Murder Never Forgets (20 page)

On the archaeology I think he was pretty good. Maybe very good. His book,
The Coffin Lid Texts: Fourteen Hieroglyphs Reclaimed
caused a stir in archaeology circles. After it came out he went to Egypt a lot. Which was okay, because when he was gone I stayed with Susie and Robbie. And sometimes he took me with him. Twice he took both Robbie and me. Rob discovered Egyptian archaeology in our library when he was fifteen; he was crazy about it. That was a really good year, the first time Daddy took me and Rob to Luxor. We rented a little tan stucco house with tame cockroaches and a big fan in the middle of the living room ceiling; we went every day to the Valley of the Kings, and I wrote things down in notebooks while Daddy and Rob dug. Maybe it was the best year of my life.

But you hate to think you had the best year of your life when you were twelve. That makes you feel like a child gymnast, too old to do those quadruple flips any more.
My future is behind me. The future is prologue.
And all that depressing stuff.

I sit on the bench by the mermaid statue thinking about all this long enough to eat four peppermint Jelly Bellies and to murmur a final salute to the mermaid circle’s former tenant, the long-legged hare, whom Rob has promised to bury beside a clump of wild iris in one of our cliffside meadows.

 
 
My telephone rings. “Carla? You better get over here right away.”

“Who’s this? Where’s here?”

The voice says, “
Who
is Mrs. La Salle and
here
is your father’s apartment—well not his apartment exactly. Outside his apartment.”

Mrs. La Salle sounds upset, which is not like her, and also confused, again atypical. “Hurry up,” she says.

Outside my father’s apartment Mrs. La Salle stands, clutching the ends of a purple-and-blue cloak and looking up. She is making sounds, negative monosyllables like “No,” and “Don’t.” And, twice, “Ed.” Just that, my father’s name. “Thank God,” she says about my arrival, and then, gesturing and flashing bits of chunky jewelry, “Up there.”

Up there
and ahead, along a brick walkway and some mossy stairs, is one of Green Beach’s fake Norman towers. At the top of this tower there’s an arched opening onto a projecting Romeo-and-Juliet balcony; this balcony holds a large terra-cotta flowerpot and a man on one knee balancing a rifle on the balcony rail. He is squinting along the barrel of the rifle and looks as if he’s getting ready to shoot it. The man is my father. He wears his best tie, a navy blue one, his Johns Hopkins tie. The rest of him is complete in a tan tweed suit and vest. Over his right shoulder there’s some kind of a rope or sling. Both he and the rifle look insecure; they wobble and vibrate.

Mrs. La Salle is perhaps safe where she has hidden herself under the overhang of our bay window; she’s still bravely calling up, “No, Ed!” I ask, strangulated, “How do I get up there?”

She points at a door half-hidden in ivy in the base of the tower. I start toward it fast, trying to run unthreateningly so as not to scare my father, who is watching. Meanwhile, I’m talking up at him. “Now, then, just stay put . . . don’t move your finger . . . it’s going to be all right . . .
you’re
going to be all right.” And whatever other feeble-minded cheery thing I can think of to yell as I pull the tower door open (it sticks) and squeeze through, and, feet stumbling and getting in the way of each other, scramble up the metal stairs that circle the inside.

The stairs ring under my feet. Around and around. The wall of the tower is lined in brick, the sort of checkerboard pattern that makes you dizzy when you run fast in a circle. “Daddy, don’t move.”

At the top of the stairs is a circular landing space floored in shiny gray material; its major feature is a view of the balcony with my father framed, dramatizing Shoot-out at the OK Corral.

“Daddy,” I say in the calm voice you’re supposed to use with rabid dogs and small children in danger, “Put the gun down . . . on the floor . . . in front of you. Don’t move your finger. Then step back . . . little steps . . . one at a time. You can do it.”

My heart is pounding so drumlike that I can hardly hear myself. And my father looks like a traditional madman, his normally neat, brushed hair scraggly from the wind, his eyes red. He’s wobbling that weapon. Pointing it off someplace down the road.

