Suicide King (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series)

by Shelley Singer

  “Do you mean,” I persisted, “that you planned to stay altogether separate from your husband’s gubernatorial campaign? Not be with him?”

  “It was silly. He couldn’t win. Why spend all that time and money and energy for nothing? He knew from the beginning I wouldn’t participate.”

  “Let me see if I understand,” I said gently. “The two of you talked it over at the very beginning and you told him you wouldn’t work with him on this? How did he react to that?”

  “No, Mr. Samson. You don’t understand. We never talked it over. There was no need to talk it over. He knew. I don’t do public things. I’m a poet. A private person. A solitary person. I find social intercourse painful and exhausting.”

  She looked at my glass of tea, still half full. I did not take the hint, swallow the rest of it and get the hell out of there. Instead, I played sympathetic.

  “I understand. And even so, despite your feelings, he went ahead and began running?”

  She smiled that slight smile again. “Not despite my feelings, Mr. Samson. Despite my lack of feelings.”

  She was stroking the flowered cover of her book, almost tenderly. It looked like one of those jobs the craftsies sell on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley— a handmade book of blank pages, to be used as a journal. “Your lack of feelings,” I echoed. “For your husband?”

  “Joe was a wonderful man,” she said noncommittally. “He loved me desperately. Actually, people used to say he adored me.” Her expression was soft, reminiscent, pleasant. As though the man had been dead a dozen years.

  “But how did you feel about him?”

  She frowned at me, a change in expression as small as her smile. “I was grateful. When I wanted companionship, he gave it to me. When I didn’t, he left me alone. And he didn’t have a wife hanging all over him, keeping him from traveling, from his political activities.”

  “Why did you marry him?” I asked her, taking care to speak very softly. “For his money?”

  She laughed, a quick, breathy sound. “The money is mostly mine. He had some. I had more.” She was stroking the book again, glancing at my quarter-full glass. This time, I thought she might simply ask me to leave, but the housekeeper appeared at the door.

  “Telephone, Mrs. Richmond.” With a tiny moue of annoyance, and not a word to me, she glided off into the dimness of the house.

  She left the book on the table. I slid it over. Sure enough, it was one of those journal books, bound in board and covered with blue cotton scattered with yellow and purple flowers. I turned to the first page.

  This morning When the fence posts steamed like dung, You cried.

  I didn’t have time to think about that right then. I wanted to read more. The poem on the next page was longer.

  This is a weed

  growing like

  a flower,

  and I can never tell

  until

  the seeds

  all blow away.

  On the page after that, something slightly more personal:

  You know,

  I’ve never been a summer woman

  dancing on the beach,

  or autumn’s silent dignity,

  or winter storms

  that shriek

  and turn to mud,

  or spring,

  the easy birth of yellow-green.

  I was just turning the page when I heard, “Mr. Samson!” and looked up to see Emily Richmond staring at me. She walked easily across the stones of the terrace and whipped the book out of my hand. Her eyes were not hot with anger but very, very cold.

  “I did not mind having you ask me questions about my marriage, Mr. Samson,” she said through white lips. “But this”— she shook the book at me— “is a ruthless invasion of privacy.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” I lied. “I had no idea what it was. I thought it was an ordinary book. I was just going to pass the time with it.”

  “How much did you read?” she demanded.

  “Hardly anything. Then I realized—”

  She didn’t believe me. “Is there anything else you want to know about my husband?”

  “Actually, yes. You said he had money. Where did he get it?”

  Still standing, she said, “He inherited it. From his family’s mill. Richmond Mills. He’s a cousin.”

  Pretty big company, I thought; plenty to go around for all the kin. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. Why is it that his friends think he was murdered and you seem to think he killed himself?”

  “Maybe I knew him better than they did. Or possibly they never saw his depressed side. I certainly did.”

  Yes, I thought, I’ll bet you did. As though she had picked up on that thought, she glared at me. It was the closest thing to a full, human expression I had yet seen.

