“Well,” I said.
“Nutso.” Ted shook his head.
“I need another drink,” Lewis said.
I gave him time to drink it, and then I nudged him out of there, leaving tips for Ted and the waitress. “Thanks,” Ted said, with a tip of his hand to his forehead. “You take care now,” the waitress called out, and waved. A few of the customers nodded to us. One or two said, “All right.”
Outside, Lewis cornered me.
“Who’s this Jack? Who’s Lennie? Who’s Freddy? And how come you didn’t tell me before we went in there what you were up to?”
“I only wanted an escort,” I said bluntly, “not assistance. I have an appointment I have to keep now, Lewis. But I’ll tell you all about it later.”.
“When later?”
“Nine.” I fumbled in my purse for paper and pen and scribbled down an address for him. “Here.” I shoved it at him as I walked away. “Meet me there around nine. But stay in your car, Lewis. I’ll find you.”
“What the hell, Cain? Why do I have the feeling I’m being used again? Hey!”
I raced to my own car to keep my dinner date with Russell Bissell.
21
The restaurant, down at Liberty Harbor, was a popular seafood place, the C’est la Vie. It was all fishnets and pink shells, and couldn’t have been a greater contrast to the bar I had just left. Nor could the man I joined there have been a greater contrast to Lewis, or to the other customers of The Seaman. Russell Bissell sat in immaculate, glowing, blond masculinity in the center of the room at a table for two, drawing female glances as the tide draws sand. A couple of thin waiters with very short hair were eyeing him as well.
He got up to pull out a chair for me, then sat down again.
“Russell,” I said at once, leaning toward him. “I just heard on the radio about Muriel Rudolph. I was so shocked. Do you know anything about it?”
He shook his head no but then contradicted himself, “The cops came out to the funeral home to interview all of us. I guess she made some sort of list, and we’re all on it, if you can believe that.” He made a face that said he couldn’t. What I couldn’t believe was that Ailey Mason would divulge a major clue to prime suspects. “They told us she was strangled, just like Sylvia. Gosh, it’s awful, isn’t it? But I don’t know how they could think any of us did it, I mean, she was a real nice lady, and we all liked her real well.”
“Did you know either of them very well, Russell?”
“Sylvia and Muriel, you mean? Huh uh.” His startlingly blue eyes didn’t waver from mine, but neither did he appear to be forcing himself to look at me. “I only knew Sylvia from work, and I guess the only times I met Muriel were at Christmas parties, that sort of thing. They were nice, though, I liked them both, and I feel real bad about all this.”
The way he talked—short words, simple statements—made me see him again as that tall, blond teenager on the beach. Even now, in April and twenty years later, he had a gorgeous tan.
A waitress in a floor-length, clinging jersey dress appeared to take our order. She didn’t once look at me, so I could only assume she heard me order iced tea and stone crabs in garlic butter. As she walked away from the table, her left arm brushed Russell’s shoulder. He didn’t appear to notice. I recalled how Beryl Kamiski clung to him at John Rudolph’s funeral, and how I had touched his arm earlier that day in the funeral home. He’d probably gone through life being patted, stroked, caressed, and all the while his physical beauty had grown lustrous, like pewter, from loving and constant buffing. I wondered if Sylvia had longed to touch him, too. Had she succeeded in doing it, and at what cost?
“What was Sylvia like, Russell?”
He fiddled with the heavy silver knife at the side of his plate, appearing to think about the question. Finally, he said, “Like I said, she was nice. And a real hard worker. She was real friendly and nice.”
“Yes.” My tone was insinuating. “I heard she was a real friendly girl.”
He looked up at me quickly, then away. “I don’t know anything about that. I only knew her at work. And she was always real . . .”
“Nice.” I was getting nowhere with this gorgeous, inarticulate, overgrown lifeguard, so I decided we might as well get on with the excuse for this dinner. “Well, these murders surely do remind us of our own mortality. I believe I told you, Russell, that my mother is very ill . . .”
