Mothers day

 

Detective Orr barreled out of interview room B with her shoulders up around her ears.  “She’s asking for a priest,” Orr said, plunking her nearly empty cup on the call desk. 

“A priest?” the desk guy was still keyed up, it’s not every day a woman staggers through the precinct doors on a Sunday morning saying she killed her own daughter. “Do we do that? Get priests or whatever?” he had never heard of someone asking. As she stood there drumming her fingers on the counter, he watched Orr’s jaw working, furiously chewing ice. She’d gone through three large coffees during her interview with the confessed murderer, sending runners out to Dunkin every 20 minutes, scurrying because you did not want to keep Detective Eileen Orr waiting when she was running hot.

“She has the right to an attorney. I don’t know the policy on religious council. If she wants to make her confession to God, I don’t think I can stop her. She ought to try to give Him the same pile of poo she just handed me.” 

“Poo?” the guy remarked. 

“I got a note from HR about my language around the kids. I’m trying to be more of a lady. Professional.”

“How’s that going?”

“Fuck yourself. That’s how. Get the fake killer a priest.”  Eileen did not appreciate having her time wasted. Abigail Monty-- pretty, articulate, well dressed—had spent the better part of an hour lying out of both sides of her lovely mouth, concocting a story that only a rookie might fall for: 

 

Abigail walks in on her husband, he’s kissing her own daughter, a heated argument blows up, somehow a gun comes out of nowhere, a struggle, gun goes off 

 

 Abigail told it all. She cried.  She sobbed. Right on cue. Put on quite a show. But she was a liar. The worst kind. She’d looked Orr right in the eye and told a tale.  Whoever shot Miss Cockburn, the gun was right up against her head, close enough to scorch the skin. One clean shot. Not the scramble Mrs. Monty was trying to cook up.

 

The various other tenants of Rose Hill, where the body had been found just a few hours ago, were coming in to make their statements. Eileen eyed them with more interest, now that she was back to square one, she needed a murderer. 

The Krantz woman was an easy out. Look at her. You’d see her coming a mile away. 

 Andy Li didn’t have the requisite temperament. She could not picture that chess player shooting the girl at the Langdon, much less dragging her corpse all the way to the lobby at Rose Hill. No upper body strength to speak of. 

And, why in the first place would anyone move the body?  Unnecessary. Why go to the extra risk? Orr chewed on this a while. 

 

The humming wall clock was going on 8:11 when she scanned the printout of the Rose Hill Apartment Building cast of characters:

A couple on the third floor, neighbors of Mr. Li, a pair of retired doctors who were on vacation up in Maine.

The deceased and Krantz  on the second. 

The other apartment on the first floor was currently vacant. 

That left Arthur Shaw, who was just now waltzing through the glass door, coming in with a short fellow, the two were laughing like they were off to see a parade. 

 

His mouth snapped shut when he felt again the cold gaze of Detective Eileen Orr. 

 

Shaw and Peter Kaye sat on hard chairs in and area just by the desk, a kind of exile, a limbo place. “So that’s her,” said Peter, admiring the formidable Detective. She was everything he had hoped. Up close she was magnificent.

“I know,” agreed Shaw, who still held on to his proprietary feelings toward her, having met her first. “She’s very sharp,” he added, as if this insight furthered his foreknowledge. Even now he was not aware that he might be in any real danger. She was doing her job, being thorough. He assumed a suitably serious expression, held his hands in his lap, and sat up straight. 

Maxim Monty walked out of one of the interview rooms, his sleepless eyes red from weeping. It was criminal, that he was still the most handsome man in the room. He was shown to another chair in limbo row, told to wait. When he saw the two men he nodded, but as soon as he sat down Max Monty shook with tears, his face collapsed in grief. Shaw made a glance at Peter, unsure of what to do. Such displays of straight male fragility made him anxious. in any other case he might offer a hug, a shoulder to cry on, he might weep out of commiseration, but he decided he didn’t like Monty much, so kept his hands folded and his eyes on the shoe scuffed floor. 

Peter Kaye entertained himself by looking at all the uniformed men, watching the activity of the department with avid interest. 

 

An officer chatted with the desk guy, he leaned with an elbow on the counter. Peter gave a little cough of appreciation. Michelangelo could not have done better, for here was a perfect David in precinct 23. 

“What’s going on?” asked the David.

