Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007

by Barbara Callahan

  She said: “Would you talk to him, Chet?”

  “I’d be happy to. But you know how he resents me sometimes.”

  “You know how I feel about that. And I’ve told him so. You were in a situation where you were forced to be his father. You had to give up a lot of things other boys your age got to do — and all for his sake. I always tell him that.”

  “I appreciate it, Laura. But that doesn’t mean he’ll be any happier if I butt into your marriage.”

  A long pause: “Then how about a little spying?”

  “Spying?”

  “Just seeing what he’s up to after your shift ends. Where he goes and things like that.” This time her laugh was real but sad. “I know this is awful. I’d sure resent it if somebody spied on me. But our marriage — it hasn’t been any good for quite a while.”

  For a moment I was back in the parking lot and Michael was explaining to me, as if I were slightly retarded, how everything was under control. He had his mistress and he had his family, and according to him, he was doing well by both of them.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have called, Chet. I’m just so—”

  She started crying. I let her get through the worst of it. Michael was doing it all over again. He’d lost a first wife who’d been every bit the player he was. But this woman was different. Only through her had he finally put his life on track. And now he was turning away from her.

  “I’m sorry, Chet.” The tears became sniffles. “I just feel so isolated, I guess. I’m sorry I called.”

  “Tell you what. I’m going to do a little looking around. I’ll be back to you in a day or so.”

  “I’m sorry I’m so needy, Chet.”

  “I’m needy, too. I want to find out what’s going on. We’ve both got a stake in this, Laura, believe me.” I made a joke of it before hanging up: “I didn’t spend all those years raising him so he’d act this way.”

  2.

  Three A.M. Sitting in my boxers. Staring at the glow of the guttering fire we’d set to chase the autumn cold away.

  I heard Jen coming down the stairs, her slippers flapping with each step. When she reached the living room, I said, “Leave the lights off, please.”

  She came over, the hem of her long cotton robe whispering across the hardwood floor. She sat on her haunches next to my armchair. Bare branches scraped the windows in the whistling wind. Shadow goblins played on the walls.

  “So what seems to be troubling our baby boy tonight?”

  “Sometimes I wish I were a baby boy.” Then: “Michael. Of course.”

  She touched my wide coarse hand with her long smooth one. “Now I’m going out to the kitchen and get that.45 you taught me how to shoot. And then I’m going to come back and kill one of us. And at this point I really don’t care which one of us it is. Because if I ever hear that you’re brooding about him again—”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Oh yes, and you swore to your father you’d raise him right.”

  “Don’t make fun of that. I gave him my word.”

  “Yes, and that was the right thing to do. When Michael was still a boy. But he’s almost thirty now. He has a wife and two children. You got him a job, you found him a wife, and you’ve been playing daddy to him right straight through. It’s not right, honey. Or normal.”

  For some reason that irritated me. Normal. What was abnormal about taking care of your kid brother?

  “If I don’t take care of him, who will?”

  “Oh, let’s see — maybe himself. He’s an adult, Chet. At least that’s what it says on his driver’s license. You have your own family and your own problems you need to take care of. You can’t keep spending all your time on him. It’s unnatural.”

  Abnormal. Unnatural.

  “You know how selfish that sounds?”

  “Selfish? What’re you talking about?”

  “That I shouldn’t worry about my own little brother?”

  “Worry, fine. But try to turn his life around — no way.” Her hand had pulled from mine a minute ago. Now she used it as a lever on the arm of the chair to pull herself up. “You know I don’t like him. But sometimes I can’t help myself — I feel sorry for him, the way you’re always putting yourself in his business. I understand why he resents you, Chet. I really do.”

  And then the line I hated most where my little brother was concerned: “You could always see the police shrink. I really think it’s something you should talk through. We’ve been arguing about this since we first started dating. And it never seems to get any better.”

  “And you never stop saying that I should see the police shrink.”

  She was all done with banter. Tears trembled in her voice. “You ever think that’s because I love you? You ever think how tired I am of all this? And I meant what I said about Michael. I feel sorry for him sometimes. I really do. But if he’s going to screw up his life, that’s his business.”

  “If it’s his business, why did Laura call me today and tell me she’s worried about their marriage?”

  “Laura called you?”

  “That’s right. So if I’m butting in, it’s because she asked me to.”

  “Oh, great,” Jen said. “Now we’ve got her pulling you into their lives. This whole thing is insane.” She started to walk back to the stairs. “I’m going to sleep on the couch in the TV room. You need your sleep, so you take the bed.”

  I started to object but she stopped me.

  “I’m too tired to argue about it, Chet. I’m taking the couch. I’ll grab a blanket from the closet upstairs.” Six steps up the staircase, she said, in a gentler tone, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  3.

  I spent the next few days finding out what I could about Jane Cameron and found nothing I liked.

