by Susan Isaacs
“I don’t have to bring you into it,” he snapped. “Come on, Judith, it’s getting late and I want to get to the office early.” I stepped toward him and ran my hands over his chest and stomach, firm from his daily prelunch workout, hairy and warm. “Come on,” he urged. “Let’s do it in bed. Okay?”
We did, finishing neatly in our usual twenty minutes. It was fine; one hundred watts of sexual incandescence discharged, a baked potato’s worth of calories consumed, a faint aura of warmth and friendliness established that lasted through the night and into the first few minutes of the morning.
At seven-thirty the next day I even smiled, then glanced out the living room window and noticed the Times on my driveway, practically pulsating with what I knew to be a major story on the Fleckstein case. But my path was blocked by Kate and Joey, having their first skirmish of the day.
“Dumbhead.” Her dark brown eyes narrowed.
“Chicken-doody-faggot,” he retaliated.
Then Bob came downstairs, wondering aloud why I couldn’t find two extra minutes to roll his socks into nice little balls instead of stuffing them all into his drawer. By nine o’clock, they were finally dispatched to their respective first grade, nursery school, and office.
Pulling a sheepskin jacket over my bathrobe, I scurried down the front path toward the driveway to retrieve the newspaper. The air was warmer than I had expected, the deceptive hint of spring before the end of February and the whole of March dump their final icy insults. Nothing in the index about the murder, I noted, reading as I walked back into the house. But I found a short squib on the third page of the second section, “Dentist Found Slain,” datelined Shorehaven.
The body of Marvin Bruce Fleckstein, 42, a periodontist, was discovered in his office last evening in this affluent community on Long Island’s North Shore. According to a police spokesman, death was probably caused by a wound in the base of the skull. Investigators in charge of the case refused further comment, although they said a report from the Nassau County Medical Examiner’s office was due in a day or two.
The Times had failed me. During elections, monetary crises, Congressional scandals, it had always come through. Throughout Watergate, there was always something to wallow in with my second cup of coffee, something enough even for me, a once-promising doctoral candidate in American political history. But today there was nothing to mull over. Not a blonde hair twirled around a button of Fleckstein’s jacket, not even a medicine cabinet tampered with. No mention, of course, that M. Bruce had found other orifices to probe. I sat slumped on a straight-backed kitchen chair, debating who would be the most fascinating person to call and discuss the case with. Nancy would be unavailable; a free-lance writer, she works from nine to one every day and takes her phone off the hook. Well, I thought, I could call...And the doorbell rang.
I dashed out of the kitchen and yanked open the door with sheer joy at having human contact. But it was a strange man. I took him in at one glance: average height, bushy eyebrows, a small smile on his wide mouth. Quickly, I pushed the door shut so it was left open just a crack. He could be the Shorehaven Slayer and I was his next victim, selected with insane randomness.
“Mrs. Singer? I’m Sergeant Ramirez of the Nassau County Police.” He held up an identification card to the glass of the storm door. It had his picture and a raised seal. It was official. “I’m investigating the murder of Dr. M. Bruce Fleckstein. Would it be all right for me to ask you a few questions?”
I grinned and held the door wide open.
Chapter Two
“Did you hear about the murder?” he inquired as he stepped into the hallway. He glanced away from me, his eyes darting about the hallway toward the kitchen, into the living room, perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps in the mild hope that he might find a blood-stained weapon lying casually on an armchair.
“I heard about it on the radio last night. Awful. Absolutely awful.” His eyes were focused on the far end of the living room, examining the empty log basket by the fireplace. I stepped into his line of vision. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“No. Don’t bother.”
“No trouble. It’s already made.”
“All right. Light, two sugars.”
I strolled into the kitchen, fixed two mugs of coffee, and returned, offering him one. “We can sit in the living room,” I suggested. He followed me and perched on the edge of a wing chair. I sat a couple of feet away on the couch. Peering at the coffee, a bit suspiciously I thought, he pursed his lips and took a delicate sip. I smiled, trying to appear sincere and cooperative.
