Mom Among the Liars

by James Yaffe

  He sat back again, spreading his hands. “I’m not trying to excuse Marvin’s little lapse, I’m just trying to make you aware of certain realities that all of us in politics have to be aware of all the time. We may not like those realities, but we can’t afford to pretend they don’t exist. If Marvin allowed his relationship with that woman to be made public, there’s an excellent chance he would lose this coming election. I don’t think he should lose. I believe he’s the better candidate. No doubt I’m biased, but that’s what I believe. Therefore, on the principle that a man of integrity should stand up for his beliefs, I would really be violating my conscience, wouldn’t I, if I didn’t—what was your phrase?—‘connive at the coverup’?”

  “Terrific!” McBride clapped his hands together. “Couldn’t have put it better myself! That’s exactly how I feel about it. If that business with Edna happened to come out, the DA’s office might be turned over to that liberal feminist wimp. Then what happens to this town? My God, they’ve been trying to get me for years—you don’t expect me to just roll over and let them do it!”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” I said.

  “They, they! The criminal element, who else! The ones who’ve been laying for me ever since I first took on this job. At considerable personal and financial sacrifice, incidentally, because of my commitment to this community—I’ve got the right to defend myself, damn it! This is America, a man can’t be discriminated against on any grounds, neither race, creed, nor color, nor previous condition of servitude, nor—”

  Realizing he was getting a little mixed up, McBride dissolved into spluttering, wheezed, and blew his nose. One good thing came out of this gesture; he had to put his cigar down. In his agitation he forgot about it, so it lay in the ashtray and pretty soon it went out.

  “That’s all very well,” Ann said, “but I’ve got a client to defend, and I can’t overlook anything that might strengthen my case.”

  “Just a moment, Ann.” Ed Brock leaned forward again. “If Marvin’s relationship with the Pulaski woman came out, I grant you it might be embarrassing to him. But what difference could it possibly make to the murder case? How could it possibly? Unless you intend to suggest that Marvin had something to do with…”

  He let his voice trail off, but his eyes didn’t leave Ann’s face.

  And now, finally, McBride caught on too. “My God, you’re saying I killed her?” His voice rose to a roar, and his face got redder than the fire in his cigar.

  “I understand why you’re upset,” Ann said. “But looking at the matter objectively—which of course you can’t do—there are some fairly suggestive points. For instance, what Edna Pulaski told Harry Stubbins—that she had a boyfriend who wanted to break off their affair, that she threatened to tell the newspapers about it—”

  “That’s all a lie! I never told Edna I was going to dump her! Why should I? We were getting along fine, one night a week, it couldn’t have been friendlier. What did I want to throw that away for? And even if I did, why would I take the chance of antagonizing her just before the election? Why wouldn’t I wait another couple of weeks until the election was in the bag? Your client’s lying through his teeth about that! For Christ sake, are you going to take the word of a miserable old drunk over mine?”

  “There are other suggestive points too,” Ann said. And she trotted out Mom’s point about McBride’s “patriotic” necktie.

  “That’s supposed to be evidence?” McBride practically screamed. “I’m wearing that tie right now! Look, here it is, same tie I wore at the dinner Saturday night! Take it to the lab, get it tested, if you find anything to connect it with that strangling—”

  “How do we know it’s the same tie?” Ann said. “You’ve got dozens of identical ones, you told us that yourself.”

  “And this town is full of guys who wear neckties, for Christ sake! Any one of them could’ve done this killing!”

  “But very few of them have the motive and the opportunity—”

  “What opportunity?”

  “The dinner Saturday night was over by eleven, and Edna Pulaski’s murderer didn’t get to her house till after eleven-thirty, according to Stubbins—”

  “Stubbins again! Terrific witness you’ve got there!”

  “He’s got no reason to make up that time, Marvin. It doesn’t help his case any to say the murderer came in at eleven-thirty-five. But it does fit nicely with your own—”

  “Look, I wasn’t near her house on Saturday night!”