He nodded but looked blank, so that for a moment I thought he wasn’t going to take the cue. I prodded him a little harder by adding, “The doctors say she could live for years, but it’s also possible that we might lose her at any time.”
At that, he seemed to rouse himself.
“You’re a loving daughter to consider prearrangement for your mother, Jenny.” He smiled sympathetically, as if someone had pulled a cord in his back, setting him in motion. The words of more than one syllable alerted me to the fact that we had now moved into the canned portion of the evening. I wondered who’d taught it to him—Beryl? “I’d be grateful to be of assistance to you, if you will allow me to tell you all about it.”
I allowed him, while we cracked and ate stone crabs. As he talked, I tried to look attentive. But, as the shells piled up until our table looked like a crustacean burial mound, I began to feel desperately tired and bored. I was wasting time and energy on this dinner. I’d seen a terrible and very real death that day, not this safe, sterile, prearranged business he was talking about. Not that it was fair to blame him for the powerful contrasts in my day, but dear God, I wished he’d shut up.
“There are literally dozens of decisions to be made at the time of death, Jenny,” he told me. “Large decisions, such as how much to spend on the funeral, and small decisions, like what music to play. As you can imagine, it’s difficult for a family to make all of those decisions, all at once, right when they’re feeling the worst of their grief and shock.”
He seemed to be waiting for a reply.
I swallowed some crab, pink and white like the restaurant decor. Did the owner plan her color scheme around her menu? Maybe that is why steak houses tended to be done in meaty reds and salad-bar restaurants were so often decorated in lettuce green and squash yellow. I tried to remember what Russell had just said to me, and, failing, offered a generic reply. “Yes, I can see that.”
It seemed to satisfy him, because he continued: “Preplanning and prefinancing allow you to make all of those decisions now, while you have the luxury of time and the freedom from devastating emotional distress. Jenny, are you beginning to appreciate the value of preplanning?”
“Isn’t the prefix redundant, Russell?”
He stared at me.
“I’m sorry. Never mind. What have you got there?”
He had pulled out a portfolio which could be mine if I chose to preplan through Harbor Lights. There was a brochure, a “Personal Record Book” for recording vital statistics, a “Notice of Moving from Service Area” to instruct the funeral home what to do with me if I moved out of town, a medic-alert card to carry in my wallet, a prearrangement agreement, a checklist of “Important Facts,” a prefinancing contract, and a Check-o-Matic agreement. While he explained what it all meant and how it worked, I thought about what I knew so far of Sylvia’s last night on this earth. What happened between the time she walked out of that bar and the next day when Stan opened that coffin?
“Jenny, you can finance your mother’s funeral by paying for the whole thing at once by cash or check, or by making a down payment and taking several years to pay the balance, whichever method of payment is more convenient for you. We can even arrange for your bank to transfer funds from your account into the prearrangement trust account each month. Does that sound good to you, Jenny?”
“Sure.”
“What more do you need to convince you, Jenny?”
“Well.” I pretended to think it over. “I’ll take these papers home and read them, and I’ll want to run them past our lawyer. I’m sure you understand, Russell.”
/> “Absolutely.” He shuffled the contents of the portfolio back together and handed it to me. I took it with a greasy hand and slipped it down beside the table leg. With any luck, I would manage to forget it. “Jenny, I’d like to see you again to answer any questions you and your lawyer may have. Would next Monday be good, or would the week after be better?”
“What about tomorrow?” I’d expected a harder sales pitch, a request for a down payment, at least. His low-key effort made me scurry to devise an opportunity to see him again, much sooner than next week. “I’ll talk to my lawyer tomorrow morning. Come to my house tomorrow evening, why don’t you? I’ll broil the lobster, you bring the wine.”
The skin above his cheekbones reddened again. “I’d love to, Jenny, but I have plans. Thanks a lot, but could you come to my office instead?”
