Superstition

23

Sam left for Riverside Drive about eleven. It wasn't just Joanna's flu that muted their enthusiasm for sex; their hearts and minds weren't in it either. When they kissed and his hands stroked the warmth of her body through the layers of cotton and nylon fiber she was wrapped in, she felt a rush of adrenaline that miraculously cleared her sinuses and quickened her breathing. But there was too much on both their minds to sustain the moment. He kissed her a last time at the door.

“Are you sure you wouldn't like me to just, you know, stay?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I'm fine. If you have no objection, I'm going to call Maggie in the morning and get her side of all this.”

“Sure-it's your story. Write it the way you want.”

She locked the door after him, then went back to bed and replayed the tape that he'd left with her. Occasionally she jotted down a note as some thought struck her that she might use in her piece. It was after one a.m. when she drifted off into a surprisingly dreamless sleep. She awoke at seven and went immediately to her computer, where she spent over an hour getting her material into order and sketching out an introduction to the story. Afterward she realized that not only did the flu symptoms seem to have almost vanished, but she felt as energized as if she'd had a week's total rest instead of just a day's illness. She breakfasted on coffee, juice, and cereal, then took a leisurely bath, got dressed, and put on a little makeup. She looked and felt herself again. Then she dialed the home number that she had for Maggie.

The phone was picked up on the second ring. The voice that answered wasn't Maggie's. It belonged to a younger woman, and there was a hesitancy in it that told Joanna that something was wrong. “Is this Maggie McBride's number?” she asked.

“It is.” The voice broke slightly.

“Could I speak to her, please? This is Joanna Cross.”

“I'm afraid that isn't possible, Miss Cross. My mother passed away during the night.”

Heather McBride was in her mid-thirties, slim, and somewhat severely elegant in the way that career women in New York, and especially on Wall Street, tend to be. But there was also, Joanna recognized at once, a gentleness about her that made her Maggie's daughter. It was oddly moving to sit with this composed but clearly heartbroken woman in Maggie's spotlessly tidy living room at the back of the vast apartment on Park Avenue where she had been housekeeper.

“My mother had suffered from a heart condition for ten years,” she said. “She'd come to terms only recently with the fact that she was going to need open-heart surgery in the near future. But she was on medication, and her doctors didn't think there was any immediate danger.” She paused, drawing in a slightly unsteady breath. “Obviously they were wrong.”

“Will there be an autopsy?”

Miss McBride shook her head. “I've spoken to my brother, and we don't think it's necessary. He's on his way now from Portland, Oregon,” she added, as though feeling the need to explain why he wasn't present with them as they spoke. “May I ask, Miss Cross,” she said after a moment's hesitation, “just what your involvement with my mother was? I don't recall her ever speaking of you.”

Joanna told as much of the story as she felt she had to, and as little as she thought she could get away with. Heather McBride listened, gazing mostly at some point on the carpet in front of her chair, occasionally nodding thoughtfully. “I know my mother was interested in that kind of thing,” she said when Joanna had finished. “I'm afraid it's all rather alien to me. We never discussed it much.”

There was a ring at the small door at the back of the apartment that was Maggie's private entrance. It had taken Joanna some time to find it even after Heather's careful instructions over the phone.

Heather got up to answer it, returning a moment later with a tall, thin-faced man in his forties wearing the black suit and stiff white collar of a priest. “This is Reverend Collingwood,” she said, “minister of the Unitarian Church here that my mother attended.” She introduced Joanna as a friend of her mother's and they shook hands.

“I have to say, Miss Cross, I've heard your name,” he said. “As recently as last night, in fact, when Mrs. McBride came to see me.”

Joanna sensed Heather's interest pick up as sharply as her own. “Last night?” she said. “Do you mind if I ask what time that was?”

“She telephoned around nine and asked if she could come to see me. I could tell that there was something worrying her. It was unlike Maggie to make a drama out of nothing, so I invited her to come over right away. She arrived fifteen or twenty minutes later.”

“Can you tell us what she wanted?” Joanna asked, then immediately darted an apologetic glance in Heather's direction. “I'm sorry, it's really not my place to ask these questions.”

Heather McBride made a brief dismissive gesture. They were questions she wanted answers to herself. “That is if you're able to tell us, Reverend,” she said.

He smiled thinly. “We're not a confessional religion. We have no strict rules on these matters. Confidentiality is respected if requested and when appropriate. Your mother made no such request last night, and I see no reason not to answer your question.” He turned his gaze on Joanna. She sensed an element of accusation in it that made her uncomfortable. She could see the suspicion building in Heather McBride's face that she, Joanna, bore some responsibility in Maggie's death that she had failed so far to be open about. She was acutely reminded of the sense of responsibility for Murray Ray's death that she had not even now wholly thrown off.

“Maggie told me all about your experiment to create a ghost, Miss Cross. I must tell you that in my view it is a misguided and possibly a dangerous endeavor. Maggie, too, had been coming to think of it that way for some time, so she told me. The events of last night, which I imagine you are familiar with, only confirmed her in that belief.”

Joanna held up a hand. “Can I say something before we start making any accusations? Maggie was a willing volunteer and knew exactly what she was doing. I'm more sorry than I can say about what's happened. I was very fond of Maggie. The whole group was. But this was a properly run and monitored experiment, and anyone was free to pull out whenever they liked. In fact, although I wasn't there myself last night, I understand that this was what Maggie had decided to do.”

“Miss Cross, I'm making no accusations. Maggie's death appears to have been from physical causes arising out of a known clinical condition. But if you will allow me to say so, I think she and the rest of you involved have gotten yourselves into something deeper than you'd bargained for. If you'll take my advice you'll stop now, before anything else happens.”

“I'm sorry, I have to be clear about one thing.”

They both turned to Heather McBride, who had spoken.

“Are you saying that my mother's death was from natural causes brought about by this ‘experiment’?” She gave the last word an emphasis that made it both suspect and somehow preposterous.

“I am saying,” said the Reverend Collingwood, picking his words with ponderous care, “that she believed something had been started which had to be stopped. She also believed that she was the one who was going to have to bear the main burden of doing that.”

“But why, for heaven's sake?” Joanna protested. “There were eight of us.”

There was a lugubrious piety in Collingwood's long face as he turned to look at her.

“She didn't believe that the rest of you were prepared to take the danger as seriously as she.”