Death at the Wheel (22 page)

"It's okay. I've been thinking about that, too. About Carrie. That's why my mom is so wrapped up in this Julie Bass business. That's why I'm so wrapped up in it myself, even though she has me so mad half the time I could scream. This isn't about Julie Bass. I don't know her. It's because Julie reminds us so much of Carrie. It's about people life has dealt a bad hand to, who need some help with their cards."

"You're not doing this because of Carrie," she said.

"I am."

"You think you are. You tell yourself you are, to justify it. You're really doing this to please your mother."

"Thank you, Dr. Freud."

"You don't need this, Thea," she cut in. "This is your mother's crusade, not yours. Let her handle it."

"I tried."

"Obviously not hard enough," she snapped. "You're thirty years old. It's time you stopped letting your mother run your life."

"I don't let her run my life."

"What do you call this mess you're in right now? Someone else's life? You've got your career. You've got Andre. If you have spare time, you could try reading or relaxing. Movies. Biking. Hikes. If you can't control your need to do good, join Big Sisters or volunteer at a soup kitchen or something. Getting beaten up by thugs is not normal behavior."

"How did you...?"

Suzanne sighed, a long, exasperated exhalation. "So I was right. Good God, Thea! When are you going to learn to be careful?"

I bent down and nuzzled the baby's head so she couldn't see my face. I was close enough to tears that I was afraid I was going to have to hand him back and rush to the bathroom before I made a fool of myself.

"I'm sorry, Thea," Suzanne said, and I realized she was the one who was crying. "I just want you to be careful. I couldn't stand having to bail you out of any more hospitals. You're my best friend. I couldn't do this without you." She started to cry harder. "Ignore this. Please. It's just all these hormones. I feel like an alien in my own body sometimes."

"Don't worry. I've become a medicophobe anyway." I pulled a box of tissues out of my drawer and pushed it across the desk. "While we're having truth time, what's this about Paul changing jobs?"

"He's being considered for the headmaster's job at the Coatsworth School." She hesitated, torn between her ambitions for her husband and her loyalty to me. "It's time for a move. He's been an assistant long enough."

My stomach knotted. I nodded. "I knew there was something going on." I wanted to yell at her, to tell her she couldn't do anything to upset my life because I liked it just the way it was. But she was already upset and I knew the only sure thing in life was change. Besides, we were close enough that she already knew what I was thinking, just as I knew what was going through her head. We could have talked about the weather and still known what the subtext was. "He's certainly qualified. How serious has it gotten? When will you know?"

"A few weeks. You know how these searches go, back and forth while everybody looks you over, but he's in the final three, and he says he gets good vibes." Suzanne really wanted this for Paul.

"At least, with their endowment, he won't be under pressure to raise money," I said.

"No. They're looking for someone to spend money."

"They could hire us."

"Except for nepotism."

"I'm not a nepot and neither are you. Besides, these places hire their sisters and their cousins and their aunts all the time."

"And the headmaster's house..."

"Ooh la la! It's a mansion!"

"Yeah." Suzanne dabbed at her eyes and grinned. "Lots of lead paint for Junior to chew on."

"Pessimist!"

"I'm just trying not to want it too much."

"You've got to stop calling him Junior. It's an awful name."

"You prefer pumpkin? Oh, Thea," she said, "I don't know what I'm going to do. None of this is working."

"None of what?"

"I wasn't kidding when I said I feel like an alien. He's such a good baby. It's not his fault. I can't go on like this, working at our pace on only four hours sleep a night. I go home and sit down and cry. Paul is at his wits' end. He wants me to quit. I don't think he understands. You can't take something that was your whole life for years and suddenly chuck it and become a full-time mom."

"Women do."

"You don't think I should?"

"No. Of course not," I said quickly. "It's my life, too, you know. But you could take it easier."

"How?"

"Do less work. Do you remember, when I married David, how I discovered having fun? And how frustrated you were that I suddenly wasn't working day and night? The business didn't fail."