“It’s not a gun,” he shouts into the air, “it’s a rifle.” He starts a rhythmic gesturing, he chants: “Here is my rifle, here is my gun; one is for fighting, the other . . .”

This is the second time I’ve seen him look the way an Alzheimer’s patient is supposed to look, that is, crazy and dangerous. “Father. Put it down.”

“Down? Why? They promised me. An e-mail. They need my token.” He waves this out into space; he semaphores.

“Listen. Please.”

“Please? What kind of a word,
please
? They promised.” More space gestures, rifle up, rifle down. I’m behind him, halfway out of the hole at the top of the stairs; I resist an impulse to grab him.

“I could shoot them,” he says. “All of them . . . Good idea,” he adds. “She needs me.”

“Just put it down. We’ll talk.”

“But she
needs
me.”

“Father,
I
need you.”

“Then why is she dead? I knew her. The woman in the net.”

“The woman in the net is over, Daddy.”

“And the woman on the beach. The woman in the net and the woman on the beach. Woman in net. Woman on beach.” He makes a kind of chant of this, gesturing with the rifle to keep time. “Beach . . . net . . . beach . . . net. They said it. My token will help.” He has slid part way back into the room now. “Did you know? They left me a hangman’s noose.”

His gesturing has got the rifle caught in the scalloped balcony rail design. He struggles and tugs.

“Father,” I squawk. “Stop. Don’t pull.” Now I’m up and out of the circular staircase and almost behind him.

He says, “Oh, no,” in a heartstricken voice, as he braces one foot. “Caught,” he wrenches something.

A shot discharges; there’s dust, noise, a sharp dusty smell, and he tumbles backward into the room. Particles settle. A metallic clatter from below signals that the rifle has landed.

My father lies on his back. He says, “Woman in net. Dead, and I couldn’t . . .”

“Father!” I blurt out. I’ve had it. A mixture of fear and irritation overwhelms my social-work approaches. “
Stop
that. I can’t
stand
it.”

And this works. He shifts; he’s lying on his back, half on the balcony, half in the room, a haze of dust and plaster settling around him. He shoves up on one elbow, thinking about this. I can see his mind starting to partly clear; it’s almost two images at once, like a montage in a movie. Slowly his shoulders realign, he straightens, he sighs. And then he pushes entirely away from the balcony. “Well, now.” He almost sounds like Edward Day again.

Which doesn’t help me much. I’m still scared of him and for him.

“Sit here,” I say. There’s a ledge around the inside wall of this landing, I pull him up and shove him on to it. He’s still hanging on to the rope across his shoulder.

“I
didn’t
see her,” he says. “I saw you. And that lady. That particular lady. But I didn’t see
her
. That was a terrible thing. Did I frighten you? I’m so very sorry.”

Yes, you frightened me. I guess this craziness will get worse from now on. “Where did you get that rifle?”

“That? I hope it’s all right. It was a gift. It was sent to me in a package. Wasn’t that nice? It’s quite a good one. Did I frighten you?”

My father isn’t a gun nut, but he knows how a rifle works. He had a rifle in Egypt where it might be useful against jackals and looters; I never saw him fire it, but I guess he knew how. “Yes, you frightened me. Who sent you the rifle?”

“Some friend. A nice gesture.”

From below Mrs. La Salle’s voice wafts up: “Are you all right up there? I have your firearm.” Mrs. La Salle knows enough not to call a rifle a gun.

My father reaches up and touches my face. “I’m truly sorry, dear.”

And all this time, the sweet man has been waiting underneath. That fact mixes with the panic I’ve been feeling, and I get a surge of anger. What business does he have being sweet during a crisis like this? “You must promise me you will never,
never
. . .”

“Oh, but my dear.” His voice is mild. “They sent me an e-mail.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

He shifts his attention to the floor. “Curious. Linoleum. Not suitable.”

“Daddy. Someone
told
you?”