  “One more thing,” I said pleasantly. “Where were you the day he died?”

  Her face had become nearly blank again. “In my house in Bel Air. By myself.”

  “Did you spend any time with anyone that day?”

  “Only the servants. I hope that’s all, Mr. Samson, because you really have exhausted me. I’m going to my room, and I’ll ask the housekeeper to see you out.”

  “Thank you. See you at the funeral?” She was already gone.

  The housekeeper saw me out, but not before I ripped a piece of paper out of my notebook, wrote down both my local and Oakland numbers, and stuffed the paper into her plump, firm hand. Just in case Emily decided she wanted to talk to me again about her husband. In a moment of caper fantasy, I wondered if I could manage to break into this house late that night, steal Emily’s book, read the whole thing, really try to get a fix on her. But I didn’t know which room was hers. Also, I figured the house was probably well wired, and the local police would be very good about calls from Lake of the Isles. Finally, reading that whole book would probably send me into a depression so heavy my plane wouldn’t take off on Wednesday.

  I have a problem with poetry. I like some of it, sometimes. But it’s hard to judge. Once I read a poem I thought was really terrific, and it turned out to be the ravings of a hospitalized schizophrenic. Of course, that doesn’t mean the poem wasn’t great. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what the hell it does mean.

  – 11 –

  JOE Richmond’s mother lived outside the city in a close-in, rich old suburb, in a monstrous late Victorian with one of those iron fences that look like they’re made of spears. The gate was open. I drove in.

  The house sat placidly in a nest of shrubs in the middle of an acre or two of perfect lawn. A few big trees covered its rear, just in case the spear fence wasn’t enough to protect it from the twentieth century. There was an entry porch, a second-floor balcony above that, and, at roof level, a widow’s walk that you could get to only, as far as I could tell, by climbing out the windows of two tall round towers, one at each of the front corners. The left-hand tower had a rooster weather vane at its peak. A hodgepodge of gables stuck out of the roof at various spots, overhung with elaborately carved eaves. In San Francisco, someone would have completed the fantasy with a three-color paint job, but this house was painted white— trim and all.

  I left my car in the well-raked gravel drive and crunched up to the walk leading to the front steps. The people in the house pretended they hadn’t noticed my arrival until I rang the bell.

  An old man wearing a navy blue suit and a navy blue tie with a white shirt answered the door. He had cold blue eyes and a face ironed smooth except for the thousands of wrinkles and micropouches around his eyes.

  “Samson,” I said. “Mrs. Richmond is expecting me.”

  He nodded. “Please come this way, Mr. Samson.”

  He led me down a long, empty hallway— no hall trees or little fancy tables with mirrors over them. No elephant leg umbrella stands, nothing— and through one of those double sliding doors the Victorians used to hide their parlors behind.

  “I’ll tell Mrs. Richmond you’re here,” he said. I nodded, looking arou
nd the room, which didn’t go with the house very well. It was done in French Provincial, with lots of white wood and gilt and pictures of people who looked like George and Martha Washington. A museum exhibit from the wrong century entirely. Even the mantle looked like it had been ripped out of an older house, somewhere outside of Paris, and stuck against the Victorian firebox.

  I sat down on a chair that looked pretty sturdy, resisting the temptation to check the seat of my pants for dust, first. On the table next to the chair was a music box with the figures of two little eighteenth-century people perched on top. When you cranked the box, they did a minuet. I was playing with that when Mrs. Richmond senior came in the door.

  I had been expecting a dowager type. Gray hair, big bosom with a brooch pinned at her chest, rings, maybe even a cane. I got the rings, but nothing else.

