Holy Terrors

by Mary Daheim

  Judith’s memory of Herself was of a dyed blond with long legs, a high bosom, false eyelashes like bird wings, and dresses slit to the hip. She’d had something of a singing voice, a whiskey contralto that was usually drowned in gin. And she definitely had played a mean piano. Yet even after two decades, Judith still didn’t understand the attraction. Or at least didn’t want to.

  Joe had set the photograph back down, pushing aside a stack of folders and a Rolodex to give Caitlin a little breathing room. “I’ll walk you out,” he said, again taking her arm. “There’s something I should tell you, though.”

  Feeling his touch and aware of his gaze, Judith felt faintly breathless. Absurd, she lectured herself, but there it was…“What?” she asked, and could have sworn her voice cracked like Dooley’s.

  “You’ll know by morning anyway,” said Joe, still somber. “I didn’t tell you everything the M.E. said in his report. I held back because of Dooley.” He frowned, and to Judith’s puzzlement, gave a little incredulous shake of his head. “The medical examiner had a real shock when he started in on Sandy. It seems,” he went on, his voice rising slightly, “that Alexandra Frizzell was Alexander. Sandy was really a man.”

  EIGHT

  JUDITH DROVE DOOLEY home in a daze. She was exploding with the urge to tell somebody the astounding news she’d just learned, but since Joe had made a decision not to inform Dooley, Judith felt bound to silence. The department’s delay had been based on several factors, Joe had explained: the Easter weekend, which left them shorthanded in terms of media relations; the need to consult with the police chief who had flown to California to be with his wife’s family for the holiday; and most of all, Joe’s determination to talk to John Frizzell and figure out what was really going on with such a bizarre charade. So far, John had refused to discuss the matter with Joe or anyone else. Succumbing to the Easter spirit, Joe had decided to wait until Monday before he became hard-nosed. Whether John had lost Alexandraa or Alexander, he was still deeply bereaved.

  But if Judith kept her counsel as far as Dooley was concerned, she was sorely tempted to call Renie. Or better yet, stop by the Jones house. But it was after ten when she dropped Dooley off, and Judith was tired. There was still the kitchen to clean up. In the days of fore-closed mortgages and dumpy rentals, she had been an indifferent housekeeper. But Hillside Manor had changed Judith’s domestic habits. She never went to bed with a sinkful of dirty dishes.

  She was putting the last load in the dishwasher an hour later when a knock sounded at the back door. Judith glanced out the window, saw that the Rankers’s lights were still on, and went to let Arlene in.

  “They’ve gone!” she exclaimed, collapsing onto one of the dinette chairs. “It was all just wonderful! We had the best time! I hope they never come back!”

  It was vintage Arlene, full of earnest contradictions. Judith finished wiping off the counters and joined her neighbor at the dinette table. “They were certainly no trouble here. All they did was sleep.”

  “No wonder.” Arlene lifted her red-gold eyebrows. “They wore themselves out having fun. I brought my checkbook. I want to pay you before I forget.” She delved into the pocket of her red jacket.

  “Oh, there’s no hurry…” Judith began, but Arlene was already scribbling away.

  “There,” she said, handing the check over to Judith. “What a weekend! Did you hear about the Duffys getting broken into?”

  Judith shook her head. “No, it was the other way around. Mark was accused of breaking into the Frizzells.”

  “No, no,” countered Arlene. “I mean, yes, he was, but while Mark and Kate were down at police headquarters, someone broke into their house, too.”

  “What?” Judith shot back in her chair.

  “Oh, yes,” asserted Arlene. “Isn’t it terrible? I don’t know what this world is coming to. You’re not safe in your own house these days. Why, you’re not even safe at church! I still can’t get over poor Sandy!”

  Neither could Judith, but at this point not for precisely the same reason. “Back up,” said Judith. “Tell me again, what happened at the Duffys?”

  “That’s all I know.” Arlene didn’t look very happy over her lack of information. “Kate called me about eleven o’clock and said they’d come back from police headquarters to find that someone had broken into the house. They called the police—who turned out to be the same patrolmen who’d arrested Mark—and filed a complaint.”

  Judith’s head seemed to be spinning in rhythm with her dishwasher. “Was anything taken?”

