by Susan Kandel
9
The morning sun hit me square in the face. Bad Cece wanted to hit it back. But good Cece got up, made a pot of scary hotel-room coffee, and scrounged around under the night table for the yellow pages. Gilbert, Finster, and Johnson, Licensed Insurance Brokers, lower State Street. There it was. Unbelievable. The company where Jean Albacco and Maddy Seaton had worked was still open for business. And times must’ve been good—they’d taken out a full-page ad, which included a picture of their award-winning sales team, smiling their guts out.
I checked out and headed over to State Street. The roads were full of potholes. I sloshed coffee from my travel mug down the front of my wilted blue halter dress, but given that every day was now casual Friday, I figured I wouldn’t look any worse than anybody else.
There were WET PAINT signs all over the front of the building. With my track record, I made sure to be extra careful when I swung open the mint-green double doors. I walked across a plush but ugly rug to a long, low desk. Sitting behind it was a large middle-aged woman, flanked on the right by a younger version of herself and on the left by an older version of the same. All three wore stonewashed jeans, pink Lacoste shirts, and glasses with shiny gold frames. They were deep in conversation. The young one was furiously taking notes. She seemed to be serving her apprenticeship.
The trio looked up and flashed those award-winning smiles. “May we help you?” asked the middle one, clearly their leader.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m trying to find someone who worked here some time ago, a Madeleine Seaton. I’m wondering if she’s still here, by any chance, or if you could tell me how I might locate her.”
A conference ensued. The old one spoke up.
“I knew Maddy Seaton quite well. She worked here forever, nice lady and all, but”—she blushed furiously—“well, I’m afraid she died last year.”
Shoot.
“Are you a friend? Or is it business? Might I answer a question for you?” The middle one reestablished control.
“Well,” I said, thinking fast, “I’m investigating a crime involving another person who worked here in the fifties, a Jean Albacco, and I thought Miss Seaton could help me out. Nothing to do with company business, of course,” I said quickly, sensing their alarm. “Is there possibly someone else who might’ve worked with them back then whom you could help me contact?”
“Is it an official investigation?” the young one piped up. The older women stared at her, nonplussed.
“Well, yes,” I blustered. It was official, sort of. Biographies are official. I had a publisher. I had gotten an advance.
Thinking it over, the old one said, “I was going to suggest Mr. Gilbert, but he’s so busy with his retirement party. Maybe the Johnsons? No, not the Johnsons. Try Jean’s sister, Theresa Flynn. She lives on Chase and Centennial, over by the high school.”
“Yoo-hoo, over here!” said the middle one, peeved at having lost the spotlight. “I’ll jot down her number and address for you.” She presided over the biggest card file I had ever seen. Must have been a custom job.
“And please remind her we’ve still got Jean’s lockbox in our safe,” she added. “We must insist she come pick it up. She’s responsible for it, and we’ve sent her so many letters on the matter. For years now.”
The old one giggled nervously at this. Then they all did.
Did Perry Mason ever have it this easy?
The eye that studied me through the peephole was green and very large. Jean Albacco’s sister. I guess I passed muster because she opened the door—halfway. She had lots of fair hair and just enough of a smile. I liked her on sight.
“Yes?” she queried, patting her Gibson girl puff into place for the visitor.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have any subterfuges planned, so I proceeded with the truth.
“Mrs. Flynn,” I said, “we haven’t met, but I’m Cece Caruso and—”
“Cece who?” she asked.
“Caruso!” I bellowed. “Like the opera singer!” Too bad I was tone-deaf.
As Mrs. Flynn took that in, I continued, more soberly, “I’m doing some research on a book of local interest, and I’d be really interested in chatting with you for a few minutes, if you have the time.” I handed her my robin’s-egg blue card, which I had designed myself to resemble a Tiffany’s box. I found it sort of embarrassing now, but I’d made the horrible mistake of ordering a thousand.
