The Hand That Feeds You: A Novel Read online

  I flagged a waiter and mouthed, “Cappuccino.”

  Not one to bury the lead, and mindful of her fifteen minutes, I told her straight off that “Bennett” was dead.

  “No, he’s not,” she said with certainty.

  I took out the picture of Bennett I had shown the detective in Boston and asked the woman if this was her fiancé.

  She said nothing.

  “He died six weeks ago.”

  “He sent me flowers.”

  “I found the body.”

  “You don’t understand. He sent me flowers three days ago. I got an e-mail from him this morning. He’s in hiding thanks to those incompetent Boston detectives. And thanks to Susan Rorke’s crazy friends.”

  Her certainty about Bennett’s being alive threw me off-balance. In the moment before I righted myself, I sped through a what-if scenario. What if the body had not been Bennett’s? No one could identify it. No face. No fingerprints. What if Bennett were alive? The possibility made me sick and scared, but the chance to confront him excited me.

  I confronted Samantha instead. “You didn’t answer my question.” I held up the photo. “Is this your fiancé?”

  “Why do you have a picture of him?”

  “I was engaged to him, too.”

  She snorted. “Did one of Susan Rorke’s friends send you the photo? Did one of them send you to meet me? Are you trying to flush him out for the police? I know what entrapment is.”

  I opened my purse and took out the tiny leather box, lined in velvet, that held the ring Bennett had given me. I slipped it onto my finger to show her that it fit. I moved my hand next to hers.

  “So you’ve got Susan’s ring. Her friends will do anything to frame him.” Her voice was louder than the murmur at the communal table. I was aware of people looking and listening. “I already know about that. Susan wouldn’t return his grandmother’s ring so he had a copy made for me.”

  Shortly before Bennett died, I had driven my Zipcar into the rear of the taxi stopped in front of me. I had been looking straight ahead, yet realized at the moment of impact that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me. Samantha was the driver now. I realized I could show her any amount of proof of Bennett’s duplicity and she would not see it. I tried a different track.

  “Who do you think killed Susan Rorke?”

  “Susan Rorke killed Susan Rorke. She told him that if he didn’t go through with the wedding, she would kill herself and make it look like murder. She even scratched the window frame where she jumped to make it look as though there had been a struggle. Desperate bitch.” Her voice was so loud I wanted to shush her, but I didn’t dare interrupt now that she was finally saying something.

  “She could have taken the high road, but, no—Susan Rorke took everyone down with her. She had no shame. She couldn’t bear that we were happy and planning our own wedding. Do you know what she did the morning before she killed herself? She had an announcement of her engagement published in the Boston Globe.”

  People were no longer hiding their eavesdropping. In Samantha’s agitation, her exaggerated hand gestures knocked over a pepper mill. She kept on talking. I sensed those hands might be capable of pushing a body out a window.

  Samantha was still on a tear, and we had been talking for well over her designated fifteen minutes. “And another thing. Susan volunteering at the homeless shelter was self-serving. She didn’t care about the poor. She cared about getting promoted at work and thought it would look good on her CV.”

  I interrupted, “What kind of volunteer work do you do?”

  “How do you know I volunteer?”

  “Do you?”

  “All I’ll say is that it has nothing to do with my résumé!”

  A waiter came over and asked if Samantha would lower her voice.

  “I saw a woman change her baby’s diaper on a table in here and no one scolded her!” Samantha said.

  Nevertheless, she asked for the check and then delivered a bombshell. “Maybe you should talk to his ex-wife.”

  “He was married?” I noted the power shift between us.

  “Your fiancé never told you he’d been married? Susan knew.”

  Collecting our things to leave gave me a moment to collect my thoughts. “How can I reach her?”

  “She’s in the book. Sag Harbor. Uses her maiden name. Loewi, Pat.”

  Samantha said a brusque good-bye. I watched her back and felt that my suspicion would be confirmed; I would tell the Boston detective about her. How else would she have known about the fingernail scratches on the window frame?

