by Sarah Graves
“I don’t know. I’m trying to find out. And until now I must say you haven’t been very helpful. I’m wondering why not. And don’t,” I added, “give me any nonsense about your reputation. I’d think helping to solve a murder would do wonders for it, but you haven’t bothered.”
“Mike Carpentier hasn’t been attacked,” Willow retorted waspishly. She refilled her glass, sat across from me at the table. She hadn’t invited me to sit, but I had decided to anyway; for all her glossy image she was a little short in the manners department.
“Maybe he’s behind it all,” Willow added, her voice filled with venom. “He’s nuts enough.”
“Oh, but he has. The doll mutilation was pretty graphic. I’d say it went beyond distraction. If I were Mike, I’d be wondering if it was meant as some kind of a preview.”
I was cold, damp, and not feeling like standing on much ceremony. Someone should have taught Willow that the high-class society ladies she was apparently trying to imitate were generally more hospitable, and less jewel encrusted, than she imagined. I got up, found the coffee and equipment, and started the coffeemaker while Willow regarded her whiskey glass sullenly.
“I’m not saying you’ve all been attacked at the same time, you see,” I went on. “Or even to the same degree, so far.”
On the television, large men in spandex grappled with each other. Ellie had joined the children and was watching the wrestling match with the air of one raptly learning about social customs on Mars. She glanced up absently, intent on the sight of one very large man pretending to stomp hard on another very large man’s throat.
“Is this,” she wanted to know, “real? Or faked?”
“Neither,” I said. “It’s Greek theater. You know, struggle and climax and catharsis, and all that.”
“Oh,” she replied comprehendingly, and returned to studying the spectacle as if she were an anthropologist.
“The police are going to question you very comprehensively,” I told Willow. “Along with your husband. Where is he?”
She shook her blond head impatiently; probably he was out somewhere trying to buy a case of bananas, maybe some peanuts. Willow’s perfect pale hair had escaped its chignon, and her pink lipstick was thick on the plastic whiskey glass.
“We had an argument,” she admitted.
Darn, and I had missed it: all that jungle chest-beating. At the supper he’d sat apart from the rest, glowering like something out of a traveling circus.
“He didn’t want to come in the first place. I wanted to show off, he said. I just wanted people to see that I’d … that I’d …”
A sob escaped her. I poured her some coffee. She sipped it, made a face, drank more. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I’m not usually so disgusting. But Ellie was right,” she went on a little drunkenly, and I thought the Cutty bottle was turning out to be a stroke of luck. “When I grew up here, I was the town slut.”
She looked up miserably. “I just wanted them to know I’m not Willow the Pillow anymore. Is that so awful?”
“No,” I said, pitying her suddenly. “It isn’t.” Just then it occurred to me what I didn’t see anywhere in the room.
“Um, Willow, may I use the bathroom?”
She nodded, and I found my way to the facilities. Closing the door, I locked it as quietly as I could, the sound from the TV covering me. As I’d hoped, Willow’s purse hung on the hook behind the door.
A quick rummage was all I had time for: keys, wallet, usual credit cards, and a driver’s license. A couple of hundred in cash. No handy tin of Acme rat killer. But at the bottom of the bag was an interesting discovery: a small orange plastic bottle of Valium tablets. Three or four of them rattled lonesomely around in the bottom of the bottle.
Which made me wonder: Victor had written Reuben Tate a prescription for sedatives. But was that the sedative Tate had in his system when he died? The definitive toxicology tests, Bennet Berman had informed me, wouldn’t be back for a couple of weeks.
Tucking the bottle away swiftly, I flushed, ran the water, and went back out to the kitchenette. Either the Cutty had begun making Willow feel even more talkative or she’d decided it was time to blow some smoke at me; I couldn’t tell which.
“My husband is in business with all the right people,” she sniffled.
Visions of organ-grinders danced in my head; with difficulty I kept a straight face as she went on.
