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“You went?” I was surprised. I'd spotted the brochure at Marta's home.

“So many of us from the college went. Joshua Jennings, in fact. That's when he met her. It's when all of us discovered Marta's charming personality. Her gift of—vignette. We had a great time. A bunch of old professors—and Marta. Some students, of course, but God knows what they did.” He pointed to one of the cabinets across the room, an elaborate oriental lacquered chest. I walked up to it. One small, almost hidden shelf had a few items spread about, randomly: a black enamel box with a painting of peasants at a well, a white-gold pin shaped like a white-birch tree, a Russian Orthodox icon of Jesus on the cross. Even a tarnished school medal of Lenin. It was a tourist's travel bag of goodies. I reached for the icon.

“Don't touch anything,” he yelled. “I saved those idiotic mementos because I am reminded of our beautiful trip, which was also my last one. At one time I traveled a lot.”

“Was there any tension on that trip—I mean all you gentlemen and Marta?”

He ignored me, so I shifted questions.

“You mentioned that she and Joshua Jennings had a falling out.”

His tongue licked the corner of his mouth and then disappeared. “I don't know what about.” Said deliberately, harshly.

“I don't believe you.”

The veins on the back of his skinny, speckled hands popped up. His eyes got darker, the craggy face murkier. “That's rude, young man.”

Persistent, I corrected, “You must have thought about it.”

And then, his eyes closed tight, he talked quietly, circling and recircling his words, bobbing his head into his chest, swallowing his words. “I don't know what happened but I often guessed and when I asked her—point-blankly one day—she got curt and left early. When I asked Joshua, he babbled about her cruelty to a Spanish gardener or something…or a garden man…I don't know. Joshua Jennings was my friend but too—too what? Too manipulative. He flattered her as much as she him. I think she was dazzled by his old money and old New England name and his aristocratic background. He was a snob, but to her it seemed like polish. She was, after all, a little Irish girl who married a Polish nobody. I believe she pressured him for something and he got scared, inveterate old bachelor that he was…”

“Do you think she wanted marriage?”

“With that old bastard?” He looked up at me. “I don't know and I don't care what happened, but I know something happened and I bet she was the instigator. She probably envisioned herself the mistress of the manor. Foolish, no? She drove him out of state, I bet, because she could be forever at you, at you, pressuring you. She was a driven woman when she wanted something. She wouldn't let go of something. Sometimes you wanted to shake her…” He stopped, stunned by his own words, and trembled.

He stared into my face.

“She liked me,” he said finally.

“But she didn't like you enough?”

Now he looked at me, his glare hard. “I couldn't understand it.” He sounded bewildered. “Not as much as I liked her. But that was true for all of us.”

“What do you mean?”

“She started to withdraw,” he said. “I'd call and call, and she'd eventually show up. But”—now the words were spoken through tight lips—“she was into other things. Her words: ‘into other things.' Things—like I was a thing.” His index finger curled around the arm of the chair, and the skin, already pasty white, became translucent.

“What other things?”

“I never found out.”

I leaned in closer, bringing my face near his. I was fascinated that this man could move through such a range of attitudes toward Marta in such a small space of time—all the while slumped in that hardback chair, the heavy overcoat slung neatly over his shoulders. He was still talking. Marta had treated him cruelly in the final days. She'd been beautiful and loving and wonderful and funny and sweet. But all this anger was whispered now, his voice scarcely raised, the quiet in the room still there, the muffled street sounds wafting in, as I watched a man waffle back and forth between love and anger. Here, I thought, was an old man who'd been left, felt betrayed, who still loved and was still confused. But as I watched him I realized it would be impossible for this man, so weak, so tired and skinny, to have murdered the robust, lively Marta.

At that moment, in the silence when neither of us spoke, a taxi blared its shrill horn, and we both jumped, startled out of the dim oppressive silence.

“My taxi,” he roared. “Out.” He pointed. He jumped up, grabbed his overnight case, and pushed me out the door.

As I watched him rush to the waiting taxi, striding ahead of me with sure steps, I revised my simplistic reading of him as feeble and delicate. Here was a man whose moves were deliberate and forceful. The taxi had already pulled away by the time I made it to the sidewalk. Richard Wilcox only looked fragile seated in a gray room. When he had to move, he moved.

