Misfortune (41 page)

“Absolutely not,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation. “I never saw anything that would lead me to believe that she wanted to harm herself. She was extremely sad, and nervous for her own future, but she wanted to have that future, and was making plans accordingly.”

“Such as?”

“I can’t give you particulars. Suffice it to say that she seemed quite optimistic about starting a new life. Don’t misunderstand me. She loved your father very much. She was doing everything possible, to the best of her abilities, to make his life more comfortable and pleasant. But she wasn’t unrealistic. She spoke to his doctors. She knew his prognosis, as well as his life expectancy.”

Now it was Frances’s turn to be silent. Although she understood that Dr. Prescott’s loyalty was to Clio, his patient, it was hard for her to listen to the reference to her father’s impending death in such an objective manner. Living in Orient Point, visiting her father once a week, she had been able to distance herself from the reality of his rapid decline, of his inevitable death. She thought of her earlier visit with Richard, how frail he looked in bed, how feeble he was. Clio had been forced to face something that she herself had done everything in her power to avoid.

“I take it Clio had plans, then, for after my father passed away.”

“Yes. She wanted to move to Europe.”

Frances was startled. She hadn’t imagined that Clio would leave Southampton, the life she had, Richard’s business, her social milieu.

When Frances and Pietro had ended their engagement, she hadn’t been able to stay in New York City. She’d felt as if there were nothing left for her there, nothing that would be separate from memories of their life together. She had moved to Orient Point to start over. Apparently Clio had been prepared to do the same thing. She recalled her father’s words, that she and Clio were alike in their need for privacy. They were also alike in their need to flee from painful memories.

“When was she planning to leave?”

“Not before your father passed away,” he said defensively.

Frances sat back against the banquette. She wished she had ordered a Danish, something sweet to give her a jolt of energy. She steepled her fingers and rested them on the edge of the table. Her torso felt heavy, and she struggled to stay erect. She felt lost, disoriented by this doctor who seemed to be getting her no closer to a suspect.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know how I can help,” Dr. Prescott said as if reading her mind.

Frances thought for a moment. “Is Beverly Winters a patient of yours?”

He lowered his eyes. “I can’t comment.”

“You can’t even confirm or deny?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you the slightest bit curious about who killed Clio?” Frances asked.

“Morbid curiosity is not something I indulge in,” Dr. Prescott replied.

She got up to leave. For reasons she couldn’t precisely identify, she didn’t like Dr. Prescott. She knew from years of experience how easy it was to hide behind legal privileges, to withhold the truth under the guise of principle. She just hadn’t expected him to be so tight-lipped about his murdered patient.

As she slid out of the banquette, she turned and left a dollar bill on the table. “By the way,” she added, “when did you see my picture?”

He didn’t respond.

“You said on the telephone that you’d know me because you’d seen my picture.”

“Clio. The last time I saw her, she showed me a photograph of you and your sister.”

It had never occurred to her that Clio would bother to mention her, the stepdaughter, not to her therapist. Frances couldn’t imagine that she and Blair even passed through Clio’s mind now that they were grown and out of the way. If they did, it could only have been as irritants, not something worth analyzing. What had they discussed? What had Frances and Blair done to warrant Clio’s attention? Or had it been wrath? She looked at Dr. Prescott, who sat expectantly. Did he know what was racing through her mind? It was his job to know, wasn’t it?

Frances turned away. Whatever Clio had shared, she didn’t want to know. It was too late for reconciliation.

As she sped east on Route 495, the wind whipped around the cabin of Frances’s pickup, making the truck weave ever so slightly within its marked lane. She looked at the odometer. She had driven hundreds of miles in the last week, back and forth from the north and south forks of Long Island, forty-five miles each way, plus two trips to Manhattan in less than a week, more than she remembered making in the last year. Despite her sore back, stiff legs, and the late hour, she felt compelled to add a detour to her journey, to stop in Southampton, to speak to the woman who shared her stepmother’s psychiatrist. Beverly Winters was hiding something. She wanted to know what.

There were several lights on downstairs. Frances rang the doorbell and waited.

Beverly’s obvious displeasure registered as soon as she opened the door. She clutched a tumbler in her right hand and a cigarette in her left. As she pitched forward slightly, the ice cubes rattled in the glass. Frances surmised that whatever she was drinking, it was not her first of the evening.

