The Bluest Blood (23 page)

Loren Ulrich put his palms up in a placating gesture. Then he swiveled one wrist so that his hand was raised like a traffic cop’s, signaling
halt
. The excessive hand signals went with the outfit, another international, sophisticated accoutrement. “I don’t understand what Jake was doing with you in the morning in the first place. Where he found you, how he got there, why.”

“Well, tha’s surely puzzlin’.” Mackenzie had apparently borrowed an additional Southerner’s accent to lay atop his, and he was nearly unintelligible. But gallant. “I admit I initially shared your confusion and surprise,” he added in a soft blur of near-English that sounded like, “Ahdmitah nishlysha’ed…”

I heard him, though. Confusion and surprise, indeed. Quite a euphemism for racing across the loft and tackling Jake.

“However,” he continued, “I came to understand that Jake was at our place merely waitin’, delayin’ his return here from a desire on his part to avoid disturbin’ his Momma too early in the day. Which is to say, it was done from the finest of impulses.”

That was grand, since it didn’t answer a single question. Grander, when I weighed in the effect of that gibberish. And although Toronto’s pretty far from good-ol’-boy land, the soft-summer-nights accent and the guy-thing worked. Or something did. Ulrich didn’t rebound with another question.

“In any case,” Mackenzie went on, smooth as can be, “you have fam’ly issues to deal with. So, if you’ll excuse us.”

“I’ll explain, Dad,” Jake said, moving aside for us. “I’ll explain later.”

“Sure! For your
dad
!” Betsy snapped. “Do I get an explanation? Nobody tells me anything!”

“Thanks,” Jake told us again, and we nodded and moved toward the door, freedom, and a student-free day with Mackenzie. A weekend.

However. There’s a proverb—Yiddish, I believe—that if you want to make God laugh, make plans. My weekend was providing the Supreme Power a veritable laff-fest because at that moment, the front door was pounded upon, and its bell rung. A very Gestapo effect.

Betsy put her hands to her throat in an odd gesture of fear.

“A door-to-door salesman, do you think?” Loren Ulrich said.

I gave him points for attempting to lighten things up. I, too, tried to help. “The Jehovah’s Witnesses around here are really aggressive, aren’t they?” For once, I hoped they really were at the door.

“Harvey wouldn’t put in a security system,” Betsy whined. “He was too trusting—look what happened to him. And there isn’t even a peephole, a way to know who is out there, and we could all be killed in a second!”

Jake opened the door.

“Jake Spiers?” I couldn’t see past Jake to get a sense of the speaker, but he spoke with great authority.

“Ulrich,” Jake said. “My name’s Jake Ulrich.”

“Correct, sorry. Jake, can we come in? We’re with the Radnor Township police, and we need to talk with you. We’d as soon keep it off the street, away from the neighbors.”

He said it nicely enough, but it didn’t meet Betsy’s standards of acceptability. As the two men entered the living room, she shrieked “Po
lice
?” The word achieved glass-shattering pitch.

“Mom,” Jake said, and then his shoulders sagged. He looked too weary to try anymore.

To their credit, the policemen, both of whom were rugged and well-worn–looking, central casting’s good cops for your basic TV series, nodded and smiled as if they were quite used to caterwauling as a greeting. Maybe, in fact, they were.

“What is this?” Loren demanded. “I’m Jake’s father. What do you want with him?”

“Father?” the younger cop said. “His father died Wednesday.”

“This man’s not Jake’s father, except biologically,” Betsy snapped. “He’s never behaved like a father. He’s so involved in his career, he doesn’t even live in this country.”

Follow that logic. I dare you.

“His stepfather was killed,” Mackenzie said. He introduced himself, showed his badge, and explained he was here socially, not professionally—an explanation that surely increased the confusion, given the company Mackenzie was opting to keep.

“Why are you badgering my boy now?” Betsy said. “He was asleep when it happened. Griffin Roederer can vouch for that. All the Roederers can. Besides, everybody knows that harlot was behind my husband’s death. Harvey told her it was over. A woman—a tramp—scorned. So leave Jake alone!”

