Skeleton Key Read online

  “You look like you’re in a good mood,” Peter said. “I take it there haven’t been any interruptions.”

  “Your Kayla called,” Deirdre said. “It’s on tape.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I didn’t pay much attention. And it was hours ago. It was before seven o’clock.”

  “She was supposed to go into Waterbury and do some shopping. Whatever she said didn’t get your nose out of joint, for once.”

  “I was hoping she’d show up. I was hoping she’d find me in the hot tub.”

  “And?”

  Deirdre’s eyes narrowed. They were small eyes to begin with. They turned into slits. It reminded Peter of how dangerous she was. He needed to be reminded. He found it far too easy to think of Deirdre as a kind of classic bimbo, all oversized breasts and no brain, instead of as the mercenary little whore she really was. Mercenary little whores could be something worse than dangerous. They could be fatal.

  Peter backed out of the sunroom and took the stairs up to the loft where he slept. He saw the light blinking on his message machine and pushed the buttons he needed to play the message back.

  “Hello, Peter, this is Kayla,” Kayla’s voice said. “I’d ask you where you’ve gone, but I wouldn’t get an answer. It’s six-fifteen. I’m on my way back any minute now. Maybe I’ll stop by and see if you’ve wandered in. One way or the other, I’ll talk to you later.”

  Peter turned the machine off. Kayla must have decided not to wander in. Either that, or she had come to the door and knocked, and Deirdre hadn’t let her in. Peter thought Deirdre would have said something about that, if it had happened. Kayla Anson drove Deirdre crazy.

  Peter dropped his shirt and trousers on the floor. He stepped out of his boxer shorts and admired himself in the mirror. He was very careful about working out, and it had paid off. His stomach was flatter than it had been when he was a jock at Brown. Even women like Deirdre were attracted to him, and women like Deirdre weren’t attracted to anything, except money.

  Peter went downstairs again. One wall of his living room was nothing but windows, but it didn’t matter, because the windows looked out on a thickly treed wood that went on for miles. He went back into the sunroom and found that Deirdre had managed to get herself a brand-new bottle of champagne. It was the kind she liked best, that he bought only for her: cheap, pink, and very sweet. He got a glass from the bar and poured himself two full shots of unblended scotch. It looked as clear as water, but it tasted better.

  “So,” he said, getting into the water next to Deirdre’s impossible blondeness. Everything about Deirdre was impossible. It was what he liked best about her. In spite of the fact that her accent was a nasal mid-Connecticut whine, she reminded him of the low-rent town he had grown up in, where women tried as hard as they could to “beautify” themselves, even when they were only running out to the corner store.

  Peter anchored himself to the bench—he hated floating in the hot tub—and took a long sip of scotch. “You’re in a remarkably good mood for a night when Kayla called. What did you do, catch her trying to get in the front door and throw her out?’

  “No,” Deirdre said. “I couldn’t throw her out if I wanted to. She has a key.”

  “You have a key,” Peter said.

  “Maybe half of Litchfield County has a key. The female half.”

  Peter didn’t answer. Deirdre slugged back pink champagne.

  “I was just thinking,” she said. “About you. And about me. And about Kayla-rich-as-shit-Anson.”

  “And?”

  “And I was thinking I wouldn’t complain about her so much if I was going to do something about her. Only I couldn’t think of what to do about her. You don’t see her because you like the way she is in bed.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  Deirdre made a face. “She’s got money, that’s what it is, lots and lots of money and there isn’t anybody on earth who can compete with that. All those old movies about how men don’t want to marry an heiress because she’ll end up taking their balls away is just so much crap. Men don’t care what happens to their balls at all.”

  “I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. Besides, I don’t see what it is you think you’re—”

  Deirdre’s champagne glass was empty. The bottle was on the tub collar next to her elbow. She got it and filled up again, squinting at the glass as the liquid went into it, as if she were measuring something and the measurement had to be precise. Her blonde hair was so close to white, it looked like light. Her eyelashes were at least half an inch thick, plumped out by mink strips.

  “Somebody else called while you were out,” she said. “Except this time I picked up.”

  “While the message was still running on the machine? How did you know who it was?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “That was stupid, Deirdre.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Do you want to know who it was?”

  “I take it it wasn’t Kayla.”

  “It might have been. It might have been anybody.”

  “Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

  “It’s supposed to mean,” Deirdre said, “that there wasn’t any voice after I answered the phone. There was breathing. There wasn’t any voice. But I don’t think it was Kayla Anson’s breathing.”

  He should have brought the bottle of scotch to the tub with him, instead of leaving it on the bar. Now, if he wanted to fill his glass, he would have to get up and walk across the sunroom to do it. He would have to walk out there in the open, as naked as the day he was born.

  “Well,” he said, very carefully, “that could have been anything. That could have been a telephone solicitation.”

  “Funny time of night for a telephone solicitation.”

  Peter’s glass was empty. It was so empty, it looked as if it had never been used. He stood up carefully and began to climb out of the tub.

  He could not possibly know who that call was from. It didn’t make any sense. There was no such thing as telepathy. It could have been a phone call from Santa Claus at the North Pole as easily as it could have been a phone call from anybody else.