  • • •

  I hadn’t read Shakespeare since high school but opened a volume of the collected plays to take another look at Othello. In the play, Othello’s embittered ensign, Iago, makes the general believe that his wife, Desdemona, has been sleeping with a lieutenant in Othello’s army. Believing this lie, the enraged Othello strangles the innocent Desdemona with his bare hands. Not until graduate school did I learn of Othello syndrome, a type of morbid jealousy that ends in violence. Not all societies punish crimes of passion. For instance, if a woman in Hong Kong discovers her husband isn’t being faithful, she is legally allowed to kill him, but she can use only her hands. However, the husband’s lover is allowed to be killed in any manner the wife chooses. This ancient law is still on the books. According to crime statistics, jealousy is one of the top three motives for murder.

  I sat at my kitchen table debating my motive for notifying the Boston detective about Samantha. Did it matter if my suspicions were tainted with jealousy? I remembered the first time Bennett and I had the age-old conversation describing our past love affairs, except in Bennett’s case the love affairs weren’t in the past—they were simultaneous. A memory from that same AP lit class in which I read Othello, courtesy of William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Bennett’s lie about his matriculation at McGill might have contained this much truth: a lover he called Sam. Short for Samantha? He told me she had initially pursued him, pursued him to the point of stalking. He said he had changed phone numbers and moved, but her pursuit had not diminished. He said she frightened him. He claimed she followed home a woman he was dating and slashed her tires. That hadn’t stopped him from asking this Sam to marry him. She had the ring. He was the kind of liar who levitated just above the truth.

  I dialed the Boston detective. We’d spoken enough times by now not to bother with small talk.

  I told him my suspicions about Samantha. “She knew about the scratches in the window frame.”

  “It was in the papers. This Samantha is Bennett’s third fiancée?” He did not bother to tamp down the sarcasm in his voice.

  “The third one that I know about.” I didn’t mention an ex-wife.

  “Other than her knowing about the scratches in the window frame, all you are basing your accusation on is that she claims Susan Rorke killed herself?”

  “She displayed morbid jealousy and irrational anger. I say this as a professional.”

  I knew it hardly mattered what my degree would be in—if I could find the time and concentration to finish my thesis. All this detective would hear in my voice was the jealousy of a jilted lover.

  The streetlights came on as I hung up. The November twilight started at four thirty. I hadn’t eaten since Pain Quotidien and I’d only had a cappuccino. The kitchen was cleaner now than ever before. I hadn’t so much as fried an egg since returning. I took out the few ingredients I had—ketchup, potato chips, and a $29 sliver of Stilton I’d bought at the cheese shop. I put a smear of Stilton on an unbroken potato chip and dipped it in the ketchup: a protein, a starch, and a vegetable. I let the darkness encroach. Steven had thought I was reckless to live here after what had happened. But if I moved, I would keep moving and never feel at home.

  I walked to the window. My view was backyards. The old Italians still hung their laundry on clotheslines. I watched a woman’s thick arm pull a row of sheets through an open window.

&n
bsp; So Bennett had an ex-wife. Of all his deceptions, that one hurt the most. After all, he had told his other two fiancées about the ex-wife. A gust blew the last sheet out of my neighbor’s grasp. It landed in the backyard with the topiary, shrouding a bush shaped like a mushroom.

  I called Steven and asked him if he wanted to come over.

  “I’m in my socks. And I’m watching Chopped.”

  “Is that on the Crime channel?”

  “The Food Network. Tonight’s ingredients are watermelon, canned sardines, pepper jack cheese, and half a zucchini.”

  “I just made a meal of chips, Stilton, and ketchup.”

  “If you were on Chopped, you would have made lasagna from that. What are you watching?”

  “Happily Never After. The Bride Wore Blood. He was married before.”

  “The groom?”

  “Bennett.”