  You couldn’t call her rich, I suppose, but she did have the remains of a large inheritance to rely on if she needed it for her business, which was public relations. You would have to call her beautiful. College-girl beautiful, though she was mid-thirties — fine, clean features; gym-trim body; and a radiant blond presence in any environment. A ten-year-old daughter conveniently locked away at a boarding school in Vermont. Two ex-husbands, several lovers, at least three of whom had been married at the time. A few very public and very angry scenes with angry wives.

  As I sat at my computer looking at her photos, I realized what my little brother was living out here. He’d met her the night a jilted lover of hers had assaulted her in the lobby of her expensive condo. Michael and his partner were the first on the scene. It probably hadn’t taken long for Michael to find himself in the sort of bad movie he used to star in frequently. Married cop intrigued by fashionable, vulnerable beauty cheats on family, honor, good sense.

  For three nights, I followed him. Twice he left work to meet her at the bar across the street from her condo, the bar where all the successful young lawyers in town like to do their cheating. An hour of drinks there and back across the street to her condo. The third night, still in uniform, he went straight home. In my talk with Laura, she’d said this was his standard pattern, but she was still hoping none of this had to do with a woman, that he was just carousing with the boys.

  One night I took my camera and got some good snaps of them making out in the parking lot of the bar.

  I put them in a manilla envelope and set them in the front seat of his new Pontiac.

  The next night, when I got off shift, I found them sitting on the front seat of my own car.

  He came over, still in uniform, and slid into the shotgun seat.

  “You really think I wouldn’t figure out you were behind this bullshit?”

  “I wanted you to know, Michael. If you hadn’t figured it out, I would’ve told you.”

  “You’re insane, you know that? Clinically, I mean. Off your damned rocker.”

  “You know anything about her, Michael?”

  “Sure I know about her. She’s a very beautiful and a very successful woman.”

  “An
d she has a lot of enemies.”

  “That’s because she’s so successful.”

  “That’s because she’s slept with so many important men around town.”

  “People change.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

  “In Japan they get their hymens sewn back in for the wedding. She thinking of doing that, is she?”

  “Be careful here, man. You may still be able to take me, but I can put a lot of hurt on you.”

  I stared straight ahead. Sighed.

  “So now it’s supposed to be serious, Michael?”

  “Isn’t ‘supposed to be.’ Is.”

  “I thought it was going to end.”

  Now it was Michael who stared straight ahead and sighed.

  “I’m not sure what to do, Chet.”

  “Take out that picture of your kids in your billfold and look at it for a while. That’ll tell you what to do.”

  Silence for a time.

  “You know how good a woman you’ve got in that wife of yours, Michael.”

  “Of course I know.”

  “And you treat her like this, anyway?”

  “We’re different, is all, Chet. You and me, I mean. You’re satisfied to sit home and watch TV and I want—”

  “Excitement.”

  “Not exactly. Not the way you mean. Not running around and getting all boozed up and hanging out in clubs. It’s just — I’m starting to feel old, Chet. I’m young. But when I met Jane I realized that mentally I’d become an old man. She didn’t make me feel young exactly, but I didn’t feel old anymore, either. I’m a better cop now because of her. I know that sounds funny, but it isn’t. She really thinks it’s true. I’m even thinking about taking the test for detective.”

  “Laura wanted you to do that two years ago.”

  “Yeah, but with Laura it was different. It was just because I’d make more money. But with Jane, being a detective isn’t just about that, it’s because being a detective is—”

  “Cool.”

  “God, Chet, you don’t understand any of this.”

  “I don’t think you do, either. You’re getting a nice piece of ass on the sly and you think it’s worth destroying your family for.”

  “I’m going to go now. I can’t sit here and let you lay all this on me. Remember when I called you The Pope once? Well, you haven’t changed. You think you can run my life from this big-ass throne you sit on. But it doesn’t work that way anymore, Michael. Maybe I am screwing up my life. I’m not stupid. I know what I’m doing is wrong. But right now I can’t pull myself out of it. And you playing Pope isn’t helping. You can’t order me around anymore, Michael.”

  He opened the car door.

  “Let me ask you one thing. It’s my place to tell Laura. Not yours. So until I tell her about this, don’t say anything to her. All right?”

  I just stared at my big hands on the steering wheel.

  “All right, Chet?” The anger coming back into his voice.

  I could barely whisper. “All right, Michael.”

  4.

  The next day, I started following her. I wanted to see where the best place was to have the conversation she was forcing on me.

  Didn’t take me long to figure out that there would be no opportunity to confront her during the day. Meetings all over town with her various important clients. I couldn’t afford to brace her in any sort of public way.

  Nothing to stop me wearing my uniform on my night off, though.

  I had to make sure she was alone. I sat across the street from her fifteen-story condo. She swept her Jag — what else? — into the underground parking garage just after nine that night. She was alone.

  I pulled in four spaces down from her. I reached the elevator before she did.

  In the shadowy light, she wasn’t able to see even my faint resemblance to Michael.

  “Did something happen here tonight?” she said.

  She looked especially fine this evening in a silver suit, her golden hair pulled into a loose chignon.

