“Then she prayed for the sick, I take it—for healing.”
“No. All she did was read a psalm.”
“One psalm?”
“Yes. A single psalm.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t remember.”
“It appears that we both have trouble with our memories,” Father Baer said, a tiny streak of mockery and self-mockery in his inflection.
“But I do remember a line or two. ‘He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.’”
“That’s the 121st Psalm. It starts with ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.’”
“Yes. That’s the one!” I agreed enthusiastically.
Suddenly I was struck by the bizarre nature of this conversation. Why on earth was I discussing the theology of suffering with this priest? Why was I afraid to ask hard questions? Real questions?
“Father Baer. Did Barbara ever discuss her sexual relationship with her husband? Or with other men?”
A rigid mask seemed to slip down over the priest’s face. He pulled his hand away from Swampy. It had been entirely the wrong question, I realized, so I tried to shift gears.
“Well, forget that, Father. But do you remember her talking about any of her friends who worked with her in the herb garden?”
He didn’t reply.
“Did she mention a Renee Lupo?”
He didn’t answer.
“Or Ava Fabrikant? Or Sylvia? Did she mention me? Did she talk about me?”
He didn’t answer.
“Are you sure you never saw Swampy, before the cat came here to live?”
That was my last question.
“You will have to excuse me now,” he said, showing me the door. “I hope you’ve been assured that the cat is being well cared for.”
I suppose it’s a sure sign you’re not wanted, when a priest hustles you out the door.
***
But it was all a coincidence—Dr. Doyle confirmed it all. He had been getting coffee at the deli when he noticed the ambulance and the police cars and the bomb squad trucks outside of the apartment building where Tim and Barbara had lived. The super told him about the terrible explosion and about the cat he was keeping in the basement. Doyle himself had taken Swampy away in his arms.
“Actually,” he said, as I sat across from him in his cool office, which smelled vaguely of animal hair and disinfectant, “if Ed hadn’t wanted him, I would’ve kept Swampy myself—or found a good home for him. He’s a great cat.” Obviously “Ed” was Father Baer.
“Yes,” I agreed, “he is a wonderful animal. I think he lies about his royal origins, but he’s wonderful nonetheless.”
Laughing with delight at my description of Swampy, Richard Doyle—or “Rich,” as the priest has called him—broke the pencil he’d been holding. That just made him laugh harder. His joy in living was apparent. I couldn’t help thinking that he must be one of the all-time good guys—those men over sixty who retain the very best of childhood until they die. It seemed so right that he should make his living by healing helpless animals.
But then a somber mask slipped down over his face. “It’s really very sad, isn’t it?” he said. “First Barb, and then that awful murder of her husband. The whole family’s gone now.”
“Did you know Tim Roman, too?” I asked.
“No. Well, I think I might have met him once, years ago. But Barbara was more like a friend than a client. She and Swampy. It’s so strange to remember that I saw them both only a day before she died.”
“You did? You mean she brought Swampy in?”
“Yes. She hadn’t made an appointment. They just came in and waited until I had some time.”
“And what was the matter with him?”
“I couldn’t really tell. He was very agitated, just acting downright manic.”
“It’s very strange to imagine Swampy manic.”
“Yeah, it is. But it’s true. He was pacing and making strange sounds and climbing the walls.”
“So what did you do?”
“I asked Barb if she’d changed his food recently. Or if he could’ve eaten part of a plant—they crave chlorophyll sometimes, you know. I even told her that maybe he was catching some of her allergies, since they were so close. But we couldn’t come up with anything. I finally gave her a tranquilizer for him.”
“What was that about allergies? I didn’t know Barbara had any.”
“She had a few of them. She was allergic to strawberries, I think, and chocolate and nuts.”
“And you think it’s possible that Swampy caught—”
“Oh, no. Of course not. I was joking. I don’t know what upset him that day, but she called me in the morning and said he was back to his old self.”
As I left Dr. Doyle’s office and headed downtown, my eye took in the little restaurant—the Healthy Bagel—where I’d gone on that first day of tracing Barbara’s neighborhood path. Unfortunately, I had made precious little progress since then.
I checked off some of the things I’d accomplished: slept with a friend’s widower; manipulated a New York City policeman and probably compromised him in his professional life; alienated Basillio; behaved rudely to a priest, all but calling him a liar. And there was more—all of it embarrassing. Once again, my deep involvement in the case had kept me from following standard operating procedures. Basillio had said as much, before he’d accused me of being a “loon.”
But enough of feeling sorry for myself, I thought. It was time to get back to basics. It was time to return to the scene of the crime—that party. It was time to confess to one and all that I believed Barbara had been pushed to her death by one of her friends. It was time to put away childish things . . . strange loves . . . tales of vengeance . . . It was time to become a professional. It was time to interrogate suspects. And Renee would come first.
