Death in a Funhouse Mirror (8 page)

He shook his head. "No. It's great. I just didn't understand what you meant about Friday, Saturday and Suzanne."

"The wedding."

"Wedding?" He sounded blank, as though the word wasn't in his vocabulary.

"Wedding. You know. Brides and grooms. White dresses and penguin suits. Pretty girls in flowery dresses. The organ plays
dum dum de dum.
The minister gets up and says, 'dearly beloved...' Is it coming to you now?"

He still looked puzzled, and a little annoyed. "I know what a wedding is, Thea. I mean, whose wedding? What does it have to do with us?"

"Suzanne and Paul. I'm the matron of honor. Sounds like the fat lady who sings the 'Star Spangled Banner,' doesn't it? Next Saturday. You are coming, aren't you?"

Suzanne was my partner. Small and blonde and very feminine. And a very tough customer. She could wrap a headmaster around her little finger and then slowly unwind him as she dazzled him with her understanding of independent schools and their problems. She was perfectly credentialed for the job. A girls' prep school, Wellesley, and graduate work at The Business School. She excelled at tennis, could discourse on the pitfalls of myriad golf courses, or the vagaries of sailing, and drink more than one glass of sherry in the afternoon without slurring her words. She was perfectly at ease when the headmaster with whom she was staying on a consulting job stumbled sleepily into the bathroom when she was emerging from the shower, and kept a section of her closet full of unusual handwoven garments to wear on such visits.

She was also my best friend. She'd comforted me when David died, brought me soup and done my laundry when I was sick, valued my work and boosted my confidence during the years we'd worked together, and honored me by inviting me to become her partner. She'd driven to Maine to rescue me when my investigation into Carrie's death landed me in the hospital, and believed in me when my whole family thought I was off the wall.

More than anything, Suzanne had wanted to settle down, get married, and have a family. After years on the relationship roller coaster, she'd met Paul at one of our client schools, and now they were about to embark on their happily-ever-after. Both of Paul's children were going to be in the wedding, and it looked like they had a good shot at a successful blended family.

I'd been looking forward to the wedding. I like my friends to be happy. And I'd been looking forward to being there with Andre, even though I wasn't ready for a commitment as serious as that with him. I was still afraid of that, afraid of getting as connected as I'd been with David. Andre has a dangerous job and I couldn't bear to lose someone again. But just because I wasn't ready to sign on the line didn't mean I didn't need him there. Going to a wedding alone, contrasting their happiness with your aloneness, despite anything Miss Manners might have to say about it being your job to focus on the bride and groom's happiness and not your own, can be seriously depressing. And right now Andre was wearing his impassive policeman's face, the one with all emotion locked out. From experience, I knew it wasn't just a look. He could be hard as a rock.

"You are coming, aren't you?" I repeated.

"I'm not sure." That was all he said. He stopped looking at me and concentrated on his breakfast, which disappeared with lightning speed. Only when everything was gone did he look up. "Is there more?"

I shoved my plate toward him. "You can have mine. I'm not hungry." He took it without argument, and started eating. I stared miserably at his bent bristly dark head. "You want to talk about it?"

He raised his eyes briefly to meet mine. "Not really. I'm just not sure I can go to a wedding with you. It's something I need to think about."

"That's not fair," I said. "Yesterday you hinted that you weren't satisfied with things the way they are. Today you say maybe you can't come to the wedding, something we've been planning for a long time. But you won't talk about it. That's no way to work on a relationship. Besides, it's just a social event. It's not such a big deal."

"If it isn't such a big deal," he said, "then it shouldn't matter whether I come or not. Anyway, talking about it won't make any difference. I'll say I want something more. You'll say you're not ready. Nothing will be changed. I hate wasting time on talking just for the sake of talk. My ex-wife was an expert at that. She'd give her opinion. I'd give mine. We'd do things her way. Sort of looks like that's happening here. I'd just as soon pass, thank you." He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, body language that said, as clearly as his words, that he was withdrawing. The guy who'd been swinging me around the kitchen minutes before was gone.