“Did you happen to notice what time your neighbor, Mrs. Tuccio, came in last night?”
“Why do you ask?” Now that we were friends, drinking coffee together, I could afford to revert to my usual perverseness.
“Well, it’s nothing serious,” he said crisply. Ramirez had assimilated with high honors. No trace of an accent, demeanor as open, as briskly friendly, as a WASP car salesman. “It’s just that Mrs. Tuccio was his last patient yesterday, probably the last person to see Dr. Fleckstein alive.”
“Except for the murderer.”
“Oh. Right. Anyway, did you happen to notice what time she came home last evening?”
“Is Marilyn Tuccio a suspect?” Is the Pope an atheist?
“We just have to check every possible fact, Mrs. Singer.” Ramirez, despite my excellent coffee, seemed mildly annoyed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t notice. I was busy with the children and getting dinner ready.”
“I see,” he said slowly. “Do you know Mrs. Tuccio well?”
“We’re friendly.”
“Did she ever happen to mention anything to you about Dr. Fleckstein?”
“No.”
“Well, thanks anyway. If you remember anything, give me a call. I’ll jot down the number.” He took a pen from his coat pocket and extracted a small green-covered notebook from his jacket. He wrote down the number and tore out the page. “Here,” he offered it to me. “And thanks for the coffee. It was strong, but I like it that way.”
I escorted him to the front door, waved goodbye, and plodded back inside. Could they suspect Marilyn Tuccio of anything? The Saint of Oaktree Street? Absurd. Then why was Ramirez checking? And if he was so interested, why hadn’t he asked any probing questions about her? Was she stable? Any homicidal tendencies? Did she keep any dangerous weapons in her bread box, between the oatmeal cookies and the home-made cracked wheat rolls?
With an explosion of energy that is rarely visited upon me before noon, I jammed the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher, ran upstairs and made the beds, then quickly drew on a pair of jeans and my favorite blue denim work shirt. Finally, lifting the receiver of a beige Princess phone that I had ordered in a long-forgotten moment of frivolity, I called Marilyn.
“Marilyn? It’s me, Judith. Can I come over for a few minutes?”
“Judith, I’m a little busy now...”
“Look, the police were just here asking questions about you.”
“Oh. What did they say?”
“Marilyn, I’d rather not talk about it over the phone. Anyway, you sound as though you could use some company.” Actually, she sounded as though she were aching for solitude.
“Well, sure. Come right over. Would you like coffee?”
“Always. See you.”
Marilyn O’Connor Tuccio is one of those wispy Irish redheads who look as though they were born to be taken advantage of: tiny, delicate, you could imagine her exhaustedly carrying an enormous pot of stew to the parish house “for Father Sweeny, Mrs. Mallory” or lugging home cases of beer for a beefy, veiny-nosed husband who made certain she was pregnant every year. Fragile and petite, with pale blue veins shimmering under the lightly freckled white skin of her hands, she should, according to stereotype, whisper hello to you and then lower those long, pale eyelashes, astonished at her own brazenness. Instead, she is unfailingly assertive, competent, and almost violently energetic, the only housewife I know who
doesn’t, even secretly, feel she got shafted. Marilyn sews all the clothes for herself and her four children, cans all her fruits and vegetables, drives endless car pools and, in her spare time, is president of the junior high PTA and a Republican County Committeewoman.
I trotted across the street and, when I got to the door, noticed that she had taken down her Valentine wreath and put up her Presidents decoration, a crewel-work double portrait of Lincoln and Washington, simply framed with flowers she had dried herself. Next month there would be an adorable stuffed lion and lamb hanging from the door, and for April, I recalled, a fluffy crocheted Easter bunny clutching a bouquet of crepe-paper daffodils.
I rang the bell and Marilyn called out: “The door’s open.” I stepped into a massive room that took up the entire first floor of her house, a combination kitchen, dining room, living room, and playroom, paneled in a light wood and dominated by a large brick fireplace. A room for a family, she had called it two years before, when she ran across the street to show me her architect’s drawings.
