Sugar and Spice Chapter Five

 

Chapter Five

October 17 Friday Morning

The Jackson Home

Cambridge, Massachusetts

MARJORIE JACKSON ROLLED over in bed. The alarm would go off in 15 minutes, not that she would fall asleep. She had only napped all night, checking the clock at 1:59 and at 2:19. After that she stopped looking.

Emma, her nine-old daughter, slept next to her. Even in the limited hall light through the crack in the door, she could see that her daughter’s face looked puffy from crying.

The bedroom door opened. Brad tiptoed in. All her husband wore was his underwear, probably from yesterday. She watched him remove clean socks and underwear from his chest of drawers.

Had he slept in Emma’s room? On one of the couches downstairs? She had no idea when he came home last night.

How many times had she left a message on his phone? Over a dozen at least. She never worried about him cheating. She knew his work at the MIT lab was at a peak point that required his extra hours. In the short time they shared, he would talk about it even though she understood almost nothing.

More than once, he’d thanked her for listening because it helped him sort out whatever he needed to sort. She once heard him tell a friend at one of their few social events with other professors how supportive his wife was about his work. If he only knew her resentment.

Their Putnam Avenue apartment, outside Central Square, Cambridge meant that he could walk to work and not waste time waiting for the T or fighting traffic. She, too, could take the T one stop to Harvard Square where she was the secretary, read nursemaid, to the history department’s professors, a role she loved. She must call and tell them to say she couldn’t come in today. She wouldn’t say why.

Moving quietly to not wake Emma, she entered the bathroom, sitting on the toilet while Brad finished showering.

“Good morning.” He dripped on the blue mat as he reached for his dark blue towel. Marjorie color-coded their towels, so she knew who to yell at for not hanging them up.

“We need to talk.”

“I can’t. I gotta get back to the lab pronto.” Brad was one of those scientists who if given a choice between breathing and working on this project, he probably would grab a cannister of oxygen and continue working.

Still, she had never expected to be married. How it happened was what she called a lucky accident. They met on the T when the Red Line’s electricity stopped working. He had a flashlight and had sat next to her.

At 39 she had been single half by choice. As she watched her friends fall in love, marry, fall out of love and divorce, she felt grateful for her single status. Her friends might complain that hubby wouldn’t eat olives or red peppers. She could prepare and eat what she wanted.

So, at 40, when he asked her to marry him and he didn’t seem to care about things like what he ate as long as he ate, she walked down the aisle of the Unitarian Church, much to her parents’ relief.

One year later her beautiful, sweet, bright Emma was born. The landlady upstairs babysat when Marjorie went back to work. No way would she give up her salary in case her marriage exploded like so many, and besides, she loved her professors’ sometimes eccentric personalities.

“You need to call in and say someone has to step in,” she said.

“No way.” Brad dropped his towel on the floor, stepped into his jockey shorts.

“This isn’t a choice. We have to be at the Cambridge Police Station at 11 with Emma. Tom Ganley will meet us there.”

Brad had one leg in his jeans. “Why do we need to be there? What does our lawyer need to be there for?”

“Finish dressing and meet me in the kitchen. I’ll bring you up to date.”

Marjorie tried to think the best way to condense what and how to tell Brad what happened yesterday. His habit of shutting his phone off was maddening, not that she needed to call him that often, but yesterday was an unexpected emergency.

She had answered the door thinking Emma had forgotten her key. It was her friend Alice’s turn to drop the girls off after dance class and when Emma hadn’t been at home, she had checked first with her landlady upstairs. If Marjorie wasn’t home, Emma automatically went to the second floor flat.

Her daughter wasn’t there. She was walking down the street, still in her school uniform, with a man and a woman. Normally after dance class she put on jeans and a jersey that they had packed the same morning along with her dance clothes and ballet slippers. They must be in her backpack.

The man wore a suit over a turtleneck and a scarf around his neck. The woman wore a pants suit.

The photo on the man’s badge matched his face. His name was Robert Bunker. The woman ‘s identity card said she was Samantha Lee. Both were detectives.

Several thoughts ran through Majorie’s head. Lee looks a little Japanese or maybe Chinese. Maybe biracial, not that it was important. What were the police doing with her daughter? Were they for real? Why weren’t they in uniform? Maybe detectives don’t wear uniforms. Why was Emma crying?

