by Julie Smith
The waitress brought the hamburgers. Talba began pouring ketchup on hers, trying not to seem overeager. She tried for lightness. “You must have a really great alibi for the night she was killed. You’re sounding like a hell of a suspect.”
“Alibi?” He looked surprised. “I never thought about it. What night was she killed?”
“Monday.” Surely he had to know, the whole city did.
“Oh. That’s okay then. I was at a hurricane party. What exactly did you want from me?”
“I guess,mostly to know if you know who killed her.”
“Uh-uh.” He applied mustard to his bun. “But I sure know a lot of people who might have wanted to. And, yeah, you can put me at the top of the list.”
“I take it your relationship ended badly.”
“Ended badly? It started badly, it was always bad, and now I have a lot of bad memories.” He bit into the sandwich, chewed once, gulped, and said, “A lot of stupid memories. Did anyone mention I’m a homosexual?”
Talba nodded. “That seemed like the consensus.”
“So why would I be engaged to a woman? Here’s why—because she seemed like a man. She was more like a man than John Wayne.”
“Now, he was a particular kind of man. Was Allyson a conquering hero type?”
“God, no. I just meant she had a very masculine mind.”
“In what way?”
“Well, that’s the problem—I can’t really tell you. She was like… Svengali. She could hypnotize you into thinking she was anything she wanted you to be. She could make you believe. Take me. I am only attracted to men. Men only. See that waitress? She’s got about as much appeal for me as this salt shaker.” He picked the object up and jiggled it. “How the hell did Allyson convince me I wanted to marry a woman?”
“Well? How did she?”
“Let me think.” He drank and ate while he tripped down memory lane. “First of all, she made me admire her. She came into town all effervescent—you know those really upbeat Southern women? The kind who can make you forget there’s anybody else in a room? That you just can’t take your eyes off, and you can’t hear anything else except her talking?”
“You sound like you’re still in love.”
“Love! I was never in love. I was in some sort of crazy trance. See, first she came to me to help her find a house. And she chirped and bubbled and enthused and just, you know… made you want to be around her. She loved everything and if she didn’t love it, she could say such scathingly funny things about it you’d be rolling on the floor.”
“Pretty hard on your nice linen suit.”
“She even made me buy the damn suit. Do I look like the white suit type to you?”
“Actually…”
“Don’t say it. Yeah, a lot of people have said it since. She convinced me I didn’t really know myself—that she knew me better than I did… that she could somehow see into my soul. Read my mind. I don’t know. Sometimes she’d complete sentences for me. When we first met, that is. It stopped after a while. I think now she was just incredibly observant. She figured me out. Watched my reactions, listened to the way I talked, noticed what I liked.”
“Like what?”
“My mama, for openers. I was very close to my mother. She was ill when we were together and she needed quite a bit of taking care of. And I took pleasure in taking care of her. Next thing you know, Allyson had me taking care of Allyson. I even painted her toenails, for God’s sake!”
“I’m surprised. I would have thought she wouldn’t be caught dead without a professional pedicure.”
An ironic little noise—a smirk maybe—debouched from around a bite of hamburger. “She probably wouldn’t. The thing was to get me to take care of her—to make me enjoy it. To portray herself as a poor, put-upon, helpless female at the mercy of her money-grubbing children for the pitiful few cents they allowed her.”
Talba was surprised. “Including Cassie?” she asked.
“No, not including Cassie. To hear Allyson tell it, Cassie was a venal little bitch who wanted the money that Austin held in trust for Allyson; and Arnelle had somehow gotten all the money from her father, Allyson’s first husband, that should have rightfully been Allyson’s…”
“Hold it. Arrnelle’s father is dead. She probably inherited his money. And Austin doesn’t have a penny, according to his big sister.”
Hale shook his head. “You’re not getting this, are you? It was probably all a fabrication. Every single word of it. The point was to make me feel sorry for her and want to help her. Would you believe I actually lent her part of the down payment on her house?” He nodded. “Yep, I did. And I’m generally considered a good businessman, same as I used to be considered the queen of Queenland. She said she had a big payment coming in the fall—from her trust—and if she lost her opportunity for the house…” He paused and drank deeply. “Oh, God. I can’t even talk about this without gibbering. She made me feel like I was the world’s greatest real estate agent. Pathetic, isn’t it? When she got her money, she was going to not only pay me back, but help me buy out my partner, who happened to be my ex-lover—you can imagine how much I wanted to get out of that one—and she’d set me up in her carriage house (rent free, of course) and once we were married, I could leave my apartment and live with her in the Big House.”
Talba was shaking her head, not getting it.
“Okay, you think I’m crazy, but you have no idea of the persuasive power of the woman. Part of it was promises—those and sheer exuberance. She was going to throw all these parties for me to make business contacts. And she did give a few. I have to give her that. She did.”
“I thought her thing was to give parties for artists and writers.”
“Well, that was the payback. She’d give a party for me, and then she’d give one for herself, and I had to get people there that she wanted. In certain circles, I do know everyone. Ever since I helped Hunt and Lynne Montjoy find their house, I’ve been pretty well connected in that area.”
