by Susan Isaacs
“Like who?” I asked. “What names did he mention?”
“Lots of people,” she insisted.
Realizing I was back in the game-playing business, I bantered: “Oh, come on. Lots of people? He really mentioned names to you?”
“He most certainly did. Would you believe Ginger Wick?” I could; Nancy had already told me. “Everyone thinks Ginger is such a genius career lady, but Bruce told me about some of the things she liked to do. And let me tell you something, Judith,” she sputtered, the words pouring out too quickly for her to scrutinize their import, “what Ginger Wick liked would make you realize that she isn’t so liberated. And Ms. Gordon-Jaffee.” She spit out the “Ms.” Laura Gordon-Jaffee was a local feminist who had become involved in a national group that raised money to finance litigation in sex discrimination cases. By all reports she was intelligent, effective, and violently energetic. Her name had been mentioned in a magazine article on the new leaders of the liberation movement.
I was stunned. “Laura Gordon-Jaffee? How did someone like that get hooked up with Bruce Fleckstein?”
“What do you mean, ‘someone like that’?”
I had been something less than diplomatic. “I mean, she’s so busy. Traveling around. Making speeches. Organizing.”
“I don’t know. But Bruce told me all about her.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, that for a women’s libber, she sure liked it a lot.”
“Liked what?”
“You know. Sex.”
“Oh.” I felt relieved. If Laura Gordon-Jaffee had been fixated on handcuffs or baby-doll pajamas, I would have hung up the phone, baked a pile of brownies, and waited patiently for my grandchildren to be born. “Did he mention anyone else?”
“No one that I can remember.”
“Are you positive?”
“Yes. Those were the only names I recognized.”
I said goodbye, again promising that her face would remain foggy in my memory when I looked at the photos. But I pleaded with her to call a lawyer; if Bruce had told her about his other paramours, maybe he had told them about her. But Mary Alice denied it, assuring me that he had promised to keep their liaison secret.
“Pea brain,” I muttered as I got off the phone. My stomach began making plaintive grumbling noises, so I poured myself a glass of milk. I took two big swallows, when the phone rang. It was Nancy.
“Busy, busy,” she commented. “You were chatting away for quite a while. Someone fascinating? Arthur Schlesinger? The Pope?”
“Even better,” I answered wearily. “Mary Alice.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“Nancy, are you free tonight?”
“Free?” she asked blankly.
“Could you have dinner with me? Or is Larry coming home?”
“I’ll tell him to work late,” she said. “Anything wrong?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I just feel like getting out for a while. Let’s go some place really nice. I’ll break out a new pair of pantyhose, okay?”
“Fine. Do you want me to pick you up?”
“Would you? About seven?”
“See you then,” she said. “I’ll make a reservation some place nice. You sound as though you could use it.”
I gulped down the rest of my milk and called Mrs. Foster, who said yes, she’d love to baby-sit for her little lambs. Mrs. Foster calls all the children she sits for her little lambs.
Later, in my bedroom, I opened my closet and reached into the back pocket of an old pair of white jeans that hadn’t fit since Joey was conceived. My worldly goods, I thought, and counted out forty-five dollars. More than enough for dinner and a baby sitter. But not nearly sufficient for even a down payment on a really nasty divorce lawyer.
Chapter Fourteen
“A bottle of Chablis,” Nancy informed the waiter. “We’ll order later.” We sat in the back room of Hermann Lomm’s, a local restaurant that had risen to fame on the basis of its magnificent T-bone steaks and crisp, salty German-fried potatoes. I settled back into an uncomfortable large Papa Bear chair upholstered with red vinyl and nail studs. Not the atmosphere for a quiet, cathartic cry with a good friend. This was a tough meat and potatoes place. I leaned over the table and arranged the packets of sugar and artificial sweetener into neat little piles.
“How lovely and precise,” observed Nancy. “Do you think you could stop your housekeeping chores and talk to me?”
