Going Out in Style

by Gloria Dank

  “You mean Susan killed her mother, and then George killed Mrs. MacGregor?”

  “Yes … yes, that’s what I mean.”

  “Yes. How clever of you, Jessie. We don’t have any proof,” said Gretchen, “but you know, I’m positive that’s it!”

  On the other side of town, the two people being accused of murder at that very moment by Gretchen and Jessie were sitting playing a quiet game of Go Fish. George had come over for dinner—a meal which he had prepared by himself, since Harold was in a bad mood and was acting up. There had been a scene when it came time for Harold to go to bed, but after half an hour of screamed protests, with Susan hovering anxiously over him, he had dropped off to sleep abruptly, looking like an angel with his arms wrapped around his teddy bear. Now George and Susan, exhausted, were playing the only card game that both of them knew.

  “Harold’s been awful lately,” Susan said. “Yesterday he practically accused me of lying to the police about Dora’s being here the night Mother was murdered. Do you have any aces?”

  “It’s been hard for him since your mother died,” said George. “Dora was here, wasn’t she? Go fish.”

  “Yes, in fact, she was, Georgie. What do you think? Do you think I killed my mother?”

  “No, no, Susie. Don’t get upset. It’s just with these murders and everything … well, it’s an uneasy feeling, isn’t it? Somebody we know did it. Do you have any fours?”

  “Go fish,” said Susan unsympathetically. “How do they know that? Maybe it was somebody from the outside. A crazy person. Why don’t they ever consider that? Here.”

  There was an exchange of cards.

  “Susan, honestly. It was somebody at that party. You know it was. Do you have any kings?”

  “No, Georgie. Go fish.”

  George fished.

  “I think I’m doing pretty well here,” said Susan a little while later. “Do you have any sevens?”

  “Go fish,” said George, eyeing her cards. “You are doing well. Any jacks?”

  “Go fish. You know, sometimes I worry about us, Georgie. Why can’t we learn any more sophisticated card games? Do you know any other adults who still play Go Fish? Why can’t we learn bridge or poker or blackjack or something? I learned this game when I was five.”

  “Here’s a jack,” said George in triumph. “Look out, Susie. Do you have any eights?”

  Susan looked disgruntled and handed them over.

  “I win,” said George. “There’s something about its simplicity that’s appealing, don’t you think? The game, I mean. What do you say, shall we play again?”

  “Oh, sure. Why not?”

  George won two more games, and Susan won one. She leaned back in her chair and said, “I’m exhausted, Georgie. Totally drained. Too much Go Fish gets to me, you know, like a drug. Want some coffee or something?”

  “Sure.”

  Over coffee and cake, George said, “Listen, Susie, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Philo Harmonia is planning a concert in Hartford next weekend, and we’re going to play that new piece I’ve written—you know, the string quartet. It’s going to be the second half of the program. Will you go with me? Albert’s welcome, too, if he wants. Please, Susie. You know I wrote that piece for you.”

  “Oh, all right, fine. I’ll ask Albert if he’s busy.”

  George’s face broke into a big smile. “Good. Good. I’ll get you free tickets.”

  Susan did not say anything, but she wondered how they had the audacity to charge the viewing public for tickets. Philo Harmonia was not, after all, the New York Philharmonic. She looked at George, who was humming to himself and happily dripping coffee all over his shirt. The shirt was so old and wrinkled that somehow it didn’t seem to matter. Susan sighed. Was she doing the right thing? After all, she already had a son. George needed somebody to look after him almost as badly as Harold did. It wasn’t as if Harold actually liked him or anything. Of course, Harold always hated any man she brought home for his inspection. Nobody was good enough. George was the best of what, she admitted to herself in retrospect, had been a sorry lot.

  Unbidden, the thought came to her, But I don’t have to marry anyone now … I’m rich … I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.…

  She was horrified at herself. What was she going to do, toss poor George on the scrap heap just because she had come into some money?

