Death in a Funhouse Mirror (34 page)

"She couldn't have, of course. But who did?" He was leaning forward over his plate, his eyes fixed on me like he honestly expected me to have the answers. He'd hinted at it before, but now I could see how this case was obsessing him. He couldn't stand not being able to figure it out.

"Don't look at me like that," I said. "I've been following your advice. Staying out of it, just like you said." It was the truth. On the other hand, my withdrawal hadn't had any effect on the people who kept calling, so I might as well tell him about that. It was what he seemed to expect, anyway. He was waiting for my response with the air of a man who wasn't going to accept no for an answer. Some protector he'd turned out to be.

"Lenora Stern says Helene was afraid of someone. That she took some kind of a self-defense course because she was scared."

"Scared of what?"

"I don't know. It was on my machine. I didn't call her back. You can call her."

"Anything else?" His blue eyes were boring into me, searching for something I didn't have.

I felt my anxiety level rise to match his, as though the two of us had to figure it out before we could leave the table. "She had a big fight with Rowan Ansel," I said.

"Who told you?"

"Norah McCarty. The housekeeper. She also left a message on my machine."

He leaned forward eagerly. "What else did she say?"

"I didn't call her back."

"What else?" he repeated.

I couldn't look away. It was as though he had some indefinable power over me, holding me there and sucking out all the little bits like a mental vacuum cleaner. "She—Norah—said Ansel was trying to persuade Helene to give Cliff a divorce. I know Ansel didn't like her. When I talked with him, he wasn't the least bit sorry she was dead, only that it was so hard for Cliff."

He nodded. "What else?"

"Cliff told me that humoring Eve by going along with her crazy theories about his involvement was unhealthy for her and I must stop. And Rowan Ansel keeps trying to get me to meet him so we can have a private talk." I actually searched for more, even though I knew there was nothing, because I wanted to give him the answer just as much as he wanted it.

We sat there, eyes locked, until Rosie interrupted us by banging her coffee cup loudly on the table. "Stop it, you two," she ordered. "This was supposed to be a nice breakfast, not a goddamned interrogation. What is the matter with you, Dom? Why can't you leave the poor girl alone?"

"It's my fault, Rosie, I..."

"It's not your fault. My husband is just like a terrier, worrying at things until he's satisfied. But he shouldn't be using you." She turned her angry gaze on her husband. "Hasn't she been through enough?"

"I can't help..." Dom began.

"You can too, Dominic Florio, and you know it. The fact is that you don't want to help it." She folded her arms across her chest and glared at him.

Her remarks were directed at Dom, but I responded. "I'm sorry, Rosie. We can't leave it alone because we can't stand the fact that we don't know the answers. Not that it's exactly a two-way street. Dom knows everything I know, and I don't have any idea what he knows."

"That's life with a cop. You'd better get used to it," she said.

"I'm not sure that's anything I'll have to worry about anymore."

"What does that mean?" he interrupted. "So he didn't show for the wedding. That's not the end of the world. Hey, you're giving him the hook because of that?"

"That's none of your business," Rosie said.

"I'm afraid he's given me the hook," I answered, briefly telling him about Harris and the lilacs.

"Don't worry. I'll talk to him." Good old Uncle Dom. When he wasn't pushing me around, pumping me for information, or trying to tell me what to do, he was going to straighten out my love life. The guy was like a fishtailing trailer. First he swung a little in each direction, then a little more, than he began veering wildly.

"Don't bother, Dom. I can take care of my own affairs."

"Yeah," he said, "it sure sounds like you can."

"Shut up, both of you," Rosie ordered, "you're ruining everything, and I worked so hard to make it nice." That shut us both up in a hurry. We apologized and went back to eating. It was a fine day and a fine breakfast, and if only an exorcist could have come in and cast out the ghost of Helene, everything would have been perfect, even if Andre wasn't there to share it. After breakfast, Dom and I cleaned up and did the dishes while Rosie excused herself and went into the bathroom.

The stuff that wouldn't go in the dishwasher I washed and he dried. "I'm sorry, Thea. Rosie says sometimes I can be a real jerk, and she's right. Look at me. I tell you to quit—meant it, too—and here I am, pumping you again. I can't seem to stop myself...."

"I understand. It's like the invisible rock in your shoe. It just keeps bothering you. You think you can ignore it and it will go away, but it won't. And it never will until you solve it."

"No, I can't. She's gotten under my skin so that I have this Helene Streeter obsession. I never even met the woman and yet I can feel her staring at me with those gorgeous eyes, demanding that I find her killer. But I can't get inside her head. I can't look through those eyes and see what she saw. Usually I can do that, but not this time. I don't mean to sound so melodramatic; I haven't done that many murders. We don't get a lot of murder here. Not in a white-bread community like Anson, so maybe I can get into the heads of my crime victims... listen to me... sounds pretty arrogant, doesn't it? My crime victims... but what I mean is that I can usually put myself in the victim's place and see things from their point of view. I can't do that here."

He wiped out the sink and leaned back against it, arms folded over his chest. "It's too confusing. I don't understand her. Was she a saint or a whore? A good person or a manipulative bitch?"

"You're trying to simplify a complicated woman," I said. "She was all of those things and more. Intelligent and analytical and charming. Strong willed, manipulative and ambitious. Gracious, generous and controlling. Political. Paranoid. And beautiful, Dom, really beautiful. When she was around it was hard to take your eyes off her. It's too bad you never met her. She had this presence... this mesmerizing presence... like Circe...."

"Maybe that's why I can't stop thinking about her."

