Beyond Midnight (68 page)

"
Aunt Mary. . . you were in such a hurry,
"
she said softly,
"
that you doubled up on your panty hose. I
'
ve done the same thing myself. Why don
'
t you take them both off? You
'
ll be so much cooler.
"

The elderly woman looked at her feet with astonishment.
"
For heaven
'
s sake.
"
Her lined, pale cheeks rouged to pale pink. She looked at her niece, her eyes watery with tears, and said,
"
It
'
s the same at the
Senior
Center
. I can
'
t remember any of the steps to the dances. . . any of the rules to the games.
Lena
,
"
she said fearfully,
"
what will I do? Tell me what to do.
"

Helen stooped down to eye level with her aunt and took her trembling hands in hers.
"
You can go with me to the doctor on Tuesday,
"
she said urgently.
"
You can get tests
;
this isn
'
t as bad as you think. Sometimes there are perfectly good reasons for people to be forgetful. Plus, look at all the stress we
'
re going through! My God—half the time I don
'
t know if I
'
m coming or going!
"

"
Yes
...
yes,
"
Aunt Mary said vaguely.
"
It
'
s so hard to remember everything nowadays. Such a busy summer
...
so many people. Oh! Peaches Bartholemew called,
"
she said, suddenly remembering.
"
She was looking for Nat. At nine in the morning! Here! It was almost rude.
"

Now it was Helen
'
s turn to rouge up.
"
Did she say what she wanted?
"

"
No. She asked for you, too, but I told her you
'
d gone to the herbalist
'
s. You know
...
her voice is so familiar. I
'
m sure I
'
ve heard it before. But I know I haven
'
t met her. Have I?
"
she added timidly.

Helen shook her head, then said,
"
Unless it was at the Ice Cream Social.
"

Her aunt pursed her lips.
"
I don
'
t think so. I would
'
ve remembered her name. It
'
s so unusual.
'
Peaches.
'
What does she look like?
"

"
Very beautiful. She dresses well. Long, auburn hair; she sometimes wears it in a braid, or a twist. She
'
s tall. Good figure.
"

It was amazing, in fact, that Nat had been able to resist her.

In the meantime, Helen
'
s aunt was frowning fiercely, her nose scrunched up, her mouth pressed firm, trying to place the voice with the face that Helen was describing. She looked like a contestant on
Jeopardy.

"
I know!
"
she cried, clapping her hands together.
"
I remember!
"
Her face became utterly joyous, younger by twenty years.

"
It
was
at the Ice Cream Social. I thought she said she was someone
'
s mother, not their nanny; but maybe I misunderstood her. She was, oh yes, I remember now, very interested in everything. And she said nice things about you, what a good mother you seemed to be; and
I
know I was bragging, dear, but I told her how you were bringing up the children so well by yourself
...
how you made Russell do chores for his allowance, and how Becky had to help with her car expenses by baby-sitting—I even told her you made them clean up the statue! Oh, I went on and on about you, dear. I think I bored her to tears. She hardly got a word in edgewise. I remember now! I do!
"

The rumors about Satanism: Peaches was there.

The rumors about Linda: Peaches was there.

The rumors about Nat: Peaches was there.

Helen jumped up.
"
My God! How could I have been so stupid! It never occurred to me that
she
might want to bring me down. I
'
d never have guessed her motive! But she must have seen, way before I did, how Nat felt. Compared to what she
'
d a
l
ready done, the Satanism—the cat—was child
'
s play! An amusing way for her to get me out of the picture!
"

She had another thought.
"
Aunt Mary! Did you tell her about all those weird soups you make? Did you tell her about the duck soup?
"

"
The
czarnina?
I may have. I remember she was curious about my last name
...
but then, she was curious about everything. We did talk about Polish food
, I know."

"
Oh my God.
"

"
Was that the wrong thing to do?
"
Aunt Mary said fearfully.

"
No, no, no. Don
'
t worry about it. You
'
ve helped me a lot.
"

She ran back to the phone and pressed the redial button. Busy. Damn it!

