‘Like what? To who?’
‘Why didn’t you say something to Albert that night?’
‘I was really, really scared. I was physically sick the whole night, and then we left and I tried hard not to think about it. I started to think maybe I was wrong.’
‘Why didn’t you say something to Albert the next day, in the morning, so you could both go and check it out?’
Conni bowed her head. ‘I couldn’t tell Albert. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell him.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t buy it.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Why didn’t you tell your lawyers this? Why didn’t you say you were innocent?’ As Spencer said it, he thought, not so innocent. And in that instant, he stopped feeling sorry for Conni, stopped pitying her.
‘How could I prove I was innocent?’ Conni said. ‘The circumstances were against me. I’m seen running from the scene of the crime, I can’t account for nearly an hour of my time, which happens to be the time she died. And you were convinced I was covering something up.’
‘You were,’ interjected Spencer.
She nodded. ‘I was. Plus my face is under her fingernails. What do I have, except my word? Albert testified against me,’ she said broken-heartedly. ‘Jim testified against me. You testified against me.’
‘I was wrong.’
‘You didn’t think you were wrong.’
‘Doesn’t make me any less wrong.’
‘You weren’t on my side, and I knew it.’
‘Your side? Conni, you saw a dead human being in the snow and you didn’t tell anyone. You didn’t even tell Albert. You should’ve told him.’
Spencer and Conni fell silent.
Then Spencer asked, ‘Did Albert have a pair of gloves?’
‘Gloves?’
‘Yes. Leather or any kind of gloves.’
‘Yes, yes. I don’t remember very well, but he had a pair of brown leather gloves he wore all the time.’ She bowed her head. ‘Something other than the gloves.’ She quietly stared at the table in front of her. ‘He had a brown leather coat.’
‘Yes?’
‘It disappeared.’
‘It what?’
‘It disappeared. I tried not to think about it then. We were ready to drive home for Thanksgiving, and he took his ski jacket with him. I asked him where his leather coat was. He said he couldn’t find it. After we came back I asked him if he’d found the coat, and he said no. We had a little bit of a thing about it. I didn’t understand how he could lose a leather coat. I was upset. You see, I had given him that coat for Christmas the previous year.’ Conni looked up, an ashamed look in her eyes. ‘I just didn’t want to think about where that coat might be.’
Spencer nodded. ‘No, I’m sure you didn’t.’ He saw the pained expression on her face. ‘It’s all right now,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter anymore.’ But he was lying.
Primping her short hair and touching her face, Conni said, ‘So what now?’
‘What now?’ Spencer was surprised by the question. ‘I don’t know. You might want to go to your lawyer and tell him what you just told me.’
Her manner became agitated. ‘And what? What good is that going to do?’
‘Conni, ask him to reopen the investigation.’
‘To what end? I plea-bargained!’ she exclaimed shrilly. ‘But I’m not guilty. Not guilty of anything.’
Spencer coughed gently. ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, Conni.’
‘I told you, I didn’t kill her.’
‘No, you didn’t. But –’ And here Spencer paused again. He was having difficulty coming up with the right words. ‘You did see her – dead.’ He willed his eyes to remain dry. ‘You knew whose boots they were. You knew it was her. I know you didn’t want to think about it right then – though I really wish you had – but the next day you didn’t see Kristina. You must have known what you saw in the snow was her, and yet you left, with her dog. Left to celebrate Thanksgiving. Left her in the snow for over a week –’ Spencer couldn’t continue.
‘I couldn’t say anything. It was too long already.’
‘Yes. Which is why I say you should’ve gone for help immediately. I doubt you could’ve helped her, because she was probably dead when you saw her. But maybe not. Think about that. Live with that. Had you gone for help immediately, you wouldn’t be sitting here for five or more years of your life.’
‘I couldn’t go for help immediately! Don’t you understand?’ Conni sounded helpless and desperate.
‘No, actually, I don’t. I know you were scared.’
‘Not just scared. Terrified. More frightened than I’ve ever been.’
