On the Street Where you Live (14 page)

I
am
a hell of a good cook, he admitted to himself. No—make that a hell of a good chef!

He went into the living room to make sure there was nothing out of place. On the wall leading to the sunporch there was a picture of the house as it had looked when he bought it, with the shingles broken, the porch sagging, the shutters peeling. The inside had been just as bad, or worse.

He had hired a contractor for the structural work. The rest he did himself. It had taken years, but it had been an absolutely satisfying job.

It was one of the smaller places, one that had been labeled an “early, unpretentious year-round dwelling.” It amused him that the pretentious mansions were gone. Houses like his were in constant demand on the local real estate market.

The phone rang. Will answered with a cheerful greeting, but when he realized who was calling, his grip on the receiver tightened.

“I'm all right, Dad,” he said. “How are you?”

Would he
never
get the message? he wondered, as he listened to the halting voice of his father saying he was recovering pretty well from the last bout of
chemo, and looking forward to getting together soon. “It's been too long, Will,” his father said. “Far too long.”

He finally had relented and had dinner with him in Princeton last year. His father had tried to apologize for the years he hadn't called even once. “I wasn't there for you when you needed me, son,” he said. “So worried about the job, so busy; you know how it is.”

“I'm pretty busy myself, Dad,” he said now.

“Oh, that's a disappointment. In a month or so, maybe? I'd like to see your house. We used to have some nice times in Spring Lake, when your mother and you and I stayed at the Essex and Sussex.”

“I have to be running, Dad. Good-bye.”

As always happened after a call from his father, the stinging pain of the past washed over Will. He waited quietly, willing it to leave, then walked slowly up the stairs to dress for Martha Lawrence's memorial service.

W
HEN
R
OBERT
F
RIEZE
returned home after an early morning jog, he found his wife already in the kitchen, eating her usual sparse breakfast: juice, black coffee, and a single slice of unbuttered toast.

“You're
up early,” he commented.

“I heard you moving around and couldn't get back
to sleep. Honestly, Bob, you had a couple of nightmares last night. I had to wake you up. Do you remember that?”

Remember.
The word that was beginning to frighten him. It had been happening again lately. Those blank periods when he had not been able to account for a couple of hours, or even a whole afternoon. Like last night. He had started to drive home from the restaurant at 11:30. He didn't get home until one. Where had he been that extra hour? he wondered.

Last week he had been wearing something he didn't even remember putting on.

These disturbing occurrences began when he was a teenager. First he started sleepwalking, then having periods when he would find time gaps in his activities, and not be able to explain to himself where he'd been.

He had never told anyone about it. He didn't want anyone to think of him as a nutcase. It wasn't hard to conceal it. His mother and father had always been wrapped up in themselves and their careers. They demanded that he look good, have good manners, and get good marks in school. Otherwise they didn't give a damn what he did.

He had always been an insomniac. Three hours sleep was enough. Sometimes he sat up and read late into the night, at other times he'd go to bed, then get up and go down to the library. If he was lucky he would doze over a book.

The episodes had let up after college, then for years stopped completely. But for the last five years they
had been happening again, and now they were becoming frequent.

He
knew
what was causing them: the restaurant—the most colossal mistake of his life. It was hemorrhaging money. It was the stress that was driving him into the blank periods again.

That
had
to be it, he decided.

He hadn't even told Natalie that three months ago he had put the restaurant up for sale. He knew she would have been hounding him every day to see if anyone had shown interest. And if not, why not? And then she would go through the litany of the craziness of buying it in the first place.

The real estate agent called yesterday afternoon. They were getting a nibble from Dom Bonetti who once ran The Fin and Claw, a four-star place in northern New Jersey. Bonetti had sold it, moved to Bay Head, and now had too much time on his hands. Actually, it was more than a nibble. He was bringing an offer to the table.

I'll be fine as soon as I sell it, Frieze promised himself.

“Do you intend to pour that coffee or just stand there holding the cup, Bobby?” Natalie's tone was amused.

“Pour it, I guess.”

He knew Natalie was getting sick of his moods, but for the most part she'd been uncomplaining. She looked gorgeous, even with her hair tousled around her shoulders and no makeup and wearing that old chenille robe he hated.

He leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

“Spontaneous gesture of affection. Something that's been lacking for a long time,” she said.

“I know. It's just that I've been under a lot of pressure.” He decided to tell her about the prospective offer. “I've put The Seasoner up for sale. We may have a buyer.”

“Bobby,
fantastic!”
She jumped up and hugged him. “Will you get your money back?”

“Most of it, even allowing for some bargaining on the price.” As he said these words, Bob Frieze knew he was whistling in the dark.

“Then promise me once that's done you'll sell this house and we'll move to Manhattan.”

“I promise.” I want to get out of here too, he thought. I
have
to get out of here.

“I think we should leave early for the memorial Mass. You didn't forget about that, did you?”

“Hardly.”

And after that, he thought, we go back to the Lawrence house, where I haven't been since that night I spent so much time talking to Martha.

Then we go to Stafford's place to get grilled by Duggan about what we were doing early the morning after the party.

He dreaded both sessions. The problem was, he remembered the party, but not what followed. Early that next morning he'd had one of his episodes. He hadn't come out of it until he found himself showering in the bathroom. His hands were grimy and his jeans and tee shirt had patches of dirt on them, he remembered.

He had planned to work in the garden that morning.
It was his one hobby and always calmed him down.

I'm sure I worked in the garden that morning, he told himself, as he went up to dress for the memorial Mass for Martha Lawrence, and that's certainly what I'm going to tell Duggan.

