Deadly Beloved (32 page)

“Thirty-five thousand will be more than enough for now,” Kevin told Henry. “It’s when you choose what you really want to build that you have to throw some more in. When your architect has plans you want or when you decide on one of the stock plans the development company puts out. Our house here came from a stock plan.”

“Ours did too,” Henry said. “The guy showed us what he intended to build, we walked through a model on the other side of the city, and here we are.”

“I preferred the Victorian myself,” Evelyn said matter-of-factly, knowing nobody was listening. “There were things I liked about this house, but I liked the Victorian better.”

“We bought a stock plan down in Florida too,” Sarah said. “It just seemed so much easier. If you’re really picky, I suppose it would be all right to fuss with architects and all that sort of thing, but I really can’t see it.”

“I just don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning and find that, cashier’s check or no cashier’s check, I don’t own this piece of property because the owner thought someone else had made a better offer.”

“Nobody else is going to make a better offer,” Kevin said. “I’m as near to the owner as you’re going to get. I’m not talking to anybody else but you.”

On the screen, the soap opera flickered and jumped and disappeared, replaced by the dull black-and-white signboard that meant a bulletin was coming. When Evelyn was a child, bulletins meant at least the Cuban missile crisis or a major political assassination. Now they meant any excuse at all, because the local news crews wanted to feel like they were living exciting lives.

“There has been another minor explosion in central Philadelphia,” the talking head said. “Details right after this message.”

Evelyn wondered if there were advertisers out there who stipulated having their ads aired during bulletins. Did the stations have to guarantee the bulletins? The talking head was back. She was a scrawny blonde with limp hair and a strange curve to her lip, wearing too much lipstick. She stared soulfully into the camera.

“Police have been called to the home of a Philadelphia nurse this afternoon and forced to bring everybody from the fire department to the bomb squad with them as the third pipe bombing in under two weeks rocks the city of Philadelphia to its foundations—”

“Horseshit,” Evelyn said under her breath.

“Did you say something?” Henry asked.

“There’s been another bomb.” Evelyn pointed to the television. “In central Philly this time.”

“You shouldn’t watch so much television,” Henry said. “God, it’s bad for your mind and bad for your butt. You ought to get up and move sometimes.”

“I think Patsy must have been one of those SDS Weathermen in hiding,” Sarah Lockwood said. “I mean, what else would explain it. Steve must have been one of them too. And he wanted to turn himself in, so Patsy executed him.”

“I think it would have come out by now if Patsy had that kind of background,” Evelyn said. “The police have been on it for days.”

“Oh, the police,” Sarah said. “I don’t see that they’re much good. They never seem to be able to catch the criminal with the least amount of intelligence. And Patsy had at least that.”

“I thought she was boring,” Henry said. “A boring, pudgy, middle-aged woman. Why do so many women get so boring after they pass the age of forty?”

Sarah Lockwood cleared her throat. “Well,” she said. “I think we’ve got everything done we meant to get done. Kevin and I have an engagement this evening. We have to get dressed.”

“Some people we knew when we were living in London,” Kevin said. “They have a house near us down in Florida too. Lovely people.”

“We’d invite you two along, but you know what the British are like.” Sarah shook her head. “Throw new people at them and they go right into a deep freeze.”

“They’ll be all right once you get to Florida,” Kevin said. “We’ll have a dinner party to introduce everybody to everybody and tell the Brits all about it in advance.”

“Don’t you think this will be fun?” Sarah said.

Another talking head—another scrawny blonde, this time with a hand mike and a bright red blazer—was interviewing that black police detective who had been out at Fox Run Hill just a little while ago. Next to him was Gregor Demarkian, looking tired.

Henry came back from seeing Sarah and Kevin out. His face was red and mottled. His knuckles were white.

“You could have been a little less rude,” he told Evelyn. “You could have talked to people instead of sitting in front of the television table like a dinner roll waiting to be buttered.”

“Nobody wanted to talk to me,” Evelyn said. “Even you didn’t want to talk to me. Nobody was the least interested in hearing what I had to say.”

“Maybe that’s true, Evelyn, but if it is, it’s only because of your weight. People are put off by your weight.”

