Firm Ambitions Read online

  “Weird, huh?” Ann said with a smile. “You waiting up for Mom to come home on a date.”

  I nodded. “Weird.”

  She opened the door and paused. “Richie doesn’t know,” she said softly. “He would be so hurt. Now that I look back on what I did, I think I must have been totally crazy. How could I have allowed myself to risk everything just for a fling with that slimeball?”

  “Richie may never find out,” I said. “But if he does, it won’t be the end of the world. He’s part of what drove you to Andros. You deserve more in your marriage, Ann. Regardless of whether he finds out, you’re going to have to find a way to help him understand what you’re going through.”

  “Richie? Are you kidding? He’d never understand. He’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t have an affair even if I ordered him to.” She gave me a kiss on my cheek. “But I’m not going to worry about it. If the police call, they call. I’ll let you know. Thanks, Rachel. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Ann.”

  ***

  When I got into bed at twenty to twelve my mother still wasn’t home. I tried to read a chapter of Emma but my eyes started smarting after two pages. I was feeling my three hours of sleep the night before.

  As I clicked off the reading lamp and set my alarm, I thought back to Ann’s parting comment about Richie. In her determination to turn him into my father she had blinded herself to some of his qualities. I had held my tongue.

  Unlike Ann, I had been suspicious of Richie’s fidelity from the start. He confirmed those suspicions six years ago at a big New Year’s Eve party he and Ann threw. Around one in the morning I had walked into their kitchen for a beer. I didn’t realize Richie had followed me in. As I reached into the refrigerator, he grasped me by the hips and jammed his crotch against my rear. I was so startled that at first I thought he was joking. But then he turned me around and backed me up against the built-in Amana microwave oven. “God, you have magnificent incisors,” he groaned as he tried to stab his thick tongue into my mouth. I had to conk him on the head three times with the beer can, splattering foam on their new hardwood floor, before he loosened his grip enough for me to shove him away.

  We’ve pretended that that little incident never occurred. Nevertheless, as far as I am concerned, any man who would try to French-kiss his wife’s sister in his wife’s own kitchen is someone who, contrary to Ann’s belief, might fool around even without an order to do so from his wife.

  I glanced over at the clock. Ten to twelve. Last night I had been trying to get to sleep. Tonight I was trying to stay awake.

  As I lay there, Gitel the cat walked into the room and stopped by my bed. She stared at me, her eyes phosphorescent, the white of her fur almost electric. I turned on my side and watched. She crouched slightly, and then she jumped onto the bed. She sat on her haunches, studying me.

  “Good evening, Gitel,” I said with a hint of reproach in my voice, but after a moment I gave in and scratched her behind her ear. She purred. Then, wonder of wonders, she curled up against me and closed her eyes, her head resting on her paws. This was the second time for us in under a week. Maybe there was still hope for Ozzie.

  Thinking about Ann and Richie made me think about the kind of guys I seemed to fall for. Starting back in junior high and moving up to my latest ex, a heartless heart surgeon at Barnes Hospital, only one of my boyfriends had been anything like my father. He was a pediatrics resident who had begged me to marry him and move back home to Cleveland after he finished his residency. I had been a second-year associate at Abbott & Windsor in Chicago, and I ultimately told him no, explaining that I wasn’t “ready” for that kind of “commitment”—cop-out language if there ever was. I was still in my Young Professional Woman phase back then. There were dragons to slay and scores to even. A lot of women of my generation went through that phase, until we started to notice that the men we were trying to emulate didn’t seem all that happy with their own careers or with what those careers had done to their lives.

  Perhaps there was some truth in what I told my sweet boyfriend from Cleveland—I really hadn’t been “ready” back then. But, I conceded to myself as I scratched behind Gitel’s ears, there was also the fact that he was, like Richie and like my father, predictable. There was nothing exciting about him. Nothing dangerous. And like Richie and like my father, he shared little in common with the other men I had dated over the years. Almost to a one, they were strong-willed and, ultimately, not very nice.

  Ann had married a man just like our father. Had I been trying to avoid that kind of man, to avoid the kind of relationship that my mother had with my father? Was I selecting men that I couldn’t dominate the way my mother dominated my father, men that wouldn’t be congenial enough to give in on every important issue, the way my father always gave in to my mother?

  As I turned on my side in bed, losing my struggle against sleep, I couldn’t decide whether I had made a genuine discovery about myself or had become a living, breathing C+ term paper in Psych 101. Maybe I just happened to be the kind of woman who found Butch Cassidy a whole lot more attractive than the stolid menfolk in the posse that eventually killed him.

  Chapter Seven

  “Whoa,” Benny said reverently. “Mine eyes have seen the glory.”

  “Where?’

  “Ten o’clock. Blue dress. No bra. Praise the Lord.”

  She was a platinum blonde. I studied her as she paused in the aisle to our left, three rows down from us. She looked like this year’s poster girl for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Her high round breasts didn’t merely defy gravity; they were completely oblivious to it. I recognized her from the aerobics class. She had not been in the photo album.