  “Of course.” Arlene lifted her shoulders. “The usual—their VCR, the sterling, Kate’s pearls, Mark’s camcorder, stereo stuff, the TV the kids gave them for their anniversary. The house is a mess. I can’t understand why burglars have to be so careless—they always know exactly what they’re looking for.” Arlene turned quite cross.

  “Yes, they do,” Judith agreed in an odd voice.

  But Arlene took no notice. “I must run. I want to go over to the Frizzells tomorrow and see if I can help John with the arrangements. It’s a shame they didn’t have time to make friends. I honestly don’t think anyone on the Hill felt very close to them.”

  Judith agreed—and thought she now knew why.

  The sensation caused by the police department’s announcement that Mrs. John Frizzell was actually Mr. John Doe sent Heraldsgate Hill reeling. The story had broken in a news bulletin on radio and TV shortly before nine a.m. Judith, who was in the shower at the time, didn’t hear it, but Renie called about an hour later before going into a presentation she was making at the university.

  “I had the radio on in the car,” she said. “Honest to God, I just about ran over six people in a crosswalk! What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” Judith admitted. “Are you free for lunch?”

  “Yeah,” replied Renie, “until two when I meet with some old twit from the phone company. I ought to be done here just before noon. The usual?”

  “Right. See you then.” Judith hung up just as Dooley sprang onto the back porch and Gertrude thumped into the kitchen. It was too late to stop either of them. Dooley was inside the house before Gertrude could get as far as the sink.

  “Well, you little pervert,” she rasped, “done any window peeking lately, or have your folks taken away your telescope?”

  The incident involving Dooley’s up-close and personal view of Gertrude, naked as a jaybird, was still a source of friction between the two. Dooley attempted to look abject, caught Judith holding up two wiggling fingers behind her mother’s head, and almost lost control.

  “I’m interested in astronomy,” he explained. “You know, stars, planets, meteors, heavenly bodies.”

  “Which leaves you out, Mother,” murmured Judith, still gesturing behind Gertrude’s back.

  Gertrude, however, was willing to suspend hostilities in the wake of the newest sensation about Sandy Frizzell.

  “I know all about homosexuals and transvestites and stuff,” said Dooley, “but this is too weird. Why would a man pretend to be a woman?”

  “It’s stupefying,” agreed Judith, automatically pouring orange juice for Dooley and coffee for her mother and herself. “The charade had to be necessary. But why?”

  Gertrude had taken her coffee mug over to the sink, where she was cutting up cabbage for cole slaw. “I can think of ten million dollars worth of reasons,” she barked. “What if somebody’s impersonating the real John?”

  “Huh?” gasped Judith.

  “Unreal,” breathed Dooley.

  “I don’t get it,” confessed Judith, as surprised by her mother’s late entry into deduction as she was by the remark. Judith turned pensive, both hands curved around her coffee mug with its smiling but blurred picture of Queen Elizabeth II in her coronation regalia. Indeed, Judith thought as she gazed down at the mug, after going on forty years, the Queen looked like she could use a cup of coffee, too. “I’ve heard screwier ideas,” she admitted to her mother and Dooley. “But Emily
must have known John, or at least seen pictures. His mother—what was her name, Lucille?—lived with Emily for a time.”

  Gertrude ground away at some carrots. “I don’t remember seeing John Frizzell. Ever. When Lucille came back to Heraldsgate Hill, John was in college someplace, California maybe, I forget. As far as I know, he never set foot in this town until old auntie was on her last legs and loaded for bear.”

  The more Judith listened, the more plausible Gertrude’s theory became. As she headed down the Hill and into the city’s metropolitan district, it struck Judith that John Frizzell and Sandy had shown up a bit too conveniently. The possibility of John being an impostor was the first topic of conversation between Judith and Renie when they met at their old haunt, Papaya Pete’s, on the edge of downtown. Amid Polynesian decor and the aroma of curry, the cousins discussed the latest details in the Frizzell case. Renie insisted Joe must have a notion of what was going on; Judith insisted that he had seemed as genuinely baffled as the police were always supposed to be.

  Savoring the Green Goddess salad dressing on her enormous crab louie, Judith did her best to peddle Gertrude’s theory about John. Renie wasn’t buying.

