Chapter Three
An hour later Lee entered his empty, darkened apartment on East Seventh Street, savoring the stillness before turning on the hall light. He removed his coat, hanging it on the Victorian bentwood coatrack, a gift from his mother. She loved all things Victorian: burgundy velvet drapes, satin-lined Chinese scarves with fat laughing cherubs, lace curtains, painted china tea sets, opera capes. Men were unreliable, and would come and go, but the Victorian era had a solid, carved-oak heaviness that she seemed to find comforting.
"Well, it's a theory, anyway," Lee muttered as he walked to the kitchen.
His piano sat in the corner under the window, waiting for him. But right now he wanted a cup of coffee, strong and bitter and hot, with a dollop of milk and a teaspoon of sugar. His insides ached from the strain of digging around among the demons that continued to plague him. There was something in the back of his mind, something he couldn't quite grasp. He had a feeling that it related to Marie's death in some way. As he put the water on to boil, the phone rang. The sound was jarring, cutting through the stillness of the air like a summons. He picked up the receiver and held his breath.
"Hello?"
"Hello, dear." It was his mother, brisk and cheerful as usual. Her voice was a shield, with a veneer of warmth and optimism, but he could sense the fear and sadness underneath.
"So how are things?" His mother's cheeriness was resolute, implacable-an immovable object.
"Fine, Mom." There was only one answer to this question in the Campbell family. Nothing else was acceptable. Fine, Mom. Everything's just fine. Laura's murderer is still out there, and there's a college girl in the city morgue with her chest carved up, but everything's fine.
"Isn't this weather just awful? It's hard to believe there are only six weeks until spring."
Weather-a safe topic. Weather, food, home improvement, gardening-all safe topics for Fiona Campbell.
"I just can hardly wait to get my roses in. I've got three different colors of tea roses this year." She was always planting things: roses, begonias, petunias.
"Oh, good."
"Stan thinks it's too early. He says we'll have another frost, but I don't believe him."
Stan Paloggia was her next-door neighbor who hovered around her like an eager beagle. Actually, he was a lot like beagles Lee had known: short and stocky, with a voracious appetite, thick around the middle. His voice, too, was a kind of a bray, like the hoarse baying of a hound on the hunt. He followed Fiona Campbell around like a one-man posse, being helpful in any way he could, whether it was gardening advice or plumbing repairs. Lee had often wished he could tell the man he was wasting his time-his mother was only attracted to remote, elegant men like his father. Tall, glamorous, and handsome, Duncan Campbell was Stan's opposite in every way-but Stan seemed to enjoy the quest, and panted happily along whenever he could. His mother tolerated his attention, and treated him about as well as she treated anyone.
"Well, if Stan says so, maybe you'd better listen," Lee said, pouring coffee beans into the white Krups grinder.
"I don't know; I just hate waiting," his mother replied.
Lee turned the grinder on and took the phone into the living room as the machine whirred into action, screeching harshly as the beans tumbled over each other.
"How's Kylie?" he asked.
"Oh, she's just fine-growing like a weed, you know. It's hard to believe she's almost seven!"
Lee looked at one of the snapshots of Laura on the door of his refrigerator. It was taken in front of his mother's house, and she was squinting into the sun, her hand raised to push back a few stray strands of long brown hair. He remembered the day well-he had taken the picture shortly before her graduation from college.
But his niece would have no memories of her-she would know her mother only through photographs like this one, or in the stories people told about her. Kylie lived with her father, but she spent Saturdays and Sundays with her grandmother, as he worked the ER shift at the local hospital most weekends. George Callahan was a big, bluff man without an evil thought in his head. Lee always wished Laura had married him, but he wasn't her type. Steady, unexciting, and kind to a fault, George was nothing like the vain, high-strung father Laura had never stopped searching for in the men she dated. Even after Kylie was born, Laura refused to marry George, even though he had begged her.
"You're still planning on spending Saturday with her, aren't you?" His mother sounded wary-lately Lee had been less than reliable.
"Uh, sure."
"Do you want to say hello to her? She's right here."
"Sure."
In the background, Lee could hear his niece talking to his mother's cat, Groucho. He pictured the scene: Fiona in the kitchen, cooking breakfast, her portable phone cradled on her shoulder as she stirred the potatoes, Kylie sitting in the corner kitchen nook with Groucho on her lap, trying to dress him in baby clothes.
There was a pause, and he could hear his mother in the background. "Put the cat down now-no, he doesn't like being held like that."
He smiled. Kylie was just like his sister, ferociously independent and stubborn. At six and a half, she already displayed Laura's ironic wit. There was the sound of the cat hissing in the background, then a sharp "Ow!" and the sound of a chair falling. Moments later, his niece came to the phone.
"Hello, Uncle Lee."
"Hi, Kylie. What were you doing with the kitty just now?"
"Playing." Her voice carried a note of gleeful guilt.
"Really? What sort of game were you playing?"
"Um…dress up."
"You were dressing up Groucho?"
"Um…yeah."
"Did he enjoy that?"
"Not really. He tried to run away."
"But you stopped him?"
"Yeah-until he bit my hand."
"That must have hurt."
"Uh-huh…Grandmom is putting a Band-Aid on it."
Kylie's relationship with Groucho was one of hunter and hunted-and, when she managed to corner him, it was torturer and victim. Her favorite game was dress up, and she clothed the cat in a dazzling array of humiliating outfits. The aging and dyspeptic tabby was far from child friendly, but Fiona Campbell had had him for years and wasn't about to give him up now.
"My Band-Aid has Winnie the Pooh on it," Kylie said.
"Oh, that's nice. Did your grandmom buy them for you?"
"Uh-huh. I picked it out, though."
Lee heard the whistle of the teakettle and went into the kitchen. "That's good. I'll bet it feels better already."
"Yes." There was a pause. Talking to a young child on the phone was a job. You had to constantly initiate topics, keep the conversation moving. As Lee poured hot water over the coffee grounds, he was aware of something in the back of his mind trying to press its way to the front, but he couldn't quite grasp what it was-a thought, an idea, an image of some kind.
"Are you having fun in school?" he said into the phone.
"Um, yes."
"What do you like best?"
"Art class. I drew pictures of Mommy today."
"You did?"
"Yeah. We were apposed to bring a picture in and draw from that, so I brought one of Mommy from the scrapbook." Kylie had trouble with "sp" sounds, and pronounced "supposed" as "apposed." She also said "Francanscisco" for "San Francisco" and "pissghetti" for "spaghetti." Lee found all of these childhood speech patterns charming, and was sorry the day would come-as he knew it would-when his niece would outgrow them.
A silence hung in the air, and Lee couldn't think of anything to say. He knew his mother kept a scrapbook filled with pictures of Laura, but he didn't know Kylie had seen it.
"And then when she comes back I can show it to her."
Lee bit his lip. It was bad enough that his mother had never accepted Laura's death, but it made him furious that she insisted on sharing her unreasonable hopes with her granddaughter.