“I heard she actually paid you to introduce her to people.”
“Oh, she did. She doled out money in dribs and drabs, but the big payoff never came.” He sighed.
“With your repayment,” Talba said. “I guess you didn’t make her sign a note for the loan.”
“Are you kidding? We were engaged by then. I was going to live in her house, and it was going to be half mine anyway.” He wiped his mouth delicately, but let his napkin slip to the floor. “Anyhow, she said the money would come in the fall, as soon as some ‘legal complications’ got ironed out. And then there was her catalogue business, which was always teetering on the verge of making money. The way she told it.”
“I’m just curious. How did she… uh…” Talba didn’t know how to put it.
“Seduce me? The usual thing. Moonlight and roses. Candles and too much booze. It was like anything else. I’m gay; she knew what gay men do.”
“Oh. You mean the thing all men want.”
“Yeah. Men are men, I guess. She actually convinced me that might be enough. Anything was possible as long as we were together, because we were meant to be together. God, this is embarrassing!”
“And how did it fall apart?”
“Well, she got crazier and crazier. And also the money never came—the money she owed me, I mean. By the time I got the idea I was being taken for a ride, I was in so deep I didn’t know how to get out. It was that thing you hear about men doing to women. That psychological abuse thing, where they cut them off from the herd and just… work out on them. She got me at a vulnerable stage. I was just out of a relationship, right? So first she sucked me in, then she started getting abusive. And my mama was dying by that time, just to make things worse. Also, half my friends wouldn’t talk to me, they thought what I was doing was so crazy. So I needed her. She was my only friend, I thought. She was my lifeline. And besides, if I made her mad, I was never going to get my money back. I was smart enough to know that. So just when I needed her the most was wh
en she started getting abusive. You know what happened, eventually? My ex-lover persuaded me to go away with him for a weekend, and when I got to Florida, he had all these guys there from my former life and… I don’t know… just being with them made me remember what real life was all about. My real life.”
He picked up his drink, and this time he sipped, apparently having gotten his blood alcohol level high enough to calm down. “So I broke up with her on the phone—from down in Destin—and after that she never let me have a moment’s peace.
She called me all the time, with threats and intimidation, and tears—you name it—but fortunately that was all electronic.” He smiled. “Thank God for voicemail.”
“Tell me—how did you react when you found out she was dead?”
“You really want to know? I thought, ‘What a waste.’ But it was about her life, not her death. You know what? I don’t think we were ever really engaged at all. I think she was just conning me.”
“Out of the money, you mean?”
He nodded. “That was part of it, but only part. I was like a trophy wife. She wanted to show me off—who doesn’t want a presentable man around?—and also to mask her real interests.”
Talba realized she had a great talker on her hands, and the scotch wasn’t hurting. “How about another drink?” she asked.
“No, thanks. I just needed a jump-start.”
“Well, then—about her real interests. She had a secret lover? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Oh, didn’t she wish. She moved here for Hunt Montjoy. She chased him all around the country. I don’t even know where she met him—Tallahassee, I think.”
Talba’s heart picked up speed. Allyson had lived in Tallahassee. And thinking back to Hunt Montjoy’s C.V.—had he? She couldn’t remember, but Hale supplied the missing piece. “Montjoy taught at Florida State.”
“And that’s where she got her master’s!”
“Oh. Did she? I didn’t even know she had one.”
“She did. In English lit; can you believe that?”
“Oh. My. God. I’ll bet the whole thing was in aid of chasing Montjoy.”
Talba considered the implications of that—and there were many. “They were actually having an affair—is that what you’re saying?”
“Not to my knowledge they weren’t—not in the usual sense. But she did sleep with him at least once, when she first moved to town. Trying to rekindle the old relationship. She told me that.”
“So they had been involved.”
“In Tallahassee. At least that’s my understanding. It was like she was stalking him. Moved here for him, got Lynne to do her house. Can you believe that? Hired his own wife.”
“And she told you all this? All the while convincing you the two of you were soul mates?”
“She told it like it was in the past. Like I was helping her recover. But you know something? It wasn’t in the past. Know how I figured it out? Montjoy was the only person on God’s green earth she had a kind word about. She was paranoid as hell. At the time, I believed her lies—I thought she really was being taken for a ride by everyone in her life. But she never said anything like that about Hunt. She acted like he was God on the half shell. That’s how she happened to give that Leo party for him. You know—the one where I met you.” He winced at the memory. “Possibly the nadir of my life.”
Talba said, “There’s something really strange about all this.”
“If I were a little younger and less imaginative, I’d probably say, ‘Well, duh…’ God, I hate that expression, don’t you?”
The last thing Talba wanted to do was get off the subject. “I understand,” she said carefully, “that Cassie was the one having the affair with Hunt Montjoy.”
“Cassie! You’re kidding.”
“I can’t prove it. I’ve just heard it rumored.”
“Oh, man! That must have seriously pissed off Gatsby Girl.”
“Gatsby Girl? Did you know that’s what they call her at the literary festival office? The Girl Gatsby.”
“No, I thought I made it up. When you think about it, though, it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?” He sipped his drink one last time, found he’d hit bottom, and changed his mind about not having another. With his glass, he signaled for one.
