“Heart attack,” I said.
“Yep…” My father paused.
“What’s the pregnant pause for?” I said.
“Effect,” my father said. “Regina, clearly taken with me, despite her years, confides that she thought he had blood on him.”
“Blood?”
“She says she can’t be sure. She looked away as quick as she could after she found him on the floor. She found it, her word, ‘repellent.’ But she thought he was bleeding.”
“Do people ever bleed from heart attacks?”
“Not that I know of,” my father said. “Coulda banged himself as he was falling, I suppose, oozed a little.”
I nodded.
“But the attending physician made no mention of it,” I said.
“No.”
“Nor anything in the campus police report.”
“No.”
“Was there an autopsy,” I said.
“No reason,” my father said. “Far as the Walford police were concerned, some professor at the college had a heart attack, and the college took care of it.”
“Regina never said anything,” I said.
“Not until she talked to me,” my father said. “She wasn’t sure what she saw. She found everything about it ‘repellent.’ She didn’t want to get mixed up in it.”
“But she told you.”
“She found me reassuring,” my father said.
“Daddy, did you flirt with her?”
“Of course,” my father said. “Established investigative technique.”
“Does Mother know?” I said.
“She suspects,” my father said.
“Any sign of a weapon in all of this?” I said.
“No mention by anyone,” my father said.
“How old was Senior when he died?” I said.
Again, there was a moment of silence on the phone.
Then my father said, “Forty-six.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“That’s just what I thought,” my father said. “Here’s another thing, may be nothing, but there was never another Spare Change killing until this year.”
“That would be true of a lot of people,” I said.
“I know,” my father said. “But none of the others were the father of a suspect.”
“Are you thinking that he might have done the first batch and his son might have done the second?” I said.
“I’m thinking everything,” my father said. “Unfortunately, I can prove nothing.”
“Father and son, twenty years apart?” I said.
“Maybe,” my father said. “You always say I should think outside the box.”
“If Bob Senior was Spare Change the first,” I said, “it could be why he killed himself. If he killed himself.”
“And if he was and if he did, it might tell us something about why there is a Spare Change the second,” my father said.
“But no evidence yet, and half of what you’re looking for happened twenty years ago.”
“True,” my father said. “And maybe nothing will pan out. But for the first time in twenty years, I have at least the beginnings of a theory of the case.”
“Not a bad thing,” I said.
“No,” my father said. “Not a bad thing at all.”
42
Vicki Russo had made us coffee. We drank it together in her living room. Her home looked as if it had been done by the staff designer at a furniture store. Everything matched. Nothing was very interesting. Vicki herself still looked like her picture. Her dark hair was shorter and had some highlighting. Her makeup was a bit more sophisticated. But, in her mid forties, she looked very much as she had when the picture was taken.
“Is Bob Johnson in trouble?” she said.
“No, no. Just routine stuff,” I said.
I showed her the picture.
“This is you, is it not?” I said.
“Where did you find that?” she said.
“It is you,” I said.
“Yes, college graduation picture. I never liked it.”
“I know. I almost never like pictures of myself,” I said.
We smiled. Two girls chatting.
“When is the last time you’ve seen Bob Johnson?” I said.
“You know, that’s funny. I hadn’t seen him since college, and then this year I saw him again.”
“What was the occasion,” I said.
“My husband graduated in the same class with Bob. I was two years behind them. We went back this spring for my husband’s twenty-fifth class reunion.”
“And Bob Johnson was there?”
“Yes,” Vicki said. “He came over, and we talked for, oh, quite a while, half-hour, maybe longer. He has developed a very nice manner since college. Both Lenny and I liked him much better than we had when we were in school.”
“Did you know him well in school?” I said.
“Actually,” Vicki said, “I dated him for a while.”
“How was that?” I said.
Vicki laughed.
“Uneventful,” she said.
“What was he like?”
“He seemed very shy. He was nice enough, but there was no juice to him. About his only claim to fame was that his father was a professor there.”
“Were you ever intimate?”
“Hey…” Vicki said.
“Sorry. It’s something we have to ask everyone. It won’t go any farther.”
Vicki smiled and nodded.
“You’re probably not a virgin, either,” she said.
“Not for some time,” I said.
“Yes,” Vicki said. “Once. He was…not too good at it. I don’t think he’d had much experience.”
“He have trouble?”
“He wasn’t impotent,” Vicki said. “He got very, very excited, very little foreplay…and, ah, he didn’t last very long.”
“Don’t you hate when that happens,” I said. “Did he, ah…actually…” I made an aimless rolling gesture with my right hand.
“He did penetrate,” Vicki said. “But briefly. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
“I know. It’s awful,” I said.
“Poor Bob,” Vicki said. “He was so apologetic, like he’d done something terrible.”
“Were you kind?” I said.
“Sure. I told him he was great. That it was fine. That I enjoyed it very much, that kind of thing.”
“Did it make him feel better.”
“I don’t know. When a man finishes as quickly as he did,” Vicki said, “he should know that it wasn’t very good for the woman.”
“Did you continue to date him?”
“A little. In truth, I wanted to let him down easy. You know, not stop right then and let him think it was his sexual failure, or whatever.”
“That was nice of you. Were you intimate again?”
“No,” Vicki said. “I think he was afraid to try again. And I didn’t really want to. It wasn’t just how quick he was. It was, I don’t know. Something about how frantic he got when he did it, compared to how shy and sort of boring he was the rest of the time.”
I nodded.
“How did he take it when you broke up.”
Vicki tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling.
“He cried,” she said.
She lowered her eyes to look at me.
“It was awful. He cried and told me he loved me, and begged for another chance.”
“Chance?”
“To be better at sex,” Vicki said.
I nodded.
