The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [22]
Now I have the strange, unnerving feeling that a whole new aura has entered the house. In an uncanny way, it’s as though Elsbeth’s replacement has shown up, a kind of premature reincarnation. Not that I know Diantha that well. She did come to the wedding, but her visit was brief.
We had a chance, doing the dishes together, to chat. “Your mom tells me you’re in show business,” I said by way of an invitation to her to tell me about herself.
She shrugged. “I’ve done some acting. Some modeling. I have an agent. I’ve had gigs and a zillion near misses for the big time. But that’s not really what I do.”
“What do you do?” I asked, noticing that she stacked the dishwasher exactly the way her mother does.
“I have this knack for sorting out programming problems that confuse people with a lot more smarts than I ever had. It’s a kind of idiot savant flair. Even the high-end providers keep making the same mistakes.” She laughed at herself. “They pay me lots of money and it leaves me enough time to screw up the rest of my life.”
“I’m sure you underestimate yourself.” I rinsed off Elsbeth’s dish, noticing that she had eaten very little.
“Yeah, so I’m told. It’s better than having other people do it for you. Mom says you’re working on another murder.”
“We’re not sure they’re murders.”
“She says it’s juicy stuff. Two people fu … did themselves to death.”
“Yes. It seems there was … intercourse of some violence.” In speaking I attempted to maintain the tone of objectivity, however spurious, that allows one to talk of prurient matters without the appearance of indulging in the prurience.
Diantha laughed one of her mother’s laughs, a bright, mischievous hiccup. “It sounds like a great way to go.”
“It wasn’t a pretty scene.”
“You were there? Afterward?” Her voice had a touch of awe to it.
“I looked at the crime scene photos. And the crime scene video.”
She bent to put a glass in the dishwasher with, I thought, an exaggerated motion. “So you really get into it.”
“I’m helping the police with inquiries, as the British put it, but not as a suspect. Not yet anyway.”
She beamed at me. “That is so cool.”
“That remains to be seen. I could just botch things up for them.”
“Now you’re the one underestimating yourself.”
I smiled. “What did you say before? It’s better than having other people do it for you.”
As we closed up the kitchen for the night, she took one of my hands in hers. “By the way … Dad … Do you mind if I call you Dad?”
“I’d be honored.”
“I want to thank you for taking such good care of Mom these last couple of years.” Her eyes were bright and dark with sincerity, establishing as much as the warmth of her hand the closeness she wanted to have with me.
“She has taken care of me, too, you know. She has made my life …” At which point, for the first time all evening, I had to stop and take a deep sigh.
But there remains a jagged, nagging note to this sad and yet curiously jubilant occasion that I have been skirting around throughout this account. In saying good night to Diantha in the hallway upstairs, I leaned down to give her a chaste peck on the cheek only to find myself kissed full on the lips with a sensuality the sensation of which I cannot quite shake. I found myself reeling down the hallway in a kind of sensual time warp, every nerve alive, my imagination full of conjurations, my pulse racing. Though nearly six decades along in life, I find myself still burdened with a persisting virility, as though marriage to Elsbeth has re-endowed me with the manly vigor of youth. I thought the momentary pulse of lust, distressing enough, would pass as I came to my senses. But it lingers and I find myself beset with images and forbidden desires.
It’s as though my dear Elsbeth, lying in our bedroom suffering through a drugged, fitful sleep, has become a ghost, replaced in life by Diantha, who is the very embodiment