  I heard Steven’s TV mute. “He’s dead, Morgan. His lies are buried with him.”

  “They can’t bury him until someone claims his body.”

  “How do you know he was married before?”

  I told him about Samantha.

  “You think she’s dangerous?”

  I told him I didn’t know.

  “I’ll call a car service and come right over.”

  “Samantha can’t throw me out my window. I have bars.”

  A half hour later, Steven rang my buzzer. He arrived with a toothbrush and the next day’s work clothes, a dark suit still in the dry-cleaning bag for a meeting at the UN. He slept on the sofa he had bought me five months ago to celebrate my thirtieth birthday.

  Unlike accused humans, Cloud and George didn’t have the right to a speedy trial, nor was there such a thing as bail for dogs. They languished behind bars while the courts took their time. To say they languished is not accurate. Every day, they deteriorated physically and spiritually in the filthy confines of the noisy and understaffed shelter.

  Then McKenzie called with news that gave me hope—he had secured a hearing date, in two weeks. We met as usual at Champs. For the first time he was there before me. His face was animated; I could see he was pleased with what he had accomplished. He presented the news to me as the gift that it was: I knew that dangerous-dog cases could sit on the docket for a year or more.

  It surprised me that the first thing he said was that I looked better. Better than what? I must have looked confused because he went on, “I mean, you look rested, calm.”

  “Really?” I said, incredulous. Apparently staying up all night tracking down your dead lover’s ex-wife was rejuvenating. “Thank you. You do, too.”

  “I don’t need any quid pro quo. I’m just glad to see you looking well.” McKenzie flagged a waitress. When she brought over menus, he didn’t look at his.

  I told him I’d brought the affidavit from my vet and handed him the folder, thick with years of Cloud’s medical records. As a puppy, Cloud had eaten a pair of Fogal herringbone tights. The surgery to get them out of her stomach cost $4,000, but the vet gave me the tights back. Since the tights had cost $65, I figured I was only out $3,935.

  “You spent sixty-five dollars on tights,” he said, leafing through the folder.

  He read on. Cloud was once stung in the nose by yellow jackets, and her muzzle swelled up so much she couldn’t open her eyes. One time she was snake-bit swimming in a lake in Florida.

  George’s folder, by contrast, contained only three months of records. The treatments he had required were standard vaccinations and checkups.

  “Why are there no charges for George?”

  I told him my vet had refused to charge me for any of George’s or Chester’s appointments—she had a soft spot for rescues.

  The waitress brought McKenzie a vivid green drink made of seven vegetables. I ordered coffee, black.

  “I also brought pictures.” I fanned them out on the table: all three of the dogs meeting a baby in the park, and playing ball with a team of first-graders.

  I handed him testimonials from neighbors who had known Cloud since she was a puppy.

  “You’re very thorough,” he said appreciatively, slipping them into his backpack.

  “Is there anything more I can do?”

  “Any of these neighbors know George well enough to testify in his defense in court?”

  “My neighbors watched Cloud grow up, but they were afraid of George. I was disappointed that they were prejudiced because he’s a pit bull. He never did anything wrong, and still they avoided him.” That’s when I remembered Billie, reaching through the kennel bars to stroke George when he and Cloud were first brought in.

  “One of the volunteers at the shelter knows him and might do it. She’s the one I told you about, the one who arranged George’s temperament test.”

  “That would help us.”

  I was struck by his use of the word us. It told me something about him. I was so grateful not to be alone with this. And that made me feel calm, rested. I wasn’t used to feeling this with a man. I liked it. But I didn’t trust it. Normally I was drawn to men who, like Bennett, seemed kind and attentive at first, but turned out to be anything but. My reaction to that discovery was counterintuitive: I was drawn further in. The more controlling and withholding a man was, the closer I felt to him. Not because he enlisted my understanding but precisely because he did not. I worked harder to deserve his trust. The harder I worked, the less he trusted me. I became increasingly anxious and I mistook this anxiety for passion. The more anxious I became, the more fixated on me he became, and I mistook his fixation—Where were you? Why were you late?—for love.

