What Goes With Blood Red, Anyway?. Stevi Mittman

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СКАЧАТЬ how your brain (or is it just mine?) can operate on two levels at the same time. Like when your great-aunt in NYC dies and for just a split second you wonder if her rent-controlled apartment can pass to you. I mean, you’re sad and all, but there’s this little section of your brain, this piece that sentiment and emotion doesn’t touch….

      Never mind. I’m sure it’s just me.

      As an officer escorts me toward the door, limping because I am down to one of my good Todd’s driving moccasins that I’ll probably never find on sale again, it occurs to me that maybe the reason I can’t leave is because I’m a suspect. “They can’t possibly think I could have killed Elise, right?” I ask as he opens the front door for me. He looks me over. My working wardrobe consists of only black, white and beige, so that I never clash with swatches I’m showing a customer. Today I am wearing white jeans from T.J. Maxx’s clearance rack with some designer’s name on the back pocket. They’re a size ten, but they run small, and I look pretty good. I mean, for me.

      “I wouldn’t think so,” the patrolman says. “No blood. If you hit that woman, you’d be pretty spattered in blood.”

      I stiffen, holding my arms away from my clothing. Suddenly I don’t know what to do with my hands. My body seems alien to me—a piece of evidence. Even though they don’t have Elise’s blood on them, I will have to throw out the clothing I have on because every time I even glimpse them in my closet I will remember that I was wearing them when I found Elise.

      Outside, four police cars are parked at odd angles to the curb, and neighbors are beginning to cluster at the ends of driveways. Two women in jogging suits round the corner and stop in their tracks to stare at me. They converse with each other in hushed tones and then take off in the other direction. It is eerily quiet and I think about how different this neighborhood is from my own.

      I am in a foreign country, or maybe on another planet.

      In my world the residents would be all over the police, demanding to know what happened. There would be a lot of yelling, and every sentence would have either “Syosset” or “this community” in it, driving home what the police already know—that we don’t tolerate bad things happening in our neighborhood. Someone, probably Joan Favata, would be marshaling her daughters to take all the littler kids around the corner to Mrs. Kroll’s place where they could play on the new swing set, and someone else would be pushing money at the older ones to stroll down to Carvel for soft ice cream so that no one would see something awful come out of the house, like a body bag.

      Here in The Estates, there appear to be no children. There isn’t a single basketball hoop in anyone’s driveway, no bikes litter the road. There isn’t a single Sesame Street Plastic Playhouse or so much as a doll stroller blocking the sidewalks. A lone woman in a midcalf skirt and man-tailored blouse with a Ralph Lauren–ad dog leaves a nouveau Victorian with a wraparound porch that’s a shade too small for the wicker furniture on it. She throws a fisherman’s knit sweater over her shoulders as she casually saunters by the patrol car. Striking a pose, she stops to talk to one of the patrolmen while signaling her dog to stay off Elise’s perfectly manicured lawn and sit beside her. The cop pats the dog and appears noncommittal as the woman gestures toward first Elise’s house and then her own.

      Across the street a man has the hood of his Mercedes up, pretending to look at the motor. He waits for the woman to leave Elise’s driveway and meets her in the street, where they both rub their arms to ward off the fall chill and glare suspiciously at the cop and at me.

      The gardeners across the street start putting their tools in their trucks, but they are asked to stay put until they are released by the police. They begin to argue—they have other leaves to blow, this is no business of theirs, and the neighbors begin to demand to know what’s going on. The policeman guarding me, if that is what he is doing, goes into the street to calm everyone down, but his presence seems to do the opposite.

      And then, with the exception of a gasp or two, all sound stops abruptly when a car marked Medical Examiner pulls up to the curb.

      I reach into my handbag and fish around for my cell to call Bobbie Lyons, my business partner/neighbor/best friend. When I turn on the phone there are several messages waiting for me. The officer returns to me, probably to tell me I’m only allowed one call, and I show him that two of the messages are from Elise.

      “Do you think it’s okay for me to hear them?” I ask, thinking that I don’t really want to hear Elise’s voice from the other world and realizing that maybe in her moment of need she was calling me for help.

      The officer, I suppose thinking the same thing, tells me to wait and ducks inside the house.

      The crowd, which had turned into one of those living tableaus, comes to life and closes in. Before I can answer any of their questions, a strong arm yanks me back into the house.

      “Whatcha got?” Drew asks me. His partner is nearby, examining some of the sports memorabilia that I’ve creatively placed in the hallway I expanded to accommodate it. A sort of Hall of Fame, if you will, which allowed me to move the stuff out of the living room to please Elise and still keep it in plain sight to please her husband. I hand Drew my phone and tell him which keys to press. He gives me a look that says he didn’t make detective being stupid, and I back away from the phone.

      I am still close enough to hear Elise’s excited voice as she tells me how much she loves the new look. Do I think she should reconsider my suggestion that we do the back wall in deep Chinese Red? She’s thinking that the new, mustard-color upholstered bar stools would look great against the red, just as I told her they would. Look, we hear her say (my head is now inches from The Handsome Detective’s and I notice he smells good, too).

      I press the button that lets us see the picture Elise has sent. I touch the screen lovingly. Yes, Elise, the wall would have looked perfect in a vintage claret wallpaper with a small golden-mustard accent design. And the bar stools, as I can see in the picture, actually looked better where I placed them than where they are now.

      Drew says they’ll need to confiscate the phone and bring it down to the lab to examine the picture for any possible clues—which I totally understand. I mean, Bobbie’s sister Diane is a rookie cop and she’s always reporting that they confiscated this or that.

      On the other hand—and I don’t want to seem petty here—this is my phone, my link to the outside world, my security blanket. I tell him we can just send the photo to the precinct via e-mail. Nelson says he’s already got Elise’s phone and sees that the picture is saved in there. Just as I ask if I can have my phone back, there is a commotion outside and Jack Meyers, Elise’s hot-shot sports agent husband, pushes his way in.

      All my nasty thoughts about how he doesn’t know “jack” about decorating evaporate as his face goes gray and he tries to grasp what the police are telling him.

      He keeps asking what they mean by dead, as if there are different types or degrees. Probably like he thinks there are different degrees of fidelity or marriage. “Hit on the head,” he repeats over and over again. “A blow to the head.”

      “It appears that way,” Nelson tells him. “We won’t know for sure until we see the autopsy report.”

      If there’s a color grayer than gray, Jack turns it. I force myself to forget what I know about him and guide him to the “Martin Crane” chair in the living room, the one he refused to let me recover, never mind replace, and I help him sit. I open the antique armoire I’ve had retrofitted to accommodate a bar and pour him a straight Scotch.

      After a healthy belt, he collects himself and tells us all how he wasn’t home СКАЧАТЬ