  Inside, however, the voice whispered, It’s not just some money … it’s sixty-four million dollars … sixty-four million dollars.…

  Somehow she had never thought seriously of what that meant. It meant she didn’t have to work anymore … that she could travel, do as she pleased, see whomever she wanted, whenever she wanted. She looked doubtfully at George, as if seeing him for the first time. Was he really the man she wanted to be tied to for the rest of her life? Hadn’t things somehow … well, changed between the two of them since her mother had died?

  George apparently didn’t think so. He sat there, unconcerned, looking just the same as always: artistic and unkempt. He was humming the third movement of Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Susan turned away, suddenly annoyed. She was tired of the Trout Quintet. She was tired of ironing George’s shirts for him and interceding between him and her son. She was tired of Philo Harmonia and his poorly composed pieces with their interminable viola solos. She was tired, in the final analysis, of George.

  But when she looked at him again she relented. He was a very sweet man.… She didn’t want to make a mistake. She would think it over for a bit.

  She smiled at him. “More coffee, dear?”

  Gretchen was sitting in her office at school, marking essay papers. She was scowling and mumbling, “No, no, no …” as she wrote out comments in her large, bold handwriting. She was writing savagely on one student’s essay, “Just because Chaucer used creative spelling doesn’t mean you can,” when Albert came into her office and sat down.

  She gazed at him with concern. He was looking very tired and drained recently. Of course it was no wonder, with everything that was going on, but still …

  “Are you all right, Albert?”

  He nodded vaguely.

  “Are we still going out to dinner tonight, or would you rather cancel it?”

  “What? Oh, no, no … I mean yes, of course we’re going out. We always go out on Fridays, don’t we?”

  “All right, then. I’ll come by your office around five.”

  That evening, at the Golden Eagle, Albert leaned across the table, knocking over the salt and pepper shakers and a basket of bread. He did not seem to notice. He took her hand and said, “Gretchen, will you marry me?”

  She was busy cleaning up the mess he had made. “Oh, Albert, please. Look at what you’ve done here.”

  “Gretchen. Will you marry me?”

  She gazed at him, startled. “Albert—”

  “Life is short, Gretch. Life is short. You never know when it’s going to end.” His face had a sad, haunted look. “I’ll turn forty this year. I don’t want to go on like this. It’s not for me.” He added with that strange dignity of his, “I care for you very much, Gretch. Please marry me.”

  “Albert—”

  “We could get married this summer. In June, perhaps. June is a good time for a wedding. I’d like to get married sooner, but we can’t, not with—well, you know …”

  “These murders,” she said dryly.

  “Yes. These murders.” He paused and leaned forward. “You don’t have any idea, do you, Gretch—I mean, who might be behind all of it?”

  “No. No, of course not.”

  “Neither do I. It seems as though if I could just think about it … just think about it the right way, the answer must be obvious, you know. Obvious. But I can’t seem to see it that way at all—”

  “A June wedding,” Gretchen said.

  “Oh. Yes. A June wedding. What do you say?”

  “Yes, Albert. I say yes.”

  He was so gratified he knocked over his wi
ne glass. After they had finished dinner, they went out to The Painted Man to celebrate.

  “You mean it, Gretch? Really? You and Albert are getting married?” Jessie’s face was flushed a mottled pink color.

  “Yes, Jessie. He asked me tonight at dinner. Can you believe it? After all these years!”

  “Oh—oh, Gretch … I’m so happy for both of you, I really am. This is what I’ve wanted for years … for years, Gretch. Oh, I’m so excited—and a June wedding! Oh, it’s wonderful—wonderful!”

  And she burst into tears.

  “It’s nothing,” she said, struggling to smile as Gretchen leaned over her worriedly. “It’s just that I never … I never realized—oh, I’ll miss you so much, Gretchen!”

  Gretchen, very sensibly, poured her out some brandy. After a few sips Jessie perked up again and began to plan.

