get in trouble for it?” Jenny asked, knowing the answer.

“All the time.” Greg chuckled. “But it was worth it. I didn’t have any choice, you see. I had to follow my heart. And your mom here, she owned it. Always did.”

Karen felt tears fill her eyes. It wasn’t so much from the old story, although she loved the way he told it. It was just that she was so hurt inside. Tears were very close to the surface. “Don’t tell her that,” she said coldly. “She doesn’t need any more encouragement to defy her parents.”

Greg was undaunted by her angry tone. “I’m not sorry I did it,” he said. “I’d be a liar to say otherwise. What about you? Any regrets?”

She could feel his smile without looking at his face. He knew very well that she could trace her whole adult life from those passionate meetings in the gazebo. All the good days and the bad days; their home, their life, their fights, their child. Every bit of it. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “None.”

Her words seemed to reverberate in the silence of the car. After a minute Karen felt Jenny’s touch, light as a butterfly, on her shoulder.

“Please don’t be mad at me, Mom,” she said. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“It’s all right,” said Karen stiffly. Her words did not sound warm, even to her own ears, but they all knew, from their lifetime together, that her icy crust was a thin one. Now that it had cracked, it would break up quickly.

“I know you’d never hurt anybody. I don’t know why she made it sound that way.”

“Look,” said Greg sternly, turning around in the seat and pointing a finger at her. “You better learn a lesson from this. You can’t blame this on anyone but yourself.”

“I know,” said Jenny.

“This is a free country, and people can say any old nasty thing they want if you give them the opening. That reporter just took what you said and ran with it.”

“I wish I could take it back.”

“Well, that’s the oldest story in the world.” Greg sighed and squinted into the distance. “But, everybody makes mistakes. Now we have to make the best of it. And we have to do it together. We’re a family. We stick together. No matter what people say about us, we just hold our heads up and ignore them.”

Easier said than done, Karen thought, but she knew he was right.

“Okay,” said Jenny solemnly.

Karen did not say anything. After all, she was the one they would be talking about. Not Greg. Not Jenny. She could feel them waiting for her, for some indication of solidarity. She thought it over for a minute.

What was the use of being stubborn with them? Greg and Jenny were the most important people in her world. What did it matter what other people said?

“All right,” she said.

“Now, I could eat some pizza,” Greg said, relieved. “What about the rest of you?”

“I could,” Jenny cried.

“Even if people point at us?” he asked.

“I’ll point back,” she said seriously. “Sticks and stones can break my bones, right?”

“How ‘bout you, Mom?” he asked.

Karen nodded. “I’m ready.”

The sun was gone now, the sky darkening rapidly. Karen smiled at him but shivered in spite of herself. Once that sun was gone, you would never know it was almost summer.

“You,” Margo Hofsteder cried as Knudsen, the man from the appliance repair service, came through the door in the lobby. “Don’t you dare send me a bill. I’ve had nothing but trouble with that ice machine since you fixed it. My man has had to mop up five times a day since you were here.”

“What!” Knudsen protested, hands flattened on his chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never touched it.”

“Well, that’s the damn truth,” Margo snorted.

“I just come to fix the thing tonight. I couldn’t get here any sooner.”

Margo, who was prepared to continue her tirade, sat back down on her stool, deflated. “You couldn’t?”

The man grimaced. “I’m sorry about this,” he said. “My wife got the flu and I had to stay with the kids. I figured you might have called somebody else, but I thought I’d come check anyway.”

“No,” said Margo, taken aback. “No, I thought…” A puzzled look came into her green eyes as she began to calculate.

“How ‘bout that murder?” Knudsen asked. “I read in the paper she was staying here.”

“Mmmm,” Margo mumbled. She pointed her pencil at him and examined him with narrowed eyes. “You didn’t even stop by to look at the thing? The other night? The night she got killed?”

“Nope,” said Knudsen. “So what do you say? You want me to work on it?”

Margo frowned in his direction, but she was looking through him. Then she said, “Okay, but fix it right this time.”

