A Nice Murder For Mom

by James Yaffe

  She plunged into the details of that argument, but it not only didn’t interest me, I couldn’t understand half the words she used. Will somebody tell me please what a “text” is? Don’t people read plays and poems and stories anymore, the way they used to do when I was in college? Then I heard the phone ring.

  It was in the foyer, I noticed, on a little spindly legged mahogany table. An expensive item, I would’ve guessed. The phone rang three or four times, with everybody closest to it blandly ignoring it. One of the things in this world I can’t stand is an unanswered phone, so I turned away from Fletcher—my rudeness not bothering her a bit: She went right on with her monologue, directing it at somebody who had just come up on her left—and went out to the foyer and picked up the receiver.

  I said hello and started to say “Professor Van Horn’s residence,” but the person at the other end interrupted me. “Stu Bellamy here,” he said. “Samantha Fletcher, please.”

  I recognized that irritating drawling voice from last night, but I saw no point in identifying myself. I just said, “I’ll go get her, just a minute,” and put the receiver down. Then I went back as far as the archway and signaled to Fletcher inside the living room. “It’s Professor Bellamy on the phone, he wants to talk to you.”

  “But I’d heard he was sick in bed with the flu,” Fletcher said. “That’s why he isn’t here tonight. Why on earth is he calling me?”

  She headed for the foyer, and I headed after her, and when she picked up the receiver I was right next to her, squeezed pretty close to her by the press of people, so I could make out what Bellamy was saying at the other end of the line.

  Why should I have made out anything? somebody might ask. What business was it of mine to stand there and listen in on somebody else’s conversation? The answer is, there was something about the look on Fletcher’s face that roused my curiosity, and once my curiosity is roused I have to unrouse it or I’ll go around in a lousy mood for days.

  And I wasn’t the only nosy one in the place. Marcus Van Horn got to that phone around the same time I did, shoving his face as close to the receiver as he could, while his little cat’s eyes glittered.

  Fletcher got on the line and said, “It’s Samantha, what do you want, Stu?”

  Bellamy didn’t answer for a second or two, as if he was uncertain if he wanted to go on with the conversation or not, and then he said, “All right, Samantha, you win. Here’s the last paragraph of Black Boy.”

  And then he started reading this long passage from a book. I didn’t recognize it at the time—since then I’ve found out it was the last paragraph of the autobiography that Richard Wright wrote back in the 1940s about his childhood down South. And I can quote the paragraph from memory now, because I went over it about a hundred times in the week that followed. It goes like this:

  With ever watchful eyes and bearing scars, visible and invisible, I headed North, full of a hazy notion that life could be lived with dignity, that the personalities of others should not be violated, that men should be able to confront other men without fear or shame, and that if men were lucky in their living on earth they might win some redeeming meaning for their having struggled and suffered here beneath the stars.

  All the time Bellamy was reading this out, Fletcher was getting more and more excited. The look on her face was positively triumphant. She kept saying things like, “You see what I mean? Men should confront other men!” But Bellamy paid no attention to any of this, he just kept on reading to the end.

  And then, all of a sudden—the moment after he got out the last word, “stars”—we heard this noise. Like a thud or a bang, very loud but also thick, muffled. And then a kind of gasp, or maybe a groan. And then silence.

  Fletcher waited a second, then she said, “Stu, what is it? What’s going on?” She said his name a few more times, she jiggled the receiver, still no Bellamy. Van Horn said something about a bad connection and the disgraceful telephone service nowadays, so Fletcher hung up the phone and dialed Bellamy’s number. This time there was a busy signal.

  Van Horn said he’d call the police, and I decided I was the police, in a way, so I’d better get out there to Bellamy’s house.

  Fletcher had turned very white, but she was keeping hold of herself, keeping calm. I asked her if she knew where Bellamy lived, and she said she did, and if I was going to drive out there she’d be glad to show me the way.

