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Selena grinned sloppily. “Peter charmed her.” It wasn't said as a compliment. “She can't—couldn't—resist a pretty man.”

“And?” I waited.

“Well,” Peter went on, “nothing. Really.” He pointed to the library. The door was open but the room was dark. In the dimness I could see a stepladder and paint cans, drop cloths. A huge cloth covered an object in the center. Peter pointed to it.

“Marta didn't know that the one thing Joshua left with the house was that grand piano of his.” He frowned. “Out of tune, of course. Worthless, of course. A fortune to repair, of course.” He shook his head. “Everything else was sold to antique dealers. Choice pieces were sent to the academy or the college. But he let us buy that. For a price—not a big one—but a price. Neither Selena nor I can play.” He was shaking his head.

“But it looks great there,” Selena said.

Peter ignored her. “So Marta comes one morning and starts to clean, does the front rooms, the bathrooms and kitchen, the guest room in back we're gonna use, but she's moping around. And then she opens the library door and sees the old grand piano—we'd pushed it in there from the music room, unfortunately scraping the French doors—and the tears start to fall. Wailing, I tell you. She never finished cleaning, and we had to take her home. She sat there on the piano bench, duster in one hand, bawling her eyes out. It was awful, like a slapped cat or something, a high-pitched wail of a cry, bone-chilling. We couldn't stop her.”

“Did she say anything to you?”

“She kept saying he died on her. She said he didn't have to run away, that she didn't mean what she said to him.”

I got interested. “She say what that was?”

“No, she was babbling. She looked real lonely, sitting there in that big empty room. I guess it was wrong of us to make her come back here. We just didn't
know
. She hadn't been here since long before he moved out last spring. Even before he sold the house they hadn't talked in a while. Some major blowout.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“No. I almost had to carry her out to the car. I drove her home. In her car.”

“Why haven't you told me this before?”

Peter looked dumbfounded. “It's important?”

I shrugged. Maybe it wasn't. True, it was a familiar variation of what I'd been hearing from everyone else.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Anything else?”

“No,” he said. “I can't believe you think this is important.”

I entertained a mental image of Marta draped over the piano, weeping for lost love. It made me sad, thinking about her in that cavernous room, but in that moment the face of Karen superimposed itself on her dead aunt's. The same melancholic, drawn face, the wasted blue eyes, the sagging mouth, the birdlike movement of the lips. I imagined Karen sitting at the piano, weeping. Karen touching me on the shoulders, her body hunched over, shaking, Karen motioning me out of her apartment.

I shook my head. Peter was standing there looking weepy himself, like a beaten dog. But I heard a syrupy dripping sound, and I turned to face a hiccoughing Selena. She was staring from Peter to me, as though unable to follow the conversation, a whiskey glass against her cheek, and she was trying unsuccessfully to suppress a fierce giggle.

Chapter Twenty-one

After the overheated packed room, the buzz of two stiff drinks in my head, and the groping fingers of Selena, the cold outdoors was a relief. As darkness fell, the streets became raw with icy air seeping into my bones. The earlier drizzle had ended, and I liked it. I bundled up, drew my collar tighter, and walked.

I didn't expect to bump into Charlie Safako, strolling along with a hesitant little pug. I was staring at the sidewalk, sloshing through accumulated fall leaves, enjoying the crunchy noises I was creating, when I heard a deep intake of breath. I looked up to see the professor standing still, gloved hand gripping a taut leash. He looked like an unsorted pile of clothes. Oversized parka with a tear in the sleeve, a wrinkled disheveled look about it. His hair was carelessly tucked under a wide-brimmed cap, the kind you see on men in summer golf carts. He hadn't shaved. He waited until I was near, and then he grunted at me. It was a sign, I knew, that he'd missed me.

“Well, well, Professor Safako of the history department, waiting on the heir apparent.”

He half-turned away, as though to ignore me, but Charlie Safako liked to assail people. He'd practiced on generations of hapless students at the college.

“Rick Van Lam, PI. Please Irritate. Intimidate. Or is it Irrigate?” He chuckled, amused at himself. “Or Pesky Immigrant.”

“You weren't invited to the Canterburys' party?”

“Oh please, that tiresome serial? The Bitch and the Beaten. Selena and I have a brief history. She wanted—well, never mind.”

His smile was creepy. I waited. I couldn't imagine Selena wanting him. “Sounds like you're dying to tell me something.”