“Sure,” I said, giving her a weak smile. “I think my life may be in ruins.” I waited for a quip, but she said nothing. “Bob has withdrawn from me completely. Someone—probably the murderer—broke into my house. And the cop who’s in charge of the investigation keeps threatening to arrest me, and I want to have an affair with him.”
“Judith,” she breathed, “you have been busy.”
“It’s better than cleaning out closets,” I retorted.
“For heaven’s sakes, stop trying to be cool. Tell me what happened.”
For the next half hour, over a bottle of icy wine and a Caesar salad, I recounted everything that had happened; from the moment I walked into my house and saw the M.Y.O.B. on my refrigerator to my planned meeting with Norma Fleckstein to my last glimpse of Sharpe walking out of my living room on his lovely, powerful legs.
“I assume you want my reaction to all this,” Nancy finally said. I nodded. “Well, let’s start with the break-in. It’s fairly clear...” The waiter came and took our order for dinner: steak for two, medium rare, fried potatoes, sautéed onions. “And a carafe of red wine,” she called as he trotted toward the kitchen.
“I don’t think I should have any more to drink,” I said.
“Hush, Judith. Now, as to the break-in. Nice people generally do not force someone’s door in unless they are deeply perturbed about something.” She lifted her long hair from under the collar of her yellow silk shirt and let it fall casually onto her shoulders. Three businessmen at the next table watched her. “Therefore, I think you ought to take the message seriously.”
“I do. It is serious.”
“All right. Now, it’s clear that it’s someone involved in this nasty murder. Most likely it’s not the Mafia. I really can’t imagine some hood pulling up to your house in a shiny blue Cadillac and spray-painting your refrigerator. Right? I mean, they tend to be more forthright in their requests.”
I agreed. “Whoever it is,” I said, “is an amateur. And not terribly subtle, either.”
Nancy looked up. The waiter came and placed a large platter of thickly sliced steak in the middle of the table. We sat silently as he served us.
“All right,” Nancy said after he left, “so we can exclude the pros. Now, of all the people in Shorehaven who might have wanted to see Fleckstein laid out with a lily in his hand, do you have any idea who might be the one?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Well, it’s just a feeling, you know. Nothing based on fact.”
“I see,” she said, spearing a piece of potato with her fork. “And that’s what you told this stud Sharpe and that’s why he threatened to arrest you.”
“Right.”
“Well, if he can’t get it out of you, I certainly can’t.” She stared down at her plate, contemplating her steak. “Since when,” she asked, looking up, “do you go for WASPs? You’ve always seemed to be drawn to those glowering, intense, cerebral Jewish types.”
“Oh, Nancy, I’ve never met anyone like Sharpe. You should see him.”
“Oh, Nancy,” she mimicked. “My God, you sound positively pubescent. Do you dream about walking hand in hand with him through a field of clover?”
“No. I dream of finding some nice, seedy motel room and screwing until we both expire from exhaustion.”
“Oh, boy,” she said. “Can you handle that, Judith?”
“I doubt it. Anyway, I don’t know if he’s interested.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he is. But it’s just a feeling.
I mean, I have nothing concrete...”
“Eat your dinner,” she ordered.
I did, along with a glass of resiny red wine. And then another. Oddly, I didn’t feel at all tipsy, just extremely alert. Nancy sat back in her chair, half her steak left over, while I again went over all the details of the case, all the reactions of the people I had spoken with: Fay, Mary Alice, Scotty Hughes, the Duncks, Marilyn.
“Do you have any plans to speak with his nurse, Lorna Lewis?” she inquired.
“Yes. She’s next on my list, after Norma.”
“Do you think it could have been her?”
“Nancy. Come on.”
“I just asked. Don’t get so touchy.”
“Look, all I’ll say is that the police believe she left Fleckstein’s office first, before he finished up with Marilyn Tuccio.”
“And did she? Or do you think she came back later?”
I filled my mouth with air and exhaled slowly. “I don’t know anything for sure.”
