First Lady (39 page)

Apparently this marriage ceremony, in the surf at Wrightsville Beach (he carried a photograph from it in his wallet—the groom shirtless in white baggy shorts, the bride in a white halter and a wrap-around skirt, both carrying big sunflowers, the minister straddling a surf board), was the reason he had failed to attend his recent hearing on a charge of auto theft. “Give me a break,” he said indignantly. “How many times does a man get married?”

“Well, Griffin, I hope not as often as he steals a car.”

“Hey, exactly.” He nodded eagerly, vindicated. “So what's this favor?”

I asked him if he knew where Balmoral Heights was. He told me he did indeed. Sometimes he and Brittany drove around in the new subdivision looking at the houses. They wanted to move there. “We've had it with East Hillston, it's nothing but trailer trash.”

A half-hour later the young Pope pointed out to me his favorite Dutch Colonial with its two-car garage option as I drove him twice past the empty Ferraro house on Dumfries Court. Since standard model houses on sixty-foot lots began at three-hundred forty-nine thousand dollars in Balmoral Heights, I suggested to Griffin that he needed to think about a different career path. Music and larceny weren't going to do it for him. He admitted that Brittany couldn't agree with me more. Far from the bimbo his meathead dad thought her, Brittany was in accounting at The Fifth Season and had already talked to the manager about maybe Griffin's starting a limo service there to take guests to the airport and golf courses and such. I said I thought that was an excellent idea, particularly since Griffin was so obviously fond of driving.

When Griffin hopped out of my car at the corner of Dumfries Court, I wished him luck. He said, “I don't need luck, I got talent. Brittany thinks I got talent. And I do.” Another Pope male had found the right woman. He headed blithely to the Ferraro house to steal their car.

Despite Cuddy's lectures to me about not visiting my mother, I actually dropped in to see her in Haver Hospital every day. Usually, as now, I came around five in the evening, the moment she had once called “sherry time”—when she'd sat with us at home hearing about our school days as she sipped a tiny amount of that amber liquid from a tiny crystal glass engraved with her family
D
for Dollard. Mother was in the hospital with pneumonia. She'd contracted it while recovering from a broken hip. But there was a problem from which it seemed unlikely she would ever recover. My mother, who once in her life could play by heart the Goldberg Variations, the Chopin Etudes, the Beethoven piano sonatas, now at times could not remember her address or her phone number or the names of her sons.

When my father resigned as Dean of Haver Medical School, he was supposed to retire, as he'd promised my mother he would. Instead, he took on the directorship of Haver Hospital in order to oversee the construction of a new wing that had been donated by old Briggs Cadmean. After the wing was finished, there was another reason why he couldn't leave. And then another. He died in Haver Hospital while still its director. Mother so disliked the place that it was some comfort to think that although she'd been here for over a month, she often had no idea where she was.

The present was receding from her, pulling her down the rabbit hole back to childhood where the red queen in
Alice in Wonderland
was right: you do have to move twice as fast to stay in the same place, and when you're old, you're too slow to do it and so you lose ground. The future vanishes. You can't remember what you should do tomorrow and then you can't remember what you did today. And in the end all you have is long ago.

But Mother hadn't yet left for good. There were days when she was so much like her old vivacious, talkative self that I grew hopeful that she might return completely, might even be able to go back home to Catawba Drive and call her friends to come over for bridge. But those hopes inevitably crashed into senseless confusions that broke my heart.

I fed her another spoonful of the lemon sorbet she loved for me to bring her. “Mom, I want to ask you something.”

“You go right ahead, honey, ask away.” She smiled, an imitation of her old bright smile. The pneumonia had so weakened her that for weeks she could barely keep her head from the white pillows fluffed behind her, although she very much disliked how the pillows flattened her hair. My mother, Peggy Dollard Savile, had been blonde, petite, and pretty when it was the fashion to be so. As a result, she had never doubted her attractiveness and felt a responsibility to maintain it for the enjoyment of others. Today she wore a pink lace bed jacket and had a thin pink band in her hair. As soon as I saw her, I knew she was having what she called one of her “Hello, Earth, I'm back” days and that this would be a good time to ask her something.

I had brought one of her gold-leaf bowls and a Georgian silver spoon to serve her the sorbet in. I think she liked the memory of elegance even on “bad days.” Then I asked, “Do you remember Fulke and Mary Norris?”

“Of course I do. They only lived two blocks down from us.” And she pointed shakily at her bedside table where there was a small stack of poetry books by Fulke Norris.

“You remember what happened to their daughter-in-law Linsley?”

