Detective Broumas smiled. He removed his navy blazer and hung it off the back of one of the easels in the first row. “We were talking to your husband in there. An artist. Is that how you got into this line of work?”
“Yes,” I said.
The policeman named Charlie brought the chair I’d just been sitting on and put it in front of Detective Broumas.
“Put it up there with the other one,” he said. “Shall we?”
As I stepped up on the platform and took the seat that was meant to substitute for a tub in Woman Washing in Her Bath, Detective Broumas turned to retrieve a notebook from the pocket of his blazer.
I remembered finding a small notebook that must have fallen from Jake’s jacket pocket. Inside he kept a sort of journal of his time outside in the cold.
Dripped icicles for forty minutes in snow. Used tree as cover.
Can I break up ice and solder it together by melting it with my hands?
Leaves as thin as parchment. How to embellish what is already perfect?
“Are you ready?” Detective Broumas asked. He sat across from me. The uniformed policeman had taken up his post near the door. I noticed, as I glanced at him, a certain boredom, as if this were a day like any other.
“My friend says my mother was killed,” I said.
“Somebody had a hand in it, yes.”
“Who?”
“We aren’t sure yet,” he said. “She was found in the basement by a neighbor of hers.”
“Mrs. Castle,” I said. “She has a key.” Answering, for myself, my own open question.
“Actually, she doesn’t. She found a window open in back that had been jimmied and asked a young lady to help her.”
Detective Broumas referred to his notebook. It was a small leather-bound book with a red ribbon to mark his place.
“Madeline Fletcher. Her father lives next door.”
For a moment I thought of the tattooed wonder snaking into my mother’s house, how it would have upset her.
“Yes,” I said, “that’s the window my husband tried to fix yesterday.”
“It was wide open,” Detective Broumas said.
“It shouldn’t have been.”
“Mrs. Castle also said that you were there last night. That she saw your car as late as seven p.m. outside the house.”
“That’s right.”
“What were you doing there?”
“She’s my mother, Detective.”
“Just go through what you did and how you left her, if you can. Was she sleeping? Up? What was she wearing? Did you get any phone calls? Hear any strange noises? Had your mother been frightened of anyone or anything?”
“My mother has been declining for some time,” I heard myself say. I used the passive vernacular I so hated in reference to the elderly. “She had a grim bout with colon cancer a few years ago and never really recovered. Her doctor says that if people live long enough, cancer of the bowels gets them in the end. It’s his little joke.”
Detective Broumas cleared his throat. “Yes, well, that sounds difficult. We’ve talked to Mrs. Castle, and I know she assisted her a great deal. Was there anyone else who frequented the house?”
I looked down at my hands. I had stopped wearing jewelry of any kind. I didn’t like the weight of it on my body, and whenever I found myself out at a restaurant, by the end of the meal I would have piled everything, from rings to earrings to watch, to the left of my place mat. I was unable to talk with it on.
“Not recently,” I said.
“Mrs. Castle mentioned an incident in the house not too long ago,” he prodded.
I looked back up at him.
“I found a condom in my old room.”
“And?”
“We all assumed it had to be the boy who ran errands for my mother and sometimes did things around the house that she couldn’t manage herself.”
He referred to his notebook. “Manny Zavros?”
“Correct.”
“Fifteen twenty-five Watson Road?”
“That’s his mother’s house,” I said. “He disappeared after Mrs. Castle put the congregation on him.”
“Disappeared?”
“Do you think it was him?”
“We’re following every lead.”
“I don’t want to get Manny in trouble, but…”
“Yes?”
“There’s something else that I didn’t share with anyone.”
“I’m the person to share things with,” he said.
I knew this was the moment to plant the seed. As I spoke, I felt my face flush.
“Around the same time, the contents of my mother’s jewelry box went missing.”
“You didn’t report it to the police?”
“I didn’t notice it for a few weeks, and by that time Manny was gone and I’d had the locks changed. Anyway, I didn’t want to upset my mother. She hadn’t worn most of the jewelry for years.”
“I see. By the way, your mother isn’t the only one who died in the neighborhood in the past twenty-four hours.”
I knew what he was going to tell me and tried quickly to hide any expression that might indicate this.
“It wasn’t Mr. Forrest, was it?”
“Why do you ask about him?”
“Because I’m very fond of him,” I said. “I’ve known him since I was small.”
“And Mrs. Leverton?”
I drew a quick inhalation of breath and covered my mouth with my hand. The action-too calculated-made me immediately self-conscious.
“She was found in her bedroom this morning by a cleaning woman.”
Though I knew what I had seen-Mrs. Leverton alive and leaving in an ambulance-I couldn’t help thinking that at least I’d been present when my mother died.
“How did they die, exactly?” I asked. I felt a light layer of perspiration spread beneath my sweater. My hands grew clammy. Why hadn’t I asked this at the start?
“Very differently. Mrs. Leverton was unconscious but breathing when the maid found her. She died in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”
“And my mother?”
“What time did you leave your mother’s house last night?”
I sat up straighter and looked for signs that he was on the verge of accusing me. But he glanced at me mildly and pulled at the crease of his right trouser leg with the same hand that held his pen.
I remembered a phrase Sarah had taught me. Weak Handsome. It was a show-business term that stood for men who were shadows of truly handsome men. They held all the proportions and qualities-hair color, height, etc.-but there was just enough flat or off about them that they were never cast as leads. A weak chin, eyes a bit too far apart, ears that stood out from the sides of their heads. I decided that Robert Broumas was Weak Handsome.
“I want to know how she died,” I said.
“I’ll answer that in a moment. What time did you leave your mother’s house?”
“Shortly after six,” I said. I stopped short of flinching. Mrs. Castle had said she’d seen me at seven.
Detective Broumas flipped back a few pages in his notes. He adjusted himself in the chair, cleared his throat.
“Did you go straight home?”
“No.”
“Where did you go?”
“Mrs. Castle may have told you how badly off my mother was,” I said. “That she hadn’t recognized her yesterday.”
“She did.”
“I knew I would have to call the hospice. That once they took her away, she would never see her house again.”
I found myself crying now. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I wiped them with the sleeve of my sweater. She never had to leave her house, I wanted to say. Do you realize how important that was to her?
“I drove around a lot,” I said. “I went to a spot I go to, to think.”
“Where is that?”
“It’s near farmland up near Yellow Springs Road. You can see the Limerick nuclear plant from there.”
“And you stayed there for how long?”