by Leslie Glass
“So maybe the other guy wiped his off.”
“Then they’d all be gone. Anyway, this doesn’t have the look of a gay killing. Sounds like Tom seduced Raymond and Raymond couldn’t handle it. How about that?”
Mike shrugged and went in for the car keys.
Next stop, Raymond’s wife.
Lorna Cowles lived on East Seventy-fourth Street in a smallish building not unlike the one to which her husband had moved when he’d left her. The second coincidence was that she also lived in 5E. This doorman, a rotund person with a German accent and powerful B.O., said he’d just come on and didn’t know if she was there or not He rang up on the intercom to find out.
“Mrs. Cowles.” The doorman kept his eyes on April as he spoke into the intercom. “There’s a foreign lady here to see you.”
“Detective Woo,” April prompted.
The doorman shook his head at her. “She says she already has a maid,” he told April.
April flushed. This was the first time she’d been taken for a maid. “Woo, tell her it’s Detective Woo.”
“Foo,” he said into the receiver.
April took it out of his hand. “Mrs. Cowles. It’s Detective April Woo from the police, remember we talked with you yesterday? Sergeant Sanchez and I want to talk with you for a moment.… Thank you.”
April scowled all the way up in the elevator. At the end of the hall, Lorna waited for them by her open door, a tiny, snow-white Maltese in her arms. The dog reminded April of Dim Sum when she first saw her. The poodle puppy had been so beautiful, she had lured two young women to their deaths. She sneaked a look at Sanchez. His mustache twitched at her. She wondered if they’d ever feel quite the same about dog lovers.
Lorna studied them anxiously. “Did you find something out?” she demanded.
“Nice dog,” Mike said. “May we come in?”
Lorna led the way to her living room. It was in the back, its windows facing a garden where a number of trees had grown so tall their leafless branches reached past the fifth floor.
As a cop, April wasn’t supposed to feel anything, either pleasure or pain, so she tried to calm down, to listen to her instincts. The woman was a jerk, but her husband most likely had left her for another man, and now he was dead. Looking around, she was startled to see a style of decor she’d never encountered before. The room to which Lorna Cowles had led them was painted deep orange and had an unusual array of plants in it. A bamboo tree spread out from the corner and rose so high it brushed the ceiling. Around it were potted ferns and spiky bromeliads. African violets in deep purple, lavender, and white sat on tiered trays filled with wet pebbles. Pink begonias layered a baker’s rack. A humidifier whirred mist into the air around a camellia bush bursting with sweet white flowers. It was hard to imagine a man living there.
The furniture consisted of undulating wicker chairs and love seats that looked as if they had come from colonial Vietnam or Egypt or India a century ago. An elephant’s foot served as a footstool. April checked the corners for snakes.
“Nice place,” Mike remarked.
Today Lorna Cowles was wearing a tweed skirt, gray with flecks of pink in it. Her blouse was pink silk. The pearls around her neck were the size of mothballs. She stroked her dog.
“I didn’t want it to look like a New York apartment,” she answered distractedly, making a motion for them to sit.
Well, she had nothing to worry about on that score. April regarded the low seat of the nearest wicker chair, then decided to remain standing. Mike made the same choice. They stood there in a tight circle facing one another as if about to play ring-around-the-rosy.
“What have you found out? When can I bury him?”
Mike raised his chin a fraction. This one was for April, his gesture told her. She took a breath and decided they had all better sit after all. She slid into one of the chairs, her bottom finally coming to a stop a few inches from the floor.
“Mrs. Cowles,” she began, “how well did you know your husband?”
“What? What do you mean?” she demanded.
“Well, you had some marital problems. What were those problems about?”
“We had a wonderful marriage,” Lorna said stiffly. “We loved all the same things.”
“You don’t have children?”
“No, we didn’t want children. We had each other. Why are you asking me these questions?”
“Marriage problems usually center around certain issues: money, sex, religion, jealousy.” April said it as gently as she could.
“We didn’t have any of that,” Lorna said flatly, pressing her lips into the soft fur on her dog’s head.
“Good. We need to rule some things out. So I’m going to ask you what kind of person he was, the kind of friends he had, his habits.”
Lorna settled the fluffy creature on her lap and began stroking it from head to tail. Her fingers were long and thin. She was still wearing a modest diamond solitaire and a gold wedding band. “All right. Money. I have some money of my own. He earned a good salary. We attend St. Stephen’s. Ray was in the choir. Is that what you want to know?”
“Yes.” April opened her notebook and made a note.
“St. Stephen’s—the Episcopalian church around the corner on Lexington?” Mike asked.
Lorna looked at him. “Yes.”
“What about family?” April asked.
“We’re both estranged from our families,” she said softly.
“What about his friends? Did he have any special friends?” Mike this time.
“Friends … you mean women friends?”
“Or male friends. What about male friends? People from church, from the choir.”
“I don’t think he had any. He may have been friendly with some people in the choir. And Father Hartman. He called on us. But close friends …” She shook her head.
“What about work? Any special friends at work?”
“Ray never talked about work.”
Now April. “Your husband moved out. Did he give you a reason?”
