by Jan Burke
“Psyche was a beautiful woman. Venus was jealous of her. It was actually being claimed that she was more beautiful than the goddess, which offended Venus to no end. So Venus sent her son, Cupid, on a mission to make Psyche fall in love with the most vile creature on earth. But once he saw Psyche, Cupid ended up falling in love with her instead.”
“What about the seeds?” John groused.
“The middle part of the story is really very—”
“Look, get to the seeds. Someday when I’m in a better mood, you can tell me all of it.”
“You, in a better mood? I suspect we’ll be sitting by a very, very warm fire. Our host will have horns, but we’ll have lots of time on our hands—”
“Kelly, I swear to God—”
“Okay, okay. Condensed version. Psyche and Cupid loved each other, but as things happened, they were separated. Psyche decided to search for him, but Venus put a few obstacles in her way. Venus gathered a huge pile of the tiniest seeds—poppy seeds, millet, things like that—and told Psyche to sort them by nightfall. As Venus knew, it would have been impossible.”
“So who helped her?” John said through gritted teeth.
“Pardon?”
“The question in the letter! Who the hell helped her?” he shouted.
“Ants.”
“Ants.”
“Yes, the ants took pity on Psyche and an army of them helped her. Venus came back to find the seeds sorted. There’s another story about ants—”
“Never mind,” John said. “This guy Thanatos doesn’t make a lot of sense. Some Muse of Good Cheer—”
“Grace of Good Cheer.”
“Okay. Some Grace of Good Cheer will know the agony of Tantalus, he wishes you a Merry Christmas—or happy Saturnalia—wants you to wait until January, and puts something in here about ants.”
“I agree it doesn’t make much sense. The last one didn’t make much sense either, until after the professor was murdered. Are we going to run it?” I asked.
“Of course.” He used the intercom to call Lydia into his office.
“What about Frank?” I asked.
He thought for a moment, then said, “He can have the original.” He picked up the letter and walked over to the copier with it before I could protest about fingerprints. I didn’t say anything about it, knowing it was unlikely that the forensics lab could lift a good print from the paper, even if Thanatos had not used gloves.
Lydia came into the office, and John handed her a copy of the letter. The minute she saw what it was, she looked over to me. I tried for nonchalance. I could see she didn’t buy it.
“Tell Mark Baker to get on this right away,” John was saying. “Kelly can fill him in on the translation. And tell Design I want to run the letter on A-1 tomorrow—anybody has any objections, see me. I don’t see how they can argue. For all we know, someone out there may be able to foresee that they’re in danger if they read this.”
A passage in the letter came to mind. “ ‘It has already begun,’ ” I quoted, suddenly feeling a little shaky. “I think we may be too late to warn the victim.”
“You don’t know that!” John said vehemently. Seeing my surprise at it, he added, “Besides, I hate all the dull stuff we’ve been running lately. I hate the holidays.”
“Bah, humbug!” I said.
“Go ahead and laugh. You and your snookums will be having a great time, Kelly, while I slave away.”
He was trying to make me believe that he hadn’t forgiven me for asking for a few days off around Christmas.
“What are you doing over Christmas?” Lydia asked.
I hesitated. I wasn’t completely comfortable with the plans Frank and I had made, but in a moment of testing myself I had agreed to them.
“We’re going up to his cabin in the mountains.”
“The mountains! Where—”
“No. Different place—not where they held me. According to Frank, his place is more like a house than a cabin.”
“But it will be near there, won’t it?” she asked, then saw I didn’t like the question.
John, in the meantime, had dialed Frank’s number. He told him about the letter and after a pause said, “She’s fine. You want to talk to her?” and handed the phone to me.
Frank told me he’d be down to pick up the letter and asked if the three of us wanted to join him for lunch. John begged off but Lydia was agreeable.
* * *
FRANK HAD SPENT the morning down at the county buildings, taking care of some business at the courthouse. He was happy to get a change of pace. We had lunch at a little hamburger joint a few doors down from the paper. It’s had about five different names in about as many years, but the same people seem to own it—or cook in it, anyway. They make good old-fashioned burgers, so risking arteries that will probably look like pinholes, I ordered up a cheeseburger, fries, and a strawberry shake. Frank followed suit but Lydia behaved herself with a chicken sandwich and a salad.
“So what are your plans for the holidays?” I asked her.
“Guy is going to spend them with me and my mom. You know that Rachel is coming out to spend Christmas with Pete, right?”
I nodded. Guy St. Germain had been dating Lydia since the summer, and Frank’s partner had been seeing as much of Rachel Giocopazzi, a Phoenix homicide detective, as he could manage between their work schedules and his fear of flying.
“Well, Rachel and I got this idea to do up a real Italian Christmas dinner,” Lydia went on. “It’s a two-day affair. You get everybody together on Christmas Eve and eat nothing but meatless dishes—fish is okay, but no meat. Like Fridays used to be. Then on Christmas you go for broke. I’m doing Christmas Eve, Rachel’s doing Christmas, and my mom will do all the breads and desserts—oro corona pane, dodoni, rum tortes, things like that. We’ll eat both meals at my place. We’ve invited Jack Fremont to join us.”
