Generous Death

“No,” I said weakly. “I mean yes. I mean no I won’t.”

  I perched on a stool in the well-lighted kitchen at my mother’s house and stared at the blasted rhyme and willed my hand to stop shaking. It wouldn’t obey me, so I set the note on the counter top.

  Snow fell off the roof and hit the ground with a sudden thud. I jumped the proverbial foot, discovering that a person’s heart, when said person is frightened out of her wits, really does stop beating. When it starts again, it’s with a, no kidding, sickening lurch. Whoever coined that cliché knew whereof he spake.

  I longed for the cop to come fast, soon, now.

  And I read:

  Jennifer Cain, beauty and brain,

  Her father is Greed, her mother’s Insane;

  Jennifer Cain, giver of pain,

  Gave her life, but not in vain.

  I put my head on the counter with the note and wept.

  Chapter 21

  The policeman who rang the doorbell five minutes later insisted on identifying himself fully with his badge. “It wouldn’t do for you to go with just anyone, miss,” he said kindly, if unnervingly. As I locked the door behind me, I heard the phone ring inside the house. I had forgotten to switch on the answering machine; well, it would just have to ring until whoever it was gave up.

  I climbed into the front seat of the squad car beside the officer. He was about fifty, gray and ruddy with that bulbous red nose that comes to heavy drinkers as they age. Pretty, he was not; but he was quiet and considerate. If he thought my destination interesting, he didn’t show it by word or expression. I may be a child of the ’70’s, but I am also my mother’s child enough to have been obscurely grateful for his lack of leering.

  Geof’s home turned out to be one of a number of enormous contemporary houses in a new and expensive part of town. From the outside, his was all graceless angles that pointed off in every direction as if the architect hadn’t been able to make up his mind which way was up.

  “Must be nice,” the officer said as he walked me to the door. “You’d never know he was rich, though, the way he acts I mean. Never puts on no airs.”

  He preceded me into the house and turned on so many lights that I had a feeling he knew I’d been frightened at my own empty home.

  “Snazzy, huh?” It was obvious he was waiting for my dramatic reaction to the interior of the house.

  “Good grief,” I said. I didn’t mean at all what he thought I meant, but he was pleased with the look of astonishment on my face.

  “Well, Detective Bushfield said to tell you to make yourself to home and that we’ll drive by every now and then just to see you’re all right. We won’t bother you or nothin—I’m sure you need your sleep—but maybe you’ll feel better, just knowin’ we’re there.”

  “Yes. I will.” I jerked my wondering eyes away from the scenery and smiled as largely as my exhausted muscles would permit. “I can’t thank you enough, Officer. Really, I’m so grateful.”

  “No problem,” he said, prophetically I hoped. “Take care now, Miss Cain.”

  I locked the door behind him and turned around.

  To my right was Geof’s living room. Beneath the vaulted roof there was only one piece of furniture: an enormous redwood hot tub, with no water in it.

  To my left was his dining room. There was no furniture there—only Nautilus equipment for body building. Well, that accounted for the broad shoulders and muscular legs. But from the looks of his house, there was no accounting for taste. His kitchen, in which he evidently neither cooked nor dined, was straight ahead down the hallway; hardback and paperback books lay neatly stacked on every available inch of counter space and floor. There was only a single thin path through which he evidently strolled from barbell to book to tub.

  Bell, book and sandal.

  The mind boggled at what the bedrooms might reveal.

  I walked cautiously forward until I could see the family room just the other side of the literate kitchen. And there, thank goodness, lay the answer to that eclectic decor: packing boxes. Geof, it appeared, had only just moved in.

  I breathed more easily. Before I jumped to unflattering conclusions, I’d wait and ask him if maybe his last wife got all the furniture in the last divorce.

  A phone rang somewhere.

  I found it in the kitchen between stacks of Le Carré novels and a yellow pile of National Geographies which looked as if they had actually been read.

