Several Deaths Later

by Ed Gorman

  "Huh?" Cindy said. Her eyes had strayed to her

  purse, where she'd stuck the envelope that had been pushed under his door. Ever since waking up, she'd been thinking of how she was going to tell him about the envelope.

  Because it was definitely a problem.

  How could she show him the envelope without explaining to him that in effect she'd been opening his mail?

  "Couldn't we take a shower first?"

  "Great idea. Together."

  "No, I didn't mean…"

  But he was kissing her, and even with morning mouth (his and hers alike) she forgot all about the envelope.

  Twenty minutes later, she had at least six new things to tell Aberdeen about Kevin Anderson.

  Seven if you counted what he showed her to do with the soap.

  23

  5:24 P.M.

  By now of course Tobin was beginning to assume the worst. Not only had Cindy McBain gone off with Kevin Anderson but she had most definitely slept with him. All morning Tobin had been able to tell himself that maybe Anderson had gotten to first or maybe second or maybe even, after plying her with drinks, third base, but no home run stuff, no out-of-the-park routines. But, as Tobin knocked on her empty room several times, and then checked various lounges and eateries, and then walked the length of several decks never so much as glimpsing her-gradually he began to understand the real implication of what was going on here. And, ridiculous as it was, he felt betrayed and jealous. She hadn't made love to Tobin because she'd been so upset with Ken Norris's death. But the blond macho TV cop was apparently another matter.

  Quite another matter, Tobin thought as he made his way along the middle deck into the sunlight and in the direction of the captain's cabin. He assumed that by now Dr. Devane had sobered up and that both he and the Captain had had time to go through the dead people's effects. Perhaps they'd learned something useful about Iris Graves and the man killed with her.

  A deck tennis game was in progress as Tobin reached the unfettered sunlight. He was dressed in a white shirt and white ducks and white deck shoes without socks. His red hair was brilliant in the yellow light. He smiled as passengers waved in recognition, or pointed or whispered. He owed them courtesy. God knew they'd put up with him and his pontifications on the tube (he could still recall saying, in a spontaneous if obscure burst, that John Ford was "a racist but not a malicious one," and while he knew what he'd meant, nobody else had, as evidenced by the hundreds of letters comparing him to various Nazi figures, and KKK leaders) and he should be in return, and at the least, polite.

  The blue water of the pool shimmered as if it were not quite real. Around the perimeter, on the tiles, lay any number of women who could fulfill the most exotic of Tobin's fantasies.

  One of them, delightfully enough, even reached out and grasped his ankle.

  "Not speaking?"

  "Oh, hi," Tobin said.

  "Did you finally get some sleep?"

  "Finally. And you?"

  She smiled. "Finally." Susan Richards was even better looking in the daylight wearing a one-piece white bathing suit, such suits invariably reminding him of Julie Adams in The Creature From the Black Lagoon, a seventh-grade spectacle so astonishing that he began to understand that the most exalted feeling on the planet, right next to godliness, was horniness. She wore sunglasses so black he could not even glimpse the shape of her eyes behind them. She smiled. "But my wrinkles were still there, this morning."

  "Wrinkles?"

  "Around my eyes and mouth. My agent wants me to pay a little visit to my friendly neighborhood plastic

  surgeon because I got turned down for a role two months ago. Because of my age."

  "You're beautiful, Susan, and you know it."

  She dismissed his compliment with a graceful hand. "Twenty-two lines in a Raquel Welch mini-series. I was supposed to be her younger sister. But the casting director said I was too old." She laughed but there was a chilly sadness in her voice. "Oh, he didn't say it quite that way, of course. I think he said, 'Raquel and you are too much alike. It might confuse the audience.' " She paused then. "We had a meeting."

  "Who had a meeting?"

  "The regulars on 'Celebrity Circle.'"

  "Oh?"

  "Yes, and Todd said that you think one of us is the killer. Is that right?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know who else it could be."

