Martin applauded. Deirdre applauded. Bunny tucked the magic box under her arm and took a little bow. “I’m sorry, Martin, that you had to bother coming all the way up here for nothing,” she said.
“Not a bother,” Martin said. “Never a bother, Miss Nichol. Wouldn’t have missed this for anything.” He dropped Deirdre’s wallet into her messenger bag and transferred it into Bunny’s arms. “You’re sure there’s nothing more I can do?”
“I’m sure. Thank you. Thank you so much,” Bunny said. She rose on tiptoe and planted a kiss on his cheek. Martin flushed so red that for a moment the lipstick smear she’d left on his cheek seemed to disappear.
A minute later Deirdre stood alone with Bunny, watching the security car disappear down the driveway.
Bunny turned to face Deirdre, hands on her hips. “So.”
Deirdre’s first instinct was to apologize, but she was through apologizing. She was tired of being treated like a child who had to be lied to. “I thought you might recognize that knife.”
“Should I?” Bunny opened the messenger bag and, to Deirdre’s astonishment, pulled the knife from within it. Then she peered into the open bag. Lifting the edge of the yellow dress, she added, “I see you still have this. Where did you find it?”
“Among some things Henry says Dad told him to get rid of. I think that’s the same dress and knife that you showed my father the night Tito was killed. You told him you were keeping it for insurance. Insurance against what?”
Bunny’s eyes turned watchful. “How do you know that?”
“I . . . he told me.”
“He told you?”
Deirdre stared hard at Bunny, determined not to let her gaze drop to the bag Bunny was holding. The manuscript was in it, underneath the yellow dress.
“I asked, how do you know that?” Bunny repeated with a cold, hard look.
“He wrote about it in his memoir,” Deirdre said defiantly.
Bunny reared back, clearly shaken. “Where did you find this memoir?”
“Does it matter?”
“Where is it?”
“I gave it to Sy,” Deirdre said without missing a beat.
“You gave it to Sy?” Bunny narrowed her eyes and stared into Deirdre’s.
“He said he’d take it to his office. He thinks publishers will be all over it, given the content.”
“Your father wrote musicals and romantic comedies. He got paid to make things up.”
And you get paid to act, Deirdre thought.
“Don’t you think it’s time people knew the truth?” Deirdre said, the words coming out strong and sharp even as her eyes filled with tears. “My father was here. He helped you move Tito’s body from Joelen’s bedroom. When he asked you where I was, you said he should be asking where Henry was.”
Henry. Bunny mouthed the word as her eyes widened. “What else did he write about Henry?”
Deirdre tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “What I want to know is how did the dress I was wearing that night get like this?” She pulled it from the bag. “And how”—Deirdre waved her crutch—“did I get like this?”
Bunny’s look softened. “I understand why you feel you need to know. And I’m sorry you’ve ended up with so many . . . questions.” She gave Deirdre a long look, stripped of artifice. “But I’m telling you, as clearly as I possibly can, that it would be much better all around if you simply stopped asking them.” She lifted the dress out of the bag and bundled it around the knife. Then she gave Deirdre back her messenger bag, opened the gate to the pool, and went through it. A moment later Deirdre heard a splash.
When Bunny came back through the gate, her arms were empty.
Chapter 35
Deirdre waited until she was off the Nichols’ estate to pull over and check that her father’s manuscript was still in her bag. It was. In an odd way, it was a relief to be rid of the dress and the knife.
When she got back to her father’s house, the police car was gone. Henry’s car was gone, too. The dogs greeted her at the door. She gave each of them a desultory pat on the head. One glance past the front hall told her that the place had been thoroughly searched. She made her way through the living room and into the den. Rugs were pushed back. Shelves cleared, with books and videocassettes dumped on the floor.
Deirdre continued to her bedroom. She leaned against the doorjamb and took in the disarray. The mattress had been stripped, the bedding piled on the floor. Her duffel bag had been taken out of the closet, unzipped, and its contents emptied out. The hollow-eyed, kitten-holding orphan was staring from the closet at her. Cardboard boxes that she’d piled in front of the orphan had been pulled out and opened, their contents strewn about. High school yearbooks. Scrapbooks. Spiral notebooks from college classes.
Deirdre wondered what on earth the police were looking for. It would take hours to straighten the mess.
She sank down onto the bare mattress, pulled the pillow off the floor, and hugged it to her chest. She wanted nothing more than to tip over, curl up, and shut down.
“Deirdre? Is that you?” her mother’s plaintive voice called.
Deirdre squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the pillow over her head.
“Deirdre?”
Deirdre threw the pillow aside and stood, steadying herself with her crutch. She followed her mother’s voice into her father’s bedroom. On the way past Henry’s room she looked in. His prized electric guitars were piled in a corner instead of lined up against the wall. The contents of his bureau had been dumped on the floor, his closet emptied out too.
Gloria was sitting up in Arthur’s bed, her turban askew and her eyes red from crying. Spent tissues were crumpled on the bed covers. This room had also been tossed.
“I see the police came back,” Deirdre said.
“Twice.”
“Twice?”
“First, two of them showed up and took Henry in for questioning.”
“They arrested him?”
“I don’t think so. Henry said to call Sy.” Gloria’s voice rose. “But before I could, another police officer arrived to search the house. I couldn’t stop him. He tore through the place while I tried to call Sy. I called his office, and I tried him at home. I tried over and over, but I couldn’t reach him.”
“Did the police officer say what he was looking for?”
“Looking for?”
“Didn’t he show you a warrant?”
Gloria hung her feet off the side of the bed, put her hands on her hips, and worked her thumbs into her back. She looked exhausted. “All he did was show me a badge and tell me to keep out of his way.”
“And I’ll bet he didn’t leave behind a list of what he took, either.”
“He didn’t leave anything and he didn’t take anything, either.”
One officer. No warrant. Nothing taken. Sounded like a pretty sketchy police search.
Gloria went on. “Look what a disaster he left the place. The funeral is tomorrow. People will be here.” Her voice dropped to a whimper. “It’s too much. It’s just too much.”
“And Henry’s still not back? He hasn’t called?”
“I haven’t heard a word from him.” Gloria’s face crumpled, and she pulled out another tissue. “I’m so glad you’re here, at least.”
Deirdre imagined Henry being questioned by Detective Martinez in that little room for hours on end, his words captured on a tape recorder without Sy’s reassuring presence to guide him. She tried phoning Sy but, like Gloria, got no answer. She hung up and stared at the phone, willing it to ring. But of course it didn’t.
“Come on,” she said to Gloria. “At least we can start straightening up.”
For the next hour, Deirdre and her mother worked their way from room to room, putting the house back together. They were finishing up in the den when the phone rang. Gloria raced to answer it in the kitchen. Deirdre listened, praying it was Henry.
“Vera?” Deirdre heard her mother say. A long pause. “Oh my God, no!” Deirdre rushed into the kitchen. Gloria was ashen, a trembling hand over her mouth as she listened. “Right. Right.” A pause. She shook her head. “How awful.”