“Oh, please come in, Miss Caruso,” she said, smiling broadly. “I’m a widow. I’ve got lots of time. I’m an author, too,” she said. “A short book on Wordsworth, long ago. I used to teach English literature. I don’t miss grading papers, not one whit, but I do miss the conversations. Sit down, dear,” she said, gesturing toward the sofa. “I’ve just made a pot of tea.”
The living room was small but graciously appointed—an upright piano with yellowed keys, a well-worn Victorian settee covered in burgundy sateen, a needlepoint pillow, an etched-glass vase, a framed print of some boaters, one good side chair. There seemed to be just one of everything, in fact, as if anything more would be somehow profligate.
I admired the roll-top desk in the corner.
“It was my sister Jean’s desk,” Mrs. Flynn explained, emerging from the kitchen with our tea and a plate of butter cookies. “Actually, she inherited it from our grandmother, and I inherited it from her. It was a wedding gift from my grandfather’s employer. Extravagant, don’t you think? But my grandfather was an excellent worker. Forty-five years at the same job.”
I took a sip of tea. Then a bite of cookie. Then I cleared my throat. “Actually, Mrs. Flynn, it’s your sister I’d like to talk about.”
Her puff drooped. She batted at it nervously. She was wearing a pretty ruby ring.
“Let me explain,” I persisted—cruelly, I suppose. “I’m writing a book about the crime writer Erle Stanley Gardner. You know, the one who wrote all the Perry Mason books?”
“Yes, I know. He’s our local celebrity.”
“Anyway, my research put me in touch with your sister’s husband, Joe, who once knew him. I’m trying to find out more about their relationship—Gardner and your brother-in-law’s—and why Gardner would have tried to help him.”
“Help him? Why on earth would Joe have needed help? He killed a young woman with her whole life ahead of her! My sister was the one who needed help.”
“But that’s just it. Can we be sure Joe was responsible for her death? I don’t think Erle Stanley Gardner was convinced.”
“Miss Caruso, let me tell you something before you get in over your head. You’ve been fooled by that man. Don’t feel too bad about it. It’s not entirely your fault. He took us all in. He could charm a snake, my dear, always could. Tell me, does he still have that smile?”
I could feel my cheeks redden. But this wasn’t about me. I couldn’t let it be.
“Did he charm your sister, Mrs. Flynn?”
“Oh, that smile, those beautiful eyes, those beautiful words. He swept her right off her feet. She wasn’t easy, my sister. She had a difficult childhood. Our father drank too much. And our mother looked the other way. Lace-curtain Irish. We had to be perfect little ladies. Jean couldn’t stand that. She went through some rough patches.”
I sipped tea, and she talked about her dead sister.
“Jean was a good girl. She really was. But she always felt she was a disappointment to everyone, making one mistake after another, never living up to her potential.”
“That must have been difficult.”
“It was. For me, too. She used to see everything I accomplished as an attack on her, as part of some grand plan to humiliate her. But it wasn’t like that. Not at all. I loved my sister dearly.”
“I can see that.”
“Joe changed everything. He worked some kind of magic on her. He made her feel special. And she became special. She truly did. She turned herself around. We didn’t understand at first, how it all happened. It was right after his mother died that they got serious. Maybe he wa
s vulnerable, maybe he saw something in her the rest of us didn’t. Oh, she was pretty, Jean was, and smart as can be. But unpolished, not the kind everybody thought he’d wind up with.”
“From what I understand, Joe wasn’t exactly born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”
“True. But he was on his way up, and everyone knew it. Jean knew it, too. She was sure they could make something of their lives, if only they stuck together. She wanted to be someone, you see. To show everyone. But it was all for nothing,” Mrs. Flynn said, her smile dissolving.
“Didn’t you ever question his guilt?” I asked, hoping she’d throw me a crumb.
She looked away, as if to even acknowledge the question would be a betrayal.
Finally, she said in a low voice, “I did, at first. I didn’t want to believe it. It hardly seemed possible that such a thing could happen, that this boy we all admired so much could be responsible for something so awful.” She grabbed hold of the arm of the sofa, as if she needed to steady herself. I should have stopped her from going on, but I had to know.
