by Stephen Frey
“Yeah, so?”
“I’m trying to find out what happened to her. I understand there was one particular man who was here a lot when she was performing.”
“Are you working with the cops?”
“No, I’m just a husband trying to find out what happened to his wife.” I look into Erin’s eyes and I see compassion. I think anyone who heard my tone just now couldn’t help but feel bad for me. “I just want closure, you know?”
She nods.
“So you were friends?”
“Yeah. I liked her. She was different from the other girls.” Erin shakes her head. “Which is why she never should have come here in the first place. She wasn’t ready for it. She thought she was, but she wasn’t.”
I look down at the cigarette butts and spilled beer on the sticky floor. “I wish she had never come here too.” I glance up quickly. “I don’t mean that as an—”
“It’s all right,” Erin says, allowing herself a sad smile. “I know what you mean.”
“I also heard that Melanie was known as the Vamp,” I say. “And that she had a routine.”
“We had a routine.”
I look up. “You?”
“She never did it with anybody but me,” Erin says, almost proudly. “But it wasn’t my idea,” she adds quickly. “She was the one who thought it up. The one who wanted me to do it to her. And it wasn’t anything really out of control either. I mean, I never tied her real tight. She could have gotten out by herself anytime she wanted to. That was all there was to it,” Erin says. “The Two O’Clock Club isn’t that kind of place.”
“What kind of place?”
“The kind of place that gets into all of that underground stuff. You know, the live sex shows. We dance here, but that’s it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She suggested it on the spur of the moment one night a few months ago,” Erin continues, lighting up a cigarette and inhaling deeply. “The people who run the place weren’t real happy about it at first, but it was a weeknight and there weren’t too many people around. And this one guy sitting right up front was tipping us really well. The other guys went wild too, so management let us keep doing it as long as we promised not to get too crazy and not to do it too often. They didn’t want trouble from the cops. I guess there are guidelines about that stuff.”
“You said that this one guy up front tipped you really well?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“Was he a regular?”
Erin frowns as she props her elbow against her side and holds the cigarette out away from her body. “He was here almost every night Melanie was,” she finally says, smoke trailing away from her fingers toward the ceiling. “I think Melanie knew him before she came to the club. That was the impression I got from the way she talked, but I don’t know for sure. Like I said, he tipped real well at first. After a while he didn’t throw his cash around as much, but Melanie still gave him special attention. One night she even let him tie her wrists while she stood in front of him, but management freaked out about that and they made her promise never to do it again.”
I feel the fine hairs on the back of my neck beginning to stand up. She let him tie her wrists. “Do you know anything about the guy? Did Melanie ever mention his name?” I’m not going to prompt Erin. Vincent might have been making up everything about Taylor just to get me off him. He saw me go after Taylor at the Grand. He knows how much I hate him.
“She called him David.”
“David?” I ask, disappointed.
“Yeah, but I don’t think that was his real name. She always kind of laughed when she called him that. Like it was a joke or something.”
“Anything else?” I ask.
She takes another drag from the cigarette, thinking. “Stay here,” she finally says. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
The bouncer flashes me a nasty look, like he wants me out of here soon. Fortunately, Erin is back quickly.
“Here,” she says, handing me a blue backpack. “This was Melanie’s.” She opens a flap while I hold it and reaches inside. “This is the guy,” she says, pulling out a Polaroid.
I let the backpack fall slowly to the floor as I take the photograph. It’s a picture of Frank Taylor and Melanie standing alongside a silver Mercedes. A big sleek Mercedes that looks a lot like the one that almost ran me down in the parking garage a few weeks ago. I can’t believe it.
“Melanie asked me to take that picture of them a couple of months ago.” Her lip curls as she glances at the photograph. “I never trusted him.”
“Me neither,” I whisper.
“He and the bald guy were her biggest fans.” She shakes her head sadly. “I told her they were both bad news, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“Who was the bald guy?”
“Just some other guy who was here a lot of the nights Melanie performed too, but he always sat in the back, seemed kind of shy. David was always right up front.” She smiles. “For a while there the bald guy tipped me pretty good too, but he hasn’t been back in a month or so. Come to think of it, neither has the other guy. Not since Melanie was—” Erin interrupts herself and looks away.
“What did the bald one look like?”
“Tall and thin.” She grimaces. “He had bad acne scars on his face too. Real bad.”
“Did he have a beard?”
“No. I wouldn’t have noticed the scars on his face if he did.”
“Did you ever get his name?”
Erin shakes her head. “I never ask nobody’s name. The only reason I knew David’s name was because Melanie told me. Better not to know. That kind of intimacy can get you in a lot of trouble.” She hesitates. “Like it did Melanie. I warned her, but she didn’t listen. Like I said, she wasn’t ready for this place.”
I check the bouncer. He’s finished with his magazine. My time’s running out. “You’ve been very helpful, Erin.” I hand her a twenty-dollar bill and she takes it automatically. “I want to thank you for your time.”
“Sure.” She puts her hand on mine. “Melanie was a good person.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?”
I expect an immediate no, but that’s not what I get. “You may not want to hear this, mister. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. You seem like a good person too.”
