The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold [82]
“Shall we go in here?”
“Here?” I said, pointing to the door Natalie and I had just stepped out of.
“That is, if you don’t mind.”
Natalie was asked to wait outside. Detective Broumas called for one of the uniformed officers, and the three of us went into the classroom.
“It was a very confusing morning for the neighborhood,” Detective Broumas said.
Surveying the room and seeing few places to sit, he pointed toward the platform.
“There’s a chair there, I guess. Does that suit you?”
“Sure. There’s another chair behind the partition,” I said.
“Will you get that, Charlie? We can move them over here.”
“Actually,” I said, “Professor Haku would prefer that you didn’t move that one chair. He has it set up so the pose can continue on Monday.”
Detective Broumas smiled. He removed his navy blazer and hung it off the back of one of the easels in the first row. “We were talking to your husband in there. An artist. Is that how you got into this line of work?”
“Yes,” I said.
The policeman named Charlie brought the chair I’d just been sitting on and put it in front of Detective Broumas.
“Put it up there with the other one,” he said. “Shall we?”
As I stepped up on the platform and took the seat that was meant to substitute for a tub in Woman Washing in Her Bath, Detective Broumas turned to retrieve a notebook from the pocket of his blazer.
I remembered finding a small notebook that must have fallen from Jake’s jacket pocket. Inside he kept a sort of journal of his time outside in the cold.
Dripped icicles for forty minutes in snow. Used tree as cover.
Can I break up ice and solder it together by melting it with my hands?
Leaves as thin as parchment. How to embellish what is already perfect?
“Are you ready?” Detective Broumas asked. He sat across from me. The uniformed policeman had taken up his post near the door. I noticed, as I glanced at him, a certain boredom, as if this were a day like any other.
“My friend says my mother was killed,” I said.
“Somebody had a hand in it, yes.”
“Who?”
“We aren’t sure yet,” he said. “She was found in the basement by a neighbor of hers.”
“Mrs. Castle,” I said. “She has a key.” Answering, for myself, my own open question.
“Actually, she doesn’t. She found a window open in back that had been jimmied and asked a young lady to help her.”
Detective Broumas referred to his notebook. It was a small leather-bound book with a red ribbon to mark his place.
“Madeline Fletcher. Her father lives next door.”
For a moment I thought of the tattooed wonder snaking into my mother’s house, how it would have upset her.
“Yes,” I said, “that’s the window my husband tried to fix yesterday.”
“It was wide open,” Detective Broumas said.
“It shouldn’t have been.”
“Mrs. Castle also said that you were there last night. That she saw your car as late as seven p.m. outside the house.”
“That’s right.”
“What were you doing there?”
“She’s my mother, Detective.”
“Just go through what you did and how you left her, if you can. Was she sleeping? Up? What was she wearing? Did you get any phone calls? Hear any strange noises? Had your mother been frightened of anyone or anything?”
“My mother has been declining for some time,” I heard myself say. I used the passive vernacular I so hated in reference to the elderly. “She had a grim bout with colon cancer a few years ago and never really recovered. Her doctor says that if people live long enough, cancer of the bowels gets them in the end. It’s his little joke.”
Detective Broumas cleared his throat. “Yes, well, that sounds difficult. We’ve talked to Mrs. Castle, and I know she assisted her a great deal. Was there anyone else who frequented the house?”
I looked down at my hands. I had stopped wearing jewelry of any kind. I didn’t like the weight of it on