  “How can I reach that volunteer?”

  I gave him the number Billie had given me when I’d first met her in the shelter.

  “I have something for you.” He reached into his backpack. “This is a copy of the Boston police report on Susan Rorke’s death.” I took the heavy file, but before I could slip it into my tote bag, he said, “You’re used to crime-scene photos, right?”

  “Not a problem,” I lied. The victims in the hundreds of crime-scene photos I’d studied had not been engaged to my fiancé.

  “Do you want something more than coffee?”

  I made my excuses. I was so eager to read the report that I couldn’t get away soon enough. (There is a fine line between apprehension and excitement.)

  Did I imagine a flicker of disappointment on his face as I gathered my things? If that is what I saw, then was he disappointed in my interest in Susan Rorke over the dogs, or disappointed that I did not linger with him?

  • • •

  I couldn’t bear to read the police report in the apartment where Bennett had been killed. I walked a block to the East Williamsburg branch of the public library, a small, one-story, vine-covered brick building.

  I walked past the empty children’s book area, past the crowd at the video rentals, past the line of homeless waiting for a free computer, and sat down at the deserted long table meant for readers. Normally it saddens me that so few people read, but today I was fine with it.

  I spread out the crime-scene photos. I hadn’t realized that Susan Rorke landed on a vendor’s cart. The body was upside down, the legs caught on the cart, her upper body hanging. Her shirt had ridden up and exposed her breasts. Skewed gymnast. Hanging deer. I tried to make anatomical sense of what I was seeing. The juxtaposition of the halal cart and the broken body was obscene, and my thoughts took an obscene turn—Did they retire that cart? Ashamed of myself, I thought back to the Facebook photos in which she displayed her engagement ring, which was not in any of the crime-scene photos. Had the killer taken it? As a souvenir or to hide evidence? If Bennett—it was to hide evidence. If Samantha—it was to retrieve what she believed was his grandmother’s ring, and to keep what she believed was rightfully hers.

  The autopsy report said she died of blunt force trauma. As I knew from my studies, blunt force trauma is the ME’s go-to attribution for accidents, suicides, and homicides. Deaths from blunt force trauma occur for a ra
nge of reasons, whereas death from gunshot wounds or stabbings, for example, are confined to fewer possibilities. I read quickly, looking for the answer to a key question: Was the blunt force trauma inflicted by the collision with the cart, or did she sustain the deadly injury prior to contact? The autopsy report was clear on this—the cause of death was listed as a blow to the back of the head with an instrument the size of a silver dollar, consistent with a hammer. Yet no hammer was found at the scene or during an extensive search of the building and surrounding area.

  It was one thing to push a person out a window in a rage, another thing to have brought a hammer. Death would have been instant.

  I skipped past the environmental conditions at the crime scene—I had no need to know the “exterior ambient temperature.”

  I skipped past the reporting officers’ accounts, past the location description and “injury extent,” past occupation, and started to read when I got to the evidence inventory.

  The tox screen showed no blood alcohol or drugs. She wasn’t impaired in any way until she was attacked by the unidentified figure photographed by a security camera in a bank across the street from the shelter. The shelter’s own camera was broken.

  Witnesses included the shelter’s security guard, who claimed he heard a woman cry out, “No, no, no, no!” when he stepped outside for a smoke, followed by the sound of Susan Rorke’s landing less than a hundred feet away. Other witnesses—three shelter residents in the infirmary—say they saw a figure wearing a hoodie running down the hallway. Two kitchen volunteers preparing the day’s lunch saw the same hooded figure leave the building shortly after the time of death.

  I turned to the photograph of Bennett’s car going through a tollbooth on I-93 north at 1:57—forty minutes after Susan Rorke’s death—on his way to meet me in Old Orchard Beach.