He hardly ever mentioned his ex-wife. Maybe two or three times since we met. All I knew about her was that he thoroughly despised her. And now he was comparing me to her. Unfairly, it seemed to me. I hadn't listened to him and rejected what he had to say. He'd refused to talk. But trying to get him to talk when he didn't want to was like beating my head against a wall. The only satisfaction I'd get was that it would stop hurting when I stopped banging. I'd get nothing from him. "You want some more coffee?"

His eyebrows went up. "Is that a truce? Are we going to stop beating the dead horse now?"

"Not exactly. I don't think the horse is dead," I said, "but sitting here butting horns won't get us anywhere." I got the pot and poured us each more coffee. We drank it in silence. The brilliant May sunshine still poured in through the windows and the curtains still billowed, but the charm had gone out of the day. This was not the weekend I had so eagerly anticipated, driving home on Friday. The aspirin were taking the edge off my headache, but now that I was generally discouraged, it was easier to notice how tired and spacey my tortured sleep had left me.

He got up, still without speaking, and started clearing the table. I carried my coffee out to the deck and admired the view. I might as well enjoy it, I was paying enough for it. Through the open door, I could hear him loading the dishwasher and cleaning up the kitchen. That was our arrangement. If one cooked, the other cleaned up. At least he wasn't in such a rush he was going to take off and leave me with the mess. I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes, basking in the heat of the sun, gradually slipping into a trance.

"I'm leaving," he said from the doorway. "May I have my shirt?"

I got up, still half-asleep, and went inside, unable to focus at first after the blinding sun outside. I fingered the first button, hesitating, unwilling to part with the shirt. Things might be unpleasant between us right now, but I still liked him, still loved him, still liked wearing a shirt that smelled like him. But for all I knew, it might be one of his only good shirts. He might need it for court. I was used to seeing him in casual clothes. "Please, Thea," he said impatiently. I stripped it off and threw it at him. He caught it and stuffed it into his bag.

"I'll call you," he said. He put his hand on the knob, hesitated, and turned around. "Don't get drawn into that mess between Eve and her father. They're both accomplished manipulators. Between them, they'll grind you into powder." He knows I hate being told what to do, and dislike even more being told what not to do. His advice practically guaranteed I'd do the opposite. He knew he'd made a mistake as soon as the words were out of his mouth. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. But I'm serious, Thea. It's a nasty business and you should stay as far from it as possible. It's not like with Carrie. You don't have a personal stake in it."

"Except that Eve is my friend."

"So be a friend," he said. "Call her once in a while, see how she's doing. But don't get involved, unless you want to spend a lot more nights like last night."

"You were the one who insisted I call."

"That was before I met the family."

"I thought you'd like Eve."

"Whatever made you think that? She's unstable, Thea. And dangerous."

Usually I was inclined to defer to his judgments about people, especially in his area of expertise, but this time he was wrong. He didn't know Eve like I did. "You just saw her at a bad time. She was upset. Her mother had just been killed."

"I'm not going to argue with you," he said. "Just please consider what I said."

I stood there in my black running shorts and black bra, arms folded over my chest. Where did I find this guy, I wondered, this man who refused to talk to me about things that were very much his business and insisted on meddling in things that weren't. "Go on," I said. "Leave. We don't have anything to talk about, remember?"

His face closed like a slammed door. "I should know better than to waste my time trying to help someone as pigheaded as you," he said. He pulled the door open and shut it loudly behind him.

"I never said I was nice," I yelled at the closed door. Behind me, in the kitchen, the dishwasher slurped happily to itself. I knew if I went in there, everything would be sparkling and tidy. It was one of the things I liked best about him. He wasn't hung up on job descriptions, what women did, what men did. He was just a very straightforward man. I already missed him. I could probably run out now, still catch him, and tell him I was sorry and I was wrong. But I didn't want to. Because I wasn't sure I was sorry and I didn't think I was wrong. And I was in my underwear. So I turned my back on the door and Andre and went back to bed.

