by Jon Wilson
He looked up at me, his eyes wide. “You just…you’re brutal. Is that attitude supposed to help? Keep me from lapsing into shock like—” He swallowed something hard. “Like that slap you offered yesterday? I saw those tricks during the war. It struck me as bunk then, and it strikes me as bunk now. And brutal. Give me a cigarette.”
“Say please.” But that just confused him, so I dug out my pack. “You people. Why don’t you carry your own?”
“I usually do. My mind was a bit distracted this morning. I…I think I have a pack in my car. Probably.” Taking the cigarette I offered, he did produce his own expensive, gold-plated lighter, which made me think he might not have been lying about normally carrying his own. He lit up and sat back, relishing that first puff. He closed his eyes, then opened them and perused my desk. “Why don’t you keep some out? For clients. My broker has a Faberge dispenser he keeps right about here.” He leaned forward to touch my desktop near the front about a foot from the corner. “Three different brands of cigarettes.”
“Sure. Faberge. It would match the couch.”
He sat back, examining the cigarette I’d given him. The smoke or the tobacco or maybe just having a toy in his hand that he could fiddle with had done the trick. His words weren’t tripping over themselves trying to make it out of his mouth. He took a slow breath and let it out. “I like that couch. You’d be surprised what an impact seeing that thing had on me. Lana wasn’t at all keen to even come in here after getting a look at your hallway out front. But the instant I saw that couch, I knew we’d found the right place.”
It was my turn to be confused, so I backtracked. “I thought you said you were on an English holiday during the war.”
“No, that’s what you said. Trying to be rough. And I haven’t had anything to drink today.”
“Want some?”
“No. Damn it, I couldn’t. Not after yesterday.” He attacked his hair again. The problem was that he was shoving it against the part, and it was falling down in a scattered mess across his eyes. “I don’t think I stopped drinking after the police left. And you came. I think I thought you were going to help.” He glanced up at me through his bangs.
“Is that why you called me Tuesday night?”
“Called you?”
“Yeah, Tuesday at about ten. I got a message you had called.”
He seemed genuinely perplexed. “I don’t know—oh!” It hit him. “Yes. I mean, no. I was calling to apologize. For Lana and…and what happened. It was nothing. I’d completely forgotten I’d telephoned you. That’s strange?” He put it up to me like a question.
I shrugged. It didn’t strike me as too remarkable in light of all that had happened since. “You sure you don’t want a shot of something?”
The corner of his mouth went up. “It’s not even ten-thirty.”
“What time did you start yesterday?”
“Nine. Maybe. Maybe eight-thirty.” He took another deep breath. “But that was different. Yesterday was a nightmare. The police were brutal.”
“The police were brutal. I’m brutal. Brother, you have no idea. This thing’s just leaving the gate.”
He slid lower in his chair, propping his arms on the rests. His hips were nearly riding the front edge of the seat cushion. He looked disgusted about something, but whether it was murder or the twin brutalities of me and the police, or maybe just his drinking, I can’t say. He wasn’t much of a smoker either. The cigarette spent more time smoldering between his fingers than it did in his mouth.
“I’m not really that weak. At least—God, I hope I’m not. It’s just they all decided so long ago that I was unfit for…so much of life. Those things weren’t for me. I wasn’t to be allowed in. I guess I’d gotten used to breezing along the periphery of everything. My life wasn’t real. Now it’s…” He hesitated.
“Real?”
He gazed at me again, shaking his head. “Don’t laugh at me. I may very well still be drunk.”
“Are you normally that type of drunk? The philosopher?”
“I’m normally the fool. Drunk or sober. Ask anyone.”
“Sure, now you sound like a whiny rich kid.” He no doubt thought that brutal, but I meant it. I sat forward. “Did you do what I asked? Did you bring the letter?”
“Asked? Is that what you call it?” He dug a folded paper from his breast pocket. “Yes. It wasn’t easy. Joe said you and he had discussed it and agreed he would take the lead. He didn’t want me to—what’s so funny?” He stopped in the process of handing the document over, apparently put off by my laughter.
“Nothing.” I quashed the chuckles and took hold of one end of the paper. “Nothing is funny at all.”
He didn’t let go of his end. I could see he doubted me. “Then why are you laughing?”
“That Joe.” I gave the paper a tug, prompting him to release it. We both sat back. “Sometimes he gets confused.”
O’Malley flattened his tie to his chest and then reached up to comb his fingers through his hair the right way this time, pushing his big curtain of ginger bangs back across the top of his head. He was looking at something on the edge of my desk. “I don’t know. He seems pretty slick to me. Too slick. Lana’s—” He stopped himself with a visible jerk and swung his gaze up at me.
I tried to make him think I wasn’t paying attention. I’d opened the document in my hands and gave it a thorough look. It was plain stationery, eight-by-five, yellow, with no date nor addressee nor salutation. About halfway down the page someone had typed:
What was in the drink his wife gave him the night Lawrence O’Malley died? Why had the glass been removed and washed before the police arrived? Why had the entire staff been given the night off? Two men dead. How many more shall follow?