She’d never seen a real police ID from anywhere, much less Cambridge’s.

When Samantha Lee let go of Emma’s hand, the child threw herself at her mother, wrapping her arms around Marjorie’s waist. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m . . .” the rest of what she said was lost in sobs.

“May we come in?” the woman had asked.

Marjorie indicated they should follow her into the living room. She kept her arms around her daughter, whose head was buried in her mother’s side. She used her free hand to invite the police to sit before sitting on the couch in the middle where the police perched on the edges.

“What’s this about?” She expected Detective Bunker to answer, at least she guessed he was the older. If he were male, he’d be the senior officer. It probably said on the badge that she was too bewildered to absorb.

Bunker looked at Lee.

She titled her head as if to ask, “Are you sure,” but a tiny movement of his hand convinced her. “We are investigating if your daughter and three of her friends plotted to kill another student, a boy.”

“They’re children.”

Bunker leaned forward. “There are many instances throughout history of children killing children.”

Most of the killers, however, were boys, Marjorie thought. Wait, she didn’t know that for sure. Her daughter? Plotting a murder?

“We want you to come to the Cambridge Police Station tomorrow at 11.”

“Will she be arrested?”

“It’s for questioning.” Samantha Lee handed Marjorie a paper with the police building photo in the upper left corner with a map, address and website. Marjorie shifted her weight enough under Emma’s grip to put the paper on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“I would suggest you contact a lawyer.” Marjorie noticed that Lee did not look at Bunker, who frowned at her.

“Can you tell me more, please?”

“Ongoing investigation. No murder was committed, but it looks as if one was prevented.”

Marjorie felt as if a fog came through the room hiding everyone from view. A video she’d seen before going to bed last night of a mother gorilla hugging her baby, who had just tripped and fallen, flashed through her mind. She tightened her grip on Emma who was still sobbing.

Why was she having trouble focusing? “Maybe the girls were just joking,” Marjorie tried forcing herself to clear her mind. She’d never read how-to-raise-your-child advice covering police telling you that your daughter had been plotting a murder. Her daughter? Her sweet, loving daughter?

“We don’t think so.” Bunker spoke loudly to be heard over Emma’s crying.

Marjorie held up on one hand to silence him. “Let me calm her and then we can talk.”

“Of course.”

With both hands she plied Emma away and held her at arm’s length. “You must stop crying. Stop crying.” Marjorie had no idea how long it took to quiet the child. Only when Emma was reduced to sniffles and gulps, her face and eyes red, snot running down her cheeks, did she allow her back in her arms. Marjorie stroked the child’s head. “I’ll put her to bed and come back and talk with you.” When they didn’t stop her, she was surprised.

She put Emma in her the child’s bed and stretched out beside her spoon style. Within minutes, Emma was asleep. Covering her daughter with the duvet, Marjorie returned to the police, half expecting, half hoping they would have gone.

They hadn’t.

She didn’t apologize for taking so long. “She’s asleep. What is this about? A plot to murder . . .”

“Tomorrow, at the police station. Eleven.” Bunker pointed to the sheet of paper with the address, a map, the closest T and bus stops.

“You or her father or both must be present when we talk with Emma. You may want to bring your lawyer.” Lee covered Marjorie’s hand with hers. “I know this is difficult.”

As soon as they left, she tried to call Tom Ganley, whose wife Beth worked in the same role as Marjorie only for the English department.

The two couples didn’t socialize. Brad wasn’t a man who liked couple dinners or movie nights. Marjorie and Beth had tried it and decided it was better that they do things such as girls’ night out and frequent lunches during the workday than involve the men.

“I’ll be there, but I suspect you’ll want a different kind of lawyer,” Tom said as soon as she explained what had just happened. “Since it’s already after seven, I doubt if you will be able to find one by eleven tomorrow morning.”

Now she had to condense this entire debacle into a few sentences to make Brad understand that for once family must come before work.

“You must be at the police station by 11 today. Tom Ganley, Emma and I will be there.”

“I can’t.”

“She’s being questioned for attempted murder. If you aren’t there, I will ask Tom to represent me in a divorce because there’s no point to this family.”

Note: Chapter six will be published January 7th.