The Night Caller (22 page)

Light snow was falling when Coop drove past the new housing developments bordering the highway outside Haverton. Soon the houses were older, the bright dusting of snow making them look picturesque rather than run-down, as they had on his last visit.

In the town proper he passed homes that were more modern and expensive before reaching the downtown area with its steepled church and gray stone city hall facing each other across the square. There were only a few people on the snowy streets, walking fast and bundled against the cold. Only the war memorial Union soldier, huddled in his bronze cape, stood brave and motionless in the center of the square and seemed to observe Coop’s passage.

Coop drove beyond the square to Main Street. He didn’t stop today at the brick building with its white columns where Bette had worked. He’d phoned Prudent Stand Real Estate earlier asking for Lloyd Watkins and was told Watkins was on vacation but was still in town. Coop had decided to drop in on Watkins unexpectedly. The surprise of seeing Bette’s father on his doorstep again might rattle him into saying something he’d rather keep secret.

Just east of town, Coop steered the car into the Beau Jardin condo development. Its white and tan brick buildings, with their low hedges and mansard roofs whitened by snow, looked postcard pristine.

Street signs and addresses were obscured by snow, so it took him a while to find Lloyd Watkins’s condo on Rue de Montre. The Honda continued to slide for a few feet when he braked at the curb, making him wonder how the highway would be driving back to New York.

When he climbed out of the car, he noticed that the temperature had dropped considerably in the last few hours. Cold air bit at his nose and throat. The snow was still light, but persistent. A few inches had collected on the sidewalk, which no one had shoveled.

Coop pushed the doorbell button to the town house’s private entrance and waited, feeling the gentle cold touch of snowflakes settling on his face and the backs of his hands.

What sounded like a chain lock rattled faintly; then Watkins opened the door. Though it was afternoon, he was wearing a robe and corduroy slippers, and his dark hair was mussed. When he saw Coop, his dimpled chin dropped, and his bushy eyebrows gathered in a frown. He tried to speak but could only stammer. Coop had expected something of a reaction, but nothing this strong.

Finally Watkins got out, “Uh, Mr. Cooper…”

“I was in Haverton and had a few more questions to ask about Bette,” Coop said, as if he hadn’t noticed Watkins’s discomfort. “I thought I’d drop by and see if you were home.”

“I, uh, am.”

“Yes. You mind if I come in for a few minutes?”

“Well, no, but…”

A figure appeared behind Watkins.

Now it was Coop who was surprised.

“Come inside, Mr. Cooper,” Hillary Bland said. She was wearing pajamas beneath a yellow silk robe.

Looking embarrassed, Watkins lowered his head and stepped back so Coop could enter.

The condo was a lot neater than the last time Coop had seen it. The magazines that had been scattered on the floor were now in a stack on the coffee table. Also on the table were two drink glasses on cork coasters. They contained ovals of melted-down ice floating in diluted amber liquid.

Watkins was still speechless. Hillary brushed back a strand of her long auburn hair and met Coop’s gaze. “If you think something is going on between us here, you’re right,” she said. “If you think it was going on before Bette died, you’re wrong.”

Coop studied both of them, then nodded. “I’ll take your word for it.” He removed his coat, folded it wet side in, and laid it over the back of a chair. He motioned toward the glasses on the table. “Can I have a drink?”

Watkins seized on something to do, maybe to get him out of the room. “We were drinking single malt Scotch,” he said. “Glenfiddich.”

“My brand,” Coop lied. “On the rocks.”

Watkins picked up the two glasses from the coffee table and hurried into the kitchen.

Hillary didn’t say anything until he returned only a few minutes later with three glasses of Scotch and ice. She accepted her glass and sat in a corner of the sofa. Coop sat down in the chair where his coat was draped. Watkins sat as far away from Hillary as possible at the opposite end of the sofa.

Coop nibbled at the Scotch, not really wanting it. “I’m not here to play morality police or pry into your private lives. I only want to talk to you some more about Bette.”

“She and I had broken up even before she…was gone,” Watkins reminded him. “This might seem too soon to you, but it’s one of those things that just happened. I’d phone Bette and she’d make up some excuse, tell me she wasn’t feeling well…”

“No further explanation is necessary, Lloyd,” Hillary told him. She fixed a direct stare on Coop. He was liking her more and more. “Ask any questions you choose, Mr. Cooper.”