“Fine.” I smiled, to cover the awkward moment. It struck me that despite my initial awe at his physical beauty, there wasn’t enough chemistry between us to fill a test tube. Not that I wanted chemistry from anyone but Geof. Still, I had hoped for another less-public opportunity to probe Russell’s defenses. Failing that, I made a final, awkward stab at delicate subjects. “It’s good to keep pleasure and business separate, Russell. It’s one reason I hate office parties, you know?”
“Boy, do I.” He said it with feeling. I was reminded of the photograph of him surrounded by admiring females. Most men would love any function that brought them that kind of attention. I wondered if a person could get too much loving attention in his lifetime, too much petting and stroking so he grew satiated and tired of it. It probably happened to movie idols and rock stars. And to extraordinarily handsome men?
“I guess Sylvia had a good time at her last office party.” I feigned a smirk, hated myself for doing it. “Seems strange to me though, considering a good ‘friend’ of hers had just died.”
“So what if she was having a good time?” The pink patches returned to his cheeks but this time in evident anger. “What’s wrong with that? She wanted to be with her friends, drink a little, try to forget for a while. But she was hurting, let me tell you.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know her very well.”
“I didn’t.” He clamped his lips together, then seemed to remember that I was a customer he didn’t want to offend. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean to . . . I shouldn’t have . . . it’s just that I feel so bad about . . . I could just tell she was hurting, that’s all. She came in looking kind of sad, and then she got to drinking and laughing and carrying on, and all of a sudden she was real quiet again, and then she was gone.” He lowered his gaze to the table. “I didn’t get to say good-bye to her.”
“So that’s the last time you saw her?”
He nodded, still looking at the table.
I looked at my watch. It was getting on toward nine.
“I have to go, Russell.” I declined his offer of coffee and dessert and said, “Thank you for dinner, and for this.” I touched the portfolio. There wasn’t going to be any way to leave that restaurant, under his gaze, without taking it with me. He paid the bill, then walked me out to the parking lot. My last view of him was of his blond, sculptured head, framed, in profile like a Classic Greek portrait, in the window of a baby-blue Mercedes sedan.
It was 9:05 when I located Lewis, down the street from 1210 Ash, and joined him in the front seat of his old, battered, orange VW Rabbit.
“You’re a weird lady, Cain.” He was slouched up against his door, smoking a joint. The air in the car was still fairly fresh, so I figured he hadn’t been waiting long. The second thing he said was “Talk.”
“Sylvia went to the Harbor Lights’ office party to drink away her sorrow over the death of her lover, John Rudolph,” I began. “And she had a good time, for a while. I know, because I saw evidence of it in some photographs that were taken of her at the party, and I have at least one witness. She may have been grieving, but she didn’t show it.
“But something happened at that party to upset her. If the person I talked to can be trusted on this point, Sylvia suddenly became quiet, and then she just disappeared from the party. You and I know that she went to The Seaman, where she continued drinking with Jack, Freddy, and Lennie.”
“Whoever the hell they are.”
“Gravediggers.”
“Holy shit. Your ‘sister’ was as weird as you are.”
“Think of them as maintenance men,” I advised him. “It doesn’t sound so strange that way. Okay, so we know she fought with the one named Jack, that she accused him of betraying her, but he claimed it was all her own fault. We don’t know what any of that means, but I think she found out about this ‘betrayal’ at the office party. That’s what upset her. By the time she got to The Seaman, she was ready to let him have it. They fought, she got up and left, he followed her.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Did she and Jack go to the funeral home together? Did he kill her there?”
“You’re asking me?”
“I’m asking you to help me find out, Lewis.”
“That’s why we’re parked in a dark car in this charming neighborhood, I suppose. In case Bushfield hasn’t shown you the crime stats for Port Frederick lately, maybe you’d like to know this area is big on people who are directly descended from highway robbers and horse thieves. You do know the nicest places, Cain.”
“Let me tell you my plan,” I said.