  Benny placed his hand over his heart. “I believe I am experiencing what the Catholic Church describes as an epiphany.”

  “Oh? Is that a Torah in your tabernacle or are you just glad to see her?”

  Benny turned to me with a solemn expression. “Now, now, Rachel. As the good Lord is my witness, so long as I have a face, that woman will have a place to sit.”

  Benny and I were in the back row of the mortuary chapel. We had arrived early and passed by the open coffin while the chapel was still empty. I had been surprised to see that Andros was dressed in a black-and-silver Nike warm-up outfit.

  “Tacky,” Benny had said with a shake of his head as we took our seats in the empty back row of the chapel. “He’s going to feel like a total putz when he shows up on Judgment Day in that silly costume.”

  The other early arrival had been Poncho Israel. He came in just after we took our seats. He walked by the coffin up front and settled into a seat in the back row on the other side of the chapel. He had looked over and acknowledged me with a friendly nod.

  “How ’bout this babe?” Benny asked, gesturing toward the right aisle. “She in the album?”

  There were several women in the line of mourners slowly moving down the aisle. “Which one?”

  ‘The redhead in the double-breasted jacket.”

  “Oh, no. Not her.”

  “You know her?”

  I nodded. “Her name is Christine Maxwell.” She was wearing a conservative double-breasted glen-plaid suit jacket with a matching knee-length skirt and a black silk blouse. Her short red hair was parted on the side and combed back behind her ears.

  “Is she a lawyer?”

  I watched as she moved down the aisle toward the front. “No. According to Ann, she’s some sort of insurance agent or financial adviser.”

  “Married?”

  “Don’t know. But she’s not for you, Benny.”

  “How do you know that? When it comes to tall redheads with long legs, I can be very tolerant.

  “She’s not. Trust me.”

  She moved slowly past the open coffin and followed the path to the aisle against the far wall. As she started up the aisle, looking for a
seat, a dark-haired man in the second row stood up and gestured her over. He pointed to a space next to him.

  “Her husband?” Benny asked.

  I watched her move down the row toward the man. He had a dark mustache, a deep tan, and a gold band on his ring finger along with big pinkie rings on each pinkie. He was wearing an expensive-looking green suit with no back vent. When she reached him, he put a hand on her shoulder and she kissed him quickly on the cheek. “I don’t think so,” I said. They seemed more like business colleagues than husband and wife.

  I checked my watch. The funeral was scheduled to start in ten minutes. The chapel was already half full, and the line of people waiting to pay their last respects stretched to the back of the chapel. Most were female. Several were dabbing at their eyes or wiping their nose with a handkerchief.

  I heard someone’s pager start beeping. Poncho stood up and clicked it off as he left the chapel.

  “So how was Sarah’s big date?” Benny asked.

  “She got home after midnight.”

  “Sounds to me like Sarah and Tex played more than one round of miniature golf.”

  “Don’t start, Benny. No golf jokes.”

  “Not even one about Hizzoner’s putts?”

  “I’m warning you, Goldberg.”

  “My, my, my. Aren’t we touchy today.”

  “Benny, she’s my mother.”

  “Hey, Rachel, lighten up. Give your mom some slack. She looks pretty good for her age. Hell, she looks pretty good, period. She’s not even sixty. She’s entitled to have some fun.”

  “I’ve known my mother for thirty-two years, okay? This is her first date since I was born. The first time she’s gone out with any man but my father. Life goes on. I know that. She’s going to start dating. I know that. That’s the way it should be. That’s what I tell myself. But no jokes, okay?”

  Benny put his arm around my shoulder. “Sorry, pal.”

  After a moment I turned to him with a sheepish smile. “I’ll say one thing, though: Tex Bernstein is not exactly one of the Chippendale dancers.” My thoughts drifted. “But then again,” I added quietly, “neither was my father.”

  Benny squeezed my shoulder.

  The organist came to the end of the song—”Climb Every Mountain,” I think it was—and then there was silence, broken only by a muffled sob or the blowing of a nose.

  An elderly man walked in a side door to the left of the coffin and slowly climbed the three stairs to the podium. He was extremely tall and slightly stooped. Placing his hands on the podium, he looked out at us and smiled. When he first appeared, I thought for a moment that he might be a family member. He clearly wasn’t. He had the gaunt, Anglo-Saxon look of a bank teller from a Charles Dickens novel: long face, high forehead, limp hair, beaked nose, protruding ears, large Adam’s apple.

  “My name is Alfred Mellon,” he said in a kindly voice as he withdrew a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “I’ve been asked to say a few words about a young man who worked in my pharmacy his first year in America. I knew him as Ishmar al-Modalleem.”

  Mellon paused as he unfolded the paper and smoothed it on the podium. He put on his reading glasses, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “Many of you are here today,” he read, “because Andros touched you in a special way.”

  A woman three rows in front of us started to sob. Benny smothered a laugh.

  “He knew how to fill that private space within each of you,” Mellon continued. “To fill it in the way only he could— with good and wonderful feelings.”