“We belong to the country club. And he’s decided to go into politics.” She looked up blearily. “All of it is very important to him. You see, he came from a very poor family, and …”
Oh, please; not another old story. For a minute there I was tempted just to bonk her over the head with the Cutty bottle.
Instead I sat down again. “So I guess a scandal, even an old one, could hurt him in a lot of ways. Financially too, maybe.”
She snorted, not prettily. “Especially an old one. God, his opponents could go to town on me. Old dirt’s the hardest to clean up. As for money, well, you know what they say: it’s who you know that counts. And if people don’t want to know you anymore …”
She trailed off, then rallied with an effort. “One thing about Eastport, it doesn’t matter how much money you have. It’s how you act that people judge you on, here. But boy, do they ever.”
A hideous gust of wind shook the building; the lights dimmed and the draperies shivered as the windows thought about breaking, decided against it. Thick, water-resistant pelt or not, I hoped Willow’s creature-feature husband was tucked snugly into the Waco Diner or at La Sardina having a beer.
“What about Reuben?” I asked. “I heard you were with him the night he set fire to Uncle Deckie Cobb’s shack.”
She looked up, her mascara-smeared eyes surprised. It didn’t seem like an act. “No. I was following him. I was not with … that was Mike Carpentier. I was following them.”
Another rush of wind roared. The lights flickered. We held our breaths until the power came on steadily again. The kids clicked the remote control through the channels.
“Why were you following them?” I glanced at El-lie, whose gaze remained studiously fixed on the television screen. But I could tell she was listening.
Willow looked impatient. “We—Mike, Paddy Farrell, and I—all lived within sight of one another, you see. On Beech Street. And Reuben used to climb the trellis into Mike’s bedroom window at night. Stay there, sometimes for hours.”
I’d heard of Beech Street, didn’t think I’d been on it. It was in a ramshackle part of town, I knew that much. But twenty years ago, probably it hadn’t been run-down. “When Mike was about twelve, and Reuben was—”
“Right. Nineteen or so. God, it was weird.” She grimaced, remembering. “He used to get these little animals and bring them to Mike. Mikey, we called him back then. A bird in a cage one time, and another time I think a puppy. How Mike explained those to his folks, I don’t know.” She sat up straighter, shook off the recollection.
“But you were supposed to be his girlfriend, right? I mean, sort of, anyway? So did you ask him about that? Or ask Mike?”
Willow nodded reluctantly. “Sort of his girlfriend. He was the bad boy, I was the bad girl: perfect fit, right? And sure, I thought I would ask him about it. Sometime when I really wanted a split lip, or a black eye.”
She frowned impatiently. “I wouldn’t have asked Mikey anything like that, though. He was just a little kid.”
Willow finished her coffee, looked around for more. When I didn’t get up immediately, she went and got it herself, putting the pot and a bowl of creamers and sugar packets on the table.
Not for the first time, I thought about money and manners: that sometimes when people forget they’ve got it, they remember how to behave. But it’s a hard thing to forget for some people, especially ones like Willow who’ve had to try so hard to get it.
And like you, a small voice whispered unpleasantly in my head. I banished it, concentrating on what Willow was saying.
“He
would do that, though,” she went on. “Take a liking to one of the kids, make a pet of them. Or a dislike, and …”
Make a mess of them, I wanted to say, thinking about Boxy Thorogood. But she was going on pretty steadily and I didn’t want to interrupt her.
“Anyway, that night they both climbed out of Mikey’s window again, and that was different. I was curious so I followed them.”
She paused, her forehead furrowing. “Uncle Deckie had a shack at the edge of town. Boards, tar paper. They went inside. Then they came out, Reuben kind of giggling the way he did and Mikey looking … I don’t know. Strange. Like maybe he was in shock or something.”
Willow looked over to make sure her kids weren’t listening. Ellie’s head tipped bemusedly at the TV; the kids’ faces were blankly avid.
Willow sighed. “And then the place just sort of … erupted. A ball of flames. Deckie, screaming inside. He screamed for a long time. And Reuben just stood there. Giggling.”