“I told the other lady yesterday. Ray was unhappy. It had nothing to do with me. He said he loved me, but he felt something was missing.”
“Did he tell you what?”
“He didn’t know. Look, I’ve been doing all the talking. What’s going on? What have you found out?”
“The postmortem report hasn’t come in yet, so we can’t rule out foul play completely,” April answered. “But our preliminary findings seem to indicate that your husband took his own life.”
Lorna was confused. “But what about the woman who was with him? I saw the food, the wineglasses …”
“The doorman said Raymond had a frequent visitor—a tall, dark-haired man called Tom. Do you know somebody by that name?”
“A man?”
Mike nodded.
“A man?” Lorna looked puzzled. “Tom Hartman?”
“The minister?”
“He’s not tall and he’s not dark.” Still puzzled. “Are you telling me you think Ray was a fag?” She didn’t have to think about it, got it right away.
“Is that possible?”
“No! Ray hated fags, hated them. He thought there was no place for gays in the church. He hated them, I’m telling you.” Lorna’s voice had become shrill with rage.
“Well, thank you for clearing that up, for being so open with us.” Mike struggled to get out of his chair, had to make two attempts. He was quiet all the way back to the station.
twenty-one
At six P.M. on Tuesday, November 2, Jason Frank had two unexpected messages on his answering machine. The first was from Clara Treadwell, the last person he’d have thought would want to consult him. Four years ago in California Jason had been the presenter of a paper, and Clara had been the discussant. She’d attempted to take him apart in front of two hundred colleagues with a stunning verbal assault that was completely unsubstantiated by any scientific or clinical evidence. After Jason provided a strong and compelling rebuttal, she
’d asked him to lunch. She was a big deal at the hospital out there and gracious in defeat, so he’d accepted the invitation.
Then, in a dining room filled with a group of colleagues so finely tuned to nuance they wouldn’t miss a skipped heartbeat through a brick wall, she started massaging his knee under the table and suggested they work together. She was unapologetic for her earlier verbal attack on him and completely unconcerned about creating gossip in a public place. She had the supreme confidence of someone who had no fear of rejection or consequences. Jason realized that she was testing her power like a sport fisherman with a swordfish on the line. He’d been thirty-five then, only a year married to Emma, and might have been a bit too vehement about his refusal. After she returned to New York as head of the Centre, Clara Treadwell showed Jason that she was in a position to make things uncomfortable for him: She did not hesitate to do so whenever she had the chance.
So he was surprised to hear the warm voice on his answering machine asking him to be the consultant on a personal case of hers involving the mysterious death of a former patient. Clara said she thought he was particularly suitable in light of his knowledge of police procedure. She ended by giving him her office and home numbers. He wrote them down and let the tape run on to the next message.
The second unexpected message was from his wife, asking if he minded if she came home for a few days. She was auditioning for a play in New York, Emma said, and needed a place to stay. This message cheered Jason so much that for a few minutes he refused to worry about who Clara Treadwell’s dead patient was, what she really wanted him to do, or what helping her out would cost him. He checked his watch. It was seven minutes past the hour. He dialed Emma in California. It was 3:07 there.
Emma picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me.” Jason’s voice was as warm as he knew how to make it.
“Hi.” Hers was a little hesitant and distrustful. He believed he loved her a lot and was a uniformly nice guy. He didn’t understand where the distrust came from.
“How’s the weather?” he asked.
“If you called me for the temperature in Southern California, you could have gotten it on CNN.”
He sighed. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees in one sentence, and once again he’d blown it, whatever “it” was. “I just said hello. Why be so testy?”
“Darling, men who love their women say: ‘I got your message. I’m dying to see you, and I hope you get the part.’ You say, ‘How’s the weather?’ What am I supposed to think?”
Jason was silent as he struggled with gender differences that sometimes seemed unbridgeable. Was he really so evil if the right words to him were not the right words to her? Wasn’t it the essence of feeling that mattered, the things that weren’t said and couldn’t really be said? Or was he just a caveman, no better than a scruffy, disorganized seventeen-year-old with a Walkman plugged into his ears, who just couldn’t deal, man, with anything else but lust? The silence led him into a contemplation of his working space.
Jason’s office had bookshelves up to the ceiling on two walls. The third wall had two windows facing the side street high above the entrance to the building. These windows were covered with shutters so that no patient attempting to resist treatment could see out and thus be distracted by the weather or the view. There were five clocks in the office. None had chimes. In this room, everything else was old, but time passed without comment.
In spite of the odd array on the shelves and tables of the usually tasteless gifts from patients’ vacations—needlepoint pillows, painted rocks, sculptures made from colored sea-shells, watercolor landscapes, and his burgeoning collection of books and medical journals—Jason’s office had an ascetic, almost hermetical, feeling to it. The two doors that sealed the office off from the waiting room didn’t help. Sometimes even Jason had the feeling of being locked inside. His tour completed, he repressed a sigh.
“You there?” Emma asked after a minute.
“Where else,” he murmured, leaning forward to adjust the minute hand on the nearest clock. “Shall we try again?”
“Good idea.”
“I got your message.”
“Good. What do you think?”
