My attention was suddenly dragged down from the roof of my car to the side mirror. I watched as an arm retreated back through the open window of a car that was parked a few lengths behind me, as if somebody had tossed out a cigarette butt. It occurred to me that meditating alone on a dark street is not the safest form of recreation for man, woman, or beast. A sudden memory of Sylvia Davis lying facedown in her lover’s coffin, and then of Muriel Rudolph’s contorted face, and then of the Jackal proffering his drugs to me as if he were offering his trophies in some bizarre courtship ritual gave me the energy to start the car and to drive home. I chose a route down major streets where there was still considerable traffic for as late as it was.
There were moments that night when I envied Lewis his drugged sleep. Muriel Rudolph kept me awake for a long time, as did her dead husband and his lover, and a pair of dilated, shiny black eyes that were focused steadily on me.
25
I didn’t wait for Russell Bissell to call me the next morning, but telephoned him first thing, from my office. I told him I’d already talked to my attorney, who had given her blessing to my desire to buy a prearrangement plan for my mother. I would like to sign the contract immediately, I said . . . could he see me now?
“Come on over anytime, Jenny.” His voice had that warm, lazy, liquid tone that pours out of salespeople when they successfully close a sale. “Will you be making your down payment by cash or check?” He laughed pleasantly. “I always have to ask. You wouldn’t believe how many little old ladies keep their life savings in hundred-dollar bills rolled up in coffeepots.”
I forced a responding chuckle and said, “Check.”
After Russell hung up, I thought about the visit that Sylvia Davis might have paid him the night she died. Beautiful, bachelor Russell must have seemed just what the doctor ordered for a lovely, lonely lady. But I wondered if she got the reception she expected.
With that on my mind, I placed a call to a local health club to speak to an old friend.
“Robbie?” I said when I was connected with Robert Morrison. “It’s Jenny Cain.”
“Wonderful!” he exclaimed, in the familiar warm voice that made everybody who knew him feel welcome in his life. “God, it’s been too long, lovey. I don’t suppose you’ve called to take advantage of our two-for-one membership sale, have you? I’ll sell you a year’s membership, and that gorgeous hunk of a guy you live with can get in free.”
I laughed. “You’d let him in free, anyway, Robbie.”
“You’re right.” His chuckle was warm and rich as plum pudding, a laugh that sounded as if it derived from a chubby body, not a tough, muscular one like Robbie’s. “He wouldn’t have any cop buddies he’d like to fix me up with, would he? I’ve always kind of liked authority figures.” The merry laugh rolled out of him again, giving no hint of the agonies of identity he had endured in his early life, including his time on the football squad in high school. Now, Robbie was about as well adjusted, as unself-conscious as anybody I knew, and his loving personality won over almost everybody and made him extremely popular in the small, discreet gay community in Port Frederick.
I decided to be as straightforward as he was.
“Robbie, if I mention a name to you, will you tell me which way he swings?”
“Only if it’s a public swing, lovey.”
“I understand, and if it isn’t, I know you won’t tell anybody I asked. His name is Russell Bissell.”
“The beauteous Bissell?” Robbie whistled lightly. “I can tell you that now and then he drops into my favorite bar, but that might not make him anything but curious. Or thirsty.” Robbie laughed. “He does allow the rest of us to buy him drinks, sort of like the prince consorting with the commoners. Royalty doesn’t carry cash, you know. But he’s not a regular, and I’ve never seen him leave with anybody. Jenny, I wouldn’t want to plant a seed here that won’t grow flowers. Maybe he just likes to get away from all the women who’d like to catch him and eat him for breakfast.”
“That,” I said, “is entirely possible.”
“On the other hand,” Robbie said, thoughtfully, “I know some mighty ravenous men, too. About the only place he’d be safe is on a desert island, alone. And even then, I’d worry about the monkeys.”
“Thanks.” I laughed. “And I’ll think about the membership, seriously. My head still feels as if it’s under thirty, but my thighs are coming up on forty.”
Next, I called Lewis at the newspaper to suggest that we meet at police headquarters in two hours. I told him that I thought I’d figured out where Sylvia went after she left Friedman’s and that I was going over to the funeral home to see if I could confirm my suspicion that she attempted to get a little tender loving care from Russell Bissell.
“So if I don’t show up, Lewis,” I said, “tell Ailey to check all the newly buried coffins for an extra inhabitant, a tall female with long blond hair.”
“You sure you want to do this alone?”
“Well, I don’t see why not,” I said, truthfully. “After all, it’s broad daylight, and there will be plenty of other people around. What can happen?”
“That’s what George Custer said before he rode into the Valley of the Little Bighorn,” Lewis said in an ominous, knowing tone, “and look what happened to him.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
In truth, I was nervous, but not necessarily because I feared Russell. I didn’t particularly want to run into Aaron Friedman, and I felt equally anxious about the possibility of seeing Stan, because if I saw him, I would feel compelled to ask him about his affair with Sylvia Davis, and the blackmailing. The truth was, I simply hadn’t believed Aaron and Sonya when they denied Stan’s affair with Sylvia. Ironically, the affair and the blackmailing had too much of the ring of truth when the Jackal told it. I thought of all the years I had known Stan and liked him, and of the photograph in his office of the pretty woman and the three children, and I felt disappointed and saddened. Well, Geof often said that criminal investigation was the peeling away of illusions, and sometimes the peeling was painful. I had to visit two water fountains and a public rest room before I worked up the courage to walk back into the funeral home.