  “You’ll get married on the Whitaker estate, of course. They have the most beautiful back yard there, and in June it’ll be all roses and those bunchy things, what are they called, not chrysanthemums … oh, well. I think the color of the wedding should be pink, don’t you? I’ll wear a deep pink, sort of a rose color, and your other bridesmaids can wear pale pink, like rosebuds. It’ll be so romantic, Gretchen! You’ll be all in white with a bouquet of sweetheart roses, I know just the place to order them from, they do it up right with lace and everything. And Albert will wear a tuxedo, of course, and the table linens can be all pastels, pink and blue and pale yellow, I think that would be so pretty, don’t you? Let me see, I saw an illustration in a magazine the other day that would be just what I’m talking about.…”

  And she bustled off happily to root, swinelike, in the pile of newspapers and magazines under the coffee table in the living room.

  Gretchen, watching her go, smiled to herself. Dear Jessie!

  The next evening, Saturday, a cheerful group bundled into George’s car for the trip to the concert in Hartford.

  Susan had asked Albert to come along (“Honestly, Albert, you know Georgie, he’d be so hurt if you didn’t come”), and Albert in turn had corralled Gretchen and Jessie. Susan sat in the front, next to George, and the three others were crammed together in the back of the old rickety Ford. George drove a faded red Ford that, like so many things about George, had seen better days. It ricocheted and backfired and made strange clackety sounds as they drove along. Jessie, in the back seat, was convinced she was about to die.

  “Oh, be careful!” she sang out as George swung into the left-hand lane. “Be careful! George, be careful! Look over there—oh! Oh, no!”

  “Just keep your eyes closed,” Susan advised. “It’s best when George drives. The man is a maniac.”

  They sat through the concert, in a rented hall in Hartford, in a state somewhere between boredom and stupor. Jessie fell asleep quite peacefully on Gretchen’s shoulder. The string quartet which George had composed was an hour long and included, perhaps not surprisingly, five viola solos. George had a nervous habit of humming as he played; humming that could be heard very clearly in the audience. Susan rolled her eyes at Albert and whispered, “I’ve told him, but he never listens.”

  “The middle section was very nice,” her brother whispered back.

  “Thank you, Albert. Thank you for being kind.”

  Afterwards they went out for a late dinner, where they all drank to Gretchen and Albert’s engagement. Jessie showed Albert some pictures she had of different styles of tuxedos. Albert said to his sister, “Perhaps we’ll have a double wedding.” Susan smiled nervously. A short while later she stood up and said, “It’s time for me to get back, if you don’t mind. Dora says there’ll be hell to pay if she’s not home by twelve to watch Star Trek with Phil.”

  A few days later, George was driving Susan home from work. It had been a long day at the Ridgewood Star and Susan was in a bad mood. She usually worked at home, not in the office, but she had come in to do some last-minute corrections on one of her “What’s New in Ridgewood” columns. “The problem is,” she was saying furiously to George, “that nothing is new in Ridgewood. Nothing ever is new in Ridgewood. My mother’s death and Mrs. MacGregor’s death were the biggest things to happen around here in years. I refused to write about them—well, at least the idiots in the editorial office can understand that—so what’s left? How many people were at the skating rink last weekend? That’s not news. It’s not news, Georgie.”

  George nodded sympathetically, cut off another car with a squealing of brakes and mutual insults, and careened along in the left-hand lane.

  “And then when I went out to lunch,” Susan continued hotly, “I ran into that self-righteous prig Lizzie Feldencraft, who told me she had read my last child-care column and thought it was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. She said all her children had been allowed to cry themselves to sleep alone at night, and look how they turned out. I agreed with her. I said, ‘That’s right, look how they turned out.’ Well, she didn’t like that at all, George. I told her it was just plain cruel to let a child cry itself to sleep all alone, no matter what the so-called experts say, and that my Harold had never been allowed to do that. Even when he’s upset, I’m there for him. So then, naturally, you can imagine what she said …”

  After an exchange of mutual insults concerning their offspring, the two mothers had retreated to opposite sides of the Golden Eagle lunchroom and glared at each other throughout the meal. “Self-righteous prig,” Susan said now. “Bitch! Conceited bitch! Why, if I told you the things she said to me—”

  George nodded again, cut back into the middle lane, passed a car on the right and stopped at a traffic light with a loud protesting squeal of brakes. Susan lurched forward. Something bright and shiny rolled out from under her seat.

