Rita said, “I couldn’t sleep.”
“I haven’t been up this late since junior-senior prom.”
“No offense, but you look like shit, honey.”
“Guess how I feel.”
“Like you look.”
“Like I look,” I confirmed, stumbling over to the couch where I flopped down on my stomach. My nose sniffed the air: something nice cooking. I said, “What smells good?”
Rita said, “I found a coffee cake mix in your cupboard. I’m making it. Is that okay?”
“That’s not okay. That’s wonderful. What else do I smell?”
“Coffee to go with it, stupid.”
“How long till the coffee cake?”
“Few minutes.”
“How long till the coffee?”
“Right now.”
“Hot damn.” I rolled over on my back—the dying dog’s last trick. I pulled the flesh away from my eyes with the flats of my hands, then got started on a series of overlapping yawns.
Rita came over bearing coffee. Good hot steam rose off the liquid in the cup and I inhaled it, then sipped. She nudged herself room next to me on the couch. Her big brown eyes were open wide as she said, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know how John’s doing, though.”
“Why?”
“I think it disturbed him, having this sort of thing happen in... the civilian world.”
“Oh.”
“Too bad it went the way it did. Davis is no great loss to humanity, I suppose, but he took a lot of information with him.” I sipped the coffee. “You know, Brennan came out and admitted he’s been sweeping the case under the carpet for the Normans.”
“No shit?”
“None at all. I’ll say this much for him: it took a certain quota of guts just to admit it.”
She made a face. “Oh, please.”
“He’s an SOB, all right, I won’t argue with you there. But even a belated stand against the Normans could cost the sheriff his job. I just hope he doesn’t go overboard trying to make up for lost time. You know, going into a gestapo number.”
“Coffee cake.”
“Huh?”
“The coffee cake should be done.”
“But I got some brilliant deductions to share with you.”
“If I don’t take it out it’ll burn.” And she rose and bounded toward the kitchenette.
I said, “I know who killed Janet Taber.”
“Tell me over the coffee cake,” she said, opening the oven door.
“Sheesh,” I said. “I solve the mystery and nobody gives a damn.”
The coffee cake was very good, moist and yellow and rich with crunchy cinnamon topping and my mouth surrounded a piece as Rita said, “Well, don’t pout. Spill!”
I spoke with my mouth full. “I don’t have any of the details figured out, understand. I mean, the pieces don’t form a picture yet or anything.”
“So who did it, already?”
“Davis did it, no doubt in my mind.”
“Why?”
“Because Stefan Norman told him to.”
“Why?”
“I think because Janet had something on the Normans. Maybe something she ran across back when she was working on Richard Norman’s campaign team.”
“What about Harold?”
She flipped the question out casually, lightly, like the rest of her conversation, but unlike the rest of it, this didn’t float: it was a leaden lump in her throat even after spoken.
I said, “Don’t worry. Your brother’s in the clear. I’m as sure of that as I am of Stefan’s guilt.”
She couldn’t hold back her sigh of relief, but she tried to cover it by sipping her coffee right after.
“You know,” I said, “your brother’s a nice man.”
“I could’ve told you that.”
“You did. Several times.”
“Now that you’ve ruled my brother out, I suppose you’re through with me. Won’t be needing my services anymore. Shove my black butt right out your door.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I could use a sleep-in maid around here.”
“Oh, typecasting, is it?”
“Maybe. Only I think of you more as the French maid type.”
She smiled and flicked a crumb of coffee cake at me and it landed on my nose. I brushed it away and leaned over and kissed her.
We were lying together kind of half asleep on the couch when the phone rang.
“Yeah?”
“Mal?”
“John, why in hell are you still up? Are you all right?”
“I went back to bed for a while, couldn’t sleep. Then the phone rang.”
“So who called?”
“The nightwatchman at the Maxwell Building.”
“The nightwatchman at the Maxwell Building. Well, what did the nightwatchman at the Maxwell Building have to say?”