As it turned out, Francie ushered me right into Russell’s office, then started to shut the door behind her, I reached out for the inside knob and tugged the door away from her grip. “Do you mind if we leave it open?” I smiled at Russell. “It’s kind of stuffy in here.”
He didn’t object.
I moved a chair up close to his desk so that I could be seen from the outer office but not overheard. He was pulling papers out of a desk drawer, and when he looked up, he seemed startled to find me so close to him. He pushed his wheeled chair back slightly from his desk, opening more space between us.
“Russell,” I cleared, my throat to cover the shakiness in my voice, “before I sign anything, may I ask you another question?”
“Of course.” His smile held all the confidence of a coach whose team leads the game by a field goal in the final seconds. “Ask me anything you want, Jenny.”
The night before, he’d used that old sales gimmick, the “give a choice” close on me. I thought I would try it on him. “The night Sylvia died, did she visit you at your home before midnight or after midnight?”
The other team seemed to have made a miraculous interception, because, the coach suddenly looked stunned and confused. In the face of his staring silence, I once again traced Sylvia’s path, claiming the police knew all about it, ending with, “. . . and after she left Friedman’s, she drove to your house, looking for a little love and comfort. Did you give it to her, Russell?”
“No.” The magnificent blond head began to shake violently back and forth in denial. “It isn’t true.”
“Which isn’t?”
“The last time I saw her was at the party.”
“No, no,” I said with a patient air. “I just told you the police know all about her visiting you. They have a witness, Russell
, a neighbor who saw her go into your house.”
The time-honored lie seemed to work, because he suddenly put his head in his hands. When he looked up at me, the handsome features had gone haggard and nearly ugly with fear. “Oh God, I killed her.”
I stared at him. Had he just admitting to killing her, just like that? Yes, there it was, and it wouldn’t seem to sink into my dense skull. It couldn’t be this easy. If it were this easy, even Ailey would be a good cop. Could this be admissible in court? But wouldn’t they say I’d trapped the witness? No, that was crazy, I wasn’t a cop or a lawyer, just an ordinary citizen. But of course he would deny it, and they would never get him to admit it again. Oh Lord, who did I think I was, playing cop? All I had wanted was an admission that she was there, so I could take the news to Ailey. And now look what I had done! Not having the least idea what else to say, I repeated his words. “You killed her?”
“By sending her away.” His blue eyes were on me now, but I had the feeling he was staring into the past, down some vast psychic distance. His voice had softened to just the other side of tears. “I’ll always know I killed her, because I didn’t let her stay with me that night.”
Now there were tears in the blue eyes.
“But you didn’t strangle her,” I said, feeling an absurd relief that rested mainly on the hope that I hadn’t screwed up the investigation entirely.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters!”
“No,” he shook his head in obstinate misery. “Even if somebody hadn’t killed her, she’d have died on the highway, drunk as she was. Probably had a wreck and killed somebody else, too, a family of five or something. And I’d be responsible, because I sent her away. I should have let her stay, or driven her home, or something, God, something.”
“Why didn’t you want her, Russell? And why didn’t you tell the police she’d been there?”
He took a deep, shaky breath and stared down at the contracts on his desk. “Because they’d have asked me the same question you just asked . . . why did I send her away? I’m a single man, Jenny, and I live alone, and women . . . like me . . . and the police wouldn’t believe me if I said this beautiful woman came to my door and offered herself to me, and I made her leave.”
“Why did you make her leave?”
“Like I said.” His glance held mine for a second, then flickered, and fell. “I didn’t want her.”
“When did she leave, Russell?”
“About fifteen minutes after she got there. I told her she couldn’t stay, that I didn’t want her, and she asked to use the phone, and I let her, and then she left.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
He shook his head.
“Whom did she call, do you know?”
“I don’t know, honest to God, I don’t know. I just keep remembering how she looked when she left my house. She was crying and hugging herself and kind of stumbling, like a little girl, like this sad, lost, little girl.”
He sucked in another deep, shaky breath.
“Who do little girls want to talk to when they’re feeling sad and lost?”
“Mom or dad.”
I hadn’t realized I had spoken the question aloud, and I was startled to hear his voice. “What did you say, Russell?”
“She couldn’t have called her mom, because she lives out of town, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a long-distance call, at least I don’t think so. And she couldn’t call her dad, because he died when she was just a kid.” He looked up at me with blue eyes that were full of the tears of the self-pity of guilt. “Sylvia didn’t have a father.”
Oh yes, I thought immediately, grimly, she did.
Suddenly, I wanted very badly to talk to another woman.
“Is Beryl in the office today, Russell?”
He half rose out of his chair. “Why?”
“I want to talk to her, that’s all.”
