A Crack in Everything Page 18

  “We’ll be fine, and Roddie will be back before you know it.”

  “Will he?” She poked her fingers through a crocheted rosette. “If Roddie has to prove he didn’t kill a man he didn’t know, then we’re all at risk, aren’t we? Guilty until proved innocent.”

  It was a lucid enough comment, and I wondered if the tranquilizers, or her distress, had begun to wear off. Did she mean guilty in the abstract?

  “I’d better let the camp know Delia won’t be in.” She pushed up from the sofa, trailing her shawl to the desk.

  The Willowood directory was a flimsy production attached to an apothecary’s lamp by a long orange thread I recognized as a filament of Roddie’s mountaineer’s rope. Lauren punched in a number, left a message, then lay down again. By the time Delia came back, dressed in overalls and pink velcro sneakers, Lauren was asleep.

  “All right, kid. How’s that stomach ache?”

  “Better,” she said. “I’m hungry.”

  There was no real food in Lauren’s kitchen, no microwavable redi-pacs, no ten-second oatmeal. No toaster home fries.

  There were elements. Flour, sugar, salt.

  I’m no chemist. “Have a tangerine,” I said to Delia. “I’ll peel it for you.”

  She nibbled it segment-by-segment, dainty as a squirrel munching nuts. Watching her eat stirred my own appetite. The dilly/potato bread was on the platter where Roddie had left it, and together we finished four slices, toasted and buttered, to go with our milk.

  After we cleared the table, I bent over the dishwasher, helping her load our plates and glasses. When I straightened, Nino’s face flashed before my eyes, a waking vision that passed instantly. I hadn’t slept much since Saturday night. I was beginning to dream on my feet.

  “Want to see my brothers’ toys?” Delia said, and I knew what she was up to. Let Susan explore forbidden territory with Delia the innocent bystander.

  “Sure.” I yawned.

  The basement opened off the main staircase; Delia found the light, and we headed down to the playroom. From step to step, she chattered about this toy and that. “Josh and Sam got a truck that climbs up stairs. We got a million blocks in my camp. Me and Amanda make castles.”

  “Is Amanda your best friend?”

  “Uh huh. We give her a ride ‘cause her mommy goes to work in a different direction.”

  I stopped. “Amanda doesn’t know you won’t be at camp today. We better call so her mommy won’t be late.”

  We went back to the den. Lauren’s breathing was steady, and I left her to whatever dream was smoothing the frown off her face.

  “What’s Amanda’s last name?”

  “Lester,” Delia said.

  I flipped through the Willowood directory, amazed at the glamorous names the girls had: two Sophias, an Olivia, a Chloe. Delia was the only Cordelia. Cordelia, vaguely English, old-fashioned no matter which way you sliced it. I wondered if Roddie and Lauren were at the top of a new naming trend.

  I dialed Amanda’s number, and gave Mrs. Lester the bad news. She did not take it well. “This is third time Lauren’s left me in the lurch,” she said, her voice rising. “She knows I don’t have my car this morning. She was going to give me a ride to work after we dropped the kids off. Can I speak to her, please?”

  “She’s sick in bed.” My little white lies were accumulating like snowdrifts. “I don’t think Delia will be going to camp at all this week. Lauren will call you tonight.”

  Mrs. Lester sighed. “Tell Lauren I’m sorry she’s not feeling well. I’m taking the day off, so if there’s anything I can do…”

  Delia waited patiently while I wrote Lauren a note, which I left next to the phone.

  Except for a few tarted-up Barbies, a Bratz, and a Victorian doll’s house, the playroom was set up for boys being rowdy. Instruments of navigation and space travel lay scattered about the tile floor. There was an archery target, water guns, hockey sticks. A computer and a television for lulls in the action.

  “Here’s the truck.” Delia nudged something large and black with her foot. The thing was to “truck” as “clodhopper” was to “slipper.” She handed me the remote. “Wanna try?”

  I pressed every button, wiggled the joystick, reversed the batteries. Nothing worked. Ten seconds later, thumb in her mouth, Delia had the “truck” spinning across the floor.

