Return to Dust (27 page)

Peter looked down, his hands folded into his lap.

“She knew?”

A monotone. “She knew something was wrong. Something about Joshua leaving this house didn't sit well. She wasn't stupid.”

“But why did you hire her, of all people, to come into this house?”

He looked up. “Everything seemed all right. She'd chased after him—wrote that damn letter and all—but when he was dead, what could she do? We never considered her a problem. A fucking cleaning lady? We were worried about it until Joshua was, well, dead.”

I realized he didn't know about Marta's fanatical pursuit to Amherst and Clinton—those visits happened afterwards. All he knew was the letter.

“We thought she was nothing. A house cleaner with a stupid crush on an old man. She was—nothing. It never occurred to us that she was
that
important. When he talked about it, Joshua played it down—the relationship. His viewpoint. Not hers obviously. Then one night, walking home, I bumped into Richard Wilcox, and he was all crazy. Another old codger, smitten. He'd rushed out to get something and was rushing home to get ready for Marta's visit. He told me that she was walking over and had something important to tell him. He made it so secretive. ‘What?' I asked, panicky. He didn't say anything. I knew there was trouble. She was going to tell him her suspicions. About us and the house. About Joshua and his books.” His voice broke.

“And so you waited by the bridge. When she walked over, you pushed her?”

Peter gazed at me and shook his head. His lips trembled.

“No,” he said. “I could never do that. I couldn't
kill
anyone.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

“No.” A voice from outside the room. “But I could.”

Selena walked in from the living room. She pressed one hand against the doorframe, as though to steady herself, and my first thought was that she'd been drinking. She had a wild look in her eyes, a spitfire gleam.

“I did it.” She was looking at Peter, angry now, fierce. “You fool. You pitiful fool.”

Peter said nothing.

“He didn't know a damn thing, Peter. You gave it away. You didn't have to. You goddamn fool. He was guessing.”

“Selena.” I watched her turn toward me, her face hard.

“Well, well.” She smiled at me, a grimace, really. “I didn't think Romeo boy would get to the bottom of this. I was convinced it was all dead end. God, we watched you stumble around. Running in circles. Nothing—no way to point an accusing finger at us. Nothing. You surprise me. Handsome and bright.”

She stood behind Peter's chair and gripped the top of it. One hand brushed his hair, but he didn't move.

“You did it?”

We locked eyes. Selena shifted her gaze.

“It just happened. She knew—or sensed—about Joshua. I didn't, well, plan it, and it sort of happened. But yes, I did it.”

“Where is Joshua?” I asked.

Silence.

Again. “Where's Joshua?”

Peter's voice was hollow. “He's buried in the backyard.”

Selena shot him a contemptuous look. Her fingers pressed against his neck. He winced.

She smiled without humor. “Sort of like burying an old bone.”

“For God's sake, Selena.” From Peter.

She faced him but spoke to me. “Peter never thought he could break a law. Some lawyer, no? I married a man who still believes that law is sacred.”

He spat out the words. “Yeah, and look where your horrible game got us.”

“Rick, believe me, it wasn't supposed to be like this.” A bittersweet sadness in her voice. “Not at all.”

“Tell me,” I demanded.

***

Joshua had played with them, teased them, toyed with them about the magnificent house, enjoying the banter and the attention. He'd placed the house on the market so often, then always changed his mind. He canceled the deal with the local realtor, and sat back. The faded For Sale sign disappeared from the front lawn.

Selena and Peter attended so many school functions there, and loved the house. But they had little money. They became friendly with Joshua. He liked them, he said, and now and then they dropped in, bringing Indian or Chinese take-out. One night at dinner, he suggested that they should have the house.

“A young couple, good-looking, the future of the college. You look good in these rooms.”

Joshua was looking into a retirement community in Amherst. Maybe it was time. He made them read the glossy pamphlet. Perhaps they could work out some deal, he told them, a private mortgage. A reasonable down payment—he wanted twenty grand, which made them wince because it was most of their savings—and then reasonable monthly payments. He wanted to unload the house.

He got them all excited, and they dreamed of the Federal Colonial with its Old World charms, its role as cynosure on Main Street, its affection held by the college and its faculty.

“Yours,” he told them. “It should be yours.”

Night after night they rhapsodized about the life they could live there, Peter promoted to professor, a high-profile private law practice on the side, the beautiful Selena assuming the role of hostess for those parties. The big-moneyed landed gentry of Farmington. A membership in the exclusive Farmington Country Club. That dream fired their early honeymoon days, made their anemic lovemaking sparkle. They visited much more often than they told their friends. Their friends supported them.

