She finally turned off the faucets and dried her hands. “Either your brother got it very wrong, or he was teasing me. Or you’re being played.”
“What are we talking about?”
“Nick. Joel said he was gay.”
I laughed, which lightened nothing. I tried, “Joel was teasing you, Ma. It was his way of avoiding the topic of Nick and me as a possible couple.”
“Is he bisexual?”
“Not bisexual. Not homosexual. Heterosexual.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“When did this start?”
First day I saw him, I thought. “It’s new. Since Christmas.”
She tore a paper towel from the nearby roll and wiped her eyes.
I said, “Please tell me you’re not crying over this.”
“I’m not . . . not really.”
“I still don’t understand what you’d find upsetting, unless it’s your lying son.”
She finally turned away from the sink and faced me. “I knew this time would come—big goings-on in the family . . .” She pointed every which way—me, Nick, the police. “And even though I’m furious with your father, we’re still your parents. When something goes wrong, my first impulse is to pick up the phone and call him. But I don’t make that call, which means he’s won.”
I said, “Is that a reference to terrorists—that if you don’t go about your normal business then Dad the adulterer wins? Because I don’t really see the parallel. You can certainly call Daddy. He’d probably be relieved you were talking to him.” And while I had her at close range, I whispered, “Did you get the stuff?”
“Affirmative,” she whispered.
I patted her purse. “Safe and sound?”
“In the zippered compartment where I keep my pills.”
I heard footsteps on the cellar steps—Nick’s. “There’s an army of them downstairs—a photographer, a videographer, a guy taking notes on every single thing said or done.”
“I asked about that,” said my mother. “They videotape everything in case it goes to trial. Even up here, on their way in. The whole house.”
“Not upstairs?” I asked.
“Just their path from the porch to here and down there,” she said.
“Which reminds me,” Nick said. “Mission accomplished?”
Not as happily conspiratorial as before, she said, “Yes. Found it.”
“Good work.”
“I never said I wanted to drive around town with it in my possession.”
I translated her frosty tone for him. “Mom did a little snooping upstairs. She noticed your room looked unoccupied.”
“And that’s not cool?” he asked.
She didn’t answer except to say, “I’d hardly call it snooping.”
“Did you see anything downstairs?” I asked him. “Do we know any more?”
“They’re ripping up the plywood. They knew there would be a cement subfloor underneath it, and there is.”
“Is there any chance it’s money buried down there?” my mother asked. “Or jewelry, or papers of some kind?”
I said, “The warrant said ‘blood.’ You can’t go to court and get a warrant to search for bloodstains if you’re really looking for buried treasure.”
“Why don’t you go back down?” my mother asked Nick.
I said, “My turn.” I took the stairs even more carefully than usual, hand over hand on the railing. The usually dimly lit cellar was now illuminated by spotlights that looked movie set–ish and, indeed, a whole crew was bustling around. Brian, seated and supervising from the bottom step, rose to let me pass.
I asked if I could talk to him for a minute.
“How about when we finish up here?”
I asked, “Can you tell me whose blood you’re looking for?”
“No.”
“No you don’t know yet, or no you can’t tell me?”
“Faith? How would we know? We need to test it and find a relative or most likely exhume a body or bodies to even make a match.”
“Exhume . . . like here?”
“No. From their graves. If they were buried, that is.”
“Ugh. Exhuming a dead body always struck me as the creepiest thing imaginable, and the creepiest job! The poor guy who has to open the coffin—”
“That would be me,” said a heretofore silent member of what Brian was calling the unit.
I said, “Oh, sorry. I’m sure you’re used to it.” The two were methodically crowbarring their way under and across my plywood floor. I asked, “Wouldn’t there be a logical place to find blood? I mean, if someone died falling downstairs, wouldn’t they have bled here?” I pointed to my own feet, a yard from the bottom of the stairs.
“Depends,” Brian said. “Rick over there”—the man waved—“is a blood-splatter expert . . . Guys, it’s five forty-five. Sean has basketball tonight, and I can’t miss another game.”
Excuse me. Blood-splatter expert? Was that not a phrase that stopped any conversation cold? “If you find blood, then what?” I asked. “Are you looking for one person’s blood or several persons’?”
“Faith! Could we just leave it that someone might’ve died here, not accidentally?”
I said, “Okay, fine.” I watched for a minute or two. More patches being photographed and videographed. Samples being bagged and tagged. I asked if they’d found something.
“Maybe.”
I said, “In big cities, or at least on cop shows about big cities, they use a chemical that shows blood even after it’s washed away. They can tell if a washing machine was used to cover up the murderer’s bloody clothes. Even when the cycle is finished.”
“Is that right?” Brian asked. “Imagine that.” He made a little show of tiptoeing to my washing machine, lifting its lid, and peering in. “Just as I thought,” he said. “Let’s read her her rights.”
His partners laughed. I said, “Very droll. Are you going to fix my floor when this is all done?”
“We’ll submit your request to the district attorney,” Brian said.
I addressed the videographer, in case a future jury would be weighing in on my guilt by real estate association. “I just bought this house four months ago. I wasn’t even born when the previous owner might’ve killed someone.”
Brian said, “Very nice. Did everybody hear that?”
Nods.
“It’s almost six,” Brian repeated. “Let’s call it a day.” And to me: “I’m sure I don’t have to ask you not to disturb anything. Don’t even go near it.”