“You can’t tell her about this.” His tone was urgent, pleading, and I suddenly had a distasteful sense of power. “She’s my boss. I might get fired if they find out. You can’t tell her.”
“Fired?” I found it hard to believe, but I had to accept that he knew better than I the limits of other people’s tolerance. “No, of course I won’t mention it.”
He admitted then that she was in the office.
“Russell.” At the door of his office, I looked back at him. “Go to the police, before they come to you. Tell them she was drunk and disgusting, tell them whatever you want, but tell them she was there and made a phone call and left again.”
He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “But I can’t prove she ever left.”
“Maybe they can,” I suggested, and gently closed his door. I hoped I had given him good advice. He could have taken his story to Geof, who would have respected his privacy, but would Ailey protect a man’s reputation when his own reputation as a detective was at stake? Without saying a word to another person, I already felt as if I had betrayed Russell Bissell. On the other hand, he might have killed her to keep her from betraying his homosexuality. Or maybe he had lied . . . maybe he’d had sex with, her and hated both himself and her afterwards . . .
I realized, sadly, it was a secret that wouldn’t keep.
26
I slipped into Beryl’s office just as she was putting on the jacket of her gray wool suit. “Miss Cain,” she said, and smiled warmly, her large gray eyes expressing her surprise at seeing me there.
“Jenny, please.” I stepped farther into her office. “Are you leaving?”
“Yes, I have a couple of sales calls to make.”
“Mind if I walk out with you?”
“Not at all.” Her smile was like a magnetic force pulling me out of the building after her. “Did Russell fix you up with a prearrangement plan?”
“Just about,” I lied. We were outside the front door by now, standing on the steps above the parking lot. “But that’s not what I need to ask you about, Beryl. It’s about Sylvia, and finding out who killed her.”
She stopped in her tracks and looked closely at me, as if seeing whether I were serious, or someone to take seriously. “She was a dear child, Jenny . . . sweet, hardworking, conscientious, and if there’s anything I can do to help find her murderer, I want to do it. I can’t imagine what I can tell you, or how telling you will help, but ask me anyway.”
“Actually, it’s about her husband.”
“Darryl?” She took my arm, began steering me down the steps. “Let’s talk as we walk, I’m running a little late. What can I tell you about Darryl Davis?”
“Did he want the divorce?”
“Lord, no.” Her voice was resonant, vibrant, a voice to match her appearance and the strength of her personality. I blessed her silently for being so willing to accept my curiosity without question; maybe she sensed my good intentions, or maybe she just liked to gossip. “It was killing him, I just know it was, because he adored her. But Darryl always gave her whatever she wanted, so I suppose he would have given her the divorce, too.”
“Didn’t he know about the others?”
She glanced at me. “The other men, you mean?”
“Yes,” I said, glad to be talking to another woman.
“Of course he did, but he understood.”
“Understood?” I stopped, pulling her to a halt as well.
She glanced at her watch, a pretty, delicate affair with a sprinkling of diamonds on it. “I told you, Darryl let her have anything she wanted, that’s the kind of lovely man he is. Maybe it’s not the sort of marriage you or I would like, although I don’t know . . . put that way, it doesn’t sound so bad!” She shook her head, smiled wryly. “But they were different from the rest of us, at least partly because of the difference in their ages, of course. They solved their problems in their own way, I guess,” She started moving again, so I did, too. “Sylvia was quite fond of him, really she was, and she was grateful to him for being so good to her. Darryl’s a good man, a fine
man. But she was young, and pretty, and restless, and well, you know how it is, sometimes it’s hard to keep them happy.”
“This is my car.” I opened the door and got in, not wanting to delay her any longer. “Some marriage,” I commented, turning the key in the ignition. Beryl remained beside my window.
“Oh well,” she said, and shrugged. “When they got married, everybody said it wouldn’t last, that she only felt sorry for him, and she’d grow up, get bored, and leave him. It was inevitable, really, that she would separate from him, like a child from her parent. That’s what he really was, Jenny, not so much a husband, as the daddy she never had. And she was a good daughter to Darryl, really she was—taking care of him, cooking for him, cleaning for him—until she figured out he was a grown man and he ought to be able to take care of himself. And, of course, she wanted to be more independent, too.”
I stared at her, thinking how uncanny it was that she had tracked my thoughts exactly. But then it was pretty obvious and just the sort of pop psychology a good barmaid would dispense along with her whiskey sours. It didn’t take a psychiatrist to figure this one out. I didn’t, however, think I should just swallow it whole. At least, I could check her sources.
“How do you know all this, Beryl?”
“Oh, we talked,” she said, and started to walk away. But then she turned back. “You know how it is. She knew I was older, and thought I was wiser.” Her chuckle was deep, rich, but there was a sadness to’ it. This barmaid operated from behind a desk in an office instead of from behind a bar, I thought, and she extended coffee with her sympathy, instead of liquor. I suspected, that Beryl Kamiski heard more “personnel matters” than Aaron Friedman, for all his dull, cautious decency, could ever hope to hear. She was saying, “It was pretty obvious to me, Jenny.” Of course it was, to any perceptive woman, and to any barmaid who has lived long enough and heard it all before.