“That’s Frank Ellsworth’s house, right?” Claire ventured. Nods all around, but the neighbor’s eyes didn’t leave the thrilling sight of the idling emergency vehicles, and the two cops who were now discussing things in voices too soft to carry. “Do you know what’s happening?”
Everyone looked to an old woman with a long gray hair that reached the middle of her back. After taking a sip from a mug reading “World’s Best Grandma,” she said, “His son called me a couple of hours ago because he’s been phoning Frank since late yesterday afternoon and no one’s answered. So I went and looked through the garage window and saw that Frank’s car was still there, but no one answered the door when I knocked and it was dead silent inside. I went home and called his son back. He said Frank has diabetes and a heart condition, and I should call 911 because he’s probably lying on the floor sick or worse. And so I did and all this happened.” She gestured with her free hand, but she didn’t seem worried. Maybe death was close enough for her that she took its threat in stride.
Claire had another thought. What if after talking to Claire, Fred had begun nosing around, asking questions about his sister’s death? What if Charlie was right, and Elizabeth had been murdered? Could whoever had killed her all those years before reached out yesterday to silence her meddlesome brother?
The two policemen had been joined by one of the fireman. After a brief huddle, they broke apart. It was clear a decision had been reached. The fireman walked back to his truck, said something to the other men, and they all began opening doors and pulling out equipment. The group clustered on the street watched closely as one of the policeman took a step back, then kicked high and hard at a spot just to the side of the doorknob. On the second kick, the door flew open. The firemen had readied a wheeled gurney and now they pulled it into within a few feet of the front door. After a pause while they shouted Frank’s name a few times, the two cops slowly walked inside. Claire noticed that both of them were resting their hands on the butts of their guns.
They were gone long enough for the crowd to grow restive and for the man with the beer to finish it and go back for another. When the cops finally emerged, they were empty-handed.
“Frank’s dead, then,” the guy with the beer said flatly, knowledgeably, and there was a kind of sigh of agreement.
One of cops went over to talk to the firemen. Although the little group on the sidewalk couldn’t hear his words, they could see him shaking his head. The firemen began to put their equipment away, collapsing the gurney.
“If he’s dead, why aren’t they taking his body with them?” said a young girl with a baby on her hip and a ring through her eyebrow. Claire couldn’t decide if she were the baby sitter or the baby’s mother.
“They need to get the medical examiner in, don’t they?” said a man in a gray sweat suit who looked like he had been napping. “Haven’t you ever watched a cop show? They’ll need to do an autopsy to make sure the death isn’t suspicious.”
Another car pulled to the curb and parked behind Claire’s Mazda. She took a quick look behind her, then did a double-take. It was her mother. And in the seat beside her was – Frank. Very much alive.
Claire put her hand over her face.
“What’s going on?” Frank said behind them. Claire’s mother stood beside him. Oh God, Claire though, was that a hickey on her neck?
At the sound of Frank’s voice, everyone turned. The woman with the grandma mug spoke first.
“Your son has been trying to call you since last night. He was worried that you might have had a heart attack or stroke or something.”
Frank’s voice was more of a purr. “Let me assure, I am very much to be numbered among the living.” He gave Jean’s ample waist a squeeze. “Wait here a moment while I ascertain if I can straighten this out.” He strolled off, rather slowly, Claire thought, given the circumstances. He seemed to be enjoying all the attention. His shirt was rumpled, his collar unbuttoned, and something trailed from his pants pocket. It took Claire a second to identify it. The flapping ends of a yellow bow tie.
Claire turned to look at her mother, as did everyone else. Jean’s raccoon eyes made it clear she had gone to bed with her makeup on. If she had gone to bed at all. She wore a black dress that seemed to contain a large percentage of Lycra, the offspring of an unholy union between a dress and a girdle. Her jutting freckled bosom had assumed the dimensions of a ship’s prow. The babysitter or whoever she was giggled. There was definitely a purple suck mark on the side of Jean’s neck. Claire grabbed her mother’s hand and yanked her to one side. Only with an effort did she keep her voice low enough for the craning spectators not to hear.