  “How do you like the house?” Geof asked as soon as I’d said a cautious hello. I thought I detected a grin in his voice, but I wasn’t sure, so I settled for tact.

  “Well, it’s certainly … new … isn’t it?”

  He guffawed.

  “Ain’t it awful?” he laughed. “I suppose I should have warned you, but I was afraid you wouldn’t go if I told you I was in the middle of moving out.”

  “Out?”

  “Um. That house was the supremely had idea of wife numero dos, name of Melissa. Her taste was all in her mouth.”

  “Now, now. It’s not nice to speak ill of the departed.”

  “Oh, that was one of the nicer things I could say about her. That was a compliment compared to what you will undoubtedly hear some time at great and boring length.”

  “You seem a nice enough, guy to me. How come two wives couldn’t get along with you?”

  “My fault,” he said, the laughter gone. “I’m told it’s not much fun to live with a dedicated cop.”

  “Is that a warning?”

  “I suppose.” He sounded as tired as I felt. “I’m sorry things are such a mess, Jenny. I hope you’ll find your way around well enough to be comfortable.”

  “I will. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I’ll make my own choices about that.”

  Sadly, it only took a moment for him to tell me how little more was known about the attack on Minnie. “She’s still alive,” he said, “but unconscious. They pumped her stomach at the hospital, on the assumption that she’d been doped like the others.”

  “Why didn’t it kill her, too?”

  “Well, she’d eaten fairly recently and that slowed the action of the drug, plus we got there soon enough and we knew what we were dealing with.”

  “But she’s still in danger, I take it?”

  “Yes, and possibly in more ways than merely medical. I’ve got a twenty-four hour guard on her. I am not going to let anybody get near her to harm her a second time.”

  “Did you find a rhyme?”

  “On Minnie? No.” He sounded puzzled. “But I guess it’ll turn up.”

  He told me to sleep well and we hung up.

  It was two A.M. by the luminous clock on his bedside table when I woke and became aware of him sitting on the bed beside me.

  “You’re staring,” I said sleepily and smiled. “Have you been staring long?”

  “Years.” He looked older in the dim light from the moon that shone around the edges of the window shade; the long night had temporarily aged him. He reached out a gentle fingertip and stroked my eyelids. “You’re the one who just woke up,” he said, his voice husky, “but I think I’m the one who’s dreaming.”

  He stood up slowly and began to remove the tie he had loosened hours before at my house. I raised my hands to shake the tangles from my hair. The sheet and blankets fell away from my shoulders.

  Geof’s hands paused on a shirt button and his eyes moved down from my face.

  I looked down at myself.

  “I don’t wear a nightgown,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “I see that.”

  His fingers moved at the buttons again.

  “What,” I said suspiciously, “are you-grinning about?”

  “I was just thinking about the guys I used to know in high school.” He slipped off his loafers and socks, then removed his shirt and draped it over the back of a bedside chair. When his handsome head emerged from the white T-shirt he pulled off over it, he was still smiling. “We used to watch the cheerleaders bounce up and down and we?
??d make bets on which girls were for real and which weren’t. You were always so proper in high school—friendly, of course—but proper, so we never had the benefit of anybody’s firsthand account to tell us the truth.”

  “Well?” I was trying not to laugh.

  He stepped out of the rest of his clothes.

  “Just wait until my reunion,” he grinned. “Finally, I can tell them you’re for real.”

  I threw a pillow at him.

  Things happened fast after that, the first time; then things happened beautifully slowly.

  “Darling Jenny,” he said softly before he slept.

  Chapter 22

  You’re staring again.”

  I woke in the morning, too few hours later, to find him propped up on one elbow and turned toward me in the bed.

  He said without preamble, “I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was the wall and the first thing I felt was exhaustion and depression over this damn case. But then my foot moved so it touched you”—he smiled—“and then I remembered …”

  He kissed me a sweet good morning.