“In this case, I think people would have been put off by my point of view.”

“Oh, don’t start that again,” Henry said.

“I’m not starting anything, again or otherwise.” Evelyn stood up, one fluid motion, a dancer’s exercise she had learned as a young girl in a local children’s ballet class. It had been years since the last time she had tried to do that. It was incredibly gratifying to find out that she still could.

“I’m not starting anything,” she repeated. “I’m just telling you. There’s something wrong with it. It’s some kind of scam. They’re cheating you.”

“Sometimes your background really comes out,” Henry said. “Do you know that? Sometimes you’re really nothing more than one more fat housewife from the Pennsylvania steel country, parochial and suspicious and small-minded and petty.”

“If it’s being small-minded and petty to be able to
add
, Henry, then I’m small-minded and petty. Come to your senses for a moment. This deal doesn’t add up.”

“It isn’t supposed to ‘add up,’ as you put it. This is a handshake between friends. That’s the way people do things where there’s a willingness to trust and a commitment to mutual advantage.”

“Kevin Lockwood didn’t trust
you
for that money. He made you bring a cashier’s check.”

“That was to satisfy the legal requirements.” Henry sounded infinitely patient. “You always have to have a cashier’s check when you buy property. It’s standard operating procedure.”

“We didn’t have to have a cashier’s check when we bought this property. At least, we didn’t for the down payment. I gave him an ordinary check out of my checkbook when we decided on this house. I remember.”

“We had to have a cashier’s check later,” Henry said.

“Yes, we did.” Evelyn nodded. “We had to have it when we closed. But we didn’t close on that property this afternoon, Henry. We just put a deposit on it and promised to buy.”

“I don’t really see the point in this discussion, Evelyn. After all, it isn’t your money. It isn’t like you made it and brought it to the marriage. I made it. My books made it.”

“I know you made it.”

“If anything, you’ve made it more difficult for me to make it. You haven’t helped. Don’t you think this—this appearance problem of yours causes me a lot of stress? Don’t you think it costs me sales?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I know, Evelyn. I know. It’s my money. And unlike you, I don’t just want to sit where I am forever. I want to move up and out. I want to meet people I have something in common with. There are reasons why successful people stick together, Evelyn.”

“I don’t think Sarah and Kevin are successful. I don’t think they’d be hanging around with us if they were.”

“They might not be hanging around with you,” Henry said, “but they would be hanging around with me. You may not be doing anything with your life, but I’ve been on
The New York Times
best-seller list.”

The talking head was gone from the television screen. The soap opera was back. Evelyn suddenly had a distinct vision of Patsy MacLaren Willis pulling out of her driveway in the Volvo, the back of the station wagon packed with clothes on hangers.

“That’s funny,” she said.

Henry looked furious. “I don’t see anything funny in the situation we’re in. I don’t know what it is you think you’re doing here, but I’ve had this about as far as I can take it. I want a divorce, Evelyn.”

“All right,” Evelyn said calmly. “I’ll make you a deal.”

“About a divorce? You’re going to make me a deal about a divorce? How can you?”

“I can make a deal about not being a problem to you,” Evelyn said. “I can promise not to call you up at all hours of the night to make your life a living hell. I can promise not to follow your girlfriend all over town with a camera and a tape recorder.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Henry said. “And if I did, and you did any of those things, I’d have you put in jail.”

“I’ll give you a divorce if that deal of Sarah and Kevin Lockwood’s isn’t some kind of scam,” Evelyn said. “If they’re really and truly okay, I’ll just pack my bags and move into an apartment in Philly and that will be the last you ever hear of me. I’ll even go back to my mother. I absolutely promise.”

“Christ,” Henry said. “You’re worse than impossible. You’re ridiculous. I don’t have to listen to any of this.”

“If it is a scam, I’ll fight you all the way,” Evelyn continued. “I’ll hire lawyers. I’ll hire private investigators. I’ll do everything that can be done, and in Pennsylvania it’s a lot of everything, Henry. I’m tired of listening to you tell me how stupid and fat and lower-class I am. I’m tired of listening to you tell me how you know everything in the world it’s worthwhile to know.”

