Crooked Heart

by Cristina Sumners

  “Haven’t a clue. But it makes slightly more sense than her running off with half her luggage and leaving the other half in the car and lying to the airline clerk. Wait a minute—there was something funny about the car, wasn’t there?”

  “Come again?”

  “Monday night, you said something to Bill Stanley about the car—”

  “You mean when I asked him if he drove his wife to the airport, and he said she drove herself, and then he practically fainted.”

  “Right. It seems to me that oddities are collecting around that car. Stanley faints at the mention of it, Carolyn puts her bags in it, then goes off without them. Have you gone over it? Is there anything picturesque like bloodstains on the upholstery?”

  It was Tom’s turn to feel like a fool. “No,” he admitted. “I didn’t think Carolyn’s car mattered, since we know Bill put Grace’s body in the van. You know, I believe I’ll just call the airport police again and ask them to have a little look around the long-term parking lot.” He moved purposefully toward the front door, but Kathryn didn’t mind. It was all right if he left now. She had the remark about honorary sergeant, and she planned to cherish it.

  “Thanks.” He waved as he went down the walk. “I’ll let you know if we find anything interesting.”

  “Do that.” She closed the door and turned to call up the stairs, “Warby! You have been exquisitely thoughtful and stayed out of the kitchen for an hour, but hadn’t we better rescue the roast?”

  They had barely finished dinner when the phone rang, and Kathryn leapt to get it.

  “Hello?”

  “Well, you were right.”

  “About what?”

  “She left both her bags in the car, the small suitcase and the hanging bag. In the backseat.”

  “Now all we have to do is figure out why. Anything else about the car?”

  “Nothing unusual. It’s a white Mercedes, brand new, blue upholstery, no bloodstains.”

  “Now, who,” Kathryn asked, momentarily diverted, “would drive a white car in this climate? I thought better of Carolyn.”

  “The bags are white, too. Blue trim. Like the car.”

  “My color-coordinated friend. I wonder if I’ll ever get my life that well organized.”

  “I don’t know about organized. The car is in short-term parking, not long-term. And she’s gonna be gone for most of a week. Jesus, can you imagine what that’s going to cost her?”

  There was no response to this.

  “Hello? Kathryn? Are you still there?”

  “Sorry. I was just thinking.”

  “What about?”

  “Carolyn. Oh, never mind. I’m sure it’s nothing. Thanks for calling. Keep on keeping me posted, won’t you?”

  He promised he would, and they hung up. Kathryn, who normally helped with the supper dishes whenever she wasn’t rushed for time, wandered out of the kitchen, deserting Mrs. Warburton, and found herself in the library. There she sank into a large oxblood-leather chair and proceeded, to all appearances, to spend twenty minutes studying the brass knob at the top of the left andiron. At the end of that time she decided she knew why Carolyn was eluding the San Francisco police.

  CHAPTER 22

  Some dim voice inside her protested, producing a niggling feeling of discomfort, but it was overcome by the immensely gratifying knowledge that she was being very, very clever. Tom would be thoroughly wowed. She couldn’t wait to call him. She started to rise from her chair, then hesitated.

  It was so far-fetched. It seemed plausible to her; would it seem so to Tom? What if it didn’t, what if he said it was the silliest thing he’d ever heard, and—horror of horrors—what if he turned out to be right? The longer she thought about it, the greater the possibility for acute embarrassment loomed in her mind. She leaned back in her chair and drummed her fingers on the leather arms, making a faint, steady patter.

  Suddenly her eyes opened wide.

  It was a bold notion, and at first it seemed preposterous. But the more she thought about it, the more reasonable it began to look. She could certainly afford it. And chief among its advantages was that if she turned out to be wrong, Tom Holder would never know. And if she were right—what a coup! Yes, she would do it.

  She looked at her watch and ticked off time zones on her fingers. Four-forty in San Francisco, good. But how to find an agency, and would they accept a job on the basis of a long-distance phone call? Three seconds’ thought brought her an answer to both these problems.

