Mad as a wet hen she was, fretting the whole time that one of the girls in our bridge club might see me on TV.
"Not that it would have mattered to me. In fact, later that summer was when I finally came out with the girls. Now there's a story I'll tell you someday, and you won't know whether to laugh or cry. There were eight of us in the bridge club back then, and now we're just five. That's a good number for poker"-she laughed-"but not worth a tinker's damn for bridge."
"It sounds pretty awkward."
"I guess that's one reason I'd like to hang on to this old house. It's like a true friend that doesn't judge us."
"You'll keep it. You'll get through this."
"Will we?" Her brown eyes were dull with exhaustion and defeat. "Sometimes I'm not so sure.
After a while you just begin to run out of steam." She heaved a deep sigh and began to fan her face with the Burpee catalog. "Well, Don, I guess there's no shortage of steam today, is there?"
I agreed that there was not. McWhirter came back from the phone, announced that he had dealt persuasively with the Albany Police Department, and said he was going to paint the rest of the barn while he awaited their arrival and their apologies for being tardy.
I said, "I'll look forward to that too."
Greco followed McWhirter outside, and I asked Dot for quick sketches of her neighbors on Moon Road, which she provided. One of them, Bill Wilson, who at the height of an argument over the Millpond situation had called Dot "a stubborn old bag" and kicked the fender of her Fiesta, sounded like a man especially worth getting to know. Though I planned on calling on all the rest of them too.
Dot adamantly refused my suggestion that she and Edith spend the next few days in a motel.
Who would water the peonies? Nor would she consent to phoning any of her or Edith's children or grandchildren, all of them spread about the Sunbelt, where she and Edith visited each February. Dot said her friend Lew Morton was coming over to spend the evening, and Peter Greco had promised to return to the house by midnight with or without McWhirter, who had set a goal of recruiting at least a hundred gay national strikers that night as he moved through the Central Avenue bars and discos. The man was from Mars, but I figured Albany could stand it for a day or two. In its history as a state capital, the town had seen stranger sights.
As I bumped back up Moon Road, I passed an unmarked blue Dodge with a familiar face at the wheel heading toward Dot's. Detective Lieutenant Ned Bowman was busy avoiding potholes, but he glanced my way as he careened past. He must have recognized me, as his eyebrows did the little dip-glide-swoop dance of horror my presence always triggered, and which over the years I'd come to look forward to in a small way.
I pulled up in front of the Deem house. The old Fury was still in the driveway, and now a cream-colored Toyota sedan was parked beside it, fresh heat undulating off its muffler. Above the house, the sun was a great white blot against the western sky. I checked my watch. It was just six-ten.
"Good evening. I'm Donald Strachey and I'm working for Millpond Plaza Associates. Are you Mrs. Deem?"
"Oh. Yes, I'm Sandra Deem. You're from Millpond? Oh, gee. Why don't you come in, Mr.
Strachey? Jerry's in the shower but he'll be out in a minute." Her voice was muted, insubstantial, as if it came from a high place where the air was too thin.
"Thank you. It's hot out here."
"Oh, isn't it awful? Gosh, nobody called us from Millpond today. Is there anything new? We haven't heard from Mr. Trefusis at all for a couple weeks."
As I stepped into the living room, Mrs. Deem looked tentatively hopeful. She was thirty-sevenish, with pale skin, a plain round freckled face, and black rings of sweat around dull hazel eyes. She wore tan bermuda shorts, a sleeveless white cotton blouse, and rubber thongs on small feet. She smelled heavily of Ban.
I said, "As a matter of fact, there have been some developments. But none that will be helpful for you and your husband, I'm afraid. A problem's come up. Somebody is harassing and threatening Mrs. Fisher and Mrs. Stout."
Her eyes narrowed and she thought this over. She brushed her hand across her own cheek the way Peter Greco had touched mine earlier. "Why don't you sit down, Mr. Strachey," she said after a moment, and directed me to a long high-backed couch covered with pictures of "colonial" scenes. A picture of a blond haloed Jesus hung above it.
"What is this person actually doing to harass Mrs. Fisher?" she said. "Whoever's doing it. Gosh, that's an awful thing."
I stepped over the blocks and dolls and stuffed animals on the gold-colored shag rug and seated myself behind a coffee table. "Nasty slogans were painted on the carriage house last night. A letter and a phone call came today threatening death if Dot and Edith didn't leave. You're right.
It's upsetting for both of them."
A toddler toddled into the room from the kitchen. "Hi-ee," she said, checking me out with big inquisitive blue eyes.
"Hi," I said. "What's your name?"
Mrs. Deem breathed, "Heather, you go out and play now. We'll have supper in a couple minutes.
Go on."
"By-eee." Heather spun around several times, pretending to be dizzy, then went out and played.
"That must be real scary," Mrs. Deem said, and perched on the edge of an easy chair that matched the early American couch. "Gosh, I just don't approve of that at all. Scaring a couple of old people like that." She was speaking to me but she also seemed distracted by a thought, as if she might have knowledge of the subject she wished she didn't have, or an opinion on it that was forming itself in a troubling way.
"No one knows, of course, whether the threats are serious," I said. "But that's part of the problem in a thing like this. The not knowing. I've been hired by Millpond to track down whoever's responsible."
"Oh, I see." She looked even more worried. Then she remembered something and stood up.
"Why don't you come out to the kitchen, Mr. Strachey, if that's okay? Do you mind? I'm getting supper and we can talk in the kitchen. Jerry will be out any minute. I want him to hear about this too."
I followed her and took a seat by the Formica table. A little color Sony was on the counter. Dick Block and the anchor news team were chattily rattling off brief accounts of the day's convenience-store holdups and double suicides.
Sandra Deem dumped half a bottle of something Kelly green over a bowl of chopped-up iceberg lettuce and said, "Do you think somebody around here is doing these things to Mrs. Fisher? Is that why you're here? I mean, why are you asking us about it?"
"We have to assume that's a possibility, Mrs. Deem. The three parties with something to gain by Mrs. Fisher's being scared off are your family, the Wilsons, and of course Millpond, my employer. So I have to ask you if there's anyone in your household-or maybe some sympathetic friend of yours or your husband's-who you think might be mad enough to break the law in this way."
Her face tightened, and she stood there blinking at me with the half-empty bottle of green glop poised above the salad bowl. "No," she said after a moment. "No, I really don't think so. Not something as mean as that. No, I can't think of anybody who would do such an un-Christian thing." Her voice gained an approximation of fervor as she spoke, but there was apprehension in 19 her eyes.
The man who padded barefoot into the kitchen, looking startled when he saw me there, was around my age, forty-three, paunchy in a fresh white Fruit of the Loom T-shirt and pale green slacks, and smelling of chemical substances meant to be cosmetic. He had thinning sandy hair, alert wide eyes the color of his pants, and the expression on his pleasant boyish face was one of mild perplexity.
"Hi, I'm Don Strachey from Millpond Plaza Associates," I said, getting up, and sounding to myself like a character on Dynasty.