“Boy,” Nancy commented, “you want to keep everything to yourself. What do you want to do, wrap it all up in a neat little package and present it to your cop as a token of your love?”
“I don’t know,” I said thoughtfully.
“All right, I won’t push you. Now, what about the Duncks?”
“Well, I told you everything I know about them. He belongs to your club, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. And everyone agrees that the admissions committee made a truly tragic error. I mean, Lord, he is so adolescent. Now let me get something straight. I was right, he did have a fight with Bruce over money?”
“Yes. But according to Brenda, they had kissed and made up. Apparently, Fleckstein even steered some business his way.”
“I see. And what about Mary Alice?”
“Well, she had a motive. And so did all the women he photographed.”
“Was he actually involved in blackmail?”
“I don’t have any more information on that than I had the day we spoke to Mary Alice. Of course, he did have the pictures, so the threat was implicit. And he seemed to have a knack for selecting women with successful husbands, women who could pay.”
“You see,” said Nancy, “that’s why I pick nice, sweet young guys who have no imagination beyond their own cocks. They like me, I like them, we have a good time, and that’s all. Lord, these convoluted relationships. I don’t understand them at all.”
“Well, these women needed something. Don’t you?”
“Yes. I need lots of good, straight sex.”
“Don’t you need love? Attention?”
“Judith, they’re not exactly ignoring me. And I get love from Larry. Attention too. Sometimes he’s painfully boring and he has the soul of a Calvinist, but he really loves me. And I love him.”
“I know you do. But why do you need other men too?”
“Because they give me things that Larry can’t.” I peered at her curiously. “Passion. Spontaneity. Novelty. And excitement.”
“Can’t you get that from Larry?”
“Can you get that from Bob?”
“That’s unfair.”
“No, it isn’t.”
We sat for a while, silent, and then I switched the subject to her article on the fleeing suburbanite. It was going well, she said, and would probably be finished in another two weeks. The waiter came with the check. Nancy picked it up, saying it was her treat.
“Why?” I demanded.
“Why not?” she responded.
She drove me home, and as I reached for the door to get out, she took my hand and squeezed it. “You’ll be okay,” she said.
I strode into the house, somewhat belligerently, propelled by the wine, but Bob hadn’t come home yet. I paid Mrs. Foster, marched upstairs and, swaying a little, undressed and got into bed. Bob’s gold tie was still lying limp on his pillow. Within five minutes I was asleep.
He came home that night, I knew, because his side of the bed had been slept in. But by the time I awoke, at seven, he was gone—and so was his tie. I found it a moment later, in the bathroom waste basket, curled up beside a foil packet of Alka-Seltzer and a wad of crumpled tissues. He’s been drinking to forget me, I thought. But he’s such a lousy drinker; his stomach gets upset after a half of a martini. And the tissues. He’s been crying. Or he used them to wipe some whore’s lipstick off his mouth and God knows where else. I picked them up and examined them: normal, used, mucousy tissues. I threw them back with disgust.
With a loud sigh, I showered and dressed, then went downstairs to make breakfast for the children. Feeling heavy with guilt, I called a mother of one of Joey’s friends and arranged to have the bus leave him at her house after nursery school. That way, I could stay as long as I had to with Norma Fleckstein, without worrying that my son was standing before a locked, empty house, bleating with fear and hunger.
At nine-fifty, I checked Fleckstein’s address in the telephone book. At nine fifty-five, I got in the car and drove there. And at ten on the dot, Norma Fleckstein answered the door in a coral cashmere sweater set with matching slacks, a black mourner’s ribbon pinned over her left breast like fourth prize in some terribly depressing contest.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” she answered. “Easy, Prince,” she commanded, as a mammoth German shepherd pushed its way past her and growled at me. “He’s really very gentle,” she explained, as the dog stuck his snout between my legs. “Stop that, Prince. Bad dog. Bad dog.” Prince took a long sniff and, clearly uninterested in what I had to offer, turned and skulked away into the house. “Come in,” Norma said.
