by David Bishop
Sergeant Fidgery came through the doorway, his posture slouched, his stride short. “Hey, Matthew, I just finished your latest, The Blackmail Club, it’s your best yet.”
“Thanks, Fidge. As always, your technical tips helped. Where’s your new partner?”
“What’s with the new? You know George has been with me since, well, since that stupid stunt you pulled on the courthouse steps ten years ago.”
“Anybody since me will always seem new. So, then, where’s George?”
“Sick,” Fidge said. “I’m soloing. That’s why I approved your coming down here. I need you to remember how to behave in a crime scene.”
“By the way, happy birthday old man. Sorry I didn’t make the party last weekend. Forty-seven, right?”
“Forty-seven,” Fidge said sarcastically. “We go through this every year. I’m forty-seven, you’re forty-six, but only for a few months, then you’ll be forty-seven like me. Brenda said to tell you she hasn’t forgiven you for missing the party.”
“You know I would’ve been there if I could. My agent scheduled a book signing way over in the San Fernando Valley without checking the date with me. She won’t do that again.”
“No sweat, Matthew. I’m just yanking your chain. Brenda understands.”
“Thanks. Look, I stepped on the cornflakes before I saw them. They blended with the carpeting. It looks like the flakes had been walked on before I got here. You?”
“Who the hell expects cornflakes on gold carpet?” Fidge asked. “Christ, on any color carpet.” Fidge put a steadying hand on my shoulder, crossed one knee with his opposite ankle and looked at his sole, then the other. Neither of us saw anything on the soles of his shoes.
“Did Clarice walk on them?” I asked.
“Says so. Says she got up, threw a load of clothes in the washer, put the coffee on, showered and slipped into what she called ‘a little thing,’ and then came in here to wake her old man.”
“What about the uniform at the door,” I asked, “did he come in too?”
“I cursed when I stepped on the flakes,” Fidge said, shaking his head. “A bit too loudly, I guess. Officer Cardiff came running. Now stop poking around, Matthew. I let the wife call you because she said she had been with you last night and that you might have a key to this place, not so’s you could play detective. Tell me about her, and keep your voice down.”
“What can I say? She’s got her own teeth, great hair, and this and that.”
“Yeah. Right off I noticed her this and that. Also the ‘little thing’ she put over her this and that when she got up this morning; it’s hanging behind her bathroom door. You ought to take a look. Then maybe you’ve already seen it, with her in it.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye, and then added, “I haven’t heard you deny she was with you so tell me about her visit.”
“Clarice came down during the night. Said she thought someone would try to kill her husband. I didn’t take her seriously, but she had been right.”
“What time did she get there?”
“It was dark, for a good while. I had been zonked. I went to bed around ten. Midnight would be a good guess.”
“What did she say? I want all of it and I want it exactly. Everything.”
“Page one: The doorbell woke me a few minutes after midnight. I found Mrs. Talmadge leaning on my door jamb wearing a man’s white button-down shirt, a strategic gap formed by the mismatching of a southern buttonhole with a northern button. Her blond hair teased her shoulders. She had on a pair of shiny gold sandals, her toenails painted red to match the bloody mary she held, a celery stalk stood tall in the short glass.”
“Knock it off, Matthew; this isn’t one of your novels. You know what I want. Give.”
I nodded. “Her opening line was ‘something bad is gonna happen.’ She brushed past me, her sandals slipping as she stepped down into my sunken living room, her shirttail failing to fully cover her backside. Oops. I forgot. You said no descriptions. I asked her what she was talking about. She said, ‘somebody’s going to kill Tally.’ That’s her pet name for her dead husband.”
“Then what did she do?” Fidge asked.
“She took a big drink, chomped the end off the celery stick that had poked her in the cheek, and oozed her bottom over the arm of my leather chair, creating two small miracles. She didn’t spill a drop, and her face showed no reaction when her bare bottom settled onto the cool leather.”
Fidge screwed up his face.
“Okay. Okay, just the facts, Sergeant. I asked why she thought that. She said, ‘Three days ago, I answered the phone. Some guy with a raspy voice asked for Gar. Only he made it sound like jar. I told him there’s no jar here and hung up.’”
“Was her dead husband there?”
“No. But her live husband was.” Fidge gave me the finger. I ignored his bad manners and continued. “She said her husband, sitting at the table drinking coffee, turned white when she mentioned Gar. To illustrate the color she held up her short white shirttail, her unblemished skin imitating melted milk chocolate. She had no tan line. I know you said to can the descriptions, but I figured you’d like that one.”
“What did her husband say?”
“He told her that some former business acquaintances in Europe used to call him Gar. Then he told her to hang up when they called back.”
Fidge put one hand in the air like he had been busted back to directing traffic. “When? Not if?”
“I asked her that too. She definitely said, ‘when they called back.’ And, before you ask, she said there were no more such calls, at least not while she was at home. She got in Garson’s face about that call again the next morning, and they again fought.”
“How well did you know this guy?”
“Not all that well,” I said. “I went out to dinner two or three times with the Talmadges. Garson was a bon vivant. He and I played poker with a few men in the building, maybe four times.”
