A smile loaded with malice. He angled himself toward the house where the spiritual murder was taking place. “The free ride of staying in a mansion where there was peace and quiet and eating better than I ever had. They even have a maid. All you have to do is say you want a Pepsi or a piece of pie and she goes and gets it for you. They even have guest rooms. It’s like staying in a nice hotel. Mainwaring let me stay overnight any time I wanted to, and I wanted to a lot.”
I waited a moment before asking my next question. We just stared at each other. Then I said: “All I’m asking is one favor. I want you to think about who might have wanted Vanessa dead besides Neil Cameron.”
“He killed her. You know it and I know it.”
“I don’t know it, Delaney. But I’d appreciate it if you’d think about it and give me a call.” I handed him a card.
As he studied the card, the shrill got shriller in the house behind us. He shuddered. His entire upper body just shook for ten seconds or so. Then he sighed: “Maybe I’ll think about it. Maybe not. Right now I’ve gotta get back in there before it gets any worse.” He made a face. “I have nightmares he’s gonna kill her sometime.”
Then he was gone, trotting across the dead brown grass to the hell house.
8
“Was Jesus a hippie? I think not. Did Jesus smoke pot? Did Jesus listen to the Rolling Stones? Did Jesus burn the American flag? No, he didn’t. And Jesus never said vile things about the Vietnam War, either.”
Reverend Cartwright’s midday radio show.
It wasn’t really a manor house but it tried to be, a three-story native stone building of twenty-five rooms, nine baths, and two dining rooms, not to mention a fireplace that you could walk into. Not while logs were burning, of course. The home lay on fifteen acres of green trimmed lawn with gasp-inducing hedges and stone-edged ponds on which swans swam, and pines of such sweet perfume you got dizzy. Behind the house was the bright red barn where Eve Mainwaring had the six horses she ran in her white-fenced three-acre domain. All four doors of the garage were open, revealing the fact that Mainwaring didn’t think much of American car making. There was a Porsche, two Mercedes sedans, and a Jaguar. All of recent vintage.
I’d called ahead. Mainwaring had told me to come around to the back veranda where he was having lunch. The day was well on its way to reaching the predicted ninety. From an open upstairs window I heard The Byrds’ version of Bob Dylan’s “Tambourine Man.” As I looked up I saw a young female face, framed by long dark hair, watching me. The youngest of the Mainwarings, Nicole. She leaned back, out of sight.
Mainwaring sat beneath a large blue umbrella at a table of glass and chrome. He appeared to be staring out at the swimming pool. The water was blue and chemically fresh, no doubt. It was also empty.
I was still behind him when he said, “She always swam in the mornings. When it got cold she swam indoors. She rarely missed a morning.”
I didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. I walked across the fieldstone veranda and seated myself at his table. It was cooler under the umbrella. He wore a starched white short-sleeved button-down shirt, tan military-style walking shorts, white socks, and white tennis shoes. Before him was a plate that held two halves of an English muffin and two poached eggs. One half of the muffin, covered with strawberry jam, had been nibbled on. The eggs hadn’t been touched. They looked like the eyes of a comic monster. Next to his coffee cup lay his package of Chesterfields. “I don’t eat breakfast. I run three miles and then have breakfast for lunch.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Good for you or tell him how my day starts. You know, peeing and having a cigarette as soon as possible. But that doesn’t sound quite as impressive as a three-mile run, I guess.
There were no amenities.
“I wanted you to talk to Nicole, Sam. But she and I had a disagreement this morning so she’s up in her room sulking.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. In the shade of the umbrella his silver hair didn’t glow quite as much. “Eve will be joining us in a few minutes.” He paused. His harsh blue eyes showed pain. “She was what we were arguing about, of course. Neither of the girls accepted her. They never gave her a chance.”
“That’s a tough transition sometimes. A stepmother.”
“They never gave her a chance.”
I was expected to agree with him.
“I see.”
Then, appearing in the French doors behind us, was a sight rare even in the upper-class homes of our town. A maid, a real one, in a gray uniform and everything. White and fiftyish and from the looks of her, Irish. If she spoke with a brogue I’d suspect that we’d been transported into a sitcom.
“Will there be anything else, Mr. Mainwaring? I need to get going on the laundry.”
“Marsha, this is Sam McCain. He’ll be working with me for a while. Have you had lunch, Sam?”
I lied. “I have, yes. But I’d appreciate some coffee.”
“Why don’t you bring us a fresh pot, Marsha?”
“Sure. Anything else, Mr. McCain?”
“No. But thanks for asking.”
After Marsha had left, Mainwaring said, “You’re like I was at first. Nervous about having somebody wait on me all the time. Marsha was Eve’s idea. Ironically, the girls like Marsha much more than they do Eve.”
I didn’t correct the tense he was using. It was difficult to get it right when one daughter was alive and the other one was dead.
“Have you started work yet, Sam?”
A breeze carried the scent of the water in the pool. I was trying to say the unsayable. “I’ve been trying to get some background on Vanessa.”
Paul Mainwaring’s eyes narrowed and a bitter smile crossed his face. “Then you know she was something of a tease. Maybe even something of a whore.”
Fathers aren’t supposed to say that about their daughters. Other people say it and fathers say you’re a g.d. liar.
“That’s a little harsh.”
“No, it’s not, unfortunately. She was a very nice young girl even after her mother died. She was an A student, helped around the house and spent a lot of time making sure that Nicole and I were all right. I sent her to a counselor just to make sure that she wasn’t hiding any deep problems. I was afraid that maybe she was really depressed but covering it up. The counselor said she was a remarkably mature fifteen-year-old and that she was dealing with Donna’s death very well. All that changed when I brought Eve here and told the girls that I was getting married to her. They didn’t even pretend to like her. We had the wedding here. The girls went somewhere else. Wouldn’t come under any circumstances. In fact they stayed at their aunt’s in Cedar Rapids for two weeks before they came back. And it was right after that that Vanessa started changing. It was very conscious on her part. She got into the whole hippie thing. Didn’t wear a bra. I could smell the pot in her room. She also started bringing boys up to her room, something I’d never allowed before. I found some unused Trojans on her desk one day. She’d left them there on purpose so I’d be sure to see them. She wanted me to see them. She wanted to hurt me.”
“What was Nicole doing all this time?”
This time the smile was fond. “Little Nicole? She did what she always did, followed her sister. She got the same clothes and listened to the same music and started spouting the same rhetoric. It was sort of sweet in an odd way. Vanessa would be going on about capitalism and how the pigs had taken over-I was of course one of the pigs. They used to be proud that I’d made my own way in the world and had become wealthy doing it. But now I was a pig. A liberal pig. But I was saying it was sweet-and it was. Vanessa had some idea of what she was talking about when she argued about the capitalist system. But Nicole-she was this innocent little girl with all these big words and big concepts and she had no idea what she was talking about.”
“And where did Eve fit into all this?”
“Eve did the best she could under the circumstances, but obviously it wasn’t enough.”
The words had come from behind the sheer white curtains covering the French doors. Eve appeared in her jodhpurs and white silk blouse. Her brown leather riding boots gleamed. “I only listened for the last few minutes. I thought that since I heard my name mentioned I might as well join you.”
