It turns you stupid.

I picked up the small Coach purse, gently grasped the red leather pull of the zipper, yanked it open, and in that one sudden movement I was suddenly all in.

8

The knocker on the big green door was a bronze coiled snake, with its forked tongue sticking out. I lifted it and dropped it twice.

Knock, knock.

While I was waiting for the “Who’s there?” I looked around at the poorly lit front lawn, at the large dark BMW parked in the circular driveway, at the brick and white-pillared arbor off to the side. The stone house was big all right, not quite a mansion, like the papers were calling it, though the “of death” part was surely accurate. In the gloom of night, it had a forbidding mien, like a cantankerous old man in a wheelchair, legs covered by a tartan blanket, with money in his wallet and evil in his heart.

Knock, knock, knock.

The door opened a crack. “I heard you the first time,” came a voice, creaky and slightly Southern. “What you want in here?”

“I’m looking for Wren Denniston,” I said.

“Don’t be a fool,” came the voice. The door opened a little wider, and I could see her there, tall and thin with short gray hair and raw hands, a trim white-and-blue dress. “I spent all day dealing with reporters banging on the door and crawling through them bushes. I’ve heard more lies than a priest in confessional the last three days. I don’t need to hear yours, too.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I’m just looking for Wren. He told me to stop on by when I got to town. This is his house, isn’t it?”

“I never said it wasn’t.”

“Then I’m at the right place. Is he in? Can you just tell him that I’m here?”

“What you say your name was?”

“Taylor, Anthony Taylor. Wren will know me as Tony.”

She cocked her head, narrowed an eye. “How do you know the doctor?”

“We were at Princeton together. In the same eating club.”

“You look younger than him.”

“He was a couple classes ahead of me, and I live clean. If he’s not in, just tell Julia that Tony is here. She’ll know me.”

“Julia, huh?”

“His wife.”

“You really don’t know.”

“Know what?” I said.

“Where are you from?”

“Columbus,” I said. “Just got in this afternoon.”

She stepped out, wagged her head left and right, and then pulled me through the doorway before shutting the door behind us both. “Maybe you should have a seat,” she said. “In the living room, Mr. Taylor. I have some terrible news.”

Her name was Gwen, and she was a lovely, dignified old woman who had worked for Wren Denniston for years, starting when he was a boy, and she’d worked for his parents in this very same house. Her eyes welled as she broke the brutal news of his murder to one of Wren’s old college pals. I patted her hand, and gave what comfort I could, and I felt like a cad the whole time I was doing it, but I’ve done worse in my life. And I had good reason to be there.

When you need to find the truth about a murder, there is no better place to start than the killing ground. Except I didn’t need the cops to know I was snooping around, or Julia to know either, for that matter. So I wasn’t Victor Carl this night. Instead I reached into the sad history of our city’s baseball past, pulled out one of the few names that still shone, and became Tony Taylor, Princeton grad. I sort of liked the sound of that: Princeton grad. Maybe I should have actually studied for my SATs.

“I came back and found him myself,” said Gwen as she poured me some tea out of a fine china pot. I was sitting on a green couch in a cavernous blue living room stuffed full with French-style chairs and couches. She was sitting across from me, holding the pot with a steady hand. “All that blood and him lying there, pale and dead with that black mark on his forehead and the back of his head gone. It was horrible, Mr. Taylor, just horrible. Would you like more pie?”

“Yes, thank you. I have to say, Gwen, this is the best pecan pie I’ve ever had.”

“My cousin sends me the pecans from back home, fat and fresh off the tree.” She cut a slice from the thick brown pie sitting next to the teapot on the coffee table. “Fresh pecans make all the difference. When I saw the doctor lying there, I just screamed and screamed, which was silly, since there was no one to hear it. But I couldn’t help myself.”

“Of course you couldn’t.”

“More freshly whipped cream?”

“Yes, please. The pie is too rich without it.”

“That’s the way I make it,” she said. “That’s the way my mother made it, and she taught me how. Right away I called the police. They came quick, but even so it was too horrible being in the house. I waited outside for them to come.”

“I understand completely. Where was Julia?”

“She was gone. They were arguing when I left. I had dinner plans. Norman buys me dinner every Sunday night. So I left them to their argument. It’s not like it was a startling event, the two of them going at it.”

“What were they arguing about?”

“Something personal to them. But, to be truthful, they didn’t need an excuse.”

“Who was usually right?”

“Now you’re going to get me in trouble. More tea?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“The doctor was… well, you know, being old friends, like you are.”

“He was prickly, even in college,” I guessed.

“That he was. He wrestled all through prep school and college, as I’m sure you know. He told me once that wrestling was the truest expression of his inner nature. All that twisting and violence, the domination by the man on top. And I don’t think he changed much over the years.”

“What about Julia?”

“The missus is a little more complicated. But she is a kind soul, a sweet woman who I took to right away. We have a special bond. It might not seem it, but she needs taking care of, and in her own way she lets me do just that. The poor missus didn’t understand what she was getting into when she married the doctor.”

“What was she getting into, Gwen?”

Gwen lifted up her teacup, took a sip. “It was a marriage, Mr. Taylor. And, if I can confide-”

“Of course you can.”

“Some loves die hard and some never die at all.”

“Are you talking about Julia’s love for Dr. Denniston?”

“No, dear, I’m not.”

I turned my head to hide the emotions that must have flitted across my face. Was ours the old love that had never died in Julia? Of course it was, and it was indescribably sweet to hear how she had described it to someone else. And if I were to be true to myself, I had to admit that our love held the very same place in my heart. So maybe my foolish hopes from the night before had not been so foolish after all. Suddenly, in the midst of the current darkness, there seemed to be something bright over the horizon, if I could only steer us past the shoals. I looked around at the richness of the furnishings, the sturdy bones of the manse, the housekeeper who seemed to come along with the deed. Julia, my darling Julia.

“Where’s Julia now?” I said with complete disingenuousness.

“She’s still being held by the police. But we expect her back home tomorrow.”

“We?”

“I and her lawyer. Clarence Swift.” She sniffed a bit, as if at a peculiar smell. “Do you want to see where it happened?”

“I don’t know. Do I?”

“He was your friend. You should see it, as a memorial, don’t you think? Maybe leave a token like they do at those street-corner shrines whenever a child gets shot in the city.”

“Could I finish up my pie first?”

“Of course, dear. Do you have enough whipped cream with that?”

After putting down my fork and smacking my lips – I hadn’t been lying, about the pecan pie at least – I followed Gwen out of the living room into the wide central hall. Toward the rear of the house, there was a pair of closed double doors on the other side of the hallway and a piece of yellow tape wrapped around the door handles.