“Nothing to me, Mal. It was Brennan’s call.”
“What about?”
“Swing by the jail and pick me up, will you? We’ll go over there and you can see. Brennan’s there with the cops now.”
“What the hell is it?”
“Stefan Norman’s been shot.”
TWENTY–THREE
“Suicide,” Brennan said.
I said nothing.
I looked at the desk where a few minutes prior the husk of Stefan Norman had been sitting. Stefan’s desk was big and black and metallic, with a small white blotter in its center, a throw rug on a ballroom floor. The blotter where Stefan’s head must have rested had a wine-color stain that had blossomed out, suggesting hidden shapes and meanings in Rorschach fashion. Otherwise the desk was bare, except for the blood-red push-button phone, and a small black automatic, responsible for the smell of cordite in the air.
Stefan’s office was large and the lack of furniture made it seem larger. The desk with one brown leather chair behind it and another opposite and a couch along the draped window-wall were like the last props waiting to be cleared off the set of a play that had closed. Not that this indicated the Norman Fund was a dummy operation: the outer office had rows of file cabinets and all the standard equipment, including a photocopy machine and the work-heaped desks of two full-time secretaries. And beyond that was a reception area complete with stacks of old U.S. News & World Reports. The Norman Fund had indeed been functioning at something or other.
I was feeling a little bit shook: deaths aren’t an everyday thing for me, not yet anyway, not even after everyday contact with them, which I’ve had from time to time, everything from typing obits all morning for a newspaper to tromping through some poor Asian guy’s rice crop with a rifle in my hands.
Also, I felt cheated: I didn’t have a chance to know Stefan Norman, let alone understand him. He was just a guy I talked to once for a few minutes; yet a guy who was important to me, a guy whose head I wanted to climb inside of to find the answers to some questions. A port of entry was there now, all right, but not for climbing in—for seepage only. The things in there, the man in there, were lost.
And, too, I had the spooky feeling that I was walking through a slightly altered replay of the events of Tuesday evening past. First off, John showed up in the yellow fringed buckskin jacket, blue shirt and black leather pants he’d worn then, but there was a logical reason for that: now that he’d soured on his stepfather, John was digging out his most outlandish outfits to make Brennan as uncomfortable as possible. Then at the Maxwell Building we were momentarily stopped by Oliver DeForest, the same guy who stopped us out at Colorado Hill Tuesday night. Next, John and I stood waiting for the elevator to come down and who should the doors open up on but Tuesday night’s ambulance boys, only this time it wasn’t Janet’s body they were cheerfully hauling out, but Stefan’s. I looked at John and said, “Déjà vu,” and he said, “Gesundheit.”
Brennan said, “Don’t touch anything.”
I motioned to the couch. “Mind if I sit down?”
“Be my guest.”
/>
I walked over to the couch and John followed. We sat and watched Brennan and a cop in uniform and another in a baggy gray suit wander around and try to find something to do. The uniformed cop asked Brennan if somebody ought to take fingerprints and Brennan said why bother. The guy in the baggy suit said what about the gun and Brennan said he was sure it was Stefan’s but check it out anyway and go ahead and take it down and get it checked for prints. Gray suit went over to the desk and shoved a pencil down the automatic’s barrel and walked to the door carrying the gun on a pencil like a boy scout carrying Old Glory in the parade. As he opened the door, the gun started to slide off the pencil and he instinctively guided it back in place with his free hand; he passed the torch to a cop who for no particular reason was standing watch in the outer office and told him what to do and came back and wandered around some more. The uniformed cop said anybody see the shell casing and Brennan said he already picked it up. It went on like that for fifteen minutes.
Finally I said, “Can I talk to you for a second, Brennan?”
Brennan said, “I’m kinda busy.”
“Are you?”
“Okay, okay, go ahead and talk.”
“Can we have some privacy?”
“Jesus, Mallory!”
“Brennan?”