“Orr is on my ass to find a priest,” said desk guy. 

“A priest?”

“The lady who made the confession. Shot her daughter. She wants to see a priest.”

“Sucks.”

“What, do I just Google it, or?” 

“I guess. You could call a church? But Sunday? It’s like their busiest day.” David sauntered off to impart further wisdom over by the call center where there was a dispatch operator he was keen on. 

Shaw shot up from his chair. “I’m a priest!”

Peter Kaye laughed.

“I mean, I’m a man of the cloth,” Shaw said. “An ordained minister.” He went on a little too long about how he had officiated at his friend Nicole’s wedding to Janice, his hand was reaching for his wallet in his back pocket to produce his credentials, he had an official card, laminated and everything, but the young man waved him off. 

“You don’t look like any minister,” said the guy.

“I’m a Unitarian. We look like regular people.”

“Unitarian? What, is that like Presbyterians?

“More like Congregationalists,” said Shaw. 

“With worse haircuts” Peter chimed in. 

 

The young officer was stumped. Orr demanded a priest. She was off in the records room and hadn’t said a word about what to do about these folks in chairs, he assumed they were waiting to give routine witness statements, like the other tenants. A minister would have to do. “I guess it’s ok.” Who knows, he might even get a smile out of old Hawk Eye from Homicide.

 

Peter whispered: “We don’t know anyone named Nicole. Or Janice.”

“No. And if he asked to see my proof, he’d have seen my library card expired two years ago.”

“I am impressed,” said Peter. 

 

Abigail Monty sat in a small square room, her hands nervously moving, the ring on her left third finger tapping the table.  When the door opened, she had expected to see that Detective Orr, whom she had a sinking feeling did not believe her. Abigail was steeling herself for another round of re-telling her story, the story she had already told four, five times, never varying by so much as a word, realizing too late that was exactly what made her story unbelievable. Rehearsed. Obvious. She only hoped that Monty had kept to his part of the script.

 Abigail’s back stiffened, each vertebra of her spine pressed into the flat back of her seat 

“It’s you,” she said, as Shaw was being let into the room. “What?—" 

Shaw pulled out a chair, it scraped along the linoleum floor. For a while they sat silently regarding each other across the table. She fiddled with the chain around her neck.

“Abigail,” he began, his open hands in front of him. “I’m here for you. Peter too. Of course. We don’t believe for a minute that you could have done this.”

Relief overwhelmed her. For the first time that morning, a sad smile played across her face. Someone was in her corner. This man with the kind eyes and a tiny moth hole in the sleeve of his sweater. 

“Can I get you anything?” Shaw asked.

More than anything, she craved a cigarette. She wanted a deep lungful of mentholated chemicals and nicotine. She wanted out of this windowless box of a room, to feel the spring sunlight. Abigail wanted this to be over. Then she remembered Penelope, remembered why she was here. The smile died on her lips. “It’s all my fault,” she said, “—all of it. Everything. It’s all my fault.”

 

Max Monty’s sobs ebbed. He rubbed his eyes. “This is a terrible tragedy,” he said to Peter Kaye. 

Peter could not help but think that some of the blame for said tragedy lay at Monty’s well shod feet. “Were you having an affair with the girl?” Might as well get right to it. 

Monty winced. He’d already had to answer this question several times in the last few hours. “Yes,” he said, with an outtake of breath. 

“How long?”

“A year, after her 18^th birthday. I swear—”

Peter decided he didn’t like Maxim Monty much, either. He looked the man over, askance, nonchalant. There was something unsettling about the deep cleft in his chin, where the angels kissed him the day he was born. History is rife with handsome faces and the havoc they wrought. That might explain why Abigail was doing this nonsensical thing. He asked, point blank: “Did you kill Poppy?”

Fresh tears sprang easily, streaking those chiseled cheeks. “No.”

“Did you love her?”

More tears. The scoundrel’s shoulders heaved. 

 

“What happened?” Shaw asked. “Do you want to tell me?”

 She did. She was ready. “My daughter is an innocent. A good girl.”

“Last night---"

“He seduced her—” it was out. Abigail hesitated, swallowing, watching his face, willing him to respond. She allowed a single tear to trace its course down her grave face.

Peter sighed. His hand reached out, clasped hers. 

“I met Max when I was at a low point in my life. The lowest. You’ve seen him. He’s beautiful.”

