The man was sounding exasperated. “Look, the guy on the phone, he didn’t see the door, for chrissakes. He’s calling from Falmouth and buying a baby grand from Marion and he probably doesn’t know you ain’t got double French doors opening into the garden, y’know?” The man looked inside and barked, “Jimmy, for chrissakes, leave that till I tell ya, huh?”
“I don’t remember them having to take the door off to get it in,” said the girl, stubbornly.
“Then they musta built the house around it.” He called inside again. “Jimmy, come out here.” The man turned to the girl. “Tell ya what. Me and Jimmy are gonna take a break, walk back to that coffee shop down to the main road. You think about it, call your mother, whatever you want. We’ll be back in half an hour. Then either the door comes off or we take off.”
A freckled kid edged sideways past the girl, who was holding her ground in the doorway. He was maybe sixteen and stared at her rump as he moved by her.
As the man passed me, he muttered, “Fucking college. Doesn’t have the brains God gave …”
I missed the next part as Jimmy said, “Fuckin’ A, Uncle Vin,” and followed the big man down the path.
Deborah Wald looked at me for the first time. “You’re too late. We already sold the piano.”
I gestured toward the departing pair. “Maybe not.”
She sighed, looked at the door. “What if they can’t get it back on?”
“If they can get it off, they can get it back on. So long as they don’t break or bend anything.”
Wald turned back to me, cocked her head. “You aren’t here for the piano, are you?”
“No, my name is John Cuddy. I’m—”
“You’re the one who called last night. About Jennifer.”
“That’s right. Your mother—”
“Can I see some identification, please?”
Smart kid. I showed her. Wald examined it, then said, “Mom said you were from the police. That’s not what that says.”
“I told your mother I was a detective investigating Jennifer’s death. She may have assumed—”
“What you wanted her to assume.” Deborah Wald gave me a scrunched-up smile. “Come in anyway.”
As she walked in front of me into the house, I could see why Jimmy was admiring her. She had on faded cut-off jean short-shorts and beautiful legs marred only by matching varicose veins on the backs of her calves. I could also see why Uncle Vin was ticked at her. The baby grand occupied at least half of the old cottage’s living room.
Wald pointed me toward a stuffed armchair and seated herself in its mate across from me. “So how come you’re still investigating when they have William already?”
“I’m working with William’s lawyer. There are a lot of disparities in what happened. I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell me something that will help.”
“Help William get off, you mean.”
“Help find who’s really responsible.”
“Don’t expect any miracles.”
“I won’t.”
“Okay. What do you want to know?”
“I understand that William met Jennifer at Goreham, in the dorms.”
“That’s right. Her boyfriend of the hour was hassling him or something and she picked him up. At least, to hear her tell it.”
“By ‘boyfriend of the hour’ I take it you mean she was pretty popular?”
Wald stifled a laugh. “Yeah, she was ‘popular.’ Or maybe I ought to say ‘copular,’ if that’s a word. Because that was what she did best.”
“I thought you two were roommates.”
“We were.”
“Doesn’t sound like you were too close.”
Wald shifted in the chair, feigning relaxation. “We didn’t get along too well.”
“How do you mean?”
She shifted again. “Look, I don’t see how this can possibly matter to you. About William, I mean.”
“I need to find out everything I can about Jennifer. I didn’t know her, and if someone other than William killed her, then I …”
“All right. My dad died of cancer. Three months ago, all right? I found out—he found out he had it just before Thanksgiving. And Jennifer was a shit about it, an absolute shit. I mean, I’d be in our room, crying, for God’s sake, and she’d be sticking her head around the door, trying to get me to leave for a while because she had some guy with her. She wouldn’t go out to dinner with me, or talk with me, or even just listen to me. Understand?”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.” Wald started to get teary. “You couldn’t understand unless you were losing someone to cancer a day at a time like I was. Someone you loved.”
“Like I said.”
She was about to cry, then bit it off, assessing me. “One of your parents?”
“My wife.”
“God,” she said. “But you’re so … I … I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …”
“That’s okay. It was a while ago. I can talk about it now. It gets a little easier as time goes on.”
Her face reset a bit, the tears on hold. “That’s funny. Odd, I mean. I wanted to talk about it. With him, with my mother, but they’re … My father survived the camps. In Germany, the death camps. He was just a baby, but he got out and came to this country when he was seven. He went to pharmacy school, and he opened his own drugstore here. I was thirteen, thirteen, before I ever found out about him in the camps, and then from some man who called here one day, looking for money for a Holocaust observance. My father never talked about it. But I got interested in Judaism, like in my roots, you know, and Goreham’s got a great religion department, and then David was going there already.”
“David?”
Wald darkened. “Just a guy I knew from here. There aren’t many Jews in this town. I dated him in high school. He’s a junior at Goreham now.”
I thought back to my visit to McCatty and something Mrs. Creasey had started to say. “Exams all over?”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Exams. At school. I thought exams were still in progress there, but your mother said you were working around here.”
“I, uh, had to leave school. Between my dad and … all.”