“I went to see him in jail that first night, Miss Caruso,” she said, her eyes looking into mine now. “He was devastated. It was as if his soul had up and left his body. I was frightened—he wasn’t moving, wasn’t speaking. I worried about him, I did, but the evidence just seemed to mount.” Her voice rose. “And who else could have done it? Tell me. Who could have wanted to harm her? It was the only explanation. The police insisted. It’s always the husband.”
I wasn’t about to convince her that there were dozens of other scenarios that could have played out that night. This was the story she’d chosen to believe. I was ready to give up when she caught me off guard.
“Then I found the scrap of paper. It changed everything. Any doubts I may have harbored about Joe’s guilt were gone forever.”
Mrs. Flynn was a refined woman, but not one to equivocate. She walked over to the roll-top desk, opened the bottom drawer, and took out a very small, very yellowed piece of paper. It was crumbling at the edges.
“Read what it says.”
“‘Meredith Allan. MI6-7979.’” I looked up. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
She sighed. “Maddy Seaton, Jean’s best friend, told me Jean suspected Joe of having an affair. The police as much as guessed that anyway. That’s usually how it goes. But they couldn’t find any proof. That was only because they didn’t look hard enough. I found that scrap of paper stuck to the bottom drawer of Jean’s desk a few years ago, when I was cleaning it out. The police must’ve missed it all those years ago when they searched the house after she’d been killed. I had to peel it off the wood. It’s Joe’s handwriting, you see. And Meredith Allan was the richest, most beautiful girl in town. Joe fell in love with her—how could he help it?—and murdered my sister to be with her.”
10
I am a biographer. I understand people the way secretaries understand file folders and doctors understand femurs. Okay, that’s ludicrous. A file folder is a file folder any way you look at it, and ditto for a femur, but you’d have to be deluded, really gone, to think a person, any person, could ever really understand another. About as likely as turning base metals into gold.
Still, it’s what I do. Given which you’d think I’d have some kind of feel for human nature. Woman’s intuition, at least. It is my birthright. But as I drove away from Theresa Flynn’s house, I had to wonder. Had I been dead wrong? What kind of man was Joseph Albacco, really? Had he been so in love with this Meredith Allan that he’d kill his wife for her?
That name, Meredith Allan. It sounded so familiar. It was an ordinary kind of name. Meredith Allan could’ve been somebody I went to school with back in Jersey, somebody who’d blackballed me from the cheerleading squad. Or a bank manager who’d denied me a loan. There’d been a lot of those. Had that name come up in the transcript? I didn’t think so. Something was nagging at me. And I couldn’t help feeling that someone was playing me for a fool. What about Vincent—Vincent, the soul of kindness? Was it possible I had misjudged him, too?
As I merged onto the 101, I pulled out my phone book and dialed Annie at work, almost plowing into a tour bus in the process. Well, Gardner had been a bad driver, too. Worse than me. He’d smashed a brand-new Model T Ford right through the garage of his first Ventura house. I’d visited the spot on a previous trip. There hadn’t been all that much to see. It’d been turned into a Mexican restaurant. Killer margaritas, though.
Unfortunately, Annie wasn’t at work, though they had expected her that morning and had left dozens of messages because—hello!—they were shooting tomorrow, and the gold facade of the alien ziggurat was hideous, and if I got ahold of her, would I tell her to please, please, call Vanessa? I tried her at Lael’s, but there was no answer. Then I called her at home and got the machine. I waited for the beep.
“Annie, it’s Mom. Vincent stopped by yesterday. I’m trying to mind my own business, but I think we need to talk, sweetie—”
“Mom, don’t hang up!”
“I’m here.”
“Sorry, I was out in the garden, weeding.”
