Like Love

by Ed McBain

  Carella looked at Hawes uncomfortably.

  “When I get in bed at night, I can’t sleep. All that energy. My hands twitch, my legs,

  I just can’t sleep. I take pills every night. Only way I can relax. I’m like a motor.”

  “And your daughter was that way, too?”

  “Positively! So why take her own life? Impossible. Besides, she was going to leave that bully. She was going to start a new life.” She shook her head, “This whole thing stinks. I don’t know who turned on that gas, but it wasn’t Margaret, you can count on that.”

  “Maybe it was Barlow,” Hawes suggested.

  “Tommy? Ridiculous.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they were going to get married, that’s why. So would either of them turn on the gas? Or leave a stupid note like the one in the apartment? ‘There is no other way!’ Nonsense! They’d already decided on another way.”

  “Now, let me get this straight, Mrs. Tomlinson,” Carella said, “You knew your daughter was seeing Tommy Barlow.”

  “Of course I knew.”

  “You didn’t try to discourage it?”

  “Discourage it? Why the hell would I do that?”

  “Well… well, she was married, Mrs, Tomlinson.”

  “Married! To that bully? That was a marriage? Hah!” Mrs. Tomlinson shook her head. “She married Michael when she was eighteen. What does a girl of eighteen know about love?”

  “How old was she now, Mrs. Tomlinson?”

  “Almost twenty-one. A woman. A woman capable of making up her own mind.” She nodded. “And what she decided to do was to leave Michael and marry Tommy. As simple as that. So why should she kill herself?”

  “Are you aware, Mrs. Tomlinson, that your daughter told her husband she was coming to visit you on the day she died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she do that often?”

  “Yes.”

  “In effect, then, you alibied her, is that right?”

  “Alibied? I wouldn’t call it that.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “I would call it two sensitive women helping each other against a bully.”

  “You keep referring to Mr. Thayer as a bully. Did he ever strike your daughter?”

  “Strike her? I’d break every bone in his body!”

  “Threaten her then?”

  “Never. He’s a boss, that’s all. Believe me, I was glad she planned to leave him.”

  Carella cleared his throat. He was uncomfortable in the presence of this big woman who thought of herself as a small woman. He was uncomfortable in the presence of this mother who condoned her daughter’s adultery.

  “I’d like to know something, Mrs. Tomlinson.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Michael Thayer said he called you after he saw your daughter’s picture in the newspaper…”

  “That’s right.”

  “… and asked you whether she was here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Mrs. Tomlinson, if you approved of your daughter’s relationship with Barlow, if you disliked Michael so much, why did you tell him she wasn’t here?”

  “Because she wasn’t.”

  “But you knew she was with Barlow.”

  “So what?”

  “Mrs. Tomlinson, did you want Michael to know what was going on?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why did you tell him the truth?”

  “What was I supposed to do? Lie and say Margaret was here? Suppose he asked to speak to her?”

  “You could have invented some excuse. You could have said she’d stepped out for a minute.”

  “Why should I lie to that louse? Anything he got was coming to him!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The divorce, I mean, Margaret leaving him.”

  “Did he know she planned to leave him?”

  “No.”

  “Did she tell anyone else about this divorce, Mrs. Tomlinson?”

  “Certainly. She was seeing a lawyer about it.”

  “Who?”

  “I think that’s my daughter’s business.”

  “Your daughter is dead,” Carella said.

  “Yes, I know,” Mrs. Tomlinson said.

  And then, for no apparent reason, Carella repeated, “She’s dead.”

  The room, for the space of a heartbeat, fell silent. Up until that moment, even though Mrs. Tomlinson had been in the midst of funeral preparations when they’d arrived, even though the conversation had most certainly dealt with the circumstances of their visit, Carella had had the oddest feeling that Mrs. Tomlinson, that Hawes, that he himself were not really talking about someone who was utterly and completely dead. The feeling had been unsettling, a persistent nagging feeling that, despite references in the past tense, despite allusions to suicide, they were all thinking of Margaret Irene Thayer as being alive, as a girl who was indeed about to leave her husband next month to begin a new life.

  And so, his voice low, Carella repeated, “She’s dead,” and the room went silent, and suddenly there was perspective.

  “She was my only daughter,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. She sat on the sofa that was too small for her, a huge woman with flat feet and big hands and lustreless green eyes and fading red hair, and suddenly Carella realized that she was truly tiny, that the furniture she’d surrounded herself with was bought for a small and frightened woman lurking somewhere inside that huge body, a woman who really did need gentleness and tenderness.