  “Where did you go then? You could put an end to this whole line of inquiry if you happen to have been with somebody at eleven-thirty.”

  “After that dinner, I went home. If you can call it home. I’ve got this one-room dump on the North End. Nellie’s got the house—naturally, she needs it for the kid. Anyway, I dropped Ed off at his place first, in my car, and then I went straight home and I went to bed.”

  “Can you prove that?” I said.

  “How the hell am I supposed to prove it? You go to bed alone, you haven’t got any witnesses. From now on I’ll take a broad to bed with me every night, that way I’ll always have an alibi for everything.” He gave a violent shake of his head. “Ann, Dave, for Christ sake—Ed—you can’t believe I killed her?” McBride was holding out his arms, and there was real feeling in his voice.

  Ann met his gaze steadily. “Did you kill her?”

  “I didn’t, Goddammit! I never touched that Pulaski woman. I’m telling you the God’s truth. I swear it, on my mother’s grave!”

  That did it. For a moment there he had almost had me convinced that he wasn’t acting, that he was innocent and felt genuinely wronged. But then I recovered my wits and laughed at myself. Except maybe when he was in the throes of a particularly bad hangover, there was never a time when McBride wasn’t acting.

  “Excuse me, Marvin,” I said, “but your mother is alive, isn’t she? Didn’t you tell me once that she’s living in a home for the aged in the south of the state?”

  McBride puffed at his cigar, and the boyish grin reappeared. “Good thinking, Dave. You’re right, my dear old mother has a lot of years to go, I hope. I was just using what you might call a figure of speech.”

  He broke off abruptly, and his good humor disappeared fast. “Wait a minute, why am I answering all these questions about where I was and who I was with? Why am I having this conversation with you? You haven’t got a damn thing on me. You’re trying to smear me. I’m on to the waste and inefficiency in your office so you’re trying to get my opponent elected. I think it’s about time you got the hell out of this office, because in another minute I’m liable to lose my temper!”

  We took him at his word and got out of there.

  * * *

  I drove Ann back to the courthouse—she had an appearance to make in connection with an entirely different case—but I didn’t get out of the car. I had a lot to think about.

  McBride’s affair with Edna Pulaski did give him a motive for murder, I thought. And it gave the same motive to Ed Brock, whose interest in protecting McBride’s reputation before the election must be pretty much as strong as McBride’s own—and who, incidentally, lived alone and had been let off at his house a little after eleven on the night of the murder.

  But it also occurred to me now that the affair between McBride and Edna created a different kind of motive for somebody else. For McBride’s wife who, even though she had dumped him, might not look so kindly on somebody else he was sleeping with.

  Obviously the time had come for me to talk to Mrs. McBride. And since it was after three o’clock, and school was out, I might be able to talk to his daughter too.

  As usual, I didn’t call beforehand.

  They were living, as McBride had told us, in the same house where he had lived for most of his married life. It was located a few blocks away from the Richelieu Hotel, one of the best sections of town. Full of impressive mansions, some of them must’ve sold for a million or more, but McBride definitely didn’t have one of those. H
is house was the smallest I saw in the neighborhood. It had just one story and there was an infinitesimal lawn in front. In the old days, when these estates were even bigger, it had probably been somebody’s servants quarters.

  The door was opened for me by a dark thin girl, about sixteen. She had no makeup on her face, her hair was faded and stringy, touches of acne were imperfectly covered up by some kind of lotion. Behind thick glasses, her expression was tight and anxious.

  I told her who I was and reeled off my usual spiel about the public defender having as much right to question witnesses as the police. She looked at me in a dull scared way, and finally she stepped aside to let me into the foyer. “I’ll tell Mommy you’re here,” she said, and turned away to the archway just behind her. I figured she was McBride’s daughter, but she made no attempt to introduce herself.