“Did the Talmadges go to dinner with you or did you go with them?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Who invited whom?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Who drove? That’s usually the person who extended the invitation.”
“That I remember. Clarice. She gets motion sickness in a car. She claims it doesn’t happen when she drives. Garson said it had something to do with her vision and hearing senses getting the same stimulus.”
“When I was a kid,” Fidge said, “my uncle always drove for the same reason. You mentioned you played poker with the deceased and a few other men in the building. The wife’s about thirty-five and a real looker. The dead guy’s around eighty. Was she also playing with some of the other men in the building, and I don’t mean poker?”
I ran my hand through my hair, wrinkled my lips, and then said, “Yeah.”
“You?”
“I expect it’ll come out, so here it is. One afternoon, two days before they moved in last spring, Clarice knocked on my door. I had seen her and Garson in the building earlier, but hadn’t been introduced. She said … no, she didn’t say, I assumed she and Garson were father and daughter.”
“But she didn’t say otherwise, right?”
“She didn’t say otherwise. Before she left we did the deed, you know. Then I found out they were married. It’s rumored several other fellows in the building have also taken turns. I don’t know any names, but I suspect you’ll find wives eager to spill their suspicions.”
“Someday,” Fidge said, “I need to give you my sex-without-deep-feelings-is-worthless speech. I just don’t have time right now.”
“Oh, too bad, I’ve been so looking forward to that one. But it’s a load of bull. Sex for pure lust is not worthless. Not all of us are fortunate enough to have someone we love deeply in our lives every time we get a case of the galloping hornies.”
“You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought, Matthew. But may I bring you back to why we’re together this morning?”
&nbs
p; “You brought it up.” I sighed. “Go ahead.”
“What do you know about Garson Talmadge’s background?”
“Less than I know about his eating habits. During one of the dinners, Garson said he came from Europe, but shied from anything beyond generalities. I can tell you he spoke some words with the softer consonants common to the French. Once when the poker talk came around to Iraq, Garson pronounced ‘Allah’ with the back of his tongue raised to touch his soft palate as is done with Arabic.”
The sun broke through the clouds to reflect off the ocean and brighten Garson’s bedroom. We moved a bit to avoid the glare. Fidge walked over to look at a desk along the bedroom wall which held a computer setup and also a typewriter. “Don’t see many people with a typewriter these days.” Then he asked, “What else happened while she was at your place?”
“She took another bite from the celery stalk. A drip of bloody mary fell onto her skin to slalom down her abundant cleavage until blossoming into a pink splotch on her white shirt.”
“Knock off the colorful bullshit, Matthew.”
“You know, you’re the only person since my mother who regularly calls me Matthew. Brings back memories. I like it.”
“I told you to knock it off.”
“Sorry. It’s the novelist in me; I think that way now. Clarice said the next morning when Garson went into the bathroom, she saw a bunch of passports in an attaché case he’d left open on his bed. They all had his picture, but different names. She didn’t remember any of the names, but from the way she told it he had enough to start his own phonebook.”
“I understand they fought a lot?”
“According to her, yeah,” I said, “at least since that call asking for Gar. She also heard him on the phone speaking some language she didn’t understand. She said it wasn’t French. That she didn’t speak French, but had taken French in high school so she recognizes it. After the ‘Gar’ call, she said her husband stopped leaving their condo except to go to the workout room and spa area in the building. The only time he left the building was the prior week to keep an appointment with his attorney.”
“What else?” Fidge widened his stance, taking care not to step on more of the cornflakes.
“Did I mention her fingernails were painted to match her toenails?”
Fidge flipped me off again, then asked, “What time did she leave?”
“I didn’t look.”
“Guess.”
“I’d put it at close to four in the morning. And, yes, the skin on her fanny made a popping sound when she pulled free of the leather chair.”
“She stayed nearly four hours? Just what were you two up too?”
“We talked. All right? Her life. Well, her life some. Mostly mine, I guess.”
“And you spilled your guts, right?”
“Some stuff. Yeah. I guess. The woman knows how to get a man talking.”
“I’ll bet she can. Her naked under a man’s white shirt enhanced by mismatched buttons and buttonholes. I supposed you told her your wife got a divorce after you went to prison?”
“Yeah.”
“And that she had been mad enough to file ever since you shot her father’s prize hunting dog? You tell her that too?”
“That damn dog was hunting me, Fidge, charged me in the study, saliva hanging from its teeth. For heaven’s sake, you had to be there. That animal took down game with that mouth. What would you have done?”
Fidge laughed. “I’d have brought along Milk Bone when I visited the in-laws.”
“Ha. Ha. Like you said, my marriage was kaput by then anyway. My arrest just gave her an easy explanation for it.”
“So you sort of moved up her timetable.”
“Shooting that damn dog was self-defense. Hey, you got a murder here. Shouldn’t you be doing something more important than critiquing my fucked-up personal life?”
“You’re right; I’m here about the murdered man, not the murdered dog. But, like we say in the crime-fighting business, you having shot the dog, then the guy outside the courthouse established your pattern of behavior. Now, you were telling me about you and Clarice and your four hours in paradise.”