“Marilyn,” I said, seeing her sitting at the end of her long refectory table, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but the police came over and started asking me questions, and I didn’t want you to think...”
“Judith, this is unbelievable. A police detective was here last night asking me questions for over two hours.”
“Unbelievable,” I concurred. Her small, pointed chin jutted out angrily. “Ridiculous.”
“I told him I was busy going through my voter registration lists, but he just kept asking the same questions over and over.”
I liked that. Marilyn was a politician after all, probably letting the detective know she was a committeewoman, well-connected in this congenitally Republican county.
“What did he ask you?”
“The usual,” she replied. Twenty years from Dragnet to Kojak and we’re all experts. “Whether Dr. Fleckstein seemed upset about anything. Did he get any phone calls. What time Lorna Lewis, you know, his nurse, left. Did he seem in a hurry to get me out of the office. Did I see anybody hanging around. Things like that.”
“What did you tell him?”
“You take your coffee with a Sweet ’n Low and a little milk?”
“Yes. Thanks. Were you able to tell the police anything?”
“Well, you have to understand that I was absolutely numb from the Novocaine and that nearly the whole time I had that gas thing on and was floating over the clouds somewhere. I wonder if that’s what marijuana is like.”
“Were there any phone calls or anything?” I sipped my coffee. Excellent. Marilyn had ground her own beans.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“And what about people? Any other patients waiting?”
“No. In fact, I felt a little uncomfortable being alone in the office with him after his nurse left.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And that’s why when I opened the door to leave, I was glad to see a couple of people in the hall.”
“Who?” I demanded.
“I forget. Some doctor, I think, in a white coat, and maybe one or two others.” She ran her hand over her red hair, as if making sure she looked presentable enough for those strangers.
“Did he seem different to you in any way?”
“No. Well, Judith, you know what a complete lecher he is.”
“Was. I’d heard.”
“Well, he started flirting when I came in, just like always.”
“Like how?” Men like Fleckstein, who wear gold chains around their necks and have manicures, tend to ignore me. I seem to attract hypercerebral types, chubby astrophysicists in wire-rimmed glasses who tell me I have a first-rate mind while they stare at my breasts.
“Oh, the usual come-on. That there was only one way for me to prove that I’m a natural redhead. And didn’t I know that dentists were better than doctors?” Marilyn’s husband, Mike, was a pediatric surgeon.
“What did you say?” Things like that never happened to me. Once, an advertising copywriter whom I’d met at a dinner party took me aside and said: “If you ever get into the city, give me a buzz. We’ll have lunch.”
“What did you say?” I repeated.
“Nothing. I just laughed, although I told Lorna, his nurse, her daughter was in Kevin’s class, that her boss had himself one heck of a reputation and that someday he was going to get himself in big trouble.”
I stared at her. “When did you say that?”
“Yesterday. She came to tell him she was leaving, and he stepped out for a minute, so we chatted a bit.”
“Terrific, Marilyn.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Lorna probably told the police that you said her boss was going to get himself into big trouble.”
“That’s absolutely idiotic.”
“Of course, it’s idiotic. But, look, Marilyn, you know the police. And that Lorna looked like she had a stick up her ass; she was probably whooping it up with him between patients. Those super-neat, prissy types are kind of sneaky. I mean, they look like they don’t even have vaginas and then all of a sudden you hear they...”
“I don’t know,” she interrupted. “Maybe.” It occurred to me at that moment that Marilyn, when she wasn’t baking bread or drafting nominating petitions, taught confraternity class; I had been more forthright with her than I usually was.
“Sorry about my choice of words,” I said.
“That’s okay.” She stood and walked to the refrigerator and extracted a large plastic bag of green baking apples. “I’m making apple crisp,” she explained. “What do you think I should do?”
“I assume you’re not asking me for a recipe.”
“No,” she responded softly.
“Well, it can’t hurt to talk to a lawyer.”
