Shades of Grey (2 page)

‘Mr Grey, I miss you,’ she couldn’t resist saying out loud. Immediately, she regretted it. What would her jerk room-mate say if he’d heard?

‘Tim, are you there?’ She hiked up the stairs, desperate to shed the pantyhose. If Suze had still been living with her, or any woman for that matter, Dulcie would have started to peel them off as soon as she walked in the door.

Over the top stair, she could see a large dark spot on the industrial tan rug, reaching from behind the sofa into the middle of the carpet. Great. Dulcie and Suze had lived in this apartment close to four years, but only in the past two months with Tim had the place begun to show its age. She closed her eyes. ‘Tim?’ She was going to have to say something. Not that it would do any good. ‘
Tim
!’

With that yell, she made it up the last two stairs and looked around. The spot was huge, a wet-looking stain that seemed to be spreading still. And inside the dark spot was something white, like a fleshy spider. Something that looked very much like a hand. Taking two steps forward, she peeked behind the sofa’s raised and padded side, to see that the fleshy spider was indeed a hand, and that it was attached to an arm that extended out of a familiar ‘Beer Good!’ T-shirt. Dulcie blinked, not believing what was before her. Cat or no cat, pantyhose or not, Tim was beyond teasing her now. Instead, he was lying on his back by the sofa on the living room rug, with her mother’s second-best carving knife in his chest.

Two

Dulcie couldn’t move. For several long moments the day, the heat, even her pantyhose were forgotten as she stood there staring. The blade, still shiny in spots, and the black wooden handle, always a bitch to clean, held her like a magnet. The edges of the room began to dim.

Then, suddenly, to her right, she saw a flash of movement – of grey fur – and she turned. That cat! How had it gotten by her? She took a step toward the kitchen, the spell broken.

‘Kitty! Where are you?’ Was she speaking? No, though she had half formed the words, meaning to chase the stray down the steps, the voice she’d heard was in her own head. Still, had she heard something?

Dulcie, please, go back outside. Go outside and call 911.
She was losing it; that much was clear.
I did try to warn you, you know.
Stepping back, her eyes averted from the still, lifeless form on the living room floor, she hastily descended the stairs and closed the door behind her. The rain had begun in earnest, big fat drops that kicked up the dust on the sidewalk and street. The wet felt good, soaking through her thin summer dress.

She should call the police. She should notify someone. But when she reached for her bag, she realized she’d dropped it, inside. She looked up at her own front door. No, she didn’t need any eerie voices to tell her not to go back into the apartment. Her neighbors, though, they were an option. As thunder began to rumble she ran down her stoop and began banging on the door of the first-floor apartment. Helene, still in her nurse’s uniform, answered.

‘Dulcie, what’s wrong?’ Helene’s broad, dark face immediately assumed a look of professional concern, and Dulcie realized that the wet on her cheeks came from tears as well as rain.

‘It’s Tim.’ Dulcie gasped for breath.

Helene ran a hand over her short, cropped curls and rolled her eyes.

‘That full-of-himself frat boy done something again?’

‘He’s not— He wasn’t—’ The sky rumbled and Helene reached out to pull the younger woman inside. Dulcie shook her off. ‘It’s— He’s—’ A crack of thunder burst the air and both of them jumped. Dulcie was crying in earnest now, desperate to get the words out.

Helene was staring at her, puzzled, maybe a little annoyed. She’d have worked a long day, too. Dulcie closed her eyes and saw a pair of feline green eyes staring back. Focus was the key. She took a breath.

‘It is Tim, Helene.’ She opened her eyes, her mind clearing. ‘But not what you think. I came home and the door was open, and Tim was just lying there, Helene. He’s lying on my living room carpet, and I’m pretty sure he’s dead.’

Two hours later, Dulcie was sipping sweet, hot tea liberally laced with rum. It wasn’t a cocktail she’d ever have thought of, but sitting on Helene’s sofa, wrapped in a blanket, it surely hit the spot.

The police had taken over her apartment, she remembered that. After the sudden storm, she and Helene and a growing crowd of neighbors had waited outside as the lights flashed and uniforms scurried about. They’d had plenty of questions for her, too, particularly the portly older detective who seemed to be in charge. What had she seen? Had she touched anything? Dulcie had been over and over her horrible homecoming so many times, she could no longer tell what had actually happened: the man she had seen on the street – he’d probably been walking from the T, same as her; the car that had sped by; the voice she was sure she’d heard – no, that bit she kept to herself. No need to have any of them thinking she was nuttier than she was. But she did tell the stout detective that the door had been open, and that she must have dropped her bag.