Chapter 19
Renee Lupo lived in a loft building on Twenty-Seventh, just off Eighth Avenue. It was part factory, part residence. Its major distinguishing feature was a remarkably old and well-preserved fire escape, which circled the structure like some huge chastity belt.
I’d been in the apartment only once before and remembered being struck during that visit by the fact that there were no books to be seen. I knew Renee to be very well read. And she had written several bestselling young adult books about problem girls who had straightened out. I remembered thinking that she must keep her books in the closets.
Her place hadn’t changed. It was one enormous room, and a room where everything seemed to have been elevated: the bed, the television, and so on. Even the kitchen was up a little flight of stairs. Everything, that is, but her low-slung neutered cat, Judy, who was black as coal except for one white ear and one white hind leg.
Renee served the coffee on an old wooden milk crate. From the moment she’d opened the door for me, she’d begun crying. Because of Tim Roman, of course. I gave my condolences to her, while trying to imply by my tone that I understood her grief for Tim had to be different from that of the others, more intense.
But Renee waved off my sympathy. No, she said, it wasn’t just Tim’s death that was making her weep.
“So much death,” she said. “All around us. I’m almost numb to it. . . . Do you really want to see why I’m crying, Alice? I’d like to show it to you. Maybe you’d understand.”
I told her that I wanted to see anything she wished to show me. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and fished out a crumpled piece of paper. She pushed it toward me, saying, “Here. Read it.”
The paper contained a handwritten list of book titles.
Dubin’s Lives. Levels of the Game. Notes of a Native Son. Artists in Crime. Collected Stories of Paul Bowles. A Murder of Quality. Brighton Rock. Let It Come Down. The Good Soldier. Down There. Auprès d
e ma Blonde. Love in Amsterdam. Watcher in the Shadows. Love for Lydia. All Shot Up. The Gallery. The Zoot Suit Murders. A Bend in the River. Arabian Sands. Akenfield. Death of an Expert Witness.
Some of the titles sounded familiar, but most of them I’d never heard of. I looked up at her in puzzlement.
Renee took the list back. “Don’t you see? I’m crying over something I wrote ten years ago. A stupid list of the books I read while I was sick in bed over a period of time in 1980. Every one of those books meant something to me. But now I don’t even recognize most of the titles. I barely recognize the titles of things I wrote. And these days I don’t read much of anything outside of gardening manuals. It just all seems so futile. Do you know what I mean?”
If she was saying something about the passing of time—lost time—time invested in ideas or tied to objects that you can’t even remember anymore—then, yes, I did understand. But Renee didn’t seem to care about my answer. She sat holding her coffee cup, in a kind of trance.
I had to bring her back to the present. After all, I was there with her so that I could start to ask questions I should have asked right after Barbara died. No more elliptical side trips. Straight ahead.
She must have seen the look of determination in my face, because she dried her eyes and sat up in her chair, looking directly at me. “What did you want to say, Alice?”
“That I believe Barbara was pushed to her death that night. That she did not take her own life. I want to find out who did it.”
She looked at me with a startled face, then a frightened one, as if she were sitting across from a madwoman.
“Oh really, Alice! What are you talking about? It’s Tim who was murdered. But not Barbara! It’s impossible! Barbara was the sweetest person in the world. Why, even her enemies would have to admit that.”
“I didn’t know she had any enemies.”
“Well, you know what I mean. Everyone makes some enemies. Barbara was very principled and very strong. If absolutely everyone loved her, it would demean those of us who truly loved her. Understand?”
“Not really,” I replied. “But for now it doesn’t matter. What I need now is your help in reconstructing the night she died. I want you to tell me everything you remember about that night in Ava’s apartment—before Barbara was murdered.”
She shot out of her seat, in a rage. “I want you to stop this delusional nonsense right now! Barbara was not murdered! She committed suicide for reasons none of us understand. I won’t have you going around making these insane charges! If you need to believe she was murdered, just so you can give yourself some private-eye kind of business, you are sick!”
Renee’s outburst had alerted Judy the cat, who moved with liquid grace toward the sound of her voice. Nothing looks so fearsomely dramatic as a black cat slinking along a white wall. The sight sent a delicious shiver down my spine.
Renee’s rage was spent. “I apologize for that fit,” she said. “But I just don’t think I can take much more.” She looked at me grimly and began to play with the big fabric-covered buttons on her tomato-red silk blouse. The color seemed to lend endless highlights to her lively, dark face and satiny hair. She looked like a beautiful gypsy. If Tim had gone after her, it wasn’t hard to tell why. But I couldn’t help wondering if she knew about Tim and me.
“What is it you want me to remember?” she asked, sounding both tired and somewhat patronizing.
“Anything. Tell me the first memory that comes into your head.”
Judy was on the retreat now, ears back, tail lowered. I was smitten with her—love at first sight. I neither loved nor trusted her owner, however.