  “Careful Delia,” I warned as the vehicle tottered on two wheels and flipped onto its side before recovering. Watching it climb three stairs, I knew Delia had been here, done this, many times before, when Lauren wasn’t looking, and the boys weren’t home.

  We passed an hour in the playroom, reading and singing and picking out tunes on the upright piano. I played the first five bars of Fur Elise, the chords for Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue, and Chopsticks, exhausting my repertoire.

  “My turn,” Delia said.

  I took myself to a chair and closed my eyes. Torpor descended. Far off, I heard her flailing away at the piano, then silence, then the hum of the stair-climbing clodhopper. Careful, Delia, I wanted to say. Keep your eyes on the wheel. Your big blue eyes, Cordelia…

  …don’t it make my…

  “Susan!”

  …brown eyes blue…

  “Susan, wake up!”

  I felt her breath on my cheek and pulled out of my slump. Her face was so close I could see the light in her blue marble eyes.

  “Cordelia,” I said, not sure I wasn’t dreaming. “I know who you are.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Another Wrinkled Truth

  Delia, suddenly shy, clung to my hand. She aimed her bag of stale bread at an artificial pond ringed by woods that gave the Idlebrook grounds a mountain forest air. “The ducks are over there.”

  “After we visit Mrs. Renfrow.”

  Cordy was sitting outside in an Adirondack chair, her white hair and yellow sweater bright against the brick condo wall. Blue hydrangeas clumped around the patio, interspersed with pots of begonias and stubby scarlet flowers I didn’t recognize. Johanna had told me about Cordy’s “good days,” when her memory held, and I wondered if she was waiting for me here in her garden.

  Delia and I walked across the lawn. When we were about fifteen feet away, Cordy rose slowly from her chair. “Are you the young woman who called?”

  “Yes. I’m Susan.” I stepped onto the flagstone and extended my hand. Instead of shaking it, Cordy took it in both of hers, light and dry as tinder.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come. It’s lovely having visitors. Is this your daughter?” She smiled at Delia, standing close to me. “I have a son. No daughter, more’s the pity.”

  “Delia’s a friend of mine. We’re going to feed the ducks, but first she wants to say hello to you.”

  “You won’t find ducks here. Just geese nowadays.”

  “I want ducks!” Delia put her thumb in her mouth and glared.

  Cordy stared at me, “Do I know you?” and the good day clouded over.

  “I’m Susan.” I looked from one to the other, from Cordy to Delia, from Delia back to Cordy. “You’re Cordelia.”

  “Yes, that’s my name, more’s the pity. Everyone calls me Cordy.”

  “Cordelia’s a wonderful name.” I put my hand on Delia’s shoulder. “It’s my little friend’s name, too. Everybody calls her Delia.”

  They had the same eyes.

  Chaz’s eyes.

  His mother. His daughter. I was sure of it.

  ***

  A polished and combed Lauren was standing in the middle of the den. “What do you expect me to do? Beg your silence?”

  “I expect you to tell Gordon Brenner so he’s not blindsided when the affair comes out. And it will come out. Of course Roddie will have to be told, but you’ll handle it.”

&nbs
p; “Roddie knows. I told him right after it started.”

  Music leaked up from the basement playroom. I closed the door, so that Delia, who couldn’t possibly understand, and who was downstairs watching a video, might not hear. “You told him?”

  Humor flickered for a moment. “I don’t like sneaking around.”

  Lauren’s kind of honesty must sting, I thought. “Roddie didn’t insist you end the affair? Never threatened to divorce you and take the kids?”

  “I offered to leave. He said he’d rather have me this way than not at all. He asked for nothing more than my discretion. He didn’t even want to know Chaz’s name.”

  Outside, crows flew past the house, so close we could hear their wings flap. Was Roddie for real? I didn’t think Michael would share me. I sure as hell wouldn’t share him.

  “How did you find out?” Lauren spoke deliberately, almost her old self again. Confession was good for her soul.

