Spur of the Moment

by David Linzee

  “Right. Um … Don? When you’re trying to persuade her husband that you two are not having an affair, I would try to speak a little less warmly of her.”

  He gave her a sideways glare and flung the car into a squealing left hand turn. When they had swayed back upright, he said, “I am not having an affair with her. I’m trying to make the point that someone like her is not going to be scared by Bert’s threats.”

  “Yes, but shouldn’t you be just a bit scared by them? Stay away from his wife until—”

  Don slammed on the brakes. The car nosedived and Renata, who hadn’t fastened her seatbelt, plunged forward. She caught herself on the dashboard and looked up. They had arrived home. He did not switch off the engine.

  “Don, come in. We’ll have hot tea with milk and sugar, like at home, and we’ll talk this over.”

  “I don’t need any advice from you. You don’t understand the situation. Bert doesn’t matter. His wild accusations don’t matter. All that matters is that Helen does not ask for her money back.”

  “Right. I do understand.”

  “I don’t think so. Money’s not your problem. You think you’re above people like me, because you have talent.”

  “Yes, Don. Come on in and tell me all about it.” If he wanted to row with her, fine. Once the two of them got to fighting, it could go on for hours. It would keep him in the house.

  “Don’t patronize me. The only thing makes you special is your capacity for guilt. If you don’t practice for three hours every day, you feel guilty. You’ve been that way since you were five. And the result is, you can hit the right notes.”

  “Well, thanks for that.”

  “Only people aren’t willing to pay to hear you hit the right notes. There aren’t enough opera fans in the world to support all the aging journeyman mezzo-sopranos like you—”

  Renata gasped. It didn’t stop him.

  “So people like me have to go out and get money. From people who have some. Whether they love opera or not. Understand?”

  “Perfectly.” She had the door open and was sliding out. “Go make a bloody fool of yourself for all I care.”

  She slammed the door and the car roared away.

  Chapter 6

  Bert Stromberg-Brand was sitting in a sports bar on Big Bend Boulevard. His bicycle helmet rested on the table in front of him, next to a half-empty beer stein. He was gazing at a baseball game on the big-screen TV. Brilliant greens, reds and whites were reflected in his eyeglasses. His high forehead was deeply furrowed, as if he was having trouble following the game.

  A short, broad-shouldered man with tousled black hair approached the table. He looked very tired; his eyes were hooded and his arms hung straight down. His T-shirt was on backward. He said, “Mr. Stromberg-Brand?”

  “Oh hello, Luis. Sit down. It’s Bert, especially after I wake you up from a sound sleep.”

  “It’s okay. I wasn’t asleep,” said Luis, rather unconvincingly, as he sat in the chair next to Bert.

  “I want you to know, I didn’t call you because you’re our gardener. I mean, it’s not your job to come pick me up at eleven p.m. I called you because you’re the only person I know with a pickup truck. For my bike. I have a flat.”

  Bert drained his beer. Luis folded his arms on the table and leaned heavily on them. He watched Bert. Bert watched the baseball game. After a few minutes he said, “About ready to go?”

  “I’d like to see how this inning … no, sorry, let’s go.”

  Bert put his hands on the table and pushed himself upright. Picking up the helmet, Luis followed. They stepped out into the humid darkness of the parking lot. Bert waved at his bicycle, which was lying on the asphalt, and walked to the cab of the truck. Luis swung the bike into the bed and got in.

  Once they were out on Big Bend, Bert wound down the window and hung his head out in the wind, as if he were a dog. After a few moments he slumped back in his seat. “Uh … Luis? How about we go back to your place?”

  Luis gave him an alarmed sideways look. “What’s wrong with yours?”

  Bert was silent for a minute. Then he said, “Nothing. Not a damned thing. And it is my house. Mine and hers. Ours. Community property, under the laws of the State of Missouri. She can’t say, it’s my house and you can’t come home, not even if you have a flat tire.”