“First off,” Renee said, “I remember talking to you. I know we were having a discussion, and you had all kinds of things in your hands—coffee cups or something. And then I heard all the cars honking their horns below. And then someone went out to the terrace to check.”
“All right. Go back, a little before that. Barbara was with us, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “And then she gave you her cup.”
“No, a brandy glass.”
“Right. A brandy glass. And then she said something about getting some air.”
Renee paused and then said it again: “Something about having to get some air . . .” Then she closed her eyes and shuddered.
“Did you know that she meant she was going out onto the terrace?”
“Of course.”
“Did you see her walk out there?”
“No. Did you?”
I ignored the question. “Did you see anyone else go to the terrace?”
“No. I wasn’t looking. I was talking to you.”
“Can you place where the others were at the moment Barbara left to get some air?”
“‘Place’ them? Like candlesticks, you mean? No. I told you.”
I decided to change my tone, make the questions a bit less specific. “Tell me something else you recall about the evening. Anything at all.”
Renee was clearing off the milk and coffee cups from the crate. “I’m going to have a glass of wine,” she announced. “Would you like some?”
I said I certainly would.
“When I think of that night and that party,” she said a few minutes later, regarding me from above the rim of her red wine, “I think of it—except for the horror of what happened to Barbara, I mean—with great fondness. The lovely food and the talk and the friendship. Yes, what I remember about it was the warmth and closeness and the lack of pretense. And I have to hold it in my heart and my memory forever, because we’ll never again have such a night.”
“You recall the meal?”
“Umm . . . Yes and no. Was it orange duck?—or orange chicken? I remember a wonderful lemon dessert. And how beautiful the table looked when we sat down.”
“What were you wearing?”
“I . . . You know, I don’t recall.”
“And me? What did I have on?”
She just shrugged. I finished my Beaujolais and set the glass down on the crate, plumb out of questions. I looked at Judy, who was napping up on the ledge of one of the oversized windows. Renee had not shown me the door, like Father Baer, but I knew this would be my last visit to her loft. We were not destined to be buddies, no matter how the murder investigation turned out.
My eyes rested for a moment on the wineglass I had just abandoned. It was obvious I had not been thorough—there was still some Beaujolais left. I picked up the glass, drained it this time to the last drop, and replaced it once again on the crate.
When I straightened up, Renee was standing. She had a strange look on her face, and her finger was pressed against her lips.
It was obvious she was signaling me that I must remain quiet.
Slowly, silently, she moved to a small chest and opened a drawer. I saw her remove a small silvery object and put it in the palm of one hand.
To be honest, this sudden eruption of strange behavior frightened me. What was the matter with her? What was that object in her hand?
She moved stealthily away from me, toward the far window. So quietly, so smoothly, that it seemed as if I were watching a silent movie. Had she seen an intruder through the window? Did she want me to help?
Suddenly she leaped forward, and I saw the silver object in her hand flash.
Judy, her cat, woke up from her nap on the window ledge, arched her back threateningly, and glared malevolently at Renee—who just stared innocently at the ceiling.
I burst out laughing, finally realizing what had happened. Renee had merely snuck up on her cat in order to clip one of her nails while she was asleep.
When Renee sat back down, she said, smiling: “I can only get one foot at a time, but sooner or later I get all four. The problem is that Judy naps at different times. You have to catch her in a deep nap.”
“I really didn’t know what you were doing at first. I thought you had gone around the bend.”
“You must admit, I move quickly when I have to.”
“Yes, you do, Renee.”
“Maybe” she added, “if you need someone to cover one of your cat-sitting assignments, you can give out my number. I mean, you just saw my proficiency.”
“Cat-sitters don’t have to cut their charges’ nails.”
“Oh, Alice! I thought you were a super cat sitter! I thought you did everything.”
I stared at her. The tone she had used was sarcastic and distinctly unfriendly. Had she resented my questions about the night Barbara was murdered? I didn’t acknowledge her comment. It was time for me to go.
But Renee was not finished.
“Why do you cat-sit, anyway?” She asked.
“I like cats, and I need the money,” I replied.
“I never could understand, Alice, why you aren’t rich and famous. I mean, everyone says you’re a great actress. Everyone says you’re beautiful and talented and dedicated. I mean, what else does a person need?” Her conversation had started to drip with a peculiar kind of hostility and censure.
“Bad attitude,” I explained, humorously, trying to defuse the hostility.
“You mean toward the theater in general?”
“Yes.”
“But if you’ve been in the theater for more than twenty years, and you still have a bad attitude, isn’t it time you just gave it up?”
“No, Renee. I like the struggle.”
“You don’t look like one of those women who enjoy pain.”
“Who do I look like, Renee?”
She thought for a moment, then declined to continue, switching to a new topic of conversation. She asked: “What about men? Do you also have a bad attitude toward men?”
A wave of enlightenment suddenly hit me. So that was it. She was telling me that she had suspicions about Tim and me. Had Tim told her before he died?
“I like men,” I replied.
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