Murder in the Collective

by Barbara Wilson

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t feel like explaining about Elena. No one ever asked about her, and anyway, what had happened between Hadley and Fran, and maybe I wasn’t a lesbian anyway, a lot of what Elena said was probably true. They were a mixed-up bunch of women really, not Hadley so much, but who knew? It would probably come out sometime or other, you couldn’t grow up rich, a lesbian and with an alcoholic for a father without having a lot of problems.

  Hadley seemed annoyed by my silence. “Suit yourself,” she said and moved off to ask Ray something.

  “Lovers’ tiff?” asked Penny, with what seemed like a sneer.

  I suddenly walked out the door.

  Lesbians were no better than anyone else; lesbians were terrible people. What Elena had been trying to tell me had finally sunk in.

  I found her about a block away from the trattoria, sitting at the wheel of her car, staring straight in front of her.

  I went to the window, bent down. “You did it, didn’t you, Elena? But why?”

  She shook her head, didn’t even look surprised. She motioned me to get into the car. “I was angry, angrier than I could have imagined—crazy, I guess. I told you lesbians, women were no better than anyone else.” She leaned her head on the steering wheel, started laughing eerily. “It was really funny when Fran saw me and thought I was Jeremy, smashing up B. Violet—even she would have never imagined that a woman, her own lover, could do something like that…”

  “What are you talking about, Elena?”

  “What you’re talking about—you know now, don’t you? I was the one who did it, who wrecked B. Violet. I did it because I wanted to get back at Fran and because Hadley paid for everything and Fran still loved Hadley and I was drunk. I’m a goddamn drunk too and I’m scared.”

  “But I’m talking about Jeremy. You killed Jeremy, you killed him, didn’t you?”

  “It wasn’t me, I didn’t, I saw him but I didn’t…”

  Someone leaned over the car and cast a shadow on my side of the windshield. Elena jerked back and almost screamed. I shuddered myself, then realized it was Hadley. I rolled down the window.

  “I was going to make a joke about your meter being up,” she said, subdued. “But I guess it’s not appropriate…Are you guys okay? Are you coming back to work, Pam, or what’s going on?”

  “Get in, Hadley,” I said. “You might as well come along. In fact, I think you’d better.”

  “Sure,” she said, getting in the back seat. “I didn’t feel like working anyway on such a nice sunny day. Where to?”

  “To Fran’s.”

  30

  “I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING more to say to Fran,” Elena said, refusing to start the car.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I can do the talking.”

  “What’s this all about, Pam?” Hadley leaned forward and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Did you have any idea that it was Elena who wrecked B. Violet?”

  “Oh,” said Hadley and sat back. “Well, it makes sense.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” wailed Elena. “There’s no way I can apologize enough.”

  “Fran doesn’t know? Is that why we’re going to Fran’s?” Hadley asked. She sounded a little dazed.

  “That…and other reasons,” I parried. “Come on, Elena, start the car. Unless you have any other big revelations to make. Like what you meant when you said you saw Jeremy but you weren’t the one who killed him. Who was? It was Fran, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Elena cried.

  “I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere if you keep browbeating our chauffeur, Pam,” Hadley suggested.

  “Well, you drive then. Or I will.”

  She didn’t move. In fact, we all remained sitting exactly as we were. After a few minutes Elena’s sobs died out. She took her keys from her pocket, put them in the ignition.

  “You’re right. We’ve got to ask Fran, once and for all.”

  We still weren’t moving. I didn’t say anything. I was starting to feel ashamed of my ‘browbeating’; what did I think I was in, anyway? A fucking TV cop show?

  “Why don’t you tell us what happened, Elena,” said Hadley gently. “Just as much as you want to right now. As much as you feel okay about telling.”

  “It’s all so weird,” said Elena, calmer now but with a snuffle in her voice. “I don’t expect anybody to believe me, especially after what I did.”

  Hadley stroked her shoulder. “I know, I know, but just try, Elena. We’re not going to judge you.”

  That wasn’t true, but I let it stand. I avoided Hadley’s eyes.