  She wore a big square-cut emerald on her right index finger and an even bigger ruby on her left ring finger. She was wearing those sunglasses you can’t see through, so I couldn’t see her eyes at all, and her eyes, I guessed, would show her age. She had to be at least sixty-five, I reasoned, since Joe had been in his early forties and had, according to Pam, an older brother. Unless she wasn’t the mother of the older brother. Maybe she wasn’t Joe’s mother either? Maybe there was a mistake and she was their sister? My face must have shown my confusion. I stood up.

  She smiled. “Mr. Samson? I’m Marietta Richmond. Why don’t you explain to me exactly what it is you want to know, and who is paying you to conduct an investigation into my son’s death?”

  I smiled back. Her teeth were definitely her own, I could see the slightest sag under her chin, but the hair was carefully and expensively dyed a soft brown. Her shapely, firm-looking body was encased in a long, sleeveless form-fitting royal blue dress of some soft cottony fabric. I couldn’t see her legs, but the arms were smooth and slender. I wished passionately to see her eyes.

  “I’m sorry if I seem to be looking at you too much, Mrs. Richmond,” I said. “But I’m finding it hard to believe you were Joe’s mother. Not to mention having an even older son.”

  “You’re very sweet, Jake.”

  “Thank you. And in answer to your questions, my client is a friend of his, a political connection. And I want to know about his life, what kinds of relationships he had with what kinds of people. My client believes someone killed him. People usually have reasons for killing other people.”

  She sat down on a love seat. I took the chair I’d been sitting in before she’d arrived.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes people kill just for the pleasure of it.” She smiled again. I really wanted to see her eyes.

  “I don’t think that’s what happened here.” The old man in the blue suit came in.

  “Would you like something to drink, Jake?”

  “Mineral water would be nice. With lime?”

  “And an orange soda for me, please, Gerald.” The old man went out of the room again. “I’m glad you’re doing this, Jake. I don’t think he killed himself, not for a minute. He was not that kind of man. He was not that kind of child, either.”

  “Had you thought about hiring an investigator?”

  “No. I never thought of it. But I’m glad someone did.”

  Gerald returned with our drinks. She took a big swallow of her bright orange soda pop. It left a bright orange mustache. A lesser woman would have made excuses, given reasons, been almost apologetic for liking a child’s drink. Not this one.

  “I suppose you want to know who I think might have done it?”

  “Sure.” I plucked the lime wedge off the rim of the glass, squeezed it into the water and dropped it in. “I’d like that. I need all the help I can get.” I pulled out my notebook and pencil.

  “I have no idea.” She took another sip of her soda and dabbed at her lip with a napkin. She still had an orange mustache. “But there’s his wife, of course. And what about that odd woman who was running against him. Gelber, I believe her name is? I met her once. Although I don’t think a political opponent is really the answer.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, it’s not like there was any real power to be had by winning the Vivo endorsement.” There was an edge of contempt in her voice. Did anyone close to Richmond, except Pam, respect his political career?

  “So I guess you didn’t think much of his politics?”

  If I’d been able to see her damned eyes, I guessed they would have widened. “I admired my son’s politics very much, Jake. What I didn’t admire was his delusion that he could make a career of them. I don’t understand what he was doing. It was the only stupid thing he ever did. Except of course for marrying Emily, but sex is different.”

  I stayed away from that one. “So you think the motive was personal?”

  She smiled over the rim of her glass. “A scorned woman? A betrayed husband? I don’t know about that side of my son’s life, but I assume he had affairs. God knows his father did. Of course, his father wasn’t killed by a jealous husband, he died in a boating accident.” She shrugged. “At least I don’t think he was killed by a jealous husband.”

  “His father, you mean.”

  “Yes. I think you should look into money. There’s very big money involved in politics, isn’t there? Big contributions, that sort of thing?”

  “Yes. Big money, people with lots of money.”

  “Joe was a very noble character in some ways, Jake. He had his ideals, his beliefs. But money was also very important to him. Money to live out his ideals. Money to run his campaign. Money to do as he damn well pleased. Very important.”

  “But he already had a lot of money, didn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes, And it was very important to him. That’s where you should be looking.”