“Handsome is as handsome does, my nana always said.”

“Mine too. Maybe I should have listened to my grandma.”

He laughed. 

For the second time that morning, Abigail smiled. “You wouldn’t happen to have another mint, would you?”

 

No matter how Peter Kaye tried to position himself, legs crossed, uncrossed, this way, that way, he could not make himself fit into the unyielding wood and metal of the chair from purgatory. Monty’s elegant slimness irritated him. More to the point, he was not convinced that Monty hadn’t pulled the trigger. In fact, as the moments ticked away, he became more convinced. “Where did the gun come from?” This was something that had been bothering him.

“Hmm?” Maxim was looking sullenly at nothing.

“The gun? The murder weapon? Was it yours?” 

“No. Abigail hates them. She’d never let me have one in the house. The gun belonged to Poppy. I know. I bought it for her.”

“You bought it for her?”

“It was a gift. For her birthday. Last year. She needed protection.”

“Protection?”

“The security in that building she was living in. Complete joke. Anybody could’ve gotten in the place with a popsicle stick. For her safety, she needed a reliable firearm.”

“That turned out well.”

Monty nodded. “I guess you think I’m responsible?”

“You’re connected to the gun. You two were caught having an affair. And it must be noted that you, sir, are far too good looking. “

“Is that a crime?”

“In your case, the jury is still out. One wouldn’t need much imagination to see you killing someone though.”

“I suppose not.” Monty’s shrug was a feint at casual ease, but Peter was sure he saw real wrath flicker across that face. Max was daring him to go on.

Peter might now be sitting this close to an actual killer. The hum of the busy police station throbbed into his awareness again, and he forced himself to relax into the unforgiving chair while he puzzled this out.  

 

Orr shot out of the records department, a manilla folder in her hand and a text on her phone from one of the uniforms posted at the Langdon School. If she could have skipped, she would have. It tickled her, thinking how the kiddos at their desks would drop dead if she did a Dorothy right here. Ease on down the road. She gave that knobby kid from Charlestown a hard look, savoring the panic it caused. That would have to do. 

 

The front desk guy was sweating over a Sudoku, but he snapped to full attention when Detective Orr stood in front of him. 

“Where is the guy from the apartment building? Number 2?” Orr was pointing to the empty chair next to Peter Kaye. “He was sitting right there. I leave you alone for ten minutes. I should get you a babysitter.”

 The guy had zero to say for himself. Pathetic. It wasn’t much fun making him squirm.

All he could do was nod toward Interview room B. 

 

Peter Kaye watched her stride across the floor. Almost balletic. If he didn’t know better, he might have sworn she just did a little hopping skip. 

 

Detective Orr banged through the door. Abigail and Shaw were like two kids caught by the head nun. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked. “Neither of you should be talking to the other until we clear you. Until I clear you. Do you understand?”

They looked at her, two pairs of wide eyes blinked in the harsh white glare of the buzzing overhead light. Now that she had their attention, she could ease into it. 

She tossed the folder on the table.

Placed her phone on top of it.

 Sat down.

Abigail made herself return the other woman’s steady gaze, but her eyes could not stop glancing back at that folder. 

“No more make believe, Mrs. Monty. Let’s start over nice and fresh. You were trying to convince me earlier that you somehow shot and killed your daughter Penelope. I know that’s not true.”

This was her last stand. “I don’t care what you think. Or what the law says. I am bound by a Higher Law. In His eyes I am guilty.”

Orr had to appreciate the sheer moxie of the woman. “Do you want this to continue, in front of Mr. Shaw?” 

“Let him stay,” Abigail said. “I need a friend right now.” 

Shaw again clasped her hand, held it. 

“How cozy,” said the detective. “While you two were having this unlawful little tea party I took the liberty of looking you up, Mr. Arthur Shaw. Incidentally, you were, for a while, my favorite suspect in this little caper.”

“Me?” Shaw beamed like a chump. Then the gravity of the situation fell on him with a thud. This was murder. Poppy’s dead body had been found just a few feet away from his own front door. And everyone saw how mad he’d been when she was so rude, so nasty, she really was a terrible little-- “I mean—"

Eileen was sorry she wasn’t going to spend much more time with this one, he’d be endless fun to keep dangling. “Relax. You’re absurdly clean.” She opened the folder, for effect. “There’s not much here.  Nothing that screams Killer. One notable arrest. You were part of a protest that got a little rowdy back in 1994. Handcuffed yourself to an officer of the law.”