“Did you try to get help? Or tell anyone, afterwards?”
Her face closed abruptly. “Someone must have seen, because the fire sirens went off almost right away. After that I ran. But not,” she added, “until after Mike Carpentier saw me.”
She shivered, as if trying to shake off the memory. “He got home afterwards somehow, so hardly anyone else ever knew he was there but me. But if looks could kill, when he saw that I knew he was there that night, I’d have been dead on the spot.”
“And neither one of you ever told anyone officially that Reuben did it.”
Her laugh was scornful. “You still don’t really believe it, do you? How bad he was. But that’s because you weren’t a part of it. You didn’t tell on Reuben Tate, see. You just … didn’t.”
The kids were getting restless, saying there was nothing to watch on TV. I thought if the wind kept up they’d be watching a dark screen soon; the lights flickered again, warningly.
I got up. “So that put the nail in your coffin, reputation-wise,” I guessed. “Who was it put the story around that you were there with him? Implying you were in on it, instead of Mike?”
She nodded, began clearing up the coffee things. “I don’t know. But I couldn’t really prove otherwise, could I? So I didn’t bother denying it. I just got out of town as soon as I graduated, swore I’d never come back. And do I ever wish I hadn’t.”
Another gust, more ferocious than any before, hit the motel and made the structure shudder. The windows thrummed as we all waited to find out whether they were going to burst in at us, Willow in the act of rinsing the coffeemaker’s basket at the kitchenette sink.
“What did Weasel Bodine have to do with any of it?” I asked.
Willow looked surprised. “Nothing,” she said. “Who’s he?”
The lights went out.
The power was off for only a few pitch-black instants, but when it came on again Willow’s face had firmed up determinedly; she began making the subtle, ushering movements of the practiced hostess, informing us that the party was over.
“Did you see Reuben before he died?” I asked as she handed me my rain slicker. “Did he come around, making a pest of himself?”
“Oh, sure. Wanted money. And he’d done his homework. Reuben always did. Always knew,” she finished, “how he could hurt you.”
She gave me my rain hat. Ellie got up from in front of the television and said goodbye to the kids.
“Said he’d rake up all the old gossip,” Willow went on. “I gave him,” she added a little shamefacedly, “fifty dollars to go away. Do you think the police will keep us here for very long?”
“I don’t know,” I began, and then the door flung open, wind-driven rain sheeting past the big man himself: Willow’s husband. He wore a bomber jacket, wide-wale corduroys, and running shoes, all drenched; shoving the door closed, he frowned in displeasure, and not only at being wet.
Willow hastened to introduce us as two old East-port chums, a story he accepted scowlingly but without questions; it was just possible, I thought, that his development level was preverbal.
Although that of course would have ruled out aspirations to politics, so probably he was able to pronounce words, if not necessarily to understand all of them. Also it seemed to me that Willow was a little afraid of him, or why not tell him the truth about why we’d come?
“Good t’meet ’cha,” he managed finally, not offering a hand or the pretense of a smile.
“Likewise,” I replied, noting again the big, square head and blocky neck, the meaty, plug-ugly cast of his face.
Businessman, my aunt Fanny. This guy was a thug. It was the pinkie ring on his right hand that finally nailed it for me: a thick, vulgar object of gleaming gold, dripping with diamonds, about as subtle and tasteful as a set of brass knuckles.
I didn’t get a look at the left hand, to see if there was any mark on it. He kept it stuffed in his jacket pocket, probably to keep it from bumping along on the ground when he shambled.
Meanwhile, there was one final thing I wanted to make sure of, while I still had the chance.
“Willow,” I said, “you must meet Victor, my husband, sometime. Even though we’re divorced we’re on such good terms and I know you’d enjoy hearing about …”
This, you see, is the trouble with very fast improv: you run out of logic long before you run out of breath. All I really wanted was to confirm that she’d never been in Victor’s house. Which I felt fairly sure she could not have been, but …
“Actually,” she said, “I have. Met him, that is. Jeremy,” she waved at the blond boy in front of the TV, “fell off a bike the first day we were here. Hit his head hard, and someone said go see Dr. Tiptree. So we went, and he was so kind and reassuring to us. Wasn’t he, dear?” she added to her husband.
