“I’ll try not to stay long,” he continued.
I made a resigned face at my reflection and rummaged among the lipstick tubes in my dressing table drawer. But I wouldn’t change the sheets; I still had a faint hope that later in the day it would prove to have been wasted effort. Actually, I’d settle for sitting in the same room while we read. Though our sex life was often wonderful, our “together” time was minimal. I scanned the closet for my black pumps and slid my bare feet into them.
“No hose?” Martin said as he zipped up his blue jeans. He reached in a drawer to pull out a T-shirt. He seldom got to dress this casually.
“My knees have scabs from hitting the sidewalk last night, in case you didn’t notice. And they’re pretty sore.”
“Oh, honey, did I hurt you? Earlier?”
“If you did I didn’t notice! But now that I’m up and around, I can tell I hit the pavement.” I flexed my leg and winced.
“Maybe while I’m at the hospital I’ll check to see how Arthur Smith is,” Martin said, with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
“That would probably be good for appearances, anyway,” I said. “Thank God you were holding my hand when he was stabbed… or whatever happened to him.”
Martin stood behind me and bent to kiss my neck at the spot that always makes me gasp. “Some people that you dated, being around them doesn’t bother me. But being around Arthur does, not because I think you have feelings for him but because he must still have some for you. He always gives me this look, ‘I had her first, I know all about the mole on her back,’ crap like that. And once Lynn and he have separated, what does he do? Puts himself right in your line of vision and looks at you as if he was a painter and you were the Mona Lisa.”
“And gets stabbed,” I said, to point out that Arthur’s evening hadn’t ended well, however much staring he’d done. I polished my black oblong-framed glasses, the ones I almost always wore to church, since they made me look serious. I peered into the mirror to check my makeup and decided I was entirely too pale. Maybe this year, for the first time since I was a teenager, I’d try to get a tan. If I went about it carefully, perhaps the sun wouldn’t hurt my skin too badly. “You know, Martin, I’d think I had it worked out if it wasn’t for Arthur,” I said, pulling a Kleenex out of its box to blot my lipstick.
Martin, bent over to tie his Avias, said, “What? You worked out what?”
“All this violence.”
“What’s your theory?” Martin leaned his elbows on his knees to listen.
“I think it’s because of Angel.”
Martin was astonished. “How do you figure that?”
“Okay,” I said, holding up my fingers. “Jack Burns’s body was dropped in the yard while she was out mowing.”
Martin nodded cautiously.
“Then Beverly was rude to Angel in the library, and Beverly got attacked.”
I was busy folding fingers down and Martin was nodding.
“Then Beverly’s purse was found on Angel’s car.”
“What does that mean?”
“Whoever did it was saying to Angel, ‘Look what I did for you!’ Like Jack’s body falling in her yard. Just like Madeleine.”
Martin raised his eyebrows, as if to say “Explicate.”
“I was watching Madeleine the other day as she was hunting, and I was thinking how yucky it was to have to clean her kills off the doormat. Then I realized that she brought them as an offering to me: like, ‘I’m a useful cat. See what I did?’ ”
Martin was looking a little dazed by my excursion into cat psychology.
“So, Jack was an offering. Like a dead mouse. ‘See what I did for you? He gave you a parking ticket, so here he is, delivered to your doorstep.’ ”
“You think someone is in love with Angel and is showing her that by hurting people who upset her?” Martin raised his eyebrows, the picture of skepticism.
“It makes a perverted kind of sense,” I said stoutly. “And poor Beverly’s purse being put on the hood of Angel’s car. To underline the fact that the attack was- in Angel’s honor.”
“So, Shelby was hit on the head because he’s her husband?”
“Right.”
“Why wasn’t he killed?”
“Maybe because I turned on the downstairs light?”
Martin nodded slowly, not as if he was in love with my theory, but to indicate he was giving it consideration.
“But what about Arthur?” he asked. “That won’t wash, with Arthur. I don’t think he and Angel have exchanged two words since she moved here.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said smugly, having that instant figured out where Arthur might tie in. “Remember, Arthur had called her in to the police station before he questioned me.”
“So this hypothetical admirer just decided he’d given Angel a hard time?”
“I guess. Actually, Faron Henske interviewed her, not Arthur.”
“Angel,” Martin said slowly, doubt in his voice. “I don’t know, Roe. Angel’s not the stuff dreams are made of.”
“Not your dreams. But I’ve seen men just about hang their tongues out when she walks down the street,” I said. “It’s because she’s so strong and sleek, I expect.”
“Hmmm. That’s an interesting theory…”
He didn’t believe it for a minute.
“And,” I added, having had a few more thoughts, “the police won’t think of it, I bet, because they’re seeing this as attacks on two policemen. Beverly could’ve been mugged and Shelby could’ve heard a prowler.”
“Roe, the police could be right.”
“Well… maybe. But I think I am. I just can’t understand,” I added, as I slid the beige-and-gold-enamel barrette into my hair to hold the waves off my face, “why the police couldn’t find the knife Arthur was stabbed with.”
“They certainly searched us all thoroughly,” Martin said, his voice dry. “Perry Allison had a pocketknife, but it was perfectly clean. I don’t think the wound could have been deep at all, if they suspected a pocketknife could’ve done it.”
“No blood on anyone…”
We shook our heads simultaneously at the opacity of the mystery surrounding the parking-lot stabbing of Arthur Smith, police detective.
Martin gave me a kiss and left to go to the hospital, and I finished preparing for church.
As I started a load of clothes in the washer on my way out the door, I reflected that this had been the best morning Martin and I had had in a while; longer than I liked to count up. For the past few months, Martin had been traveling more, had stayed in the office longer hours, had never let more than a day pass without going into the plant. Outside of work hours, the Athletic Club took up more time, and the meetings of all the boards and clubs he’d been asked to join-Community Charity Concern, Rotary, and so on and so on-ate into his lunchtimes and his evenings. I’d been increasingly on my own or thrown into the company of Angel and Shelby, with whom I had little in common, fond as I was of both of them.
As I retrieved my car keys from the hook by the south kitchen door, I realized Martin and I hadn’t gone out together at night, except for four community functions, in maybe three months.
This was not the life the young wife of a handsome, older, wealthy man was supposed to lead, right? He should be hitting all the nightspots flaunting me, right?
I’d heard the stupid phrase “trophy wife” behind my back on more than one occasion, and I thought it offensive and absurd. Of course I was quite a bit younger than Martin, and I was his second wife; but I was no voluptuous bimbo who’d married Martin for money and security. When Martin wanted to establish himself as the alpha male, he tended to challenge another man to racquetball rather than encourage me to wear low-cut dresses.
It might seem-to an outsider-that Martin, to some extent, had lost his taste for me. That our honeymoon was so far over that I was housekeeper and occasional companion to Martin, only. That I’d gone back to work because I was bored and unfulfilled as full-time wife. Or that my married life was sterile because I’d found out I was.