  “No,” she asserted. “Emily Tresvant was neither trusting nor gullible. She wouldn’t accept an utter stranger as her sole relative and heir. Maybe she never met John until this winter, but I’ll bet she’d seen pictures. Lucille must have had some, and he’d have been grown by the time she came back to live with Emily, so he wouldn’t have changed that much. John and Sandy…” She stopped, fork poised over a slice of tenderloin beef slathered in curry sauce. “Good grief, I just can’t take in that Sandy was a man!”

  “Some Sandys are,” said Judith dryly.

  “One’s a dog,” agreed Renie, “if you count L’il Orphan Annie.”

  Judith savored a mouthful of Dungeness crab before she responded. “No wonder Sandy wore so much makeup. I just thought she—he—had lousy skin. What about those kids?”

  Renie snorted, causing the two businessmen at the next table to turn discreetly in the cousins’ direction. Leaning closer to Judith and lowering her voice, Renie was oblivious to the damage she was doing to her fuji silk banana-yellow blouse. “Ten to one, they don’t exist. Or they’re some relation of Sandy’s. If they were John’s, they might stand to inherit, too.”

  Judith winced at the curry sauce stain on Renie’s left breast. There was no point in mentioning it yet. Renie wasn’t finished eating. “Joe will check on that, I’m sure.” Judith picked through the romaine for more crab, but came up with a slice of avocado instead. “I wonder—what was Eve accusing Wilbur of? She mentioned an estate. Do you suppose it was Emily’s?”

  “Could be.” Renie licked rice from her lower lip. “As for family pictures, who would have seen them at Emily’s?”

  Judith reflected. “Emily wasn’t much for company. She was a virtual recluse in her later years. But Eve was in the house at some point. She knew there were a lot of valuable antiques there.” Wearing a sly expression, Judith delved for the last crab leg. “Speaking of pictures, that reminds me, what if that wasn’t a real burglar at the Duffys? I mean, I was thinking, what if it was someone going after Mark’s videotape of the Easter egg hunt? The other stuff might have been taken just as a cover.”

  Renie’s brown eyes widened. “Well! That’s right, all you do with those things is take them out and slip them into your VCR, right?”

  Judith went for the last piece of cracked whole wheat bread, but Renie had beaten her to it. The cousins exchanged mutual mock glares. The businessmen at the next table eyed them surreptitiously. “What was on that tape, I wonder?” mused Judith.

  “The scissors snatcher?” suggested Renie with a grimace. “That would make it premeditated murder. Ugh.” She glanced down at her front. “Ugh! I’ve practiced piggery. As usual.”

  “You don’t need to practice, you’re very good at it,” replied Judith as Renie frantically dabbed at her blouse with a napkin soaked from her water glass. “We’re assuming, of course, that Eve is not the murderer. She’s got the nerve, I think she’s a bit ruthless, but I don’t see any motive. Yet.”

  Their waiter approached with coffee. The cousins paused, going through the ritual of accepting tall glasses encased in macrame holders, with sugar but no cream for Renie, black for Judith.

  The waiter departed. Renie inspected her blouse. Judith noted that the garment was now wet enough to make her look like a nursing mother, and wondered, not for the first time, how Renie had survived so long in the corporate world. Obviously, neatness didn’t count.

  “When,” inquired Renie, holding her coffee glass close to her bosom in an apparent effort to steam the blouse dry, “will Joe get back the lab report on the rabbit suit?”

  “Late today,” answered Judith. “Damn, I wish I’d paid more attention to the rabbit when I came out of the rest room.”

  “You think it might not have been Wilbur?”

  Judith shrugged. “I don’t know. I just assumed it was. And yet there was something about him…he looked…what?” She screwed up her face in an attempt at recollection. “He seemed all done in. Different, somehow. But at the time, I chalked it up to fatigue.”

  Renie stirred extra sugar into her coffee and stared down a furtive glance from one of the businessmen. “Wilbur Paine, homicidal maniac. It doesn’t wash. None of the SOTS on Joe’s suspect list strikes me as a killer. The only one I really don’t know very well is old Eddie, the church gardener.”