“I don’t have to listen to any of this,” Henry repeated. Then he gave Evelyn his best glowering stare, the one from which she always recoiled, and turned his back on her. Evelyn hadn’t recoiled, but she didn’t know if he had noticed that. His back was stiff and hard. His head was cocked at an odd little angle.

“I’m really sick to death of your attitude,” he said. “I’m really tired to death of your lower-middle-class pettiness. I’m getting out of here.”

“So go,” Evelyn said.

Henry went. He went more slowly than she could ever remember him going, but he went. He kept his back rigid and his head at that odd little angle. He seemed to be waiting for her to do something or say something she hadn’t done or said yet, but Evelyn didn’t know what it was.

As soon as he was gone, Evelyn stepped out onto her back patio and looked up at the afternoon sky. The sky was blue and cloudless and somehow threatening. The air was hot and heavy and thick with moisture. Fox Run Hill was much too quiet. From back there Evelyn couldn’t see anything or anyone of importance. The backyards for all the houses were carefully designed for privacy, so that a couple could screw stark naked next to the built-in charcoal grill and nobody would be able to tell. Somebody could scream and scream and scream out there and no one in the whole community would know it was happening.

If I were going to kill my husband, that’s how I’d do it, Evelyn thought. I’d bring him out here and leave him lying next to the hydrangea bushes. I’d bury him in the compost heap. I’d leave him for the lawn service. Except that I wouldn’t kill my husband. It wouldn’t make any sense.

Evelyn went back into the house. She stepped out of her own front door and looked down the curving road at the Tudor where Patsy and Steve had lived. She thought of that Volvo backing down the drive and then gliding down the road, Patsy with her hand stuck out a window, waving at Molly Bracken. She thought of herself sitting in Patsy’s breakfast room one morning, looking at a picture in a sterling silver Tiffany frame.

“Those are the people who mattered most to me,” Patsy had said at the time, and then gone on to whatever it was she had had to say that was more important than that.

Evelyn gave a last long look at the mock-Tudor and then went back into her own house.

It was funny, she thought again. It really was. But it didn’t seem as if it could mean anything.

Evelyn went back into the kitchen and put on the kettle for tea. She could hear Henry rattling around upstairs. He expected her to come up and try to placate him, but she didn’t want to.

Funny, funny, funny, she thought to herself again, and then: I wonder if it means anything.

Evelyn did not wonder if her marriage to Henry meant anything, because she knew it didn’t mean a thing.

For Evan Walsh, the news of the explosion in Liza Verity’s apartment meant everything and nothing. He noticed it on the television when the news bulletin came on, but he was in one of those periods where he was counting every breath Karla took, so he didn’t notice it with his whole mind and attention. Pipe bomb in central Philly, he thought, and then he bent more closely down over Karla’s chest and watched it rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall, perfectly rhythmic, perfectly serene. If there hadn’t been any of those tubes and wires, if this had been any other kind of room but a hospital room, anyone who didn’t know better would have thought that Karla was just ordinarily asleep. She looked no different from sleeping princesses anywhere. Evan walked around her bed and checked her covers. He put his hand on her newly short hair and stroked against the stubble. He wished for things that made no sense: that they had not cut her hair; that they had let him buy her something nice and frilly to wear instead of this plain cotton hospital gown that looked to him like a shroud. Karla would not have seen herself as the frilly sleepwear type, but Evan could see her in lace and latticework. He could see her in satin as well as flannel.

Karla was breathing, breathing, breathing. That was all. Evan went out of the room and down the hall to the nurses’ station. There were all these stories in the newspapers about the overcrowding in Philadelphia’s hospitals, but this ward seemed to be nearly empty. There was nobody standing at the counter at the nurses’ station. Evan went around the back and looked through the window in the door to the office. Shelley Marie and Clare were sitting in there, looking at magazines and watching television. Evan knocked.

Shelley Marie looked up, nodded, and came to the door to let him in. It was against all kinds of regulations, but Evan was a known figure on the ward by then. Except for one real dragon of a head nurse, they all tried to take care of him. Shelley Marie opened up and shooed him inside. When he was in, she shut and locked the door again.