  A moment later she was back. “She says come in.” She showed me into the living room, which was full of overstuffed furniture that looked old. Secondhand old, not antique. McBride’s money, it occurred to me, had gone into the address and the neighborhood, not into space or luxury.

  On the sofa was a middle-aged woman, plump, plainly dressed, wispy gray hair, watery blue eyes. The first impression she gave was of mildness and bewilderment. She didn’t stand up, but she held out her hand, and when I went over to shake it she told me she was Nellie McBride, and she introduced her daughter, Laurel.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. McBride,” I said. “I’m investigating the death of Edna Pulaski for the public defender’s office. Our client, Harry Stubbins, is being held for the crime by your ex—your—”

  “My husband,” Mrs. McBride said, in the flat twang that belongs to the southern end of our state. “We haven’t been through any divorce yet. I’m not sure we’ll ever do that.” Then, without putting any noticeable emotion into her voice, she added, “I’m not sure it’d be right. When two people have been joined together in the eyes of God—” her voice trailed off. Then she said, “I don’t know why you’re coming to me. I don’t know as how I’ve got any information you could use. I never even met this woman that got killed.”

  “Mrs. McBride—” I gave a glance at her daughter. “Do you think I could talk to you in private?”

  A shadow came over her face. “Well, yes, sure. Laurel, honey, how’d you like to go upstairs and do your homework before dinner?”

  Laurel hesitated, as if she meant to disobey her mother’s orders. But the hesitation didn’t last more than a split second. Then she was moving toward the living-room archway.

  “Can I ask one question before Laurel leaves?” I said. “This last Saturday night—were the two of you here in this house together?”

  Laurel’s chin turned in her mother’s direction. Her eyes blinked through her glasses, as if she was looking for instructions.

  In a steady voice, still without any emotion in it, Mrs. McBride said, “I was home, right here, all night Saturday. I had one of my headaches, I get these headaches, so I went to bed early. Fixed my Ovaltine and put a sleeping pill in it, I do that when my headache gets really bad. Took it up to the bedroom with me, and it put me right to sleep.”

  “And Laurel was with you all this time?”

  Laurel opened her mouth, but stopped herself from saying anything. Another quick glance at her mother, and I saw Mrs. McBride gave the slightest of nods. Then Laurel spoke, in a very low voice, which had in it a muted version of her mother’s nasal twang. “I wasn’t home Saturday night. I mean, not till late. I’m in this play at high school—we’re doing this musical, Peter Pan. I don’t have a very big part, I’m just one of the Indians. But I have to be there all through rehearsals anyway.”

  “And you were at rehearsal Saturday night?”

  “It went real late. I didn’t get home till after one. Mommy was asleep, I looked into her room but I didn’t wake her up.”

  “What school do you go to?”

  “Laurel goes to General Wagner High,” said Mrs. McBride. “That’s the public high school in this neighborhood. She’s real interested in drama and acting in shows and all, and they’ve got a real good program there. Laurel’s got a beautiful singing voice—”

  “Mommy!” The girl’s voice was filled with pure agony. I understood her feelings completely, so I changed the subject. “You and Laurel are all alone in this house, Mrs. McBride? No live-in help of any kind?”

  “There’s our cleaning woman, she comes in twice a week. Otherwise we take care of the place ourselves. I got along without any help for plenty of years, I guess I still know how.” A pause, and then another flat emotionless afterthought. “The house seemed kind of big and empty when Marvin first moved out. But I guess we’re used to it now.”

  “How long has he been gone?”

  “Almost a year. As of next Thanksgiving.”

  “Since you’re not divorced, does he keep any of his things here? Clothes, personal articles?”

  “He don’t keep anything here. I made him take away every bit of that stuff. There’s not even a button left.”

  Her voice didn’t quaver or tighten, but now, for the first time, I saw a glint of emotion on her face.

  I turned to Laurel. “When you see your father, I suppose you go to his apartment?”

