“Sounds like you’re a big fan,” I said, trying to snap some reality back into her.
“It’s the best soap on TV, but it’ll never be the same again. Not ever, not without Sylvie. She was so good in that role of Amelia. Everybody loved her.” Madeline teared up and covered her face with her palms. She gave a little sob.
“My name is Claire Morgan, and I’m a detective with the sheriff’s department here in Canton County. You’ve already met Bud. We’re investigating Ms. Border’s death.” I glanced at the flame-stitched wing chair beside me. “May I sit down, Mrs. Cohen?”
“Of course, dear, please do. I’m just so nervous, I can’t think straight.”
“That’s understandable.” I took a small notepad out of my big leather handbag, sat down, and flipped it open. “Why don’t you tell us exactly what happened on Tuesday when you first met Ms. Border? Did you notice anything in particular about her that day, anything unusual?”
Mrs. Cohen shook her head. “She was just very nice, very sweet. She said she’d wait when I wanted to run back in the salon and grab something for her to autograph. She was gracious, very much so, just like she was a regular person. So was Doctor Black. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen him on morning shows, especially The Today Show; he’s on that one the most, might even be a regular. He treats me more like an old friend than a patient.”
Bud leaned in toward Mrs. Cohen. “Doctor Black was with Sylvie when you saw them?”
“That’s right. They’d had lunch together. What a handsome couple they made. She’s so small and blond, and he’s so tall and dark.”
“Had you seen them together before? Were they a couple?” I wasn’t hiding my eagerness much, but I was interested in Mrs. Cohen’s impression of that relationship.
“You mean, were they romantically involved?” Madeline made a birdlike shrug and shivered all over. Bud handed her a chenille throw off the end of the couch. It was the color of seashells.
“Thank you, dear,” she said, becoming more relaxed. Southern charm works like a charm, just like I said. “I really can’t say if they were or not. It appeared they were having a good time together, you know, laughing and enjoying each other’s company. She held on to his arm when they left, but I suppose that doesn’t really mean anything, does it?”
I nodded. “Is that the only time you spoke to the victim, Mrs. Cohen?”
“Yes, the only time I spoke to her at length. Except, sometimes when I was out swimming, I’d see her. I was a champion swimmer way back when. I won ten medals for the breaststroke back in the fifties. I still have a strong crawl.” Bud and I donned suitably impressed looks and waited. “Usually that was in the morning, when she was drinking coffee out on the deck,” Mrs. Cohen said, her voice growing hollow. “She’d always wave at me. That poor little thing, barely more than a child, and now she’s dead. And why was she sitting at that table like that? She was sitting at a table under the water, wasn’t she? I did see that, didn’t I?”
I nodded and said, “That’s what we’re trying to find out, ma’am, who killed her and why. Did you hear anything unusual last night? Any screams or loud noises? Or did you see anyone hanging around?”
“No, no, I can’t say that I did. But I take a couple of Tylenol PM every night around eight o’clock so I can get up early enough to swim before the boats get out on the lake. It’s my arthritis that acts up. It’s really quiet here, with all Doctor Black’s security. How could this have happened? Right next door. I’ll never be able to swim in that lake again. Oh, to think of her down in that water like that. Mort’s coming to take me home. I can go home, can’t I? You’re not going to hold me, are you?”
“No, ma’am.” Bud patted her shoulder. “But we’d like to take down all your personal information so we can get hold of you if we need to ask you more questions.”
“Pretty interesting how Black and Sylvie were such a cozy little twosome,” Bud said as we left Mrs. Cohen’s condo. “What’s say me and you go see if his girl Friday can really alibi her boss?”
LIFE WITH FATHER
The child sat on the bed beside the mother because she was getting over another beating. She’d failed to get the blood out of the father’s white shirtsleeve. He’d punished her with the strop until she could not walk.
She whispered to the child, “He’ll stay in the cellar until dinner. He won’t come up here.” When she reached out to him, she groaned in terrible pain. “Don’t ever leave me, and I won’t ever leave you. We’ll always be together.” She began to weep, softly so the embalmer wouldn’t hear. The child glanced at the door in alarm, afraid for her but not crying; that was against the rules. She went to sleep after a while, and the child walked to the window and looked outside. It was a beautiful spring day. The red rosebush that the mother tended on the trellis by the side gate was heavy with blooms. She loved roses more than anything. She picked them and put them in a vase beside the child’s bed, and they perfumed the room. The mother was lying still now, one forearm flung across her eyes.
Tiptoeing, the child moved out into the upstairs hall. It wasn’t scary in the house in the daytime like it was at night, when they used the candles and shadows flickered up the walls like grasping fingers and the furniture crouched in wait like dark, devouring monsters. Downstairs, the sound of the embalmer’s saw drifted up from the cellar in a distant whine, as if someone were crying. The father was busy. It was safe to sneak outside.
Once in the warm sunshine, the child breathed in fresh air, not used to being alone. The mother kept the child at her elbow at all times. It was against the rules to leave the house. Fear rose and made it hard to breathe, then receded when the sweet fragrance of roses wafted on the breeze. The mother loved roses. She would be happy if she had some beside her bed.
The child ran fast, reaching the lush rosebush and jerking off three roses before a car approached on the road. A black hearse pulled in the driveway, and the child hid behind the thick trunk of the nearest oak tree as the cellar door swung open under the porch. The father walked up the steps, and the child’s breath caught with fear as the embalmer looked around the yard. Then the man driving the hearse called hello from the front yard, and the father walked down the brick walk to meet him.
Minutes later the embalmer and hearse driver pushed a gurney down the sidewalk and descended into the cellar with a dead body. The child squatted behind the tree and waited until the man had driven the hearse away, then sprinted toward the back porch.
Racing across the porch into the kitchen, the child made it to the entrance hall before the embalmer stepped out. “You think I don’t know what you’re up to, sneaking around, breaking my rules. You think your mother can hide you behind her skirts now?”
The embalmer grabbed the child around the waist and descended into the cellar. “You broke my rules on purpose, didn’t you? You were spying on me in the cellar, weren’t you? Well, I’m going to show you what I do all day in the cellar. It’s about time you earned your keep, you lazy, ugly brat.”
The words were mouthed in the embalmer’s awful, vicious whisper, and the child was terrified. The cellar was big and dark except for bright circles of fluorescent light that shone down on two long metal tables. Naked bodies lay on both embalming tables, and one had strange black hoses snaking from the corpses into big brown bottles. It smelled terrible, like the iodine the mother put on the child’s half-moon cuts after the beatings. Another smell came from the dead bodies, a strange,