  Luis kept quiet and drove. A few minutes later, they turned into the Stromberg-Brand’s street, which was quiet. There was only a man walking along the sidewalk, who averted his face from their headlights. Luis pulled into the driveway. He left the engine running.

  There were lights in the front windows of the house. Bert gazed at them a moment, then opened his door. “I was actually hoping she’d gone to bed. So I could tiptoe in and sleep on the couch. Isn’t that pathetic?”

  “Good night, Mr. Stromberg-Brand.”

  Getting out of the truck, Bert noticed his bicycle in the bed. “Oh, uh, Luis, could you help me with the bike?”

  “Sure. You want me to put it in the garage?”

  “It’ll be locked. Just put it inside the front door, please.”

  Luis hefted the bicycle and followed Bert up the front steps. Only the screen door barred their way; the front door was open. “She’s letting the cool air out,” Bert said. “You ought to hear her complain when I leave a door open.”

  He opened the screen door and paused. Tiny rainbows were scattered over the white walls of the hall. Bert looked down at the blond-wood floor. There were nuggets of crystal lying all over it, creating the prism effect. And there were small red stains. Bert ran to the doorway of the living room, looked in, and screamed.

  Luis let the bicycle fall as he rushed over. Helen Stromberg-Brand lay motionless on the floor, face down. Her blond hair, white dress, and the Kashmiri rug under her were soaked with blood. Red flecks of it marked the wall behind her. Her head looked as if it were resting in a depression in the carpet, but that was an illusion. Her skull was caved in. Scattered all over the floor were fragments of the crystal bowl that had been broken over her head.

  Bert was backing away, still screaming. Luis took his cell phone out of his pocket and tapped in 911.

  Chapter 7

  Renata woke abruptly from a deep sleep. It took a moment to figure out where she was—her brother’s house. After their argument, she had considered going to a hotel, but it was late and she had no car. The next moment she realized what had awakened her. Male voices were talking loudly and excitedly, directly below, which meant they were in the front hall. A lot of them, all talking at the same time. Even so it was easy to pick out Don’s voice. He sounded frightened.

  She swung her feet to the floor and staggered through a wave of dizziness to the window. It was still dark outside. The street was full of police cars. She would not have thought the peaceful suburb of Webster Groves had so many police cars. Some cops were standing in a group, shoulders hunched against the chill, with the unashamed indolence of a road-repair crew. Ted’s next-door neighbors, an elderly couple, were standing at the foot of their drive in their bathrobes, watching.

  Renata made for the stairs, pausing only to see that she had something on. It turned out to be last night’s blue dress. She threw open the door and hurtled down the stairs in her bare feet.

  Don, in his striped pajamas, was backing away from a group of bulky, grim-faced men. The one in the lead had a black mustache, no hair on his head, and a badge dangling from a lanyard round his neck. He stepped forward, grasped Don by the wrist and biceps, and spun him halfway around. A few more vigorous movements and Don was leaning both hands on the mantle of his fireplace. She saw, without registering it, that his right hand was wrapped in a blood-stained bandage. The lead cop kicked Don’s bare ankle with his heavy black shoe, moving his feet farther apart.

  In Renata’s mind, thirty years fell away: this was her little brother, set upon by bullies.

  “Stop that!” she roared. “Leave him alone!”

  The cops froze and stared at her. No w
onder: her voice could fill a three-thousand-seat opera house. She ran straight at the cop who was kicking Don. Flinging out both hands, she struck him in the chest. She was a large, strong woman and he staggered back. That gave her room to swing at the cop beside him. Her open hand smacked him in the side of the face and sent his glasses flying.

  Renata often played characters transported by emotion. It had never happened to her in real life until now. It was strange to have no control of her words or actions, no thought for the consequences. It was rather restful.