  “I’ll remember that. Who else do you think I should talk to before I leave Minneapolis?”

  “I suppose you could talk to his brother.” She went to a small side table, took a pen and a piece of paper out of a drawer, wrote down a number, and gave it to me. “This is his home phone.” I already had his work number; I’d gotten that from Pam. “Have you talked to Emily? Maybe she knows something I don’t, although I doubt it. Other than that…” she waved a limp hand and swallowed the last of her orange soda.

  “I’ve talked to Emily.”

  “In that case… this has been very pleasant, Jake.” Her smile was coquettish, charming. “But I’m very tired, and I still have to get through the funeral tomorrow.”

  “Of course,” I said, standing. “If I have any other questions, I hope you won’t mind if I give you a call?”

  “As long as it’s after the funeral. And I do want to know what you find out, ultimately.” She leaned forward, toward me. “I really do.”

  “Sure.” I gave her a card from the stack I’d taken off the hotel desk. “And here’s where I’m staying, in case you come up with any ideas.” She took the card and stuck it in an invisible pocket in the long skirt.

  “Would you like to see the rest of the house? Gerald can show it to you. I have an art deco room, a Victorian room, a medieval room, a modern room— I have a Mondrian in that one.”

  “No, thanks just the same. I’ll go now.”

  “I don’t want you to feel I’m being inhospitable. I’ll be fine, once I’ve gotten through the funeral.”

  “Right. Of course you will.”

  “Gerald will show you out, then.”

  On my way out behind Gerald, I was wondering what she thought the funeral was going to do for her. Did she think she would stop mourning once the formalities were over? Did she think that once he was buried everything would be okay and she could take off her dark glasses?

  – 12 –

  PAM had given me a few leads, a few names to start with. The wife, the mother, the cousin who was currently running the mill. The brother. A couple of old friends. Some political connections, including Richmond’s campaign manager, who would be in town for the funeral.

  By the time I’d f
inished with Marietta Richmond, it was nearly six o’clock. No one answered at the business numbers I had for the cousin and brother, or at the home number Marietta had given me for her older son. I did manage to reach one old friend— he hadn’t known Richmond was dead, and kept repeating, “Hanged? He was hanged?”— the campaign manager and one local political pal. I’d asked the old friend to meet me, but he declined, saying there was nothing he could possibly know about Joe Richmond hanging himself. When I explained that he might not exactly have hanged himself, the man was even more certain he had nothing to say. The campaign manager agreed to meet me for breakfast the next day, and the local political connection said Wednesday was fine.

  I went out for a Japanese dinner and a couple of bottles of sake, then I went back to my room, mellow, full of raw fish, tempura and rice, and called Rosie for a consultation. Her carpentry job, she said, would be finished by Wednesday morning.

  “I’m really sorry I’m not with you, Jake. Sounds like the Richmond women are a lot of fun.”

  “Who knows? You may get your chance. Have you managed to get anything done on your end?”

  She had, with Pam’s help, paid some calls on Pam’s immediate neighbors. No one had seen anything the day of Richmond’s death. She’d made a couple of phone calls earlier that evening— it was seven o’clock in Oakland— and was getting some idea of what directions we ought to take out there, and who we should be talking to for starters. That was good news. As usual at the beginning of a case, the possibilities are multidirectional and somewhat overwhelming. And narrowing things down is tough. If you’re not careful, you can eliminate someone early on who might have had the key to the whole damned thing. In real life, there’s no nice, straight literary line that leads right to the killer. I was hoping to do a great deal of narrowing down in Minneapolis.

  After I had talked to Rosie, I called Pam. She wasn’t there, so I left her a message to get back to me. I had just settled down with one of my favorite sitcoms when she called.

  I ran over some of the same ground with her, although I was a bit kinder to Richmond’s wife with Pam than I had been with Rosie. I’m not sure why. And a little less amusing about Richmond’s mother.