"Well, I'd like to forget the whole mess, but no one will let me. I'm like flypaper. All sorts of things seem to come my way and they stick even though I don't want to be involved."

"Yes you do."

"Why do you always think you know what I want? When I say I want to be left alone, I mean it."

"You do and you don't...."

"Maybe you're right. You never knew Helene, but like people said at her funeral, she was very special. She had that same quality Cliff has, that facility for making you feel unique and welcome. And she was so passionate about her issues. So alive. It was exciting to be around her, intimidating but exciting. I used to want so much to be like her...."

"Then it must hurt to hear about her secret life," he said.

"I'm not sure I believe..." Suddenly I didn't want to talk about it anymore. He was right. It did hurt. I'd been too busy to pay attention to my feelings, to what I believed and what I didn't, or how it felt to find more of my heroes with clay feet. It wasn't just the murder. The whole business was sordid and depressing and ugly. "She was important to me," I said.

"She was a decadent, self-centered bitch...."

"Not always... not just that... she was so much more..." I shouted. I was angry at him. At Helene. At Cliff. At Eve. At Andre. "And it looks like I'll have to find her killer. None of the rest of you seem to be able to do a goddamned thing!"

"I told you to stay out of it...."

"And I told you two to cut it out. This is just like having the kids at home." Rosie was standing in the doorway, glaring at us.

Then I realized what I was seeing. Rosie standing. She took a few careful, tentative steps, crossing from the doorway to the stove. Dom put down his towel and the dish he was drying and went to meet her, his face astonished and aglow. Carefully, tenderly, he took her in his arms. I dried my hands and went quietly into the other room, sat down on the couch, and pulled some work out of my ever present briefcase, waiting for a diplomatic moment to say good-bye. I was well into the third page of an interview outline to use at Bartlett Hill when they waltzed in looking radiant and embarrassed.

"I'm sorry, Thea. I'm afraid we've been very rude," Rosie said. "I wanted to do this when someone else was around, in case Dom collapsed from shock."

I joined them and put an arm around both of them. "I'm honored that you were willing to share it with me."

"Anything to get the two of you to stop fighting."

"We weren't fighting," I said.

"If fighting can get you to do this, we'll stay and fight all day," Dom beamed.

I said a quick good-bye and left them, feeling like I'd just witnessed a miracle.

 

 

 

Chapter 22

 

If Lenora Stern was surprised to see me, she didn't show it. In fact, she acted like she'd been expecting me, leading me into her study with an air of satisfaction, and even her body language, as she settled into her chair, said, "It's about time." And that was, not surprisingly, the first thing out of her mouth.

"I'm sorry?" I said, all innocence.

"You're not much of a detective, are you? Here I am, ready to give you information, and you won't even return my calls." She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, tossed her hair back from her face and tented her fingers on her knee. "Has anyone else told you about Armed and Dangerous?"

"Armed and Dangerous?"

She seemed pleased by my ignorance. "It's a self-defense course for women. Helene and I took it last month. She believed she was being followed and was afraid it might have been the husband of one of her clients. She wanted to be prepared to handle an attack."

"Why didn't she just get a gun?"

"Do you know how often women's own handguns are used against them?" she said. "Anyway, this was different. It wasn't about getting a weapon, it was about developing a whole new point of view. Very empowering. You can't imagine how good it felt, tossing those men around, screaming at them, hitting them." Her face grew flushed, remembering. "What they taught us was that no one has the right to hurt you. Women have a hard time with that idea, you know. We tend to just keep taking it, not making waves, trying to be conciliatory and not make a scene. The instructor said it is harder to teach women to have the will to fight than it is to teach the actual technique."

I could imagine Lenora enjoying herself; I had a harder time envisioning Helene hitting people and throwing them around. "Did Helene enjoy it?"

Lenora shrugged. "Not as much as I did. I admit I got a charge out of knocking those guys around, but she said it made her feel a lot safer. Said at least she'd know what to do if anyone came at her." She hesitated, studying her fingers. "That's why it doesn't make any sense."

"What doesn't make any sense?"

"That someone was able to come up to her and attack her like that, yet the neighbors heard nothing. It doesn't make sense unless you agree with Eve. Unless Cliff did it. No one else could have gotten close enough to her with a weapon before she made a scene. She'd been trained to make a scene. But Cliff could have walked right up to her and stabbed her before she knew what was coming."

"So could anyone, if they took her by surprise...."

"You haven't been listening," she said, exasperated. "She was trained to expect surprise. That's one of the things the course was all about. About listening to your body. About sensing what's out there with your subconscious before your conscious mind even knows what's going on. About instinct. You probably don't realize this, but your body senses danger long before you actually know it's there. And when you sense danger, you take a deep breath, quickly assess the situation, and decide whether to fight, or scream and run, or whatever. Confronted by a sudden attacker with a knife, she would have run immediately, screaming for help, letting people know she was being attacked. And she didn't do that," Lenora finished, "so she must have known her attacker. The neighbors were home that night. And they didn't hear anything."

"Did you tell this to the police?"

"Of course I told them. Or him." She heaped immeasurable scorn on the word him. "I could tell that he thought I was totally off the wall. He hardly even bothered to listen. I could see it in his face, his disbelief in the possibility that a woman could handle herself capably in that situation. I'm sure he completely disregarded everything I told him. You look pretty skeptical, too, and you should know better."

I didn't like Lenora Stern, and evidently she didn't like me much, either. "I don't know how close you and Helene were. Were you aware that she had other men?"

She laughed. "Such a nice archaic construction. As long as she had them, rather than them having her. Yes, of course I knew she saw other men. She was a very physical woman. She needed sex. So what?"