8 The Man Who Loved Women to Death

by David Handler

  There was a tap at the bedroom door. Merilee went and opened it.

  It was Pam. “Are we decent?”

  “Not if we can help it,” I answered, climbing into my shawl-collared silk dressing gown.

  “Yes, yes, dear boy. Now then, I was wondering …” She stopped herself, her cheeks flushing a rosy shade of pink. “That is, we were wondering—Victor and I—if it might be convenient for the two of us to drive out to the farm tomorrow. Begin making those arrangements of which we spoke.”

  “Arrangements? What arrangements.”

  “I’ve offered them the farm, darling,” Merilee explained. “They’re getting married there.”

  “Ah. Excellent idea.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” Pam agreed breathlessly. “It’s so romantic there over the holidays.”

  “Tomorrow will be fine, Pam,” Merilee told her. “The three of us will join you as soon as we can.”

  “Oh, good, good,” she exclaimed, fluttering girlishly. “We’ll, ah, leave first thing in the morning. Dinner will be ready shortly. I assume that will be satisfactory?”

  “That will be perfect,” Merilee said.

  And with that Pam headed off. I dressed—the navy-blue suit, white broadcloth shirt, red and yellow silk polka-dot bow tie. Merilee already was. Dressed, that is. That silk camisole she’d been modeling was in fact an evening dress. This all became splendidly and erotically clear the second she stepped into her three-inch heels. Which, by the way, did her long shapely calves no harm.

  “What do we think of this rather surprising romantic development?” I asked, working on my bow tie in the mirror over the dresser.

  “It’s not in the least bit surprising, darling.” Now she was pawing through her jewelry box for her diamond earrings. “They enjoy each other’s company. They’re comfortable with each other. I, for one, am thrilled that it has blossomed into something more.”

  “Their age difference doesn’t bother you?”

  “Don’t be so Bumsteadian, darling. Cheese Louise.”

  “I’ve been missing your quaint little expressions.”

  “Evidently that’s not all you’ve been missing,” she said tartly, nudging me out of the mirror so she could put her earrings on.

  I nudged her back. “How is it you knew this was going on and I didn’t?”

  “Because I’m a woman. Women sense things.”

  “Things? What things?”

  “Feelings, of course. Men don’t. You’re too busy clomping around the house—”

  “I do not clomp. I stride purposefully.”

  “—Thinking about how wonderful you are. Frankly, darling, it was as plain as the nose on your face. Or at least the nose on mine.” She stood shoulder to shoulder with me in the mirror, examining hers critically. “Is mine getting larger as my face sags or is that just my imagination?”

  “Maybe we should invite her out, Merilee.”

  “Invite who out, darling?”

  “Tansy. For the holidays. It might be good for her to get away for a few days. And I need to talk to her about this book. I won’t do it if she’s against it. I want her to be comfortable with the idea.”

  “That’s an excellent idea, darling. She won’t come, but I’ll try. I’ll call her in the morning.”

  The doorbell rang now. I heard footsteps. Clomping, if you must know. Followed by a knock at the bedroom door.

  “It’s Inspector Feldman and Lieutenant Very, Hoag,” Vic called to me.

  “Turn on the lights in the living room, Vic. I’ll be right there.”

  Merilee joined me. Lulu did not. Merely moved from the bathroom floor to the bed, whimpering softly. Possibly a dose of cod liver oil was in order.

  Merilee and Romaine Very were old friends by now. The lieutenant got a kiss on the cheek, not to mention some highly tactful words about his haircut. As for the Human Hemorrhoid, he got the full star treatment. First the dazzling smile. Then the firm handshake. Then the modest, the just-plain-folks: “Hi, I’m Merilee.”

  As if he wouldn’t know. The poor man was pie-eyed and speechless. Her outfit certainly didn’t hurt. “A fan,” he was finally able to croak. “I’m a huge one.”