Naturally there was no signature, but without trying to prop myself up, I think I knew immediately who had sent it. And it wasn’t just a hunch or intuition; it was keen observation and the fact that at least one person the day before had let on that she knew too.
I asked, “How did this arrive?”
He fidgeted, trying to get comfortable with something. “Regular mail. The envelope had no return address and was postmarked at the local branch. The police told us all that. Joe dusted the envelope and the letter for prints and examined them under a microscope for any—what?”
Another fit of the chuckles had taken hold of me and again I struggled to master it. “It’s the comedy. You’re killing me.”
“I don’t understand. Are you implying this is all a hoax? That we’re simply too foolish to see it?”
“No. That’s not what I am implying. And I shouldn’t be laughing. It’s very unprofessional.”
He looked like he agreed with me but let it slide. He sat there ready for my next question.
I supplied one. “Is any of it true? Was the glass washed before the police arrived? That’s the sort of thing that usually rates some investigation. I don’t recall reading anything about it.”
“Well, no. How could anyone have known? There was some alcohol in his blood, they said, but no sign he’d had a drink there at the house. He had just come from his club and was going to bed.”
“And Mrs. O’Malley denies making him a drink?”
“She didn’t need to. She wasn’t there. No one was there. She and George were at the Shanty.” That was Marty Velasco’s joint in Marin. “I know they were because I was there too.”
“So the three of you alibi each other.”
“I guess so, if you want to call it that. We were there from at least nine until well after one o’clock.”
“You came and went together?”
“Not in the same car, no. I took my own car.” He twisted in his seat again. “You do know that I don’t live in that house?”
“But you might have swung by and picked them up. Or vice versa.” I pulled a few flakes of tobacco from my lower lip, considering. “What about your sister?”
“She never goes. She doesn’t approve.” He had answered just as open
and willingly as he had any previous question, but then something occurred to him and he grinned at me. It was a jaunty grin, full of snide rebuke, but still one hell of a grin. “Of course, she’d need to be a loon to have killed our father and then spent the last two months trying to get someone to investigate his murder.”
I grinned back at him, more manly and pure I hope, but wanting him to see that I could play. “She might have hoped to frame your stepmother. Stranger things have been known to happen.”
His grin devolved into a disapproving frown. “Except she loved the old man. Someone had to. And she was mostly indifferent to Miranda before this happened.”
“What,” I said, “were her feelings toward Adam Reed?”
His head pulled back. “Adam Reed?”
“Yeah, Mrs. O’Malley’s first—”
“Yes.” He interrupted me, returning the favor. “I know who he is. Or was. Adam got killed in France. What the hell do you drag him in for?”
“I didn’t.” I tapped the anonymous letter on my desk with a fingertip. “This does. ‘Two men dead,’ it says. Do you suppose it’s referring to someone else?”
“No, but—” He looked down and then off to the right, but whatever he was searching for seemed to elude him.. He shook his head at me, perplexed. “What was the question?”
“What were your sister’s feelings about him? Only let’s broaden it. What were your feelings about him? And your father’s? You call his father Uncle Jay.”
“Sure.” He was nodding, slowly at first, gradually building momentum. He had shifted his eyes down and left, but I didn’t get the feeling he was being evasive. He was just trying to see it all clearly enough to put into words. “My father and Uncle Jay were business partners. I mean, he was the family retainer and all that, but they made a lot of money together. During the Depression. Before that too, I guess. But especially during. Especially after my mother died.” He looked up at me suddenly. “Can I tell you something?”
“I thought you were.”
“Something secret. It may not be true, but I think it is.”
“Truth is overrated when it comes to secrets.”
“Well, hell. If we’re going to be melodramatic.”
I thought my line had been pretty good. But he sat shaking his head at me. He was done with his cigarette, and I gave him another without his having to prompt me. I didn’t want him to get any more distracted. He lit it, then brushed his lower lip with the tip of his thumb. “I think Uncle Jay was in love with my mother.”
That actually disappointed me. I suppose I figured in families like his, the kinks were bound to stretch way back. I shrugged and nodded both.
He squinted at me as if he didn’t quite trust my reaction. “My aunt, my actual aunt, mother’s sister, told me once that they fought a duel over her.” Then he lightened up and shook his head. “Naturally, I looked into that but never found anything to back her story up. But I do think Uncle Jay loved her—mother, that is.”
“What did your father say?”
“Come now. Do you really suppose we had that sort of relationship? I spent most of my childhood away at school.”
“What did Uncle Jay say?”
He chuckled. “I should ask him. Maybe I will. I guess I always figured that bringing it up would be bad form, seeing how he lost.”
It occurred to me that never having seen a picture of his mother, I couldn’t go willy-nilly along with his assumption about who had won and who lost. Of course, it also occurred to me that stating that thought aloud might be in bad form.
I got myself a cigarette and leaned back in my chair, hoisting my feet back up onto the corner of my desk. I had on a shiny pair of two-tone brogues and felt like showing them off. It was a wonder I didn’t tip over backward. “That was a fascinating tangent. But I haven’t forgotten about Adam.”