He’s still examining the floor, bent over and scratching with one finger at the crusty surface. “Yes, they. It’s important that it was
they
. Several people. More than one, I believe. I’m an archaeologist, you know. Interesting. Two different layers of time.” He lifts his head. “Here, would you take this rope? It’s beginning to scrape.” And he pulls at the tan rope hanging over his shoulder. The way he’s had it, over one shoulder and down his side, I couldn’t see the back of it, but now that it’s free I recognize that it ends in a kind of loop with a knot at the top. Heavy rope, the kind you’d want for tying a boat to its dock.

He stretches it out and examines it interestedly. “A hangman’s noose. Hard to make. Do you know, I think it was for me?” And he stretches the loop wide, puts his head inside, rests his chin on the knot, and makes a horrible face, eyes crossed and tongue extruded. “Awwk!” he chokes.

I tell him, “Stop it. You’re showing off.” Which is true. It feels good to tell him that.

“Nevertheless, I wasn’t scared,” he says. “And I still have my token.” He crosses his eyes some more, “When you do this they don’t stick, though some people say they will.

“But I wasn’t scared. It seemed too bad, with such a nice rifle. Do you know, I’ve just realized, it might be teatime. I want scones. And vanilla yogurt. I’m
hungry
!”

He
thunks
the rope over to me. Yes, it is a hangman’s noose, no question about it. Made of rope so heavy that the whole arrangement must weigh almost four pounds.

 
 
We take Mrs. La Salle to tea with us. She carries the rifle, hidden under her cashmere cloak, and I carry the rope with most of the noose part under my jacket.

Over the tea table I try several times to elicit details from my father. “Who sent the e-mail? Who said what?”

“It was to help her, you know.”

“But someone sent you the rifle?”

“My dear, apparently.”

“And the noose was in the same package with the rifle?”

“I think he doesn’t want to talk,” Mrs. La Salle observes.

Daddy is breaking his scone into small pieces. I’ve combed his hair and he looks like Edward Day again. “It probably wasn’t very safe. That end board, the one on the edge there, was unsteady.”

“Listen, you
must
remember.”

“Perhaps I tied that knot myself.”

“Let’s just eat,” says Mrs. La Salle. She herself is managing fine, with three cucumber sandwiches and a cappuccino, and the rifle placed crosswise under her chair. She has promised not to talk about this adventure; she understands that management may still want to send Daddy off to the special facility. “You silly man,” she says to him now, approaching a firm, pink-tinged cheek for a kiss.

“It was a symbol of something,” my father says.

I take him back to his room, where I try to find a place to stash the rifle. I finally decide to take it back to my broom closet and stash it behind my cardboard dresser. This isn’t a good place, but nowhere is. A rifle is an inconvenient shape.

The rope can be untied; I can keep it. A lot of people save rope.

 
 
“What in hell was that all about?” Rob asks when I describe the scene to him.

“Trying to scare him,” I say.

“Trying to get him to tell them something,” Rob says.

“Trying to get some object. Find some object.” I say.

“To persuade him to give it to them. The token.” Rob suggests.

“Trying to scare him,” I repeat. “A threat. A hangman’s noose. But he doesn’t seem really scared.”

“He has Alzheimer’s. The response synapses are different.”

“You mean you don’t get scared when you have Alzheimer’s?”

“You can be plenty scared. Really frightened. Obsessive about it. But often it’s irrational. Scared of stuff that isn’t there. Of different things. Not the logical ones.
Hangman’s noose
didn’t connect for him. He knew what it meant, but it didn’t really matter, wasn’t part of his personal mythic history. Now if it were something Egyptian . . .”

“Well,
I’m
scared.”

Rob latches on to this. “Good. Leave. Pack up. Come stay with me.”

“We did this already. No.”

Rob says, “Oh, hell,” and kicks at the dirt near the mermaid statue.

“Were they trying to make him fall?” I ask, after a prickly silence.

“No. They can’t want him dead. Not now. He’s got something they want.”

“Jeez Louise,” I say, imitating Henry the cabdriver, “It’s giving me nightmares.”

“You
should
have nightmares. You’re the stubbornest human being in captivity.” For a minute I think Rob is going to walk off and leave me sitting there, but he doesn’t do that.