She shrugged. "I guess I can try. I'm just overwhelmed by everything and then the possibility of moving on top of it all. Paul is being so good to me. Last night he made dinner. Music. Candles. Everything. He put Leonard Cohen on. You know. 'Suzanne.' And I was so grateful that I couldn't stop crying."

"Excuse me," Sarah interrupted. "A Dr. Durren on the phone. You sick?"

"It's business, not pleasure."

"Since when was going to the doctor a pleasure?" she muttered, retreating. Something was bothering Sarah, something more serious than her ongoing dissatisfaction with her marriage. When I felt more energetic, I was going to have to find out what it was. Actually, from the look of things, we were going to need group counseling.

"I'll leave you alone," Suzanne said, getting up and taking the baby out of my lap. Where he had been was slightly damp.

"We're not done with this discussion," I said. "How can we move? We need Bobby and Sarah and Lisa and Magda... and I'm worried about you."

"We'll talk about it," she said quickly. The pained look on her face said she wanted to put it off as long as possible. So did I.

I punched the button. "Dr. Durren? This is Thea Kozak."

"I need to talk with you," he said. "It's urgent."

I looked at my calendar. "Sometime on Monday?"

"Now," he insisted. "I'm downstairs."

I stared gloomily at the papers on my desk. I wasn't making progress anyway. "I can give you a few minutes but that's all. I've got another appointment."

"I'm in the parking lot. In my car," he said, and disconnected before I could ask what car. Not that it mattered. I already knew it was a Porsche with an MD plate. That would be hard to miss.

As I passed Sarah's desk I told her I was meeting someone downstairs and would be back in half an hour. "If you're not back," she said, "what shall I do? Call the cops? Send out a St. Bernard?"

"Pour gasoline on my desk and set it on fire," I said, and hurried out.

It's hard to be subtle when you drive an electric-blue Porsche. It didn't seem to go with his retiring nature. Maybe he was having an early midlife crisis. Maybe Mrs. Durren bought it to spiff him up a bit. Maybe he bought it to impress Julie? My, I was having nasty thoughts today. I opened the door and climbed into the comfortable leather passenger seat.

Durren sat gripping the wheel, looking like he'd just lost his last friend. "Anything new?" he asked eagerly. "Anything that will help Julie? She can't stand it much longer... away from her children... Framingham is an awful place and that lawyer doesn't seem to be doing a damned thing for her. Can't seem to get her bail. They're holding her to let Connecticut make a case for extradition. And no one is trying to help."

"Rendition, I think. Not extradition," I corrected. All my life people have been casting me in the role of fixer. I know. Ann Landers says people can't do anything to you that you don't let them. But she expects a lot from us. I was trying to break the habit and people like Durren helped. I found his assumption that it was my job to fix things for Julie infuriating. Especially when he'd been so determinedly unhelpful himself.

I shook my head. "The best I've been able to do is identify some other people who were angry at Bass. About stuff at the bank, mostly. Except for his brother-in-law. You don't really think someone is going to call me up and confess, do you?"

He grabbed my wrist. "You've got to do better," he said. "She needs your help."

"Cut that out," I snapped, snatching my hand back. I was sick of being manhandled. The word had taken on new meaning this past week. The way things were going I might as well have been wearing a big sign that said "Hit me! Maul me. Jerk me around."

He stared at me, astonished. "I'm sorry. I'm just so upset... I wasn't thinking," he muttered. I would have taken his head off but he looked so pathetic it would have been like kicking a puppy.

"How long have you and Julie been lovers?"

"Who told you that?"

"Oh, come on, Doctor. Don't be naive. Everyone in town is talking about it. There's even a rumor that you fathered her second child. Besides, I've read one of your letters... the one you dropped on the front lawn."

"I what? I dropped... What letters?" he sputtered. He fell silent. This wasn't news. We'd already danced this dance the last time I'd mentioned the letters. Maybe he thought his bluff had worked.

"I had hoped..." he began. "The letters, I mean. That they'd stay private." He must have decided he could drop his pretense of the interested "friend," because his face took on the fatuous look of a lover. "I wish she were mine. Emma is a doll. But she's not. Our... our love... our relationship... is a more recent thing." He said it proudly. Defiantly.

