The Dog Who Knew Too Much (16 page)

“What are you talking about?” I asked him.

He leaned over the counter. “Well, I guess they had some kind of fight, you know, a breakup, like over the holidays. But he kept coming around for a while, asking if Ms. Jacobs was home. But when I went to ring her, he always said, Never mind, and he'd just leave. I was really embarrassed for the guy, coming around like that but not even calling up. It was pretty humiliating.”

“And he'd go wait across the street, like until she walked the dog?”

“No, it was way later, like after midnight. Ms. Jacobs, she never walked Charlie that late unless she worked late and Charlie's last walk was the walk home. This was when my shift was over. Twelve thirty, one o'clock.”

“When you were leaving for the night?”

“Yeah, right. I'd see him, not right here, you know, not so obvious, but way on the other side of the ball field, where the bums hang out?”

“You mean the boccie court?”

“Around there, right. I'd see him, you know, lurking in the shadows, like leaning on a tree, a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, like I wouldn't recognize him, right? It was real dramatic, like something out of a movie, you know what I mean, the ex-boyfriend watching the building, standing there all alone, just staring like that. Gave me the creeps.”

“But he never came late, used a key to get in?”

“No, ma'am.”

“How do you know?”

“We're covered here twenty-four hours. If the night man is late, I wait. We never leave the door uncovered. I would have seen him.”

Of course, he had missed me coming in with Paul.

“He just stayed there and watched? How long?”

“From, you know, after they broke up to until she died. Sad thing, about her dying, your cousin. Such a pretty girl. Always considerate, too. Not like some of them,” he said, tilting his head toward the elevator doors to indicate those residents who were less considerate than my cousin Lisa.

“I meant, how long did he stand there? Ten minutes? An hour?”

“Oh, that I couldn't tell you, Ms. Alexander. I don't know how long he was there because I stay behind the desk, you know. So I only noticed him when I was leaving. But figure it was winter, right, so how long could he a stood it out there in the cold?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Musta been really stuck on her, your cousin, to take the breakup so hard.”

“You mean to stand out there in the cold watching her windows?”

“Yeah, and all the stuff he sent.”

“Stuff?”

“The flowers, for example. A half dozen roses, sometimes a dozen, two, three times a week. All like this, with no card,” he said, pointing to my roses. “The delivery guy would have his slip with Ms. Jacobs's name and the address, but there was never one of those little envelopes pinned to the cellophane. Like Ms. Jacobs was fooled. You know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“There were presents, too. I mean, money was no object. Little packages used to come, UPS, just her name and address on them, never a return address. She worked late sometimes, Ms. Jacobs, so I'd hold them here for her. Once she opened one in front of me. It was, you know, from Tiffany's, in that little blue box they have, with a white ribbon tied in a perfect bow on top, kind of thing you women go crazy for, am I right? But Ms. Jacobs, she didn't go crazy for it. She was
pissed
. ‘Can I leave this with you, Eddie?' she said, and she left the box and the ribbon for me to put in the trash, but, you know,” he leaned over again and whispered, “I didn't. I took it home. I'm saving it for my girlfriend's birthday. I'll get her something, put it in the Tiffany box, you know what I mean?” He winked.

I forced a smile. “So what was in it? What'd he send her?”

“A silver bracelet, with a heart on it, and some writing. I didn't get to see what it said, but she, your cousin, she rolled her eyes when she read it, put it back in the little blue bag, and stuffed it in her pocket. There was some other stuff too, but that was the only one she opened here. That was the last one,” he said. “That one came right before she did it, a day or two before.”

“And then afterward, Mr. Wilcox wasn't around? You never saw him again?”

“Not until tonight, forty, forty-five minutes ago, when he left.”

“Thanks, Eddie.”

Lisa's daddy had done well by her. The Printing House was like living in the fucking Plaza. They had maid service, if you wanted it, and you could drop off your laundry and dry cleaning at the desk and have it back, clean and ready, by the time you got home from work. If you needed gossip, protection, opinions about your private life, that was available, too. I wondered if you could put your shoes out in the hall at night and find them back and polished in the morning.