  Her beautiful mouth became ironic. "Does that include me?"

  "Well…"

  "You're cute when you're trying to be evasive." She put out a hand to be helped up. He thought of holding this same hand last night. The darkness seemed impossible now that yellow day burned the deck.

  As she stood up, she grabbed a black leather Gucci casual bag and a tiny framed black-and-white photograph of a little girl. He was about to ask her about the girl when Jere Farris strolled by and said, "Coming to the costume party tonight?" and then went on without waiting for an answer.

  "Well," Susan Richards said, "are you?"

  "I suppose."

  "You sound delighted."

  "It's the idea of dressing up in funny clothes, I guess.

  I've never been able to figure out why adults like to do that."

  She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, and he thought of last night again, now so idyllic in memory, and she laughed like wind chimes and said, "Who said we're adults, Tobin?"

  24

  6:13 P.M.

  "Sanderson was a private detective."

  "From an agency?"

  "Agency?"

  "Yes," Tobin said, "a detective agency. Like Pinker-ton's."

  The captain shook his head. "Not from the looks of this brochure. I'd say he was strictly free-lance and not exactly running an empire, either."

  He handed Tobin a two-color trifold brochure. The paper was rough to the touch and you could see where the ink had smudged in the printing. The outer panel said, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS OUR SPECIALTY.

  "Pretty much what you'd expect," Captain Hackett said as Tobin opened up the flap and looked inside.

  There were several photographs of Everett Sanderson, all of them taken when he was much younger. In one photo he wore navy whites; in another, a dark police uniform; in a third (and the most recent) he appeared as he had aboard this cruise ship, a chunky, sixtyish man in a conservative western suit with a white Stetson, string tie, and bulldoglike jowls. The copy beneath these photos referred to the fact that Everett Sanderson had served first his country, then his city, and now, on a for-hire basis, he was serving the public.

  "Simpson, Kentucky," Captain Hackett said.

  They sat in his office. Sunlight streamed through their whiskey glasses, giving the liquid a golden gleam, as the ceiling fan chopped briskly at stale air. The captain explained that the Coast Guard would be sending investigators within thirty-six hours.

  "That mean anything to you?" Tobin said.

  "No. I was hoping it meant something to you."

  Tobin smiled. "Afraid not. But there is something that would mean something to me."

  "What's that?"

  "What you and the doctor checked Cindy McBain for the other morning."

  "I guess you're on our side now."

  "Is that an answer?"

  The captain sighed. "We found blood." The captain paused. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "We weren't quite sure you could keep a secret." He frowned. "I'm sorry, Tobin."

  "Tell me about the blood."

  "There was plenty of it. He'd been stabbed."

  "A second blood type on the rug. We think that the killer must have cut him or herself while stabbing Ken Norris. So we were checking Miss McBain's hands and arms for any cut marks."

  "You didn't find any."

  "Correct." He hesitated. Cleared his throat softly. "But we did find somebody with exactly the sort of cut marks we would have expected."

  "You did?"

  "Yes. Miss Graves."

  "The dead woman?"

  "Right. And, in her bel
ongings, we also found a notebook-a sort of journal, actually. She wrote about going into Miss McBain's room-after following Ken Norris all night. But she didn't cut herself on the knife. She cut herself on a piece of a lamp that had been knocked over and shattered. That's what she said in her journal and that squares with what we found at the scene." Now it was his turn to smile. "She was also the mysterious figure in the trenchcoat and snap-brim hat your friend McBain kept going on about."

  "Why the hell was she following Norris?"

  "Story, presumably." He leaned leftward, opened a drawer, and withdrew the small brown leather notebook Alicia Farris and Iris Graves had been struggling over the day of Iris's death. "She has a lot of rambling notes in here. I spent most of last night sipping sherry and looking through them. Care to take the notebook and see what you can come up with?"

  "Sure."

