by Doug Allyn
The house creaks in the wind from the desert, although it is a new house. It was built on the dry brown hills west of Thousand Oaks by a homesick Englishman after one of the Tudor manor houses he had admired as a child. The door immediately to Edward’s left leads to the back stairs — the scullery stairs, his wife calls them — and the next two floors. From his wife’s bedroom on the third floor, when the wind from the desert drives the smog out to sea, one can see a glittering expanse of blue water, the curve of the beach at Malibu, and far, far away, fading like a dream, buildings of white stone and black glass.
Edward has to open several drawers before he finds a clean white cloth. He moves quietly. The servants are asleep. Everyone is asleep.
Marianne lay on her side in the bed flipping irritably through the latest catalog from Spivey. She had pulled the satin sheet carelessly up only to her waist, and beneath it she was naked. From time to time she glanced irritably at the back of Roger’s head as he finished dressing in front of the full-length mirror. She knew he was admiring the angle of his jaw, the cleanness of the line. Roger was very proud of his jawline, and rightly so. He pretended to adjust his tie.
“I don’t think you understand how humiliating this is for me,” she said. She stared at the back of his head, and he sighed.
“Of course I do, darling. It’s not every day of the week that Friar Tuck—”
“Don’t call him that,” she said.
“—confesses to murder.”
He left the mirror a little unwillingly and came to sit on the edge of the bed.
She sank back on the oversized pillows and glared at the squares set in the plaster ceiling some ten feet above her. The afternoon sun poured across the peach carpet from a mauve sky and touched the expensive highlights in her chestnut hair. Beyond the diamond-paned window, shrouded by the dense air, the sea swept ashore at Malibu.
“But darling,” he said, “what can you expect from a Jesuit who married a nun? The man is fundamentally weird.”
Roger was a little pleased at that. He wondered if she got the association: fundamentalism, religion. Probably. Marianne was very bright.
He patted her firm, flat tummy. She did eleven hundred crunches a day to keep it that way.
“This is beyond weird, Roger.”
The chill in her voice stopped his hand where it was.
“It’s definitely grounds for divorce, my dear. You could take him for all he’s worth.”
Marianne closed her eyes. “Roger,” she said with the weariness of repetition, “Eddie doesn’t have money, he makes money. Do you know what the payments are on a nine hundred and fifty thousand dollar mortgage? Well, neither do I, but that’s not the point. I couldn’t make a single month’s. Neither could you. But Eddie’s just a little money-making machine. He turns those guileless blue eyes on a client and suddenly checks are flying through the air. I know talent when I see it, and I knew it the moment I met him. It’s one of the three things he does really well. Eat, screw, and sell insurance to the stars. But he doesn’t have anything.”
Roger thought that the way Marianne spent Eddie’s money he never would have any, but had the common sense not to say so even if he was a little hurt by her tone. Roger might not be the brightest stockbroker in Thousand Oaks, but he was sensitive. He had to scramble just to keep up the payments on his Mercedes, and it was three years old. That was the beauty of the car. No one could really tell how old it was. He was thinking of painting it another color next year and passing it off as a new one.
Roger was handsome, well dressed, and — thanks to the time differential between coasts — had his afternoons free.
“So what if I’m extravagant,” she said to the ceiling. “Somebody’s got to spend Eddie’s money. It might as well be me. Who better? I’ve got more taste in my little finger than most people have in their whole bodies. That’s my talent.”
“Among others.” Roger grinned.
“Anyway, why would I want a divorce? I like Eddie. But, my God, how would you like to get a call in the middle of the night that your husband’s been arrested? Arrested because he has confessed to being the hillside slasher? In Van Nuys, for God’s sake!”
Roger decided flippancy was not to his advantage. Marianne did have the loveliest skin.
He frowned. “Why Van Nuys?”
“That’s where they found the last body,” she said impatiently. “So that’s where Eddie confessed.”
Roger wished he had the time to read a paper now and then, but he could hardly keep up with everything he was supposed to read as it was. If it didn’t make the Wall Street Journal, he was unlikely to have heard of it. But everyone had heard of the slasher.
And Van Nuys was the pits. Roger knew it well. He had lived there for a time some years ago, before it became too dangerous to do so. Suddenly Eddie’s little escapade was taking on the déclassé griminess of the tabloid. Roger knew Marianne wouldn’t be caught dead in Van Nuys.
“I understand,” he said sympathetically. Sympathy was one of Roger’s strong suits. “So what did Friar — Eddie say?”
“Oh, he wouldn’t talk about it.” Marianne frowned, then immediately touched the skin between her eyes, smoothing away the wrinkle there. Her husband was making her look older than her thirty-four years. “He was sheepish, embarrassed. All he would say was that he was having trouble sleeping.”
“Sounds like guilt to me, darling.”
Roger could no longer afford therapy, but remnants of those sessions flitted through his mind like snatches of songs half remembered.
“Oh, stuff and nonsense. We’ve been married four years. If he were going to act weird because he feels guilty, you’d think he’d have done it sooner.”
Roger hated it when she was short with him. Roger said stiffly, “What about the nun and the kid?”