‘You saw your room-mate lying on the floor, and you continued into the apartment?’ He ran his hand back through what remained of greasy black hair. ‘Toward the kitchen?’

‘Well, no. Not really.’ She remembered turning away from the body, but not what she’d been planning to do. Had she been going to proceed through the kitchen and upstairs to her room? Ignore the body in the living room? That’s when it hit her: she’d seen the cat again, the grey long-hair who must have followed her in. She’d turned toward the running cat, and he’d told her to get out of the apartment. She was sure of it. She’d tried to explain to the detective then; tried to tell the older man about the strange voice she was hearing – a voice she’d never heard before but that seemed to be coming from the cat. She’d told him that she’d seen it pass by her, and that its movement – a blur of silver fur – had broken her out of her stupor, finally gotten her to move. He’d tut-tutted and ‘there there’d’ her. Clearly, he thought she was nuts. Ah, well, at least at that point, he’d decided to release her into Helene’s care.

‘A grey long-hair, you say? Oh, she had a cat like that,’ she had heard her neighbor explaining. ‘Silky like a Persian, only without that ugly pushed-in face. She had to have it put down, poor girl. She was that upset – and her room-mate? He didn’t understand. He used to tease her.’

The detective had looked over at her again at this point, his eyes narrowing under heavy black brows, and Dulcie didn’t think it was with sympathy. But she’d been at work whenever –
it –
had happened. Hadn’t she? Dulcie recalled her slow trudge up Suffolk Street and how she had paused when she’d seen that beautiful grey cat. She thought of the open door – and the spreading puddle around Tim’s body.

Her teeth were chattering now, and the booze in the tea sloshed around in her belly. Huddling in the blanket, she turned toward the back of the sofa. If only she could stop thinking about that puddle, the darkness that had looked almost black on the dingy carpet. If only her stomach would settle down. Were the police still in her apartment upstairs? Had her landlord started to clean it? Helene had called the emergency number for her.

‘You’re paying rent on that place, child. And he sure has insurance to cover a new carpet!’ Dulcie shivered and pressed her head between the sofa cushions. Almost, she thought, she could hear a vacuum cleaner, or maybe one of those carpet shampoo machines, in the apartment above, the low hum coming through the ceiling and her protective cocoon of upholstery. Whirr, whirr . . . the sound was strangely relaxing, rhythmic and even. Whirr, whirr . . . just a little, she thought, like a cat’s purr; like when Mr Grey would jump up on the bed as she drifted into sleep. Whirr . . . whirr . . . and she was out.

Three

The funeral was a mistake. Dulcie had known that from the moment she’d walked into the chapel and realized that her long, black Indian skirt was completely wrong for the day, being neither tailored nor linen. She shouldn’t be here. She didn’t fit. She’d wanted to skip the whole thing, forget that Tim had ever happened, and spend the day curled up with her books. But Suze had insisted that she go.

‘You were his room-mate, Dulce. It’s only polite.’ Although Suze was a couple of hundred miles away, Dulcie could picture her room-mate clearly: tall and lean, her no-nonsense dark hair cut short and chic as well as cool. She’d said it was sweltering in DC, so she’d probably be wearing her old Harvard swim team T-shirt and shorts. ‘You’ve got to go.’

‘He’s not going to care, Suze.’ Dulcie settled in for a long comfort talk, stretching out her own shorter and significantly softer legs on to the sofa. ‘I mean, his family doesn’t know me from Eve.’ It was Friday. Dulcie was back in her own place by then. She’d rearranged the furniture in a desperate attempt to reclaim the space, and had dragged the sofa over toward the window so she wouldn’t have to see the spot where Tim had lain. Not that there was any actual spot by then. The stained brown carpet had been replaced with a strange green shag that looked like it belonged on the bottom of an aquarium. It was probably all that the landlord could get in a hurry, but Dulcie was grateful for the distraction. ‘Did I tell you about this new carpet?’

‘Three times, Dulcie, but I understand it’s weird. And, yeah, you’ve got to go. It doesn’t matter if his family acknowledges you. You were his room-mate. Besides, don’t you want the cops to think you’re mourning?’