‘You didn’t have much to be frightened of before that night, Conni,’ said Spencer. ‘But what we are only comes out in crises. It’s so easy to be passive in everyday life, which doesn’t challenge us. There are no risks. But once or twice in our lives, our name is called. And when it’s called, we have to stand up. Not run the other way.’ Spencer fell silent.
She stared at him, uncomprehending.
‘So you’re not going to help me, detective?’ she said coldly. ‘Why did you come here, then?’
‘I came here to see if I was right.’
When he didn’t elaborate, Conni asked, ‘Were you right?’
Slowly he bent his head. ‘I was right.’
Spencer didn’t feel like a young man anymore. Their web had entrapped him and held him prisoner for nearly four years, and he couldn’t extricate himself from it. He couldn’t be young again. He was graying at the temples of his light brown hair, and the lines of his face were becoming pronounced. These kids were going to make him old, but he wouldn’t let them. He needed to let them go.
‘Conni,’ he said resolutely, ‘I know why you didn’t tell Albert the night you ran back from the bridge. You didn’t tell him because you thought he’d killed her. And when he didn’t speak of her, and when days passed and he hadn’t mentioned her, when she was obviously missing in plain sight and he said nothing about her, you knew he’d killed her. And you didn’t say anything. What were you hoping? That she’d never be found? If you thought he’d killed her, did you then realize you’d be shacking up with a murderer, or did you not care?’
‘Don’t say that,’ Conni gasped. ‘Don’t say any of this. Stop talking.’
Spencer continued, louder than before. ‘You kept your mouth shut, hoping your suspicions were wrong. Were you hoping that if you took the fall for him, he’d come around and start to love you, too?’
‘He did love me!’ she exclaimed.
‘Oh, Conni!’ Spencer was so tired. ‘For God’s sake! He never loved you. He never loved anyone his whole life.’ Then Spencer remembered Kristina’s maroon coat. ‘He loved only her. Don’t you see that? You thought you could make him love you by your sacrifice, but he forgot you as soon as you went to prison, and now you want revenge. You should have tried to put him away, not woo him.’
Conni started to cry.
‘Don’t cry. What do you want me to do now? We don’t even know for sure, we don’t know anything for sure. You don’t, I don’t. Don’t cry. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he isn’t the one.’
Conni wept, not even bothering to wipe her face. ‘Find Albert,’ she sobbed. ‘Find him.’
‘Find him? And then what?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘In your heart you’ll know what to do.’
‘Leave my heart out of this, please,’ he said. Then Spencer softened. ‘What do I do when I find him? Kiss him on both cheeks?’
‘You’ll know what to do, detective. I’m confident in you.’ Conni sniffled.
Spencer understood she was placing her hope in him. ‘You think Albert is going to fess up to the deed? You don’t know him, Conni.’
‘I do. I know him.’
Shaking his head, he said, ‘You don’t know him at all.’ Again he thought of telling her about Nathan Sin
clair. But hadn’t she been punished enough?
Changing the subject slightly, Spencer asked about Jim.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Every Sunday. He comes here.’
‘You’re kidding,’ said Spencer. ‘Every Sunday?’ But he wasn’t really surprised. ‘What’s he up to?’
‘Not much. He’s working as a bank manager.’
‘He went to Dartmouth to become a bank manager?’
‘No,’ said Conni. ‘He went to Dartmouth to go into law, but he’s … reconsidered.’
‘Reconsidered? Did he graduate?’
Conni said thoughtfully, tenderly, ‘He reconsidered that too.’
‘I see,’ said Spencer. ‘Conni, have you reconsidered Jim?’
She nodded, looking ashamed. ‘He comes every Sunday.’ Her voice broke at those words, and Spencer wasn’t sure if it was because of what Jim had done for her or because of what Nathan Sinclair had done to her.
He wanted to reach out and pat Conni’s arm. ‘I’ll do what I can, Conni,’ Spencer said.
‘I know you will, Spencer. That’s the kind of person you are.’
‘But so you understand – not for you. For Kristina.’ And for me. And for Kristina’s mother, whom I promised.
‘I understand,’ she said eagerly.
‘I’m not promising anything, you understand?’