  “Happen?”

  “When I saw your uniform, I thought maybe something had happened in the building tonight.”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. I’m here on my own. I’m just going to see somebody in the building.”

  She smiled. “Well, I love having a police officer around. Makes me feel safe.”

  The elevator door opened. We climbed in.

  Then she said: “That’s funny.”

  “What is?”

  “Why aren’t you in the lobby getting checked in by Lenny? He checks everybody in. Even cops.”

  I had been demoted from police officer to cop. She was smart. She knew there was something wrong with this situation.

  I said, “I’ll bet you said that to my brother.”

  “Your brother? What’re you talking about?”

  A bit of panic — just enough to be gratifying — shone in those azure eyes.

  She didn’t know it, but she’d already lost control of the situation. It was almost disappointing. I thought she’d be a lot tougher.

  After she’d brought us whiskey sours, she sat on the divan across from my chair and said, “I hope you realize that all I have to do is pick up the phone and call my friend the police commissioner and your days as a cop are over, sweetie.”

  “And if that happens, ‘sweetie,’ then I’ll get somebody to help me get a computer file of some of your messes we’ve had to help you with — especially a certain group of pissed-off wives — and I’ll send that file straight to a friend of mine who’s a reporter at KBST. And I’ll do the same thing if you don’t agree to break it off with my brother right away.”

  She smirked. “You’re going to blackmail me out of seeing your brother?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “I can’t believe you two are brothers. Michael’s so handsome and intense and you’re so—” She hesitated. “I may as well be up-front with you. You scare me.”

  “Good. I should scare you. You’ve got good instincts.”

  She exhaled harshly. I tried not to notice the way her long sleek legs were stretched out on the divan or the sheer blouse she wore now, having discarded the jacket to her suit. She kept a single shoe on a single big toe, dangling there. Like my brother’s future.

  “You’ll dump him someday, anyway.”

  “I’ve been dumped, too, you know.”

  “Any tears go with this story?”

  “It’s true, you bastard, whether you believe it or not. I was dumped — twice, in fact — and I got hurt just like anybody else would. You make me sound like some sort of professional heartbreaker. I have parents I see three times a month and I have a daughter I love very much.”

  “So much you put her in boarding school.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She just watched me for a time, as if she was observing something in nature she’d never seen before. “Michael told me you were like this. So goddamned judgmental. He calls you The Pope.”

  “I’m judgmental about women who break up marriages.”

  “Michael told me you had an affair when you were about his age. Aren’t you a little hypocritical here?”

  I felt my cheeks burn. “I made up for it. I’ve never put a hand to another woman since.”

  “Mass three times a week? Confession every Saturday? Coach a Little League team? The perfect husband and father.”

  I finished my drink and set it down. “Thanks for the drink. I want to hear Michael tell me that you’ve broken it off.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “We’ve already discussed that.”

  “You’ll ruin me.”

  I waited until I was on my feet. “I’ll sure give it my best shot.”

  “I really do love Michael.”

  “You’re not what he needs. Laura is what he needs.”

  “I’ve never claimed to be anything other than what I am — a selfish, spoiled woman. But this time — with Michael — I really do love him. I never thought I’d do it again.”

 
“Do what again?”

  “Let somebody get me pregnant. I didn’t want to be owned by a man or by a child. But with Michael — I stopped taking my birth control. I went to the doctor’s last week. I haven’t even told Michael yet. I want this child. I want Michael, too. But if I can’t have him, at least I’ll have his child.”

  I shrugged. I was trying to make sense of all this. But there was no sense to be made of it, none of it. A little fling, every man did it once in a while. Back when it started it had seemed nothing more than that. But now I was listening to her tell me that she was carrying Michael’s baby.

  All I could think of was poor Laura and the kids. I turned the knob on the door leading to the hall. I wanted to say something nasty. But then an old man’s weariness overcame me. I didn’t seem to have any strength left at all. Then words came: “I’ll pay for an abortion. And Michael doesn’t have to know about it.”

  She laughed. “You won’t believe this, Mr. High and Mighty, but I don’t believe in abortion. I may be a slut in your eyes, but I’m still a good little Catholic girl.”

  I turned my eyes back to hers and with the last of my strength, I said: “Then walk out of his life. He doesn’t have the strength, but you do.”

  “That’s the terrible thing,” she said. “I don’t have the strength, either.”

  5.

  The next afternoon I tried to find my brother before his shift started. Sometimes he had coffee down the street at a luncheonette. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the precinct locker room, either.

  “You didn’t happen to see my brother, did you?” I asked Keller, who was spelling the watch commander, who was in Vegas at a police convention. Don’t think there hadn’t been a lot of jokes about holding a cop convention in Vegas.

  “Bad sore throat and fever. Home sick.”

  “He call in himself?”

  He gave me a sharp look.

  “No, his wife did. Man, you gotta give the kid some breathing room, Chet. He calls in or Laura calls in. What’s the difference?”