 

 

 

Chapter 5

 

I woke up about seven on Sunday night with the phone trilling next to my ear like a demented toad, reached out without even opening my eyes, and muttered the appropriate greeting. "Thea? You sound strange. Are you okay?" Suzanne said.

"Fine. I was asleep, that's all."

"Ah," she said knowingly. "I assume that means Andre has finally surfaced."

"Surfaced long enough to spend Saturday hanging around while I comforted a friend whose mother had been killed. Long enough to mope about hinting that he wanted more from our relationship, but not long enough to talk about it. He beat a hasty and huffy retreat when I suggested dialogue."

"You 're kidding. No nude mud wrestling or anything?" Suzanne finds our obvious physical attraction amusing.

"Oh, we're a very practical pair. First we wrestle, then we argue. And I'm not really being fair. He didn't so much refuse to talk about it as admit that he wasn't ready to talk, partly because he thought he knew what I'd say, and partly because he didn't know what he wanted to ask for."

"Well, you can work it out next weekend. I can't see you guys staying mad at each other for long."

"I don't know if he's coming."

"That's a bummer, isn't it? Well, I bet he shows up." Suzanne is an optimist, a good balance to my pessimism. "I'm sorry to hear about your friend. What happened to her mother?"

"She was stabbed."

"Oh, Thea, not that awful murder that's been all over the papers?"

"Yes."

There was a silence. Then Suzanne said, "So the daughter, Eve, is your old roommate. I've met her, right? Small and dark and very intense?"

"That's Eve," I said.

There was another silence at Suzanne's end. "Look, Thea, it's none of my business, but I've never let that stop me, so I'll say this—don't get involved. You can console Eve and be a good friend without getting sucked in. You don't need any more murder or grief in your life."

"You're the second person who's said that."

"Andre being the other, right? Look, I know you hate being told what to do, but this time, he's right. You don't need this."

"Eve didn't choose to have her mother murdered."

"Don't get huffy with me, Thea, I'm just trying to be your friend," Suzanne said, "and now I'm going to change the subject." A very good idea, since I
was
getting huffy. "I feel really stupid admitting this, but I've got the prewedding jitters. Everything I've eaten all weekend I've thrown up. Every time I look at that beautiful white dress my skin gets clammy. And I can't miss it. It takes up half my bedroom. I was hoping we could go out and eat something wicked and fattening, have a few drinks and I could cry on your shoulder."

"Think you could handle clams?"

"I can't handle anything, so it doesn't make much difference. You weren't thinking of Monty's?"

"Where else? I've been dreaming of clams all weekend."

"Sometimes you are so weird. What time?"

I looked at the clock. "Quarter of eight?"

"You're on. Hope you don't mind pale green."

"Suzanne, you never wear green."

"I don't mean my clothes. I mean my skin. Paul's out with some of his friends tonight, celebrating the end of his single state. So I'm supposed to be out with a bevy of my girlfriends, doing the same. Only I don't have a bevy of girlfriends. Been too busy working. Paul's sister called and asked if I wanted to get together, but she's so serious. Can you imagine spending the evening in an earnest discussion of the best reference books on the blended family, or what
Consumer Reports
recommends in vacuum cleaners? Well, neither can I. See you there." She hung up.

I imagined her dashing around her neat, feminine bedroom, pulling on some perfectly coordinated casual outfit in sandwashed silk. Suzanne likes clothes. I, on the other hand, mostly wear them for the sake of decency, except for things I like a lot, which I wear to death. Most of them have come from Suzanne, my personal shopper. She spots them when she's shopping, buys them, and leaves them on my desk with little notes. If I like them, I keep them and write her a check, otherwise she returns them.