“Mmmph,” he agreed, pouring himself a Cutty.
Which was when I finished pulling on my rain stuff fast and got out of there. Because suddenly I felt I needed a Cutty, too.
Maybe even a double.
The lights started flickering again as we made our way back to the parking lot and went out decisively as we got into the Jeep. They stayed out as Ellie’s car key found its way to the ignition and the dashboard lights began glowing like a handful of sparks in the streaming darkness.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Ellie asked as we made our way down Water Street. Store signs swung wildly, rain hammered the Jeep’s roof and fought against the sweep of its wipers, its headlights bars of yellow, probing ahead. “And are you still carrying that little gun?”
“I’m thinking that Willow might be too light to have lifted Reuben; she’s built, all right, but not that way,” I replied. “The husband could have, though. Or the two of them together. There’s Valium in her bag, and nobody’s told me that the drugs in Reuben’s system weren’t Valium, yet.”
I took a breath. “Maybe Willow told her husband about Reuben, and they decided then how they would get rid of him if he started looking like a real threat to their—his—plans. Setting Victor up to take the blame could have come from Reuben’s own bragging; he might have said more to her than she’s letting on.”
“They’d have had time to work up a real scheme for getting rid of him,” Ellie agreed. “And if Reuben went back to the motel to ask Willow for more money, they could have given him a dosed drink there.”
“All of which is an awful lot of blue sky,” I admitted, “but it could have worked. I didn’t get a look at the husband’s hand, but the two of them had been in Victor’s house and could have seen the surgical-instrument collection.” A pair of killers would’ve made all the tasks that needed to be done a much easier proposition.
“So if that’s it, why would Willow tell us how bad Reuben could have made it for them, maybe ruining her husband’s election prospects and so on? Why give us what amounts to a motive?”
We looked at each other. “To make it seem,” we said in one voice, “not like a motive.”
“But what about him being in business an
d in country clubs and all? And … politics?” Ellie questioned. “He just doesn’t seem the type.”
“Hey, people have elected real TV wrestlers to political office. This guy only looks like one. Well,” I amended, “he would look like one, with another million years or so of evolution. As for business and clubs, well, people like people who can get the job done, you know? There are plenty of movers and shakers in high places who wouldn’t be there except that they’ve got money. And if a fellow has been careful not to get any convictions …”
As opposed, I meant, to everybody knowing that he’d done bad things. That part some people actually were attracted to, because it meant he could do bad things for them.
“I guess,” Ellie conceded. “Sure blows my fantasy of what fancy-pantsy social life is like, though.”
I had to laugh; once upon a time it had blown mine, too. “But Willow was right,” I said. “An ugly story about her would be a find for her husband’s political opponents, especially if he’s managed to stay officially clean, himself. It could be the only thing they’d have to use against him. Subtly, but effectively.”
A trash can rolled across the street in front of us, driven by the wind; Ellie swerved around it. Foamy whitecaps slammed the breakwater, then fell back for another run at it.
“So,” I went on, “maybe Reuben finally threatened the wrong guy. But if Willow and Mr. Personality got rid of Reuben to shut him up, and faked Willow’s near-poisoning to draw suspicion away from themselves, why do it so dramatically? And why kill Weasel and Heywood?”
Ellie glanced at me, waiting.
“Maybe to make it,” I answered my own question, “look as if the three deaths are related. And yes, I do know that’s overkill, two murders to cover one, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. And to answer your other question, no, I’m not carrying the gun.”
“Jacobia, I thought we agreed that caution ought to be the watchword, until …”
“I know. But I put it away. It started feeling foolish, day after day and no action. I’ll carry it if I go somewhere alone.”