  Benny snickered. “Can you believe this knucklehead?” he whispered.

  “Shush,” I told him, struggling to keep a straight face.

  “I know,” Mellon continued. “Because he filled that special space inside me, too.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Shush.”

  Mellon’s eulogy moved on to other equally infelicitous metaphors, groped around without success for a unifying theme to the deceased’s life, and eventually ended on a poem that had all the power and resonance of a store-bought sympathy card. When he finally took off his reading glasses and left the stage, many of the women in the audience were crying.

  Next up was a swarthy little man in a blue leisure suit. He spoke for a few minutes in a thick, guttural accent. I couldn’t decipher most of his speech. Whatever he said, it certainly moved him. His voice kept cracking, and he had to stop twice to blow his nose.

  He was followed by a plump man with basset-hound eyes. He was either the funeral director or a minister of unclear denomination. I couldn’t tell which during the short time it took him to read two psalms, recite a prayer, and signal the pallbearers. I noted with interest that the dark-haired man next to Christine stood and took up a position alongside the casket. As the organ music swelled, the pallbearers carried the casket out the side door to the waiting hearse.

  Benny and I joined the crowd that was moving slowly up the aisles and out of the chapel. As we stepped into the sunlight, I saw Poncho Israel standing off to the side. He gestured for me to come over.

  “Wait here a sec,” I told Benny.

  I walked over to Poncho. His eyes looked even more melancholy than usual. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Rachel, we just took your sister into custody. We’ve given her her rights. She refuses to say anything until you’re there with her.”

  “Ann?” I said, confused. “What did you arrest her for?”

  “Murder.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “There must be a mistake.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Who?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Who did my sister supposedly kill?”

  He gestured toward the chapel. “The man they just loaded into that hearse.”

  “I can’t believe this, Poncho. You actually think my sister killed Andros?”

  He nodded solemnly.

  “And you think you have evidence to support that?”

  He nodded again.

  “What?” I demanded. “What evidence?”

  “Let’s go down to the station, Rachel. We can talk there.”

  ***

  “It can be used to clean silver,” I suggested, remembering the blurb on the label.

  “Uncle Harry,” Ann said dully.

  We were alone in the attorney-client room at the police station, seated on opposite sides of the metal table. I had expected Ann to be a wreck. Maybe she was inside, but outwardly she seemed wooden, almost eerily so. She had her hands flat on the table.

  “Uncle Harry?” I said. Our Uncle Harry had died of lung cancer five years ago. He had owned a small jewelry store in University City.

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Come on, Ann. I know this is hard on you, but it’s important to try to remember this stuff now. Concentrate. Did Uncle Harry give you a can of cyanide?”

  She tried to concentrate. “Possibly,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “When he closed his store,” she said without inflection, almost mechanically. “After Aunt Rose died. He had a lot of stuff left. He didn’t have anywhere to keep it. Richie let him put his stuff in a storage closet in the basement. It was mostly old-fashioned watches and fountain pens and totally out-of-date costume jewelry. I think he put a box of chemicals down there, too.”

  I stood up and walked over to the window. There were bars on it. “What makes you think he put a box of chemicals down there?”

  She shrugged. “I just do.”

  Be patient, I reminded myself. I took a breath and exhaled slowly. “Did you ever look in the box, Ann?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Then how do you know it had chemicals in it?”

 
She thought it over. “I think Uncle Harry said something while I helped him put his stuff in the basement. He put a box up on the top shelf. He told me to make sure the kids kept away from the box. I think he said there were chemicals in there that he used to clean and fix watches and rings.”

  I came back and sat down. I placed my hands on top of hers. “The cyanide that the police found was in a red can. Does that sound familiar?”

  She frowned. “Red? I don’t know.”

  “It’s a quart-sized container, with one of those lids you have to pry off with a screwdriver, like a paint can. The brand name is Vigor.”

  “I’m sorry, Rachel. I don’t remember.”

  Detective Poncho Israel had shown me the container before I went in to meet with Ann. The red label, emblazoned with skull-and-crossbones symbols, had given me the creeps:

  VIGOR

  Sodium Cyanide

  Eggs

  CL-520

  Used by all jewelers for cleaning jewelry,

  silverware, watch and clock movements.

  Poison B UN 1689

  Notice: This product is for sale for professional use only.

  Not for sale for household use or use by nonprofessionals.

  DANGER!

  POISON!

  KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN

  This product is HIGHLY TOXIC. Very small quantities, when in contact with acid, give off deadly fumes.

  Very small quantities, if swallowed, cause death in seconds.

  Use with extreme caution! Use only in well ventilated area. Wash hands after use.

  STORE OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN!

  The label described the contents as “sodium cyanide eggs,” and that’s exactly what they looked like: small white bird’s eggs. There were four eggs left. I had asked Poncho how much it would take to kill a man. He pointed to the layer of white powder in the bottom of the can. It looked like confectioner’s sugar. He told me that if I moistened my fingers, pressed them into the powder at the bottom of the can, and licked them off, I would be dead in five minutes.