The Death of Perry Many Paws (29 page)

“I know you talked to Bing, Tamsen. He told me all about the conversation. Only it really wasn’t a conversation in the true sense, was it? More of a grilling to see what Bing would tell you, to find out what he knew. Seems a little underhanded. That’s why I wasn’t sure if you would come when I called. You seem less like a friend and more like an adversary since Franklin died …”

“He was murdered, Syra. Murdered in cold blood.”

“I’m well aware of that. Why did you need to ask Bing about our parents? Prying into our lives is not going to bring Franklin back. What do you want from us?”

It occurred to me to just tell her emphatically that I had no idea what she was talking about, suggest she check the dosage on her medication and stand up and walk out the front door. And run home. I was determined not to be victimized by this psycho Syra and yet I couldn’t leave until I knew what was going on. It was like a book you couldn’t put down even though you were going to be late for an appointment. You have to know how it ends.

“Why does Bing think his mother’s name was Mary?”

“Because it was.”

“Mary Foster?”

“Yes.”

“Then who is Hetty Foster?”

“My mother.”

So far so good. She seemed like she would answer any question I asked her. Unfortunately nothing she had said made any sense.

“Then you and Bing have different mothers?”

“No.”

I pondered that for a few seconds and reached for the hot chocolate. I had it to my lips when I realized what I was doing and hastily put it back down on the table. Some splashed on my hand and I looked at it in horror, expecting it to start eating away at my flesh. It didn’t. Syra continued to sip her hot chocolate and stare at me.

“So are you saying Hetty Foster and Mary Foster are the same person?”

“Exactly. My mother’s name was Mary Henrietta Foster. She was named after her mother who was also Mary Henrietta. They called my mom Hetty as a child so it would be less confusing. My mom started using her real first name when she was an adult although she never cared for either name.” I suppose that actually made some sense.

“Why does Bing think her maiden name was Willard?”

“Because that is what she told him. Us.”

“But that is really her father’s first name, right?”

“Yes. Her dad was named Willard Foster.”

“So why the deception?” I asked. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to get her to tell me the truth, assuming it was the truth. It all made sense so far. Sort of.

“I would think it would be obvious. My mom wasn’t married to either my father or to Bing’s. She made up a story so we wouldn’t know …”

“Then it’s true that you and Bing have different fathers?”

“I would think that would be even more obvious. Of course we do.”

“But Bing doesn’t know it. He thinks your mother was named Mary Willard and she married your father, and his name was Fulton
Foster. But in actuality there wasn’t a Fulton Foster but two different men, one your father and one Bing’s. Right?”

“Almost. There was a Fulton Foster. He was my mother’s brother. She just used his name.”

I remembered Claudia telling me Fulton Foster had had polio and had watched the children from his bedroom window. And then he had disappeared. Syra couldn’t have killed him too, as she wasn’t born yet. Maybe her mother killed him and Syra had inherited the murder gene.

“What happened to him, the real Fulton Foster?” I whispered, clutching the seat of my chair.

“He died,” she stated matter of factly. “Does it matter?”

“It probably does to him,” I blurted out. “People don’t just want to die, you know. We have an innate sense of survival. We are supposed to have a certain amount of time on earth to accomplish the things we are supposed to accomplish and if our time is cut short, we don’t get everything done. And that’s a problem because we are sent here to get stuff done. So we are supposed to stay. Until our earthly time is over. Only God can decide that, not other people. Other people can’t determine …”

“Why are you rambling on like this?”

“Who killed Fulton?”

“Nobody. He had polio as a child and it left him crippled and eventually caused his lungs to stop working. He died in his sleep when he was ten.”

“But … but he disappeared. Claudia said so.”

“Of course he disappeared. They didn’t keep him propped up in his window like the dead guy in
Weekend at Bernie’s
. He died. They buried him. What’s all this disappearance stuff about?

“Claudia made it sound sinister. Like he just disappeared one day …”

“Well I suppose that to her that is what it seemed like. He was just a couple years older than she so probably her folks glossed over his death, like parents do about anything that might scare a child. Maybe they didn’t want her to know that children died. I don’t know. Is everyone in your family so dramatic about death?”

“Claudia and I aren’t in the same family. At least we aren’t related by blood,” I affirmed. Somehow distancing myself from Claudia’s genes seemed more important than defending my so-called dramatic attitude. “So who was your father?”

“That’s the whole point of the secrecy, Tamsen. I don’t know who my father was. My mom didn’t know who my father was. After Franklin went strange and Edmund went to college my mom was left on her own and she got into trouble at a party one night. She came home drunk and then a couple months later discovered she was pregnant. My mom had a cousin who lived in Syracuse and she let my mom stay there until I was born. My mom never came back to Birdsey Falls. She got a job as a typist in Syracuse and later moved to Binghamton, where she met Bing’s dad. She also didn’t know his name. After Bing was born she stopped drinking and tried to be a good mother. She did okay. Bing adored her. I want Bing to have happy memories of his childhood. There’s no point in knowing all the sordid details.”

“But why did you move to Birdsey Falls?”

“Birdsey Falls was part of my mom’s fairy tale and Bing wanted to move here. My mom had a great childhood but her parents weren’t around much for guidance. All Bing knows of Birdsey Falls is what my mom told him, and it’s all happy and adventurous and fun. He misses her. He wants to be here to be close to where she was so happy.”

