She took his sport coat, wrapped it around herself, and went out on the front walk to wait for the ambulance.
– 17 –
The policeman who took her statement was Harold Shrewsbury, a local. Darcy didn’t know him, but did know his wife, as it happened; Arlene Shrewsbury was a Knitting Knut. He talked to her in the kitchen while the EMTs first examined Bob’s body and then took it away, not knowing there was another corpse inside him. A fellow who had been much more dangerous than Robert Anderson, CPA.
“Would you like coffee, Officer Shrewsbury? It’s no trouble.”
He looked at her trembling hands and said he would be very happy to make it for both of them. “I’m very handy in the kitchen.”
“Arlene has never mentioned that,” she said as he got up. He left his notebook open on the kitchen table. So far he had written nothing in it but her name, Bob’s name, their address, and their telephone number. She took that as a good sign.
“No, she likes to hide my light under a bushel,” he said. “Mrs. Anderson—Darcy—I’m very sorry for your loss, and I’m sure Arlene would say the same.”
Darcy began to cry again. Officer Shrewsbury tore a handful of paper towels off the roll and gave them to her. “Sturdier than Kleenex.”
“You have experience with this,” she said.
He checked the Bunn, saw it was loaded, and flipped it on. “More than I’d like.” He came back and sat down. “Can you tell me what happened? Do you feel up to that?”
She told him about Bob finding the double-date penny in his change from Subway, and how excited he’d been. About their celebratory dinner at Pearl of the Shore, and how he’d drunk too much. How he’d been clowning around (she mentioned the comic British salute he’d given when she asked for a glass of Perrier and lime). How he’d come up the stairs holding the glass high, like a waiter. How he was almost to the landing when he slipped. She even told about how she’d almost slipped herself, on one of the spilled ice cubes, while rushing down to him.
Officer Shrewsbury jotted something in his notebook, snapped it closed, then looked at her levelly. “Okay. I want you to come with me. Get your coat.”
“What? Where?”
To jail, of course. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to jail. Bob had gotten away with almost a dozen murders, and she hadn’t even been able to get away with one (of course he had planned his, and with an accountant’s attention to detail). She didn’t know where she’d slipped up, but it would undoubtedly turn out to be something obvious. Officer Shrewsbury would tell her on the way to the police station. It would be like the last chapter of an Elizabeth George.
“My house,” he said. “You’re staying with me and Arlene tonight.”
She gaped at him. “I don’t… I can’t…”
“You can,” he said, in a voice that brooked no argument. “She’d kill me if I left you here by yourself. Do you want to be responsible for my murder?”
She wiped tears from her face and smiled wanly. “No, I guess not. But… Officer Shrewsbury…”
“Harry.”
“I have to make phone calls. My children… they don’t know yet.” The thought of this brought on fresh tears, and she put the last of the paper towels to work on them. Who knew a person could have so many tears inside them? She hadn’t touched her coffee and now drank half of it in three long swallows, although it was still hot.
“I think we can stand the expense of a few long-distance calls,” Harry Shrewsbury said. “And listen. Do you have something you can take? Anything of a, you know, calming nature?”
“Nothing like that,” she whispered. “Only Ambien.”
“Then Arlene will loan you one of her Valiums,” he said. “You should take one at least half an hour before you start making any stressful calls. Meantime, I’ll just let her know we’re coming.”
“You’re very kind.”
He opened first one of her kitchen drawers, then another, then a third. Darcy felt her heart slip into her throat as he opened the fourth. He took a dishwiper from it and handed it to her. “Sturdier than paper towels.”
“Thank you,” she said. “So much.”
“How long were you married, Mrs. Anderson?”
“Twenty-seven years,” she said.
“Twenty-seven,” he marveled. “God. I am so sorry.”
“So am I,” she said, and lowered her face into the dishtowel.
– 18 –
Robert Emory Anderson was laid to rest in Yarmouth’s Peace Cemetery two days later. Donnie and Petra flanked their mother as the minister talked about how a man’s life was but a season. The weather had turned cold and overcast; a chilly wind rattled the leafless branches. B, B & A had closed for the day, and everyone had turned out. The accountants in their black overcoats clustered together like crows. There were no women among them. Darcy had never noticed this before.
Her eyes brimmed and she wiped at them periodically with the handkerchief she held in one black-gloved hand; Petra cried steadily and without letup; Donnie was red-eyed and grim. He was a good-looking young man, but his hair was already thinning, as his father’s had at his age. As long as he doesn’t put on weight like Bob did, she thought. And doesn’t kill women, of course. But surely that kind of thing wasn’t hereditary. Was it?
Soon this would be over. Donnie would stay only a couple of days—it was all the time he could afford to take away from the business at this point, he said. He hoped she could understand that and she said of course she did. Petra would be with her for a week, and said she could stay longer if Darcy needed her. Darcy told her how kind that was, privately hoping it would be no more than five days. She needed to be alone. She needed… not to think, exactly, but to find herself again. To re-establish herself on the right side of the mirror.
Not that anything had gone wrong; far from it. She didn’t think things could have gone better if she had planned her husband’s murder for months. If she had done that, she probably would have screwed it up by complicating things too much. Unlike for Bob, planning was not her forte.
There had been no hard questions. Her story was simple, believable, and almost true. The most important part was the solid bedrock beneath it: they had a marriage stretching back almost three decades, a good marriage, and there had been no recent arguments to mar it. Really, what was there to question?
The minister invited the family to step forward. They did so.
“Rest in peace, Pop,” Donnie said, and tossed a clod of earth into the grave. It landed on the shiny surface of the coffin. Darcy thought it looked like a dog turd.
“Daddy, I miss you so much,” Petra said, and threw her own handful of earth.
Darcy came last. She bent, took up a loose handful in her black glove, and let it fall. She said nothing.
The minister invoked a moment of silent prayer. The mourners bowed their heads. The wind rattled the branches. Not too far distant, traffic rushed by on I-295. Darcy thought: God, if You’re there, let this be the end.
– 19 –
It wasn’t.
Seven weeks or so after the funeral—it was the new year now, the weather blue and hard and cold—the doorbell of the house on Sugar Mill Lane rang. When Darcy opened it, she saw an elderly gentleman wearing a black topcoat and red muffler. Held before him in his gloved hands was an old-school Homburg hat. His face was deeply lined (with pain as well as age, Darcy thought) and what remained of his gray hair was buzzed to a fuzz.
“Yes?” she said.
He fumbled in his pocket and dropped his hat. Darcy bent and picked it up. When she straightened, she saw that the elderly gentleman was holding out a leather-cased identification folder. In it was a gold badge and a picture of her caller (looking quite a bit younger) on a plastic card.
“Holt Ramsey,” he said, sounding apologetic about it. “State Attorney General’s Office. I’m sorry as hell to disturb you, Mrs. Anderson. May I come in? You’ll freeze standing out here in that dress.”
“Please,” she said, and stood aside.
She observed his hitching walk and the way his right hand went unconsciously to his right hip—as if to hold it together—and a clear memory rose in her mind: Bob sitting beside her on the bed, her cold fingers held prisoner by his warm ones. Bob talking. Gloating, actually. I want them to think Beadie’s dumb, and they do. Because they’re dumb. I’ve only been questioned a single time, and that was as a witness, about two weeks after BD killed the Moore woman. An old guy with a limp, semi-retired. And here that old guy was, standing not half a dozen steps from where Bob had died. From where she had killed him. Holt Ramsey looked both sick and in pain, but his eyes were sharp. They moved quickly to the left and right, taking in everything before returning to her face.