Chapter Thirteen

Karen and I met for lunch at a small Vietnamese eatery in the South End of Hartford, a tiny place tucked between an overstocked Asian grocery and a raucous karaoke club that specialized in top-forty American pop songs sung in Vietnamese. Slick-haired New Wave Vietnamese gang boys sang Lady Gaga and Robin Thicke to their pouting girlfriends. Hank first brought me to the restaurant, where he proceeded to “re-educate” my Vietnamese taste buds, as he termed it. I went there a lot. I suggested it to Karen when she told me she had to be in Hartford for an appointment later that afternoon.

I arrived at twelve and she was already there. I spotted her standing outside the restaurant as I pulled into the lot. Above her head the flashing neon sign read Pho Saigon, and near the door a half dozen little Asian kids played leapfrog with one another, toppling over, bumping, blocking the doorway. Giddy teenaged Asian boys in hip-hop jeans and buzz cuts over blank mocking faces watched everyone. Karen looked nervous, standing there, the little kids brushing her dress, oblivious, weaving around her, their high-pitched mixture of English and Vietnamese jarring and shrill. When she saw me she smiled.

“I've never eaten Vietnamese food.”

“I'm your guide.” I bowed.

Inside, under a garish overhead light, with the discount store streamers and the gaudy dragon-etched mirrors on stuccoed walls, we tucked ourselves into a booth, and she immediately started fiddling with chopsticks. She was nervous.

“Relax. We're no longer at war.”

“I'm not nervous about being here,” she said, a little angry. “I'm just nervous about what you have to tell me.”

Now I laughed. “Well, we can both relax. I have nothing to tell you yet.”

“Nothing?”

“At least nothing along the lines warranted by your generous retainer.”

She looked disappointed. But she smiled, sipping the tea that the waiter placed before her. “Good tea.”

I smiled. “Buddha says, when you are weak, drink tea.”

“He actually said that?”

“Yes.”

I ordered bowls of spicy
bun
for both of us, a traditional dish of diced spring roll, thin barbecued pork strips, served over cellophane vermicelli noodles, with a slight hint of mint, basil, enhanced by fiery
nuoc mam
sauce. And I ordered hot French-style Vietnamese coffee, the vaguely cloying concoction with sweetened condensed milk. I loved the smells wafting through the place. At a rear table another waiter named Diep was dicing two-foot shafts of aromatic lemongrass.

While we drank steamy crab and asparagus soup—compliments of the house—I filled Karen in on my activities. The case was too new, I told her. I'd wanted to have lunch because I really wanted to ask
her
questions.

“Karen, I'm having trouble getting a clear-cut picture of your aunt.”

“Why?”

“I mean, I knew her as this sweet, older woman, you know, unremarkably middle class, neat as a pin, tidy, with an old lady's blue-tinted permanent, and sensible shoes. A little nosy, yes—judgmental. A—well, cleaning lady.”

“She was that.” An edge to her voice.

“But Davey portrays her as an intrusive monster, cold and unyielding. You paint her as a nice average aunt, a woman who liked Atlantic City and church. But I sense you had your own problems with her—you loved her, yet you were annoyed by her control.”

Karen looked hurt, drumming the table with chopsticks. “She
was
those things. Nobody is just one thing. You know that. What are you saying?”

“If we're talking murder, she had to be something else. Something about her had to trigger murderous intent in someone. Someone willing to
murder
her—possibly to be caught.”

She bit her lower lip. “That's true.” Said too quietly. “But that's what
you
have to find out. So what's the problem?” Her voice became clipped, brittle.

“Well,” I breathed in slowly, “I had a talk with Richard Wilcox and he described her as—well, a woman who liked the company of men. That's how he put it. An aged
femme fatale
running around with a bottle of Windex. She seemed to like her good times…”

Karen cut me off. “Yes, I know that about her. She could be flirtatious and a little forward sometimes. Sort of embarrassing in an old lady, true. She enjoyed dancing and parties. We
talked
about it, she and I. She wanted
me
to go out more to meet people. It was all innocent. After all, a woman her age…”

“But even at her age she wanted companionship. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe a little romance. A liaison.” The words stuck in my throat. I pictured Marta scooting around my apartment with a vacuum cleaner. “She could still have wanted a relationship. Did she have one after her husband died?”