  By this time Van Horn had contacted headquarters, and they told him they were sending a squad car out to Bellamy’s place. But Fletcher and I got on our coats and left the house anyway.

  CHAPTER 5

  ALL THE WAY OUT to Stuart Bellamy’s house, Fletcher sat next to me in my car, with her eyes on the windshield and her hands squeezed together in her lap.

  I asked her about the phone call Bellamy had just made to her. What was it all about anyway?

  She answered abruptly, her mind obviously not on her words. “We got into a fight last week, Stu and me—and Mike Russo was there, too. About sexism in literature. I expressed the opinion that all books by male writers, even the most well meaning, are essentially sexist. Stu claimed that this book by Richard Wright, Black Boy, is an exception. Stu is an authority on black American literature, he’s written a lot of articles about it, he’s got a big collection of first editions. I challenged him to prove his point, and he said he’d phone me as soon as he’d dug up the passage he had in mind. Tonight he phoned.”

  She snapped her mouth shut, and for the rest of the twenty-five-minute drive, she didn’t say another word.

  Bellamy’s house was on Blackhawk Road—which strictly speaking is inside the town limits but hardly seems to be a part of the town at all. It’s off to the west, away from any of the shopping centers or thickly populated residential areas. Mesa Grande’s been growing like an octopus the last few years, but somehow the growth has slid around Blackhawk Road. Between the houses, which are old and dilapidated, it’s got empty lots clogged with weeds. And plenty of snow. Actually our last snow was a week before, but the city fathers of Mesa Grande weren’t about to break out the snowplows for the benefit of a neighborhood that has practically no tax-paying citizens in it.

  Bellamy’s house was as old as all the others in the neighborhood. One of those old-fashioned sprawling giants with porches and catwalks and railings around the roof. But there was nothing dilapidated about it. You could tell he had put a lot of money into it—the paint job was new, the hedges were trimmed, none of the fence posts were falling down, and the front walk was cleared of snow. He must have paid someone to do it. On the basis of my quick look at him the night before, I couldn’t see him out there shoveling snow himself.

  Fletcher and I got out of the car and started up the front porch. All the lights were on inside, but the shades were down, I couldn’t see through the windows. I rang the front doorbell, four or five times, and there was no answer. I tried the doorknob, the door was locked. As a matter of fact, I have a way of dealing with that problem—a certain bunch of keys that I always carry with me—but just then there was a police siren, and a few seconds later a squad car pulled up behind my car, and two uniformed cops got out.

  They yelled at us, not very friendly. I think they thought we were in the process of leaving the house instead of just getting there. But we identified ourselves, and they calmed down.

  They went to the door, too, and it wouldn’t open for them any more than it had for me. One of them went around to the back, while the rest of us waited on the porch. A few minutes later the front door was opened from the inside; the cop had found a window in back that wasn’t shut all the way.

  We all went into the inside hallway. It was huge, as big as any of the bedrooms in my own house. The floor had an Oriental rug on it, and there was a table with a tall fat vase on it, blue and green, some kind of Chinese design. I don’t know anything about that sort of thing, but I would’ve taken bets it was worth a lot of money.

  The two cops led the way through the archway into the li
ving room. The first thing that hit me about that room was the books. There were hundreds of them, covering two walls and stretching up to the ceiling. And there were piles of them on the floor, they seemed to be overflowing from the shelves. And then, in between some of those piles of books, I saw the body. Bellamy’s body.

  He was lying on the floor, on his stomach, and one of his legs was twisted under him. There was blood on the floor, around his head, and you didn’t have to be a doctor to see he was dead. The blood was still wet though, he hadn’t turned stiff yet, he couldn’t have been dead very long. Fletcher gave a little gasp, I could tell she was on the verge of getting sick, so the officers told her she could go outside. But she wasn’t to leave the premises, she had to wait on the front porch.

  I can’t say I blamed her much. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t feeling too great myself. I’ve had a lot of experience with it, but I still haven’t got used to it.