“That’s right—” he looked at her as if she were a conjurer who’d unbottled a long forgotten scent of a hundred years ago, like the China Rain they all wore back then, back in his Queer Nation days of marches and anarchy and rage and clove cigarettes. Once, he’d been a young rebel. “I don’t regret it,” he said. 

“Good for you. Chalk it up to youth.” She closed the folder. “Aside from that, nothing. Except your library card expired in 2021.”

“Do I pay a fine, or—”

“It’s not a police matter. Take it up with your local branch.” 

“So now?”

Orr sat back. “So now, sir, I basically have nothing further to do here. I’m going to finish up the paperwork and get myself home, maybe have some pancakes with my wife. Because I’m a homicide detective. And this was no homicide.”

Shaw looked over at Abigail. “I’m confused. Abigail, tell her. Tell her about Monty. Tell her—”

“Hold up,” Detective Orr said. “Is she going to now try to say that her husband did it? knowing I wasn’t buying her tall tale ‘confession’, she’s going to shift gears? And she’s even got you so wrapped around her pinky finger you’re going to go to bat for her?”

“No one needs to bat for me.” Abigail said. “I am responsible. I should have stopped it. I shouldn’t have let him—" Abigail’s voice broke off. 

Orr held up her hand. “Nice try.”

Shaw said, “If this wasn’t a murder, then—"

“Please don’t,” Abigail had real tears now, streaming down her face. “Please. Don’t say it.” 

But the detective had already pulled up the latest text images on her phone. 

 

Maxim Monty could feel eyes burning into his skin Nothing was less nonchalant than Peter Kaye trying to be nonchalant. Monty was used to it. People thinking the worst of him. Just because he looked the way he did, he must be a cad, or worse, a killer. What no one ever thought, what no one might ever have guessed—he loved his wife. Always. Any tears he had shed over this matter was for the pain she must be going through, and he decided he’d had enough. He wasn’t going to let this affair ruin their life together, nor would he allow her to throw herself to the wolves for that little runt Poppy. He was done playing. “Mr. Kaye,” said Monty, “I know your friend thinks he saw the girl and I in a moment of indiscretion---”

“You were having a sexual relationship with the girl, Poppy, your stepdaughter.”

Monty made a face. “Yes. But—”

“But? You got caught?”

“What Mr. Shaw witnessed in the theater last night between me and Penelope wasn’t a love scene. It was a breakup.”

“She dumped you. Good. And then, you killed her?”

Monty had done a lot of things, but he wasn’t about to continue this ruse. “I was trying to leave her. I’d been trying for some weeks. She was becoming possessive. We had an understanding, she crossed the line, demanding, pushing me to leave Abigail. I told her I had no intention of ending my marriage. And certainly not for a little tap dancer. That night, we had it out one last time. She wouldn’t get it through her head—”

“A bullet went through her head,” Peter Kaye said.  

“That’s enough,” his voice rose above the soothing drawl he usually used in public.

 If Peter Kaye was smart, he’d stop talking right about now. “So what did happen?” he asked, leaning in closer.

Monty returned the rapt gaze with frank irritation. “I tried to tell the kid the simple facts of life. She carried on, went hysterical. I left the room and never saw her alive again after that crazy last performance.”

“Why is Abigail in there making a confession when you and I both know she didn’t shoot Poppy?’

            “A mother will do anything to protect her child—” Realizing he’d said too much, Monty stopped, his lips pressed together in a grim line.

 

Shaw was thinking how strange it was that only last night they had all sat together in the dark theater, and here they were again. Last night they were in the audience while Poppy was on stage living out her last hour of life. Now, four chairs were crammed around the table in the small square room, as Abigail told them what happened in that terrible dark aftermath. 

Monty sat rubbing his hands together.

Peter was in rapt attention, he was still watching a play.

To him this was entertainment, but Shaw had to admit that he himself was saddened by the whole mess, the ugliness of it. While Abigail told them how it all began, he could not help but feel the waste and the loss of a young life taken too soon. A hint of that youthful rebel anger shivered through him. He had survived while a generation of men died, and even now all these years later he could almost taste the tang of fury at the back of his throat. Senseless deaths. Poppy was just a kid, too.