  “So,” he said, “you mean this person just called up and breathed in your ear.”

  “For a long time.”

  “Maybe it was a random obscene caller. Dial the first number that comes into your head. Get a woman. Hit the jackpot.”

  “It wasn’t that kind of breathing.”

  “That must have been bizarre. I’m surprised you didn’t hang up on him.”

  “I thought it was a woman I’d be hanging up on. It was a woman’s breathing. If you know the kind of thing I mean.”

  Peter knew nothing at all about the kind of thing she meant. He got to the bar and started pouring scotch. He would have ditched his drink glass for a tumbler, but he thought it would be too obvious. He hoped Deirdre would think he was sweating because of the water in the hot tub. He hoped he wasn’t breathing too hard.

  “It doesn’t matter who it was,” he said finally. “If it was anybody important, he’ll call back.”

  “You’re really a snot, do you know that?” Deirdre said. “You pick your friends out of the Social Register. You care more about your image than you do about your bank account.”

  “If that were true, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Oh,” Deirdre said, “I think I’d still be here. Even men who are listed in the Social Register go slumming.”

  “I’ve never called seeing you ‘slumming.’ And you know it.”

  “You’ve never called it anything else, either. Are you going to marry Kayla Anson?’

  “I doubt if she’d have me.”

  “But you would marry her, if she’d have you? Because of all that money?”

  “Kayla is a wonderful girl. But she’s a girl. She’s very young.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Deirdre said.

  Peter turned around with his drink in his hand. His penis was waving in the air. He felt so exposed, he wanted to du
ck, except that there was no place to duck into, and nothing to hide behind. Deirdre put her glass down on the tub collar and hauled herself up. She was exposed, too, but she didn’t seem to mind it.

  “You know,” she said finally, “you really shouldn’t treat me like an asshole, because I’m not an asshole. Do you get my meaning?”

  “I never treat you like an asshole.”

  “You never treat me like anything else. But if you really think I’m going to let you get away with pushing me around the way you push around your debutantes, you’re going to be very surprised. Have I made myself clear?”

  “I never push you around.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Deirdre said again.

  She walked around the tub collar until she got to the towel rack. She got a towel and wrapped herself up in it, tucking the edge between her breasts to make it stay. Deirdre was the only person Peter had ever known who could do that and walk around without the towel coming lose and falling off. She was the only woman he had ever known whose breasts pointed at the ceiling like missiles at a launch pad. He supposed she’d had them done.

  “I’m going to get dressed and get out of here,” she said. “You’re beginning to piss me off. But try to remember a few things, will you please?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the fact that you have caller ID.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I’m going home,” Deirdre said again.

  On any other night, Peter would have gone to her and tried to make her change her mind. He would at least have grabbed her arm and tried to do something physical. Now he just watched her walk away, her hips moving like waves under the pink terrycloth of the towel. She reminded him of Marilyn Monroe in some old movie.

  When she was out of the room, Peter got a towel for himself and brought his scotch out into the main room. He could hear Deirdre in the loft, getting herself dressed, but he didn’t go up to see her. He sat down on the love seat instead and closed his eyes.

  He felt as if he were a single wagon, detached from a wagon train, and the Indians were attacking.

  7

  The call came in at 11:37, and Eve Wachinsky almost didn’t hear it. She had an uneasy feeling that she might have failed to hear a number of calls tonight. With Darla upstairs, sick as a dog, and nothing going on down here but a movie on HBO with the sound turned down too low to hear, the world could have come to an end without her noticing. Darla Barden was the woman whose house this was, and who owned the answering service that was run from this broad front room. The front room had once been a porch off the living room and had then been enclosed. Now it was an alcove off the living room, and the living room had no furniture in it. Eve rubbed at the side of her face and looked at the machine blinking in front of her. This room was full of machines: computers, telephones, fax machines, devices to contact beepers, radios turned to the police band. The movie on HBO was Wag the Dog, which was what everybody had been watching since August, when President Clinton had bombed the Sudan. Eve Wachinsky was not sure where the Sudan was—in Africa, she thought, but she wasn’t sure which part—but it bothered her to no end that her last name was so much like the last name of That Woman.

  Now she rubbed the side of her face and stared at the blinking light on the machine in front of her. The light told her which account the call was related to, so that she knew whether to say “Good evening, Southbury Diagnostics” or “Good evening, Holden Tool and Die” when she picked up. Right now, it felt to her as if everything on her body itched. She’d been sitting in the same place so long, it seemed as if every part of her body had gone to sleep. She wanted to cry, too, that was the thing, as if she had nothing to do with her life anymore except break down.

  She put the headset on, punched into the machine, and said, “Waterville Physicians Services. Can I help you?”

  “Oh,” Rita Venotti said. “Eve, I’m sorry. I couldn’t remember the number I’m supposed to use, and I knew you’d be doing this one, so—”

  “It’s all right,” Eve said. It was, too. She hated taking calls for doctors more than she hated anything. The patients were all crazy, and too many of them got abusive. “Bitch,” the women called her, when she would not give them their doctor’s home telephone numbers, or put them through to some doctor who was not on call. “Scum cunt” one of the men had said to her once, and she didn’t even remember why. The patients had terrible symptoms and waited for hours before calling in. They got addicted to their painkillers and then wanted more and more of them, from different doctors, called into different pharmacies. Eve rubbed the side of her face again, as if there was something there she needed to rub off.