A pause while she sipped tepid tea, her hand circling the small cup. “Not that I knew of. Actually we didn't talk about things like that. Anything real personal. We
avoided
stuff like that. It came up now and then, almost by accident.”

“What do you mean—by accident?”

“Well, I know that she'd have these little tiffs with the men she worked for.”

“Tiffs?”

“She'd get into a snit if she didn't get the right amount of attention, I think. They were all jealous of each other, all those old men. She liked the attention of men.”

“Wilcox said she could be mean-spirited and hard.”

She nodded, agreeing. “It had to do with Joshua. Everything always came back to Joshua, the old professor.” She sat back, sucked in her breath. “Something happened during her last year. I mean she always talked about those old guys in the same way—revered men, educated men who liked her—but suddenly she focused exclusively on Joshua. It was Joshua this and Joshua that. You know. It got a little embarrassing. And scary, I thought.”

“Scary?”

“After all, Joshua was eighty maybe. Maybe older. A decade older than her. I know she found him charming and mannerly—you know. She wanted to be part of that world. He was old guard, old-fashioned prep school finish. Farmington WASP to the nth degree.”

“But why scary?”

“Because there was something life-or-death about the way she spoke about him.”

I pictured the irascible Joshua Jennings—another small, frail man like Richard Wilcox, but bright-eyed, quick-witted, sprightly for his age. He fancied himself a daring spirit, the cruel old man with the wicked remark, slightly risqué, but he was really a conservative snob. Dressed in worn sport jackets with leather packets, old gray slacks that rode too high on his waist, he watched the world with condescending eyes.

“And rich,” I said out loud.

Karen nodded her head. “Yes, very rich. I know that Marta talked of his money. But she didn't need money.”

“What did she want?”

“I think Marta thought she might marry Joshua. Travel with him. All that.”

“But they stopped being friends.”

“They fought. Some nasty fight. Bitter. She told me it was about the gardener, that Willie guy, but I don't know. It had to be something else. I think it was about marriage. He could be a notorious flirt, too—a lecher really. I think it gave her the wrong idea. I don't know for certain but I think Marta pressured him. I'm guessing. Let me tell you, that topic was taboo with us. He was a sick old fool, an old geezer, Marta called him once—but they played off each other that way. I think they loved the game.”

“Maybe
he
loved the game, not her.”

“Maybe. Yeah, Marta wouldn't.”

“But she changed the rules.”

“Yeah, maybe. I suppose it scared him. He was an old bachelor with only Marta as a friend. A hermit.”

“Is that why he moved?”

We dug into the
bun
, me with chopsticks, Karen with a fork. For a second her mouth puckered at the tartness of the
nuoc mom
. The aroma of sweet basil wafted across the table. The quiet of the restaurant was broken when the door opened and a bunch of kids tumbled in, screaming and running. For a second Karen looked disoriented. Then she looked at me.

“Maybe. Maybe not. He'd been trying to sell that big old derelict house on the green for a while. Off and on. Fickle. For sale—not for sale. He was getting weaker and was afraid of falling down the stairs. I think she said he had trouble climbing to the second floor. He mentioned a retirement village—near a library, back in Amherst where he'd gone to school, a small place for him and his rare books—and Marta fought him. I suppose she thought she would take care of him. They fought, stopped talking for months. Marta thought it temporary—they loved their stormy silences—but then he sold the house, moved away, and Marta fumed.”

“It must have broken her heart.”

Karen frowned. “Rick, she was angry—not depressed. She got in the dumps when he
died
six months later. She imagined herself living in that big old house, the wife of the sophisticated, respected Joshua Jennings. She'd play lady-of-the-manor for those boring college receptions he hosted there. It was an old lady's stupid fantasy.”

“I know. I used to go there. We all did. That's how he met the Canterburys who bought the house. He even loved Liz, my ex-wife.”

She wasn't listening. “A foolish woman.”