“Penelope had emotional issues,” Abigail said in a flat tone. She was exhausted, glad that the whole thing was almost over. “Things began when she was just a child. In school. With the other kids. They called her a bully. I had to take her out of regular classes. We went to psychiatrists, therapists, social workers. My then husband Burt and I took her to a special program for a while. She had the best of them, the best money could buy.” She stopped, thought for a moment, maybe she had said too much already. 

No one said a word. 

“Burt got fed up. He felt we were spending too much on our daughter’s well being, that it was a waste of money because she was just born bad. He actually said that. He didn’t think she’d ever get better because she didn’t want to get better, and why should she as long as she had her mother’s tit? That’s what Burt said, not me,” Abigail wanted to clarify the point, that Burt resented his own child, and like a man just walked away, dropped the whole thing back in her lap to do her best, and he never missed an opportunity to let her know she was only screwing up Poppy worse than she’d be if they’d left her at The Walker School, that expensive glorified juvenile detention facility. She wanted to say all of it, but of course, never would. Some things she would keep to herself. The secret, the shame, died with Penelope. She shrugged, eliding past that history. “My daughter was ill. I didn’t want to accept it. That’s my fault. She was in pain. I should have seen. I should have—"

Her daughter had committed the most mortal of sins. She looked up, at all of them looking back at her, and she could not bear the pity she saw in their eyes.  

Except Detective Orr, who was leaning up against the wall, arms crossed against her chest. Her eyes were closed, as if she was trying not to hear. She was thinking about a grave in Saint Anne’s Cemetery that doesn’t have a headstone. Three years later. Her mother had left a note, too. 

 

Orr’s phone still held the image. 

A Mother’s Day card. 

Poppy’s last words, written in a childish hand:

 

Don’t pray for me. It’s too late.

 

Monty broke the silence. “It was my idea to move the body. Stupid, I know. I thought it would confuse things. Create a distraction.”

Shaw sniffed.

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” said Abigail. “I didn’t know at the time it was your door.”

“We wanted to make it look like a murder—we didn’t want anyone to think—“

Detective Orr shook off her funk. “What you did was tamper with evidence. You will likely be booked for obstruction, and a few other charges related to the illegal handling of a body.” In a softer tone she hoped conveyed the compassion she felt, she said: “I’m sorry.”

Monty’s hand reached for Abigail’s.

 

            Peter Kaye and Shaw stood on the steps of the precinct. They breathed in the damp spring air that smelled of the sea, and rain on the way. 

            “Is it really only 10 o’clock?”

            Shaw nodded. 

            “I’m not usually up for another hour,” Peter fussed. “What do people do on a Sunday morning, so early? It’s too early for a mimosa.”

            “Some go to church.”

            “Just because you played at being a minister for an hour, you have a sudden spark of religious ideation?”

            “When was the last time you were in a church?” Shaw nudged him. 

            “I was baptized on May 17^th, in the year of our Lord nineteen-hundred and sixty-five. Rumor has it the priest burst into flames immediately after.”

            “Do you ever think that we have so much to be grateful for? To be alive? Free? Did you ever think when we were in our 20’s that we would have the lives we live now? Did you even think we might be alive at all?”

            “No.” Peter dropped his usual act. “Honestly? Just us two girlfriends with our hair down? Everybody else was dying. Every day. I never thought I would live past 35.”

            “Me too.”

            “That’s the burden of our generation. Surviving.”

            “Poppy. She was just a child. No matter what else she was, she was suffering—”

            “Fine. I’ll go to Church with you. We’ll light a candle. I’lll sit next to you in a pew, and we will sing the hymns and kneel. But after that. We are going for mimosas.”

            “Will you really sing?”

            “Absolutely not.”

            And they laughed. 

            Then Peter said, “What do you make of Abigail? You think she’ll stay with Monty? I was convinced he was the killer right up until the end.”

            “Handsome is as handsome does,” said Shaw, thinking about the way Abigail had smiled, and the look on her face when she said Monty’s name. 

            “And I suppose, he does quite well—”

            

Their ride pulled up to the curb.  Shaw looked back at the flat gray building where they’d spent the last few hours. As much as he was happy to be out, a part of him wanted to linger, he wanted to see Detective Orr one last time. He wanted to tell her the story of the time he handcuffed himself to a police officer a hundred years ago.