“Let’s go on out in the hall, then.”
I looked at John and said, “Coming?”
He shook his head no. “You talk to him.”
Brennan and I walked out through the two outer offices and stood by the elevators, no one else around. “Private enough?” he said.
I said, “Suicide?”
“That’s right. Cut and dried.”
“Now isn’t that convenient?”
“What? Just what do you mean?”
“Just that it’s a nice, safe way to end the affair. For all concerned.”
“What are you implying, Mallory?”
“Am I implying something?”
“Okay, mystery writer,” Brennan said, punching the down button, “you come with me, I wanna show you something.”
We rode down in the elevator without a word, walked quickly past DeForest and went directly to Brennan’s Buick, parked in front of the building. Brennan unlocked the car door and reached in the front seat for a manila folder. He took a sheet of paper from the folder, carefully holding it by one corner with thumb and middle finger, and gave it to me, instructing me to hold it the same way.
“Read it,” he said.
“What is it?”
“What do you think it is?”
I read it over quickly, then said, “This is supposed to be a suicide note?”
“Not supposed to be. Is.”
“Have you checked the handwriting out?”
“I know Stefan Norman’s handwriting, and that’s it.”
“But you are going to have an expert check it, aren’t you?”
“The P.D.’ll handle that end of it. That’s up to them. I suppose they’ll check it out, but just as a formality. Take my word, that’s Stefan Norman’s handwriting all right. You wanna hand that back now?”
“No, give me a second, I want to reread it.”
I went over it again, more slowly this time. It was written out longhand, in a style tight, cramped and somehow delicate. It said:
I, Stefan Norman, am responsible for the deaths of Janet Taber and her mother, Renata Ferris. I felt I was working in the best interests of myself, my family and the Fund. I was in grave error.
It was my belief that Mrs. Taber and her mother, Mrs. Ferris, were attempting to blackmail certain members of my family.
In the pursuit of this belief, I approached Mrs. Ferris on the subject of her daughter’s conduct, only to find reason to suspect the mother’s complicity in her daughter’s action. The last of several arguments resulted in a physical confrontation. She (Mrs. Ferris) was a big woman and in the heat of the moment, attacked my person.
I retaliated and she was badly injured. In panic, I left the house. Later, by accident I presume, a fire began. In this indirect manner, I am responsible for her death.
George Davis killed Janet Taber, acting on a misinterpretation of a request of mine that she be asked to leave Port City at once. In this way, I am responsible for her death—and Davis’s, as well, indirectly.
I realize now my mistake in regard to Janet Taber and her mother and have deep feelings of sorrow and regret over the entire matter.
It was signed “Stefan H. Norman,” and dated.
I handed the page back to Brennan and he took it, easing it gently into the manila folder. He leaned inside the car, laid the folder on the seat and then locked it back up. He turned to me and said, “Answers a lot of questions, doesn’t it?”
I said nothing.
TWENTY–FOUR
Dawn. The sun glanced off the smooth surfaces of the Norman house, ricocheted off its sharp edges and shot blinding crossfires of glare across our eyes as Rita and I approached in the Rambler. The house looked smaller in the light of day, as though someone had come in during the night and replaced it with a scale model; and while no less grotesque in the morning light, the art deco castle seemed somehow less frightening, like a ghost that in the turning on of a light is revealed as a sheet caught on a nail.
We got out of the Rambler and I stood and had a look at the place. The slabs of interlocking cement showed a fresh crack here and there, as well as patches of mortarwork where others had been; the house just didn’t lend itself to mint preservation. Oh, if nobody tore it down, it’d be standing in a hundred years or two, but all that concrete, unpainted like it was, was bound to chip and crumble and lose some of its shape and, well, beauty. As a relic to be found in ages to come, by intergalactic free-booters perhaps, or maybe the mutated remains of whatever becomes of our race, the Norman place’ll be an enigmatic curiosity piece that, like a sunbleached skull sticking up out of the desert sand, makes one wonder what story was behind it.