“Did Bette say how she wasn’t feeling well?” Coop asked, looking from Hillary to Watkins.

Watkins appeared puzzled for a few seconds. “Oh, I see what you mean. No, she didn’t. Tell you the truth, I doubt if she really was sick. I’m sure she didn’t want to see me and was just making polite excuses.”

“Had she taken any time off work because of illness?”

“No,” Hillary said. “Bette was out of sick leave, and Prudent Stand doesn’t take kindly to unscheduled absenteeism for any reason.”

“Would you say she might have come to work sick sometimes because her job was in the balance?”

“No. But it soon would have reached that point.”

“Some employer,” Coop said. “Why do people stay there?”

“They pay well,” Hillary said simply.

“If Bette was out of sick leave, she must have missed a fair amount of work.”

“Her sick days weren’t taken in succession,” Hillary said. “Three in a row at most.”

“Sick leave covered two weeks,” Watkins said. “And you’re right, she was off work a lot. It didn’t seem like it, but the sick days must have added up. Soon they would have cut into her vacation time, but they hadn’t. She took her two-week vacation just before she went into New York and stayed at your cottage.”

“And she told no one where she was going or why?”

“Not that we know of,” Hillary said.

“She also told me she wanted to spend some time at the cottage to relieve job-related stress,” Coop said. “Either of you know what that was about?”

“No,” Watkins said. “But I can believe she was under stress, like everyone else at Prudent Stand. And maybe she really wasn’t feeling well and it was getting to her. Hell, I feel that way myself sometimes. After what happened to Bette, I had to take some of my own sick days. I could barely drag myself out of bed most mornings.”

“Would you know the name of her doctor?”

“’Fraid not,” Watkins said.

“It might be in her records at work,” Hillary said. “I can make a phone call for you.”

Before Coop could answer, she was on her feet and moving toward the kitchen, and presumably a phone.

Watkins simply looked ill at ease as Hillary’s muted voice carried like the mutterings of his conscience to the living room.

When she’d returned and reclaimed her corner of the sofa, she said, “They’ll call me back as soon as they find it. They think I’m off sick today and I want to see Bette’s doctor for myself.”

“They’ll be calling Lloyd’s number,” Coop said.

Hillary gave a slight smile. “I’m friends with the woman in Records. She knows about Lloyd and me.”

A small town, Coop thought, and not that large a company. Probably everyone knew about Lloyd Watkins and Hillary Bland. What might they also know about Bette? The possibilities scared Coop, who had seen every side of human nature, everything human faces could conceal.

He took a second sip of Scotch and decided not to take another. “Is there anything else about Bette? Even if it doesn’t seem important to you. Anything you might not have told me the first time around?”

Watkins shook his head “I’m afraid not. I’d give anything if I could help, but I can’t.”

“Any other friends she might have had outside your circle?”

“Yes! Maybe one!” Hillary said. She seemed genuinely surprised that she’d come up with something. “Bette did volunteer work at the east branch library sometimes, and she mentioned a woman named Stern. I can’t recall her first name.”

“Abigail!” Watkins said. “I remember Bette mentioning an Abigail Stern. She’s a library employee, I’m sure.”

Coop glanced at his watch. “What are library hours?”

“In this weather,” Hillary said, “you can be sure they’ll close at five.”

“Only an hour from now,” Coop said. He stood up and put on his coat.

“Aren’t you going to wait for the name of Bette’s doctor?” Hillary asked.

“I’ll phone you when I’m done at the library. Will you still be here?”

She blushed and nodded.

Watkins jumped up to show him out. “I hope we’ve helped you, Mr. Cooper.”

“Me, too,” Coop said.

At the door, Watkins offered to shake hands.

Why not?
Coop thought.
Life goes on.

As he walked back to his car, he realized he might not have had that reaction only a few days ago. It had something to do with Cara Callahan.

No, it had everything to do with Cara Callahan.

After getting lost driving to the library, he arrived at five minutes to five and found it closed. The lights appeared to be off inside, and his pounding on the door raised no reaction.

Discouraged, he drove slipping and sliding to his motel and called Hillary Bland at Watkins’s condo.

