Every Wickedness

by Cathy Vasas-Brown

  Beth became so engrossed in the summary of the murders and the lives of the victims that she was unaware of the passage of time. Her rumbling stomach and the appearance of the waiter offering another mineral water brought her back to reality. It was six-thirty. Beth accepted the drink, thinking Ginny should be along any second.

  A few people meandered along the sidewalk, Ginny not among them. Beth wasn’t particularly surprised — Ginny was frequently late. In the past, she’d run the gamut of excuses.

  “There was this great vintage clothing shop on the Haight, Beth. Had to stop.”

  “Mama needed help rolling lasagna dough. How could I turn down my mother?”

  “I just started my period. No lectures about being late, okay?”

  Beth had heard them all, some of them twice, so she was certain Ginny would concoct some intriguing tale this time. Perhaps she’d been overcome by a need to make her confession and was whispering a list of venial sins to a priest right this moment. Quickly, she dismissed this notion. It was far more likely that Ginny was grilling the priest about his single male relatives. Though Beth’s friend might be infuriating, she was never dull.

  At six forty-five, Beth ordered a fruit salad. By 7:10, she was worried enough to consider going next door to explore the church, pew by pew.

  Just then she spotted her, a flurry of colour carrying a violin case across Washington Square. Ginny’s diminutive height didn’t get her noticed in a crowd, so she made damn sure she got herself noticed. She clad herself in anything that was a direct assault on symphony black and white. Today’s ensemble was a caftan, its spectrum of colour reminding Beth of a jungle parrot. She breezed into the restaurant, then plunked onto the bleached wooden chair opposite Beth.

  “Oh-oh,” Ginny said, adjusting her tie-dyed outfit. “You’re not happy. You know tardiness is part of my appeal, Beth.” An oversized raffia shoulder bag and the violin case thudded onto the floor. Ginny, resembling a reincarnation of Mama Cass, propped her granny glasses on top of her head.

  “And you’re in too good a mood,” Beth countered, “so it’s obviously not your period this time. For God’s sake, where were you?”

  “Confession?”

  “Try again. I saw you running across the square.”

  “Okay, there was this really cute guy sitting beside me at Mass — the Saturday night Masses get all the single people — so after the recessional hymn, I followed him.”

  “You what?” Beth had long since gotten used to Ginny’s unpredictability, but this bordered on lunacy.

  “All the way down to Duds and Suds on Columbus.” Duds and Suds was a combination café cum laundromat where singles congregated. “I have to strike while my iron’s still plugged in. Ya gotta love a guy who comes for a dose of religion between loads of wash.”

  “Irresistible. Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You kept me waiting here for over half an hour while you chased some stranger through North Beach?”

  “Not an ordinary stranger, Beth. He could have been The One.”

  “Ginny,” Beth sighed, “to you, any man who owns a Gillette razor could be The One. What happened?”

  “His roommate was already folding the whites by the time I got there. Why are all the cute ones gay? Oh, well. Did you eat?”

  Beth nodded. “Fruit salad.”

  “That all?” Ginny signalled the waiter, flashed him a wide smile, then ordered the black bean soup and the pasta of the day.

  “Why the violin?” Beth asked when Ginny had finished ordering.

  “Practising with Dieter tonight. You remember, the cellist I played the duet with in the West Marin Festival? Maybe later he’ll pluck my strings.”

  The waiter set a basket of bread on the table. Ginny tore into a slice.

  “Ginny, you’ve got to be careful,” Beth cautioned.

  “Why? These pesky extra pounds are here to stay.”

  “No. I mean, you can’t go following strange men, especially now. And what about this Dieter?”

  “Hey, why not? Nice Catholic boy, a musician. He could be a contenda.”

  Beth thrust the Chronicle in front of Ginny. “Virginia Rizzuto, get serious. Look.”

  “You flatter me, Beth. Those women are gorgeous.”

  “Those women are dead. I don’t relish the thought of seeing your photograph in the Chronicle alongside theirs, Gin.”

  Ginny glanced at the photos, her gaze lingering on Natalie Gorman. “Well, I wouldn’t be in my underwear, that’s for sure. Mama would have a stroke.”

