To the Manor Dead (8 page)

I went home, went
back to bed, woke up at around eleven, ravenous. I headed over to Abba’s, where I found George sitting at the counter. Before my butt hit the stool, he said, “Dwayne is
divine
, this is
it
, we’re thinking of eloping to Massachusetts.”

“Wouldn’t that make him a polygamist?

“I’m not going to get hung up on semantics.”

“I saw Mad John this morning. He found one of your newts.”

“
Shhhh!
That project’s top secret. Did he really!?” he whispered.

“Yes,” I whispered back.

“That’s almost as exciting as Dwayne.”

Pearl shambled over.

“Morning, Pearl.” Blank stare. “Could I have whatever omelet looks good?”

Pearl pursed her lips and slowly raised her little pad and pencil and wrote … and wrote … and wrote. Then she turned and zombie-walked away.

A couple of minutes later, Abba brought out my omelet.

“You two are not going to believe who called me this morning,” she said. “Vince Hammer’s office. He wants me to cater a small dinner party next weekend. It’s just Vince … and the Livingston family.”

“Boy, he doesn’t waste any time,” I said.

“The freak wants the farm,” George said.

“Badly,” Abba added.

“You’re going to need some help with that dinner party,” I said.

“I am?” Abba said, cocking a skeptical eye.

“You are.”

The Rhinebeck police station
was in a small building on the edge of the county fairgrounds. The front room was wood-paneled, had a couple of driving-safety posters on the wall, felt deserted and very 1950s-ish. I stood at the counter. No one appeared. I could see down a hall with a couple of offices opening up off it. I heard a voice I recognized as Charlie Dunn.

“… nah, gimme the suite with all the trimmings. And I want to go out on a fishing charter every single frigging day. Can you folks arrange that for me? … Good enough. See you next month.” Then he whistled happily, farted loudly, sighed in satisfaction.

“Excuse me?” I called.

After some shuffling, Charlie Dunn appeared in the hallway. He saw me and a look of annoyance flashed across his face, followed by a big, friendly smile.

“Hi there, Ms. Petrocelli.”

“Hello, Chief.”

“What can I do for you today?” he said, reaching the counter.

“I wondered if we could talk about Daphne Livingston’s death?”

“Sure,” he shrugged.

I waited for him to invite me back to his office. He didn’t.

“Can you tell me what your investigation has shown?”

“What investigation?”

“Aren’t you going to perform an autopsy to determine the cause of death?”

“You were there, you saw the cause of death. Poor old Daphne hung herself.”

“Somebody could have done it for her.”

“When was the last time you heard of murder by hanging?”

“So … that’s it?”

“That’s what?”

“The case is closed?”

“Far as I’m concerned.”

“Where’s her body?”

“Daphne was cremated. Those were her brother’s wishes. I understand he’s going to scatter the ashes in the gardens at the farm. It’s the end of an era around these parts. We were all so proud of Daphne, before she …”

“Before she what?”

“Listen, I gotta go supervise my officers, we got six escaped ferrets running around downtown.”

“Don’t you think a possible murder is more important than escaped ferrets?”

There was a long pause.

“This was a suicide, plain and simple,” he said, giving me a smug is-there-anything-else-you-want-to-know? look.

“Isn’t it possible that someone subdued Daphne, lifted her up to the rafters, tied the belt around her neck, and then let her drop?”

“A lot of things are possible. You know, Ms. Petrocelli, I’ve known the Livingston family my entire life. They’re a distinguished family. This has been hard for them.”

“Did you at least write up a report?”

“I did.”

“Can I see it?”

“Course. It’ll be typed up in a few days. Now is there anything else I can help you with, because I’ve got to go deal with those ferrets.”

“No, I guess not.” I looked down at the counter for a moment, drummed my fingers. “Listen, I couldn’t help overhearing. Sounds like you’re going on a fishing trip.”

“Sounds like you’re on one right now.”

“Touché.”

He leaned back on his heels and stuck his thumbs in his belt. “Matter of fact, I am. Florida Keys. Might do a little condo shopping while I’m down there. Pretty word, isn’t it: condo. Short for condo-minium. Good thing they don’t call them miniums, nowhere near as pretty.”

“So you’re close to retiring?”

He smirked. “Might be. I’m definitely retiring this little discussion. I got a job to do.”

“Go easy on the ferrets,” I said.

Franny Van Kirk’s estate
was just a few miles south of Westward Farm. There was a caretaker’s cottage at the entrance and then the drive wound past a pond, some barns, an orchard—everything was neat, but not manicured. I came to the small stone chapel. There were about a half dozen cars in front—most of them Camrys and Volvos. I parked and got out.

The desultory clutch of mourners mingling on the chapel’s front steps were mostly women, mostly ancient, wearing rubber-soled shoes and sans-a-belt slacks—this money was so old it didn’t give a shit. Dazed and moving slowly, most of them looked like they were suffering from some combination of early-stage dementia and late-stage alcoholism.