“Mom, please. You’re making Harvey sound…”

“Or Neddy Roederer. Look for the sinner, not for my son. Neddy Roederer was a fraud. A morally corrupt fraud, and Harvey knew it.”

“Mom!”

I assumed Jake was trying to remind her that her late husband’s whoring and blackmail plans wouldn’t help anybody’s cause. She seemed to belatedly comprehend this, and tightened her lips again.

“I know what this must be about,” Jake said in a small voice, his eyes focused on the mud-colored carpet at his feet. “It’s about my…the stealing. Last night at the station, she was angry about everything, including that.”

“Stealing?
Oh, my God!”
Betsy screamed.

“I took two of her china boxes a while back. She has, like, a million. Tiny suitcases and typewriters and pincushions and globes. They all have hinges and open up, but they’re too small to put stuff in. I took a dog and a cat. I’m really sorry. I meant to put them back last night, but in the confusion…and of all the bad luck—that’s when she noticed them missing.”

“Why would you steal anything?” Loren asked with his first show of real interest. “And why on earth a china cat and dog?”

Jake swallowed. “It was kind of a joke, because I’m not allowed to have pets. But more because… I don’t know…they’re…silly. And pretty. They don’t
do
anything, aren’t useful. The Roederers have a lot of things like that, just because they like them. We don’t have any…” He shook his head. “I know it was wrong. But they were so little, so easy to take, and I did it, borrowed them. I can’t believe they noticed, they have so many of them. They’re in my backpack. Could I give them back to you now, maybe, and not have to…?”

The cops looked sad, but impassive. It seemed improbable that they’d traveled here in search of a china dog and cat.

“If you still need background, any kind of help, about Harvey Spiers, maybe I could be of assistance,” Loren said. “I knew him way back when he was a clerk in an insurance company, before his great religious conversion.”

“Loren!” Betsy yelped. “Don’t make him sound—”

“Yessir, thank you for the offer,” the younger detective said.

Loren searched his pockets. “My card,” he said. Then he shook his head. “That’s useless right now. Sorry. I don’t know where to say you can reach me. I came right here from the plane.”

“Don’t imagine you can stay here!” Betsy muttered.

The older cop handed him a card. “If you think of anything, call. Meantime, we need to speak to you, Jake. Do you feel comfortable talking to us?”

Jake nodded and shrugged, a conditional
yes.

“Do you want an attorney to be present?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong except take those things,” Jake said, sounding near exhaustion. “I don’t need a lawyer—unless you’re accusing me of something else. Are you?”

The younger cop smiled and shook his head.

“Am I some kind of a suspect?”

The cop shook his head again. “If you’ll get a jacket,” he said.

“You’re making a big mistake if you think Jake helped her,” Betsy Spiers said. “That slut didn’t need help. Those ropes and pulleys make hoisting a dead weight easy. Have you thought about that instead of persecuting my son?”

I watched with fascinated horror. Didn’t she realize that anything Mother Vivien could have done, she could have done as well? Vivien was large with fat, not muscle. And how did Betsy know about the efficiency of the ropes and pulleys if she never went to the bonfires? I looked at her with new interest.

She seemed to realize some of this. In any case, she changed tacks. “Do you realize what you’re doing to me, taking Jake all the way out the Main Line when he isn’t even a suspect? My car isn’t working right. I’m a nervous wreck. My husband was murdered and now you’re taking my son. Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’m sure they have good and legal reasons, Betsy,” Loren said. “And it’s only for a short while. They need Jake to verify something, isn’t that what you mean?”

Jake had on his jacket and a Phillies cap.

“Good,” the younger policeman said to Jake. “It’s still chilly, and they’re saying a chance of rain later, too, so the hat’s a good idea.”

Did the law require them to be completely honest about their reasons for taking Jake with them? They couldn’t think of him as a murderer and be so paternal and concerned, could they?

“I have a right to know what’s going on,” Betsy Spiers said. “I deserve to know what is happening concerning my husband’s”—with this, she shot a lethal, squint-eyed look at her ex-husband—“murder.”