  “Gin—”

  “Come on, Beth. Lighten up.” The waiter returned with Ginny’s soup and set it on the table. “This city’s always been home to society’s fringe groups. The Symbionese Liberation Army, Jim Jones’s People’s Temple — now we’ve got the Spiderman.”

  “You’re minimizing the danger, Gin.”

  “And you’re exaggerating it because of Anne,” Ginny said, raising her voice. “Beth, we’ve had this conversation before. I’m not about to change my lifestyle because of the Spiderman. I know about bad people doing bad things. I’m sorry about Anne, and I’m sorry about Natalie Gorman, too, but face it, she was stupid to cross that park at night. Any tourist guide will advise you to stick to the main roads. But the odds of the Spiderman harming me are slim.”

  “Still, Gin, you don’t have to go tipping the scale by following some stranger.”

  “The Spiderman won’t get me, Beth. I’m not his type. You, on the other hand …”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ginny chomped the pointed end of a crusty roll. “Sometimes,” she said between chews, “you’re too polite for your own good. Guy stands on your doorstep with a set of ten-year-old encyclopedias, and you’d let him in because it’s cold outside.”

  “I would not.”

  “Beg your pardon? How many times has that McKenna character screwed you around with the rent?” Ginny paused, and when Beth didn’t answer, she said, “See? What did I tell you? Good manners are for family and close friends.”

  “Thanks, Ginny. I feel much better.”

  “Listen, just take some of your own advice. Be careful.”

  “Anne was careful. He got her anyway.”

  “I know,” Ginny’s voice softened, “but she wasn’t abducted from anywhere near your house, and she wasn’t killed there, either. You’ve got to let it go, Beth. Don’t give this stranger so much power over you.”

  Beth nodded, not so much in agreement, but more to signal the end of the conversation. She let Ginny eat her soup in peace.

  Had she been obsessing about this killer? Since Anne Spalding’s death, Beth had thought of little else. She wondered where Anne had met the killer, and why, after fleeing from a husband who had beaten her senseless, she would trust another man so soon, and so completely. Was Anne that hungry for male companionship? Or was the Spiderman so damnably slick?

  Since Anne’s death, during many sleepless nights, Beth imagined footsteps padding across her spare room carpet. One night she sat up in bed, certain she saw Anne sitting on the upholstered chaise in Beth’s bedroom. Once, she even heard her speak. “I can’t go to my room, Beth. He’s there.”

  So many times, Beth remembered Anne coming down to the kitchen for a late-night snack while Beth sat at the living room desk, buried under her accounting ledgers. She had hardly looked up when Anne had passed by, so concerned was she with maintaining her privacy. She had provided Anne with a place to stay and wanted no involvement. No responsibility. If only she’d been more sympathetic, more open, perhaps Anne would have confided in her, told her something about herself. Maybe then Beth would have information to share with Jim.

  “Mmm, that was good.” Ginny’s soup bowl was whisked away, replaced by a steaming plate of fusilli. “Banzai!” Ginny said and buried her fork in the pasta. Pomodoro sauce spattered across Natalie Gorman’s picture. Mouth full, Ginny gurgled, “Enough about murders and such. Tell me what’s new with you.”

  “I go
t another anonymous note yesterday.”

  “Oh, hell. More bad news? No wonder you’re paranoid. What’d this one say?”

  Beth explained, then told Ginny about Kearns’s reaction.

  “He’s right,” Ginny said, wiping her mouth. “It’s not the Spiderman’s style. The guy writing those notes isn’t some fang-toothed stalker. I’d stake my life on it. More likely someone who’s already in your face, gauging your reaction to his literary creativity.”

  In your face. Beth thought of Bobby Chandler, who certainly had been in her face, in her yard, in her life lately. Was Bobby capable of such maliciousness? The mental image of the skateboarder with the lopsided grin didn’t jibe with the steely coldness of the two notes. Still, Bobby was fourteen, and weren’t all teenagers equipped with enough angst to baffle Freud? The memory of her own adolescence made her wince. Thank goodness for the advance of years.