She gave him the name of Bette’s doctor, a general practitioner who specialized in gastronomical disorders. A Dr. Scott Ferguson. Hillary even obtained the doctor’s office address and phone number.

Coop dutifully wrote down the information, then thanked her and slogged through deepening snow to the motel restaurant.

The snow had put everything on hold until tomorrow.

If only it could put tomorrow on hold.

Cara paused near the entrance to St. Alexius Cathedral, then walked up the chipped concrete steps and went inside.

The cathedral was long and narrow, with a center aisle and pews that would seat only about ten on each side. Faint, tinted light filtered through a tall stained-glass window behind the pulpit, an image of St. Alexius himself with haloed head and a cross on the left side of his ornate vestment. Cara knew he was the patron saint to beggars, belt makers, nurses, pilgrims, and travelers. She thought that last part, pilgrims and travelers, made him the patron saint of just about everyone.

Though narrow, the cathedral had a remarkably high beamed ceiling, and gallery walls decorated with aged frescoes and darkened statuettes of the apostles poised high above in shallow grottoes. After the din of the New York streets, it was remarkably quiet. The warm light streaming through the clerestory windows seemed thick enough to touch.

Seated in one of the back pews was a woman with her head bowed so low that it wasn’t visible from behind. Farther down, on the other side of the aisle, a ragged-looking man was kneeling between the pews, also with his head bowed. The cathedral seemed to be occupied by no one other than the two worshippers and Cara.

Cara and Ann had been raised Catholic. Long ago Cara had drifted away from Catholicism, then from organized religion entirely. But Ann had remained true to the faith, and Cara had learned that she often came to St. Alexius for solace and to pray.

Cara had kept her promise to Coop not to walk in Ann’s footsteps while he was away, but she didn’t think he’d mind too much if she came to St. Alexius. Her reasons didn’t only center on Ann. Cara had always heard that those raised Catholic inevitably returned to the fold. She didn’t think that was the case with her, but considering recent events, she was slightly surprised to feel the desire to pray. It couldn’t hurt, and it might help her to understand, to better cope with her grief and anger, to sleep all night without waking.

She walked down the aisle toward the pulpit, her footfalls silent on the faded red carpet that ran through the nave of the church. The dust motes swirling in hazed, tinted light, the subtle smells of the cathedral, took her back to her first communion and long-ago Sundays she would rather have spent elsewhere. The light transformed by stained glass seemed an artist’s idea of heavenly illumination. Ancient polished wood, mustiness, centuries-old stone, lingering incense, all converged in a single scent that found its way through pain and time and soothed her. She wondered if it might be the only thing now that could soothe her.

In the front of the church she knelt and crossed herself, something she hadn’t done in years, then moved to sit in one of the pews. She placed her purse beside her on the wooden pew, then lowered the padded kneeler on the pew in front of her and kneeled again.

She thought of Ann, how as young girls they’d sat beside each other so many times at Mass, how Ann was always eager to get in line to accept the host while Cara had to be talked into it, sometimes elbowed into it by their mother. She saw Ann at home with their mother and father, with their father.

Something was spotting the front of her coat. She was surprised that it was her own tears. She hadn’t realized she’d begun to cry.

Cara bowed her head farther, squeezed her eyes tightly shut, and let herself cry almost soundlessly, hearing only her own labored breathing.

She stayed that way, motionless, reconciling herself with the past and fighting her way out of it.

It was only when she thought of Coop that her tears lessened and she regained control of herself. She wondered if their time at the Atherton Hotel was another reason she’d come here, a good Catholic girl again, burdened by carnal guilt.

But she didn’t feel like confessing, because there was no guilt in her after what had happened with Coop, only joy and the memory of joy. And hope.

She did say a silent prayer in the wish that he shared her hope. He’d told her about his illness, and she’d answered that it made no difference. Remission could last years, and who knew how much future anyone had? She hoped she’d made it clear to him that he’d turned his despair inward so it grew out of proportion and threatened to consume him even if the cancer didn’t. If only he could realize that!

Eventually she stopped crying.

She didn’t know if she felt better, but she was exhausted, purged of at least some of her tension and agony.

She scooted back up to sit on the pew, swallowed, wiped her eyes with her hand, then reached over to get a tissue from her purse.

That’s when she discovered her purse was gone.