  “We’re very sorry,” he said. “Please believe that.”

  “Yes. Yes, I know. But you can’t bring her back to me, can you? That’s the one thing you can’t do.”

  “No, Mrs. Tomlinson. We can’t do that.”

  “I was looking at all my old pictures of her yesterday,” she said. “I wish I had some pictures of Tommy, too. I have a lot, of Margaret, but none of the man she was going to marry.” She sighed heavily. “I wonder how many pills I’ll have to take tonight,” she asked. “Before I can sleep. I wonder.”

  In the silence of the living room, a small porcelain clock, delicately wrought and resting on a small inlaid end table, began chiming the hour. Silently, Carella counted the strokes. One, two, three, four. The echo of the chimes faded. The room was still again. Hawes shifted his position on the uncomfortable caned chair.

  “I’ve made a hundred lists,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. “Of things to do. Michael is of no help, you know, no help at all. I’m all alone in this. If Margaret were only alive to…” And then she stopped because the absurdity of what she was about to say suddenly struck her. “If Margaret were only alive to help with her funeral preparations” were the words in her mind and on her tongue, and she swallowed them at once because the presence of death was suddenly very large in that small room. She shivered all at once. She stared at Carella and Hawes in the deepening silence of the room. Outside on the street, a woman called to her child. The silence lengthened.

  “You… you wanted the lawyer’s name,” Mrs. Tomlinson said.

  “Yes.”

  “Arthur Patterson I don’t know his address.”

  “In the city?”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Tomlinson shivered again. “I’m telling you the truth, you know. Margaret was leaving him.”

  “I believe you, Mrs. Tomlinson,” Carella said. He rose suddenly and crossed the room. Gently, tenderly, he took her huge hand between both his own and said, “We appreciate your help. If there’s anything we can do, please call us.”

  Mrs. Tomlinson looked up into the face of the tall man who stood before the couch.

  In a very small voice, she said, “Thank you.”

  * * * *

  6

  Arthur Patterson was a man in his middle thirties who had recently shaved off his mustache. Neither Carella nor Hawes knew that Patterson had performed the mustachectomy only two days before, but had they been alert detectives they would have noticed that Patterson touched the area over his, upper
lip rather frequently. The area looked very much like the stretch of skin above any man’s upper lip, but it didn’t feel that way to Patterson. To Patterson, the tiny stretch of skin felt very large and very naked. He kept touching the area to reassure himself that it wasn’t getting any larger or any more naked. He didn’t feel at all like himself, sitting there and discussing Margaret Irene Thayer with two men from the police department. If he stared down the sides of his nose, he could see his upper lip protruding and swollen and nude. He felt as if he looked very silly, and he was sure the detectives were smiling at his nakedness. He touched the skin above his mouth again, and then hastily withdrew his hand.

  “Yes,” he said, “Irene Thayer came to me to see about a divorce.”

  “Had you ever handled any legal matters for her before, Mr. Patterson?” Carella asked.

  “I prepared a will. That was all.”

  “You prepared a will for Irene Thayer?”

  “For both of them actually. The usual thing, you know.”

  “What usual thing, Mr. Patterson?”

  “Oh, you know. ‘I direct that all my debts and funeral expenses be paid as soon after my death as may be practicable. All the rest, residue and remainder of my estate, whether real or personal, and wherever situate, I give, devise and bequeath to my wife.’ That sort of thing.”

  “Then in the event of Michael Thayer’s death, Irene Thayer would have inherited his entire estate?”

  “Yes, that’s right. And the reverse was, of course, also true.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “In the event that Michael Thayer survived his wife, well, anything she owned would go to him. That was one of the will’s provisions.”

  “I see,” Carella said. He paused, Arthur Patterson touched his missing mustache. Did she own anything?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem likely. She seemed concerned about the expense of getting a divorce.”

  “She told you this?”

  “Yes,” Patterson shrugged. “I was in a peculiar position here, you understand. It was Thayer who first came to me about drawing the will. And now I was handling a divorce proceeding for his wife. It was an odd feeling.”

  “You mean, you felt as if you were really Michael Thayer’s lawyer?”

  “Well, not exactly. But… let’s put it this way… I felt as if I were attorney for the Thayer family, do you know what I mean? And not for Irene Thayer alone.”

  “But she nonetheless came to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And said she wanted a divorce.”

  “Yes. She was going to Reno next month.”

  “In spite of the expense involved?”