“He was with you! Mother, he must be eighty! You are only fifty-five! He’s old enough to be your father!”
Jean pulled herself up to her full height of five foot-three. Her chest swelled dangerously. “Frank is not eighty! He is seventy-seven.”
“Well, that’s still plenty old.” Claire could feel the heat rising in her face. “And women live longer. If anything, you should be looking the other way.”
“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have your nose out of joint if I came home with someone your age, missy. You’re just jealous that I’m in a new relationship.” Across the street, the firemen had finished packing up and now drove away. One of them gave a salute to Frank, who was standing in the doorway talking to the two cops. He waved and winked broadly in return.
In the past few days, Claire had learned more about older people’s sex lives than she really wanted to know. “Don’t tell me you’re –” she couldn’t think of the right word. Having sex? Making love? Or, to be more time appropriate, making whoopee? “Aren’t you worried about giving him a heart attack?”
“He’s not an invalid! All that dancing has kept Frank in better shape than Zed ever was.”
“But, Mom, he is just so much older!” Claire could feel herself starting to calm down. “I guess I just don’t understand the attraction.”
“You think I don’t know those other women at Riverwalk are saying about me? That I’m a gold digger, just after Frank’s money? It’s not like that at all. This is about love.” Jean’s eyes pleaded with Claire. “They’re just jealous because I’m younger.” She sagged, suddenly looking deflated. Frank exchanged a laugh with the two policemen, who then got back into their cars. Except for the woman with the long gray hair, who was now talking to Charlie, the neighbors were dispersing, talking in low voices, shooting Jean sidelong glances. Occasionally, one of them would laugh.
Claire thought of smarmy Frank, pulling her close on the dance floor while she looked down at his lipsticked ear. “True love? Oh, mother, please, don’t give me that.”
“I didn’t say true love.” Jean straightened up. “I said love. Because that’s what it is.”
Frank waved at them. “Come on over, ladies!” His grin was wide, his banty chest puffed out.
With a sigh, Claire trailed Jean and Charlie. She knew she was being too judgmental, but her mother had the worst taste in men. Claire’s father had been gone before Jean even figured out she was pregnant. Suzy’s dad had been a long-haul trucker, as had Jean’s last boyfriend, Zed. In between had been a series of used car salesmen, carpet installers, dry wall workers. One guy, Tim, had spent more than forty hours a week trying to outwit the insurance fraud investigator who was following him with a video camera, convinced that Tim wasn’t truly permanently disabled. Tim got caught when he slipped up and took Jean bowling. Jean’s typical boyfriend smoked, drank and liked risky pursuits such as raising pitbulls or driving motorcycles 90 miles an hour. Most of them moved in with Jean but somehow never could quite afford to help pay rent. And now there was Frank. Claire was fairly sure that half of Frank’s attraction for Jean had been the way the women at Riverwalk had been vying for him.
Rather than being embarrassed by all the attention, Frank seemed invigorated. He put his arm around Jean’s waist and gave her a squeeze, then turned to Claire and Charlie with a smile. “What
are you two ladies out and about for on such a lovely day?” He tilted his head on one side. “Are you going incognito today, Claire? I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“We have just been to see Allen Lisac to return the ring,” Charlie said.
“And?”
“He kept it, if that is what you are asking. But there is something else you need to know about your sister’s death.” Charlie hesitated, and Frank’s expression turned serious as he waited for her next words. “I am wondering if Elizabeth may have been murdered.”
Jean sucked in her breath.
Frank just looked bewildered. “Murdered? No, no. Of course she killed herself.”
“You knew, then,” Charlie said.
“Knew what?” Jean looked impatient at being left out.