A
S HE HAD PROMISED,
Will Stafford arrived at 10:40 on the dot on Saturday morning, to pick up Emily. She was waiting for him downstairs, her purse and gloves ready on the table in the foyer.

She decided that it had been a stroke of luck that she had brought her new black-and-white hounds-tooth check suit with her to Spring Lake, since most of the clothes she had here were distinctly casual.

Will obviously shared her feeling about how to dress. At the closing last Wednesday, he had been wearing a sports jacket; today, a dark blue suit, white shirt, and subdued blue tie were his choice of suitable garb for the occasion.

“You look lovely,” he said quietly. “I just wish we were dressed up to go to a different kind of gathering.”

“So do I.”

He gestured toward the back of the house. “I see the contractor is filling in the hole out there. Are they satisfied there's nothing else to be found?”

“Yes, they are.”

“That's good. We'd better be on our way.” As Emily picked up her purse and set the alarm, Will Stafford smiled. “Why do I get the feeling that I'm always rushing you? The other day it was to get over here from breakfast for the final inspection. If you had known what was going to happen, would you have backed out on the purchase?”

“Believe it or not, that hasn't even occurred to me.”

“That's good.”

He put his hand under her elbow as they went down the steps, and Emily realized it gave her a sense of emotional and physical security to feel it there.

It has been a rough few days, she thought. Maybe it's taken more out of me than I realized.

It's even more than that, she decided, as Will opened the door of the car and she slipped into the passenger seat. In a crazy way, I feel as if this memorial Mass isn't just for Martha Lawrence.
It's for Madeline too.

As Will began to drive, she told him how she felt, then added, “I had been wrestling with the idea that to go to this Mass for a girl I never knew might seem like being a voyeur. I was honestly troubled about it, but now it seems different.”

“Different in what way?”

“I believe in eternal life, that heaven exists. I'd like to think that those two young girls—who must have been so frightened in the last moments of their life; who were murdered a hundred years apart and their bodies dumped in my backyard—are still together now. I want to believe that they're now in ‘a place
of refreshment, light, and peace,' as Scripture says.”

“Where do you think their murderer is now?” Will asked as he started the car. “And what will be his fate someday?”

Startled, Emily turned and stared at him. “Will, surely you mean murderers! Two separate people.”

He glanced at her as he laughed. “Good God, Emily, I'm starting to sound like the nutty tabloid writers. Of course I mean
murderers.
Two. Plural. One long-since dead. The other probably out there somewhere.”

They were silent for the few minutes it took them to drive around the lake and for St. Catherine's Church to come into view. It was an exquisite domed Romanesque structure. Emily knew it had been built in 1901 by a wealthy man as a memorial to his deceased seventeen-year-old daughter. It seemed to her to be a particularly appropriate place for this service.

They could see a steady stream of cars approaching the church and parking around it. “I wonder if Martha's murderer is in one of those cars, Will?” Emily said.

“If he is from Spring Lake, as the cops seem to think, I doubt very much that he'd have the nerve to stay away. It would be too conspicuous not to be here, grieving with the family.”

Grieving with the family, Emily thought. I wonder which of Madeline's friends, with blood on his hands, grieved with our family one hundred and ten years ago.

A
T ELEVEN O'CLOCK
on Saturday morning, Joan Hodges was on her way to the beauty salon to have her hair frosted when the phone rang. It was Dr. Madden's sister Esther, phoning from Connecticut.

Her voice was troubled. “Joan, was Lillian going away this weekend?”

“No.”

“I tried to call her last night at about eleven-thirty. When she didn't answer, I thought she might have gone out with friends after her class, but I've phoned twice this morning and I still can't reach her.”

“Sometimes she turns off the phone. With all the pestering from the media over this murder investigation, she probably did just that. I'll go over and just make sure everything's fine with her.” Joan tried to sound reassuring, in spite of her own misgivings.

“I don't like to put you out.”

“You're not putting me out. It's a fifteen-minute drive.”

Her hair appointment completely forgotten, Joan drove as fast as she dared. The sinking feeling in her stomach and the lump in her throat betrayed the panic that she was trying to keep in check. Something was terribly wrong. She
knew
it.

Dr. Madden's house was on a half-acre lot on Laurel
Street, three blocks from the ocean. It's such a beautiful day, Joan thought as she pulled into the driveway. Please, God, let her have gone for a long walk. Or let her have forgotten to turn up the ringer on the phone.

As Joan approached the house, she saw that the bedroom shades were down, and the newspaper was on the front porch. Her hands trembling now, she fumbled for the key to the office door. She knew that if Dr. Madden had locked the connecting door from the office to the rest of the house, there was a spare key hidden in her desk.

She stepped into the small vestibule. In the bright sunshine she did not notice that the lights in the office were on. Her hands soaked with perspiration, her breath shallow, she went into her own office. The file drawers were open. Files had been pulled out, emptied, and tossed aside, the contents strewn all over the floor.

Her legs resisting her attempt to run, Joan entered Lillian Madden's office.

The shriek that ripped from within her was only an agonized moan when it left her lips. The body of Dr. Madden was slumped over her desk, her head turned to one side, her hand still clenched, as if it had been holding something. Her eyes were open and bulging, her lips drawn apart, as if still gasping for air.

A cord was twisted tightly around her neck.

Joan did not remember running out of the office, down the porch steps, across the lawn to the sidewalk screaming all the way. When she became aware again, she was surrounded by Lillian Madden's neighbors, who had rushed out of their homes, drawn by her hysterical cries.

As her knees crumpled and merciful darkness blotted out the gruesome image of her murdered friend and employer, a thought flickered through Joan's mind:
Dr. Madden believed that people who die a violent death return very quickly in a new incarnation. If that's true, I wonder how soon she'll be back?