Annie’s garden meant everything to her. It always had. When she was in kindergarten, her class did a unit on plants. Most of the other kids could barely manage to send up a pea shoot. She grew peas galore, plus two twelve-foot sunflowers she decided were husband and wife. We documented them with Polaroids. Annie’s tastes were simpler now. A thriving bean tepee was cause for celebration. A patch of mutant, colorless watermelons, equally thrilling. She got it from me, though I’ve always been more interested in aesthetics than organics. To which end I’ve learned, under Javier’s expert tutelage, to love and respect pesticides. I could never admit this to Annie. Watering, mulching, fertilizing, composting, harvesting, battling pests via alternative means—all were religious sacraments to her.
Before she could get a word in edgewise, I told her I’d be there in an hour with a quart of her favorite veggie chili and hung up. She and Vincent had discovered a rickety stand deep in Topanga Canyon run by an old hippie who claimed that Jim Morrison was one of her customers (still) and that she had invented scented candles. Her chili was delicious, so who was I to argue?
Then I remembered something I’d forgotten to mention to Theresa Flynn. I was on Pacific Coast Highway, waiting for a green light, and ostensibly less of a threat. I dialed the number and she answered with a wan hello. After thanking her again for the tea and cookies, I told her that the secretaries at the insurance company had made me promise to remind her about her sister’s lockbox. Sighing audibly, she told me that on innumerable occasions she had explained to them and their myriad predecessors that she had no key and therefore no use for the thing, not to mention no place to put anything so heavy. But she promised to look into it and apologized for troubling me.
I hit the gas. How odd. Your sister is murdered, all that’s left of her is one lousy lockbox, and you don’t move heaven and earth to get it? You just let it sit around for almost half a century, collecting dust? Maybe Mrs. Flynn didn’t want to know what was inside. Maybe she’d had enough surprises. Suddenly I felt very sorry for her. She’d sounded weak and tired. I planned right then not to get old. Older.
By the time I got to Annie’s, the Kombucha mushroom tea was ready. Lucky me. I called her place Tarzan’s Treehouse because it was smack in the middle of what felt like a jungle, swinging vines and all. We sat outside under a canopy of Chusan palms with yellow flowers that tickled my nose, at least partially distracting me from the poisonous taste of the tea.
“It’s also know as ‘Miracle Fungus,’” Annie said.
“It’s a miracle I’m drinking it,” I said under my breath.
“I heard that. It’s brewed from a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. If you say ‘SCOBY,’ everyone knows what you mean.”
“Rikes, Shaggy! It’s a rhost!”
Annie always ignored my pop-culture references. She had no use for such things.
“Mom,
I’ve never seen you look so wrinkled.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say. I thought dappled sunlight was supposed to be flattering.”
“No, I mean your dress.”
“I’ve grown very attached to this dress. It may well become my new uniform. No more fuss. You just pull out the blue halter dress, and you’re set. And on chilly mornings, you accessorize with the duck sweatshirt.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind, sweetie. Have you called back the people at work? They’re frantic. The alien ziggurat looks hideous.”
“Thanks for the update.”
“Annie.”
“I’ll deal with them later.”
“Fine.”
“So Vincent told you everything.”
“Not exactly.”
She picked up her garden shears and started to pace.
“It all started two Saturdays ago. Remember, that day it was so hot? I decided to stay in and organize the filing cabinet. Little Miss Perfect.”
She lopped the heads off two perfectly acceptable daylilies.
“There were tons of papers and old bills and stuff, and I was being ruthless about throwing it all away. I filled up every trash can in the house. And then I came across this letter, tucked way in the back, near the deed to the house and the pink slips for the cars. A letter addressed to Vincent.”
Two more daylilies down.
“I had no idea what it was doing there, so I read it, thinking nothing of it, that it was probably just more junk.”
“And it wasn’t.”
“It was from this woman, Roxana. Vincent had had an affair with her before he met me. I knew all about her—she was an artist, she left town abruptly, a real flake. Never took her responsibilities seriously, that kind of thing. It was no big deal, their romance, or so I had always thought. As it turned out, after they split up, she found out she was pregnant. She had a son.”