  The pomodoro sauce dried a rusty brown on the newsprint. The slain model’s face appeared spackled with blood.

  “You must come across the occasional kook in your store, Beth. What about one of your customers?”

  “Like Horace Furwell?”

  “Is that the pervert you were telling me about?”

  Beth nodded. “Not to hear him tell it, though. He thinks his bordello project will catapult me onto the pages of Architectural Digest.”

  “Like you need his help getting there. Listen, Beth, any guy who wants a designer of your calibre to turn his bedroom into a replica of a whorehouse has more than a screw loose. We’re talking the whole toolbox. I’d steer clear of that bozo. Next subject. When do you see your new man again?”

  “Monday night,” Beth replied, feeling her mood lighten. “I can’t wait.”

  “That good in the sack, huh?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “Head over heels after only a few weeks? That’s not like the sensible Beth I know.” Ginny wagged a finger and grinned.

  “Maybe a little of the Rizzuto impulsiveness has rubbed off on me.”

  Ginny’s smile faded as quickly as it had come.

  Beth said, “What’s up? Indigestion?”

  “I was just thinking.” Ginny swallowed the last noodle, and mopped up sauce with the bread, “— you got your first letter a week ago….”

  “That’s right. So?”

  “So, how well do you know this Jordan Bailey?”

  13

  Westminster chimes sounded through the corridors of the mansion on Russian Hill. Nora Prescott’s hand-sewn shoes trod delicately across the Bokhara rug.

  By the time she smoothed her chignon and checked her lipstick in the hallway mirror, whoever had rung the doorbell was gone. On the front veranda, wedged against a concrete urn brimming with azalea blooms, was an exquisitely decorated parcel.

  Nora resisted a squeal. Her birthday was three weeks away, but obviously Phillip couldn’t wait to spring a little surprise on her. She would be fifty-five soon, but hard work and meticulous care made her look ten years younger. Nora glanced right and left along the street, scanning for signs of a delivery truck or perhaps Phillip’s Lexus turning the corner. Then, seeing nothing, she picked up the box and went inside.

  Inside the package, Nora found another box, then a third. Even during childhood, Nora had hated this foolish game, knowing the final gift never matched the expectation. This one, though, wasn’t bad. It was a brooch, in the shape of an N, encrusted with pearls. Nora didn’t care for initialled jewellery; it reminded her of days-of-the-week underwear from a catalogue. Still, this brooch, while not worth a sultan’s ransom, was an antique, and the pearls seemed to be good. She would find out just how good when she got the jewellery appraised.

  Looking in the mirror, Nora affixed the brooch to the jacket of her Armani suit. It didn’t do justice to the ensemble, but she left it there, curious to see Phillip’s reaction when he arrived home.

  There’d been no reaction from him when she’d worn the watch, nor the diamond earrings. The Delft urn she received now graced the stark mantel of their all-white living room. No comment.

  Had that been part of this whole charade? Phillip, sending her gifts, waiting to assess her response? Of course, by saying nothing, Nora was leading him to believe there might be another admirer, maybe two.

  She supposed she should dash into Phillip’s arms later, coo her delight at the gifts and scold him for being a naughty boy, teasing her this way.

  But, if it wasn’t Phillip….

  One of the exasperating things about her fiancé was his practicality. The house Phillip had purchased because it was “solid,” his Lexus because it was dependable. His wristwatch was a Timex, which he’d owned for the past eight years, he often boasted. Expensive jewellery, to Phillip’s way of thinking, was frivolous, and Phillip Rossner was too stodgy to indulge in frivolity. Well, perhaps her faithful hound had learned some new tricks.

  In the silk-papered powder room, Nora applied a fresh misting of perfume and continued to puzzle over the gifts. The manicure set she had been sent was tasteless, dimestore stuff, its black vinyl case decorated with ersatz embroidery. The Delft urn, too, was an oddity. Nora had never been to the Netherlands, and her background was Scottish, so the meaning behind the Dutch pottery was lost to her. The Andrew Lloyd Webber CD might be considered romantic to some, but it was a far cry from the Cartier watch. The sender, be it Phillip or someone else, certainly had eclectic taste.