Harold filled the back doorway. He was wearing a gray suit, white shirt open at the collar. He made like a cigar store Indian for a few moments, then came to partial life and motioned us in, grimly.
Rita gave me a look that included a quick downward movement of the mouth, which I took as meaning she was worried about just how bad I’d screwed up her relationship with her brother.
I gave her a look that said, Come off it, it’s six in the morning, a couple hours after the violent death of one of his employers, how do you expect him to act?
And she sighed and let go a tentative smile. Very tentative.
Harold was about to usher us into his room, saying something about getting us some coffee. I quickly stated the purpose of my visit, hoping to avoid any further amenities: I apologized for implying that he might’ve been involved in Janet Taber’s death, and said I was sorry for any inconvenience I might have caused either him or Mr. Norman. And I expressed my sympathy for the loss of Stefan. Then I asked if I might go up and express the same sentiments to Mr. Norman.
Harold’s one eye narrowed on me a good long while. There was, I thought, skepticism in that eye, along with it being bloodshot. He was absolutely still, staring at me, like a freeze-frame in a film, then said, “You can go on up, Mallory.”
“Thanks, Harold.”
“But don’t wake him if he’s got back to sleep, though I don’t imagine he will have.”
“I won’t.”
“And don’t upset him.”
“I won’t.”
“Then go on up.”
“Thanks.”
Norman was in his wheelchair. He had wheeled himself over a tiny ramp that led up to the desk on the stagelike platform. He sat at the desk looking out the long viewscreen of a window that faced the river.
“Sir,” I said.
He turned his head slightly, but not enough, I thought, for him to see me. Just the same, he said, “Oh, hello, young man. I’m glad you’ve come back to continue our chat.”
“I’m glad you’re glad.”
/> “I’m not really in any better spirits than before—perhaps even a shade worse—but I don’t anticipate getting quite as cantankerous as I did toward the end there last time you were up. Damn old people, anyway, changing their mind before it’s made up the first time. Please forgive my rudeness.”
“Only if you’ll forgive mine,” I said. “For breaking in on you the way I did.”
“I enjoyed your company,” he said, still facing away from me, toward the river. “Come join me here, would you? The view is very nice here, share it with me, please.”
I walked across the long empty room glancing at the portrait in purple over the fireplace, and stepped up on the platform and looked out the window. The sun was still rising, the sky was gray, and rose-gray just over the line of trees, which had the artificial, nearly surreal appearance of a landscape painted by one of your relatives. Not a beautiful sunrise, rather an eerie one, unreal, a collaboration between Grandma Moses and Salvador Dalí, and I wondered if sunrises always looked that way from the Norman house.
I had almost said, “Quite a sunrise,” when Norman said, “Right down there it was,” and I suddenly realized he wasn’t watching the sun come up at all, his head was tilted downward, toward the lawn that stretched for a hundred yards or so from the house to the edge of the bluff. He was staring at the dead brown grass, pointing a trembling finger.
He said, “There used to be flowers all around, bordering that lawn, and the lawn was green. The country club with its golf course would have liked to have grass so lush and green and rich. Every Sunday they’d gather there, folks from all over, they’d drive here and come sit out on the lawn and just look up at the building. Some were sick and needed help, others... others just liked to hear, well, as I used to call it, the ‘Sound of Truth’—that was what my Sunday broadcast was called. So anyway, what was it you asked? Oh, the gathering on the lawn. Well they came from all over and filled the parking lot, which took up all the space and more than that supermarket ’cross the street does now, the one by that filling station that stands where mine used to. And they’d sit out on the grass and we’d pump the broadcast out to them over speakers and would they ever listen. We put tents up in dreary weather, ’cause a little rain wouldn’t keep them away from Doc Sy Norman and Station KTKO and the Sound of Truth.”
No Cure for Death (A Mallory Mystery) Page 13