  “Well, after the meeting about the merger and after the fiasco at the bar, Pam dropped me off at home. I tried to be calm but I just got madder and madder. I went over to Fran’s apartment but she wasn’t there, and all the time I was thinking about the idea of the merger and how maybe it wasn’t the right idea—it had been Fran’s idea and it wasn’t based on knowing anything about Best really—and Fran and I had had this stupid fight earlier and she’d said she was still in love with you, Hadley, and that’s when I found out that you’d given all the equipment to the shop….And I was drinking—God, you don’t have any idea about my drinking, Fran’s drinking. I couldn’t get drunk in a bar like her, no, I’m too nice for that, but I can sure put it away by myself, at home….And I just had this idea, well, I found myself going over to B. Violet and starting to do some damage. And the more I did, the better I felt. I can’t explain it, I’ve never felt anything like it. That urge to destroy. It never even occurred to me that I might get caught, but the next thing I knew, Fran was standing in the doorway, shouting ‘Jeremy,’ and then she kind of clunked over. Obviously she thought I was Jeremy. I was luckier than I thought. I was scared she might have hurt herself and went over but she was just asleep…she’d cut herself a little on that piece of glass. And then it was like everything was finished for me. I looked around and everything was a mess and I didn’t understand what I’d done. At all.”

  Hadley was still stroking her shoulder, but I couldn’t seem to manage any gesture of comfort. I felt revolted. There was too much in the story I couldn’t digest. I kept sticking to the essential point—that Fran had thought Elena was Jeremy. The key to the whole thing was the identity issue after all. Not that Fran thought the dead Jeremy was Elena, but that Fran thought the living Elena was Jeremy.

  “But what happened next is the hard part to tell,” Elena said. “I’ve wanted to tell somebody all week, it’s just that I couldn’t figure out how, not without admitting what I’d done to B. Violet.” She paused and then said, “I was sitting there, in the midst of the shambles and the door was open the way Fran had left it and all of a sudden Jeremy and Zee were standing there, just looking at me.”

  Hadley and I were too astonished to say anything. Elena continued, “I told them I’d just gotten there myself and found things like that. I said I thought Fran had done it in a drunken state and passed out. Fran was okay, I told them, just passed out from drinking. I remember Zee went over to her and lifted up an eye and felt her pulse. She said I’d better take Fran home. Jeremy just kept shaking his head and looking around.”

  “But what were they doing there?” Hadley asked.

  “Just passing by, it was the worst luck,” said Elena. “But the next day it was even worse. I’d ended up just leaving Fran lying there, because I couldn’t wake her and felt too weak to move her. So I went home, then came back later. You know the rest, I called everyone, pretended I didn’t know anything. Fran was gone by then, you know…But later, in the afternoon, the phone rang. It was Jeremy. He said he and Zee wouldn’t say anything about Fran wrecking the place or me being there—they understood how these things happened and they didn’t want to stop us from claiming a loss to the insurance people. All I had to do was turn up at Best that night at eight o’clock and give them a hundred dollars and the case would be closed….”

  “Shit,” I said. Could Zee be a blackmai
ler too?

  “Did you go?” asked Hadley.

  Elena nodded, bending her face low over the steering wheel. “I didn’t have all the money. I had about fifty, but I hoped that would be enough. I hadn’t wanted to go. I’d wanted to find Fran and explain everything. I thought if I could explain it to her then I could explain it to everyone. But I didn’t find her, and so I felt like I had to go to Best…it was a little after eight when I got there. The door was locked and the red light was on in the darkroom. I went in—and he was lying there, dead.”

  “Zee wasn’t there?”

  “No. There was no one. I just ran out. I had this terrible fear that Fran had had something to do with it.” She stopped and then said, without lifting her head, “I guess I still have it.”

  “Well, then,” said Hadley. “I guess we had better go ask her.”

  Fran came to her apartment door wearing an indigo blue man’s dressing gown, luxuriously curvaceous in a way she had never appeared in her flannel shirts and jeans. The white streak in her black hair waved up and spilled over her smooth forehead like seafoam; her hazel eyes were clearer than I’d ever seen them.

