Tom ignored him as I recited Marla’s number. Should Marla really come, though? I didn’t want this situation to aggravate her cardiac condition. She should not come here, I muttered. When Tom asked, I gave him the address of Arch’s friend, Sam Rodine. It was near enough to Marla’s house that she could meet me there. While Tom murmured into the phone, the coroner’s black van pulled up beside the curb. A warm breeze swished through the aspens. The babble of voices on the street increased in volume.
“I don’t believe this,” muttered John Richard. “No, Marla… Goldy’s fine, just upset,” Tom was saying. “But I need you to take care of her for a while. Meet her over at the Rodines’ house and bring some iced coffee or something. Just be with her, okay?” While he was talking, his eyes never left the two men from the coroner’s staff who were going about their grim work in the ditch. I noticed John Richard’s eyes never strayed toward that spot.
“Look, Marla, Goldy will tell you what’s going on when she meets you, okay? I need to go,” Tom said in his conversation-ending voice. “She’ll be tied up here for about fifteen minutes, so … Sure you can get dressed that fast. Yes, Goldy is with me now. No, we’re not at home. Marla, please… Okay, look, Goldy and I are over on Jacobean, here in the country-club area.”
Marla’s squawk through the receiver was audible across the porch. Of course Marla didn’t need to ask where on Jacobean we were. She was the one who had called me seven months ago and in a tremulous, indignant voice, announced the name, address, and all the vital statistics she’d gleaned on John Richard’s latest conquest, Suz Craig.
“No, don’t come over, we’ve got enough confusion as it is. Goldy won’t be here too much longer… .” Tom sighed. “Yes,” he said finally, “John Richard Korman is here, too. Marla, remember what I said. Goldy will be on her way to the Rodines’ place in a quarter of an hour.” Then he muttered, “See you later,” and disconnected. Well, that was one way to get out of a conversation.
Tom leaped off the porch without explaining where he was going. He stopped to talk to someone from the coroner’s van, then hustled back to us. He held up a hand to me: five minutes.
“Okay, Mr. Talkative,” said Tom to John Richard. He sounded almost cheery as he snapped the phone back on his belt. “You’ve been wanting to talk and now you’ve got your chance. How about telling us exactly what happened here?”
“That’s Dr. Talkative to you, schmuck.” John Richard tossed his head, suddenly calm. His changes in mood, of course, were well known to me. “And I’ve been Mirandized. I’m not saying another word until I talk to my lawyer. Just the way you told me to.” Then John Richard turned. His dark blue eyes spit fire at me even as his voice remained hideously even. “But as for you, I know you’re behind this. One way or another, I’m going to find out how. And if you tell my son about this in any way that makes me look bad, I’ll have you hauled into court so fast you’ll think our breakup was a caterers’ picnic.”
Oh, sure, I thought. But I didn’t want to hear his empty threats. I was leaving. Of course, I wanted to ask John Richard what kind of “mixing up” he and Suz had done the night before. Mixing up. What a euphemism. How about, “I beat up women when they don’t do what I want?” In the near distance, sirens wailed. I shivered and wondered about the ID bracelet that Suz had so proudly given John Richard. And why would John Richard think Suz wanted to call me this morning? The sirens shrieked louder and a police car, lights flashing, burst into view. I knew better than to try to have any further conversation with John Richard.
The police car squealed to a stop behind the coroner’s van. A uniformed policeman and a tall, dark blond plainclothes woman I didn’t recognize came up to the porch and asked if I was Goldy Schulz, the person who’d found the dead woman.
Was I ready to make my statement? they wanted to know. Just then, there was one of those unexplained moments of utter silence. The breeze dropped. The coroner’s staff in the ditch was still. The speculative buzz on the street ceased. Even the sprinklers stopped their metronomic splatting. Maybe the quiet was in my head. Maybe I was going to pass out.
“Mrs. Schulz?” inquired the tall female officer, who had said her name was Sergeant Beiner. She leaned in close. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I need… need to go get my son.”
