Mulch (13 page)

“But if we do,” she yelled at the closed door, “it will be no thanks to you!”

W
HEN
L
OUISE OPENED HER EYES THE FIRST
things she saw were the white knobs on the antique dry sink across the room. Then she became aware of the flat, hard pain in her temples. Awakening with a headache in the morning, she long ago concluded, was the price long-legged women paid in return for being blessed with ectomorphic frames. Still only half awake, she could not feel her body and long legs, which for all she knew could be curled up against her chin. The only
reality was her head with its ache. She kept it still. Only her eyes moved a little, noting the white Egyptian cotton spread on top of her body, the white percale sheet next to her cheek. What was wrong? Something was wrong, but for an instant she couldn’t think why. She lifted her head off the pillow, squinted her eyes, and looked around, as if the answer lay in this serene bedroom with its gray carpeting, its white walls, its taupe blinds, its peach-colored boudoir chair.

Then yesterday came back like the sudden reappearance of a monster. “Oh, nooo …” With one motion she sat up on the edge of the bed, her pink charmeuse nightie twisted uncomfortably beneath her, the headache following her up as if it were attached with springs. She murmured, “It’s true, it happened.” She raked her fingers through her brown hair, then brought them forward and massaged her temples with careful little pushes, since it seemed so easy to rub right through there to the inside. Then she pulled her head up and straightened her back.

“Geraghty. The detective’s coming. And that moron with him … Morton.” She looked at the bedside clock. “Oh, God.” Kicking blindly under the bed her feet somehow found her satin mules. She slipped them on and staggered to an upright position. Then she headed for the bathroom to find life-giving aspirin.

Medicated, she proceeded with careful steps down the hall and opened Janie’s door a crack. Her daughter was curled up, head covered, still asleep. Louise hesitated, incapable of decision. Then she walked back to her room and dressed in fresh underwear and socks and yesterday’s trousers and shirt, and
went to the kitchen to find that Bill had made a large pot of coffee. “Bless you, Bill,” she muttered.

A movement in the backyard caught her eye, but she did not look out. She had accepted the fact that the world was no longer normal, and there probably was a whole beehive of police activity out there. If she didn’t move her head too quickly or nose into it too much, it might all go away.

She focused instead on a microworld: Bill’s comforting beaker-shaped glass coffeemaker filled with aromatic mahogany-colored liquid. And her coffee mug reading “She Who Must Be Obeyed” that he had set out nearby for her use. She concentrated hard on pouring out a small third of a cup as a starter, then struggled to the refrigerator to add a dollop of cream. Then she leaned her elbows on the counter and cradled the cup in her hands like a small, precious prize and drank.

Two more cups and she might live.

The doorbell rang.

Detective Gcraghty was alone. His large body filled the doorway. Louise looked at him and had to blink. He was dazzling. Rosy cheeks, roundish nose, bright white hair, bright blue eyes. Except for fifty extra pounds, the picture of health. “G’morning, Mrs. Eldridge. Sorry Detective Morton couldn’t come.”

“Well, I’m not.” Her eyes flashed. “Come in. Would you like coffee? I’m just starting mine.”

Geraghty settled down at the dining room table again. After laborious efforts that seemed to take forever, she brought a tray that included buttered toast. “I’m sorry … I just got out of bed a few minutes ago. I—I’m not in very good shape. And I have to tell you, Janie isn’t awake yet. I don’t feel like
waking her for you.” She looked at Geraghty to see how this struck him.

He nodded his head to show that he had heard but didn’t necessarily agree. Louise went on, encouraged. “Everything was just too much for us. None of us could get to sleep until very late. And the TV trucks! Their lights all over the place. The street full of reporters.” Again her eye caught a movement in the yard and she turned and stared out at her little piece of woods, all outlined with garish yellow police tape. Two policemen were slowly walking in a line, their eyes poring over the ground, in their hands rakes with which they gently moved leaves around. An ancient picture of reapers came to her mind.

She looked at Geraghty and he nodded. “Our men have been out there for some time, examining the yard for further evidence.” He leaned forward and put his boxing-glove-sized hands on the table in front of him. “Mrs. Eldridge, I’m not surprised you didn’t sleep last night. Let me give you some advice. The reporters may or may not ease off after a few days. Just remember: You have no obligation to say anything to them at all. I advise you to listen to the answering machine before you pick up on phone calls … at least for a few weeks. But the press—especially Channel Nine—they’re going to hang around like ghouls until we solve this crime.” He patted her shoulder. “So just acquire a thick skin for a while. Your family has been thrown into the world of crime … no fault of your own, most likely.”

He patted her hand for emphasis. “We aren’t trying to persecute you and your family. But we do have to get all the answers to the questions we have.” He carefully withdrew his
hand and proceeded to drink his coffee, all the time looking at her with his blue marblelike eyes.

Louise sighed. “Thanks. That makes me feel better, Detective Geraghty, that you don’t suspect us. It seems so ridiculous. It’s bad enough what happened.” She touched her stomach. She felt primitive: hungry, headachy, unbathed, wearing yesterday’s clothes. Then she took a piece of toast and spread it with a little homemade jam. “Now you go ahead. Ask your questions.” She gave him a fleeting smile and took a big bite of toast.

Geraghty looked more sober now. His smile was gone. “Well, ma’am, I told you I thought this situation was no fault of your own. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some suspicion attached to someone in this house….”

Louise gulped the toast down her unwilling esophagus.

The lawman leaned forward as much as his stomach would allow. “The reason being that in the majority of crimes, the perpetrator is someone nearby—in the same family, in the same house, maybe in the same neighborhood in this case.”