  “The eyes. Delia looks like her father.” And the nose, the long, slender body. The decisive manner. “Her name. I thought about the Cordelia Trust, the loan to Chaz. It took me awhile to put Delia together with Cordy Renfrow. We fed the geese together at Idlebrook this morning.”

  She ran a finger over her metal necklace, chunky enough to put a crick in her spine. “Why did you go there?”

  “To make sure. I’ve been know to chase rainbows.”

  “Did you say anything to her?”

  “Of course not. But Gordon Brenner has got to be told.”

  “Roddie doesn’t want anyone to know.”

  “It’s your decision, too. At least bring Gordon the tape. Never mind your negligence. The tape explains why Roddie came back a day early.”

  “Does it?” she said, a funny little smile on her face.

  “Yes! It proves he didn’t come back to murder his wife’s lover. Whose name he didn’t even know, or so you tell me.”

  “He didn’t.” She went to the window and began smoothing the curtain folds. “But he’s always known about Delia.”

  What planet was I living on? “You told him that, too?”

  “Yes.” She said it so softly, I wasn’t sure she’d spoken. “I couldn’t have lived with myself otherwise. That’s when I offered him a divorce.”

  Have an affair. Have your lover’s child. But be open and honest. I ought to run that one by my mother. Or Michael. I said: “Roddie went ahead and set up a trust fund for another man’s child?”

  She whirled around, angry. “Delia’s my child, too.”

  “And Roddie loves you.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I wouldn’t love me. But Roddie gave Delia his heart. Sometimes I think he loves her more than the boys.”

  Is there a feeling more tangled than love? I sat down in the mastodon chair and rocked and connected the dots. “Roddie didn’t authorize the loan to NGT. You did.”

  “Yes. Chaz was desperate, and Roddie never pays attention to any of the trusts. John Snow and I have been working together for years. I convinced him NovoGenTech was worth the investment.” She lifted her chin. “I did it for Delia, too. Investing the money seemed to link all of us together.”

  “Oh, yeah. One big happy family. You, Chaz, Delia, with Roddie holding the coats.”

  Her face took on heat, as if she’d leaned over a cook pot. Had this cool woman actually managed a blush?

  “The loan documents haven’t turned up yet. When they do, the police will see your signature, and you’ll be dragged in. They’ll find out about the affair. They always do. Promise me you’ll call Gordon Brenner. Talk it over with Roddie when he gets back, but you must be completely candid with Gordon. That includes giving him the tape.”

  She pressed her face to the windowpane. Beyond her, the steeples of Chestnut Hill College loomed like medieval hats against a clear blue sky. “You said Roddie would be back ten minutes after Gordon Brenner got to the station. Well, it’s been hours. Where is he?”

  “Let’s find out.” I located Brenner in the Rolodex and dialed his number. His secretary told me he’d be in court until three. Another attorney from the office was with Roddie at the station. When Gordon checked in, she would tell him to call Lauren or me.

  Lauren stood by the desk, an agitated hand at her throat. “They’re not going to let him go. I can feel it.”

  Her conviction struck a chord in me. I opened the drawer where she’d stored the answering machine tape. “If you won’t take this to Gordon, I will.”

  “No! It could hurt Roddie.”

  “The police have already broken his alibi. The tape mitigates his lie.” I held it up between two fingers.

  “Leave it!” She rushed at me, then held herself back. “Mind your own business!”

  “What is it, Lauren? Are you afraid the tape will hurt you?”

  “I don’t give a damn about myself. I’d hand it over to the police this instant if I thought it’d make them leave Roddie alone. My husband did not murder Chaz.”

  “How can you be so sure? Did you kill him?”

  “Sometimes I wanted to, when he talked as if Roddie didn’t matter.” She dropped her hands, her voice. Sunlight splashed across her dress. “But I don’t kill what I love.”

  I knew how she must be feeling. After Gil died, I’d fluttered through days and months like a moth at a window. “Once everything comes out, you’ll be a prime suspect. The police will want to know where you shopped. What time you got home. Who saw you.”

  “Maybe I’d better get myself a lawyer.”