“Very soon,” she replied, as she straightened. Sergeant Beiner was fiftyish. Her six-foot height was somewhat mitigated by a humpback, and her narrow face was actually topped with a rooster-style burst of blond and gray curls. “We’re making an exception so you can go in just a few minutes. You should be coming down to the department,” she added, with a wary glance at John Richard. Then her tone turned sympathetic. “But since you have to go pick up your child, Mrs. Schulz, we’ll just ask a few questions now. We know where we can reach you if we need to talk to you some more later. Okay?”
I nodded. “Later,” I said dully, “I’ll be at home.”
The sergeant gently led me off the porch, out of earshot of John Richard and Tom. She motioned for the uniformed policeman to stand by her side as she ticked off her questions: How did you get here? What exactly did you see? What did you do? Did you see anybody driving away? Did you see anybody in the area?
While she made notes, I told her everything: I arrived in Tom’s sedan between six-thirty and seven, I saw a body in the ditch; I called 911 and Tom. No one drove away. No one showed up except Dr. John Richard Korman, clutching a bouquet. It was a painful recitation. Sergeant Beiner said she or one of the primary investigators would be by to see me later in the day. I walked unsteadily back to the porch.
“I’m leaving,” I told Tom. He stepped off the porch and gave me a wordless hug. I murmured, “I’ll be okay” into his chest. Then I pulled away.
Behind me, the grating noises of a stretcher being wheeled across the pavement disturbed the quiet of the neighborhood. Another meow directed my attention to the porch steps. A small calico ball of fur dashed out and clawed at the upended geraniums. It was Suz’s cat, Tippy. I snagged the small feline and was rewarded with a scratch on the arm. Tippy, shivering and terrified, then scrambled up my arm. When I tried to coax her down, she dug her claws in and remained poised on my shoulder. Her little body trembled next to my head.
Two more police cars wheeled up Jacobean, red and blue lights flashing. I walked to my van with Tippy the cat perched resolutely on my shoulder. I knew the cat was part of the crime scene. But she would be ignored and abandoned if I didn’t care for her. So I took her. Three more uniformed Furman County deputies crossed Suz Craig’s lawn to Tom. Two more hauled equipment toward the ditch. No one noticed me.
The video team began to record the scene. I averted my eyes and opened the van door. The cat leaped into the back. I stared at the keys in my hand. My ring was just like Tom’s: keys to the house, keys to the sedan, keys to the van. I tried hard to remember what it was I was supposed to do with these keys. It could have been me. After a moment of fumbling with the ignition, I started my van, and stepped hard on the accelerator. It could so very easily have been me in that ditch, if I hadn’t gotten out all those years ago.
The dozen people gathered on porches stared with avid interest as my van chugged down the street. One man shook his head at my noisy progress. His red scalp blazed in the warming sun. Along the street, the velvety lawns glowed like chartreuse carpets.
Suz Craig took my place. But it could so very easily have been me.
3
The cat howled the two miles to Hadley Court. I pulled up in front of a three-story, white-brick-and-blue- gingerbread-trimmed Victorian-style mansion that was about as far from a mountain contemporary as it was from Mars. Marla’s Mercedes squealed around the corner as I eased to the curb. Behind her tinted windshield I could see she was talking excitedly on her car phone, which she quickly hung up when she spotted me. She threw open her door and came bustling toward the van.
Marla’s raspberry-colored sequined sweatsuit did not flatter her portly figure. In one hand she held a covered glass and in the other a paper bag. My dear , friend always brought something that she thought would make you feel better. Usually the only thing I needed was to see her, and as usual, the sight of her rushing toward me, her rhinestone-studded sunglasses jiggling up and down on her concerned face, brought a wave of relief. Wealthy by inheritance, talkative by nature, and pretty in an unconventional way, Marla had endured being married to John Richard for six years less than I had. After John Richard’s first few rampages, Marla had also shown much more confidence than I had when it came to ridding oneself of a burdensome spouse. She’d shoved an attacking John Richard into a hanging plant and dislocated his shoulder. She’d then managed to cut the marital knot with great expertise. She and I had become fast friends when her divorce was final, proving that even the worst marital