  “Why, thank you, Inspector,” she said graciously, folding herself and her long, silken legs onto the leather settee. “I do hope you’ll come see my new show. Bring a friend. Bring the whole department.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” he assured her. He was regaining his cool. The shooting and smoothing thing was happening. Shooting and smoothing. Shooting and smoothing …

  We sat, neither Feldman nor Very so much as noticing me there on the settee next to Merilee. I was used to this. It happens whenever I go anywhere with Merilee. Especially when she’s three-fourths naked.

  “May I offer you gentlemen a martini?” I said. Merilee and I were still working our way through our pitcher.

  “A scotch would go down pretty good,” said Feldman.

  “I heard that,” Very chimed in.

  I poured them each two fingers of the Singleton. We drank, the smell of Pam’s braised pork tenderloin with fresh sage wafting toward us from the kitchen.

  “We turned up the typewriter, dude,” Very announced into his glass.

  “Where was it, Lieutenant?”

  “His place,” Feldman answered sharply. “Where else?”

  “I had assumed … I thought you searched his place right away.”

  “Oh, we searched it, all right.” Feldman’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Same day the Cassandra Dee killing went down. We went over it fiber by fiber. Came up empty. No typewriter on the premises.”

  Merilee and I exchanged a confused look. I said, “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Where did you—?”

  “Typewriter wasn’t in the house,” Very explained. “It was in that woodshed out in the garden.”

  “We missed it first time around,” Feldman said, biting the words off angrily.

  I guess I knew how the man felt. I had missed it, too. Hadn’t even thought to look out in the woodshed when I searched the place. True, I’m an amateur, but why split hairs? It made sense—that part did, anyway. “What I can’t figure out is where he wrote it. The last chapter, I mean.”

  Now it was Very and Feldman who exchanged a look.

  “What are you talking about, dude?”

  “He killed Cassandra at about three in the afternoon. He stole Luz’s car at around eight for that final drive to Cambridge. That means he must have written it some time in between, right?”

  “Right …” Feldman said doubtfully.

  “Where did he write it? He didn’t go home. He didn’t go to the restaurant. He couldn’t have—you were watching both places.”

  “What about Luz’s place?” Merilee wondered.

  “She says no,” Very replied.

  “She could be lying,” Feldman said.

  “She could be,” I conceded. “Only how did he write it? He only had a few short hours. I’m a professional writer, gentlemen. I couldn’t have banged out something that good that fast. Especially under such extreme circumstances. Plus it’s so clean. Not so much as a single typo. And here’s another question: Say he did write it before he drove to Cambridge—”

  “He did,” Feldman interrupted. “That’s a fact.”

  “Okay, then how did he get the typewriter back in the woodshed?” I asked. “You were watching the place. You had men stationed there. How did he do it?”

  Very and Feldman both froze. This hadn’t occurred to them.

  “Dig, there must be a simple explanation.” Very tugged at his little tuft of beard. “If we trip on it a minute, I’m sure it’ll come to us.”

  “Aw, Christ,” Feldman said disgustedly. “Here you two pineapples go again, circling over this thing in your helicopter. Pay attention to the facts, will you? The man’s dead. The man won’t kill anymore. The man won’t—”

  “Wait, I know what he did!” Merilee broke in excitedly. “He had already written it—befo
re he killed Cassandra. It’s all a work of fiction. None of it actually happened the way he described it.”

  “That’s a promising theory, Miss Nash.” Feldman spoke politely, trying not to stare at her legs. “Only it did go down the way he described it. Cassandra Dee was in Bergdorf that day. Sales clerk in the Prada boutique, salty old broad named Madelyn Horowitz, recognized her right off, even with her hair tied back. Lots of the ladies did. One of them even asked her for her autograph.”

  “What time was this?” I asked.

  “Noon, maybe,” he replied.

  “Did she spot Tuttle, too?” I asked.

  “That’s a negative. He must have hit on her out front when she came out.”

  Very said, “Except, he distinctly mentions seeing her in a designer boutique with only one name. How would the man know that unless he was inside?”

  “It’s tres chic to go by one name these days, Lieutenant,” Merilee said. “There’s Prada. There’s Fendi, Kenzo, Krizia …”

  “Safe guess on his part, in other words.” Feldman took a sip of his scotch. “I figure he was playing with her. Pretending to give himself up to her. And she played right along.”

