Well Bred and Dead

by Catherine O'Connell

  I squeezed out from underneath him and stood up, pulling my damp and crumpled skirt back down over my thighs.

  “Sean, I want you to go. Now,” I demanded.

  He turned onto his back and made a very deliberate gesture of zipping his fly. The sound reverberated through the room like a great insult. He climbed to his feet and casually pushed the call button for the elevator. Since the car was still at my floor, the doors opened immediately. He grabbed me, kissing me roughly before he stepped into the waiting elevator.

  “You’re a great fuck, Pauline,” he said as the elevator doors closed upon his sculpted face. “For an old broad.”

  I was so furious I wished the elevator cable would break.

  20

  Spring Cleaning

  “Do you know how much sperm it takes to get AIDS?”

  Even as the question came out of my own mouth, I couldn’t believe I had confided in Whitney Armstrong. But since losing Ethan, who had truly been my best girlfriend, there was no one to whom I felt that close. Certainly not Sunny. Not Elsa unless I wanted to read about my problems in her column. But I was finding something eminently likable about Whitney, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Away from the lunch crowd, she was refreshing and spirited. Truth be told, had she not been married to Jack Armstrong, she wouldn’t have gotten the time of day from any of the women in our group, myself included. Now I was seriously considering the possibilities of her as a good friend. And if our friendship did continue to blossom I would ask her someday who did her work. She looked outstanding.

  We were dining at the Casino Club before heading up to Ethan’s to sort through his possessions. The Casino was one of the few club memberships I still retained. Only the very socially elite belonged, and the board worked hard to keep the parvenus out—though even they had been forced to capitulate somewhat in recent years. There was simply too much dotcom money floating about. But at its core, the club remained an outpost of old, or at least older than last year, money. The hubris of the membership is best illustrated by the response of one-time president Mrs. John Winterbotham to the builders of the John Hancock Building next door when they wanted to buy the property in the 1960s. Their letter was found unanswered in the back of her desk drawer upon her death.

  Whitney shook her head and clucked sympathetically. “I don’t think you’re going to get AIDS. But I can’t believe he forced himself on you like that. What about pregnancy?” she asked in her wispy voice.

  “That would be one for the record books,” I said, giving her a poignant smile in appreciation of her womanly consideration. Though the tendency was to stretch our ages as much as Zyplast stretched our lips, we both knew my days of ovulation were drawing to a close. “Anyhow, I called my doctor first thing this morning. He said it was probably nothing to be worried about, but that I should come in for a test in a month or so if I was still worried.”

  “What about Sean?”

  “Well, I’m never going to see him again. I’ve instructed all the doormen that he is not to be permitted entrance into the building.” I took a bite of my salmon. It was slightly overcooked and lacking in flavor, but the single vineyard Meursault from the club’s cellar more than compensated for the lackluster food.

  “You know, Pauline, as much as I admire you for taking a younger lover, you have to be careful. The waters are dangerous. I had a similar experience once with an infatuation—this was way before Jack. Only he did worse than what happened to you. He beat me. Broke my nose. Tore out patches of my hair. But what hurt the most was the things he called me. He called me horrible vile names. Things so bad I can’t even repeat them.”

  As bad as “old broad” I wanted to ask. “You poor dear. When was this?”

  “Oh, years and years ago when I lived in California. It was that experience that made me decide to leave the beach and move to Chicago. I thank heaven every day that I came here and met Jack.”

  “And I believe Jack thanks heaven, too,” I said and I meant it. The canary diamond that glimmered on her finger couldn’t have been a carat shy of twelve, and a competitive sparkler hung around her neck. I had admired the Montana suit she was wearing in the couture section at Neiman’s, but passed on it after seeing the price tag—and this was her chosen ensemble for cleaning out dead men’s apartments. Not only did her husband give her carte blanche with his money, he actually fawned over her in front of everybody like an adolescent in heat. One would think he was about to have sex for the first time. Henry and I had been close with Jack and his first wife, an elegant and classy woman named Theresa. He had barely put his arm around her in public. With Whitney, his hands were magnets and she was the North Pole. The way she had bewitched her husband left every other woman in Chicago society wishing they had access to the spell.