‘Fully,’ she said, smiling sadly. ‘Thank you.’
Spencer thought her thank you sounded heartfelt. He stood up. ‘You’re welcome.’ He wanted to say, it’s the least I can do, but what he was actually thinking was that it was the most he could do. The very most for himself.
‘I don’t think we’ll see each other again, Conni,’ he said. ‘Take care.’
Here he was, putting himself back into the quagmire of those four people’s broken lives. And his own. He’d thought when he left his once beloved Hanover he’d be leaving them behind too, but he carried them with him all the time, stacked sloppily into the old suitcase of his soul.
They had ruined Hanover for him. They had sullied it with their fractured lives and their complex miseries.
Three months later, in June, Spencer O’Malley found A. Maplethorpe in the white pages of the Greenwich, Connecticut, phone book.
A. Maplethorpe lived off Sound Beach Road, on the shores of Long Island Sound, about a quarter mile from the exclusive Greenwich Point Park. Spencer called first before coming out to see him. Nathan seemed curiously pleased to hear from him. ‘What took you so long, detective?’ he said, inviting Spencer to lunch.
Before he went to see him, Spencer thought about the encounter carefully and decided to tape a microphone behind his shirt pocket. He also brought his police Magnum. He didn’t go anywhere without it, even while off-duty.
Pauper Nathan Sinclair had really come a long way since the orphanage days of Fort Worth, Texas, and the juvenile jail days of Brooklyn Heights.
The house looked magnificent from the outside. Secluded and covered by lush greenery, it was a three-story country cottage with white-grilled windows, dormers on the third floor, and ivy over the fence. The landscape included mostly sugar maples and oaks with Long Island Sound peeking through them.
Nathan met Spencer outside, where Spencer was looking at the trees and breathing in the briny air. Pointing to the sugar maples, Nathan said, ‘I’ve had them transported from New Hampshire and Vermont. You really can’t find beautiful ones like these in Connecticut.’
They nodded to each other with cool detachment. They did not shake hands. Spencer could hear the tiny hum of the recorder. He touched his lapel.
Nathan looked grown-up. Spencer supposed that returning to a Greenwich full of Sinclairs, Nathan could hardly help but be A. Maplethorpe. In all other ways, however, in his demeanor, in his clothes, in his polite and refined speech and his neatly groomed, cut, nearly manicured hair, Nathan had become a Sinclair. His clothes and his house and his speech were evidence of much money well spent.
‘Still a Maplethorpe, huh, Nathan?’
‘I’m hardly anything else.’ Nathan stretched his mouth in a white-toothed smile. ‘Where should we go?’ he asked.
‘I thought we could stay here.’
‘No. Today is not a good day. I just fired my cook and cleaning lady. Why don’t we go to a place in town? It’s charming. I think you’ll like it.’
Spencer didn’t care where they went. He wanted to stay at the house. He wanted to see inside. What did he expect – right there in the sunroom, amid the flowers and the potted plants and the bookshelves and knickknacks? Did he expect to see the square pillow lying placidly on the sofa?
They went to a diner and sat on the southern side, where the sun pleasantly shone on the tables covered with red-and-white-checkered tablecloths. The waitress, wearing a red-and-white-checkered apron, came over with some coffee.
As the two chatted idly for the first ten minutes, Nathan smoked nonstop. Spencer became aware that Nathan’s cool demeanor, calm speech, and polite manners were hiding tense fingers, gripping cigarette after cigarette.
‘So what do I owe this visit to, Spencer?’ Nathan said after a while. ‘May I call you Spencer? Are you writing a book?’
‘I’ve never been much for writing,’ said Spencer.
‘Ahh,’ said Nathan, his question unanswered. Not wanting Nathan to be on guard – though it was obviously too late – Spencer said, ‘I went to see your old girlfriend, Constance Tobias. Remember her?’
‘Of course I remember Conni,’ said Nathan flatly. ‘How is she?’
‘Very well, she’s doing well. She was wondering why you never come to see her.’
Shrugging attractively, genteelly almost, Nathan said, ‘Well, you know. It’s been very difficult. It was a difficult time for me, too.’