“And all?”
“Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but this is my personal life and I still don’t see what it has to do with William.”
“If ‘and all’ doesn’t involve Jennifer, we can skip it.”
Wald crossed her arms, waggled her foot at me. “Jennifer and I double-dated, her with a kind of creepy guy named Dick McCatty and me with David. This was maybe two weeks before … before we found out about my dad.”
“I’ve met McCatty.”
“Anyway, I thought it went okay. Jennifer seemed to get along with David, and I was glad. I mean, she was my roommate, and he was my boyfriend, and, you know, I was glad they liked each other. Well, I got the news about my dad, and I needed someone to talk to. Bad. But Jennifer wasn’t in our room, and the only other girl in the dorm that I knew well enough was in class somewhere, so I ran over to David’s place—he has an apartment just off campus. I get there and run up the stairs and I’m starting to cry, I mean the news about my dad was just starting to sink in, so I pounded on his door, and nobody came, so I kept pounding and pounding. Finally I hear him inside, cursing but coming, and he opens the door just a little bit, and I kind of push past him. That’s when I see he’s got just a towel on, and the door to his bedroom is open, and there’s Jennifer stretched out on his bed, and … Well, I just ran out of there. He tried to grab me and was saying something to me, but I broke away from him and got out of there and just ran and cried and …”
Deborah Wald began crying, deeply and regularly, as though she were still running and crying that day and needed to breathe correctly to be able to do both at once. I saw a Kleenex box on an end table near the couch and brought it over to her. She stabbed at it, bringing a wad to her eyes and nose. In about a minute, Wald stopped, snuffled a few t
imes, and bunched the used tissues in her fist.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay … It’s just that even after that, I mean, they didn’t know about my dad, and I didn’t have any leash on David, but when I waited for Jennifer to say something to me, explain at least, if not apologize, she never did. She acted toward me like I wasn’t there. No, that’s not right. She acted as though I was there, but that nothing had happened. She’d come back to the room and try to make small talk about class or clothes or whatever, like my dad wasn’t dying and like I hadn’t caught … yes, caught her with David.” Wald sniffed again, but appeared over the worst part.
“Did Jennifer ever talk much about William?”
“Oh, yeah. Till I had to make her shut up. She went on about how great he was in bed, how exciting it was to … well, do things with a black guy. Then …”
“Then?”
“I don’t know exactly, but she started saying things like sometimes he … he was like impotent, you know? Of course, William was under a lot of pressure.”
“At school, you mean?”
“Oh, yeah, that too, for sure. I mean, he struck me as pretty bright and all, but you could tell just listening to him talk that he hadn’t had a really good early education. But I meant mainly from Jennifer. She used to show him off, on her arm like some rare bird, the inner-city tamed stud, you know?”
“Would you guess Jennifer was involved with other boys while she was seeing William? Besides David, I mean.”
“No guessing about it.” Deborah shook her ponytail and leaned forward earnestly. “Look, I know I’m being pretty rough on her and all, but she really was an incredible little bitch. Jennifer wanted to sample it all, and with her looks and money, she really could.”
“She ever talk about the psychotherapy group she was in?”
“Yeah.” Deborah looked down at the clump of tissues in her hand. “I’m going to throw these away. Can I get you something to drink?”
“Just some water would be great.”
“Be right back.”
Wald left the room. I decided David was a jerk. An understandable jerk, maybe, but a jerk nonetheless.
She returned and handed me a tall glass, brimming with little ice cubes.
“Thank you.”
Wald said, “Actually, Jennifer didn’t say too much about that—the psychotherapy stuff, I mean. I had the impression that she didn’t think too much of the people in it, except for the shrink himself.”
“Clifford Marek?”
“Yeah, that was the name. She had the hots for him too, surprise, surprise.”
“Do you think they were involved?”
“Funny … no, I don’t. I mean, Jennifer talked about him a lot at first, and I think she got William to start going partly to sort of please Marek—he was trying to get some kind of real mixed group together, for research or something, I guess. I think Marek kind of kept his distance from her, like either he was too ethical to go after a patient or he could tell she might be trouble. Besides, I was just the one Jennifer bragged to. She confided in someone else.”
“Who?”
“This woman in her group. She has an odd first name, like some singer my mother used to like.”
“Lainie?”
“That’s right. Lainie. I remember Jennifer saying she thought Lainie really had the world all figured out.”
Three loud knocks came at the front door. Wald said, “Oh, shit, they’re back.” She looked at me. “Do you think I should let them take the door off?”
“It depends. They probably can’t get the piano out any other way.”
“You said it depends?”
“On how badly you want the piano out of here.”
They knocked again. Wald yelled, “I’m coming.” She turned back to me. “Oh, I want it out, all right. My father used to play it. Every night before bed. I guess in the camp there was an orchestra—remember the big fight over whether Vanessa Redgrave should be in that TV movie?”
“I remember.”
“Well, my father said the reason he wouldn’t talk about the camp was that there was only one good thing he associated with it, and that was the music. So every night he played here. Kind of a testament, I guess.”