  “Pauline, you don’t know what it means to me, getting to know you better. That’s part of the reason I wanted to help you at Ethan’s. I could really use a friend. I know the other women don’t really like me. They’ve never accepted me.”

  “It’s envy, dear, pure and simple.”

  “You mean my looks?”

  “No, it’s not looks. It’s the way Jack is so dedicated to you. I think any one of them would trade that for anything.”

  Whitney looked down and I believe she actually blushed. I thought of Terrance and the way I felt about him, about the way he came toward me, but then turned away as if we were opposing forces. Maybe I would be better served by learning what Whitney’s secret was for keeping Jack so enamored before finding out who did her cosmetic work.

  A sullen Desmond Keifer let us into Ethan’s former living quarters. The yellow crime scene tape was gone, and the apartment smelled musty and stale. “You know how much money I’m losing each day this place ain’t rented?” he grumbled, pushing the door open, his eyes fixed hungrily either on the large diamond around Whitney’s neck or her cleavage directly below it.

  “I couldn’t possibly imagine, and I don’t really care,” I said curtly, shutting the door in his slobbering face.

  “My God,” said Whitney, stepping into the cluttered living room stacked ankle deep with papers. “How did he live like this?”

  “Believe me, I have no idea,” I said, thinking once again it was no wonder why he’d mailed me his will.

  “Where do you want me to start?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you check the entry closet and see if there’s anything worthwhile in there, and I’ll go through these materials on Daisy. Keep anything of value and the rest we’ll throw out.”

  I began sorting through Ethan’s research on the Singer heiress, reading the snippets he had collected thus far about the exceedingly flamboyant and eccentric woman who went through lovers like so much trash, throwing some away, recycling others, many of them of the darker persuasion. I wondered if the information had any monetary value. The car insurance bill for the Jaguar was on my desk at home, and it required immediate attention. Ruefully, I decided that notes without a book were probably worthless. With a broken heart, I realized that short of some miracle, my car would have to go soon. It was only a matter of time before I would be forced to place the classified ad.

  I dumped the notes into a box. Whitney started going through some drawers in the dining area while I moved on to the kitchen. The cabinets held nothing but inexpensive junk, and I made the executive decision to take Mr. Keifer up on his offer of throwing it into the Dumpster himself. I had no use for any of it or the chore of packing it up. I opened the refrigerator on a whim and immediately regretted the move as my nose was assaulted by the smell of rotting produce and molding doggy bags. I quickly shut the door, deciding to leave these treasures for Mr. Keifer as well. Some of Ethan’s unopened bills sat on the counter and, with a sense of liberation, I slid them from the counter into the waste bin. I only wished my own bills could be handled in the same manner.

  In the meantime, Whitney was still sorting through the dining room drawers in a very studious and thorough manner. I left
her and went down the hall to the bedroom, hesitating in front of the open door. The memory of a corpse missing the greater part of its head flashed into my mind. I pushed the memory aside and went in.

  The dresser drawers yawned open and fingerprint dust coated much of the furniture. The bloodied sheets were still on the bed, the rust-colored stains forming abstract shapes like a Rorschach test. The matter on the wall had dried to small brown bits. Above the desk the sign saying ‘Finish Chapter One’ hung as an epithet. I stood like an ice sculpture in the center of the room for some time, trying to sense what had gone through his mind in his last minutes. Had his long ago contact with the original Ethan Campbell brought him to this hideous and terminal act?

  “So this is where you found him.” I nearly jumped out of my shoes. She had stolen up behind me so silently it was as if she herself were a ghost.

  “Whitney, you just scared the living daylights out of me!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said timidly. “I thought you might not want to be alone in here.”