  She got up, marched into the workroom that stretched long and narrow across the back of the house, went to the enormous expanse of her desk, and fished her address book out of the clutter that Mrs. Warburton was forbidden ever to tidy. She consulted an entry under R, punched eleven digits into the phone, waited for an answer, and asked for Father Ryder.

  There was a short pause, then a click, and a mellifluous voice announced that it was Geoffrey Ryder.

  “Geoffrey, my love! Kathryn Koerney.”

  “kate!” cried Father Ryder, one of the three people living who could get away with abbreviating Kathryn’s name to one syllable. “Good God. The prettiest Kate in Christendom, my superdainty Kate,” he chanted in Shakespearean tones, “never tell me you’re in town!”

  “Alas, no, I’m in New Jersey, more’s the pity, it’s just a good connection. How’s life with the Bishop?”

  “Oh, His Grace and I are getting along swimmingly, my dear, simply swimmingly. I can’t tell you what an unspeakable relief it is to escape from parish life.”

  “Overdose of Altar Guild, Geoffrey?”

  “And terminal overdose of the Daughters of the King. My dear, you wouldn’t believe!”

  “My dear, I do!” said Kathryn, who got along fine with the Daughters of the King. “Listen, sweetness, I would love to chatter endlessly with you, but I’ve got a rather interesting problem that needs to be addressed without further loss of time.”

  “Speak, speak! My ear is open like a greedy shark to catch the tunings of a voice divine.”

  “You’ve been reading Dorothy Sayers.”

  “But constantly, sweet Kate! How quick of you.”

  “The stimulus of talking to you, dear boy. Geoffrey, I need a private detective.”

  A burst of laughter met this announcement. “My dear, you are magnificent. As always.”

  “I’m serious. I need a private detective in the city of San Francisco, somebody who specializes in missing persons. Have you got a yellow pages handy?”

  “Dear me,” said Geoffrey, suddenly subdued. “One of your teenagers?”

  “I’m not doing teenagers anymore, I’m doing fourth-graders, and to the best of my knowledge, they’re all where they’re supposed to be.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake!” Geoffrey was disgusted. “Have you got one of those Neanderthal rectors? It never fails, does it? Three years in seminary, and they stick you in Sunday school because it’s Woman’s Work.”

  “Six years in seminary, Geoffrey, and I asked for it. I like kids. Are you looking?”

  “I’m looking, I’m looking. You asked for fourth-graders? Lawsy mercy me, will wonders never—here we are. I’m just skimming the big ads, here. Divorce seems to be the specialty of the house in most places. Who is the missing party, then?”

  “A woman in her middle forties, whose next-door neighbor has just been murdered.”

  “Jesus, are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lummy. Oh, here’s one. Divorce, of course, but also Missing Persons and Runaways. Got a pencil?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Charles Bradford, Inc., Investigators, 435-0763.”

  “Great. Now, Geoffrey, I need to trespass on your kindness a bit further. I’ll have to hire this guy over the telephone, and just in case he wants some assurance, before he runs around investigating, that I do pay my bills, may I give him your name, rank, and serial number? And will you vouch for me?”

  “But of course, darling. I vouch beautifully.�
�

  “Of course he might just take a credit card number; I really have no idea how these people work. I’m just trying to cover any eventuality.”

  “Count on me, my dear, I’d be thrilled. But you must promise to tell me all about it whenever you reach your thrilling conclusion. You’re not by any mad chance doing a Lord Peter, are you?”

  “The comparison shames me. Geoffrey, I must go.”

  “Yes, darling. Happy hunting, and be warned: If I die of curiosity I shall come back and haunt you.”

  “You’d be welcome. God bless. Bye.”

  “Good-bye, sweet Kate. Parting is such—”

  But Kathryn had already hung up.

  At Charles Bradford Investigators she got the man himself, and instantly suspected that the S at the end of “Investigators” was strictly for show. In this she wronged Mr. Bradford; his firm boasted five detectives and a secretary. The secretary had told him that “a woman who’s a reverend” was calling from New Jersey, and Bradford, intrigued, had taken the call himself.