  Judith brushed a few stray breadcrumbs from her orange linen skirt. “He hasn’t been around too long. What was it, a year or so ago when Grandpa Dooley’s kite got struck by lightning and he had to give up his gardening job?”

  “He should have given up kites,” said Renie. “Yeah, it was in the spring. March, I think. Father Hoyle was in a pickle about a replacement, and then Eddie came out of nowhere and volunteered.” Renie blithely mopped up the last bit of curry sauce with the last bite of the last piece of the whole grain wheat bread.

  Judith eyed her cousin in a speculative manner. “That’s just it. Where was ‘nowhere’? Sunday I asked Uncle Al if he knew Eddie, and he didn’t, except for seeing him up at SOTS. And Uncle Al knows everybody on the Hill, especially everybody over sixty-five.”

  “Good point,” conceded Renie. “But not hard to check out. We could start by asking Eddie.”

  “I suppose,” said Judith. “Somehow, I’ve always felt that Eddie’s switch isn’t turned all the way on.” She sipped at her coffee, nodding absently to the two businessmen who were now exiting from their table. “Meanwhile, I intend to find out what Eve Kramer was having such a fit about over at the Paines’ house Saturday night.”

  “How?” Renie raised both eyebrows, never having mastered the art of lifting only one.

  “I’m going to see Wilbur Paine on business as soon as we finish lunch. I’ve even made an appointment.” She gave her cousin a crafty smile.

  “You? For what? Getting a restraining order on Sweetums?”

  Judith turned serious. “We really haven’t had a family attorney since Ewart Gladstone Whiffel died right after Dan did. All this time I’ve been thinking about putting the money Dan left in a trust for Mike.” Her dark gaze roamed the ceiling with its fishnets and glass balls.

  “What money?” Renie demanded, then rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay, you’re up to your old tricks telling monster fibs for a good cause. I get it, Wilbur doesn’t need to know that not only was Dan flat broke, he ate the last warning notice he got from the IRS so you couldn’t see it.” She glanced over at Judith’s watch. “Gosh, it’s after one-thirty. I have to meet that phone company doofus at two. Want a ride down to Evergreen Tower? That way you won’t have to park twice.”

  Judith accepted. Fifteen minutes later, she was in the mahogany and glass express elevator that carried her to the forty-first floor where Hoover, Klontz, and Paine practiced law in conservative splendor. The office suite showed no sign of Norma’s more
ostentatious hand, suggesting that the other senior partners had ganged up on Wilbur.

  His desk, however, displayed a gilt-framed picture of his wife and their three children, taken before the little Paines had left the nest and Norma’s bust, along with the rest of her, had expanded to dangerous proportions. In contrast to Joe’s chaotic office, Wilbur Paine’s was a model of order. A classic pen and pencil set in marble, a leather-bound day calendar, and a legal-sized folder were the only other items on the desk. Wilbur, however, looked frazzled, his white shirt rumpled under his dark gray suit jacket and his maroon tie askew.

  “Extraordinary,” said Wilbur, opening a drawer and pulling out a ballpoint pen. “I thought I was all booked up today. I’m afraid I can give you only about ten minutes. My secretary told me you were leaving for Albania tomorrow?”

  Judith gave Wilbur her most innocent look. “Albania? Oh, no! I must have mentioned how I couldn’t leave Uncle Al with his mania. For gambling,” she added hastily. “He always goes wild on Tuesdays.”

  Wilbur’s expression was, Judith noted gratefully, mystified. “Anyway,” she went on in a brisker tone, “I’ve been remiss in straightening out my late husband’s financial affairs.” Judith proceeded to deliver a monologue on the nonexistent monies left by her late husband, mentally blocking out both the lie and the truth, the latter consisting of a debt-ridden debacle that she was sure had hastened Ewart Gladstone Whiffel’s demise.

  Laboriously, Wilbur made various proposals, all of which Judith seemed to consider. “I like the joint tenant trust idea best,” she finally said, “with provision that he becomes solely in charge when he reaches thirty.” She paused, apparently mulling. “What if he marries in the meantime? Would his wife be entitled to half the trust because this is a community property state?”

  Wilbur pursed his lips. “No. Not if it’s set up properly. She would inherit if he, ah, passed away, of course. Unless the document were worded so that should your son predecease you, it would revert to you.”