“Did you know Valerie Angelus?”
Sydney held up two joined fingers, indicating the closeness of their relationship. “When she’s around, I mean. Do you have a cigarette I can bum?”
“Don’t smoke.”
“Got a name?”
“Peter.”
“Cop, huh? You’re yummy for a cop, Pete.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
Sydney had a way of whistling softly as a space filler. She continued to look Peter over.
‘Yeah, Val and I talk a lot when she’s here. She trusts me. We tell each other our dirty little secrets. Did you know she was a famous model before she threw a wheel the first time?”
“Yeah. I knew that.”
“Say, dude. Do you like your father?”
“Sure. I like him a lot.”
Sydney whistled again a little mournfully. She cocked her head this way and that, as if she were watching rats racing around her mental attic.
“Magazine covers when she was sixteen. Totally demento at eighteen. I guess fame isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.” Sydney cocked her head again, making a wry mouth. “But nothing beats it for bringing in the money.” Whistling. “I haven’t had my fifteen minutes yet. But I will. Keep getting sidetracked.” She looked around the Knowles-Rembar campus, tight-lipped.
“Tell me more about Valerie.”
“More? Well, she got like resurrected by that artist guy, spent a whole year with him on some island.
Talk about head cases.”
‘You mean John Ransome?”
‘You got it, delicious dude.”
“What did he do to Valerie?”
“Some secrets you don’t tell! I’ll eat rat poison first. Oh, I forgot. Been there, done that. Hey, do you like The Sound of Music? I know all the songs.”
As if she’d been asked to audition, Sydney stood on the bench with her little hands spread wide and sang some of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.” Peter smiled admiringly. Sydney did have a good voice. She basked in his attention, muffed a lyric, and stopped singing. She looked down at him.
“I bet I know where Val is. Most of the time.”
‘You do?”
“Help me down, Pete?”
He put his hands on her small waist. She contrived to collapse into his arms. In spite of the bulky parka and her boots she seemed to weigh next to nothing. Her parted lips were an inch from his.
“Val has a thing for cemeteries,” Sydney said. “She can spend the whole day—you know, like it’s Disneyland for dead people.”
Peter set her down on the brick walk. “Cemeteries. For instance?”
“Oh, like that big one in Watertown? Mount Auburn, I think it is. Okay, your turn.”
“For what, Sydney?”
“Whatever Gosden said about voluntary, it’s total bullshit. I’m in here like forever. But I could go with you. In the trunk of your car? Get me out of this place and I’ll be real sweet to you.”
“Sorry, Sydney.”
She looked at him awhile longer, working on her lower lip with little fox teeth. Her gaze earthbound.
She began to whistle plaintively.
“Thanks, Sydney. You were a big help.”
She didn’t look up as he walked away on the path.
“I put my father’s eyes out,” Peter heard her say. “So he couldn’t find me in the dark anymore.”
Peter spent a half hour in Mount Auburn cemetery, driving slowly in his rental car between groupings of very old mausoleums resembling grim little villages, before he came to a station wagon parked alongside the drive, its tailgate down. A woman in a dark veil was lifting an armload of flowers from the back of the wagon. He couldn’t tell much about her by winter light, but the veil was an unfortunate clue. He parked twenty feet away and got out. She glanced his way. He didn’t approach her.
“Valerie? Valerie Angelus?”
“What is it? I still have sites to visit, and I’m late today.”
There were more floral tributes in the station wagon. But even from where he was the flowers didn’t appear to be fresh; some were obviously withered.
“My name is Peter O’Neill. Okay if I talk to you, Valerie?”
“Could we just skip that, I’m very busy.”
“I could help you while we talk.”
She had started uphill in a swirl of large snowflakes toward a mausoleum of rust-red marble with a Greek porch. She paused and shifted the brass container of wilted sprays of flowers that she held in both arms and looked around.
“Oh. That would be very nice of you. What is the nature of your business?”
“I’m a New York City detective.” He walked past the station wagon. She was waiting for him. “Are you in the floral business, Valerie?”
“No.” She turned again to the mausoleum on the knoll. Peter caught up to her as she was laying the memorial flowers at the vault’s entrance.
“Is this your family—”
“No,” she said, kneeling to position the brass pot just so in front of barred doors, fussing with the floral arrangement. She stepped back for a critical look at her work, then glanced at the inscription tablet above the doors. The letters and numerals were worn, nearly unreadable. “I don’t know who they were,” she said.
“It’s a very old mausoleum, as you can see. I suppose there aren’t many descendants who remember, or care.” She exhaled, the mourning veil fluttering. The veil did a decent job of disguising the fact that her facial features were distorted. If the veil had been any darker or more closely woven, probably she wouldn’t be able to see where she was going. “But we’ll all want to be remembered, won’t we?”
“That’s why you’re doing this?”
‘Yes.” She turned and walked past him down the knoll, boots crunching through snow crust. ‘You’re a detective? I thought you might be another insurance investigator.” The cold wind teased her veil. “Well, come on. We’re doing that one next.” She pointed to another vault across the drive from where she’d left her station wagon.
Peter helped her pull a white fan-shaped latticework filled with hothouse flowers onto the tailgate. The weather was too brutal for her not to be wearing gloves, but with her arm extended an inch or so of wrist was exposed. The multiple scars there were reminders of more than one suicide attempt.
They carried the lattice to the next mausoleum, large enough to enclose a family tree of Biblical proportions. A squirrel nickered at them from a pediment.
“They wouldn’t pay, you know,” Valerie said. “They claimed that because of my… history, I disabled my own car. Now that’s just silly. I don’t know anything about cars. How the brakes are supposed to work.”
‘Your brakes failed?”
“We’ll put it here,” Valerie said, sweeping away leaves collected in a niche. When she was satisfied that the tribute was properly displayed she looked uneasily around. “Next we’re going to that sort of ugly one with the little fountain. But we need to hurry. They make me leave, you know, they’re very strict about that. I can’t come back until seven-thirty in the morning. So I. . . must spend the night by myself. That’s always the hard part, isn’t it? Getting through the night.”
She didn’t talk much while they finished unloading the flowers and dressing up the neglected mausoleums. Once she appeared to be pleased with her afternoon’s work and at peace with herself, Peter asked, as if all along they’d been having a conversation about Ransome, “Did John come to see you after your accident?”
Valerie paused to run a gloved hand over a damaged marble plinth.
“Seventeen sixty-two. Wasn’t thai a long time ago.”
“Valerie—”
“I don’t know why you’re asking me questions,” she said crossly. “I’m cold. I want to go to my car.” She began walking away, then hesitated. “John is . . . all right, isn’t he?”
“Was the last time I saw him. By the way, he sends his warmest regards.”
“Ohhh. Well, there’s good news. I mean that he’s all right. And still painting?” Peter nodded. “He’s a genius, you know.”
“I’m not one to judge.”
Her tone changed as they walked on. “Let’s just skip it. Talking about John. I can’t get Silkie to shut up about him. He was always so generous to me. I don’t know why Silkie is afraid of him. John wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Who’s Silkie?”
“My friend. I mean she comes around. Says she’s my friend.”
“What does she say about John?”
Valerie closed the tailgate of her wagon. She crossed her arms, shuddering in spite of the fur-lined greatcoat she wore.
“That John wanted to—destroy all of us. So that only his paintings live. How ridiculous. The one thing I was always sure of was John’s love for me. And I loved him. I’m able to say it now. Loved him. I was going to have his baby.”
Peter took a few unhappy moments to absorb that. “Did he know?”
“Uh-uh. I found out after I left the island. I tried and tried to get in touch with John, but— they wouldn’t let me. So I—”