“I think it’s great, Em, really great. You’ve always wanted to work on the stage.”
“It’s a good play.”
“I’m sure it’s a good play, otherwise you wouldn’t want to do it.” He doodled on his appointment book. It was the official one of the APA, with enough lines for every hour of the day. He could see that tomorrow was completely booked, and so was the day after.
“It’s really a comedy. I probably won’t get it,” Emma said.
Jason didn’t counter with his belief that she would get it. For many years Emma had auditioned relentlessly for every part in every play that was remotely appropriate for her, as well as every commercial in New York. She never got anything except voice-overs. She had a great voice and did a lot of voice-overs for people who looked right for such things as Excedrin headaches but didn’t sound right for them. He didn’t dare ask Emma to show him the play script, either. He’d abdicated that particular right when he neglected to read the script of Serpent’s Teeth, the film that brought about her kidnapping and their estrangement six months ago.
“What’s it called?” he asked finally. “The play.”
“Strokes.”
“Ah, another S title. Who’s the author?”
Her triumph traveled east across the country with the speed of sound. “Simon Beak.”
“Wow, no kidding.” Now Jason’s voice registered real excitement. “Jesus, Emma, that’s thrilling. That’s Broadway. That’s—” Big time.
“Look, don’t get too excited. I probably won’t get it.”
“So what. I’m impressed,” he breathed. “I’m really impressed.”
“You didn’t think I was up to it, did you?”
“Yes, I did. You didn’t think you were.”
She didn’t say it took a far-out, trashy vehicle like Serpent’s Teeth for her to get noticed, and he didn’t say it, either. What people had to do to get what they wanted—well, it was more complicated than either had thought. They both knew more about ambition and drive now. Getting ahead in any field was no picnic.
“So, do you have to clear someone out of my bed? Or should I stay in a hotel?” Emma’s voice was light, but she meant it. She could take her lumps. That’s what got her through ordeals that shoved other people into the shredder.
“That’s a joke, right?”
“No. That’s not a joke. It’s no secret that they’re lining up for you, Jason. All those lovely ladies in the caring profession.”
“Ah, now you sound bitter,” Jason said, a little pleased that the wife who wandered away from him was jealous. Many wives of psychiatrists were psychologists or social workers or teachers, sweet, understanding women who didn’t make too many demands lest their busy husbands slap them down.
Whenever Emma met one of these wives, they always asked her if she was in the caring profession. And she always replied, “No, I’m in the uncaring profession.” To which no one ever reacted negatively because that would be aggressive and judgmental. Aggressive and judgmental weren’t politically correct in his field.
“Are we bitter?” Jason asked.
“Just a little. So what’s the story on the bedroom?”
“The story is the sheets are clean. You have nothing to fear on that score. I’ve been saving it all for you.”
“Oh, and what if I didn’t come back? What would happen to it then?”
“Baby, you know what you have to do. Move your things out and tell me it’s over. After that what I do is none of your business. Until then I’m yours.”
“Good, I’ll be home Saturday.”
Jason flipped to Saturday in his appointment book. “Any particular time?”
“I’ll let you know.”
There was nothing written down for Saturday. He scratched at his b
eard. Emma hadn’t seen it yet. Maybe he should get a haircut and a shave, but maybe he shouldn’t. He pondered: To shave or not to shave, that was the question. “I’ll be here,” he told her.
twenty-two
“Bobbie …”
Bobbie Boudreau heard the soft, muted cry and swung his body around to look for trouble behind him, his hands curling instinctively into fists. Half a block south on Broadway little Gunn Tram was hurrying after him, calling out his name in the noisy, densely populated, brightly lit rush-hour dusk. Bobbie had turned into the wind off the river and now felt the bite of approaching winter on his face. He had important business on his mind, scowled at having to be distracted.
Gunn quickened her small steps. For a second, she looked to Bobbie like an aging dachshund. Her big head and thickening body teetered precariously along Broadway on stubby legs and tiny black-sneakered feet. He didn’t call out to her but remained rooted where he’d stopped so she wouldn’t scream louder and draw more attention to herself.
Finally within hailing distance, she called out to him: “Going to the house?”
“Maybe,” he said slowly.
“Walk with me? I have news.”
“All right.” His eyes wrenched away from her, and he started moving again. He was pained to see this so-called friend in a shapeless pants suit and sneakers. It was embarrassing. It occurred to him that Gunn was letting herself go, was getting to be an old woman now, no longer bothering even with the pretense of carrying a good pair of shoes back and forth to her job in the personnel department at the Centre.
Gunn was sixty-two on her last birthday and joked about changing the dates in her own file so she couldn’t be retired. Not that anyone would think of retiring her, she said comfortably. “I’m the heart of the Centre, the human resource,” she liked to say.
Until recently, Bobbie had always thought so, too. Gunn was kind of saintly, soft on people. She was an optimist, she said, liked fixing bad situations. And she had the tools to do it. She had access to the computers with the business information, to the color-coded files on the shelves that had the personal stuff, to the progress and evaluation reports. Gunn knew almost everything there was to know about everybody who worked at the Centre, including the doctors and administrators. And she cared about everybody, especially him.