  “Let Gordon advise you on that.”

  “I know you don’t admire me much, Susan.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve come to think of Roddie as a friend.”

  “I love Roddie too, you know. My dilemma was wanting two men. How do I explain that to Gordon Brenner? Or the police.”

  For a second, I sympathized. I’d loved Gil. Now I was beginning to care for Michael, or was it love? If Gil were still alive, were to walk back into my life, would I want two men, like Lauren?

  “For the last few months, I’d been trying to end the affair,” she said.

  “For Roddie’s sake?”

  She shook her head. “Not exactly. Chaz was pressuring me. He separated from his wife, and wanted me to leave Roddie. We’d agreed from the start not to injure the innocent, and now he was reneging.”

  “Johanna wasn’t so innocent.”

  “That’s true. She was the first to have an affair.”

  Another wrinkled truth. Johanna told me Chaz had cheated first.

  “But Roddie is innocent,” Lauren said. “Chaz’s son is innocent. My sons. Why should they suffer?” She circled the room, stopping near the door. “Chaz didn’t care who he walked over.”

  “Delia’s five. You and Chaz must have been together a long time.”

  “We met at Chestnut Hill College. I work in Admissions. Chaz had his lab. It’s been almost eight years.”

  “After all that time, why did he suddenly start trying to break up your marriage?”

  “Because he wanted his daughter.”

  “He knew?”

  “I told him. After she was born, he asked me to give her his mother’s name, and that was the extent of his involvement. We both preferred it that way. Five years went by. Then he met her.” Lauren smoothed a lock of hair that didn’t need smoothing. “At Spaal’s gym. On this particular morning, the sitter didn’t show up so I took Delia with me. Chaz saw her there.”

  Spaal’s was a bit off Chaz’s path, wasn’t it?”

  “He did a lot of business in Boston. He liked to drop into Spaal’s, just to say hello, maybe grab a coffee with me after my workout. Not often, and never planned. He’d just show up. Sometimes we’d have breakfast in the diner across the street. A stolen hour.” The misery that Xanax
had deadened suddenly seized her face. “That morning, Delia was with us. My daughter and her father charmed the heck out of each other over buttermilk pancakes. Chaz couldn’t get her out of his mind. That was the beginning of his plan to take Delia away from Roddie, have me abandon my sons, and set up housekeeping with him.”

  “But he gave up that plan.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you know he meant to go back to his wife?”

  “No, but it doesn’t surprise me. They were business partners. NGT was in trouble, and Chaz would’ve done anything to keep his company alive. He’d have seen reconciling as a temporary expedient.”

  “This wasn’t about business. It was for Glenn’s sake.”

  “The reason doesn’t matter. Nothing would have changed between us.”

  But I wondered if Lauren had made the Cordelia Trust loan precisely to make sure that nothing would change.

  “We’d broken it off many times. We couldn’t keep away from each other. And he was determined to have his daughter.” She drifted over to me, smelling of mouthwash and rose water soap. Before I could stop her, she took the tape out of my hand.

  “I hate what I’ve become,” she said, words that surprised me. She had hidden self-knowledge for so long under a crackle of honesty. “This is the first time I’ve talked freely about Chaz. I’ve opened a window, and the fresh air is hard to breathe. I’m bypassing Gordon. I’m going to the police. I’ll tell them everything. When I’m through, they’ll have to let Roddie go.”

  “What are you going to tell them? What else don’t I know?”

  “Just what I told you. Isn’t that enough?” Her hands fluttered to her face, flushed with a look of panicked excitement. She reached behind me, scrabbling among the papers on the desk. “Where’s the camp directory? Maybe Georgina Lester will watch Delia till my mother comes down from Maine.”

  Upstairs in the master bedroom, I sat on the bed while Lauren freshened up and changed her clothes. I’d managed, just, to convince her to consult Gordon before she went anywhere near the police. She owed that much to Roddie, was how I put it. She’d arranged to meet Gordon at three o’clock, in his office. I hoped Roddie would be finished with Sergeant Tyre and the inquisition by then.