Then, a key clattered in the lock. Sarah’s breath sucked in. She assumed that somehow the Beasts had copied her key and she expected to see them now.
But, no. She sighed in relief to see Carmel return from shopping.
Were tears in her eyes?
“What’s the matter?” Sarah asked.
“Nothing,” the woman responded quickly.
Too quickly.
“Yes, yes, yes… But if something were the matter, give me a clue, dear.”
The solid housekeeper carried the groceries into the kitchen, making sure she didn’t look her boss’s way.
Yes, crying.
“There’s nothing wrong, Mrs. Sarah. Really.” She returned to the parlor. Instinctively, the woman straightened a lace doily.
“Was it him? What did he do?”
John…. The He-Beast.
Sarah knew he was somehow involved. Both Marian and John disliked Carmel, as they did most of Sarah’s friends, but John seemed contemptuous of the woman, as if the housekeeper mounted a campaign to limit access to Sarah. Which she did. In fact several times she had actually stepped in front of John to keep him from following Sarah into her apartment. Sarah had thought he’d been about to hit the poor woman.
“Please, it’s nothing.”
Carmel Rodriguez was five feet, six inches tall and probably weighed 180 pounds. Yet the elderly woman now rose and looked up at her housekeeper, who’d been with her for more than a decade. “Carmel. Tell me.” The voice left no room for debate.
“I got home from shopping? I was downstairs just now?”
Statements as questions—the sign of uncertainty. “I came back from the store and was talking to him and then Mr. John—”
“Just John. You can call him John.”
“John comes up and, just out of nowhere, he says, did I hear about the burglary.”
“Where?”
“The neighborhood somewhere. I said I didn’t. He said somebody broke in and stole this woman’s papers. Like banking papers and wills and deeds and bonds and stocks.”
“People don’t keep stocks and bonds at home. The brokerage keeps them.”
“Well, he told me she got robbed and these guys took all her things. He said he was worried about you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, Mrs. Sarah. And he didn’t want to make you upset but he was worried and did I know where you kept things like that? Was there a safe somewhere? He said he wanted to make sure they were protected.” The woman wiped her face. Sarah had thought her name was Carmen at first, as one would think, given her pedigree and appearance. But, no, her mother and father had named her after the town in California, which they dreamed of someday visiting.
Sarah found a tissue and handed it to the woman. This was certainly alarming. It seemed to represent a new level of invasiveness. Still, John Westerfield’s probing was constant and familiar, like a low-grade fever, which Carmel had her own mettle to withstand.
No, something else had happened.
“And?”
“No, really. Just that.”
Sarah herself could be persistent too. “Come, now…”
“He… I think it was maybe a coincidence. Didn’t mean anything.”
Nothing the She-Beast and the He-Beast did was a coincidence. Sarah said, “Tell me anyway.”
“Then he said,” the woman offered, choking back a sob, “if I didn’t tell him, he wouldn’t be able to protect you. And if those papers got stolen, you’d lose all your money. I’d lose my job and… and then he said my daughter might have to leave her high school, Immaculata.”
“He said that?” Sarah whispered.
Carmel was crying harder now. “How would he know she went there? Why would he find that out?”
Because he and his mother did their homework. They asked their questions like chickens pecking up seed and stones.
But now, threatening Carmel and her family?
“I got mad and I said I couldn’t wait until the lease is up and his and his mother went away forever! And he said oh, they weren’t going anywhere. They checked the law in New York and as long as they pay the rent and don’t break the lease they can stay forever. Is that true, Mrs. Sarah?”
Sarah Lieberman said, “Yes, Carmel, it is true.” She rose and sat down at the Steinway piano she’d owned for nearly twenty years. It had been a present from her second husband for their wedding. She played a few bars of Chopin, her favorite composer and, in her opinion, the most keyboard-friendly of the great classicists.
Carmel continued, “When he left he said, ‘Say hi to your family for me, Carmel. Say hi to Daniel. You know, your husband, he’s a good carpenter. And say hi to Rosa. She’s a pretty girl. Pretty like her mother.’ ” Carmel was shivering now, tears were flowing.
Sarah turned from the piano and touched the maid on the shoulder. “It’s all right, dear. You did the right thing to tell me.”
The tears slowed and finally stopped. A Kleenex made its way around her face.
After a long moment Sarah said, “When Mark and I were in Malaysia—you know he was head of a trade delegation there?”
“Yes, Mrs. Sarah.”
“When we were there for that, we went to this preserve.”
“Like a nature preserve?”
“That’s right. A nature preserve. And there was this moth he showed us. It’s called an Atlas moth. Now, they’re very big—their wings are six or eight inches across.”
“That’s big, sí.”
“But they’re still moths. The guide pointed at it. ‘How can it defend itself? What does it have? Teeth? No. Venom? No. Claws? No.’ But then the guide pointed out the markings on this moth’s wings. And it looked just like a snake’s head! It was exactly like a cobra. Same color, everything.”
“Really, Mrs. Sarah?”
“Really. So that the predators aren’t sure whether it would be safe to eat the moth or not. So they usually move on to something else and leave the moth alone.”
Carmel was nodding, not at all sure where this was going.
“I’m going to do that with the Westerfields.”
“How, Mrs. Sarah?”
“I’ll show them the snake head. I’m going to make them think it’s too dangerous to stay here and they should move out.”
“Good! How are you going to do that?”
“Did I show you my birthday present?”
“The flowers?”
“No, this.” Sarah took an iPhone from her purse. She fiddled with the functions, many of which she had yet to figure out. “My nephew in Virginia gave it to me. Freddy. He’s a good man. Now, this phone has a recorder in it.”
“You’re going to record them, doing that? Threatening you?”
“Exactly. I’ll email a copy to my lawyer and several other people. The Westerfields’ll have to leave me alone.”
“But it might not be safe, Mrs. Sarah.”
“I’m sure it won’t be. But it doesn’t look like I have much choice, do I?”
Then Sarah noticed that Carmel was frowning, looking away.
The older woman said, “I know what you’re thinking. They’ll just go find somebody else to torture and do the same thing to them.”
“Yes, that’s what I was thinking.”
Sarah said softly, “But in the jungle, you know, it’s not the moth’s job to protect the whole world, dear. It’s the moth’s job to stay alive.”
Present Day
“You want me to find somebody?” the man asked the solemn woman sitting across from him. “Missing person?”
The Latina woman corrected solemnly, “Body. Not somebody. A body.”
“Excuse me?”
“A body. I want to know where a body is. Where it’s buried.”
“Oh.” Eddie Caruso remained thoughtfully attentive but now that he realized the woman might be a crackpot he wanted mostly to get back to his iPad, on which he’d been watching a football—well, soccer—match currently underway in Nigeria. Eddie loved sports. He’d played softball in his middle school days, Little League and football, well, gridiron, in high school and then, being a skinny guy, he’d opted for billiards pool in college (to raise tuition while, for the most part, avoiding bodily harm). But the present sport of his heart was soccer.