Frank hesitated, and then said, “That my sister was pregnant? Yes. Or at least I guessed she was carrying a child. What the French call enceinte, “ Claire was fairly certain Frank mispronounced the word. “One time she was here visiting when she suddenly ran to the facilities with her hand over her mouth. When she came out I asked her what was going on, but she refused to admit anything was wrong. I always figured Liz was afraid everyone would count on their fingers and then point them at her. When the world is full of ten-pound premature babies, including yours truly. Or at least it was then, when everyone thought if you made your bed you had to lie in it. Once you got a girl pregnant, the only way out was to stick her in a white dress while it still fit and have her walk down the aisle.”
“I no longer think she killed herself.” Charlie explained about the blood on the back of Elizabeth’s head, and about how she now thought Elizabeth had been struck and then strung up.
“That bastard!” Frank’s voice was bitter. He remembered Jean and turned toward her. “Excuse my French.”
“Who are you talking about?” Claire asked. “Allen Lisac?”
“The man always blames the woman when you turn up pregnant,” Jean said, speaking from experience. “They forget it takes two to tango.”
Claire said, “Allen says he insisted your sister get an abortion, and that he gave her the money for it. While we were there, he had this kid break open the wall where I found the ring. We found what must have been the remains of your sister’s purse. There was a lipstick, an old Social Security card, and what used to be a photograph. Only there was no money. Howard thinks a thief must have killed her.”
“How much money was it?” Frank asked.
Charlie said, “Five hundred.”
He let out a low whistle. “That was a lot of money in those days. I guess that might have been enough to make somebody do something stupid and then try to cover it up.”
“There could be many reasons Elizabeth was killed,” Charlie said. “Anger. Lust. Envy. Greed. Fear.”
“You really think someone could have been afraid of Elizabeth?” Claire asked. “She doesn’t seem like she could have been much of a threat.”
“I was thinking of the fear of secrets to be revealed.”
Frank said, “I’d bet anything that Allen was afraid she was going to go running to his parents. Allen was still like a little boy around them, especially Mrs. Lisac. I mean Austrid. She was a battle ax. Maybe he couldn’t stand to face up to her and admit what had been going on under her very own roof.”
Claire thought of what Allen Lisac had said. She wanted it far more than I did. Had he been embarrassed by his own seduction, and the proof that had begun to swell Elizabeth’s body?
Chapter 25
PB4UGO
Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty, read the bumper sticker on the car ahead of Claire’s as they edged toward the Portland Airport. It took Claire such a long time to make her way into the parking garage that she started seriously considering the bumper sticker’s advice. Maybe the world really would be a better place if everyone just did a few random acts of kindness. She imagined herself picking up the lunch tab for a trio of old ladies, going door to door raising money for the rainforest, throwing a hundred dollar bill into the red Salvation Army kettle at Christmas time.
After she made her way into the terminal, she found that Dante’s flight was delayed. She settled down to wait. Two hours later she was still waiting.
“Can you watch my spot?” she asked the woman sitting on the carpet next to her. The only response was a grunt. Claire spread her New York Times over her place, hoping it would still be there when she came back, then walked over to one of the ubiquitous Starbucks. Maybe a double latte would keep her awake. Behind her stood a mother with a girl who looked about seven. The child was begging for a cookie, but her mother seemed too tired to even answer her. As Claire handed over a $10 bill, she said impulsively, “And can you give me one of those chocolate chip cookies, too?” She pushed a dollar in the tip jar, then turned and handed the cookie to the girl. “Here you go, sweetie.”
The mother snatched it out of her daughter’s hand. The kid promptly began wailing. “What have I told you about accepting food from strangers?” She turned her tiny, reddened eyes on Claire. “What do I look like? A charity case?” She stuffed the cookie in the trashcan, then stormed out without ordering anything, dragging her daughter by the arm. Now the guy behind the counter now glaring at Claire, too.
She came back to find that half her spot had been taken, but that didn’t stop her from squeezing in to sit down again, not after seeing on the reader board that Dante’s flight had been delayed yet again. The effects of a band of thunderstorms in the mid-West had rippled out until it seemed that nearly every flight was now canceled or delayed.