"You didn't do her any favors being so careless," I said, trying to shake him out of his smiling reverie.

He was startled. "What do you mean?"

"Julie sent me to the house to get the letters... the ones you took. I saw you leaving but I didn't know why you were there. As I told you last night, I found two on the floor of the closet. I found the one outside just as the police arrived." In response to the question on his face, I said, "And yes. I read one. Can you imagine what the police could have done with them? Or how things would have gone if they'd found you there with the letters?"

He just stared at me, the picture of offended virtue. "You had no right to read that." What an irritating, selfish booby. Did he really have no concept of the harm he'd almost caused with his carelessness? This was life and death, not privacy and etiquette.

I tried to puncture his facade. "Did Bass know about you and his wife?"

He shrugged, still irritated. "I don't think so. He was too busy catting around. But even if he had, he wouldn't have cared. He didn't care about Julie and the girls, except as possessions. The proper accessories to a banker's life."

"Most men," I observed coolly, "don't like other men screwing their possessions."

"Excuse me?" Durren fussed with some lint on his blue blazer. "You needn't be so crude," he said. "Julie wasn't happy as an accessory. She was... is... a real flesh-and-blood woman. She had needs, dreams, desires that weren't being acknowledged."

"You ought to know."

He drew back like I'd hit him. "What's that supposed to mean? I thought you were her friend?"

"Doctor, please. We're both adults here. Let's not play make-believe. I hardly know Julie. You must know that. You must have known who her friends were."

"Then why are you doing this?" The confusion in his voice was genuine.

"Because my mother asked me to. Because Julie needs help and there doesn't seem to be anyone else to do it. Because there's something so vulnerable and needy about her. Someone has to take care of her. Except for you and my mother and that awful brother of hers, she doesn't seem to have any friends. Because everyone thinks she did it and I don't. Because she reminds me of my sister, Carrie. I... couldn't... didn't... help Carrie... I guess I'm still trying."

There it was. I might resent people who expected me to help, but in the end, the compulsion to fix things, to put things right, was in me, not them.

"Carrie is dead," he said. It wasn't a question. Even though I'd been unkind and snappish to him, he understood about Carrie and he was sorry. Maybe he wasn't such a bad guy after all. Self-centered and ineffectual, but with a good heart? His elegant hand closed gently over mine. I looked away from him, blinking back tears. I couldn't help it. It had been a hard twenty-four hours. Mixed up images of Carrie and Julie Bass hovered before my eyes, both small and blonde and projecting an irresistible air of helplessness. Two women who cried out to be saved—even when they resented our meddling—and we couldn't seem to save them.

I pulled my hand back and straightened up. I wasn't one for wallowing in self-pity. Now that we'd declared a temporary truce, I probed a little, trying to see if Dr. Durren knew anything that might be helpful. "Did Julie know anything about these mortgage applications that her husband is supposed to have taken?"

He shook his head. "Cal kept her in the dark about his work. All she knew was that he'd put some papers in her closet. Papers he said were very important. Papers the FDIC was going to want on Monday... the day after the... after his... after he..."

I found the idea of a doctor who was unable to speak the word death a bit ironic.

Durren went on. "I disliked the man intensely. For what he did to her. I admit that. Still, it was a horrible way to die. To have something go wrong with the suspension and crash and burn like that. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy." He shuddered. "I've seen too many burn patients. It's horrible. Horrible."

"Do you know how Julie found out about the racing course? Was it from Cal?"

"It was from me. I learned of it through the Porsche Club."

"Porsche Club?"

"When I bought the car, my wife thought I should join... uh... meet people...."

Durren was getting uncomfortable again. He'd come to pick my mind and now I was picking his. He began toying with the keys and fiddling with dials on the dashboard. "I really have to get going," he said. "I've got to get back to the hospital." He confirmed my worst prejudice about doctors—that my time was worth nothing, I could be interrupted or kept waiting endlessly, but his time was precious. "I just stopped by because I was hoping for some good news. I talked to her this morning. She's a wreck... as you can imagine. I'm so desperate to help her and there's nothing I can do."