  “… and isn’t it amazing how rested and optimistic I suddenly feel. Love’s even better than a good night’s sleep.”

  I pulled him down so we snuggled together under the covers. I said, “A little early for talk of love, isn’t it?”

  “Early in the morning or the relationship? It’s neither for me, Jen. I’ve been in love with you since I was seventeen years old.”

  I was—I have to admit it—charmed, although of course I didn’t believe a word of such blarney.

  “Oh Geof, that was only a schoolboy crush.”

  “Maybe, but I’ve fantasized about you ever since,” he insisted, to my surprise. He brushed a clump of hair from my forehead, then ran his finger down my nose and cheeks and across my lower lip.

  “In your fantasies, have I always been a fourteen-year-old girl?” I teased.

  “Give me some credit,” he laughed. “I’ve seen your picture in the papers now and then through the years; I’ve kept up with how you’ve grown up.”

  “And have I changed a great deal? From the girl you remember?” Suddenly it was important for me to know what he thought of me now as compared to the bubble-headed child of then.

  “You’re more beautiful,” he said simply, and then when I thought my heart couldn’t race any faster, he floored me by adding gently, “Sometimes sorrow does that to a person, and trouble.” When I didn’t say anything, he continued in a much lighter tone. “You were always outgoing, but now you’re, well, confident. I like that. Very much. And you’re still the ambitious girl who wanted to be the best at everything.” He paused and grinned. “Now you tell me how I’ve changed. I’ll bet you can’t even remember me well enough to do it.”

  “You must be kidding.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “You were a memorable kid, Geof, don’t you know that? Anybody who knew you would remember you. Vividly.”

  He lay back and groaned.

  “For all the wrong reasons,” he moaned.

  “Well, you did all the wrong things!” I reminded him, laughing. It was my turn to roll over, prop up on one elbow and peer down at him. “Why did you? Was it rebellion? Your own personal war against the plumbing and hardware business?”

  He glared at me.

  “Damn it, Jenny, you weren’t supposed to get it right on the first try! I was all worked up to spend at least a week in justifying for you my years of juvenile delinquency, and you hit the nail on the head in the first five seconds.”

  “Don’t say nail,” I deadpanned, “you hate the hardware business, remember?”

  He chuckled. It had that deep, delicious sound that laughter has when a person’s lying on his back. I found the rumble irresistible and leaned over to kiss the source of it, in the middle of his rib cage.

  “Mmm,” he said. I slid up with my kisses, spacing them about an inch apart until one landed on his mouth. He would have pursued the subject further, but I was for the moment more interested in the previous topic.

  I propped myself upright again.

  He sighed resignedly and crossed his arms behind his head on his pillow, “So,” he continued with mock seriousness, “what we have so far is your basic poignant story of misunderstood youth. He knows he doesn’t want to do what his parents want him to do, but he’s too dumb to know what he wants to do instead.”

  “So he kicks.”

  “And generally raises hell, yes. Until one day, the good fairy drops by and waves her magic wand and says, ‘Hey Bozo, wise up,’”

  “This is not the same good fairy that paid a visit to Cinderella.”

  “I don’t think so. But this old gal knew her fairy business, because when she waved her wand it suddenly occurred to Bozo that although he thought he was hurting his family, he was—ta da—” We finished the sentence together. “Only hurting himself!”

  “Geof, you idiot, was there really a good fairy in your life?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled reminiscently and it was obvious he liked the person in his memory. “She was a cop.”

  “Ah.”

  “She caught me shoplifting one Saturday, but she didn’t arrest me. Instead, she blackmailed me into riding around with her every spare minute I had for two solid weeks.”

  “Ah ha,” I said. “And her magic wand was probably a nightstick. And after that illuminating experience, you knew in your black little juvenile delinquent heart that what you really wanted to be was a cop, just like your fairy godmother.”

  “You’re very perceptive,” he said, and smiled at me. “Not to mention silly. I think that all my life I’ve been looking for a woman I could be silly with.”