Turning to her startled aunt, she cried,
"
Stay right here. I
'
m going to Nat
'
s. We
'
ve got her, Aunt Mary! We
'
ve got her!
"

Helen ran out of the house with no more explanation than that. In the few minutes that it took to negotiate summer traffic between her house and
Chestnut Street
, she had more than enough time to work herself up into a belated fury. What had been mistrust, then loathing, now turned into a kind of full-blown outrage. Helen was beyond itemizing the injustices by this time; all she knew was that Peaches was evil, and she had to be locked away.

She rounded the corner onto
Chestnut Street
, which as usual was free of traffic. Her view of Nat
'
s mansion was unimpeded. She could see Peaches ahead of her, loading a suitcase into the trunk of her
Toyota
.

No. She couldn
'
t leave—she had to be stopped. Helen roared up alongside the
Toyota
just as Peaches dropped into the driver
'
s seat. Leaving her own car door open, she ran around the front of the Volvo and up to the
Toyota
.
Peaches, catching sight of her, scowled and rolled up her window.

Furious, Helen slammed her hands against the window glass and shouted,
"
You murdered her! I can prove it! And all the rest! You evil, evil woman!
"

With a squeal of her tires, Peaches tore literally out of Helen
'
s grip, wrenching Helen
'
s right hand in the process. Appalled at the thought that she was getting away, Helen ran up to the deep green door of the mansion. She lifted the brass knocker with her left hand and rammed the ship down on its pad. Nat had heard the commotion. He swung open the door with a look of wonder on his face.

"
Where
'
s Katie?
"
Helen said, charging past him.

"
Upstairs, lying down. She has a stomachache. Why?
"

"
Oh my God, we have to get her to a hospital, then!
"
cried Helen.

"
It
'
s not that bad. She said Peaches gave her three candy bars, God knows why. What
'
s wrong?
"

"
Call the police, call the police!
"
Helen sa
id, dragging him over to his hal
l phone.
"
Do you have her license number? We have to stop her. She killed Linda!
"
she cried.
"
She
'
s running away!
"

"
No, I booted her out,
"
Nat said, amazed at the state Helen was in.
"
Calm down, calm down. What
'
s going on?
"

"
I have to see Katie first!
"
Helen broke away from his grip and ran up the stairs. Katie was fine. She was sitting on the floor, playing with her drink-and-wet doll. Her reaction to Helen was a surprised grin.

"
Hi, Mrs. Uhvett. You wanna play wif me?
"

The sight of the child in her pink
Oshkosh
bib overalls and bow-topped hair was so at odds with what Helen feared she
'
d find that she felt, briefly, like a fool.

She made herself smile and blow a kiss
over the metal gate
and say,
"
I
'
ll be back in a little while, honey,
"
after wh
ich she backtracked into the hal
l where Nat was waiting to usher her into a quiet corner of the house.
"
C
'
mon,
"
he said.
"
My study.
"

But Helen
couldn
'
t wait that long.
"
She
'
ll get away!
"
she kept insisting to Nat on their way down the open, curving flight of stairs.
"
Don
'
t you see? Linda didn
'
t die of an overdose of prescription ergotamine. She was poisoned, somehow—with ergot!
"

"
What
'
re you talking about? Ergot; ergotamine—they sound like the same thing.
"

"
Yes, the drug is derived from the fungus ergot—from the dried scierotium of the fungus is how the herbalist explained it. The first guy knew that, too, but I couldn
'
t understand him, and—
"

"
—and I don
'
t understand
you,
Helen,
"
Nat said, more and more alarmed by her.

"
What don
'
t you understand? Peaches poisoned her! The autopsy showed the presence of an ergot alkaloid, but it didn
'
t say where it came from—how could it?
"

Helen picked up the phone on the priceless sycamor
e side table that graced the hal
l and handed it to him.
"
Call them!
"

It seemed almost like a dream. In this perfectly exquisite environment a jungle snake had bit and poisoned, and now it was slithering away.

"
And tell them what,
"
he said, slamming the phone down in its cradle.
"
To put out an APB on Peaches because she murdered Linda by talking her into swallowing half a bottle of pills?
"

"
She didn
'
t do it that way! She did it some other way, obviously—with a syringe or something. She tampered with something Linda ingested; maybe she even injected it directly—
"

"
Why for God
'
s sake? Why would she murder Linda?
"

"
For you, of course—no, that
'
s not true,
"
Helen said.