  “George?” She picked it up. “What … what’s this?”

  In her palm was a diamond-and-sapphire earring in the graceful shape of a flower.

  George’s mouth formed a comical “O” of surprise as he stared, astonished, at the earring. “What—?” he spluttered. “Where—?”

  The car behind them honked, and George put his foot on the accelerator. He turned off onto a side street and parked. Then he said feebly, “Where did it come from?”

  “Here, Georgie. Under the seat.”

  They stared at each other in silence.

  “Is it—?”

  “Yes. It’s my mother’s earring.”

  George had gone very pale. “It’s—it’s horrible.… Somebody’s trying to frame me!”

  “Who’s been in this car, Georgie?”

  “Nobody. Nobody—just you and Albert and Gretchen and Jessie …” His hands were shaking. “That concert the other night,” he whispered.

  “That’s right.” Susan thought back. The three of them had been in the back seat. “What are we going to do?”

  George stared at her, wide-eyed. “What do you mean? What do you mean? We have to take it to the police. What else can we do?”

  “We could throw it away, or hide it somewhere else.”

  “Susan!”

  “I don’t want Albert implicated,” she said fiercely. “You understand me, George? I don’t want Albert implicated in this.”

  “Albert?” George shrieked. He bounced up and his head hit the ceiling. “Albert? How about me? Can you spare a thought for me, Susan? I’ll be the first person the police will think of! It was in my car, for God’s sake!”

  “That’s true, George. That’s true. It does look bad for you.”

  He rested his head miserably on the steering wheel. “I’m not an idiot, Susie, no matter what anybody thinks. I wouldn’t plant the damned earring on myself and leave it for somebody to find. I swear to you, I’ve never seen the damned thing before. I’ve never seen it before!”

  “Yes … I know, Georgie. I know. But who …?”

  They stared at each other.

  George said in a whisper, “One of the three people who were in the back seat that night …”

  6

  Detective Jan
ovy said, “Are you sure this is the earring that your mother was wearing, Miss Whitaker?”

  “Yes, Detective. I’m sure.”

  “You have the match to it?”

  “Yes. It’s in a safe-deposit box at our bank. I’ll ask Albert to get it tomorrow, if you like.”

  “Thank you.”

  Janovy, Susan, and George were sitting on the two shabby sofas in George’s ramshackle apartment. Susan and George had driven straight there after their discovery and called the police.

  “So it was underneath the seat of the car?”

  “Yes.”

  Janovy regarded George Drexler thoughtfully. Why? he thought. Why had someone placed it there? Why, in fact, had the killer kept it in the first place?

  George was looking very much the worse for wear. He looked downtrodden and depressed. He had his viola out and was plucking at the string dispiritedly, a soft pizzicato emphasis to his words. “Somebody hates me,” he said sadly. “Somebody hates me.”

  “Oh, Georgie.”

  “It’s true, Susan. Somebody hates me. Is it something about me? What have I ever done to deserve this? Someone needed a stooge, and they picked me. It’s so unfair.”

  “Cheer up, George. Would you like something hot to drink? Wouldn’t that be soothing?”

  George perked up a little bit. “Yes, thanks, that would be great. Hold on a sec, I’ll make it. Yes, you stay right here. Anything for you, Detective?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “What would you like, Susie? Tea or coffee?”

  “Tea, please.”

  “Caffeinated or decaffeinated or herbal?”

  “Caffeinated is fine.”

  “Good. I have Twinings Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Assam, Queen Mary—that’s really special—Darjeeling, Irish Breakfast, and Prince of Wales.”

  “It doesn’t really matter, George. Whatever.”

  He vanished into the kitchen. Susan turned to Detective Janovy. “I hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to get George out of the room for a minute. I’d like to know what you’re thinking, Detective.”

  “What do you mean?”