“Yes, ma’am, and we’ll surely try to tell you whatever—”

“Well, you aren’t telling me
now
!”

“I’ll come get you, son,” Loren said. “Don’t worry.”

“You don’t even
know
the area!” Betsy had the ability to scream without raising her voice, a genuine talent. “How can you promise? It’ll be another one you break, just like all the—” She wheeled back to face the cops. “You aren’t going to tell me, are you?” Betsy said, pointing her finger at the cops. “He was my
husband
!”

By now, I was hoping for a show of police brutality. Unfortunately, those suburban fellows were unstintingly polite. “Ma’am,” the older one said, “we definitely will, when and if we get any news about your late husband.”

“If you don’t have news now—why take my son?”

Jake shook his head. The night’s overload showed in the blue hollows below his eyes.

Mackenzie smiled and nodded at the cops, in a way that reestablished that he was part of the same fraternity. “You can see there’s a lot of anxiety around here—are you able to let us know any more of what this is about?”

“We need a statement from the boy,” the older officer said. “A full statement.” He looked down at his belly, pleating his chin into a series of chinlets.

“You want custodial interrogation,” Mackenzie said.

The cops both nodded.

“Yet he’s not charged with anythin’.”

“Correct.”

“More like he’s a material witness, then?”

I thought about the night of the burning, about the two boys across the way with a probable view through winter-bare treetops to the scene of the crime. Two boys who hadn’t been asked about their whereabouts by either the police or the Roederers. Until now.

“Hope I’m not out of line,” Mackenzie said softly to his suburban counterparts, “but this early of a Saturday morning, two days after his stepfather’s demise, this seems somethin’ new and serious, and it’s surely not about china animals.” Neither of the other policemen moved a muscle. “A homicide, it’d be, wouldn’t it? Another one.”

Both officers nodded.

Another murder? Another murder to which Jake was somehow connected?

“And the victim would be…?” Mackenzie continued.

The two men looked at each other, and then the younger one nodded, cleared his throat, and spoke. “The victim would be Edward Franklin Roederer.”

Neddy. Gentle, charitable, book-loving Neddy. Mackenzie’s pick as Harvey’s killer. Instead, Neddy was a victim himself. I felt a wave of nausea at the only thing that was evident: two angry boy-men with two now dead, despised, surrogate fathers.

Mackenzie, who is generally a master of looking impassive—even dreamily absent—no matter what’s going on behind the facade, reflected my own shock on his face.

Neddy, the elegant and refined, who’d tried to call a cop, who’d had something he felt needed telling. I turned hot, then cold with guilt—I hadn’t speedily transmitted his message—a call for help? It didn’t matter that Mackenzie couldn’t have responded in time. Neddy, whom I’d involved in the politics of our school, whose generosity—prompted by me via the school paper—triggered what now felt like an endless series of conflicts and deaths. Neddy was dead. I felt partially responsible.

But for all my growing apprehension, other muscles relaxed that had been in a state of tension since I’d seen the burning effigy and said nothing fatal had happened
yet.
As if I’d always known something was waiting even beyond Harvey’s murder, which was never the end of anything because whatever caused it wasn’t over.

Now, the second shoe had dropped. The something else had happened. There was a chilling comfort in the news.

Sixteen

“Goes to prove they have too much time on their hands in the sticks,” C. K. said. “Comin’ all this way to retrieve the kid for a statement. Why didn’t they take it here, on the spot? For that matter, they could have called it in, an’ I could have taken it.” Mackenzie, Loren Ulrich, and I were on the pavement in front of the Spiers’ home.

“With…” I glanced at Loren Ulrich, then mentally shrugged. “Betsy? She’d make it—”

“Impossible.” Ulrich finished my sentence. “Betsy makes most things impossible. Flighty, we used to call it. It even seemed cute once, a kind of giddy hyperreacting. Then it stopped being charming or bearable. And now, she’s a whole lot worse.”

I wanted to say what I thought of a father who could describe his ex that way while leaving his son with her. If Jake was involved in the murders, then Loren and Betsy were coconspirators.