  Kathryn, annoyed to feel a rush of nervousness come over her, managed nevertheless to describe the situation coherently to Mr. Bradford. She was obliged, she thought, to warn him that he might find himself tripping over the police in the search for Carolyn Stanley, which further obliged her to tell him why she didn’t think the police were going to find the missing woman.

  If Bradford was amused or skeptical—and Kathryn thought he had a right to be either or both—he tactfully refrained from saying so. He made note of Kathryn’s two references, and after he had hung up checked the local number with the phone book. Yes, it was the diocesan headquarters of the Episcopal church. He made the call, and asked for the Bishop’s chaplain. After a moment he found himself in conversation with a young man who assured him earnestly that if Kathryn Koerney’s check bounced, he (Father Ryder) would eat his chasuble and dance naked on the high altar.

  Bradford decided that aside from the murder angle, which really had no bearing on what he’d been asked to do, it was a rather routine case. He handed it over to one of his subordinates and went home to his dinner.

  CHAPTER 23

  i

  Thursday. Where the hell was Grace? She had been missing since Monday night, and not only had the police not found her, they had arrested Billy for murdering her. Billy, for Christ’s sake, murdering Grace! What a bunch of morons they were! He had tried to tell them they had it all wrong, that Billy couldn’t possibly have killed Grace, he wouldn’t hurt an ant, and even if he would, what reason could he have to kill Grace? She’d never done him any harm. But they wouldn’t listen to him. They just told him they were sorry for his loss. His loss, what bullshit! And the moron cops were saying Carolyn had gone to San Francisco, but now they couldn’t find her!

  He had a headache. He never had headaches. It was all Grace’s fault, how could she have gone off like this? For a fraction of a second he wondered if the cops were right, that something had happened to her. Not Billy killing her, of course, because that was just stupid, that could never have happened, but maybe something else?

  No. No, it couldn’t be, what was he thinking? He must be going crazy. It was the stress, of course. He felt like screaming. He felt like throwing things against the wall. But the ice bitch would hear him. Suddenly he sat up straight. Now that was something he could take care of.

  ii

  He didn’t mind being in jail. If only they would leave him alone. If only they wouldn’t drag him out of the bare cell and off to that room for questions. God, the questions. And when the cops weren’t asking questions, the lawyers were. He had told them he didn’t want a lawyer, but they had gotten one for him anyway. But of course he didn’t tell the lawyer anything, any more than he told the cops, so the lawyer had given up and gone away. And then they had sent him another one.

  Somewhere deep inside him something knew that if only he could get enough distance between himself and what was happening, it would be funny.

  But it wasn’t funny now. He had laughed, of course, when they arrested him, but that was because of the surprise. But there were no surprises now. Just all these damn people asking him questions, over and over the same questions. And over and over he told them that he didn’t want to answer their questions. And he was sticking to that. It was the least he could do for her. It was, apparently, the only thing left that he could do for her. So he would go on doing it.

  iii

  It was lunchtime on Thursday when Jim Robinson came by the station to deliver, somewhat sheepishly, his daughter’s “Detective Notebook.” Tita had remembered it on Wednesday, after the policeman and his lady assistant had left. She hadn’t told them about it. And she was sure they needed to see it. Once again her father had made her a promise, and once again he was going to keep it, damn the embarrassment. And once again, fortunately, the sympathetic sergeant was at the front desk.

  Sergeant Fischer, with a grin, had handed it to the Chief. The Chief, safe from Fischer’s satire in the privacy of his office, had perused it. The first couple of pages contained a scrupulous and uninteresting log of everything the child had observed from her bedroom window on the previous Saturday and Sunday. As soon as Tom had grasped the nature of the contents of the book, he turned in some excitement to the page for Monday.