He extended both large hands outward in a gesture of helplessness. “That means we have to do a thorough check of this family, this yard, all your movements … and all your past associations.”

In a low voice, Louise said, “Incredible.”

Geraghty readjusted himself in the chair and looked down at the table. “I am afraid that although this check will include you and even your daughter, it will focus heavily on your husband.” He looked up at her, his face redder than usual.

She felt queasy again. “Tell me just why that is.”

“Well, the body is a woman’s, relatively young. Young
woman killed; points to a man usually. Only rarely another woman. Dismemberment points to a man, except … for some historic exceptions.”

Louise’s voice was dull. “This was a young woman. Who was she?”

Geraghty hesitated, then said, “We don’t know that yet. You know we found only about half of her body: two freckled forearms, two upper arms, part of a leg, and part of a torso. No head. No feet. No hands … hands are gone.”

Louise began breathing deeply through her mouth. “Oh, God,” she said, rested an elbow on the table, and put a hand over her mouth.

“Mrs. Eldridge, you’re not feeling well.” The detective leaned forward solicitously.

She took her hand away from her face. “I don’t. But it’s all right, Detective Geraghty. I want to get on with this and get it over. Exactly what do you want to know about us?”

“Not us, Mrs. Eldridge. I want to know about you. So why don’t you just finish your breakfast there, and then we’ll take a little ride around the route where you picked up leaf bags. That way we can kill two birds with one stone.”

Louise winced at his use of “kill,” but then returned to her toast and coffee and finished it with gusto.

When they walked out the front door, Louise put her nose up and breathed in the cold, fresh air. “Aah, air. Life-giving air.” She felt like a new woman. Geraghty glanced at her and said nothing. When they climbed into the unmarked black car, Louise was assaulted with the rank odor left behind by countless cigarettes. She struggled into her seat, fastened the seat
belt, and clawed at the crank with both hands to open the window. It wouldn’t move.

“Don’t smoke, huh?” said Geraghty. “I don’t either, but a lot of the other boys do. That window doesn’t open, by the way. But I’ll open mine.” With one hand he rolled the window down; with the other he turned up the collar on his worn, brown wool coat. “Now,” he said matter-of-factly, “you’re the navigator. Let’s retrace all your travels. Do we start by going into Washington and Bethesda?” He handed over to her a pen and a small pad of paper. “This might help.”

As they traveled she jotted a list. She concluded that she and her family had stopped to get leaves at seven different locations, the first in Washington.

As Geraghty drove into Washington on the George Washington Parkway he asked Louise about her work experiences.

She chose her words carefully as she listed their tours of duty with the State Department: Turkey, Israel, Washington, London, Paris, New York, then Washington again. “We’ll probably finish this tour about the time Janie starts college and then be assigned overseas again.”

“So he’s been around. What’s his title, exactly?”

“Political officer. These days, on the European desk at State.”

“Now, that still leaves unanswered my question about your work experience and how you met your husband.”

“I graduated from Northwestern, and then took some graduate summer classes at Georgetown. That’s when I met Bill—he was a Kennedy School of Government student at Harvard, visiting Georgetown’s International Institute. He
kind of swept me off my feet, and we were married August twenty-third, right after he completed his course work.”

She fell silent. Funny how she could remember times and places, whereas Bill often forgot their August anniversary, making amends with a lavish late present when he did remember. What was it about men, and remembering family events? Sometimes she felt a keen dividing line between them: He was CEO and controller, and she was secretary in charge of keeping everything else straight.

“And then?” Geraghty prodded.

Louise’s mind returned to her chronology. “Martha was born in Washington a year later, and by that time Bill was with … the Foreign Service.” It was easy for her to slide over Bill’s secret spy role with the CIA, since she had twenty years of practice dissembling. “We immediately picked up and moved overseas. Then Janie was born three years later, when we were posted again in Washington. We went back to the Middle East for a couple of years. Back and forth, back and forth—that’s about it.”

“You haven’t mentioned a career for yourself.” The detective’s florid face was in silhouette; it seemed as if he were avoiding eye contact. He rolled his window back up, as if to give himself something further to distract him.

“I haven’t worked outside the home,” she said, looking at him in case he looked at her. She did not want to appear to be apologizing.

How could she have worked, seesawing back and forth on the oceans with two small children? She added hastily, “But I’ve done a little freelance writing. I’m trying to get some writing assignments around here.”

“Oh,” said Geraghty, with a condescending tone, the kind that nonwriters give to writers to convey interest in something that actually bores them silly.

Geraghty. There he sat, bright, shining, healthy-looking, and, above all, law-abiding. Looking over at her, unwashed, hair unkempt, jacket worn, sneakers dirty, and somehow guilty until proven innocent.

“So. Where do you do your writing?”

Between his “oh” and “so” was a world of time. Louise felt her face flush.

“In the hut,” she said in a curt voice.

“The hut being that extension of your house across from your front door? It looks like part of the house, until you get close. By the way, why don’t you attach it to the house? Would it be that hard?”

She gazed over at him, wondering if she could ever like such a simpleminded man. “We like it separate.” She bit out the words. “Anyway, it’s connected with a big pergola. Did you notice the pergola?” How could you
miss
it, she thought snappishly. It was huge, and the architectural focal point of the entire house.

“Pergola, that’s what you call that archway? I thought it was just a grape arbor without grapes. Okay, okay.” He moved uncomfortably in his seat and the car swerved a little, a first time for the detective; he was a skillful driver. “Mrs. Eldridge, don’t get too annoyed with me.” He shot a boyish glance at her; she saw that his good nature was not in the least disturbed. “I’m just asking questions. You can tell me if you object to something I say.”

“I don’t mean to be difficult. It’s just this headache, but it’s going away. Ask me anything.”