“Are you still playing Jessica Fletcher for
Murder, She Wrote
? Or uploading a video onto You Tube—Mr. Lam's interviews? America's funniest videos—or some such crap. Little boy, what does your daddy say to your mommy at night? Giggle, giggle from America's TV living rooms.”

“Doing my job.”

He laughed, mimicking my voice in a deep growl. “
Doing my job
. Oh, Duke Wayne now. Lord, you do have those lines down pat. Thank God my charity dollars buy TVs for orphanages and resettlement camps in Guam. I consider it part of the Americanization process.”

I cut in, not wanting to let him get the better of me this time. “I was wondering. What exactly was your relationship with Richard Wilcox and Joshua Jennings? I know what you said about Marta but…”

He bristled. “You just don't understand relationships, my young man.”

Sarcastically, “Well, fill me in, Teacher.”

“If you must know—and obviously you must—I was not part of
that
equation. I was there as bored Greek chorus. Those two pitiful men played out their game with each other. Richard, quite frankly, was jealous of Joshua and his money and name.”

“And?”

“Well, Richard hated Joshua. Lied about him to Marta. Acting like pouting children. I watched it from Mount Olympus, imperious and cynical. For a while it was a good show. And then it got trivial and boring.”

“Why was that?”

“Because neither Joshua nor Richard wanted resolution.
Denouement
. They wanted the game to keep going. A pleasant diversion for lonely old celibate men. Marta was, indeed, an attractive woman.”

I nodded. “So I hear over and over. I still can't understand her appeal to such men.”

“Do you mean because she wasn't an academic? Like them, covered in diplomas from Ivy League gin mills?”

“Perhaps.”

“You know, she talked and talked, dreadful really, but in the end she always ended up
listening
to us. She had that…
talent
.”

“But you guys all have such negative things to say about her now.”

“Well, we're just not nice people, after all.”

“She was a friend.”

“Yes, she was fun, most of the time.”

“Patronizing?”

“So be it.”

“But she wanted more from the little play she was acting in. She wanted that resolution you mention. She wanted conclusion.”

“She wanted climax.” He grinned, showing stained teeth. “It was all meandering complication. There was no turning point in this Elizabethan farce.”

“But there
was
.”

For a moment he seemed out of focus, confused, on the verge of saying something. Then he started to walk away. Finally, he turned back, raising his voice against the wind. “But someone substituted a different script, Mr. Lam. Different play, new ending.”

I yelled back to him. “Did you have a part in this play?”

“My boy, they didn't even invite me to the rehearsals.”

***

I phoned Richard Wilcox the next morning. “How are you doing, sir?” I began. “How was your trip to the hospital?”

A pause. I could hear short, quick breathing.

“If you must know, things have changed. Now I know the horrible truth. As Brecht said, ‘Those who are still laughing have yet to hear the terrible news.' You see, I have months left, I'm told. Months. Not years. Months. Months are things you don't think about, things you throw away. We think about years—years are solid and long and in the future. Months end tomorrow. So I will end tomorrow.”

“I'm so sorry, Mr. Wilcox.” I waited. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

He wasn't listening to me. “I didn't think I'd be this frightened.” Then, after a pause, “You're calling because of Marta.”

“Yes.”

“That all seems so far away now. Like I knew her and Joshua in another life. Not a better life, but another life.”

“I still have found nothing.”

“Nor will you, I'm afraid.”

“I don't mean to bother you now.”

“Oh, but you obviously do.”

“I'll call back….”

“It was my fault,” he blurted out. Another deep intake of breath.

“What?” Startled.

A sardonic chuckle. “Old, old people playing the youthful game of love and kisses. Old foolish men.” I waited as he suffered through a coughing spell. “You see,” he went on slowly, “I was a jealous man. Neither Joshua nor I had any sense when it came to Marta. I was jealous of the attention she gave him because I was so taken with her. I had a little infatuation. She was attractive, flirtatious, a deeply sensual woman, remarkably stupid, a woman whose dogmatic and shrill personality added to the…allure, and gave her, well, plebeian crispiness.”

He chuckled, darkly.

“But she was taken with Joshua, and he with her. Somewhat. Of course, he had no intention of marrying at his age. Let's be realistic. He'd
never
married. Neither had I—no stomach for it. She was a diversion. He was so patrician in the awfulest sense, and she was pleasant company. Lord, I almost said—peasant company.”

“Unfair to her, no?”