“Oh that was so tragic. Linsley finally pregnant after trying so long and then gone in a second. She was the sweetest thing, and Fulke and Mary both loved her like an angel on earth. I remember Inez told me—”

“Inez Boodle?”

“You remember, she had that dreadful husband Pete that you just couldn't tolerate. Or
wouldn't
, even though I said, ‘These are our neighbors and you can't
say
if he comes in the front door I go out the back—'”

She'd confused me with my father, as she often did. “I think you mean Dad didn't like Pete Boodle.”

“He
hated
him!”

I fed her more sorbet. “Inez said something about…?”

Mother had once loved to gossip, spending hours on the white and gold phone in her “sitting room” off their bedroom, swapping scandals with her friends, often while I pleaded with her to hang up and drive me somewhere. She said, “Inez told me in the beginning of their marriage Tyler and Linsley were having troubles and Fulke had to step in. He told Tyler if he didn't keep his marriage together he'd be cut right out of the family. I don't think that's right. Family's family, that's what I was taught and that's what I tried to teach my sons. Is Vaughn home yet? Was I supposed to go get him today?” Agitated, she pulled herself up into the pillows.

“No, Vaughn and Jennifer live in Richmond. Vaughn's a doctor like Dad. He'll be here soon…. Tell me what Tyler Norris was like as a child.”

She was happy to be able to help. “Oh, very, very smart. He was so smart they never knew what to do with him. I mean it wasn't even funny sometimes, like Fulke had this big aquarium with some rare fish in it and Tyler wasn't much more than four or five and he let out all the water to see what would happen. Well, of course those fish just died. They called it ‘scientific curiosity,' but I could tell Fulke was mad as a hornet. Well, I said to Mary, I have two boys myself and why the Lord didn't give me a girl…with all the Dollard china and silver. Of course, Jay, you do have an appreciation—”

I distracted her with the last of the frozen lemon. “Did you like Tyler?”

She patted her lips slowly on a thin scalloped handkerchief embroidered
EAD
, her maiden name Elizabeth Ann Dollard, the handkerchief older than her long marriage. “Did I like who?”

“Tyler Norris. Mary's son.”

She looked past me, back in time. “He could play the piano.” She frowned, listening to old music. “But he didn't have your nice touch, Jay. I hate to say it and don't tell Mary but, well, there wasn't any…feeling in it. And that was funny because he was a very…intense little boy. One time I remember, oh, he was maybe six or so, he vomited right in front of everybody at a little publishing party for Fulke—because Fulke had brought him out and stood him on a table to show off how he could do any math problem in his head and Fulke would do them on a calculator and Tyler got one wrong and just vomited all over everywhere. Mary was mortified, mortified.”

“You ever hear of his doing anything…strange when he was young?”

“Strange? Well, it's not fair, but I thought the way you'd turn around and he'd be smiling at you for no reason, that was strange.”

“Creepy?”

“Well, yes, but isn't that terrible of me, he was just a little boy.”

“What about any trouble in school?”

“Oh, Tyler didn't go to school, Jay. He was much too smart for our schools. Mary got permission to teach him at home. And she was his tutor 'til the accident, I believe, and then he went off to boarding school. I think it was someplace in Georgia.”

“The accident?”

“Yes, poor Mary said she fell asleep with a cigarette and just about burned herself to death because somehow her bedroom door got locked and she couldn't get out. Little Tyler was only eight and I guess he got scared and ran off. It was just lucky the maid forgot her house keys and had to get off the bus and walk back. They couldn't find Tyler for hours and hours and finally they found him hiding in this little tree house he had on their lake property. He'd gotten himself all the way out there on his bicycle.”

“Where's this lake property?”

“Oh honey, you know. They still have it. A nice little place. Not as nice as Nachtmusik. You know Vaughn thinks we ought to sell Nachtmusik, but it's been in the family so long….”

“Where's the Norris place?”

“You know. Right next to that new resort, what's it called? Something about Vivaldi.”

“The Fifth Season?”

She asked for her little satin make-up case and looked at the mirror in its lid. “Yes, Fulke and Mary sold some of their land to that new hotel. I don't believe people ought to sell off their land to all these Yankees that honk their horns if you don't shoot out like a wild horse when the light changes. But after the fire, you'd never see Mary at the club in a swimsuit or even a short sleeve dress. Luckily it didn't get her face. I am so damn old.” Mother touched her own face, still the “peaches and cream” my dad had called her. “Peggy Peaches will now play for us,” he'd announce at the lake house as he pulled back the bedspread curtain, revealing my mother—tan in the beautiful starched white shorts and shirts that other women ironed for her—seated smiling at the small white spinet.