A woman standing on the front steps stuck out her hand as I approached. “Welcome, I’m Franny Van Kirk.” She gave me a big smile with a manic edge that screamed
I Love My Paxil
. She had to be in her eighties, with beautifully mottled and deeply lined skin, green eyes, wispy gray hair.

“Hi, I’m Janet Petrocelli.”

“A friend of Daphne’s?”

I nodded.

“Wait a minute, are you the one who discovered Daphne’s body?”

“Yes.”

She clutched my hands in hers. “We have to talk. I’m serving tea down in the house after the service. Can you come?”

I nodded.

“Good. Now I better get in.”

At the back of the chapel there were two large easels holding boards with photographs and mementos of Daphne’s life pinned on them. They told a fascinating story. There she was on the lawns of Westward Farm, a beautiful child living in a lost world. The pictures followed her at birthday parties, on boats, in hotel ballrooms—in all of them she was luminous, enormous eyes, radiant smile. Then she was a teenager and something changed in her face, a tightness around her mouth, a wariness in her eyes—and now she was walking a desegregation picket line, in an avant-garde play, sulking at a family dinner; a yellowed newspaper article announced her arrest for chaining herself to the gates of a nuclear power plant.

Then there was another incarnation—a picture book on the table,
Swinging London
, opened to a picture of Daphne partying with Mick Jagger and Mary Quant. Beside that was a small book of poems,
Movements in the Now and Then
by Daphne Livingston, and a catalogue for a show of her watercolors held in Aix-en-Provence. The other easel held a pulpy movie poster, in Spanish—
Viaje Aspero
, Rough Journey—showing Daphne sitting on an enormous suitcase beside an empty road, looking glamorous, longing, lost. And then the pictures stopped. There was no record of the last twenty-five years of her life, when, according to Abba, she had descended into the netherworld.

I’d had clients like that, people who were fighting hard to tame their demons and stay in the game, but were always being pulled downward by voices buried deep in their psyches—seductive voices urging them to give up, give in, cross over. What made them sympathetic to me was that they did fight, just as Daphne so clearly had.

And then at some point she had surrendered.

“Welcome, everyone, to this remembrance of Daphne’s life,” Franny Van Kirk said from the altar. I slipped into the last pew. The chapel was chilly and smelled of moist old stone, there were cobwebs in the rafters, and one of the stained glass windows was cracked.

“I’m so sorry that none of the Livingstons are with us this morning,” Franny said. The mourners, bunched together in the front pews, exchanged glances. “Those of us who knew Daphne when she was young will never forget her radiance, her passion, her rebellion. When she was growing up, we had an informal reading group, just the two of us. I remember when she discovered Colette. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen, and she just ignited. One day she said to me, ‘Franny, a woman’s place is wherever the hell she wants it to be.’ After that it was all Paris-Paris-Paris. Well, she got Paris, didn’t she? …” Her voice caught and she took a breath. “When she finally came home, back to the valley, I was hoping she had at last found peace … goodbye, dear girl, goodbye.”

Another ancient gal, much less
compos mentis
than Franny, shuffled to the front of the chapel and told vague, rambling stories of long-ago weddings and picnics. Then a bleary priest said the Lord’s Prayer and led a desultory little hymn that no one seemed to know the lyrics to—all I could make out were the obligatory “grace” and “glory.” That was it. This was a dying tribe that could barely muster the energy to go through the motions.

Everyone filed out of the chapel and began the short walk down the hill to the house. Like Westward Farm, it sat on a rise overlooking the river and was enormous, but less assertive, a warm umber brick with white trim and shutters.

I noticed a showroom-fresh Cadillac parked in the drive, looking out of place. A small old woman was leaning against the car—she had a lumpy, bitter face behind enormous designer sunglasses, framed by a stiff red wig. She was wearing a fancy magenta pantsuit, smoking a cigarette and talking on her cell phone. As she saw us approaching she tossed away the cigarette, got off the phone, and hastened into the far door of the house.

I followed the crowd inside. We moved through a series of stodgy, dated formal rooms—the décor was Early Dust—and ended up in a windowed sunroom that overlooked the lawn, the river, and the distant Catskills.

There was a table set with a coffee urn, a teapot, and plates of Fig Newtons and Lorna Doones. The woman I’d seen out by the Cadillac appeared and took up position behind the table. Close up, she was squat and bowlegged, a little younger than Franny, and had put a frayed floral apron on over her flashy pantsuit. The mourners greeted her with “Hello, Ethel.”

Franny appeared and took my arm; the dame had a grip like a pincer. She led me down a hallway, through a pantry and into a huge old kitchen. She opened a standing freezer and took out a bottle of Beefeater’s. She poured an inch into a glass and downed it. She looked over her shoulder, lowered her voice, and said, “Daphne
did not
kill herself.”