  “If only she’d called us,” Very said glumly. “She’d still be alive if she’d called us.”

  I said, “She was picturing banner headlines, Lieutenant. Not herself dead. No reporter thinks that way. Not if they’re any good.” I stared down into my empty glass. “Odd how Tuttle didn’t say good-bye, don’t you think? Here he was, hours from his own suicide, yet there’s nothing in his final chapter reflecting that. Or in his letter. It’s all very upbeat and enthusiastic. Not so much as a hint that he was about to blow his brains out.”

  “There wouldn’t be,” Feldman said, going into his lecture mode. “Serials typically experience a sense of exhilaration after they do their victims. When Cash sat down to write that, he was on a temporary high. But then that euphoria wore off, and up popped his demons all over again.”

  “I understand that, Inspector,” I said. “It’s just that he was so obsessed about making a big splash. All he talked about in his letters was the publicity, the money. Who was going to play him in the movie, who was going to play me, you—”

  “I forget, darling,” Merilee said. “Who was he talking about for the role of me?”

  “He wasn’t. He didn’t mention you.”

  She drew herself up at this, outraged. “What?”

  “Okay, I lied. He wanted Anna Nicole Smith.”

  “How dare he write me out of the picture? That son of a sea cook never liked me.”

  “You never liked him, Merilee.”

  “Harrumph.”

  “You were saying, Hoagy?” Feldman said.

  “I just find it hard to accept that Tuttle would end it like he did without putting that part down on paper, too. I mean, he went out with a kaboom. Literally. But in terms of his final chapter, he went out with a whimper. Do you gentlemen understand what I’m saying?”

  They didn’t. They were both staring at me blankly across the coffee table.

  Very cleared his throat uncomfortably. “You been close to this since day one, dude. Closer than any of us. Maybe you ought to do some serious chillin’. Try to remember what life was like when it was normal.”

  “My memory doesn’t go back that far, Lieutenant.”

  Merilee took my hand. “I’ll do what I can to jog it for you, darling.”

  Very grinned at her. “I’m down to that.”

  Pamela started making discreet noises at the dining table.

  “Will you gentlemen stay for dinner?” Merilee offered. “I’m sure we can throw another potato in the stew.”

  Feldman let out a guffaw. “Christ, I haven’t heard that expression in thirty years.”

  I said, “Stick around, Inspector. She’s just getting warmed up.”

  For which I got a swift, hard elbow in the ribs.

  “Thanks, but we have to be going.” Feldman got wearily to his feet and stuck his hand out to me. We shook. “Sorry it had to end the way it did. You finding your friend dead.”

  “I found two friends dead, Inspector.”

  “They never make it easy for us, do they?”

  “No, Inspector. They do not.”

  “But it’s over. That’s the bottom line, Hoagy. You just stick to the bottom line, that’s my advice. Sometimes we lose sight of the bottom line when we’re trying to get over something like this. It’s happened to me. It’s happened to all of us.” He managed a grim, sympathetic smile. The effort seemed to pain him. “You’re still not my kind of guy, you know. You’re not a team player. But I’ll tell you one thing—you made one helluva choice in a wife.”

  “Ex-wife,” Merilee and I both said.

  “Whatever,” he said. “You got lucky, my friend.”

  “It’s true, Inspector. I’m a lucky man.”

  “Ride easy, dude,” said Very.

  Then they said their good-byes to Merilee and were gone.

  We had asparagus with our pork tenderloin, also Pam’s world-renowned macaroni and cheese. She uses just under one metric ton of two different grated cheeses, Italian fontina and Pecorino Romano. Pam’s macaroni and cheese is ordinarily a major event in my life. But I barely touched it or the moist, fragrant slices of pork. I just sat there at the table, listening to the tall clock tick in the entry hall.

  “What is it, darling?” Merilee asked fretfully, her green eyes shimmering at me in the candlelight.

  “I have no idea, Merilee.”

