“So, she had children wearing soldier kilts and pancake faces, carrying toy muskets. Sometimes she smeared fake blood on them, and sometimes Georgie actually filmed it. It got so bizarre, so out of proportion, that I made Linda and Carol quit playing with the Sprague girls. Then one day Carol came home with some pictures Georgie took of her. She was playing dead, all smeared with red dye. That was the last straw. I stormed over to the Sprague house and berated Georgie, knowing Ramona wasn’t really responsible for her actions. The poor man just took my abuse, and I felt terrible about it later– he was disfigured in a car wreck, and it turned him into a bum. He used to manage property for Emmett, now he just does yard work and weeds lots for the city.”
“And what happened to Madeleine and Martha then?”
Jane shrugged. “Martha turned into some sort of art prodigy and Madeleine turned into a roundheels, which I guess you already know.”
I said, “Don’t be catty, Jane.”
Tapping the table with her ring, Jane said, “I apologize. Maybe I’m wishing _I_ could pull it off. I certainly can’t spend the rest of my life gardening, and I’m too proud for gigolos. What do you think?”
“You’ll find yourself another millionaire.”
“Unlikely, and one was enough to last me a lifetime. You know what I keep thinking? That it’s almost 1950 and I was born in 1898. That floors me.”
I said what I’d been thinking for the past half hour. “You make me wish things were different. That time was different.”
Jane smiled and sighed. “Bucky, is that the best I can expect from you?”
I sighed back. “I think it’s the best anyone can.”
“You’re a bit of a voyeur, you know.”
“And you’re a bit of a gossip.”
“Touché. Come on, I’ll walk you out.”
We held hands on the way to the door. In the entrance hall, the scar mouth clown painting grabbed me again. Pointing to it, I said, “God, that is spooky.”
“Valuable, too. Eldridge bought it for my forty-ninth birthday, but I hate it. Would you like to take it with you?”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Thank you, then. You were my best condoler.”
“And you were mine.”
We embraced for a moment, then I took off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Bunsen burner jockey.
Couch sleeper.
Detective without a case.
I worked at all three throughout the spring of ’49. Kay left for school early each morning; I pretended to sleep until she was gone. Alone in the fairy tale house, I touched my wife’s things– the cashmere sweaters Lee bought her, her essays to be graded, the books she had stacked up waiting to be read. I kept looking for a diary, but never found one. At the lab I pictured Kay prowling my belongings. I toyed with the idea of writing a journal and leaving it out for her to find–detailed accounts of my coupling with Madeleine Sprague–rubbing her nose in it to either gain forgiveness for my fix on the Dahlia or blow our marriage out of its stasis. I got as far as five pages scrawled in my cubicle–stopping when I smelled Madeleine’s perfume melding with the Lysol stench of the Red Arrow Motel. And wadding the pages up and throwing them away only fanned the brush fire into a blaze.
I kept the Muirfield Road mansion under surveillance for four nights running. Parked across the street, I watched lights go on and off, saw shadows flicker across leaded glass windows. I played with notions of crashing the Spragues’ family life, cashing in on being a hard boy to Emmett, coupling with Madeleine all over hot sheet row. None of the family left the manse during those nights–all four of their cars remained on the circular driveway. I kept wondering what they were doing, what shared history they were rehashing, what the odds were on someone mentioning the cop who came to dinner two years before.
On the fifth night, Madeleine, dressed in slacks and a pink sweater, walked to the corner to mail a letter. When she returned, I saw her notice my car, passing headlights illuminating the surprise on her face. I waited until she hurried back inside the Tudor fortress, then drove home, Jane Chambers’ voice taunting, “Voyeur, voyeur.”