“Okay …”

“She called me the day before she died. It was unusual, she’s been very reclusive since she moved back, I rarely heard from her. And she just wanted to chitchat. Daphne Livingston never chitchated in her whole bloody life. She was too busy
living
. Well, we went on about nothing, people we both knew, the old families, and I slowly sensed this desperation from her, a fear. My blood ran cold.” She poured herself another shot, went to the fridge and took out a small bottle of capers, shook a half dozen into her gin, and took a sip. “I asked her if everything was all right, and she said ‘fine’, that she was thinking about doing a little traveling. She was very vague as to where—she mentioned the Yucatan. I was worried and invited her over for dinner the following Saturday. She agreed. But of course by Saturday she was dead.” She took another sip of her drink. “I’ve known Daphne since the day she was born, she was a very talented girl, terrifically alive, but with that cursed Livingston blood. I knew she was in bad shape, but if she was thinking of suicide would she have reached out to me, would she have accepted my dinner invitation?”

“Shouldn’t you be telling this to the police?”

“The police are useless. They don’t want any trouble, there hasn’t been a murder around here in, well,
ever
as far as I know. And I don’t trust anyone in her family. That Godfrey is a bad penny. I honestly wouldn’t put it past him to murder his sister. Everyone knows he burned down the staff house at Westward Farm so he could collect the insurance. He has a criminal mind, he’s half-mad, a degenerate.”

“I think Daphne had fallen pretty low herself. I understand she was using heroin.”

She took a long swallow of her gin. “Oh, dear. I knew she was in bad shape and I heard all sorts of rumors about her years in Morocco, but
heroin
.” She perched on the top rung of a stepladder. “Well, it’s not surprising, considering. Her mother was a dear friend of mine.
Vile
woman. She was very jealous of Daphne, wanted to destroy her. Well, she didn’t have to. She made sure that Daphne would destroy herself.”

Ethel appeared in the kitchen with her antennae twitching. She was so peculiar looking in that fancy magenta pantsuit, just-done matching nails, coiffed wig, and that heavily made-up Mrs. Potato Head face.

“Janet Petrocelli, Ethel Dunn. Janet was the one who discovered Daphne’s body.”

“I know that,” Ethel grunted. “And I say: don’t stick your nose where it don’t belong.”

“That’s ridiculous, Ethel, what if Daphne was murdered?” Franny said.

“So what? She’s dead, let her lie.”

“Lay.”

“Yeah-yeah. If you want to stir up a lot of crap, go right ahead. Daphne was a miserable old hag. She probably wants to kiss whoever killed her … if she
was
killed, that is. I’m not saying she was. Now I have work to do.” She grabbed a fresh bag of Lorna Doones and marched out of the kitchen.

“Pay no attention to Ethel, she’s an absurd creature. I only keep her on because she’s the only one who knows where the hell anything is in this house.”

“Is she by any chance related to the sheriff, Charlie Dunn?”

“Brother and sister.”

“She drives a nice car.”

“She just bought it. And about a dozen ridiculous outfits. Her brother seems to have suddenly come into some money.” She lowered her voice again. “Let’s go outside a minute.” She led me through a mudroom and out to a fieldstone patio—lawns, the river, the Catskills all spread in front of us.

“What an amazing view,” I said.

“I’m sick of it. I wish I could move to Timbuktu. But it’s much too late for that.” She sat on a stone bench. “It’s not that I’m depressed, but I am
bored
… in spite of volunteering with the League of Women Voters, the Clearwater, the library, and every other goddamn good work within fifty miles.” She smiled ruefully. “I wish I could have been more like Daphne. Now she
lived
. In every way. I did what was expected of me. Do you know the only man I ever slept with was my husband? He was a kind man, but he repulsed me. He had this awful pasty little penis, it reminded me of a garden slug.” She shuddered and then raised her glass. “Rest in peace, darling.” She took a long sip. “Gin is God. But back to Daphne. I want to get to the bottom of what
really
happened to her.”

“I feel the same way.” We looked at each other, connected. “In fact, I’ve started nosing around a little.”

“Have you really?”

I gave her a report on what I’d learned.

“I want to help. Why don’t I finance your investigation?”

“I couldn’t let you do that.”

“I’m rich, Janet.”

“But I’d feel beholden.”

“Oh, bosh to beholden. If you come up empty, so be it.” My finances
were
pretty shaky. “I’ll give you a check for five thousand dollars today. Just keep me posted on your progress and let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“Are you
sure
you feel comfortable doing this?”

“I’m really
quite
rich.”

“You talked me into it.”

Franny polished off her gin, stood up, stuck out her hand. We shook.

“I’m doing this for Daphne, of course, but also for me. It makes me feel alive,” she said.

“That’s a wonderful feeling.”

“It’s what we all want, isn’t it?” She looked out at the landscape. “Suddenly even this tired old view looks fresh. Speaking of fresh …” She raised her glass.

As we headed inside she turned to me. “Do you know the secret of a happy old age?”

“No.”

“There isn’t one.”