Death in A Mood Indigo, page 19
“Then I suggest we go in search of dinner,” the psychiatrist said, with a look at his watch. “It’s nearly seven o’clock anyway. Where should I eat?”
“Can you? Face food, I mean, after all this?”
“Don’t hate me,” he said, “but I’m starving.” He added gently, “At the very least, have a drink. You look like you could use one.”
They wound up at the Brotherhood, because Enright asked to be shown where Roxanne Teasdale had spent her final hours. These visitations were part of his method, Merry knew. So she forced herself to remain detached and to learn something from the psychiatrist. Fortunately, Dana Stevens was nowhere in sight. Merry liked the FBI agent already—she was even somewhat in awe of Dana’s status—but she firmly intended to keep this particular interview with Enright to herself.
Enright chose a table with a view of the entire room. “Habit,” he explained as he politely pulled out the aisle seat for Merry. “I like my back to the wall. I want to see everything before it sees me.”
“Were you trained as a spy?” she inquired lightly.
“Of course. Every psychiatrist is born one, after all.”
“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” Merry began as Enright shook off his windbreaker and flipped open the menu.
“What’s good here?” he asked, scanning the small cursive print with a furrowed brow.
“The burgers.”
“Of course. That’s about all they serve. Which burger)”
“Depends who you talk to. Friend of mine eats nothing hut the Bostonians—those are the ones with blue cheese—while, personally, I tend to go for the ones with bacon and cheddar. Side of barbecue sauce on the side.”
“That cannot be good for you.”
“Probably not,” Merry said. “If that’s a concern, I suggest you try the one with avocado and sprouts.”
Enright caught the amusement in her voice, and his blue eyes flicked up to hers, suddenly dancing. “Not exactly a seaside place, is it? No seafood.”
“Well, not much to speak of. Few restaurants on-island can make it as straight seafood places.”
“Why not?”
“Too touristy, frankly. Particularly in the winter. For those of us who live here year-round, an occasional dinner of fish is just fine, but we’ll cook it ourselves. When we go out, what we want is a really good burger.”
“For some reason I find that tragic.”
“Because it smacks of waste.”
“Exactly. Wasted opportunity, wasted experience—ignorance of culture. Of what it means to live on a seafaring island.”
“You could always order clam chowder.”
“I could do that in Cambridge.”
“But you’ll never find a burger there to equal the one you’re about to order. So I suggest, Dr. Enright, that you decide to be happy.”
“Tucker,” he amended, and studied her face. “Do you find it so easy? To decide to be happy?”
Merry shrugged delicately and looked away from his probing eyes. “Yes. I suppose I do. I have very little time for people who wallow in the tragic.”
Enright grinned. “That could be a sentence from my very own mouth. With the exception that I would be speaking the truth, and you, my dear, are ferociously pretending.”
“No, I’m not,” Merry objected, surprised. “I may feel for poor Emily Teasdale. I may even cry when I think of Roxanne, although I never knew her. But that’s altogether different.”
“From wallowing in the tragic.”
“From deciding to be happy. Yes. Happiness has to do with compromise. With balance. With knowing that life may be difficult today—no seafood—but that tomorrow you could order swordfish for breakfast if you wanted it enough.”
Unexpectedly, Enright threw back his head and laughed. “So simple,” he said. “Such an innocent.” He reached for her hand, and to Merry’s discomfort, raised it to his lips. “A burger it is.”
Merry drew her fingers away and salvaged her composure while a waiter—Mickey the Total Baldwin?—jotted down their orders.
“I wonder which one Roxanne Teasdale had,” Enright mused.
“And if we knew, would you order it yourself?”
“Probably. Now, tell me why you dragged me out of that dump.”
“Elizabeth Osborne,” she said over the neck of her beer. “A woman I think you may have known. She was a Harvard-trained psychiatrist.”
Was it her imagination that the air between them suddenly grew heavier?