  “Well, I have. You’ve gotten less than two hours of sleep in the past four days. Why don’t you pop into bed with Lulu and a good book? I’ll join you as soon as I’ve helped Pam with the dinner things.”

  “You know, I think that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

  So I undressed and climbed into bed with B. Traven and Lulu, who climbed right up onto my chest, her paws on my shoulders, and started whimpering at me woefully. She truly was not herself. I felt her large black nose. Cold and wet. She wasn’t sick. But something was definitely bothering her. I scrunched her chin, wishing she could tell me what it was. I lay there under the down comforter with the lights of the city sparkling outside the window.

  Romaine Very was right, of course. I was too close to it. Too full of hurt and loss and confusion. But chillin’ was no answer. Because the hows and whens still wouldn’t add up. How and when Tuttle wrote that final chapter. How and when he got the typewriter into his woodshed. How and when he chose to die. They didn’t add up. No one could make them add up.

  And there was something else. Something that had bothered me several days ago about one of those chapters. An odd feeling I couldn’t put my finger on. It was in the third chapter, “the answer man takes a plunge.” The Bridget Healey murder.

  I climbed out from under my glum chum and fetched my copy and got back into bed with it. I read the pages over again carefully. Read all about him finding her there in the pool, swimming laps … She had on a string bikini, the kind they wear when they’re advertising … Joining her in the whirlpool. Hearing her story. Walking her to her dark, cramped apartment. Performing his random act of kindness … She just sort of went away, snap, like some bug on the kitchen floor … That empty feeling he was left with. I read it all over again. And I re-read it.

  And then I found it. It wasn’t much. It was just a word. One word. But it was wrong. And now the pieces started to fit together. Almost. One piece was missing. I needed the missing piece.

  I looked at the clock on the nightstand. It wasn’t yet ten. I pulled out the Manhattan phone book and started working the phone, seated there on the edge of the bed. Merilee came in after awhile. When she saw me there, saw the look on my face, she went into the living room to read. I had no luck in Manhattan, so I tried calling information. I worked my way through Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island. Then I started in on Long Island, working my way outward from the city, town by town. Luckily, I had to go only as far as Mineola. It w
as after midnight by then. But I got what I needed. I got the missing piece.

  And then I knew. I knew why it didn’t add up. Oh, yeah, I knew all right.

  Fifteen

  THOSE TWO WACKY LOVEBIRDS, Pam and Vic, went chugging off to Lyme in the Land Rover shortly after dawn. The morning weather forecast called for snow changing to sleet, followed by high winds, hailstones and lemmings. They wanted to beat the worst of it out there, get the kitchen stocked, the firewood chopped, the hurricane lamps filled. Pam served us our breakfast in bed before they left, which happens to be one of Merilee’s two or three favorite things in the whole world, right up there with shopping for clothes in Milan and boycotting the Oscars. I don’t hate it myself. There was fresh-squeezed orange juice. There were waffles, sausages, poached eggs.

  Tracy joined us in the big bed, chock full of giggles and gurgles. She wasn’t old enough yet to wake up in a shitty mood. How nice that must be, I thought. Lulu just lay there on my feet, sulky and morose. Still wouldn’t so much as sniff at her kippers and eggs. During the night I had even heard her prowling the apartment restlessly, which she almost never does. I was really getting worried about her.

  After breakfast, Merilee climbed into her gray silk lounging pajamas and went around closing her blackout curtains and turning off all the lights in the apartment. Time for a little blindness practice, bless her. Tracy got a one-way ticket back to her crib in the nursery. Me, I put in a call to Very. Came up empty—the lieutenant was in court that morning. I left word for him to call me as soon as he could. I went in the bathroom and showered and shaved and doused myself with Floris. When I came out Lulu was standing in the bedroom doorway barking at me. Her way of informing me she was ready for her morning constitutional in Central Park. I told her to hold her horses. She started barking louder. I told her to shut up. She wouldn’t shut up. And then a heavy thud came from the direction of the living room. Shook the whole apartment. A definite 6.3 on the Richter scale.

  “What did you bump into this time, Merilee?”

  She didn’t answer me. More barking from Lulu.