  “Well, that was a serious consideration. She initially came to me to find out what the Alabama divorce laws were. She had heard it was good jurisdiction. But I advised her against an Alabama divorce.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, they’ve been getting a little rough down there. In many cases, if it appears that a couple came to the jurisdiction only to get a divorce and not to establish bona-fide residency, the state will void the divorce of its own volition. I didn’t think she wanted to risk that. I suggested Mexico to her, where we can get a divorce ruling in twenty-four hours, but she didn’t like the idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not sure. A Mexican divorce is as good as any you can get. But the layman has the mistaken impression that Mexican divorces aren’t legal or are easy to upset. Anyway, she didn’t go for the idea. So, naturally, I suggested Nevada. Are you familiar with the Nevada divorce laws?”

  “No,” Carella said.

  “Well, they require a six-weeks’ residency in the state, and the grounds range from… well, adultery, impotence, desertion, nonsupport, mental cruelty, physical cruelty, habitual drunkenness… I could go on, but that’ll give you an idea.”

  “On what grounds was she suing for divorce?”

  “Mental cruelty.”

  “Not adultery?”

  “No.” Patterson paused. “She wouldn’t have had to go all the way to Reno if she were claiming adultery, would she? I mean… after all…” He hesitated again. “I don’t know how much of this I should discuss with you. You see, I did suggest the possibility of she and her husband seeing a marriage counselor, but she wasn’t at all interested in that.”

  “She wanted a divorce.”

  “Yes, she was adamant about it.” Patterson stroked his lip, seemed to be deciding whether or not he should reveal all the information he had, and finally sighed and said, “There was another man involved, you see.”

  “That would seem obvious, wouldn’t it, Mr. Patterson?” Hawes said. “They were found dead together.”

  Patterson stared at Hawes, and then activated a voice he usually reserved for the courtroom. “The fact that they were found dead together needn’t indicate they were planning a future life together. Mr. Barlow… I believe that was his name… ?”

  “Yes, Mr. Barlow, that’s right.”

  “Mr. Barlow may not even have been the man she intended marrying.”

  “Irene’s mother seems to think he was.”

  “Well, perhaps you have information I do not have.”

  “Irene never told you the man’s name?”

  “No. She simply said she was in love with someone and wanted a divorce as quickly as possible so that she could marry him.”

  “She definitely said that?”

  “Yes.” Patterson dropped his courtroom voice and assumed the tones of a friendly country lawyer dispensing philosophy around a cracker barrel. “It’s been my experience, however, that many women… and men, too… who are contemplating divorce aren’t always sure why they want the divorce. That is, Irene Thayer may have thought she was in love with this Barlow person and used that as reason for escaping from a situation that was intolerable to her.”

  “Did she say it was intolerable?” Hawes asked.

  “She indicated that living with Michael Thayer was something of a trial, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “How did Mr. Thayer feel about the divorce?” Carella asked.

  “I did not discuss it with him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mrs. Thayer preferred it that way. She said she wanted to handle it herself.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “She preferred it that way, that’s all. In fact, she was going to serve him by publication, once she got to Nevada and started the proceedings.”

  “Why would she want to do that?”

  “Well, it’s not unusual, you know.” He shrugged. “She simply wanted to wait until next month. Considering the fact of the other man, I hardly think…”

  “Next month when?” Hawes asked.

  “The end of the month sometime.” Patterson tried hard to keep his hands clenched in his lap, but lost the battle. His fingers went up to his mouth, he stroked the stretch of barren flesh, seemed annoyed with himself, and immediately put his hands in his pockets.

  “But she was definitely going to Reno next month, is that right?” Carella said.

  “Yes.” Patterson paused and added reflectively, “I saw her several times. I gave her good advice, too. I don’t suppose anyone’ll pay me for my work now.”

  “Doesn’t the will say something about settling debts and paying funeral expenses?” Carella said.

  “Why, yes,” Patterson answered. “Yes, it does. I suppose I could submit a bill to Mr. Thayer, but…” His eyes clouded. “There’s a moral issue here, isn’t there? Don’t you think there’s a moral issue?”

  “How so, Mr. Patterson?”

  “Well, I am his lawyer, too. He might not understand why I withheld information of the pending divorce. It’s touchy.” He paused. “But I did put in all that work. Do you think I should submit a bill?”

  “That’s up to you, Mr. Patterson.” Carella thought for a moment and then said,

  “Would you remember when she planned to le
ave, exactly?”

  “I don’t remember,” Patterson said. “If I were sure Mr. Thayer wouldn’t get upset, I would submit a bill. Really, I would. After all, I have office expenses, too, and I did give her a lot of my time.”