“Tell me. Please.”
“I think Melanie was real sweet on that guy in the picture,” she says, nodding in the direction of the pocket in which I placed the photograph. “At least in the beginning.”
“I think she was too,” I agree, my voice hoarse.
“See, I knew it would—”
“It’s all right,” I assure her.
“But it wasn’t like that in the end.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the last few weeks she was here they were arguing a lot. I saw them a couple of times late at night on the street near where she had parked her car.”
For once, Vincent might have been telling me the truth. “Go on.”
“David was yelling and shouting at her. I mean, going crazy. Finally she ran to her car and peeled off. It was the same both times. She didn’t know I was watching either time, but I was worried about her. I told the manager about it,” she recounts sadly, “but he didn’t do anything.”
“What were they arguing about? Were you close enough to hear?”
Erin looks around. “I don’t want to get in trouble,” she says, lowering her voice even though the bouncer and the guys sweeping the floor couldn’t possibly hear her. “I don’t want to have to talk to the cops. Some detective was here asking a lot of questions after Melanie died, but I was able to avoid him.”
“What did the detective look like?” I ask quickly.
“He was a black guy. Big,” she says, making a sweeping gesture with her arms. “I didn’t talk to him. I’ve got a record,” she admits quietly.
“I understand,” I say. “But did you hear anything? It’s very important for you to tell me if you did.”
She nods. “There was some kind of deal Melanie had agreed to go into with David. Like a business transaction or something, and when it was done, they were going to collect some big money. It didn’t sound like it was on the up-and-up, but I don’t know much about that stuff.”
Erin’s voice fades. Frank Taylor admitted the night he came to my house that he was broke, and I never did get an honest answer from Melanie about why we were taking out the insurance policies on each other. If I had died, Melanie would have received a million dollars, which would have been one helluva dowry if Melanie and Taylor were planning all along to get married.
I’m suddenly struck by another thought. An ironic one. If I don’t get the proceeds from her policy because of those slayer statutes, Frank Taylor will. As Scott Snyder told me yesterday, Taylor was secondary beneficiary on Melanie’s policy. So, in effect, Taylor always had a pretty good chance of getting his hands on a million dollars of insurance proceeds no matter who died—Melanie or me.
CHAPTER 20
After giving Erin an extra hundred bucks left over from Melanie’s secret stash, I check into a motel a couple of miles from my house. I’m not that worried about Mary, but Reggie seemed pretty concerned so I’ll listen to his advice. After all, he’s a cop and he doesn’t strike me as the type to get worked up over nothing. It’ll be interesting to see if Mary shows up at Bedford tomorrow and, if she does, how she acts. If I go in, that is. I’m not sure I will.
I haven’t returned Reggie’s call yet. I’m worried about what he wants. I’m not certain, but I have a hunch. That’s the real reason I check into a motel.
It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, and though I’m dead tired and crawled into bed immediately after checking into the motel at six this morning, I haven’t been able to fall into that deep sleep that restores your energy. I keep rolling around on the bed, trying to get the pillows right, but it isn’t working. It’s not a bad motel, as motels go. It’s quiet and the mattress is pretty comfortable, even if the sheets smell like smoke in what’s supposed to be a nonsmoking room. I just can’t stop thinking about how Vincent lied to me about Melanie all these years, and how he was so willing to use me as a front for his insider trading scheme. How Melanie lied to me about what she was doing at night, and with whom she was doing it. How Frank Taylor could smile and shake my hand at an office party while he was screwing my wife every chance he got. How people have been lying to me and manipulating me all my life. And it all started with my father.
I can’t stop trying to figure out who tore up my house too. Maybe Taylor was looking for the cash he must have known Melanie made at the club. Maybe Reggie sent his people to look for some piece of evidence they’ll never find. Or maybe it was Mary who went through my possessions, just like I think she did at Bedford. I don’t know. There just aren’t any answers.
Around six I get dressed and leave the motel room to get dinner. I haven’t had food since yesterday morning, so I drive to a diner near the motel and sit in a booth by myself, reading a People magazine while a kind, older lady serves me a breakfast dinner of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage gravy, hash browns, and pancakes. It’s delicious—like my mother used to fix on Sunday nights—and I take my time with the meal, savoring each bite. With a full stomach, I’m asleep five minutes after returning to my room.
The next thing I know it’s seven o’clock Monday morning. The television is still on and the remote is poking me in the cheek. I sit up and rub my eyes. It’s time to get on with what I need to do.
At ten o’clock I walk straight into the reception area of Frank Taylor’s law firm. It’s a small firm and I remember the office layout from the Christmas parties he threw. There are about ten offices beyond this reception area off of two corridors, and a few cubicles for the assistants in an open area in between the corridors. Where Melanie used to sit.
“Good morning, sir.” The receptionist is a prim woman with a high, starched white collar reaching almost to her chin. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Frank Taylor.”
“Do you have an appointment?” she sniffs, reaching for a leather-bound book on one side of her desk. “I don’t remember Mr. Taylor having any appointments this morning.”