Dulcie had grunted. What did she care what the cops thought? They couldn’t suspect her, could they? She considered her toenails. Should she stick with the neon-blue polish? She had already changed the color twice. But her attempt to distract herself failed; Suze’s comment on protocol had hit home. That was the kind of thing she’d never learned, growing up in a series of cooperative yurts. Lucy – Dulcie never called her ‘Mom’ – had taught her about compost, sure. But Emily Post? No way. Coming to Cambridge from the social equivalent of Mars, Dulcie relied on Suze for anything approaching etiquette. A law student from a comparatively normal suburban upbringing, Suze could talk about social dos and don’ts with a bit of wry distance, but at least she knew what the rules were.

‘Wear something dark,’ she had said, and Dulcie wondered just how well her friend remembered how limited her wardrobe was. ‘Black’s really just for the family.’

Once they’d signed off, Dulcie had gone through her closet, pushing aside both the budget-conscious rayon dresses that served for work and her favorite colorful cottons. Despite Suze’s warning, the skirt she’d settled on had seemed perfect; cascading black tiers and long enough so that she could get away with bare legs as the steamy heat of July continued. Paired with a black scoop-neck T-shirt, it looked summery as well as appropriate. She’d even been grateful, just a little, for an excuse to leave the apartment she’d once considered so homey. Until she walked into St Paul’s on the Hill, that is. The moment she had entered that bastion of high WASP worship, Dulcie had realized that once again she was the hippie’s kid; too messy, too casual, too . . . well, too Dulcie for this crowd.

The cool, dim chapel could have been the staging area for a J. Crew photo shoot. People were mulling, there was no other word for it, in perfect refinement: their conversation soft, their appearances flawless; their hair not captive to the swelling humidity. Dulcie recognized a few of Tim’s drinking buddies, preppie-looking ex-jocks, their smooth tans almost hiding where they were beginning to develop double chins. Even with the extra poundage, they looked pedigreed, the show dogs to her stray cat. Short, rounded, with an unruly mop of brown curls that the sun had only lightened to copper, Dulcie tried to ignore the feeling that she didn’t fit, though the occasional cool glance directed at her didn’t help. In response, she turned away and scanned the rest of the crowd, hoping for anything like a friendly face.

‘Alana!’ Never before had she considered the tall blonde a welcome sight. But right now she was grateful to spy Tim’s girlfriend in the small cluster of equally wispy beauties who had gathered by the side of the chapel. At least the featherweight blonde in the navy linen sheath was someone she had met. ‘I’m so sorry.’

The perfect oval face that turned toward her could have come off the cover of a magazine, with flawless skin untouched by lines or worry and a rosebud mouth delicately tinted peach. Dulcie looked into her wide-set hazel eyes, rimmed with a touch of turquoise. Girls like her must know the secret to run-proof mascara. ‘How are you doing?’

Alana blinked twice, so slowly that Dulcie could see her thoughts processing. Another girl glanced over.

‘I’m Dulcie – Tim’s room-mate?’ The perfectly shaped eyebrows arched a little higher. Dulcie turned to the rest of the group. ‘Tim’s subletting my room-mate’s room in my duplex,’ she explained. ‘He was, anyway.’

‘Oh, yes. Daisy. Thank you for coming.’ As if remembering her role, Alana’s pretty mouth pouted a bit. ‘I still can’t believe he’s gone. I keep waiting for him to text me.’

‘It must be awful. I’m so sorry. You must be devastated.’ The blonde blinked again at that, her smooth face blank with incomprehension. An image of a cow flashed across Dulcie’s mind, and immediately she could have kicked herself. The girl must be in shock. She should cut a grieving girlfriend some slack.

‘You’re the
room-mate
?’
One of Alana’s buddies turned to Dulcie. ‘You’re the one who
found
him?’ At that, they all perked up. Suddenly, she was interesting.

‘Uh, yeah. When I came home from work.’ A soft murmur, like the lowing of cattle, went up from the four friends, all blondes, except for one dark-haired beauty who probably styled herself as ‘exotic’. Dulcie felt weirder than ever, a ladybug about to be gobbled up from the grass. ‘It was pretty awful.’

As if she had just realized that her friends’ attention had drifted, Alana suddenly sobbed. Immediately, the crew turned back toward her. The brunette shot Dulcie a look, lifting a dark-berry upper lip in a sneer. Clearly, this was all her fault. ‘Honey, are you going to be all right?’ Another of the friends put her arm around Alana’s perfectly tanned shoulder, turning her away from the offending sight of Dulcie. Suddenly a tall man stepped over, his back wide enough to block Alana from Dulcie’s view.