We talked awhile about those old summer days at Nachtmusik on the lake. And then slowly she slipped away into that long past time. Finally she sank down into the pillows. “I'm feeling a little tired, honey.”

I sat by her bed and took her hand and moved each finger to play along with the CD I'd put on her small player by the bed. Together we struck the imaginary notes of the first Bach variation she'd taught me. Back then, my hand had fit inside hers, had held onto hers to climb a stair, to cross a street. Now her hand was very small, the tan faded, the strength to make music gone. When I raised her fingers to kiss her good-bye, she tugged my hand toward her lips. Her face collapsed into a painful frown. “Oh, Jay. You've been drinking again.” I pulled my hand away. “I could always tell because your skin smells funny. Where's Alice? Tell Alice I want to talk to her.”

“I'll tell her, Mom. You go on to sleep now.”

“Is Vaughn home? I want you to be nice to your little brother.”

“I will, Mom.”

“You're the most beautiful little boy in the whole wide world. And smart and sweet and everything nice.”

“I love you too, Mom. Go to sleep now.”

When I left, I took with me from her bedside table one of the volumes of Fulke Norris's inspirational verse that people were always bringing her on their visits. This one was titled “Saints” and had on its cover a portrait of St. Margaret leading a very domesticated dragon by a golden chain.

• • •

Dr. Josie Roth's lab was across the handsome Haver quad from the hospital. A graduate student pointed her out working at a bank of microscopes. She was attractive, but not as pretty as her younger sister Linsley had been. Her features were stronger, slightly asymmetrical; her frame too large for her weight. She'd grown thinner since the murder of her sister. She was surprised I'd wanted to see her. We talked a while about her work in psychiatric pharmacology. When I told her I didn't think of psychiatrists as working in labs, she said, “I'm not interested in listening to middle-aged businessmen whine about having affairs with twenty-year-olds because their wives don't appreciate them.” She gestured around the long chrome counter of microscopes and centrifuges. “I'm interested in figuring out which chemicals can help readjust a brain that's out of kilter.”

I leaned against the wall. “Like your brother-in-law Tyler's brain?”

She finished jotting tiny meticulous numbers on a piece of graph paper. “I don't want to talk about Tyler anymore. Linsley's dead. He got away with it. You tried, I tried, it's over.”

I shook my head. “It's not over. He killed Judge Turbot last night.”

Stricken, she stared at me. It was a struggle to speak. “What are you talking about?”

“He butchered her, cut out her heart.”

She sank into one of the lab stools. Her hands were shaking. “The news thought it was this serial killer Guess Who.”

“Tyler is Guess Who.”

Dr. Roth burst into tears. I waited while she fought her way back to control then I said, “I'm here because I need you to help me stop him.”

She shook her head confused.

“Were you aware that Tyler was sleeping with a college student of his named Lucy Griggs, the young woman killed at The Fifth Season?”

She said she'd be very surprised to hear that Tyler was sleeping with anyone. But she did recall seeing him once in the library food court having an intense conversation with a young woman who seemed to be furious about something. She had assumed that the girl was upset about a poor grade. I showed her a photograph of Lucy Griggs. Slowly she nodded. Yes, that was the girl. She'd seen them just before the fall term had ended, so in December, less than a month before Linsley died.

Roth excused herself to repair her tear-stained face. When she finally returned from the ladies room, she asked me, “You really think Tyler is Guess Who? You think he killed the other women?”

I said yes, I did think so, and warned her that she herself might be in danger and should take every precaution.

“Why don't you arrest him if that's what you think?”

I said I was very afraid we weren't going to be allowed to arrest him. I explained that we'd been forbidden by the district attorney's office to investigate Tyler Norris, who was threatening the city with a suit for harassment. “Nobody thinks he killed your sister, including his jury.”

Pain seemed to shrink her until she looked not thin but frail. “I could testify that I saw him arguing with Lucy Griggs, but I have no proof that there was an affair. It's the last thing Linsley thought, believe me.”

I used the suggestion Isaac Rosethorn had given me. “Dr. Roth, I wonder, is there something in that marriage that maybe you didn't testify about at the trial? Maybe something about Linsley, something you didn't want your folks to know or the world to know? Maybe you still don't.”

Josie Roth walked to the end of lab, watched for a moment as a white mouse scratched at the side of its cage. I followed her there and said, “The man's a sociopath. You know it. He's killed five, maybe six, women.” She didn't answer me. We stood there in the silent lab for a few minutes. Then I wrote my cell phone number on her note pad and told her that if she should think of anything useful, to call me.