“I don’t know,” she said. “They don’t . . . They exclude me.”
“That’ll fix you,” I said.
“For telling her he was dead?”
“Yeah.”
“I was trying to protect her,” Winifred said. “He’s not cruel, or even mean. But he’s entirely interested in himself, and what he wants.”
“Well,” I said. “I’m going to solve that problem for you.”
“You have enough evidence?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“But you will,” Winifred said.
“Sooner or later,” I said.
She stared at me for a while and nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “You will.”
She handed me her cup.
“Don’t bother with the coffee,” she said.
I poured some whiskey in the cup and gave it back to her. She sipped some.
“I’ll be as kind as I can be,” I said. “If she’s involved, I’ll try to keep her, and you, out of it.”
“Oh, God,” Winifred said. “It will kill her. I don’t know what to hope for.”
“It’s well beyond hope,” I said.
“I know,” she said, and sipped again. “If I were outside looking in, which I’m not, I wish I were—if I were outside, I’d think this was very interesting.”
“Because?” I said.
“Because you’re as implacable as he is,” she said. “Be interesting to see who wins.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m interested in that, too.”
54
An outfit named Galvin Contracting came in and restored my bombed-out bedroom. They put in a new window, changed the lock on my front door, and even assembled the new bed when it was delivered. They repainted the bedroom, same color, more gray than tan but with some hint of both, depending on the light. Susan came with me when I moved back in. She brought with her a bunch of linens that she’d purchased for me. I helped her carry them in.
“How’d you know what color I’d paint it?” I said.
She looked at me and made a sound that, had she been less elegant, would have been a snort.
“Are you implying by that look that I’m boringly predictable?” I said.
She nodded vigorously.
We made the bed together. The sheets and pillowcases were plum-colored. I went to the linen closet in the bathroom and got a black down comforter and put it on the bed. Susan went to the living room and got a large plastic bag with several decorative pillows in it. They appeared to match or contrast with the plum sheets.
“What are those for?” I said.
She ignored me and began to place them strategically on my bed until they covered more than half.
“Where do I sleep?” I said.
“At night you take them off,” she said.
“And put them on again in the morning?”
“When you make the bed,” she said.
“Every day?” I said.
“Do you make the bed every day?”
“I do,” I said.
“Then of course,” she said. “Every day.”
“Will you be stopping by to inspect every day?” I said.
“No more than usual,” she said.
I smiled.
“Do I sense that they may not be on the bed when I’m not here?”
“Hard to predict,” I said.
“But they look so beautiful,” she said.
There was nowhere to go with that, so I said, “How about lunch?”
“Sounds good to me,” she said. “Where?”
“Here,” I said. “I’ll leave the bedroom door open, and we can admire the pillows while we eat.”
Susan looked at me kind of slant-eyed sideways and went to the kitchen counter and sat.
“Whatcha gonna make?” she said.
“How about cold chicken with mixed fruit and whole-wheat biscuits?”
“What could be better,” she said.
“Well, there’s one thing I can think of,” I said. “But there’s so many damn pillows on the bed. . . .”
She grinned.
“Oh, shut up,” she said.
I took out the chicken to allow the refrigerator chill to dissipate, and some fruit salad, and started mixing the biscuits.
“Is her mother going with you when you talk to Missy?” Susan said.
“No,” I said. “Winifred says that she and her daughter are so at odds that she would only make matters worse.”
“At odds over the father?” Susan asked.
“I would say so.”
“Women fighting over a man,” Susan said.
“It’s that simple?” I said.
“Oh, God, no,” Susan said. “I was just sort of musing aloud. Consider the girl. She thinks she has no father, that he’s dead, and she fantasizes the dream father, and then when she’s sixteen years old he appears and he seems to be the dream father she had imagined: handsome, mysterious, charming, and he comes to her. She’s furious with her mother for denying him all these sixteen years. On the other hand, it took him sixteen years to come see her. Who should she love? Who can she trust? How should she feel?”
“Sixteen years is a long time when you’re sixteen,” I said.
“A lifetime,” Susan said. “Do you have a plan?”
“I thought I’d ask her about her relationship with her father and the Herzberg Foundation.”
Susan smiled.
“Subtle,” she said.
I shrugged.
“At the beginning I was walking around saying, ‘What’s going on?’ At least now I’ve narrowed the focus of my general questions.”
“And after you’ve asked?” Susan said.
“I’ll listen,” I said. “You know how that works.”
“I do,” she said. “Though my goal is generally somewhat different.”
“We’re both after the truth,” I said.
“There’s that,” Susan said.
55
I fell in beside Missy Minor as she walked near the student union.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said.
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “You have so much you don’t want me to know.”
She stopped walking and turned toward me.
“What’s that mean?” she said.
It had stopped snowing during the night. But it was kind of cold, and the wind tossed the new snow around in small white eddies.
“I’ll explain if we can get out of the cold,” I said. “Buy you breakfast?”
“I had breakfast,” she said.
“No reason you can’t have another one,” I said.
“I’ll have coffee,” she said.
We went into the student union and got a table in the far corner of the cafeteria. At mid-morning, the place was half empty. I had milk and sugar in my coffee. She drank hers black.
“I know that your father is Ariel Herzberg and that you and he see one another,” I said.
“My mother tell you that?”
“I’ve talked with your mother,” I said. “But I actually saw you and him together in the library.”
“You’ve been spying on me,” she said.
“I have.”
“Why,” she said. “Why don’t you just leave me alone?”
“Wish I could,” I said. “But you are alleged to have been intimate with a murder victim, and the man who killed him appears to be your father.”
“You’re disgusting,” she said.
“But only a little,” I said. “You involved at all with the foundation?”
“I’m not involved with anything,” she said. “I hate you.”
Even for nineteen, she was young.
“Must be hard,” I said. “No father for sixteen years and all of a sudden a father. What’s that like?”
“It’s a bitch, is what it’s like,” she said. “I mean, for sixteen years my mother lied through her teeth that he was dead. You know, she never even told me he sent money. You know that they were never married?”
“She told you they were?”
“Yeah, and that he died after I was conceived,” she said. “Fact is, for crissake, she was shacking up with some guy who had no intention of marrying her, and when she got knocked up, he left.”
“Tough on her, I guess,” I said.
“She wanted him to marry her? There’s a laugh. He didn’t love her. He was just enjoying a little joyride, you know?”