“That would be a welcome change,”
“This gravedigger, Jack Smith, lives on this block.” I pointed out the window. “Over there. I want you to go up to his apartment and pretend to interview him, say you’re interviewing friends of Sylvia’s for a human-interest angle on the murder. And then when you get in there, ask him about that night, look around for evidence of whatever . . . such as the possibility that he has a lot more money to spend than a gravedigger probably earns. There’s a strong possibility, Lewis, that he’s blackmailing somebody at the funeral home.”
“Who?”
“I can’t tell you.” I leaned toward him in the dark. “Will you do it, Lewis?”
“It won’t work.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Really, Cain, it won’t. If he’s guilty of anything, he’s already suspicious. And even if he’s not, it’s gonna look damn suspicious anyway for me to haul my ass up there to get a story from some peon gravedigger at this time of night. I wouldn’t buy it, you wouldn’t buy it, why should he?”
“You’re right.” I sighed and leaned my head back against the seat. Weariness poured over me. “It was a stupid idea. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to put you into a dangerous situation.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“I guess we’ll have to go to Ailey, but I hate to do it without any more to go on than guess and gumption. He’ll probably throw me out of his office and tell me to mind my own business. Damn, I wish this were Geof’s case.”
“Don’t give up yet, hotshot. There’s another way to do it, much easier. Believable, even. I can get us in there in the next five minutes, no problem.”
I opened my eyes to stare at him. “How?”
He stubbed out the joint in his ashtray.
“It just hit me. This guy, Jack Smith . . . he go by the name of Jackal?”
“Yes, but how . . .”
“He lives in the third building, upper right?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Jenny,” Lewis said with a patient air. “You know these funny cigarettes I smoke? Well, in an uptight town like this one, where do you think I get my stash? From another New Jersey boy, that’s where. The Jackal’s my man, Jenny. Come on, let’s go.”
22
“Us?” Adrenaline came rushing back into my body as if I’d taken a handful of uppers. “Why should I go, too?”
“Because you might notice something I don’t, because you might see something I don’t, because he’s not as likely to do something stupid if there are two of us. Drug dealers ain’t pa
rtial to drop-in visitors, Jenny.” Lewis reached over me to open his glove compartment. He fished around inside of it until he came out with a miniature tape recorder, which he stuck down in his right front pants pocket. “Small but powerful, like some women I’ve known.” He opened his door, got out of the car. When I continued to just sit there, he leaned back in to quote Springsteen at me: “No retreat, baby, no surrender.”
“Baby, I was born to run,” I threw back at him, having Springsteen albums of my own to quote from, Lewis was laughing as he slammed the car door. I put a hand on my door handle, but still I sat there. I didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, I didn’t want him to go alone; he was right about all his reasons for wanting my company. But I wasn’t eager to encounter the Jackal again, and I couldn’t predict how he would react to my presence.
“Cain, it’s cold out here! Shake it!”
Thinking was getting me nowhere. I tried listening to my feelings, instead, and what I discovered there was that residue of fury, left over from the previous morning. Suddenly, I realized how badly I wanted to nail this guy, especially if he’d killed his “friend” and poor Muriel Rudolph. We would go carefully, Lewis and I would, to minimize the risk to ourselves, if indeed there was any risk at all. I told myself to stop selfishly worrying about my own skin and to start thinking about Sylvia, about Muriel, and about ridding our town of this drug-dealing, murderous, spike-haired menace. I got out of the car.
There were no flowers outside this building, only dead-looking shrubs with bare branches. An empty plastic holder from a six-pack of cans was snagged over one of the twigs; yellowed newspapers, still wrapped in their rubber bands, were piled up against the bottom of the outside wall like logs, along with a blue plastic sandal with a broken strap and a couple of old diapers. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of children living in this place. In the lobby, three of the four bulbs in the overhead light fixture were burned out. There was a basketball in one corner. It looked incongruously innocent, a big, ripe, healthy-looking orange, growing out of season in poor soil, like the teenager who probably left it there. Maybe it was the Jackal’s. No, the image was impossible.
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