“What can I do for you?” She seemed to strain to open her bloodshot eyes wider.

“I want to talk to you about Dr. Fritz Prescott.”

If the name was familiar, Beverly gave no indication. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and I don’t appreciate the interruption. I’m busy.” Her lips tripped over her words.

“I know for a fact you do. You’re a patient of Dr. Prescott’s. Clio Pratt was, too, before she died,” Frances added. “I need to know whether you and Clio ever acknowledged that to each other.”

Beverly took a sip of her drink but said nothing.

“Did Clio know you were a patient of Dr. Prescott’s?”

“What difference does it make?” she mumbled into her glass.

Frances didn’t want to answer. The significance was in how Clio apparently reacted to those who she perceived had vulnerable information about her. The permutations of Clio’s psyche that Frances was in the process of discovering could not be easily explained. “Were you aware that Clio went to see him?”

Beverly looked up. Her eyelids drooped. Her mascara had smeared. “Not until you appeared out of the blue.”

“Neither of you knew about the other one.” Frances’s words came out more as a comment than a question.

Beverly leaned against the door frame. She flicked her cigarette butt past Frances, then ran the fingers of her free hand through her hair. “Why are you here? Do you think I had something to do with Clio’s death, is that what you’re getting at?”

“Could I come in?” Frances asked. “I won’t take more than a moment of your time.”

Beverly looked again at her tumbler, rattled the ice, and nodded. “I could use a refreshment anyway,” she said. “If we’re going to be standing around chatting.” She forced a smile.

Frances followed her down a hall dimly lit by only one of two shell-shaped sconces. The other light bulb had blown. The hall opened into a large rectangular room. Pale pink drapes were drawn in front of every window. Frances counted six couches, each covered in faded blue chintz, clustered in three different seating areas. Beverly stopped at a butler’s tray table. “Can I get you something?” she asked. She lifted up a bottle and turned it toward her to read the label. “There’s plenty of gin,” she said, adding a healthy dose to her glass.

“If you have vodka, I’d have a sip,” Frances said.

As Beverly focused on the other bottles, she rocked slightly. “Doesn’t look like there is. Anything else?”

“I’m all set, then.” Frances reminded herself that she still had nearly an hour to drive before she could collapse in her own bed.

“It’s a shame to drink alone.” Beverly wandered toward her, then half fell, half sprawled, onto one of the couches.

Frances sat across from her. She found herself playing with a loose thread in the well-worn fabric of the upholstered arm. She wanted to put her feet up but thought better of it. One edge of the glass coffee table between them already had a pronounced chip.

“So, what do you want to know about me?” Beverly asked. Her eyes closed briefly as a smile passed over her lips.

“What happened between you and Clio?”

“Hmm…that’s a question I wasn’t expecting. How shall I answer it? In the Southampton style, short and superficial, or are you interested in the real version, the ugly truth?”

Frances surmised that the question was rhetorical and sat silent.

“Let’s see…” Beverly shifted against the cushions and stared up at the ceiling. “Dudley and your father were good friends. They trusted each other. You may not know this, but Dudley was your father’s accountant up until he got too sick to work. The accountant for Pratt Capital, too. So they had known each other a long time, and there’s something about being friends for many years, sharing the same basic experiences. A loyalty develops. A camaraderie and comfort that comes from having the same frame of reference. Maybe you’re too young to realize that yet.”

Frances thought for a moment about her own friendships, what few she had. Aside from Meaty and Sam, neither of whom she had known all that long, there was nobody. When she’d left Manhattan, she had left everything, and everyone, behind.

“Your father never said a word about his divorce. He never even officially told us. It was just that one day your mother wasn’t there, neither were you two girls, except on weekends and school vacations. It wasn’t hard to figure out, but your father was very private about it.” Beverly kicked off her shoes. They thumped as they fell to the carpeted floor. “When Dudley and I first came to Southampton, it wasn’t at all like it is now. Nobody had a forty-five-thousand-square-foot house, or armed guards. It was a very conservative, stable summer community. Everyone stayed married. Only relatively recently did the second and even third wives show up. Babies whose mothers were thirty and whose fathers were sixty. Your parents’ divorce was unusual at the time.”

