Page 12 of A Talent for Murder

Martha laughed. She remembered this about Lily, that she didn’t say the things that everyone was supposed to say in social situations. “In what way?”

“You look more confident, like you’ve reached the age you were born to be.”

“Ha. You’re probably right, although I’m not feeling particularly confident.”

A waitress showed up and Martha ordered another Guinness while Lily asked for the same. After she left with their order, Lily said, “So what is going on with your husband?”

Before going into the bloodstain and the time she spied on him in the driveway and the deaths she’d found online, Martha found herself just talking about Alan, about their courtship and his job, and what he was like. She even told Lily how, although they’d gotten married, she still felt as though she didn’t know him at all. That he was a stranger to her. Lily was nodding.

“Do you know what I mean?”

“Do I know what you mean when you say someone’s a stranger to you?”

“Not just someone. Sometimes I think everyone is a stranger to me, that I’m doomed to never really understand another living soul.”

Lily took a sip of her beer, her eyes on the low ceiling. “I’d say that’s a pretty universal emotion. People who think they know everything about someone are probably deceiving themselves.”

Martha nodded. Lily said, “So what is it that you think your husband is doing behind your back? Do you think he’s cheating on you?”

“No, it’s not that.” Martha took a breath. “I think he might be a whole lot worse.”

Chapter7

“Why do you think that?” I said.

And Martha told me her story, how a few days earlier she’d discovered a bloodstain on the back of one of his shirts after he’d returned from a trip to Denver, and how she’d studied recent news stories and found a report about an unsolved assault that had happened during his trip. And then she talked for a time about spying on him from her bedroom window one night when he’d returned from a trip, and how she felt as though he were practicing his smile, transforming himself into a different person for his return home. She seemed embarrassed about that particular incident, as though she were imagining things, and I told her that it did seem at least a little suspicious. And finally she told me how she’d gone back and discovered a total of five unsolved homicides, all women, all youngish, and all occurring in cities that Alan had been in for work. “Am I crazy to think this?” Martha said.

“You’re definitely not crazy to think this,” I said, wondering if maybe she’d been crazy to marry this particular man. “But you’re thinking it doesn’t make it true. Why did you come to me?”

“I don’t know. At first I figured I had two choices. I could go directly to Alan and tell him what I’d found out and see what he had to say. But if he actually is this kind of... monster or whatever... then it would probably be a stupid thing to do. And if it’s all just a strange coincidence, then how would he feel about my accusing him? I mean, how could he ever trust me again, knowing what I suspected him of? I think it would ruin our marriage. And that’s not what I want to do.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“The other option, I suppose,” Martha said, “was going directly to the police. But it’s the same problem. If they took me seriously, and if they questioned Alan, then he would know it was me that had brought it to them. Either way, it would be over. Our marriage, I mean.”

“And you don’t want to hurt your marriage?”

“Not if Alan’s innocent, no. I know that I said all those things about him being a stranger, but it’s not as though I don’t love him. I do. And I think my life is better with him in it. Honestly, I think I’m here with you just hoping you’ll say I’m being silly and that I should just forget the whole thing.” She had finished her Guinness, and there was a little bit of beer foam at the corner of her mouth. “I’ve thought of you a lot over the years, Lily. That thing with Ethan Saltz was so horrible and I feel like you saved me. I sometimes wonder what would have happened to me if I’d stayed with him. I thought of you as someone who had helped me before in a bad situation, and then I also thought of you because one of the conferences that Alan attended was at Shepaug University. That’s near where you live, right?”

“Same town. It’s where my mother met my father.”

“So, then you became my third option. I could tell you what I thought and get your opinion. And at this point whatever you tell me to do, I’ll do. I don’t feel like I can make this decision on my own right now.”

“I get it,” I said. “You did the right thing.”

I watched her take the first real deep breath she’d taken since we’d sat across from each other.

“Tell me more about the conference at Shepaug,” I said. “Was there a death there?”

Martha had a large tote bag next to her and she pulled a notebook from it and said, “I’ve catalogued what I found like a good librarian. I almost didn’t include what happened at Shepaug because it was a little bit of an outlier.”

“How come?” I said.

She was flipping through the notebook and came to the right place. “Out of the five incidents, and I’ll tell you about all of them, this was the only one where the death was someone who was an actual attendee at the conference.”

“What was the event?”

“It was a K-through-twelve art teachers’ weekend conference, and Josie Nixon was a middle school art teacher from upstate New York. She jumped from one of the dormitory balconies.”

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