He waved a hand casually. “I don’t know what you hope to find out. He was two years older than Lana and nearly five older than me. She liked him all right, I suppose, but they never had much in common. He was athletic. I had a bit of a boyish crush on him. I admit I wept when I learned of the accident. I suppose I shouldn’t have admitted that. But it’s true. I had several friends perish in the war, but that one hit me hard.”
“So the two of you were close?” I felt my Adam’s apple sliding up and down, like something was lodged in my throat. A few tears was his idea of taking it hard?
He smirked, mainly at himself I gathered. “Not really. Our schooling overlapped slightly and having a successful and popular upperclassman as a benefactor didn’t hurt my first two years. Although I suppose it was something of a nuisance to him. Of course, George took a more active interest in my welfare.”
“The three of you went to the same boarding school?”
“Of course.” He said it like it was the only natural assumption; which maybe it was. I admit to having no idea. “Adam and George were a year apart, and I was four years behind George.”
“Which brings up another sticky problem for you and I to settle. Why did you pretend you couldn’t recall how your father and your stepmother met? She was married to ‘cousin’ Adam.”
He flashed his grin at me, then he reined in his mug, getting serious. He sat forward, propping his forearms against the edge of my desk. “That brings up two sticky problems. First, stop calling her that. I don’t care what you call her. Why not Miranda? It’s her name. But she was never my stepmother. I used to like her quite a lot. I never understood why she married my father. I was on holiday in England at the time you may recall.” He had started this speech in a playful tone, but as he progressed, his resentment built. “And I didn’t pretend anything. Yes, my father had undoubtedly ‘met’ her when she wed Adam, probably before that. He may have seen her socially afterward. And, of course, even then most men would have noticed her, and my father was certainly a man. But how they ever met in terms of uniting in holy matrimony is completely beyond me. And, honestly, of no particular interest.”
I cocked my head. “What do you mean, you used to like her quite a lot?”
His grin came back, gradually this time. He sat back, halfway to horizontal again, his arms on the arms of the chair. “I like how you do that.” He eyed me a moment, squinting slightly. “She was fun and fresh before the war. We all were, weren’t we? Adam’s death hit her very hard, like Ernie’s hit Lana. And since father’s death…” He looked confused again.
“And since father’s death what?”
“No. It’s nothing.”
Pressing him would just shut him down, so I leapt instead. “Tell me about the accident.”
His eyes grew wide. “What accident?”
“Adam’s accident. In France.” I nearly said, The one that made you weep, but decided that would simply be more brutal bullying.
“Amazing.” He pointed at my desk. “You don’t even take notes. The first week, Joe wrote down nearly everything anyone said.”
“That’s why Cobb can charge the prime rate. What sort of accident was it?”
“A sniper hit the jeep he was riding in. They crashed. Adam was shot twice, in the neck and in the back, but survived several days. He made it to a nearby village and died there.”
“Troyes.”
“Maybe. I thought George said it was something like Fulne. But I could be mistaken. Either way, a nowhere place. Adam had been staying at Troyes. I do know that. I got a letter from him there.”
“He was clearly a prolific writer.”
O’Malley shrugged. “Well, he and George were MI. They didn’t move around as much. Well, Adam didn’t. George, it seems, always managed to find himself in the thick of it. Determined, like always, to carry the lion’s share of the burden on his own poor shoulders.”
Deciding I liked this George Kelly fellow less and less and didn’t want to hear any more about what a hero he was, I dropped my brogues back to the floor and sat up. “Listen, I know you don’t live there at your father’s house, but—”
�
�It’s Miranda’s house now.”
“Sure. I know you don’t live there, but can you get me back in? I’d like to try my hand at a little detective work. Yesterday was…well, yesterday. Honestly, I expected to find the place crawling with cops. You folks must really have pull. Can you get me in?”
“Well, I doubt it would involve any serious smuggling. They’ve never barred me from the place. Why not?”
“I’m glad you think so. You may be surprised how murder changes things. But if you’re willing, I’d like to try.”
He was studying me. “What exactly do you want to do?”
“I want to see Ramona Wyman’s room. It’s on the second floor?”
“Of course.”
“West wing.”
He pulled his head back again, narrowing his eyes. “Yes.”
“Somewhere near that game room we were in yesterday?”
He thought about that a moment. “That side of the house, yes. Not directly adjacent.”
“No, it probably faces the front, with a window overlooking the drive. Say about thirty feet to the west of the front door.”
He offered me a skeptical frown. “Is this a mind-reading trick? It’s pretty impressive.”
“No, my boy, that is detecting. Only it’s probably a day too late. We shouldn’t waste too much more time.” I arose and made it halfway around my desk before he even started to get up.
“What do you hope to find?”
“Clues. Though I expect to find nothing. Which can, of course, be a clue.”
Chapter Eleven
As I was locking the door to the hall, he asked me, “Is your receptionist on vacation this week?”
I said yes in a tone of voice I hoped might discourage any additional inquiry. It may have worked too well. He was completely silent during the ride down on the elevator, not speaking again until we hit the sidewalk where he said, “Shall we take my car?”
I consented, seeing as the option was to walk nearly three blocks to the garage that housed mine, and we headed south down Pierce and around the corner to where he’d lucked into some space at the curb.