  The captain said, "They're hiding something."

  "Who?"

  "The 'Celebrity Circle' bunch. You'll see that very clearly when you start reading the notebook there. Something binds them together-but I'm not sure what."

  "You heard about Cassie McDowell slapping Todd Ames last night?"

  "Yes."

  "Whatever binds them together seems to be coming apart."

  "That's my impression too." He glanced out the porthole. "Some days I wish I would have been a Greyhound driver." He poured some brandy from his cut-glass snifter. "My daughter from Oak Park was supposed to bring her children on this cruise. Thank Christ one of my granddaughters came down with the measles." He turned back to Tobin. "I don't have any idea what Sanderson was doing on this trip but I suspect he was working with her."

  "With Iris Graves?"

  "Isn't it likely?"

  Tobin considered. Then, "She worked for Snoop. It's a publication that probably hires dozens of private investigators. I suppose they could have been working on a story together."

  "I keep thinking back to when they were all in the party room-when I told them about Norris's death."

  "Their reaction, you mean?"

  "They reminded me of wartime. I was in Korea. I got that way-about death, I mean." He glanced out the porthole again. A tattered golden cloud dragged by. "The first death I ever saw-well, it was a corporal and of course I couldn't let the other fellows see me cry. But that night in my tent…" His jaw locked as he returned his gaze to Tobin. "I guess I can understand servicemen getting that callous about death-but why would celebrities?"

  Tobin sighed. "To be fair to them, they're fighting their own war; against age and the loss of their looks, against constant competition, and against just sheer luck. There are so many people who want to make it in Hollywood. An environment like that doesn't exactly spawn wonderful people."

  "You don't seem like that."

  Tobin laughed. "But I am. Deep down. When my partner was murdered I didn't think of anything except clearing my name. It was six months before it hit me. I was walking past a theater where we used to go when we were young and poor and where they always played black-and-whites from the forties. And then I realized that the only thing that was keeping my partner alive was my memory of him-and what we'd looked like then, and what we'd wanted to be, and how we'd tried to be cool and impress girls-and here were all these memories and I had to keep them alive because that was the only way to keep him alive. That corner had been there nearly a hundred years and hundreds of thousands of people had passed by and fashions had changed and wars had come and gone and everything that had seemed so important had vanished utterly, without a trace, but in my brain I had a memory of two young men and what that corner had been like in the summer of 1964 when Barry Gold-water was running for president and when the Beatles were popular and when the girl I was dating would cry every time we made love because she was convinced it was 'wrong.' All those things had happened and when I die nobody will know about those things anymore, at least not in the way I knew about them, the way we each know things differently, and so all I can do for my partner is remember him. You understand?"

  "Of course."

  "But I don't feel that when most people die. Not the older I get, anyway. Most deaths just make me worry about my own mortality-I'm just selfish." He held up his glass and said, "So thanks for the compliment, Captain, but I'm afraid it's undeserved. I didn't give a damn when Norris died, either."

  "But you weren't supposed to be his friend. They were." He nodded to the notebook. "She's got several references in there to each of them but they don't make any sense-they're just like the rest of the notebook."

  "Newspaper people develop their own kind of shorthand the way court stenographers sometimes do. Maybe that's all it is."

  "Maybe." Then he reached behind him and hefted a cardboard box. "Here are Sanderson's things. Want a look at them? My security people have been through them, cataloged everything for when we turn it all over to the Coast Guard."

  "I caught him eavesdropping on the party room that night. Did I tell you that?"

  "No."

  Tobin nodded. "He probably knew who killed Norris and why and so did Iris Graves."

  Captain Hackett laughed. "Well, if they left any clues for us, I hope you have better luck finding them than I did." Then he glanced at his watch. "Afraid I've got a meeting, Tobin." He pushed the cardboard box across the desk. "Appreciate the help.”

  25

  6:48 P.M.

  "Did you ever sleep with somebody and regret it?”