Frances nodded. Throughout elementary school she had been the only child whose parents weren’t married. Every time she went to the refrigerator, where her class list hung by an alligator-shaped magnet, she was reminded of that distinction. Ms. Aurelia Watson, designated as her parent. No Mr. and Mrs. Richard Pratt with Aurelia noted in parentheses like everyone else.

“When your father married Clio,” Beverly continued, “we were thrilled for him. But the crowd out here can be tough. People knew your mother. Clio was a newcomer and, at first, wasn’t treated very well. I was one of the few women who accepted her. Dudley and I saw how happy your father was, how happy she made him. Early on in their marriage, the four of us did stuff regularly. We even went to Bermuda for a golf tournament once.” She looked down into her drink. “Stayed at the Reefs. I remember one night, your father and Clio were late to meet us for dinner. They arrived out of breath. Clio was wearing the most beautiful pale pink silk dress—I still think about that dress. It was exquisite. It had a square neckline, and as she breathed, her tanned chest rose and fell. There was sand on her kneecaps, and she was carrying her sandals. They’d been out walking on the beach, she said, and lost track of time. But we knew. The way they smiled at each other, a tender complicity. I could see Dudley was jealous. I was, too. It was hard not to be.” Beverly’s voice cracked. “Clio and Richard had themselves one helluva love affair. Even years later, after the rest of us had grown pretty tired of our spouses, they were still enamored of one another, happiest in their own company.” Beverly paused, took a sip of her drink, and smacked her lips.

Discussion of the intimacies of her father’s second marriage made Frances uncomfortable. She wanted to get the conversation back on track. “When did you and Clio have a falling-out?”

“Ah, yes. I was getting there, I suppose, in a rather long-winded way, now, wasn’t I?” A laugh rattled in Beverly’s throat. “Dudley and I began to have marital problems, I guess that’s what you could call them, about the time that our daughter, Deidre, left home for boarding school. I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but things seemed to deteriorate. We were having a pretty rocky time of it when Dudley got emphysema. That brought us together, kind of a bunker mentality. I think I appreciated him more when I realized I was going to lose him. Typical, isn’t it?”

Yes, thought Frances, despite her abhorrence for clichés. She too had realized the importance of a relationship when it was too late to rescue.

“For a while, we were consumed by his illness, seeing doctors, getting second and third opinions, exploring treatment options. But ultimately, it was just a distraction. The foundation of our relationship had cracked years earlier, and no amount of crisis could rebuild it. Besides, Dudley got to the point where he needed a nurse, not a wife. I wasn’t particularly good as either. It made sense for us to separate.”

“Did you?”

Beverly twirled a lock of hair around her finger and chewed on her lower lip. “I told Dudley I wanted a divorce. He acted surprised, as if he hadn’t even acknowledged our growing estrangement. He begged me not to go. It was quite pitiful.” She shut her eyes. “He was in his wheelchair in the library of our house. By that time, he was weak and quite thin. He sat with his hands folded in his lap, as if he were praying, and he cried. He told me he’d be dead soon enough. Why did I have to leave now? He said he couldn’t bear for the last major event of his life to be a divorce. I wanted to be convinced, but despite how pathetic he was, I needed to get away. I couldn’t sacrifice my life to him any longer. That’s what I told him.” She paused, opened her eyes, and looked over at Frances. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s late. We’re both tired. And I’ve probably drunk too much.”

Frances said nothing. Neither did she make any motion to leave. The two women sat in silence.

“Ah, what the hell,” Beverly said. “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. So what’s telling you gonna hurt me?” She laughed again, but it sounded forced. “Dudley had a life insurance policy. A substantial one. When nothing else worked, he told me he would change the beneficiary, give it to Deirdre, if I left him. I hadn’t counted on that, on Dudley’s shrewdness, but it was a lot of money. In retrospect, I probably could’ve gotten most of it in a divorce settlement. We were married a long time, but the thought of poverty during a protracted legal battle terrified me. I agreed to stay. He slept in the guest room, not that it made much difference, but we stayed married, kept up appearances. I wasn’t proud of myself.” She stuck a finger in her glass and stirred the ice cubes. “Nine days later, he strapped himself into his wheelchair, wheeled himself into our swimming pool, and drowned.”