“Betsy O,” Enright murmured, his face suffused with an old sadness. “So-called because of her resemblance, as we callow youths discerned it, to Jacqueline Onassis. That would have been in the late sixties, when we were all young and Camelot was our lost country. When Betsy had been married to Jack for too little time to dream yet of infidelity, and our longings could remain inchoate. Betsy O, of the breathless carriage, the silver laugh, the endless wardrobe, the mortgage-free house on Marlborough Street. Our Betsy of the Forlorn Hope.”
“You knew her.”
“Oh, yes,” Enright said. “There was a time when I believed I had invented her. But she’s been missing for years. Where did you run across her?”
“On Sconset beach,” Merry said. “Remember? You visited her grave.”
It was dramatic, perhaps, as a means of telling him—but Enright was equal to anything Merry could offer.
“I wondered,” he said slowly, “if the bones were hers.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I’m not. It was a very famous disappearance, you know. And standing over that shallow grave on your beach, I couldn’t help but think of Betsy. I’d seen her there so often in life.”
“But you never said—you never even told me you knew her—”
“Her name didn’t come up. And until you had an identification, it seemed ridiculous to speculate. Particularly about a case beyond my province.” Enright took a sip of water, sighed deeply. “To be honest, I’d rather have kept hoping she was alive. Laughing at us all somewhere. She was too vivid for death.”
“How long did you know her?” Merry resisted the impulse to reach for her notebook and glasses.
“We were first-year medical students together. She was still Betsy Shaw, then.” Enright unfurled the breadbasket’s napkin and plucked out a roll. “We went through the entire drill in lockstep. Did our residency at the same hospital—McLean, the psychiatric adjunct to Mass General. I went back to teach at Harvard, got tenure. So did Betsy, eventually.”
“Is that common?”
“No,” he said brusquely. “You might say we were the best and the brightest. I often have.”
He was in love with her, Merry thought. The knowledge made her next question more difficult. “When did she marry?”
“In our third year.”
“Wow. Despite her workload and the prospect of a residency?”
“She had an excellent mind,” Enright said quietly.
“So how did she meet Jack Osborne?”
The psychiatrist’s shrewd blue eyes probed Merry’s own. “Did he kill her?”
Merry didn’t answer him.
Enright nodded and looked down at his hands. Apparently he had lost his appetite for bread. “They met at the VA hospital where she was volunteering. Viet Nam virtually destroyed Jack.”
“So he was—a psychiatric case?”
“Yes, the poor bastard. Anything—the pop of a cork, the backfiring of a truck outside the window—and he’d fall to the floor screaming. Betsy took him in hand, day after day, after her classes were finished. Got him somewhat stable.”
“Was that usual for third-year students?”
“No—but this is Betsy we’re discussing, Meredith. Everyone said she was gunning for a clinical performance prize at graduation … until she married him.”
“That’s some story.” Merry looked at the psychiatrist thoughtfully. “The Smithsonian anthropologist found healed fractures all over Elizabeth’s body. A pattern of sustained abuse, she said.”
“Abuse?” Enright frowned. “You’re suggesting Jack beat her?”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know. Not for certain. But it’s possible, I suppose. And it’s possible he didn’t even mean to hurt her.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Wait,” Enright said gently. “Hear me out. Jack was a shell-shock case. He got trapped on the ground when his patrol called in a strike on its own position. I gather he relived that half-hour of his life for two years following his discharge. When a man thinks he’s under mortal attack, and is screaming and thrashing about on the floor, swallowing his tongue and tearing at his eyes, actually feeling, in his own mind, the sting and the cut of shrapnel—he’s beyond reason. Anyone reaching to soothe or to save him is the enemy. He will lash out. He will do serious injury. And never intend to hurt a fly.”
“I see,” Merry replied. “Of course.”
They were silent a moment in consideration.
“Do you see Jack Osborne now?” she asked Enright. “You’re both at Harvard, after all.”