  I thought I’d better hang around, though, and see what I could see, just in case this murder should come across Ann Swenson’s desk in the next day or two.

  The first item I saw, once I was able to tear my eyes away from the body, was the telephone. It was on the floor, as if it had fallen there, maybe a foot or two away from Bellamy’s head. The receiver was off the hook.

  The next item I saw was the book, presumably the one he was reading over the phone just before that thud and that gasp. He was holding it in his right hand, holding onto it tight, as if he wasn’t going to let anybody grab it away from him. That’s why it was hard to tell just what it was. But I could see the cover had a black background with red letters on it, and a picture of a black man, staring out at the reader. Accusingly.

  The next item I saw, lying on the floor next to the body, was a brownish-yellowish object, heavy-looking, probably made of bronze. It seemed to be a kind of paperweight, and it was in the shape of a book. An open book. Both cops headed straight for it, which kept me from getting too good a look at it, but I could see it had smears on it. I was sure they were blood and hairs.

  I forced my eyes back to the body, and saw the red torn place behind the left ear. Unless the autopsy came up with something very unusual, it was pretty obvious that somebody had hit Bellamy on the back of his head. Just once was my guess, but enough to do the job.

  We all stayed in that house another half hour or so, until a contingent of uniformed police plus plainclothes detectives plus experts with photographic equipment and fingerprinting equipment and so on arrived. Then the scene of the crime was sealed up, and Samantha Fletcher and I were told to drive straight back to Van Horn’s house. And just so we wouldn’t take any detours along the way, those two uniformed cops climbed in their squad car and followed us.

  Three or four detectives from the DA’s office had already arrived at Van Horn’s house when we got there. They were questioning people one by one in the kitchen, while the rest of Van Horn’s guests milled around in the living room and the hallway. Lots of excited buzzing was going on, and Fletcher and I, of course, became the life of the party as soon as we stepped into the house. We had to go over our story again and again. Van Horn was especially insistent on our filling him in on every detail.

  Then I saw Mike Russo at the other end of the room. I broke off my narrative—which I was going through for the fifth time, to an entirely new audience—and pushed my way through the crowd to Mike.

  “Where’ve you been?” I said. “Weren’t you supposed to meet me here at seven-thirty?”

  “I’m sorry, Dave. The craziest thing happened. I overslept. I just lay down for a quick nap after dinner, and the next thing I knew—Well, I didn’t actually get here till about half an hour ago. Is it true? Is Stu Bellamy really—?”

  I told him it was true all right, and I tried to keep the question that was in my mind from showing on my face. I guess I didn’t do too good a job, because Mike suddenly turned a little pale.

  “Listen, Dave,” he said, “I have to explain to you. That crazy thing I said to you after the reading last night—I was upset about something, I didn’t know what I was saying—”

  At that moment Mike’s name was called out. It was his turn to be questioned by the detectives in the kitchen.

  They let him go a little later, and I didn’t see him for the rest of the night.

  My turn came shortly afterward, and I told them exactly what had happened. I told them three times, in fact, and then they let me go, too.

  CHAPTER 6

  I GOT HOME A few minutes after midnight. As I stepped into the living room, Mom said, “It was a nice party, I hope?”

  In spite of what she had said about New York being two hours later than here, Mom was wide awake. She was sitting in the chintz-covered rocker, and the only light in the room was the standing lamp behind her. She had a copy of Newsweek open on her lap.

  I was fifty-three years old and hadn’t lived at home for thirty-five of them, and my mother was waiting up for me!

  But I controlled my impulse to get annoyed at her and said, “Terrific, if what you’re looking for in a party is that it should end up in a murder.”

  I could see Mom’s eyes light up with curiosity, but she put on a casual tone. “You’re looking exhausted, you want a nice cup of cocoa? I can fix it for you in two minutes.”

  “I’d prefer a shot of Scotch, after what I’ve been through tonight.”

  “I can fix that, too. How do you like it, ice, soda, what?”