“His office is all the way down the left corridor, isn’t it?” I ask as I move past her desk. “All the way in the back, yes?”
“Wait a minute,” she pipes up. “You can’t go in there like that. Stop!” she orders shrilly as I stride into the corridor.
Out of the corner of my eye I see her reach for the phone, but I keep going, intent on what I’m about to do.
“Hello, Frank.”
Taylor’s eyes flash up from a thick casebook as I move into his doorway. His feet are up on his desk, and he drops them heavily to the floor as soon as he recognizes me, then tosses the book on his cluttered desk and stands up. “What are you doing here?” he snaps, wincing and touching his ribs as he rises. He must still be hurting from that knee I dropped onto his chest a few nights ago. And his face doesn’t look so good either. I beat the crap out of him, that’s for sure. Felt good too.
“We need to talk, Frank.” The receptionist appears behind me, and I turn toward her for a moment, giving her a fierce look. “Get out of here,” I order. She stumbles away, petrified, and I close and lock the office door behind her.
“My receptionist will call the police,” Taylor tells me, sitting back down in his desk chair with a muffled groan. “She has orders to do that if anyone barges past her desk. When you’re in the divorce business, you have to anticipate that passions may run high. You have no more than three minutes before the cops get here, so you better tell me quickly what’s on your mind.”
I stare at him for a moment before I speak, thinking about the knife slicing through Melanie’s soft skin. “You killed her, didn’t you, Frank?”
Taylor laughs loudly, then grimaces as pain ripples through his chest. “Do you really think that, Augustus? Are you that stupid?”
“You told me yourself that your law practice is in a shambles.” I motion at the door behind me. “There were a lot of vacant offices along the corridor. It’s a ghost town in here.”
His eyes narrow. “So?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest.
I could always sense when we talked at his Christmas parties that Taylor didn’t believe I was a very intelligent man. He always had a vaguely condescending manner, like he considered himself well above me on the IQ ladder. But suddenly I can see in his expression that he’s worried I’ve figured a few things out and that maybe I’m not as average as he thought. “I never understood why Melanie wanted us to take out those life insurance policies, but now I know.”
Taylor pulls his arms tighter across his chest but says nothing.
“Remember at the Grand that night you ‘happened’ to show up?” I continue. “You accused me in front of a woman I was talking to of killing Melanie. You accused me of killing Melanie before she could sign her will, and that as a result her parents wouldn’t get the money as she would have wanted. But that was all crap, Frank. Just legal mumbo jumbo you thought a guy like me wouldn’t understand.”
“You let me worry about the legal issues.”
“You’re the secondary beneficiary on Melanie’s policy. Who gets the life insurance proceeds has nothing to do with a will, even if she had signed one. Somehow you got her to name you as the second before she died, which is all the insurance company really cares about.”
“Someone has been feeding you bad information—”
“Don’t lie to me, Taylor,” I warn, raising my voice and taking a step toward him. He straightens up in the chair quickly and makes a subtle move for one of his desk drawers, but stops when I stop. “I know you’re the second on the policy. A guy named Scott Snyder dropped that bomb on me. Seems he’s been taking quite an interest in my life lately. He’s a private investigator here in Washington, and though he didn’t come right out and say it, he thinks I killed my wife.”
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br /> “Well, it’s good to know people like him are on the ball. Good to know it won’t be long before you’re where you belong. Behind bars.”
I want to throw Taylor out of the fifth-story window behind his desk so he can feel the same pain Slammer did, but I keep my anger under control—for now. “Snyder told me all about slayer statutes too, Frank.” I’m seething and my voice is starting to shake. “About laws that bar a person who causes bodily harm to another in the course of a crime from benefiting. So if I’m implicated in Melanie’s death, you’ll get the money because you’re the second. You’ll get the million dollars.”
“That’s news to me, Augustus,” Taylor says, trying his best to seem surprised. But it’s a terrible performance.
“Your original plan was to kill me.”
Taylor points at the door. “Get out of here, Augustus. I’ve had enough of this.”
“Then you were going to marry Melanie so you could get your hands on the insurance money to save your law practice.”
Surprisingly, he nods. “I won’t deny that I wanted to marry her. I loved her very much.”
“Sure you did,” I reply sarcastically. “A million dollars’ worth.” His hands squeeze tightly into fists, but he won’t challenge me. He knows better than to try something after that night on my lawn. “But Melanie wouldn’t agree to all that, would she?” I continue. “She was willing to divorce me for you, but ultimately she wasn’t willing to help you kill me. She went as far as to convince me to take out the policies, but when you pressed, she wouldn’t go through with it. Down deep, Melanie wasn’t the monster you are.”
Taylor laughs as if to say that he finds my accusations ludicrous. “You have quite an imagination, Augustus.”
“Is that what you and Melanie fought about outside the Two O’Clock Club the night of her murder? Killing me?”
Taylor’s eyes flash to mine, and I see that I’ve gotten his attention. “We never fought,” he says, his voice cold.
“I have a witness who saw you two arguing that night. She’s a woman Melanie danced with. Erin would pick you out of a lineup with no trouble. You watched that routine so many times. Participated once too, didn’t you?”