  Here he was disappointed. The last entry was for shortly after eleven a.m., a time at which all his principals were accounted for and none of the entries concerned any Stanleys or Kimbroughs. Then he remembered that the Stanleys’ house and yard could not be seen from Tita’s bedroom window anyway. Nor the Kimbroughs’, for that matter. Oh, well, it would have been too much to hope for. He turned to Tuesday, and found, surprisingly, nothing. He had expected an account of Tita’s Monday-night adventure, but there was no entry on Tuesday. Wednesday’s reports were as irrelevant as Saturday’s and Sunday’s.

  He closed the notebook. Useless. On second thought, no, it wasn’t. He could use it as an excuse to go to Kathryn’s: “Here, Nancy Drew!” he would say. “You read it!” Since he couldn’t fool himself into thinking this errand was business, he waited until after four-thirty.

  He told her everything, which was not much. She told him nothing at all. She was still waiting for the call from California that would tell her she was right. Then she could dazzle him. She scolded herself: very childish, this sort of thing. But she had abandoned the hope that she would ever grow out of it; an obsessive desire to score points with authority figures was a habit she had contracted at the age of four, within three days of her enrollment in kindergarten and her realization that the teacher was the most important person in the room.

  The call finally came on Friday.

  iv

  When she let herself into the office at nine twenty-five on Friday morning, she was surprised to find that George had apparently not yet arrived. Normally he got in first, because, she was sure, it gave him a sense of superiority. But she had the place to herself. It would have been pleasant if she hadn’t been so worried about Carolyn.

  On her desk was an envelope with her name on it. George’s handwriting. She sat and opened it.

  Dear Patricia, it read. I’m sorry to have to inform you that Carolyn and I have decided to terminate your employment with us effective immediately. We discussed it before she left for California. We have met a young man who has both secretarial skills and experience in interior design. Of course you lack the latter, which is why we have made this decision. He will be able to contribute more to the firm than you and will work for the same salary. In lieu of notice you will find enclosed a check for three months’ salary. Please remove all your things from the office today and when you leave, lock up, then put the key through the mail flap. Thank you for your four years with us. I will not be in today; please leave any messages on my desk. Sincerely, George Kimbrough.

  Long before she got to the end of the letter, her mouth was hanging open. Impossible. Incredible. It was a lie, of course. And the insult! To be fired without notic
e! Who did he think he was, bullying her this way? He would pay for it. Oh, God, was he ever going to pay for it.

  v

  “And now we come to everybody’s favorite sin,” said Kathryn, her expertly pitched voice reaching without difficulty to the back corners of the lecture hall. “The last of the Seven Deadlies—” Here she paused, dropped her voice an octave, and pronounced lusciously: “Lust.”

  One hundred and twenty-seven seminary students laughed, and so did the professor in the back row under whose aegis Kathryn was delivering this lecture. Some of the junior faculty had a lot to learn about how to talk for fifty minutes without putting everybody to sleep, but this girl, he thought, was a born performer. He wondered how long they would be able to keep her; she joked about being the token Anglican in a Presbyterian seminary, but he sometimes suspected she felt a trifle isolated.

  “Now, as I made clear in the beginning,” she was continuing, “the order of the Seven Deadly Sins is neither arbitrary nor accidental. Lust is last because lust is least. According to the medieval Church, lust is the least deadly, the least offensive of the Seven. Why? Because it is the only sin that contains within it some element of love. In Dante’s Inferno, the lustful are near the top level of Hell, the least horrible place in Hell, and they have the easiest punishment of all the damned: They are light, wispy creatures, like dry leaves, and like dry leaves they are continually tossed about by great gusts of wind. This is to signify the way in which, in their mortal life, they were tossed around by their passions.”

  Kathryn leaned across the podium with a confidential air. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said in a stage whisper. “You’re thinking, if lust is the least of the major sins, then why is the Church so obsessed with sex?” This got another laugh. “Well, boys and girls, there are two theories to account for this unhappy state of affairs. One is that we can blame it all on St. Augustine. St. Augustine, bless his cotton socks, was what we call a late convert. He spent his youth—”