“Even you,” Peter said to me now, “told us to go for it.”

True. I suppose I did, a throwaway line at a dinner party. I didn't remember.

They could do it, Joshua told them. Each time they visited, Joshua tempted them.

“I'll throw in the grand piano.”

Peter and Selena talked about it with family, who urged them to press on. Some friends like Vinnie and Marcie, unaware of the extent of their visits to Joshua, advised caution, warned of expensive renovations, but Selena and Peter were envisioning an illusionary homestead, not a rattletrap edifice. Joshua was a fickle man. He was stony as old Connecticut soil, a dangler of carrots before the horse. Peter and Selena pooh-poohed any negative comments, confident they would win over the irascible Joshua. Life in the grand house seemed inevitable. It was easy not to see the frayed electrical work, the leaking faucets, the worm-eaten windowsills. When they turned on the switch in the foyer, the burgundy Bavarian crystal chandelier created a wonderland.

“We told him yes.”

Peter handled the straightforward legal work, orchestrating the quit-claim sale. When the announcement was made—Joshua agreeing—we had a little celebration for Peter and Selena at the house. Joshua smiled through it all.

“Signing our life away,” Peter said at the time. “All our life savings.”

“That's what we thought,” Peter said now. “All we needed was his signature, a notary, and it was ours. We had a check made out for twenty grand.”

“What happened?”

The afternoon following our little celebration, Peter met Joshua strolling on the sidewalk, and he mumbled about a change of heart, a plan to give the house—as well as his millions—to the boys' academy he so cherished. Joshua seemed out of focus, and Peter thought he was losing control of his mind.

“I'm righting things,” he said to Peter.

That night Peter and Selena fought. They'd talked about the house so often that it seemed theirs already. That, Peter admitted, and the fact that their shaky marriage needed a foundation. The house promised to be the answer.

Panicked, Selena phoned Joshua and he confirmed his decision that a sale was unnecessary. He would give the house to the school. He would live in it until he died, but the school would own it. They'd maintain it. He could stop worrying. Eventually the house could be named in his honor. Joshua Jennings Conference Center. Immortality assured by the presence of a plaque on a well-mown lawn. No, he told Selena, he wouldn't change his mind. He was sorry.

“Then,” Peter said in a low voice, “we started a dumb mind game.”

Selena jokingly said that they should declare Joshua senile—he certainly acted strange a lot of the time, and he was reclusive—and force him to sign the papers. His signature was already on the initial agreement. Peter had orchestrated everything legally. A final signature was necessary, the quit-claim notarized
.

Night after night, all that week, they played with silly notions of institutionalizing Joshua, of falsifying legal documents, of suddenly discovering blood kinship with him. Frivolous and implausible games borne out of frustration. But late-night conversation took on an eerie reality of possibility. The fanciful plans became more preposterous—snatched by a UFO. And those laughing, rollicking conversations were fun, verbal foreplay. They experienced a closeness they'd never had. But the conclusion of each of those bedtime stories was the ownership of that grand old house, plain and simple.

During the daytime, however, the nighttime game-playing seemed otherworldly. The house was moving away from them. Joshua stopped inviting them. At one time Selena had sought Joshua's confidence, used to drop in at various times, brought him things from her shop, things he disparaged. Claptrap, he'd called her offerings. Bored, sitting with him, she'd listen while he talked of his empty life. She learned the facts of his long but meager autobiography—the fact that he had no living relatives, that he was giving all his money to the boys' school. She knew where he kept his vital papers, not that she planned to snoop, but that was the way it happened. She learned the intricacies of his slow, retired life, his ornery ending of the friendship with Marta. At some point Marta had stopped phoning. Marta no longer mattered. The housekeeper with the stupid crush.

That Friday night after she closed her shop, Selena stopped in to see him. Surprised how friendly he was, she was convinced that he would sign the house over to them. Joshua, light-hearted, seemed excited. He flirted with her, something Selena had encouraged before. She wanted the house, so she let him. A repulsive man, all fingers and old-man fantasy. He liked to touch her, his fingers grazing her neck. But that day it rankled. Bitter about the house, she wasn't in the mood for his shenanigans.

“I asked him to stop,” Selena said now. “He snapped back at me that I'd never get the house that way.”