  I pointed to the bed. “He was laying right there. What was left of him anyhow.”

  “It must have been so terrible for you. It wasn’t very fair of him, was it?”

  I thought about it. “No, it wasn’t fair.”

  I went through the open drawers, lifting up tired sweaters and folded undershorts while Whitney searched the closet. I could see Ethan’s sport coats hanging in there as well as some starched white shirts and a selection of good ties. Whitney got down on her knees and disappeared partially into the closet. When she emerged, she was holding a stack of magazines. I was not surprised to see pictures of men in suggestive poses adorning the covers.

  “I think we’ll bequeath those to Mr. Keifer as well,” I said to her.

  I finished up with the dresser, a pair of lapis lazuli cufflinks the only thing of value, and moved on to the desk. There were some office supplies, pens, paper clips and the like, but even these were in spartan amounts. Some more notes on Daisy, a couple of newspaper clippings with reviews from his first two books, and that was about it.

  Sadly there was really nothing of Ethan worth saving. When I turned, Whitney was sitting on the floor, paging through one of the magazines with an inordinate amount of interest.

  “Whatever are you doing?” I had to ask.

  She did not acknowledge me, but continued flicking through the pages, lost in a world of her own. She stopped at the jagged edge of a torn-out page.

  “It’s not here,” she said to herself.

  “What’s not there?” I asked, standing over her shoulder, my curiosity like embers under the bellows.

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter anymore.” She sounded dispirited.

  “What is it? What were you looking for?”

  “Oh, just something Ethan and I discussed once.”

  I couldn’t imagine what Whitney and Ethan could have discussed that had its origins in a pornographic magazine, but perhaps it had something to do with Jack’s fondness for his wife. Possibly some technique no man could resist? Something else to ask Whitney when I knew her better.

  And then out of the clear blue, she began to rail against Ethan. “You know he wasn’t who you thought he was, Pauline. You never saw his dark side.”

  Astounded at her outburst, I had no idea what prompted her attack on Ethan. I assumed it had to do with what was or wasn’t in those magazines. I thought about the terrible deed he mentioned in his letter and all my own unanswered questions about him in South Carolina. Maybe I have seen the dark side of him, Whitney, I thought. Maybe I have. But to her I said nothing.

  We finished up, deciding to take only a couple of boxes of notes and some unframed photos from recent social events. The rest of the junk could find its way to the Dumpster via Mr. Keifer as far as I was concerned. I even left the manual typewriter Ethan had written his two books upon.

  Whitney had left the entry closet open, and I noticed the ratty hooded parka hanging inside that Ethan sometimes wore in winter months to protect himself against the elements. For some reason, seeing it evoked an emotional response in me. I pictured his little body huddled against the cold wind, marching relentlessly up Michigan Avenue to meet his lady friends for lunch or tea or a poetry reading. He really tried his best, I thought sadly, and wondered how I could ever think ill of him. In his mind, he had lived in a world that time had given up for a hurly burly of computers and World Wide Webs. Whitney was wrong. I did know Ethan, I thought. I just hadn’t known his name.

  I reached into the closet and grabbed the parka off its hanger.

  Just as we were leaving I remembered Ethan frequently took Halcion to get to sleep. My own supply was running low, so I thought I would avail myself of whatever he had left. While Whitney waited in the hall I ran into the bathroom to check the medicine chest. Except for some Band-Aids and mouthwash, it was empty. This really puzzled me, because Ethan was such a hypochondriac he was convinced his pills kept him alive.

  I shrugged it off, assuming the police took his drugs to help with the autopsy. Damn, I thought. Halcion was expensive.

  I pulled up in front of the Armstrong mansion on Astor Street, a cool concrete giant with a neoclassical facade. The gate swung open before I had come to a complete stop. Evidently, the staff recognized that Madam was home. Whitney opened the car door and started to get out, swinging perfect legs onto the drive. Then she stopped and twisted her torso back toward me. She reached out and took my hand, holding it in a loose but friendly manner.