“—ex-nun, Roger, and ex-wife.”
She glared at him, and he regretted bringing it up. He knew it made her edgy. He opened his mouth but could think of nothing comforting to say.
“Never mind,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t give a goddamn why he did it. I’m the one who has to deal with it. Brenda Delaney already has their invitation to the Jonathans’ ball. We haven’t.”
Marianne frowned again.
Roger wanted to say something supportive. The Jonathans’ was a social event that was very important to Marianne. But he doubted the machinery of the club could have found out about Edward’s gaffe soon enough to have stricken the Brennans from the guest list. He had confessed but two days ago.
“It’s probably just the mail,” he tried, but she did not change expression.
“Why’d they let him go, anyway?” Roger asked. “When he said he did it and all? He fits the profile to a T: professional, white, middle-aged male. What more do they want?”
“Details,” she said absently. “They questioned him for hours, but the police don’t let the papers print everything they know. Eddie couldn’t tell them enough to satisfy them that he was the one.”
Roger was a little disappointed at Eddie’s throwing himself into the maw of justice being so lightly regarded. Then he felt like saying something mean about Eddie.
“You’re not the only one who spends money like it’s going to be devalued, darling. The man dresses like a peacock.” He was only partially successful at keeping the envy out of his voice.
Marianne had once taken Roger into Edward’s bedroom to show him the texture of a jacket which she thought would be perfect for him. She hadn’t offered to let him try it on for good reason. Roger was a foot taller than Edward and sadly narrower in the shoulders. But Roger had been impressed with the number and opulence of the clothes hanging there, given the almost monastic simplicity of the rest of the room.
Marianne closed her eyes. It was times like these that she regretted giving up smoking. “I dress Eddie. When I first met him he was wearing double-knit suits and button-down collars.”
Roger was shocked into silence but wasn’t sure whether h
e believed her or not. He didn’t think anyone had manufactured double-knit suits since the sixties.
“You do have exquisite taste,” he acknowledged. He stroked his maroon and blue banded silk tie and tried to remember if she had given it to him.
Marianne moved his hand off her stomach.
“He hasn’t been sleeping lately.”
“How would you know, darling? That’s a solid-core door.” Roger gestured toward Edward’s bedroom.
“I find him all over the house in the mornings, that’s why, looking like hell. Found him in the billiard room, once in the study, you name it. Once on the patio, for God’s sake.”
Roger thought that peculiar but was a little miffed at her removing his hand. He stood up.
“I’ve got to go. Dinner with Mum.”
Marianne nodded, her soft, curly hair bobbing prettily. She stretched out her arms.
“Give us a kiss. I’m sorry, darling, but he’s just been so weird lately, it’s making me cranky. See you soon.”
Edward folds the soft white cloth lengthwise until he makes of it a narrow band. He places it around his neck, smoothing the ends so they lie flat against his broad chest. He pours the wine into the crystal goblet, recorks the bottle, and sets it aside. He puts both hands around the body of the glass and slowly raises it above his head. His hands and the wine disappear in the dark.
Roger watched Marianne pace the room. She was smoking. He pulled the sheet closer about his chest. He was a little sensitive about his lack of chest hair.
“Canoga Park?” he asked, as much as anything to stop her angry rush from one end of the room to the other. It was making him dizzy.
“Canoga Park,” she said. “But this time they let him go after only a few hours.”
“If they don’t catch the slasher soon, Eddie’s going to see the inside of every police station in the greater Los Angeles area.”
“Tell me about it.”
Marianne stared out the diamond-paned window at the shadows which were creeping across the brown hills, and beyond to the purple haze. She supposed the ocean was out there somewhere.
Roger hated being ignored.
“What did the psychiatrist say?” he tried.
“Which? The police psychiatrist or my psychiatrist?”
“Either. Both.”
She sighed. “Same old, same old. The police say people confess to get attention—”
“Eddie’s in toastmasters, for God’s sake—”
“—or have the need to be punished.”
Roger nodded sagely. It was as he thought. “Guilt,” he said.
Marianne chewed the cuticle of an acrylic nail. “So they seem to think.”
She resumed her pacing.
“But you don’t think so,” Roger said.
“No.”
“Wife and only son dying a fiery death—”
“—ex-wife—”
“—has to give them pause,” Roger said reasonably, “even if Eddie had nothing to do with it. He didn’t cause the accident. Fourteen people died when the tanker truck got rear-ended in that sandstorm.”
“Fifteen,” Marianne said.
“Husband runs off with secretary—”
“—administrative aide—”
“—and the nun and kid buy the farm.” Roger felt that if she was going to start smoking again, he got to call a spade a spade.
“Ex-nun.”
“Just bad luck, but you can see how it might get Eddie down.”
“That’s what they both glommed onto.”
“But you don’t agree.”
“No.”
While Roger admired her confidence in flying in the face of expert opinion, he thought her unreasonable. Her dedication to her own opinion was starting to irritate him. He got out of bed and started to dress.
“Just because it happened over three years ago,” he said, “doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been eating away at him and just now bubble to the surface.”