Talba was thinking she’d found a motive at last—one that didn’t involve Janessa or Rashad. “Let’s get back to this pissed-off thing. Let’s say her daughter really was secretly involved with the man Allyson loved, and she found out about it. Could she have killed her in some sort of blind rage? And then gone home and killed herself?”
Burford Hale laughed. “Well, the first part, maybe. She didn’t give a tinker’s damn for that pretty little girl.” He shook his head. “But I don’t see her getting all guilty about it. She just wasn’t the remorseful type.”
“You’re not the first person who’s said that. Tell me, have you told the police any of this?”
His drink arrived and he swigged without even setting it down first. “The police? No, they haven’t talked to me yet. They called; I guess they were going through her Rolodex, or maybe Arnelle told them about our pseudo-engagement. But I’m not scheduled to see them till tomorrow.”
“So why’d you agree to talk to me?”
He considered. “I like your voice,” he said finally. “You’ve got a really great voice. There’s something soothing about it.”
She didn’t believe it, but she couldn’t wait to tell it to Eddie. “Come on. Really.”
“Okay, but that really is part of it. The other part’s curiosity, I guess. I thought you might have some stuff to tell me.”
Talba let it hang there.
“Well. Do you?”
“I just did—that Cassie might have been involved with Montjoy.”
“Give me more.”
What could it hurt? Talba thought. The man’s tongue was wagging like a puppy-dog’s tail. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe we can figure something out here.”
“Like what?”
“Like who’d want to kill her.”
He laughed again. “That’s easy. Everybody.”
“I think the police theory is that Rashad did it.”
“Rashad? That kid who lived in the carriage house. My carriage house? He was the one who took over when I wised up.”
“Somehow I don’t think they were engaged.”
He shook his head in agreement. “No, it wasn’t sexual; that I’m pretty sure of. I mean, she had kids, she wouldn’t…”
“Rashad’s a grown man.”
“Barely. I think he was way too callow for her.” He took another deep draught. Apparently, this helped him think. “No, it wasn’t that. I mean, look—legally grown-up or not, he was a kid; and he was black—excuse me—” He glanced at her to see if she was offended. Deciding she wasn’t, he continued “—and poor. There was no percentage in showing him off. She wasn’t really interested in sex. She needed men for what they could do for her. And Rashad was a natural for the honey-dos. Plus, she got to look generous for taking care of him.”
“Do you see any motive for him to kill her?”
“So far as I know he’s a pretty sweet-tempered kid. But she probably did owe him money… I guess you never know.”
Same old thing, Talba thought. “What about Janessa? The girl who was painting the mural?”
“Same thing, I guess. But why would either of ’em kill Cassie?”
Suddenly Talba had a thought. “Well, what if Rashad was involved with Cassie—and he was the one who found out about Montjoy?”
“In that case, why kill Allyson?”
Talba shrugged. “To frame her for murder-suicide.”
“Could be. Could be, but I don’t buy it. And Janessa I don’t see at all—she couldn’t have been involved with Montjoy.”
After Montjoy’s unkind remark, Talba tended to agree with him—but what if that was a cover-up? On the other hand, why cover up for Janessa? “Moving right along,” she said. “How about H
unt or Lynne?”
“Sure. I could see it. Lynne for obvious reasons; Hunt because he’s a mean-tempered sonofabitch. Anything could have set him off. But, again, it doesn’t explain Cassie.”
“Arnelle or Austin, then. For her money.”
Hale shrugged one shoulder only, a dismissive gesture that was over so fast she barely saw it. “Allyson claimed they were the ones controlling the purse strings, but that was probably a lie. Sure, why not? But, then, why Cassie?”
It was getting to be such a refrain, Talba was starting to wonder if the two women had been killed by the same person. And yet, what else made any sense?
“Rosemary now,” Hale said. “Let’s don’t forget Rosemary.”
Talba already had. “Rosemary? Refresh my memory.”
“Rosemary McLeod, her business partner. If Allyson screwed the rest of us, think what she must have done to that poor woman.”
Ah, yes, the business partner. Talba couldn’t neglect her if Rashad or Austin couldn’t shed any light. She wondered how Eddie was doing down in Port Sulphur.
“Well, what I’m really working on is clearing my client…”
“And who might that be?”
“That part’s confidential. But here’s what I can tell you—Rashad and Austin were both at Allyson’s the night she was murdered….”
“Before or after?”
“That’s the dicey part. They’ve been missing ever since.”
Hale brushed his moustache. “Four days. That’s a long time. Do we even know if they’re still alive?”
“Austin’s been sighted, but we don’t know where he is now.” She didn’t see the point of mentioning Rashad’s call. “I was wondering if you have any idea where either one of them might go.”
“No,” he said. “No idea at all. But it’s pretty suspicious. Maybe they’re together.”
“Could be,” Talba said, but in her heart, she was thinking she’d struck out in the missing persons area. The Hunt-and-Allyson connection, though—that was juicy. She signaled for the check. “This is on the firm. Thank you for your time, Mr. Hale. I’ve got to go home and write a poem.”