  “Do I look as ridiculously smug as you do right now?” I asked him.

  “Yes.”

  I ran a hand lightly over the impressive muscles of his chest and upper arms and laughed at the look in his eyes.

  “Okay,” I said, “you’re just waiting for me to say it, aren’t you? You want to hear me say how wrong we were about you; how you’ve grown up into a gorgeous, respectable, capable man. And if the other cheerleaders could only see you now, they’d eat their hearts out.”

  He loved it. He laughed from deep down in his flat belly, until I rolled toward him and gave him something more current than memories to consider.

  The sweet dream ended and reality returned when he drove me to The Foundation on his way to the station that morning.

  “You’re positive there will be at least two people in the office with you all day?” he said, a cop once more.

  “Yes, Geof, I’m sure.”

  “Come on, Jenny, don’t be impatient with me,” he said easily. “Surely you’re convinced by now that you might be in considerable danger.”

  “Yes. Okay. I’m sorry.” I frowned at the gray sky; I was heartily sick of gray skies. “I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at whoever has put me in the position of having to circumscribe my life. It infuriates me.”

  He didn’t have an answer to that. We were compatibly quiet until he pulled up to my building.

  “There are a lot of things we haven’t discussed,” I said tentatively, my hand on the car door handle, my mind on the anonymous notes.

  “Yes,” he said, “I know. Expect a visit from Ailey Mason today. I may not be able to come too, but I’ll try.”

  “Kiss me, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He obeyed me very nicely, just as Simon Church drove by, smirking, with Derek Jones in the passenger’s seat beside him.

  Simon and Derek and I walked into the elevator together. I said a terse good morning, then busied myself with the elevator buttons, my coat, my briefcase, anything.

  “Good morning, Jennifer,” Derek said.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” Simon was equally arch. “You know, Derek, I always feel better about the day when I know our police force is out there protecting us, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely, Simon. A citizenry can feel so safe in th
e embrace of our guardians of the law.”

  “Well put, my man. Safe in the strong arms of the law, as it were, kissed by the sweet breath of justice.”

  I felt the red at the back of my neck rising faster than the elevator.

  “You know, I tried to call Jennifer this morning, Simon.”

  “Did you, now?”

  “Um. Nobody home. Early, too.”

  “Maybe her phone machine was turned on and she was trying to sleep?”

  “No, that’s not it. The machine wasn’t on and the phone just rang and rang.”

  “My, my, where do you think she was?”

  “Don’t know. Worried me a little. Do you think I should have called the police?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Simon said as the elevator door finally, mercifully opened. “I’d guess they already had the situation well in hand. So to speak.”

  “All right.” I turned on them, having had enough of their smarmy vaudeville act. “Enough. Please. Thank you.”

  Derek, the employee on my payroll, was instantly contrite. “Sorry, Jenny,” he said to the person who buttered his bread. “We were out of line.”

  But Simon was merely egged on to further depths of lunacy and tastelessness. “Speak for yourself!” he said, “I only stepped out of line for a minute, and look what happens—some dumb gumshoe steps in front of me!”

  I could literally have struck him. I settled for a figurative hit below the belt.

  “Simon.” I turned reproachful eyes on him. “I’m not in a good mood this morning… I feel so bad about Minnie. You’ve heard, haven’t you? Yes, well, I hope you understand my feelings. We could all use a little kindness today, don’t you agree?”

  It worked, but then I’d meant at least some of it sincerely.

  “Oh shit, Jenny.” His voice and face filled with remorse. “The Tactless Bastard Strikes Again. I’m just sorry as hell.”

  “That’s okay,” I said magnanimously. “I understand.”

  “Big of you,” Derek murmured in a wry sotto voce that Simon didn’t hear. I, taking firm control of the scene, held open the office door for them. This was my domain. They could like it or leave.

  “Why are you here, Simon?”