  “Laurel don’t see her father.” Mrs. McBride’s voice couldn’t have been quieter and steadier.

  “I don’t want to see Daddy,” Laurel said, her voice trembling. “He didn’t want to go on living with us. He didn’t care about us. So I don’t care about—” She broke off suddenly and moved to the archway. “I’ll do my homework now!”

  She darted out of the room. She didn’t give me a good-bye nod.

  Mrs. McBride gave a little sigh. “Poor little baby—Marvin’s leaving us hurt her a lot. She’s at what d’you call it, an impressionable age. You can see how shy and withdrawn she is. She’s got no social life at all, that poor baby. I keep telling her, at her age she ought to have a half a dozen boys calling her up, hanging around the house. Right now it don’t look like she’ll ever find herself a boyfriend.”

  “Do you blame her father for that, Mrs. McBride?”

  She fixed her eyes steadily on my face. “Understand me now—I’m not saying anything against him. You can’t make me. A wife is loyal to her husband, even if they’re not living together. You don’t wash your dirty clothes in public. That’s how I was brought up.”

  “Did you know about his relationship with Edna Pulaski?”

  She said nothing for a long time, though her eyes never moved away from my face. Finally she said, “I guess I knew there was somebody. Marvin’s not the type to go for long without somebody. I never had any idea who it was though—till a week ago.”

  “What happened a week ago?”

  “A friend of mine—a woman who’s in my church—saw him going into this house one night. This house on South Arizona. She and her husband were driving by, and they saw Marvin going through the front door. This massage parlor—that’s what they call those houses, don’t they? There was a sign in front, it had this woman’s name on it. My friend told me about it the next day.”

  “Were you curious to find out more about the woman who lived in that house? Did you call her up on the phone, go to see her maybe?”

  “I put it out of my head. Marvin’s life is now his own business.”

  “Did you know Edna Pulaski was Korean?”

  “I figured she’d be some kind of Oriental. In spite of the name. On account of that neighborhood is full of them.”

  “And how did you feel about this affair? Did you resent it? Were you jealous or angry at him?”

  Her voice got a little louder and sharper. “Didn’t I tell you—I’m not saying anything bad about Marvin. I’m not saying anything against my husband.”

  “You still love him, Mrs. McBride?”

  For the first time a kind of smile twitched at her thin pale lips. “I loved him the first time I ever set eyes on him. We were in high school together. Marvi
n was the smartest, most up-and-coming boy in the class. I know what you’re thinking, but you should’ve seen the rest of them. That little town—sand and mud and hogs. But he was bound and determined to go on to college and make himself into a lawyer, and since I was lucky enough to attract his favor—well, I was bound and determined I’d help him. We got married right after graduation, and I went to the state university with him. I didn’t go as any student, I was never much good at reading books and such. I went there to keep house for him, and see to it he knuckled down to his studies and didn’t get tangled up with distracting influences.”

  “There were such influences?”

  “I kept him from getting tangled up with them. Same thing when he went to law school, at the University of Northern Michigan. Maybe it isn’t the best law school in the country, and Marvin didn’t graduate at the top of his class, more like the lower middle. I knew he wasn’t ever going to be on the Supreme Court or anything like that, but he had his law degree, that was the important thing, and he had this natural ability to stand up in front of a crowd of people and talk louder and faster than any of them. So I could see he had a chance to make it in politics.

  “And that’s sure how it worked out. You can say, I guess, being district attorney in Mesa Grande don’t amount to much. He isn’t exactly any big fish in a big pond. But he’s got second best. He’s a big fish in a little pond—maybe even a middle-size pond—and it’s not bad being the wife of that kind of fish. A lot better, let me tell you, than if I’da stayed home with the sand and the hogs.”

  She came to a stop. Then in a quieter, more thoughtful voice, “Do I still love him—?” She broke off, looking at me again, no expression on her face. “I guess we better break this up now. Like I told you—you’re not going to hear me say one word that’s bad—”