I did, but gingerly. I love dogs in general, but German shepherds make me extremely nervous. Somehow, I feel they’re still in cahoots with the Nazis, and at a command from some place deep in the bowels of Argentina or the Schwarzwald, they’ll leap up and devour every Jew within a ten-mile radius.
She led me into her living room which was surprisingly pleasant: grass green carpet, green and white upholstered couch and chairs, and light sleek white wood furniture. The room was like a garden, with plants all about, hanging from the ceiling, growing up walls, covering tables, giving off the moist, earthy smell of spring.
“A lovely room,” I said, smiling. She didn’t acknowledge my compliment, so I launched into my spiel about doctoral dissertations, and abusive press, the rights of the individual, and the agony of unwanted notoriety. Norma nodded several times, not so much committing herself to my thesis as indicating that she understood what I was saying. She lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and asked in a hushed, flat voice: “What do you want from me?”
“Well, before I ask for your personal reactions, I’d like to know what happened when the articles first appeared. Did anyone call you to give you moral support? Any friends react adversely?”
“Would you like a cigarette?” she asked, offering me a Parliament, as neat with its recessed filter as she was.
“No. No thank you.”
She clutched the cigarettes and a gold lighter in her left hand. “I’m sorry. What was your question?”
“I was asking about how your friends reacted.”
“Well, several friends called. Some came over.”
“What did they say? Were they shocked? Did they dismiss it? Did they make any comments about the press?” The last question, I knew, was completely asinine, but I wanted to seem full of my topic.
“I told them it was all a bunch of lies and they believed me. What did Bruce need to do anything like that for? He made a very nice living in his practice, and he made some very fine investments. We didn’t need any more than we had.” She talked without inflection or passion, as though she had carefully memorized a speech in a language she didn’t understand.
“Well,” I asked, “who do you think was responsible for his legal problems and all this negative publicity?”
“Someone was out to get him. To destroy him.” This, too, was said in a dead voice.
“Who?” I asked, display
ing as little curiosity as I could.
“I don’t know. I’d rather not say.”
“Someone close?”
“Please,” she began, stabbing out her cigarette in a large white ceramic ashtray and reaching into the pack for another.
“Your brother?”
Her finger had just flicked the lighter. She let it burn, leaving her cigarette unlit. “How did you hear that?”
“Frankly,” I said, “I knew that your husband and Dicky were on the outs over your father’s will. Is that right?”
She lit her cigarette and flicked the lighter shut. “Yes, but it’s not like it sounds. My father had given Dicky a lot of money when he was alive. Dicky was always starting some new business and then failing, and my father must have poured in over fifty thousand dollars before he died. He had a massive coronary. So he left his estate to me because Dicky had already gotten his share.”
“And you mean Dicky still wanted more?”
“Yes,” she answered, leaning forward slightly. “Dicky said that he was a businessman and the oldest and I was already provided for because I had made a good marriage.”
“And your husband,” I commented, casting my eyes down in a ritual gesture of sadness, “your husband felt that you were entitled to your share?”
“That’s right. I mean, I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it, but Bruce said it was a matter of principle.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“But how did you know about Dicky?”
“Oh. That. Well, in researching this chapter of my dissertation, I heard that there was some tension between you and the Duncks.” She sat stiffly, waiting for me to elaborate. I did. “But then I heard that your husband had sent some business his way.” I didn’t mention that I heard it slip from Brenda Dunck. “Then all of a sudden, your husband is under investigation. So, I thought to myself, who might have something against him? Who might still be holding a grudge, especially if the business didn’t pan out? Your brother, right?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “But the terrible thing is that Bruce didn’t know anything about pornography or anything like that. I think he had heard about some people who needed a printer, and just to be decent, he told them about Dicky. The next thing, he’s involved in this awful investigation. He got a subpoena.”