  Nothing.

  "Did you ever sleep with somebody when it was really somebody else you really wanted to sleep with?”

  Nada.

  "Did you ever sleep with somebody and all the time pretend it was really somebody else you were sleeping with?"

  Tobin said to Cindy McBain, "Why don't you just shut up?"

  "It was only because I was drunk."

  "Right."

  She thought a moment. "And, well, I guess because of Aberdeen."

  What could he say?

  "Well, aren't you going to ask why it was because of Aberdeen?"

  "No."

  "C'mon, Tobin. Just ask me."

  "I said no."

  "Then I'll tell you."

  He did something with his fingers then.

  "Boy, I wish you could see how childish you look. You really do. Your fingers in your ears."

  Then she reached up and took one finger out of his ear and then she whispered something incredible in it and then she took the other finger out of the other ear and whispered something equally incredible into that one. She smelled of perfume and soft sweet female flesh and real blond hair.

  Then she put her mouth on his and pushed him gently back onto the bed in his cabin.

  Things happened quickly after that.

  ***

  "It was a good lesson for me."

  "Right."

  "Well, it was. God, Tobin, I'm glad I'm not as cynical as you."

  "If it was such a good lesson, what did you learn?"

  "Well…"

  There was silence.

  Tobin said, "So what did you learn?"

  "I learned about sincerity."

  "You sound like a contestant on Miss America."

  "That was a cheap remark."

  "Yes, it was and I apologize."

  "You're still jealous and you're still angry."

  "Yes, I am." Then, "So you learned about sincerity and what else?"

  "I learned I shouldn't do things just to impress other people."

  "So you're never going to tell anybody that you slept with Kevin Anderson, famous TV star?"

  "Well…"

  "Well, what?"

  "Well, only certain people."

  "Such as Aberdeen."

  "Yes, such as Aberdeen. If she wasn't so fat and she didn't have that mustache, then she wouldn't have to live-what's that word?"

  "Vicariously."

  "Right. She wouldn't have to live vicariously through me."

  "So in a very real sense, the only reason you slept with him was
for her sake."

  "It does make for a more interesting letter."

  "Am I going to be in your letter?"

  "Do you want to be in my letter?"

  "Only if it's in the most flattering terms."

  She giggled. "Do you want me to lie?"

  When she giggled, he started liking her again, and when he started liking her again he started getting mad at Kevin Anderson for what he'd done to her.

  Because sitting there, luxuriant of flesh and wonderful of face, Cindy McBain, Kansas City secretary and purveyor of second-hand thrills to the mountainous Aberdeen, sported a black eye courtesy of Kevin Anderson's fist.

  "So tell me again why he hit you?"

  "Because the envelope fell out of my purse."

  "And it was a Xerox of a small child's picture?"

  "Huh-uh. And when he saw it he just went crazy. He really did. He started accusing me of meddling in his affairs and he said I hadn't had any right to open the envelope and he said if I didn't watch what I was doing I was going to wind up dead like those three other people-and then he just hit me." She paused. "Jim-the-Cowboy hit me once. He said in Montana women are hit all the time."

  "Jim-the-Cowboy?"

  "I went to a rodeo once and… Well, I wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea."

  "God forbid."

  "You think it had anything to do with the killings? The envelope, I mean?"

  "I'm wondering."

  Tobin eyed the cardboard box and the brown leather notebook. He'd been back in his room only five minutes when the shamed Cindy McBain had applied supplicant knuckles to his door. He hadn't had a chance to examine any of the things Captain Hackett had given to him and now, in light of Cindy's information about the envelope slid under Kevin Anderson's door, he was very curious.

  "Why don't you take a nap?"

  "I was hoping you'd say that. Scooch over."

  "No," Tobin said. "I mean, in your room. Then I'll pick you up for dinner and the costume party. Around eight or so-all right?"

  "You want to get rid of me, don't you?"