“I can’t really tell you what we talked about. It was late. You know, you get sort of groggy, the mindless talk comes and the time goes.”
Again his silent finger preceded his question. “What about the key?”
“I don’t know why she said that.”
“That don’t answer my question, Matthew. She said you were her old man’s only friend in the building. Says she figured her husband might have given you a key for emergencies or whatever. Sounds awfully convenient for when you wanted to visit with his wife.”
“Okay. Here it is direct. I do not and never did have a key to the condo of Garson and Clarice Talmadge. Is that plain enough, Sergeant Fidgery?”
“Don’t get hot, Matthew. You know how this works.”
“I wasn’t dodging your question. As for emergencies, hell, the building supervisor lets people in then. He’s got keys to every unit.”
“Okay. I’ll check with the super.”
“How do you size this up?”
The sergeant stepped closer. “The wife’s a pastry on legs, but her deck is missing a few cards. She plugs her old man, and then leaves the front door dead bolted from the inside.” Fidge gestured toward a .22 revolver on the bed. “Says that there’s her husband’s gun, it’s loaded with longs. Only one shot’s been fired. I expect ballistics will show the missing long is in the old guy’s brain. Says the red scarf draped over the gun handle is hers, so’s that pretty little pink pillow with the ugly little black hole. Her dog sleeps on it, or used to.”
“Why the pillow?” I asked. “A .22’s pretty quiet. An expert would know that.”
“She ain’t no expert.”
“Come on, Fidge.” I shook my head. “Clarice isn’t the kind to kill a man unless it’s with loving.”
“And just what kind is she, Mr. Writer?”
“The divorcing kind. She’d move on and find a new rich guy. Think of it as legal prostitution with fewer customers and better working conditions, with a topnotch severance package as a bonus.”
Fidge grinned. “Maybe you should write one of them columns for the lovelorn.”
I imitated his finger, using my own. “What’s the story on the cornflakes?” I asked.
“Says her husband’s a light sleeper. That he sprinkled the flakes on the floor so no one could sneak into his room. How’s that for nutso?”
Clarice’s voice shrilled from the living room. “I didn’t do it, Matt. Honest to God, I didn’t do it.” Her chihuahua whimpered, perhaps in agreement.
I had never before heard the dog make a sound. Garson had refused to buy the condo unless his wife could keep her dog. She proved to the condo association that Asta had been trained to always stay quiet indoors and, after Garson paid a large nonrefundable deposit, Asta became the only pet in a building posted: no pets.
I looked at my old partner. “Just what points this at her?”
Fidge started with a facial expression that screamed I’ve already told you. He summarized: “The deadbolt. No forced entry. Nothing’s missing. The neighbors have heard lots of screaming. The gun was in the house. The scarf and pillow are hers.”
“That won’t get you a conviction.”
“That’s just the part I’m telling ya. We got more and we’re still in the first inning.”
“What else have you that ties to her?”
“I’m not paid to report to you, Matthew. But I’ll tell you this, when the wife used her scarf and her dog’s pillow she moved it up to premeditated.”
“Maybe Garson did himself in?” I said.
“Usually they leave a note, and suicides don’t often worry about fingerprints and keeping their work quiet, not to mention the awkwardness of plugging themselves in the front of the skull.” Fidge shrugged after discrediting suicide. I agreed with him. This wasn’t suicide. Still, I hadn’t s
een Fidge shrug that way in years, but habits become habits by lasting over time. This Fidgery shrug meant, open and shut.
“I’m not going to tell you again, Matthew, get outta here. The medical examiner could be here any minute.”
“I’m going.” I used the back of my hand to pat the sergeant on the breast pocket of his dark-blue suit coat. “She can phone her attorney after you get her downtown, right?”
“Sure.”
“Who called this in?”
“Her.”
“What about the coffee?” I asked.
Fidge coughed into his fist. “Says she dropped the cup when she saw the hole in her sugar daddy’s noggin.”
I left my ex-partner in Garson’s bedroom and went to Clarice in the living room. “I’ll come see you once you’re permitted to have visitors.”
She shifted Asta from one arm to the other while blotting her eyes with the soft pads of her straightened fingers, the way women do to avoid smudging their eye makeup.
“Please take Asta,” she pleaded. “There’s no one else I can ask. I got her a continental clip three days ago. She won’t need another grooming for weeks. I’ll be home before that.”
I had once thought about getting a dog, but figured on one I could name Wolf or King. Then, after the incident with my father-in-law’s mad creature, I repressed the whole idea of a dog.
“I need another minute in the victim’s room,” Fidge said, leaning out of the doorway of Garson’s bedroom. “When I come out, I want a decision on that dog. It’s you or the catcher.”
“What’ll I do with a little dog like that?” I asked, looking at Clarice.
“She won’t be any trouble.” Clarice’s eyes went all funny. “Please, Matt.”
I had always envied the way Sam Spade could stand up to the femme fatales who tried to play him. I had given that skill to my fictional detective, but no one had given it to me.