“If they were crazy enough to consider me a suspect, wouldn’t they tell me to get a lawyer?”
“I don’t know. That’s why you need one.” I paused and watched her take a paring knife and peel the apple. The skin came off in one long, thin strip. I leaned on the table and told her about Ramirez, that all he seemed interested in was the time she returned home.
“This is Lorna Lewis’s second marriage,” said Marilyn. She wanted to change the subject.
“I didn’t know that. I only saw her briefly, when I had some work done in his office.”
“She and her first husband had three children, and then one day, out of the clear blue sky, she told him to pack up and move out. She didn’t feel fulfilled.” Marilyn said “fulfilled” with great contempt. Despite her wide circle of friends, her sophistication, and the legions of divorced women scurrying about Shorehaven, she was still appalled at the breakup of any marriage. She was, above all, a devout Catholic. “Then she married George Lewis, but I gather she doesn’t find him fulfilling either.”
“Do you think Lorna was having an adulterous affair with Dr. Fleckstein?” I asked, adjusting my diction to suit my audience.
“Yes.” She was already on her fourth apple.
“What makes you think so?”
“Because I saw them.”
“Saw them?”
She laughed. “Not doing it, Judith. But a few months ago I was pulling into that Chinese restaurant, the one that’s right next door to the Tudor Rose Motor Inn. I was meeting my sister-in-law Cathy for lunch. Well, who should I see sitting in a car in front of the motel but Lorna Lewis. And not ten seconds later, guess who saunters back to the car? Dr. Fleckstein!”
“What did you do?”
“Pretended I didn’t see.”
“Did they see you?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Marilyn, did you tell this to the police?”
“No. I don’t like to spread rumors.”
She was upset. She left her apples, walked to a cabinet and took out a bag of sugar to transfer into a cannister. Then she sat next to me, peering into my cup to see if I needed more coffee. I didn’t, so she stood and paced about the huge roo
m, walking aimlessly from microwave oven to stove to refrigerator to freezer. It was disturbing. Marilyn rarely wasted a moment. If she’s having coffee with you, she’s stitching up a hem between sips, or snapping off the ends of green beans, or making little red checks on voter registration lists. But now she was perturbed. If someone had forced me to choose, I would have said she was only mildly concerned over the police involvement; what really bothered her was that she was being dragged into a matter that was potentially so sordid. But Marilyn was a private person, and I couldn’t be sure. I simply guessed that whatever portion of her enormous energy was sexual, it was expended behind closed doors of her bedroom with her husband, in complete conformity with Church doctrine. To her, the proscription against adultery was just one of ten commandments to be obeyed, unquestioningly. She would no more flit around with a Bruce Fleckstein than kill or take the Lord’s name in vain or covet her neighbor’s ass.
But she was uncomfortable, anxious even, so I guided the conversation onto safer ground, Nassau County politics. Finally, I gave her my let-me-know-if-I-can-do-anything speech and left to meet Joey, due home from nursery school, at his bus stop on the corner.
He ran to me, heels kicking out at awkward angles to his body; at four, he still retained a trace of the toddler’s stance, stomach preceding the rest of the body, which gave his movements a touchingly clumsy appearance.
“A man got deaded with a knife in his head.” His light brown eyebrows were drawn together, his small, round face full of concern.
“That’s terrible. Where did you hear that?” I held his hand as we walked to the house.
“I want peanut butter and grape jelly cut in triangles.”
“Where did you hear about the man who was killed?”
“Can I have peanut butter and...?”
“Sure. Who told you...?”
“I forget.”
We sat over lunch at the kitchen table, Joey studying me and the peanut butter sandwich with equal intensity. Can all the kryptonite in the world kill Superman? How many infinities do I love him? When am I going to die? If you smash an ant with your shoe, will it go to heaven? Joey, under a patina of cuteness and whimsy, has a core of profound seriousness. He posed question after question, all with the hope of getting a commitment that I would not die—at least not until he was old enough to be an astronaut and a fireman and have monkey bars in his back yard.