“Can you hold the flowers another minute for me, Eddie. I forgot something upstairs.”

“Sure I can. Anything you say, Ms. Alexander. Anything to help.”

Back at Lisa's apartment, I took the steps two at a time, opened the second drawer of Lisa's jewelry box, and took the silver bracelet out of the robin's-egg-blue bag. I opened the clasp and put it on, feeling the silver warm up where it was touching my skin.

I turned the heart over and read the inscription.

There wasn't a scratch on it, no patina from use. Lisa hadn't worn the bracelet. But I would. Like it or not, I had taken over where she'd left off.

Down in the lobby, I picked up the roses. Outside, where Eddie could no longer see me, I lifted them to my face and inhaled their perfume.

Never, I remember Frank saying, holding my shoulders and looking into my eyes as he spoke, never go to bed with a suspect until you find out who the murderer is.

I had nodded dutifully.

And it's someone else, he'd added.

Right, Frank, I'd said. And what number law is that?

Sex is no laughing matter, he'd said, shaking his head. In this job, it can kill you.

Who did I think I was, walking down Hudson Street with a dozen roses in the crook of my arm, fucking Miss America?

When I got to the corner, I pitched the bouquet into the trash basket. Then Dashiell and I headed home.

20

I Don't Know Anything for Sure

I overslept on Thursday morning. There was barely time to call Lisa's mother and check out my landlords' house before getting to school for a noon instructor's session with Avi.

Once a week or so, Dashiell and I went through the Siegals' town house to make sure that no homeless person had noticed it was empty and decided that sleeping indoors under crisp percale sheets would be preferable to sleeping in a cardboard box on a grate on the sidewalk. I even checked the smoke alarm, which was admittedly ridiculous since, should it go off, no one would be there to hear it. But Norma had a thing about smoke alarms, and in New York City you don't argue over an easy job that gets you a terrific place to live at an affordable rent.

Everything was covered with dust and grime. When I got back to the cottage, I called the cleaning service and arranged for them to come the first of May, which is when the Siegals usually showed up to spend a month or two in the city before heading out to the beach. And in an extravagant gesture, I told them I'd like my house cleaned as well this time.

Wearing my own clothes, and nothing of Lisa's, I headed for Bank Street. Once inside, I ran up the stairs, following behind Dash. Rounds had started, and I walked in on a startling scene. There were Janet, Stew, and Howie, each with a string of bubble gum running from the tip of the nose to the
t'an t'ien
, a spot a couple of inches beneath their belly buttons.

“Nose-navel alignment,” Avi said without turning. I watched him watching me in the mirror. “Gum's on the coffee table. Chew it first.” Just like my mother, I thought, always assuming I had the mental prowess of an idiot.

“The gum will remind you to keep your nose where it belongs,” he added, rather personally, I thought. My nose was everywhere, usually in someone else's business, and that was precisely where I wanted it.

After class the other teachers all went to change their shoes and get back to work. “Gotta run,” Janet said, looking at her watch. She caught my eye and winked, mouthing, “See you at five.” When they had all gone, Avi motioned me to follow him into his office.

“How is your project coming along, Rachel?” he whispered, even though we were all alone.

“I don't know anything for sure,” I said.

“Excellent,” he said, then he sat and turned his full attention to his computer.

It was one thirty. If I was going to get to Sea Gate on time, I had to hustle. After passing muster with the guard at the gate, I headed not for the Jacobses' house but to the beach. Marsha was already there, standing by the gate, a scarf covering her hair, a bag of groceries in her arms. I parked the car and went to join her.

“I told David I had to do some shopping,” she said, hiking up the bag of food and looking terrified. “What did you want to tell me?”

I took the bag of groceries and set it down on the ground. “Walk with me,” I said, looking down at her stockings and heels after I did so. She slipped off her shoes, leaving them next to the bag of groceries. I took off my running shoes and sweat socks and gave them to her to put on, feeling the coolness of the sand as I did.

She took my arm, and we walked down the beach, then headed to our right, where the spit of land that is this private community abuts Gravesend Bay.