  “Eve?” Rita said.

  “I’m sorry,” Eve said. “I’m a little tired tonight, I guess.”

  “Could I talk to Darla?”

  “She’s upstairs asleep. She’s got some kind of food poisoning, I think. Anyway, she was throwing up nonstop when I got here. And then she passed out.”

  “Oh, dear. Well, I don’t suppose it matters. In fact, I know it doesn’t matter. I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. I need the road crew sent out to Four Corners. There’s a telephone pole down on Capernaum Road. You know that road?”

  “No.”

  “One of those dirt things that’s really a mess, but the thing is, it goes out to that little cemetery and a few other places, so people actually want to use it. And according to the guy who called me, the pole is leaning practically sideways.”

  “I’d better call SNET, as well.”

  “No, don’t do that. Let the town people do it when they get out. It’s so frustrating, really. I mean, Capernaum Road in the middle of the night. You’d think it could wait until morning. But I know what they’d say around here if I let it wait.”

  “I don’t think it’s good to let it wait with the telephone wire being interfered with,” Eve said. “Aren’t there other things up there on those poles, electrical stuff, that kind of thing?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand any of it. I just know that when the poles come down everything stops and they close off the road for half a day. You’d think they could have thought of a better way after all this time.”

  “Mmm,” Eve said.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. Just get the road crew out to Capernaum Road and tell them to go from there. That will take care of it. I hope you’re feeling good these days.”

  “I’m fine,” Eve said.

  “Everything’s a mess over at my house. It always is. Did you know that my Michael got into Harvard University?”

  “No,” Eve said.

  “He got a scholarship, too. And he’s going to have to take loans. But we worked it out We thought it was really important, if he could get into a good school like that he should go. And now Lisa is saying she wants to go someplace good herself. Wellesley, that’s what she’s thinking of. I don’t know how we’re going to afford it.”

  “Mmm,” Eve said again.

  “It’s going to be a kick anyway,” Rita said. “Both my children in the Ivy League. Or whatever it is they call those girls’ schools. I must say I never expected, when they were born, that they would both turn out to be so smart”

  “If I don’t call the town, you’re never going to get a road crew out to Four Corners.”

  “What? Oh, yes. You’re right. Of course you’re right I’ll hang right up. It just gets so lonely around here at night, with nobody to talk to. I wouldn’t work nights at all except that it pays so much more money.”

  “The road crew—”

  “Yes, yes,” Rita said. “I’ll be quiet now. I’ve got to find out what Danny Hazelton is doing. I sent him out to Faye Dallmer’s to find out what happened to her Jeep, and it’s been simply forever. More than half an hour, at least. What do you think he could be doing out there for half an hour?”

  “Maybe this time somebody really stole it”

  “I don’t think that’s likely. Well, whatever. I’ll talk to you later
. Tell Darla I hope she’s feeling better.”

  “I will,” Eve said.

  The headset sent up a buzzing dial tone in her ears. Eve took it off and put it down on her keyboard. It was too dark outside. She had come to hate fall and winter in New England. Everything was always black. She turned sideways and began to punch the message—Tree down, road crew to Four Corners Capernaum Road—into the machine that sent messages to beepers.

  The thing was, it had suddenly occurred to her that she was getting old. Not old old. She wasn’t ready for Social Security, or a candidate for a nursing home. She was, in fact, exactly forty-nine years old. In two months, she would be fifty. The number kept stopping her dead, every time she thought of it.

  Fifty was what her mother was, the year Eve had graduated from high school—graduated in the very same class with Rita Venotti and at least a dozen other people who were still in town. Rita had a husband and two children and a house out at Mount Fair Farm. John Candless, who had been president of their class senior year, had a wife and four children and a dermatology practice in Waterbury. Even Jenna Borman, the class slut, had surprised them all by entering a convent and becoming a teacher. Now she was Sister Jenna Marie Borman, and principal of Holy Name School in Waterbury.

  I should have more to show for my life than this, Eve kept thinking—and by “more” she really meant anything at all. She kept trying to remember what she had been doing for the last thirty years or so, what she had been thinking, that she could get to the age she was now and almost literally not exist. She’d had boyfriends, but none of them had ever asked her to marry them. None of them had really been all that good in the way of catches, either, but that was something else. She had had jobs, but they had mostly been jobs like this one. She had worked for a long time as a cashier in a supermarket, and then for a little longer as a nurse’s aide in a convalescent home. She had worked at Sears, too, selling perfume. It had probably been the best job she ever had—it had at least come with health insurance—but she had left it eventually, she wasn’t sure why. She hadn’t even had what she could call a lot of fun. Now she rented a three-room apartment in a cut up old house in Watertown, and came to this job here, and played the lottery, but not too much. She couldn’t play the lottery much. She didn’t have enough money.