  Strange as her behavior was to herself, it was no novelty to the police. Many hands grasped her limbs. In no time at all they had her lying on the floor, on her belly. Trying to kick, she found that her ankles were immobilized. Trying to get her palms to the floor to push herself upright, she realized that her hands were behind her back. Something hard-edged bit into the flesh of her wrists. A great deal of grunting and shouting was going on, some of it produced by herself, but even so, she distinctly heard the click as the handcuffs locked.

  Part II

  Sunday, May 23

  Chapter 8

  The door opened and a man walked in. He had a pistol on his hip and ID clipped to his shirt pocket: another detective, one Renata had not seen before. He was young and heavy-set, and his light-brown hair was cut short on the sides, with a spiky forelock projecting over his smooth brow. His madras shirt was redolent of smoke from the Sunday barbecue from which he must have been summoned. Without looking at her he sat down across the table and opened a laptop computer.

  Not a pad of paper but a computer. From what little she had seen of Clayton Police Headquarters, it was brand-new and lavishly equipped, as she would expect of this small, posh suburb. The interrogation room in which she had been sitting, or pacing, for hours and hours had the same fixtures—table, chairs, mirror, presumably one-way glass—as the ones on television cop shows, but it was as bright and clean as an expensive hotel bathroom, with a lot of beige tile and stainless steel. Surely no criminal more down-market than an embezzler had ever been questioned here. A murder investigation must be a rare event for the Clayton Police, and to judge from the footfalls and voices she had been hearing from the corridor, they were rather excited about it.

  “I’m Detective McCutcheon.”

  “Can I speak to my brother?”

  “Not at this time.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I’m just here to take your statement, ma’am.” He spread his fingers over the keys of the laptop. “Name and address?”

  “Look, I know that Dr. Stromberg-Brand is dead—”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because somebody who’s less bloody-minded than you told me.” This was the sort of riposte Renata thought of saying and usually managed to suppress. Her nerves were badly frayed. “It’s the only question I’ve got an answer to. I’ve been here since dawn, and all you lot can do is offer me coffee. You seem to think a person is some kind of plant that needs coffee instead of water. As long as you give it coffee every few hours you can leave it sitting in a corner forever.”

  “Sorry you had to wait so long. Name and address?”

  “You’ve arrested Don for murder, haven’t you?”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Because it would be a stupid thing to do and you strike me as stupid people. Why haven’t you arrested the husband?”

  “What makes you think we should do that?” he asked in the same neutral tone. Her insults were bouncing off him; she might as well throw rocks at the tile walls.

  “Surely Don told you what happened last night. It’s all true. The Stromberg-Brands had a flaming public row and she stormed off, telling him not to come home. But he did, didn’t he? They must’ve quarreled again. He killed her.”

  “We’ll get to what happened last night, ma’am. Name and address?”

  “No. I won’t answer your questions until you answer mine.”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, ma’am. Name and address?”

  “I refuse to answer. A sister can’t be forced to testify against her brother.”

  Until now McCutcheon’s face had seemed as incapable of forming an expression as, well, his elbow. But now the corners of his mouth turned up slightly in amusement. “What?”

  “It’s in the Constitution, isn’t it?”

  “It may be in Magna Carta, Ms. Radleigh, but not the Constitution. You must be thinking of spouses.”

  “Well, if a spouse can’t be forced to, how can a sister?”

  McCutcheon sighed and looked at his watch.

  “What time is it?” Renata asked.

  “Twelve fifteen.”

  “Finally, a question you’ll answer. Wasn’t so hard, was it? Now when can I see my brother?”

  McCutcheon’s face turned to stone. “Let me explain your position, Ms Radleigh. You interfered with the police arresting your brother. You assaulted two officers.”

  “Oh come on. I didn’t do them any harm.”

  “You can be charged. I can put the cuffs on you right now and take you to jail. And since this is Sunday, you can’t go before the judge until tomorrow. So here’s your choice: you want to spend the night in jail, or answer my questions and go home?”

  Renata was silent. Strange. She’d had plenty of time to think about the questioning to come, and it had occurred to her that the police might threaten to lock her up. She had planned on being brave. But somehow it was a lot scarier when he said it than when she’d imagined it.