“But you want the piano out?”
“Yeah,” Wald said, getting up. I stood too. She continued, “My mother can’t look at it without crying, and in this room, it’s kind of hard to miss.”
They knocked again. “Okay, okay,” she called.
I said to her, “Thank you for all your time.”
“That’s all right.” Wald dropped to the softer voice again. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Before, when you told me about your wife, you weren’t just using that to get me to talk to you, were you?”
“I hope not.”
She smiled a little and we moved to the door. Uncle Vin was there, Jimmy in his shadow.
“Well?” said Uncle Vin.
“You can take the door off,” said Deborah Wald.
“Thank God,” said Uncle Vin as they went in and I went out.
“Fuckin’ A,” whispered Jimmy.
Nineteen
AS I DROVE AWAY from the Walds’ neighborhood, I spotted the coffee shop that Uncle Vin had mentioned. Next to it was a pay phone in one of those vertical glass coffins. I pulled in alongside.
Fortunately, it was push-button, so using my credit card was relatively easy. First I called my answering service. There were two messages, one from Lieutenant Murphy and one from Mrs. Daniels, both essentially seeking status reports. I tried Murphy first and spoke with a young homicide detective named Cross, whom I’d met with Murphy. She said the lieutenant was out, but she’d give him my message.
I called directory assistance for Lainie Bishop’s number. She had two listed, one business and one home. I dialed the business number and after four rings got a harried answering service who took down my information and assured me that Ms. Bishop would return my call. I tried Lainie’s home phone and after two rings got Lainie’s voice on telephone tape. After dutifully waiting for the beep, I left a message saying I wanted to see her that night, at her house if preferable to her.
Next was Mariah Lopez. I’d interrupted a session she was having with a student, but she said she would be available at 4:30 P.M. for half an hour if I could come to U Mass then. I checked my watch and told her I’d be there.
Last, I reached Mrs. Daniels at work. I told her I’d like to see her that night. She suggested seven-thirty, and I said fine.
For the ride back to Boston, I swung east and took Route 3A, the so-called shore route, north. Route 3A used to be slower but a lot more scenic than Route 3, the extension of the Southeast Expressway. Route 3A is still slower, but the scenery has been replaced by the kind of strip-city fast-foods and mini-malls you see in the Midwest.
I arrived at U Mass about four-fifteen, and got in to see Dr. Lopez at four-thirty on the nose.
“Well,” she said, “have you found out anything that helps William?”
“A little, but also some that hurts him.”
“What can I do?”
“I’m not sure. I’d like to bounce some of my impressions off you and see what you think.”
“All right.”
“It seems that William’s relationship with the dead girl was not exactly a storybook romance.”
“They seldom are these days.”
“I don’t want to be crude, but—”
“Mr. Cuddy, I really have heard most everything in this job that could possibly shock me, and I haven’t run for the convent yet.”
I laughed politely and said, “I confirmed that Jennifer was sleeping around. A lot. It also seems that William would have had to be deaf and blind not to realize it.”
“I already told you that would hurt William.”
“Maybe not. I’ve been wondering why William picked the time and place it appears he did to kill her. I mean, the
y were together in a lot more available places than the boiler room of their psychiatrist’s office building. Also, if his motive was she was cheating on him, he knew about that long ago.”
“And therefore?”
“If it’s a crime of passion, it should have happened sooner. If it’s premeditated, why not pick a better spot?”
Lopez looked thoughtful. “You recall that I haven’t seen William for quite some time?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if he was under the kinds of pressures that I believe he was, then it is possible that those pressures would have taken some time to reach an intolerable level.”
“Granted, but when I spoke with William at the jail, he was rational and helpful with most of the topics we covered. Where he blew his top was over Jennifer and the night she died.”
“Given the circumstances of her death, that’s rather understandable, isn’t it?”
“He vented in a sexual way, a cursing way. He was like a student speaking in a classroom discussion, until I would mention Jennifer, then it was ‘that bitch’ and ‘that slut’ and so on. He even tried to insult my sexuality.”
A smile started at the corner of Lopez’s mouth, but she clamped it down. “William is a poor black male who was involved with a wealthy white girl who, as you say, slept around. Mostly with white males?”
“I’m not sure, but I would think so.”
“Well, then, he probably views you as a potential, and likely successful, competitor for Jennifer. Even though she’s dead, he would still see you through that sort of lens.”
As he might view Marek, if William saw Jennifer playing up to him. Which could explain the timing and the site of her death, but not in a way that would help my client.
“Mr. Cuddy?”
“Sorry; lost in thought.”
“Is there anything more I can help you with?”
“There are a few more people I need to see. Did you come up with anyone that I could talk to about drugs and hypnosis?”
“One possibility, but I want to speak with him first myself. So that he knows you’ll be contacting him.”
“I understand. If you can, please just call and leave me a message.”
“Certainly.”
Mariah Lopez let me use her phone to call my answering service. No return word from Lainie.
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