  At first, she had been tempted to pitch the gifts in the garbage, then she realized she was being toyed with and decided to play along. She didn’t understand the game yet, but she couldn’t deny its intrigue. Besides, the Cartier was definitely a keeper.

  For a split second, she again debated confronting Phillip about the gifts. Then she decided to shut up. Either Phillip, in frustration, would eventually pout about her being ungrateful for his trinkets, or another suitor, perhaps with a fatter wallet, would reveal himself and the significance of the gifts, soon.

  14

  Mondays were sacred. On her day off, Beth usually allowed herself an extra half hour in bed, but this morning she was up and dressed by six. She power walked up to Chestnut Street, constantly alert to cars parked curbside, but there were no bogeymen waiting to jump out at her. In her favourite coffee haunt, she perched on a stool facing the street and tried to read the morning paper, but her concentration constantly jostled between scanning the café for suspicious-looking strangers and reliving her last conversation with Ginny. Beth still found herself stewing over her friend’s insensitive remark about Jordan. Every time Ginny experienced a dating drought, she would take it upon herself to ruin everyone else’s fun. Criticizing Beth’s male friends was part of her surly face-saving, and occasionally, Ginny’s assessments had been accurate. But Ginny’s implication that Jordan might be the one behind Beth’s hate mail was eroding what remained of Beth’s compassion and patience.

  Beth understood Ginny’s insecurity and used every technique she knew to bolster her friend’s self-image. It couldn’t have been easy for Ginny, growing up as the youngest of five Rizzuto children. Ginny’s four brothers were members of a dance band that played all the local European weddings. It wasn’t enough for Ginny to be lumped in with “those Rizzutos,” so she sought to outshine them and by her twentieth birthday, she thought she had, by securing a first-violinist position with the San Francisco Symphony. But Beth knew that Mr. and Mrs. Rizzuto saw Ginny’s music as a hobby, something Ginny could occupy herself with until she found a husband. When her own musical gift still brought no recognition, Ginny took pains to stand out in other areas, not the least of which was the development of a personality that would intimidate Don Rickles. She became a self-professed expert on everything, especially men.

  “He sounds too good to be true,” Ginny had said when Beth first told her about Jordan. “A pilot? You’ll never get him to settle down. Those guys want their freedom.”

  I’ll find out for myself, if it’s all the same to you, Gin.


  She was seeing Jordan tonight and tried desperately to think more positively, but she knew she would have to take a stand with Ginny, and soon. If Ginny wanted to compete with her brothers, fine, but Beth wasn’t going to be part of any contest that involved allowing Ginny to insult her. Maybe if she said exactly that to Ginny, she would back off.

  And Sondra Devereaux would bake Jim Kearns a carrot cake.

  Beth’s coffee was coated with a filmy skin. She shoved the mug aside and returned her attention to the newspaper.

  _________

  At home, Beth’s foul mood was reinforced by a call from her bank manager telling her that Rex McKenna’s rent cheque had bounced. She slammed the receiver onto its cradle and swore. She tried to phone Rex at his office, but there was no answer. He had been limping when Beth last saw him. Maybe he was at home, recuperating with a box of cigars and some girlie magazines. It was worth a try.

  “What the hell?” Ida McKenna hollered into the phone. “You mean that dumb-ass isn’t at work? I’ll broil his balls for dinner!” Ida couldn’t have stood more than four foot nine. Where was she storing that operatic shriek?

  “He’s probably out on a call, Mrs. McKenna,” Beth said gently.

  “My ass,” Ida replied, then hung up.

  By six o’clock, Beth had housecleaned and exercised away her anger. She indulged in a bubbly soak, styled her hair, and applied the finishing touches to her makeup. She wriggled into sheer black hose. She slipped her red crêpe suit on, fastened the row of buttons, added a gold bracelet and earrings, then stepped into suede pumps.

  “What do you think, Samson? Do I look businesslike but sexy? I’m shooting for both.”

  Samson, who had been mesmerized by the goings-on, yawned, stretched, then jumped from the top of Beth’s armoire and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Beth followed the tabby, opened him a can of something revolting, then locked up her house and headed toward her Audi.