  “Renata Alice Radleigh,” she heard herself say. “Thirty-seven Crosswell Road, London W. 11.”

  Chapter 9

  An hour later, she stepped into the corridor, where she planted her shoulders against the wall, shut her eyes, and breathed deeply. She felt dazed. It was partly standing up after sitting for so long, but mostly the after-effect of the interrogation. It hadn’t been at all like a cop show on telly. McCutcheon had skipped around, varying innocuous questions with ones she didn’t want to answer, seeming to accept what she said and move on only to repeat a question. She would have to review it all to figure out how much she had let slip.

  Stop kidding yourself, she thought. McCutcheon had emptied her out. Everything that could incriminate her brother, like the time he had left her and where he’d said he was going. It embarrassed her to remember her attempts to insult McCutcheon. The worst thing about anger was that it made one cocky. She would not underestimate the police again.

  As her brother had reminded her last night, Renata had a brooding, perfectionist side. Just as she went over her performances feeling a stab of chagrin for each recollected false note, she reviewed her actions in real life, pouncing on things to feel guilty about. The disgraceful way she had caved as soon as McCutcheon mentioned jail was something for which she reproached herself bitterly.

  “Renata? They told me they were finished with you.”

  She opened her eyes to find a man standing in front of her. It was someone she knew. Thinning gray hair, hooded eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, sardonic smile: Dick Samuelson, SLO’s general counsel.

  “Want a ride back to Webster?”

  She supposed that she did. Nodding, she fell in beside Samuelson as he walked down the corridor. He was in fully lawyerly rig, suit, tie, and briefcase.

  “Are you handling this … I mean, representing Don?”

  “For the moment. I was a public defender for as long as my idealistic youth lasted.”

  That was the first bit of good news, she thought. Samuelson was one of those lawyers who made her feel glad that their relations were social and not professional—that she’d never tried to wriggle out of a SLO contract. He was affable and glib, but in even the most casual discussion, he would never let you get the better of him. He thought that he was a very clever fellow, and as far as Renata could tell, he was right. “Where is Don now?”

  Samuelson stopped walking. Raising the hand that held the briefcase, he pointed his index finge
r out the window. “There.”

  They were looking at the skyline of Clayton, a satellite business center with a cluster of skyscrapers that were not very tall. Samuelson was pointing at one green-glass-and-tan brick tower that looked much like the others.

  “What is it?”

  “County Justice Center. The jail.”

  Renata thought of the London equivalent: the grim, sooty Victorian pile of Wormwood Scrubs, not far from her flat. One glance and you knew what it was. How many times had she driven by the County Justice Center, assuming it was just another insurance company headquarters? It seemed sinister to her, as if it had been waiting in camouflage for the moment when it would play its role in her life and her brother’s.

  “He’s being processed now, probably,” Samuelson said.

  That meant fingerprints, delousing powder, body cavity searches. Renata shivered as she was hit by a wave of simple fellow-feeling such as she was not used to experiencing for her brother. She wondered if he had his watch on—that fancy diver’s watch he’d bought after seeing it in a James Bond movie. None of Renata’s gibes about successful product placement had dented his pride of ownership. They’d take it away and put in an envelope, which would go on a shelf. He might never see it again. Suddenly her eyes were hot and itchy, her throat was blocked, and tears coursed down her cheeks.

  Samuelson looked at her, appalled. He reached into his breast pocket and handed her his handkerchief. It was fine white cotton, so heavily starched it resisted her attempts to unfold it. “That’s all right,” she said, “I don’t want to get mascara on it.”

  He readily took it back as she mopped her cheeks with her sleeve. She could wait no longer to confess. Leaning closer to Samuelson, she whispered, “I told them when Don left me. About ten thirty. And that he said he was going to the Stromberg-Brand’s house.” She thought a moment. “It must be here, right? That’s why we’re in Clayton. Because she lived here.”