“And I almost ruined it by asking him all those questions …”

“Exactly. Bing is an innocent. He’s vulnerable. I don’t know why, but he’s always been like that. My mom didn’t even want him to leave the house for fear something would happen to him. If you talked to
Grace about it, which I have, she claims Bing is a new soul trying to find his way in a place he hasn’t been before. I don’t agree with Grace’s beliefs or in Spirituality as a religion but I do know there is something fragile and innocent about Bing. I want to protect him. Your nosiness was going to destroy that innocence.”

I nodded my head and tried not to look at the basement door. Then I heard it, like the rhythmic thumping of the Tell Tale heart. Why should I be the one hearing the thumping? I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t have anything to be guilty about. I glanced at Syra and she didn’t react to the thumping, which was growing louder and louder and louder.

The basement door burst open and I screamed. Bing stood there staring at me and began screaming, too.

“What in God’s name is wrong with you two?” Syra asked.

I wanted to run over and hug Bing but instead I remained seated. “I think we startled each other,” I explained.

“I told you Bing was working in the kitchen in the basement.”

“You didn’t say he was
working
in the basement, you just said he was
in
the basement,” I countered.

“So? What did you think he was doing in the basement?”

I didn’t want to say, “lying in repose”, so I just shrugged. Bing had recovered the shock of my screaming at him and presented me with a chocolate cake shaped like a cat with a witch’s hat on its head. The hat was orange, as were the eyes of the cat.

“Syra said you were coming over this afternoon so I wanted to try this new design out on you. I’m going to make a bunch of them for Halloween. The Birdsey Falls Volunteer Firefighters are having a bake sale and I volunteered to make a dozen cakes. What do you think?”

I stared at the elaborate cake and began to feel as if I had just punked myself. Sure, Syra was angry with me for quizzing Bing about his parents, but she had not been planning to kill me. She obviously hadn’t killed Bing. She had even told him she invited me over and then
had him make this cake for me to keep him occupied so we could talk. Just talk. Like the friends we were. She wanted to clear the air and warn me to keep Bing’s happy memories intact. That’s all. And I thought she was going to kill me.

“What do you think, Tamsen? Is it Halloween-like enough?” Bing asked.

I shook myself out of my reverie to tell him how wonderful it looked and to thank him profusely for giving it to me. I was always thrilled to have a chocolate cake in the house. It was security, like having a pile of unread books waiting or a new knitting project. Chocolate cake should be a constant, like toilet paper, in every home.

I gave Bing and Syra each a hug and walked across the street, carrying my black cat cake, feeling like the biggest fool in the world. Would Hormone Replacement Therapy prevent afternoons like this?

t’s hard to imagine my life without Cam, but I was seriously contemplating it following his reaction to my visit with Syra. I had been scared to death and, as illogical as it seemed now, the fear at the time was very real. It had been a raw, primitive feeling, stripped bare of civility and logic and common sense. Suddenly I was able to understand how someone could grab a letter opener and use it to protect themselves. Self-preservation is an instinct so deeply imbedded in our animal nature that it surpasses rational thought, altruism, upbringing or love. Because I love Syra; she is a long-time friend. I know I can call her and she will be there in an instant, much as she knows she can do the same, thus luring me to her house yesterday under false pretences. I trust Syra. We had shared many confidences that I knew she had never betrayed. I had left Abbey with her many times when I’d had a babysitting emergency or when Cam and I spent the night away from home. You can’t trust anyone any more than that. Yet yesterday, when I felt that I knew she had poisoned Bing and was about to do the same to me, I was frantically thinking of a way to defend myself. And I knew, deep down, that I could have grabbed a letter opener and used it against one of my oldest, dearest friends if it came down to her or me.

The confrontation with Syra had been much more unnerving than the angry one that took place with Ryan when he caught us snooping
in his room. Syra had been calm. And that cold calm, that feeling that she had thought things through versus being caught off guard, was much more disturbing and threatening than a teenager mouthing off. I tried to explain to Cam that for the first time in forty-seven years I had been afraid for my life. And I had been willing to strike back, to cause harm to another person, a friend, in self-defense.

But Cam hadn’t been able to get past the vision of me afraid to drink Syra’s hot chocolate, thinking Bing was dead in the basement when in reality he was frosting a cake. He had laughed. I spent the night on the couch in the library telling Mycroft how afraid I had been and what an insensitive jerk Cam was. As always he had listened intently and agreed with everything I said. I should have married Mycroft.

Of course, there was no thawed bagel waiting for me for breakfast. No note from Cam admitting he was the most insensitive, unfeeling, unloving, unevolved man in the world. I grabbed a diet soda and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on toast and headed to the library to write. I wanted to channel this anger and this spunky, defiant feeling into a new idea I had for a novel. I hadn’t been able to get the story of Sylvie and how she had been abandoned by Roger Behrends out of my mind and I was ready to start outlining my thoughts. I wanted to write an adult novel, taking place in post-Civil War New Orleans. It would feature a Sylvie-type woman who had been rich and a part of New Orleans society until the war had wiped out her family’s plantation and wealth. Instead of allowing her family to marry her off to the best suitor still available, she was going to rebuild her life on her own terms. She would be a woman ahead of her time, a woman who couldn’t be pawned off in marriage by her family, a woman who could live her life without the money or protection of a husband. And I wanted the handkerchief in the story too. She would have a trunk full of these useless embroidered silk handkerchiefs. They would become her trademark as she set out on her survival adventures: the symbol of
the frivolity and waste of her former life left as a calling card as she embarked on a life of purpose and meaning. Maybe I would call it The Purpose Driven Handkerchief.