  “Mom, you’re the guest,” I said, “you don’t have to—”

  “A man comes home needing a drink, somebody’s got to give it to him. Am I one of these female libbies?”

  As she bustled around, putting glass, whiskey, soda, and ice together—she hadn’t been in the house twenty-four hours, but already she seemed to know where everything was kept—she said, “Besides, you’ll pay me back by telling me about this murder.”

  As a matter of fact, I didn’t need any bribing. I told her everything that had happened to me at the party and afterward.

  “Very interesting.” Mom settled back in the rocker. “So what’s your theory what happened?”

  I had no trouble recognizing that innocent look on her face. I remembered it from the old days, whenever she was coaxing me into crawling out on a limb so that she could saw it off. But I started crawling anyway. I’ve never been able to stop myself.

  “It all seems pretty straightforward, Mom. While Bellamy was talking on the phone, somebody sneaked into the house, maybe through the window he left open in the back—some burglar maybe, or somebody who had a grudge against him—and this person came up behind him and hit him over the head.” She just kept on smiling at me. I fidgeted a little and said, “I think that’s the line the cops are taking, too. What’s wrong with it anyway?”

  “How can I tell you? I’m no policeman, I don’t know from murder investigations. If I happen to notice a little hole or two, maybe it’s only my imagination.”

  “What little holes do you happen to notice?”

  “For instance—did the murder weapon belong to Professor Bellamy?”

  “Yes, it did. Bellamy always kept it on the desk in his living room, everybody who ever visited him noticed it. Besides, who else but a college professor would own a paperweight in the shape of a book?”

  “So this burglar, or whoever it is that came up behind him and took him by surprise, wouldn’t such a person, such a premeditated killer, bring his own weapon with him? Would he depend on finding a convenient paperweight when the time came? And if he was such a schlimazl that he forgot to bring a weapon with him, how come he didn’t attract Bellamy’s attention when he stopped at the desk to pick up the paperweight? In which case Bellamy would’ve turned around to see who was there, and he wouldn’t have been hit on the back of the head.”

  “Okay, maybe the murderer didn’t sneak into the house. Maybe Bellamy let him—or her—in himself, and they were talking, and then Bellamy decided to make that phone call, which meant he had to turn his b
ack on the murderer, and that’s when the murderer picked up the paperweight and killed him.”

  Mom gave her head a shake. “If it happened that way, this Bellamy and his murderer are both schlimazls. Would Bellamy break off in the middle of a conversation with somebody so he could make a phone call—especially since there was nothing urgent about it? And would this moron murderer decide to kill a man while he’s talking on the phone? So in case the man didn’t die instantly, he might have time to say the murderer’s name to the party at the other end of the line? It’s a pretty impatient murderer that wouldn’t at least wait until Bellamy was off the phone.”

  “Maybe he panicked,” I said. “Or she. People don’t always use logic when they’re committing a murder. In any case, Mom, this murder really isn’t any of my business. It’s up to the police to solve it.”

  “If they arrest somebody,” Mom said, “isn’t there a chance your office will be handling the case?”

  “Depends on how much money the defendant has. The people we defend can’t afford anybody else. We’re the last resort, the bottom of the barrel.”

  We both started yawning then, so we had to break off the session. Mom came up to me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Anything develops with this professor’s murder, you keep me up-to-date, all right, darling?”

  CHAPTER 7

  I GO TO WORK at nine in the morning, but I’m never up before eight-fifteen. A quick shower, a mouthful of orange juice, then I’m in my car, on my way. I prefer my sleep to my breakfast.

  The morning after the murder I tiptoed through my waking-up routine, not wanting to disturb Mom. I was sure she’d be sleeping till noon at least, after the strenuous day she’d just had. But when I got downstairs, I found she was up already, and a delicious salami-and-egg smell greeted me from the kitchen.

  “Mom, it’s really nice of you,” I said, “but I never eat breakfast. I don’t have time.”