The psychiatrist shook his head. “We’re in very different worlds. Utterly different. And, frankly, I can’t say I ever liked Jack Osborne, Detective.”
“Why not?”
Enright’s eyes slid away from hers. He shrugged. “Not my type. He seems to prefer the adulation of his female students to adult male company. He always has one or two starry-eyed girls floating on his arm.”
As did Tucker Enright, if Dana Stevens was to be believed. Merry’s hand tingled suddenly at the memory of Enright’s touch, and she wondered: Does he see me as an adoring acolyte?
And did his contempt for Jack Osborne betray an old wound?
“This wouldn’t have to do with Elizabeth, would it?” she asked him.
“It has everything to do with her,” he replied with a faint smile. “I lied the other day at lunch, Meredith, when I said I lived alone. The truth is, I live with Betsy’s ghost. I loved her madly. Still do. No other woman has ever come close.”
An awkward silence. Meredith felt the impulse to look away from Enright’s pained eyes, and fought it. “Did you see them socially in Boston?”
“Yes. And I saw them socially here. I saw them whenever I could, though I knew I was just another one of Betsy’s faithful—the entourage. She held court, like a Renaissance princess.” Enright leaned across the table, his blue eyes intent. “So, tell me, Meredith. What are you ginning up in that beautiful little head? That Jack strangled his wife because he was jealous of me? Don’t bother. Betsy knew how I felt about her. She probably enjoyed it. But she never gave it a serious thought.”
“I’m sorry,” Merry said, and meant it.
Enright shrugged. “I got over it.”
Liar.
“When was the last time you saw Betsy, Doctor?”
Enright answered her without hesitation. “June twenty-fifth, 1988. We had a clinical session together at a local hospital. I remember she was leaving the next week to spend July and August here.”
“Did you hear from her over the summer?”
He shook his head, lips compressed. “I was consulting on a case for the Bureau. Flying in and out of DC. And that year Betsy pushed the envelope. Lingered on Nantucket longer than usual. Skipped her normal prep work for the school year. Iwondered about it—” He stopped short, threw up his hands. “I figured she was just taking some time off.”
Or had a new lover. Tell me what you really thought about her marriage,” Merry said.
Enright fixed his eyes on the restaurant scene before them, unseeing. “I think it ultimately bored her. After a while Jack didn’t need her in the same way. He went on. Got a law degree. A brilliant law degree. Got tenure at Harvard himself.”
“Did you ever have any sense that Jack hadn’t gone on?”
“What do you mean?”
“Any … sudden outbursts of violence?”
“Physical, you mean?” Enright shook his head. “Not a hint. Certainly not from Betsy; and I was working fairly closely with her then. We came at our projects from opposite ends of the spectrum, of course—she believed in rehabilitation, while I plumped for eternal damnation—but we always ended up in the same police interrogation rooms.”
“Really.” Merry digested this and realized she knew too little about Elizabeth Osborne’s work. “And she never confided in you about her marriage? Never mentioned any desire to leave her husband, or any … tear of him, for example?”
“No. If anything, Betsy was the sort who would hang on longer than Jack, I think.” Enright turned over a fork, aligned it precisely with the edge of his napkin. “For whatever reason, Betsy needed to see herself as a savior.”
“Long after her projects were saved.”
“Exactly. She specialized in lost causes, you know–––behavioral therapy for criminals, and so forth.” The corner of his mouth lifted in amused memory. “She once went so far as to stage a rape, with a convicted attacker playing the role of victim. Betsy believed that it might have a therapeutic effect.”
“My God.”
“She only did it once. Too controversial. And too useless.”
“Hence the nickname,” Merry observed.
“Nickname?”
“Our Betsy of the Forlorn Hope.”
“Yes. If you’re going to hunt for her killer, even if you think its Jack Osborne—I’d like to help.”
Merry nearly winced at the savagery in his eyes.
“You’re pretty busy already. But thanks.”
“It might be a way of putting her ghost to rest. I need to do that.”