Three hours later, Claire shifted for the millionth time on the thin carpet on the floor outside Gate C16. Judging by the way her butt was aching, the carpet provided a barrier less than one-sixteenth of an inch thick between her and the cold, hard concrete. Why, oh why had she chosen to wear a skirt? Sure, it had seemed like a good idea six hours ago, when she was dressing to come to the airport to pick up Dante. She had been imagining the drive home, and the way his slightly callused hand would slowly run up her leg, parting the wrapped edges of the skirt before it, while she tried to concentrate on staying in her lane.
Now she was stuck with the skirt and no Dante to appreciate it. If Claire had known how long she would end up waiting, she would have gone back home, or at least worn her old Levis. The skirt parted at every opportunity, leaving her few options for sitting modestly, and none of them comfortable.
Now she read an article in the Arts & Leisure section, the kind of thing she would have skipped over before she met Dante. (She would probably never have read the New York Times at all if she hadn’t met Charlie).
A woman threw two eggs at a work of art that won Britain’s Turner Prize, but it wasn’t damaged the Tate Britain Gallery in London said. Martin Creed’s prize-winner – a large empty room with lights that turn on and off every five seconds – was closed briefly so gallery staff could clean up the mess. The attacker was another artist who had dismissed the minimalist construction, titled “227: The Lights Going On and Off,” as ‘electrical work’ rather than art. The egg thrower was immediately escorted from the gallery and banned indefinitely from returning. The works of other Turner winners and finalists have been vandalized in recent years. Tracey Emin’s installation of her unmade bed, a 1999 Turner finalist, was disturbed when two visual artists staged a pillow fight on it.
Finally, the crowd began to stir. The PA system crackled. “Ladies and gentleman, we are pleased to announce the arrival of Flight 207.” A cheer went up.
Claire became suddenly aware of the two lattes she had drunk. It would be at least ten minutes before the passengers began to de-plane, as they called it in airline-speak. And she couldn’t wait the additional forty minutes it would take to get back to her car and drive home. Like a fish swimming upstream, she wiggled her way through the people who were already beginning to crowd around the security checkpoint, and found her way to a restroom.
As she st
ood up from the toilet, Claire heard it begin to flush itself. Even though she had run into these all-knowing toilets before, the sound still startled her. And why was there a sliding, breezy sensation on her thighs? Too late, she realized that one of the ties of her skirt must have fallen into the bowl.
Now the toilet was sucking off her skirt.
She turned and grabbed for the swiftly disappearing fabric. Most of it had already disappeared, but there were still a foot or two of blue and green paisley material. Claire tightened her grasp, but even this remnant was yanked from her hands. From the bottom of the bowl, now empty of anything but water, came a sound nearly like a swallow. The toilet had won.
Claire was left standing, empty-handed, wearing sandals, a blue silk short-sleeve sweater, and nothing in between but her nicest pair of lace panties. Sheer, white and delicate, they were basically meant for nothing more than being taken off.
“Um, hello?” she called out from behind the stall door. Silence. Not even the sound of other toilets flushing or of hands being washed. Her voice was tentative, too soft. Claire made it louder, so that it echoed off the walls. “Is anyone in here?” It was absolutely still. She pushed the latch to the side and peeped out the door. No one.
She had to wait five minutes before anyone else entered the restroom. Finally, a tiny elderly Asian woman bustled in. “Excuse me,” Claire called to her. The woman started and looked all around, not seeing her. Claire let the door open a little wider. The woman gasped at the sight of a half-naked stranger, muttered what sounded like an admonition in a foreign language, and scuttled out the door. Once again, Claire was alone.
Only thirty feet away and a doorway away were people with luggage. Luggage filled with clothes. Maybe she could shield the front of herself with her wallet on a string and beg the first person she saw to donate something to the cause. She walked over to the mirrors above the sinks, her thighs very conscious of the sensation of eddying air. Ulp. That lace was pretty see-through. Even if she clutched her clutch to her crotch, everyone would be able to tell she was a natural redhead.