“Karen, his death must've hit her hard. Two weeks later she's dead.”

“Well, think about it. She reads it in the paper. He dies in New York City, you see, visiting a relative or something, a niece, and there was the huge, front-page obituary in the local paper. It drove her nuts because she'd always planned on a reconciliation.”

“But he'd finally made a decision.”

“And didn't say good-bye.”

“He was still angry with her?”

Her voice cracked. “He wanted nothing to do with her. She violated some awful rule he had. It had to be more than a simple fight. She would never discuss it.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked. I poured her more tea.

Karen fiddled with her napkin, crumpling the paper. “I need to tell you something. She sent at least one letter to him in Amherst, early on, back in May, and he never answered. One letter that I know of. She got his address from the boys' school, and I think she pleaded with him. He got it, of course—he didn't refuse it—but he never answered. I remember she sent the letter certified, on purpose, so he'd have to sign. She saw that signature on the little green card as his ultimate insult to her. She carried it around all summer, steaming. She threatened to go there—to confront him. Tell him off.”

“She told you this?”

“Only after he didn't answer her letter. She never mentioned the letter to me—before that, I mean. Then he died.”

She started fumbling with some papers. “I have the obituary here.” She smiled. “Those papers I mentioned to you. I have them here.” She handed me a folder of papers, and I glanced inside. Neatly clipped news clippings, the insurance policy I'd asked about, other personal papers, all bound with elastic bands.

“I can borrow these?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

For a while we ate in silence, absorbed in the food.

I caught her looking at me, a whisper of a smile on her face. “You have an interesting face.”

I smiled. “Interesting?”

“I mean that in a good way—attractive, I mean.” She got flustered. “I mean the Asian and the blue eyes and the…”

I grinned.

She looked down, embarrassed. “Conversation messes me up.”

“Thanks.” I cleared my throat. “Tell me about Davey.”

For a few minutes she told me what I already knew from my conversation with him. They weren't close, but she claimed to love him. Years ago, when their parents suddenly died, they were inseparable, hiding together in the lonely shadows, sheltered by Marta and her husband until he died. But they drifted apart as grownups.

“He's real strange, and Aunt Marta had little use for him.”

“Why?” I watched her face. “That bothers me.”

“I think she saw him as a bum. At one point he was more…Catholic than she was, if that was possible. At the end I couldn't even bring him up in conversation.”

“They had a fight?”

A pause. “Maybe. Yes.”

“Your aunt seems to have a habit of fighting on a grand scale.”

“She was passionate about things she believed in.”

I let it go. “Davey told me something interesting. Marta always got what she wanted. The only way he'd see her killing herself was if she couldn't have what she wanted.”

“I said she was—passionate.”

“My question is, what did she really want that she couldn't have?”

She frowned. “Are you thinking Joshua?”

“Maybe. But maybe that's too simple. Maybe there's something else. If it's Joshua, there goes your murder theory. Joshua was dead by then. There was no chance they'd ever reconcile.”

“And it makes the suicide more realistic.” She sighed. “I still cannot see her killing herself. If you were at that last conversation I had with her…”

“Davey and I talked about her being Catholic and all.”

“She was devout. Devout people don't kill themselves.”

“Yes, they do,” I said.

She looked into my face. “This is Davey talking, I think.”

I waited. “Davey makes me nervous,” I broke in. I deliberated a moment. “He warned me about you. Said you had bouts of—depression. Mentioned medication. Illness.”

Karen's face hardened, anger seeping in. Then she forced an apologetic smile. “I knew he'd tell you that. A breakdown in high school. One in college. I went to school in Boston, at Emerson, but the city got to me. I had problems so I had counseling. So what? Bouts of depression come and go, so I deal with them. Marta wanted me to be a carbon copy of her—her bigotry, her rigidity, her fear of different people. Her knee-jerk Catholicism. She bought me clothes like hers—all pastels and matronly stuff. But Davey has made a point of telling everyone I'm nuts. I'm not surprised. It's his favorite story. I can get moody, I know. I get overwhelmed.” She looked into my face. “I'm still like Marta in that way. I sometimes want the world to obey my orders, and then I fall apart. I get lost.”