  “Well, if it isn’t the famous detective duo and their latest suspect—or witness?” she said jovially. “Come to confront me about my testimony? Well, come on in.”

  It wasn’t the reaction I’d expected at all. Hadley and Elena said nothing and I began to feel a little foolish. Here we were, at nine-thirty in the morning at Fran’s, at my insistence. What did I expect to find out and how?

  We went in. Fran’s apartment, in spite of Hadley’s description of her as a closet bon vivant, was still a surprise to me. Rows and rows of books along one wide wall. An old Persian carpet on the polished wooden floor; an enormous stereo set-up, framed photographs and several original paintings; fresh flowers on the table. I’d expected clutter; there was none; had been sure I’d find a revealing lack of taste—plastic, velour, lesbian kitsch. Nothing like that.

  Fran was looking at me in amusement, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. “Coffee?” she asked and went to make it.

  We were all subdued, though Elena’s desperation seemed to be giving way to the remorse of the hangover. She crawled into an armchair and covered her eyes with her hands.

  “Didn’t I tell you that Fran had a nice place?” Hadley tried. “She took those photographs herself. Aren’t they good?”

  “Yeah, great.” I wanted to say something more, something cutting, but I felt too nervous. Fran had some kind of power—over them, over me—that I hadn’t begun to fathom. I only knew that she could be nasty, she could be persuasive, she could be out of control, she could be orderly and elegant, she could be vulnerable, and she could probably be very violent.

  Those who are unpredictable always exert more influence than those who can be counted on to do the expected thing. That was definitely something to remember when dealing with Fran.

  Hadley looked disappointed at my response. Well, what did she expect? I hadn’t come to admire Fran’s photographs, but to make her admit what she’d done to Jeremy. Hadley was supposed to be my sidekick, not Fran’s art agent. I wondered if I was falling out of love with her so soon.

  Fran came sweeping back into the room like some robust bordello madame, carrying a tray of cups and a pot of coffee. One thing for sure, ever since I’d been with Hadley I’d started to really look at women’s bodies, or at least admit to myself that I was looking at them. And Fran was built like a lavish Victorian love seat with velvet pillows. It didn’t help that she went right over to Hadley with her tray, and that Hadley half-smiled into the deep V of Fran’s cleavage as she bent over.

  I decided I was in love with Hadley after all.

  Elena had begun to twitch and shiver, with jealousy or shame, it was hard to tell. Her soft face was as creased with emotion as if she’d been lying on a bed of horsehair and nettles. Misery in tied bundles around her eyes; thatches of worry and anger on her forehead; and two long, bitter marks, like painful parentheses, around her mouth.

  “It wasn’t Jeremy you saw at B. Violet that night,” she said hoarsely. “You obviously don’t know what I look like if you could make a mistake like that.”

  Fran didn’t do anything rash. She carefully put down the tray and advanced on Elena.

  “You? You? You?” was all she said, in ever deeper tones of disbelief.

  Elena got hysterical, even as she shrank into a kind of ball in her chair. “You’ve never cared about me, you just wanted a drinking companion because Hadley wouldn’t. You got me drinking with you and all fucked up. It’s not my fault. You shouldn’t have told me about Hadley and that she bought you that equipment, it wasn’t fair. I never knew I’d be that angry. I never used to be that angry.”

  For a moment Fran looked like a large blue bear about to smash a gnat, but suddenly she started stroking Elena gently on the face and head. Her voice was full of pity.

  “You’re right, Elena. I did fuck you up. And I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter about B. Violet, really. You know I asked you a few days ago if you wanted to come to AA with me. I’m asking you again….Do you want to change?”

  Elena just sobbed.

  I remembered the first time I’d seen Elena, long before she began to work at Best. It was at a rally over abortion rights; Elena was speaking out for the rights of lesbians as well. She stood on the raised platform in Westlake Mall, on a cold day in March, in jeans and a lavender sweatshirt, a beret slanted over her blonde curls. She was glowing with health and power and righteousness; her ringing voice cut through the crowd with the conviction of an evangelist, and at the end of her speech she lifted her arms in a victory salute, silhouetted against the back wall of Bartell’s Drugs, shouting, “We will survive!”