  “Pauline, let’s be close. I think we both need it.”

  Though I found her delivery to be somewhat odd, I knew what she meant. She wanted us to be better friends. To do things together. Go to shows and openings and events Jack Armstrong would be attending too. I found it very touching because most women were generally not eager to bring a single woman along when they were with their husbands. But as I had mentioned before, the last thing in this world that Whitney Armstrong had to worry about was Jack straying. And she knew it.

  I smiled my serious woman-to-woman smile. “I’ll call you. We’ll do lunch next week.”

  “Wonderful. This one’s my treat,” she insisted.

  21

  Last Rites

  Whitney and I did end up doing lunch the following week, but it was along with seventy or so other close friends and hangers-on of Ethan’s, and at my expense.

  The FBI fingerprint search finally came through that Monday and yielded nothing, meaning that Ethan wasn’t in their files for having committed a crime or for any other reason for that matter. I breathed a sigh of relief. With no dental records available from his childhood, the authorities satisfied themselves with Shannon Maglieri’s identification of her brother from photos, and they released him to me.

  I had the body transferred to Stapleton-Fox Funeral Home, the preferred mortuary of Gold Coasters when a loved one checks out, conveniently located only blocks from most of their homes. And on a damp April afternoon, three weeks to the day after the discovery of the body, services were finally held for Ethan Campbell (a.k.a. Daniel Kehoe), services I was paying for, services that had left me aghast when I learned their price. The cost of dying had gone up dramatically since Henry’s demise. In the interest of saving some money, I decided to have the body cremated. For the time being, its final resting place would be in an urn in my apartment. Perhaps in one of the windows overlooking the lake.

  The crowd that showed up for the service came as much to pay respects to Ethan as to see who else was there. Most of them were women, most without their husbands (it was after all a Wednesday afternoon and there was work to be conducted), and all were thoughtfully dressed in finest mourning couture.

  Ethan would have appreciated the turnout, I thought, as I surveyed the flower-filled parlor. All of Ethan’s swans were there, as well as a lot of the local creme and many who aspired to be creme. His decorator friends, Raoul and Bharrie, were in attendance, as well as his hairdresser and the many waiters and shopkeepers h
e had befriended who spoke in hushed tones about the people with whom they were rubbing shoulders. It seemed none of them cared a whit about having been bamboozled, either that or they didn’t want to miss the circus. The only one of his friends who was missing was Sunny. She and Nat were conveniently in Paris, but she did send an ostentatious bush with a card that read, Ethan, You will never be gone as long as you are in our minds.

  The press was in no short supply either. Ethan’s friends from the society magazines, literary critics, and of course Elsa, dressed in a Genny suit with a black chapeau to match. And then there was Connie Chan who had conspicuously chosen to wear bright red. “I can’t believe that bitch had the nerve to come,” Elsa said to me, dabbing at her eyes in a most affected manner with her lace-edged handkerchief. “Red to a funeral. It’s an affront.”

  “An utter lack of respect,” I said, echoing her sentiment.

  The volume level was high with talk of the Lincoln Park Zoo Ball and other rites of spring, lending the gathering an almost giddy feel. Mr. Fox, the funeral director, approached to tell me the minister had arrived, and suggested we get on with the services. I walked to the front of the room and took the podium beside the orchid-draped casket. The chatter slowly died with the exception of the voice of Marjorie Wilcock. I located her and silenced her with a glare.

  “Good afternoon, friends of Ethan,” I said. “We are here to pay our respects to a special person who touched all of our lives in one way or another. Reverend James is going to perform a service, but before he does, I’ve asked Elsa Tower to say a few words in remembrance of him.”

  Always at her best in the spotlight, Elsa walked dramatically to the podium, her head held high beneath the black rim of her hat. In her hand she held a folded sheet of paper with her notes. I stepped aside to give her center stage.