“I told you,” Knudsen cried, “I never touched it.”

“Okay, okay,” said Margo. “How come you’re here so late?”

“I’ve got another day job, lady. You need two jobs these days to make ends meet.”

Margo nodded and waved absently as Knudsen headed out the door and down to the room with the broken ice machine. She sat back and tapped the pencil against her teeth. An idea had come to her. After all, hadn’t the police asked if she’d noticed anything unusual that night? Well, she had noticed something. She just didn’t realize it at the time. She wished Anton were here. He would really have appreciated this. Actually, he probably would have beaten her to it. Nothing got by that man. He was a born observer. They often used to read the same mysteries, and they would jot down the page number when they had figured it out and who they thought the killer was. He always beat her by at least fifty pages. Margo sighed. She always missed him, like a dull ache in her heart. But at a moment like this, she would give anything…Oh, well, what was the use of wishing. Picking up the phone, she started to dial Eddie’s room. Then she hesitated. Maybe she should wait until morning. She didn’t want to blow this out of proportion. No, she told herself, shaking her head. She knew from a million mysteries that the police didn’t want the trail to get cold in a murder investigation. There was actually not a minute to waste. She resumed dialing Eddie’s room. When he answered, she did not bother with small talk. “Eddie, I need you to help me out. Can you get down here right away and mind the desk for me? There’s something I have to do.” Eddie agreed grumpily, and Margo hung up the phone. Then—she could not help it—she hugged herself with glee. A clue, she thought. I have a clue. It was a mystery lover’s dream come true. She took out her compact mirror and began to touch up her makeup while she waited for Eddie. She wanted to look good for her appearance at the police station.

Karen came up behind her husband and put her arms around his waist. He was wearing his T-shirt, pajama bottoms, and an old plaid bathrobe, and he was studying the contents of the refrigerator.

“You can’t be hungry,” she said. “I’ve got a soggy mass of pizza in my stomach.”

“Actually, I’m looking for something carbonated, for that very reason,” he said.

Karen smiled and rested her cheek against his broad back. “That was a good idea, tonight,” she said.

Greg leaned over, took a bottle of seltzer off the door, and chugged some down from the bottle. “I’m full of good ideas,” he said.

“Well, I enjoyed it. I feel better.”

“That was the object of the game,” he said. “That, and giving our little waif a chance to redeem herself. She looked so pathetic when I picked her up at school today. You never saw a sorrier sight.”

Karen smiled. “I know,” she said. She released him and walked over to the back door, locking it. “I think Pm going up to bed. What a day.”

“It has been quite a day,” Greg admitted. “I feel like we’re going to be all right, though.”

Karen tied a knot in her bathrobe belt and nodded. “Me too,” she said. “And in the end, I guess it was a lot of fuss for nothing. The police obviously didn’t put much stock in Ms. Hodges’s article. They never did show up here.”

“What’s that?” Greg said. He frowned and cocked an ear toward the outside.

Karen heard it, too. She tried to smile. “Famous last words,” she said.

“Mom, Dad,” Jenny cried, clattering down the stairs. She came down the hall to the kitchen and stared at them, her face dead white. “There’s three police cars in the driveway.”

Karen’s heart began to race. Stay calm, she reminded herself. You have nothing to hide. “I was just saying to your father that I didn’t think they were coming,” she said, attempting a self-deprecating tone.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Jenny said miserably.

“It’s okay,” she said to Jenny. “I just wonder why they had to wait until the middle of the night.”

Karen and Greg walked down the hall hand in hand and peered out the front window from behind the curtains. Two black-and-white cars and an unmarked sedan were parked behind Greg’s van in the driveway, their radios squawking. “God, do you think they brought enough manpower?” Karen joked weakly.

“These are storm trooper tactics,” Greg exclaimed. “It’s outrageous, showing up here at this hour.”

“All right,” said Karen. “Let’s just talk to them, and get this over with.” She walked over to the front door and opened it. Walter Ference and Larry Tillman stood on the front steps. There were several officers with flashlights on the lawn behind them.