Marianne watched him put on his socks. She wondered if he knew what an idiot he looked like in putting on his socks before he put on the rest of his clothes.
“That’s what they think,” she said. “God, Roger, if you can’t make it as a broker, maybe you can make it as a shrink.”
“There’s no need to get nasty, darling.”
Marianne ground out her cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I’m sorry, but he’s driving me wild. Both of them said, ‘Not to worry, he’s harmless.’ Harmless? Harmless? Would you buy insurance from a certifiably crazy person?”
“Of course not.” Actually Roger had let his policy lapse. He couldn’t afford the premium, and he was pretty sure that should anything happen to him, his mother had enough money to get by.
“Well, neither will anyone else,” Marianne said.
Roger came to sit by her and patted her knee.
“At least you got your invitation to the Jonathans’.”
“They can hardly take it back, can they?”
Marianne stared bleakly into a future as a social leper with horrendous mortgage payments.
“Did Eddie tell them anyway? The psychiatrists, I mean.”
“What psychiatrists? He hasn’t seen any psychiatrists on his own. I’ve tried to get him to see Fred, but I think Eddie thinks Freud was in league with the devil. The police psychiatrist only said that Eddie wanted to sleep, but he can’t because of the screaming.”
Roger felt cold. He drew the edge of the bedspread over his lap.
“That’s why they believed him at first,” Marianne continued. “They thought he meant the screams of those poor women that maniac carves up in the afternoons. Which is ridiculous. You can’t sell as much insurance as Eddie does and take the afternoons off to butcher people.”
“But now they think he means the ex-wife and kid?”
“That’s what they think.”
There was an awkward silence. Roger wished his clothes weren’t on the other side of the bed.
“What makes you so sure they’re wrong?” he asked.
“They’re wrong because at the funeral Eddie said I was paid for.”
“What?” Roger was shocked. “What on earth did he mean by that?”
“I think he meant that he was being punished for being with me. That their deaths were the price he had to pay for our happiness.”
“That’s a bit thick, isn’t it?”
Roger stood up and began to look for his underwear.
“He said his suffering made a balance. For Eddie everything has to balance.”
“Did you tell them that?”
“Of course not. What good would it do? I did tell them that he slept like a baby for three years after the accident. Anyway, I don’t care why he is now running all over Los Angeles confessing to crimes he can’t have committed. I just want him to stop. Did I tell you about the clippings?”
“What clippings?” Roger could find only one of his shoes.
“I went through his things this morning while he was at the office, or looking for another jurisdiction, or whatever he does now with his days besides not sell insurance. In his sock drawer I found a pile of newspaper clippings about the slasher.”
“That’s morbid.”
“No, I think it’s homework. He had underlined some of the grisly details. I think he’s trying to get better at convincing them.”
“Hell of a hobby.” Then Roger had a chilling thought and paused in the act of retrieving his shoe from beneath the bed.
“You don’t think he knows about us?”
“Of course he doesn’t.”
For once Roger was grateful for her absolute conviction. But like picking at a scab, he couldn’t leave it alone.
“That’s good, darling, but what makes you so certain?”
“We’re still alive, aren’t we?”
Roger decided she was being flippant. But with Marianne, he never knew. It was part of her charm.
“I like that part about his
being harmless,” he said. “I think I’ll go with that.”
Roger finished tying his tie. He ran a finger along the edge of his jaw. Was it his imagination or was the skin there losing some of its elasticity? He frowned at his image. Sometimes it was easier than at others to see the skull beneath the skin. Those girls.
“Why do you think he keeps doing it?” Roger asked.
“I don’t know and I don’t care. He tells me he’s very sorry. Very sorry, but the screaming has got to stop. He can’t sleep.”
“He might try a bed instead of patio furniture. I’m afraid he’s nutty as a fruitcake, my dear.”
“That’s not very constructive, Roger.”
Roger looked at his eyes. Sometimes they didn’t look as disappointed as they now did. Sometimes they showed his power, his magnetism. He needed a confidence builder. Maybe he’d go for a drive near Pepperdine. There were plenty of girls there.
Edward blots his mouth carefully on the white cloth. In the dim light the wine stain looks black. The back of his shirt is wet. He doesn’t feel the moisture rolling down his sides. His lips move.
“Forgive me.”
He tried to make them punish him for what he is about to do. He tried.
He takes a knife from the wall and starts up the stairs.
Murder Mystery
by Alex Auswaks
© 1994 by Alex Auswaks
A resident of Eilat, Israel, Alex Auswaks published his first novel, A Trick of Diamonds, in the U.K. with HarperCollins. He has since had stories in several anthologies including that put out by the International Association of Crime Writers. His debut for EQMM is truly international in scope, featuring a would-be sleuth who sets out from Britain for a holiday in Germany, only to take a step back in time to old Tientsin...
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The old folk are beginning to depart this world.
Before they go, they visit each other. They fly from one part of the world to another. Their children and grandchildren slip boxes of chocolate to airline stewardesses and say, “He’s eighty,” “She’s ninety.” The airline stewardesses smile and promise to look after them.