“I know.”
The waiter materialized at their table, two platters held high. “Bacon and cheese?” he inquired of Enright.
“Avocado,” the psychiatrist said abruptly, “with happiness on the side.”
Chapter Fifteen
May 7, 1996, Ralph Waldo Folger inscribed on the notebook’s clean page, in his copperplate hand. Walked three miles into conservation land near Mason Farms, off the Milestone road, and took up position fifty feet from Altar Rock. Waited approximately thirty-five minutes before sighting quarry.
His white head lifted at a slight noise from the foyer—or perhaps he merely sensed, from long habit, that he was no longer alone. In the stillness he heard the distinct click of a turning doorknob and the strident creak of the front door swinging open. “That you, son?” he called, and stood up slowly, thrusting his hands against the armchair for support.
But it was Merry who appeared in the doorway, her eyes ringed darkly with exhaustion. “Hey, Ralph,” she said, and slumped against the jamb.
“Working overtime, Meredith Abiah?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Saw you on the television tonight,” he offered. “You certainly gave those reporters what-for.”
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper,” she said, annoyed. “They really ran that tape? They must be desperate for news if that’s all they can dredge up.”
“Oh, they managed to make a story out of it,” Ralph said consolingly. “Suggested you were so prone to lose your temper because the police are baffled. No leads to speak of, and worried the killer will strike again.”
“Great.” Merry sighed. “That’s all the FBI needs to hear.”
“Eaten anything?”
She nodded. “Burger at the Brotherhood. With Dr. Tucker Enright. Has Dad told you about him?”
Ralph set his notebook on the seat behind him and placed his pen on the open page. “He has. An unpleasant sort of life for anyone to lead, seems to me.” He surveyed his granddaughter’s form—one part weariness, nine parts dejection—and adopted a brisker tone. “You look done in, burger notwithstanding. How about some tea and carrot bread in the kitchen?”
“I really just want to talk, Ralph.” She moved toward the pool of light his reading lamp threw on the worn red fabric of the armchair, looked idly at his notes. “What are you working on?”
“Birding,” he said shortly. “Inky Mirror reported a snowy owl sighting out near the bog. I went to look for it myself.”
“And found it, I see. Do you realize how much your years of report writing have affected your prose?”
“Just the facts, ma’am.” His smile was wintry. “Old habits die hard, especially when you’re as old as I am.”
“You’ll never be old, Ralph.” Merry threw herself onto the sofa and kicked off her shoes. “As long as the snowy owl can get you out into the moors. That’s what the Tucker Enrights of this world lack. The quickening to the natural world.”
“You sound more like Peter Mason every day,” Ralph observed, and reached a hand to smooth her golden hair. “Not that I’m criticizing, mind you. Peter’s a good man. He has achieved a hard-won peace. That’s rare among the men of your generation.”
“He asked me to marry him yesterday.”
Ralph was silent an instant, observing her averted head, the absence of joy in her form. “And?”
“I avoided the issue. Do you think I’ve spent my life avoiding issues, Ralph?”
He reached behind him for the arm of his chair and eased himself into the seat, hoping his granddaughter would ignore the increasing stiffness in his back, the disconcerting weakness of his legs. He felt very old tonight, and Merry’s questions only deepened the sensation. There had been a time when anything she asked seemed to pull at his first youth; but lately he was at a profound loss for answers.
“I don’t think so, my dear,” he said now, “but perhaps some issues beg to be avoided. When it’s right for you to marry Peter—and I believe it will be, one day—you will know.”
Her eyes were on his face, and he saw the first wrinkle of concern—for himself, not for her own cares—etched between her black brows.
“Are you okay, Grumpus?” Her childhood name. The use of it showed him how much he had already betrayed to her. And so Ralph willed himself to smile.
“I’ll do for the moment,” he replied. “I’m just feeling my eighty-four years. I vowed once never to admit the impact of age, but in the evenings especially it overtakes me.”