Thank God our food came. Lydia is a fantastic cook, and I was working up an appetite listening to her. So our friends would be together. I became aware of Frank watching me. Lydia kept describing her culinary plans until she suddenly noticed his silent study as well. She looked between us. “I wanted to invite you two, but Pete said you already had plans, Frank. Irene tells me you’re going to the mountains.”
I concentrated on eating my lunch.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s been the plan. But I’m not sure we’ll do it. We may stay down here.”
“What?” I said, putting my cheeseburger back on the plate.
“I’ve given it a lot of thought, Irene. I know you agreed to go, but are you really pleased with the idea of going to the mountains, or are you just trying to make me happy?”
“I used to love the mountains.”
“That’s what I mean. Used to. Maybe we should stay home.”
“I don’t want to wimp out, Frank. I’ve got to keep facing the things I’ve become afraid of, get back into life.”
“There’s such a thing as pushing yourself too hard.”
Lydia has been a friend of mine since grade school, and she has seen me at high and low tide, but nevertheless there are some conversations I’d rather not have in front of her. I noticed her interest in this debate. I guess Frank saw me glancing over at her, because he said, “Let’s talk about it later tonight, okay?”
I nodded. I was a little quieter at lunch that day than usual, I suppose, but I had a lot of things to think through. As I swirled the same cold french fry in the same puddle of catsup half a dozen times, I wished that I could just think them through one at a time.
7
I SAW THANATOS’ LATEST MISSIVE as a declaration of war, so I spent the first part of that afternoon studying my enemy. I went over all the stories about the first murder, and I read the copies of the two letters again and again. I was pretty sure I knew what he was going to do and when. I just didn’t know who he was going to do it to, or why.
Lydia stopped by my desk and interrupted my musings. “You’re pulling on your lower lip,” she said. “What’s
up?”
I put my hand down quickly. Beyond being chums for years, Lydia and I were roommates in college, so she knows most of my little idiosyncrasies. I don’t see this as a big plus.
“I was thinking about how it would feel to be very hungry and within sight of a bountiful feast, and yet unable to eat any of it.”
“Are you writing a Christmas piece on the homeless?”
I didn’t register what she meant for a moment. “No, no. I’m talking about Thanatos. I think he plans to kill someone by starving them to death within the sight of food.”
She gave me a look that was one part skepticism and two parts revulsion.
“I do, Lydia. What else could the reference to Tantalus mean? Nothing else in the letters lends itself to a method of murder.”
She shuddered. “It would be such a slow way to die. Not very practical as a means of murder, is it?”
“How practical is it to take someone’s body from a college campus and toss it into a pen full of peacocks? Besides, he’s hinted that it’s going to be a slow death. He says it’s already started and will come to an end in January.”
“Good Lord.”
“I wish to hell I could figure out who Thalia represents. Grace of Good Cheer. Who could that be? I’ve been pouring over the stuff on Edna Blaylock, trying to learn something from it. It’s maddening.”
“You think there’s a reason for these killings?”
“Yeah. You and I might not think his way of choosing his victims is rational, but I’ll bet he believes it’s perfectly logical.”
“But a history professor? Why? Do you think she had a secret past or something?”
“Hard to imagine. She fooled around with some students, so she wasn’t an angel. But other than that, she’s as solid as bedrock.” I read from my notes. “She was born in L.A., lived here in Las Piernas since she was about eight or nine years old. Her mother raised her; her father died in World War II. She went to Las Piernas College, then went on for a doctorate at UCLA. She wasn’t the most spectacular contributor to American historical scholarship, but she had been published in a few minor history journals. The article she was working on for the Journal of American History would have been an important feather in her cap.”
Lydia looked toward the City Desk, where Morry, the City Editor, was beckoning. “I’ve got to get back over there,” she said. She took a couple of hurried steps toward the City Desk, then stopped and turned back to me. “Do you think he might be a student or some other man she turned down?”
“Maybe.”
I watched her walk off. I thought about the first letter and the fact that whoever had killed Edna Blaylock not only knew her schedule, but knew how to sneak a body off campus. Maybe it was a former student or a faculty member. After all, the first letter had been mailed from the campus.
On the other hand, we had checked out the second envelope and figured out that it had been mailed from the downtown post office, not far from the Express.
Had Thanatos been down this way to find his next victim? Or had he been near the newspaper, watching me again?
* * *
I PICKED UP the phone and tried calling the one person left on my list of Dr. Blaylock’s former lovers: Steven Kincaid. As far as I knew, Kincaid had been Dr. Blaylock’s last lover; he was the only one who admitted still being involved with her at the time of her death.
The phone rang about five times before he picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Kincaid?”
“Yes.”
“This is Irene Kelly with the Las Piernas News Express.”
He hung up in my ear.
I took it in stride. Certainly wasn’t the first time it had ever happened to me. Angry sources come with the territory. Before I could decide on my next move, the phone rang. It was Kincaid.
“I called to apologize, Miss Kelly. That was very rude of me. I don’t usually hang up on people. This has been a very difficult time for me. I’m not sure why I . . .” His voice faltered.