‘Oh sure, difficult. Are you working?’
Nathan smiled. ‘Nah. A rich wife. She bought us our house.’
‘Ahhh,’ Spencer drew out. ‘Wife. So you’ve married.’
‘Yes,’ Nathan said solemnly. ‘I had been married.’
Spencer struggled to understand. ‘Had been? Nathan, it’s only been two years.’
‘Actually, it’s been nearly four, detective,’ corrected Nathan. Was that a hint of sarcasm in his voice?
‘Are you already divorced?’
‘No, I’m widowed.’
‘Widowed?’ Widowed! Spencer’s hands began to shake. He struggled to remain composed.
‘Is that black-widowed, Nathan?’
Nathan didn’t answer, smoking and smirking.
‘Well, I’m very sorry to hear that. I was just about to congratulate you on your marriage.’
‘That would’ve been less than appropriate.’
‘How did your wife die?’
‘She lost control of the car. Just a freak thing. Went off the road, turned over.’
Spencer sat and absorbed what he’d just heard. He hoped his face didn’t show what his heart was feeling. He hoped he didn’t sweat himself into an electric shock with that microphone taped to his chest.
‘Waitress!’ Spencer called. ‘I think I’ll have a whiskey.’
‘We have –’
‘Anything. As long as it’s whiskey,’ Spencer interrupted her.
She brought it to him.
‘Let me ask you,’ Spencer said finally. ‘Did anyone investigate her death?’
‘Certainly. The insurance company.’ Nathan leaned over and smiled thinly. ‘It really was an accident, Detective O’Malley.’
‘Yes, and Kristina really was naked in the sub-freezing temperature. She could’ve very well frozen to death.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Nathan. ‘You know she didn’t freeze to death.’
‘Yes, but that was strictly an accident itself. Kristina was meant to look like she froze to death.’
Nathan lit another cigarette and flung his groomed hair back. ‘Detective O’Malley,’ he said, ‘I’m not saying it’s not pleasant to see you, but why are you here?
Conni Tobias is in prison.’
‘Yes, Conni Tobias is, isn’t she?’ said Spencer pointedly. If it weren’t for the fact that Nathan was into his second pack and it had only been about thirty minutes, Spencer would’ve thought he had wasted his time by coming. But Nathan was smoking the cigarettes so mechanically, so tensely, so systematically, that Spencer suddenly became sure, sure, that his gut feeling was dead on.
‘Nathan –’
‘I really wish you’d call me Albert,’ said Nathan. ‘I haven’t gone by that name in years.’
‘Strange. You went by that name in Kristina’s letters to her grandmother, and in her letters to you that she never sent, and in the other things she left behind, except her will. You are Nathan to Kristina’s mother. Let me ask you, did your bride – what was her name? – know you by your rightful name?’
‘No, because it is not my rightful name and hasn’t been for years.’
‘What was your bride’s name?’
Nathan lit a cigarette before he said, ‘Elizabeth.’
‘Elizabeth. Elizabeth. That’s beautiful name. What was her last name?’
‘When she died, I believe she was Maplethorpe.’
‘How about before she died?’
‘I really can’t remember, detective. Why are you so concerned?’
‘I’m not concerned at all. I’m concerned she’s dead, I’ll be honest with you.’
Nathan smiled. ‘Well, don’t be so concerned.’
Nathan Sinclair was very cool on the exterior. Spencer was so shaken, he didn’t want to pick up his bourbon; he didn’t want Nathan to see his unsteady fingers.
Where did one go with these pointedly bad feelings?
Did one crawl away, did one die with them?
Spencer didn’t want to crawl away. He wanted to know more about Elizabeth. Nathan, though, was very close-mouthed on the subject and only acknowledged that it was hard to be a widower at twenty-five. Spencer stared at Nathan to see if there was genuine emotion behind the words. When he looked across at Nathan, all he saw was a cool young man in trendy clothes, chain-smoking Camels. He said the right words, certainly, but Nathan did not seem to be suffering a tragic loss. And Spencer knew something about loss.
‘Let me ask you a question. Was there suspicion of foul play?’