On Monday, he said, he would meet with the boys' school to make it final. He'd inform them of his intentions—he'd itemize exactly what he wanted them to have. His decision was ironclad—the house would go to the school.

“I hated him then.”

When his hand slid to her hip, she slapped him hard, angry, and he backed up, stunned. No one had ever hit him before. Sputtering, he went to hit her back, but she shoved him, disgusted, and he toppled over.

“He gasped, clutched his heart, and pleaded for help. He started making gagging sounds. There was spittle in the corners of his mouth.”

Then he was dead.

“It was over so quickly. We were fighting, and then he was dead.”

She hunched over his body, this withered old man dead at her feet. And the promise of the splendid house faded from her reach. Wild with fright, she stared around the vast room. “This was to be
my
home.”

“It was then,” Peter added, “the game-playing became real.”

“Why not?” sputtered Selena, almost in tears. “It should have been our house. It
was
our house. He'd agreed. We'd even given notice at the apartment complex.”

She called Peter, demanding that he get there, and a frightened Peter raced over.

“Why not just forge his name on the papers?” I asked.

Peter shook his head. “What? I file the papers on Monday morning. Joshua is found dead the previous Friday. Who'd believe it? There couldn't be any question. No doubts. No contesting the estate. We didn't know if the boys' academy knew of his intentions. Yes, we found a copy of a letter in his desk informing the headmaster that he'd be giving the school the cherished Renaissance painting, some antiques, and a volume of incunabula. But we didn't want them saying they were told the house should be theirs. No. Joshua had to be kept alive until we were in the house for months. There had to be…an interim of time.”

“Time?”

“To make it seem believable. After all, he was dead.”

Selena glared at Peter. “You wanted to call the coroner.”

Peter looked miserable. “We should have.”

“I had to push him.” Selena pointed at Peter. “Threaten him. He finally agreed.”

Everything shifted to slow motion. Peter and Selena became a bizarre couple dragging a dead body across the floor. A cheap horror movie on TV. Other peoples' lives. Trancelike. “We didn't stop to think what we were doing. We just kept moving.”

Under cover of darkness, Peter dug in the muddy eighteenth-century gardens behind the house. Joshua's body disappeared under the wet sod. Peter stared into my face. “When the last shovelful of dirt was thrown and the original sod replaced, I knew there was no turning back.”

Back in the house, they stared silently at each other, both grimy with dirt and sweat and tears. “It was like we'd walked out of a movie,” Peter said. But the horror of it made them tremble. “We sat on the floor and cried and cried. There was no going back now.”

They needed to buy time—a couple months. On Monday Peter filed the papers, forged. For years he'd had a silly flirtation with Myrtle Banks, the aged librarian at the college. Luckily also a notary. He wore his lawyer's face, exaggerated, as she did his bidding without so much as a question. He promised her lunch. He deposited twenty grand in Joshua's account. No one saw Joshua around because he rarely went out. Marcie and Vinnie took Selena and Peter to dinner that night. Everyone celebrated.

“They toasted us,” Selena told me.

They read the glossy pamphlet on the Amherst retirement village. Selena did a short-term rental, using forged checks from Joshua's household account, and the game plan grew. Peter knew Amherst because he'd been an undergraduate there. Posing as Joshua in a careful letter, they terminated the services of his accountant—just in case. They stopped other services—oil delivery, the
Hartford Courant
. In New Haven they bought theatrical makeup at a shop near the Yale School of Drama, and at night they practiced transforming Peter—who had acted bit parts in college—into a feeble, squeaky Joshua. They created a voice for him.

“Remember how everyone made fun of my performance as King Lear?” Peter said. “The reviewer in the college newspaper mocked me.” A pause. “Well, King Lear was reborn.”

Peter-as-Joshua moved into his quiet place in Amherst. “People don't pay attention to old folks. They walk around them. So it was easy.”

That
part was easy. They used Joshua's money to pay for expensive short-term rentals, for removal of his furniture to Goodwill. The promised Renaissance painting, antiques, and cherished incunabula delivered safely to the boys' school. A thank-you note sent from the Board of Trustees with an invitation for Joshua to visit when the painting was unveiled in a ceremony. He declined, claiming illness.

At night, still frightened, they plotted the long sequence of events—from Amherst to Clinton to death in anonymous New York. To leave no trail. There'd be no question. They suffered waves of panic, but it was too late to stop. Joshua lay in the garden.

“We were afraid Willie Do would come back to work the back gardens, so I mowed the lawn, trimmed the bushes. He never came back.”