  The scene here in Fran’s living room was far too dramatic to be a private moment between them, but it was still effective. Fran standing there like Aimee Semple McPherson in her indigo robe stroking the head of a fallen sister, promising her salvation. How the hell was I supposed to insert the accusation that it didn’t matter if it had been Elena or Jeremy at B. Violet; the point was that Fran had thought it was Jeremy who sabotaged the shop and that she had killed him because of that.

  I glanced at Hadley, but she looked supremely touched. She’d never suspected Fran, never, and never would.

  All of a sudden it came over me that I didn’t either. It just didn’t fit, I couldn’t see it. I started thinking again about what Elena had said in the car and the truth slowly dawned on me. It was very depressing.

  “Come on, Elena,” Fran urged. “I’ll take you to AA tonight. You’ll be surprised who you meet there. It’ll be like old home week.”

  Elena struggled out of the chair and for a moment I thought she was going to kneel down at Fran’s slippered feet, but instead she gave her former lover a good kick in the shins.

  “Whatever I do about changing my life, it’s going to be because I want to. You can’t make me do anything anymore. It’s my life, goddamnit, get out of the way!”

  And in a wild leap of energy Elena flew from the room and out the door. I congratulated her silently.

  After a moment Hadley said, “How long have you known that I was the one who gave the money to Margaret, Fran?”

  Fran was looking somewhat dashed, rubbing her leg. She sat down in Elena’s chair. “Not too long. Margaret told me when I started talking about a merger with Best. I don’t know what her point was, because she only undercut her own position. She used to have a certain mystique in the collective, remember, as the one who’d been given thousands of dollars. I should have guessed it was you, Had. You always were so adamant about never giving B. Violet a thing.”

  A bitter but complicit look passed between them. Hadley bit her lip but Fran said, “It doesn’t matter now…everything’s gone. I don’t know, if you and I had been able to work it out….”

  “If you hadn’t started drinking again,” Hadley had to say.

  “If you hadn’t been so
moralistic all the time. Shit, your idea of a good time is a soyburger and a glass of milk. When you could eat filet mignon every night.”

  “I don’t like filet mignon,” Hadley said stubbornly, but with the beginning of a laugh in her voice.

  “Oh, let’s forget it. You’ve got someone else”—she glanced at me with a magnanimous sneer—“It’s all water under the bridge….You know, I’ve been looking at that one earring you’ve got on. Was it Jeremy’s?”

  “Sort of.”

  “’Cause I found one like it.”

  “Where?” Hadley was thrilled.

  “It was weird. I don’t know where. It was sticking to my sweater, like it got hooked on somehow. Couldn’t figure it out. Do you want it? It’ll look good. Match your eyes.”

  She went out of the room cheerfully. All of a sudden I was remembering Fran’s body half-covering Jeremy’s, in the instant when she’d thrown herself down, thinking he was Elena. Had the earring gotten caught on her sweater then?

  “Excuse me a minute,” said Hadley and got up and followed Fran into the bedroom. They seemed to be there an uncomfortably long time, and when they came out, Fran was dressed in her normal, heavy-duty dyke clothes and was far too pleased with herself.

  Hadley didn’t look at me at all.

  31

  FRAN DROPPED HADLEY AND me off at Best Printing, where Ray and Penny seemed to have formed a mutual pact not to discuss our absence. I didn’t care, I was feeling pretty low. I hadn’t liked the way Fran kissed Hadley good-bye, not one bit.

  Later in the afternoon I asked Hadley what she planned to do with the earrings. She told me, and then I explained to her what I had in mind.

  “Oh, that’s much better,” she said. “It’s more dramatic.”

  By this time I was quite sure I’d lost her back to Fran, but I couldn’t stop to think about it yet. As she left the shop, she gave me a good strong hug that reassured me slightly.

  “So, see you later then.” She winked one of her iridescent turquoise eyes.