He chuckled again. “Oh, the facile judgments of the young. I can still make a snobbish joke. You know, she could make a lonely celibate feel like—well, like he was a handsome young man in a diet-soda commercial. Isn't that an odd thought? That kind of young-at-heart world. It was all game play. When I talked, she stared into my face as though I were dispensing the most cherished wisdom.”

“Did she pressure Joshua for marriage?”

He laughed out loud. “It did come up. Joshua told me one time when we talked. She talked so openly about it—not to Joshua, but to me—and perhaps others. Joshua was getting sicker and sicker—he's older than I—
was
older than I—and she got more desperate.”

“And you poisoned the well?”

His voice got stronger. “Smart man. It was easy. He had this elevated view of her—devout Catholic observant, you know, even though Joshua always held Catholics suspect, as we all do. My Lord, they eat wafers and think they're tasting God. Delightful primitivism. But her fervor did suggest goodness—of sorts. Christian faith, hope, and charity. You know.”

“And?”

“And I took care of that.”

“How?”

“I learned somehow—it may have been through Marta herself—or maybe her fickle friend Hattie, that hag—that Marta liked to frequent a place called Louie's in Unionville, a local bar or tavern, a little rough at the edges. Marta could bend the elbow if she wanted to. I'd never been there, of course, but Louie's has sort of a sleazy reputation.”

“I know the place. And so you told Joshua?”

“And so I told Joshua. I couldn't wait. I think it led to some words because directly afterwards there was a shooting there—some lowlife I should have sent a check to in gratitude—and it made the local paper. Louie's on page one. Perfect timing. God must be a journalist—he so likes breaking news. And I think Joshua, always frightened of publicity and the world in general, backed off from her. He avoided her. Then that hissy fit with the gardener and a tracking of dirt or something. Then a bigger spat.”

“About what?”

“I never knew because she clammed up. She got more strident—her true colors emerging—and Joshua backed off more.”

“Is that why he moved?”

“Well, that surprised me. He talked about moving for years, of course. A real bore about it. But I suppose so. That big house was an albatross. Marta was huffing and puffing at the doorway, ready to blow the house down. Life elsewhere probably seemed desirable—and peaceful. She was smothering.”

“Did Joshua understand your…sabotage?”

“Of course. I told him before he moved.”

“And?”

“He shunned me after that.”

“Were you bothered?”

“Yes, because I didn't expect silence. I expected—applause.”

“Well, you can't blame yourself for the way things went down.”

“I can do whatever I want, young man. I even told him she went home with strangers. A complete lie. Oddly, Marta was a virtuous woman who just liked to wander around the edges of sensation. Gambling, but only slot machines. Bars, but only appropriate mixed drinks with various garden produce in them. Occasionally a late Saturday night, but home in time for early Mass. After all, the Blessed Virgin was watching her from some tree in Rochester or somewhere.”

“Did she know about what you said to Joshua?”

“Of course. None of us could keep a secret. We didn't talk for some time. But she came back. We missed each other. We were, after all, friends.”

“She was coming to see you the night she died?”

His voice tightened. “Yes. That was weird, I must say.”

“Why?”

“I've already told you. She sounded…panicked. Frightened. I never heard
that
before. Sad, depressed, angry, annoyed—but this was different.” He seemed to be holding the phone further away, his voice fading.

“If she was panicky or frightened, wouldn't that suggest murder?”

He made a
tsk
ing sound. “All it suggests, I think, is…panic. Fear of the god Pan—that's the root of the word, you know. Fear of the unknown. She was frightened by loneliness.”

“But…”

“And she was drunk as a skunk.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“Well, she was babbling. Something about dying, but that was old stuff. She was always talking about her impending death. A fear of the grave. An old lady's aches and pains. That's why I wanted her to come visit—to calm her down. Do you know how I know it was suicide? Because she
told
me so. In all the babble she kept mumbling about me burying her. I just assumed she feared cremation, I don't know. We'd talked about it once—I guess Karen advised her to be cremated.” A snicker. “Probably sooner than later. ‘Can you bury me?' Me bury her! I had to step in. Imagine that. Slurring her words. Afraid her niece wouldn't tend to her sacred Catholic burial rites. She wanted some guarantee. It was all preposterous. A drunken conversation. Was I supposed to storm St. Augustine's—me, the old Protestant? A revisionist Martin Luther in a new Reformation?”

“You didn't tell me this before.”

“Well, I…” Then nothing.

“It does sound like a suicide cry,” I admitted, finally.

“Well, haven't we all been telling you that all along? Perhaps you should start listening.”