“I wanted to see you without David because I thought that if you were alone—”

“David would be very upset with me if he knew about this. Very angry.”

“Why is that, Marsha?”

I felt the envelopes I had brought with me in my pocket, all that was left of Lisa's mail after I'd pitched the catalogs and junk mail and filed the bills for her parents to deal with later.

“Certain things, he says, belong in the family, only in the family.” She lifted her free hand and wiped her cheeks. “But I know you can't really help us if you don't know the truth. Your aunt Ceil said we should trust you completely. But we haven't done that. We've kept secrets from you.”

I took the envelopes from my pocket, the one I'd slid out from between the couch cushions after Paul had left and the one I'd found in the pile of mail I'd gone through later.

“What is that?” she asked.

I showed her the contents of both envelopes.

“I knew that one day I would have to talk to you myself. I am only ashamed that I waited for you to call.”

For a moment, there was only the sound of the seagulls, their beaks wide open as they cawed loudly to each other.

“When you asked about Lisa's note to us—”

“The suicide note?” I asked.

Marsha nodded. We walked past the jetty, where there was a small pool of water caught between the rocks and the sloping shore. Dashiell began fishing for crabs, and I called him to follow us as we slowly headed toward the bay, the light so bright it was difficult to see.

“We had seen her several times in the months before, and there had been many phone calls, more than usual. She was usually so busy, she'd only come on the holidays, and only call once a week. Sometimes less. Her father would try to call her in between, but he would only get the answering machine. She worked such long hours at the school, she couldn't return her calls the same day. Sometimes not for several days. David would get impatient and call her at school, too, but there they do not answer the phone when they are teaching or practicing t'ai chi, and Lisa told us they were always doing one or the other.”

“But then something changed?”

“Yes. She started calling more often, then she came to see us, because she had something on her mind.”

I stopped walking, loosened my arm from Marsha's, and turned to face her.

“China,” she said. “Again, China.” She began to weep, covering her face with both hands.

I put the airline ticket, one-way, to Beijing and the signed contract to sell the condo back into my pocket, then took off my jacket and spread it on the sand for Marsha to sit on so that she wouldn't ruin her good coat. And for a while, my arm around her, she cried against my shoulder. When she sat back up, eyes swollen and pink, her lips were shaking, her hands, too.

“Tell me what happened, Marsha.”

“Lisa came to visit us, at the holidays, for Hannukah, in December, and she told us she was going to go to China.”

I reached for her hands.

“Not to visit,” Marsha said, her voice cracking. “To live.”

When I'd first seen the envelope from a travel agent, I had assumed it was like the ones I get, junk mail, a brochure touting a guided tour to Africa or a discount trip to Rome with Mr. Italy. I'd assumed, even though the fifth law of investigative work is, Don't jump to conclusions. I'd also assumed all those letters from real estate brokers were like the ones my landlords always got, letters that started, “Dear Owner, If you've been thinking of selling your apartment, if you've ever wondered what it would be worth in today's seller's market …” But one of them had been a countersigned contract to sell the condo Lisa's father had bought for her so that she could walk to work.

“This didn't make her father very happy, did it?”

“He was wild. Just like the first time. Saying the same things. Only now Lisa was a woman, not a child. She didn't
need
his permission, his approval. Perhaps that's what she
wanted
, for her father to approve of her decision, to give her emotional support. But that is not what happened.”

Her head was down, the scarf covering part of her face; her arms clutched each other, and she rocked as she spoke.

“She, too, flew into a rage. ‘Daddy,' she said to him, ‘I'm a grownup now. This time you can't force me to do what
you
want me to.' ‘It's for your own good,' he said, just like before, when she was a student, a young girl, ‘for your protection.' She jumped up from where she was sitting, Rachel. ‘This time I'm going,' she said, cold, like the inside of a refrigerator. And she was gone. Out of the house. I thought we wouldn't hear from her or see her for a long time. Or ever. I thought she might just go, and never write us. But she called, she pleaded, she explained, she wanted so much for David to let her go with his blessing. She was not so grownup that she didn't still need this from her father.”