“It’s okay, Mr. Kincaid. I understand.”
“I’m not sure you do. The newspapers—I wasn’t very happy with what they said.”
“Let me assure you right off the bat that I’m not interested in adding anything more to what Mr. Baker has written about your relationship with Dr. Blaylock. I just thought you might be interested in trying to help out. I received another letter from Thanatos today.”
There was about a full minute’s silence. I knew he hadn’t hung up on me again, because I could hear him breathing. It was the kind of breathing you hear when someone is trying to bring themselves back under emotional control.
“I don’t know how I could possibly be of help,” he said, “but go ahead.”
I had already decided to try to meet him face-to-face. It’s much harder to walk away from a person than to hang up on a voice. “Look, why don’t we meet for a cup of coffee? I’ll buy.”
There was another pause before he asked, “Where?”
“You live near campus?”
“Yes.”
“You have classes today?”
“No, winter break is just starting. Finals just ended.”
“Hmm. What about the Garden Cafe—is it still around?”
“Yes. That sounds fine.”
I described what I was wearing and arranged to meet him at this old college haunt in half an hour. I hung up and wondered at the differences between this man and Henry Taylor. Taylor had seemed no more personally affected by Edna Blaylock’s death than a man reading about a flood in a distant country. Kincaid, on the other hand, sounded as if he was just keeping his head above water.
Just before I left, I stopped in to see John, and told him of my plan to meet with Kincaid.
“Watch out, Kelly. For all we know, he could be the one who killed her.”
“He had an alibi, John.”
“You’ve covered trials. I don’t need to tell you that sometimes an alibi can be pretty easy to come by.”
I shrugged. “Maybe so. But then again, maybe this kid is innocent and will end up telling me things he wouldn’t tell the cops.”
“And if he gives you any information? Is this going straight to Frank’s ears?”
“That’s why I came in to talk to you. I won’t talk to Frank if you tell me not to. I just need to know where the paper stands on all of this.”
“You’ve got an obligation to Kincaid. He can’t act as a source and not be made aware of what you plan to do with the information. If he asks for confidentiality, he should get it.
“On the other hand, I’m not overlooking our obligation to the community. Had a long talk with Frank about this, and later with his lieutenant—what’s his name?”
“Carlson.”
“Yeah, well, we’re all on thin ice here. And if Wrigley gets word of this, we could both end up sending out our résumés. For now, I’d prefer you talk things over with me before you say a word to anyone connected to the police—anyone. The only exception would be if you were fairly sure that someone might be physically harmed if you didn’t contact the police immediately. Can you live with that?”
“Sure. I’m going to be pestering you a lot, but I don’t mind if you don’t mind.”
“Well, let’s just play it this way for now. Now scram. You’re going to miss Kincaid and deadline both if you don’t get a move on.”
* * *
THE GARDEN CAFE hadn’t changed much since the 1970s, other than the clothing and hairstyles of the clientele, and even some of those were the same. It was a college hangout when Lydia and I were students, as it had been twenty years before we started school. The walls were covered with photos of Las Piernas from about 1910 up to the present day. There was no particular theme, except that after the cafe’s founding in the 1950s, photos of alumni who had made good decorated portions of the wall behind the old-fashioned cash register. I wasn’t up there.
The “garden” was a small enclosure behind glass that featured a c
ouple of ficus trees, a few ferns, and a small fountain. They used to have finches in there, but every once in a while they’d bang up against the glass and kill themselves, which didn’t do much for the appetites of the customers who saw it happen. So the birds had been gone for some time.
I stood by the door, catching snippets of conversations that ranged from the Lakers’ chances to go all the way this year to whether or not the Stanford-Binet tests were a valid measure of intelligence. There were one or two people who looked like they might be faculty members, but I was definitely an oldster in this crowd.
A few people turned my way when I walked in, but nobody seemed to take special notice. I was a few minutes early, but wondered if Kincaid was already there. I looked to see if anyone might be trying to attract my attention. I saw a self-conscious young man peering up at me over the rim of his glasses. He studied me for a while, and I figured him to be Kincaid. He was skinny and had that archival pallor that scholars develop. I decided that he looked to be the type that would take his fifty-four-year-old professor to bed with him.
“Miss Kelly?”
I jumped and turned to look behind me, where the voice had come from. I was almost nose-to-nose with one of the most gorgeous men I have ever laid eyes on. And he knew my name.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He extended a hand. “I’m Steven Kincaid.”
I decided to close my gaping mouth before I gave him enough time to examine my dental work, and reached out with my right hand. He glanced down and noticed the swelling, and gave me a gentle but warm handshake. I was still speechless.
He grinned. Goddamn. No wonder old Edna hadn’t been able to keep her mitts off him. I tried to imagine having this stone fox stare at my podium for an hour or two a day. I would have been sorely tried.
“You’re not what I expected,” he said, and led the way toward the back of the cafe. With his back to me, I was able to shake myself out of the daze I was in and follow him. I thought of Frank and felt a wave of guilt, then smiled to myself. I could enjoy looking at Frank for a hundred years, go blind, and still want to be next to him for another hundred. More than just another bonny lad, Frank Harriman.