“I was already friends with Lenny,” Vicki said. “But we weren’t, you know, a
couple. But I talked with Lenny about Bob and Lenny said, ‘You don’t have to go out with somebody just because they want you to.’”
“And after you broke up with Bob, you started going with Lenny?”
“Yes.”
“How did Bob handle that?”
Vicki smiled.
“Poor Bob,” she said. “He used to trail us sometimes. Follow us around, you know? Watch us. Finally, Lenny told Bob he’d beat him up if Bob didn’t stop.”
“And Bob stopped?”
“He kind of had to,” Vicki said. “Bob wasn’t a very big guy, and Lenny played football.”
She shrugged.
“So that ended it?”
“Yes,” Vicki said. “I never had any more problems with him. I barely saw him in school, and once he graduated, I never laid eyes on him until last spring at the reunion.”
“Where he was cordial,” I said.
“Very. Really seemed to have turned out to be a nice guy, successful, easygoing. Really quite charming.”
I nodded.
“When was the class reunion?” I said.
“Oh, beginning of June,” Vicki said. “I could check back in my calendar if you want.”
“Please,” I said.
She went from the room, and in a few minutes came back into the room with the dates written on an envelope.
“So what’s this about?” Vicki said after I put the envelope in my handbag.
“Just clearing up some details,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” Vicki said. “I don’t believe that. I’ll bet you don’t always ask all about somebody’s sexual experiences on a routine case.”
“I’ll tell you some of mine,” I said, “if it will make you feel better.”
“Got anything good?” Vicki said.
I smiled.
“Well, there was this time in L.A.,” I said. “On Rodeo Drive…”
“You’re just trying to distract me,” Vicki said.
“I am,” I said.
“You don’t want to talk about the case,” Vicki said.
“This is true,” I said.
We were quiet for a moment. Vicki fiddled with her now empty coffee cup.
“Rodeo Drive?” she said.
43
My mother invited me to lunch at her house to meet Elizabeth’s fiancé, Charles Strasser. We ate in the dining room. Elizabeth, Charles, my mother, and me. My mother had made tuna-noodle casserole and served it with a side dish of tomato aspic on a lettuce leaf. There was a basket of brown-and-serve rolls, and butter in a cut-glass dish. Charles had brought some wine, and my mother was uncertain what kind of glasses she should use. She and I conferred softly in the kitchen. She had no stemware that matched, so we settled for lowball glasses. She also did not have a corkscrew, but we were saved by Charles, who had a Swiss army knife with a corkscrew attachment. He opened the wine expertly. When we sat down to lunch, I noticed my mother had quietly eschewed the wine, and provided herself with bourbon on the rocks.
The table had a white tablecloth on it and was carefully set with the silver she’d received as a wedding present all that time ago. Charles looked not so much appalled as puzzled when he sat down. He quite possibly had never seen a tuna-noodle casserole.
“This is a lovely-looking lunch, Mrs. Randall,” Charles said.
The lying bastard.
“Thank you, Charles. I can whip things together pretty quickly when I need to,” my mother said. “I had four tables of bridge here just two weeks ago and I fed them all, in jig time.”
Charles smiled and nodded. He picked up his glass of wine.
“I’d like to make a small toast,” he said. “To all the lovely Randall women.”
He gestured with his glass.
“And especially to you, Mrs. Randall, the loveliest of them all.”
My mother almost blushed. She raised her glance, sort of covertly. Since she was included in the toast, I knew she didn’t know whether to join in it. She decided to, and drank some bourbon.
“It’s too bad Daddy couldn’t come,” Elizabeth said.
“Oh, pooh,” my mother said. “He and Sunny would spend all their time talking about those dumb murders and the rest of us could go fry fish for all they’d care.”
“Murders?” Strasser said.
“I’m helping my father,” I said.
“You’re a police officer?”
“Was,” I said. “Now I’m in, ah, private practice.”
“You’re a private detective?”
“Yes.”
“This wine is fabulous,” Elizabeth said. “Charles, tell us a little about it.”
“It’s really very drinkable,” he said. “From Alsace. Ideal for a convivial lunch, I think. Especially with fish.”
We all looked at the tuna-noodle casserole sitting on its hot pad in the middle of the table. If Charles had noticed my mother’s bourbon, he pretended he hadn’t.
“Well, it’s fabulous,” Elizabeth said. “You like it, Sunny?”
“Fab,” I said.
My mother clearly wanted to get in on the conversation, but since she didn’t have any wine to praise, she had to find another route.
“The tuna-noodle casserole,” my mother said, “was always the girls’ favorite when they were small, especially Elizabeth. Elizabeth used to beg me to make it.”
“It looks delicious,” Charles said. “Do you make your own noodles?”
My mother nodded enthusiastically.
“I boil them first,” my mother said. “But about a minute less than they need, so that they can cook in the casserole without getting overcooked.”
Charles nodded vigorously.
“And are they homemade?”
“Sure, I made the whole casserole this morning.”
“And the noodles?”
I couldn’t tell if Charles was merely making conversation or if he was busting her chops for his own amusement.
“The noodles?” my mother said.
As far as my mother knew, noodles came in a box. She’d never imagined someone making them.
“Mom uses Prince noodles,” I said.
“Absolutely,” my mother said. “I swear by Prince.”
“They’ll be fun to try,” Charles said. “Anyone been to Tuscany?”
We hadn’t.
“In the little local restaurants in Tuscany,” he said, “in the villages, the chef will make his pasta right in the open kitchen as you watch, and serve it to you with vegetables fresh-picked from his own garden, and olive oil fresh-squeezed from his trees.”
“I always add frozen peas to the casserole,” my mother said.
“That sounds delicious,” Charles said.
“You get to Italy much?” I said.
“I teach comparative literature,” Charles said. “And I try to spend my summers enriching my understanding of other cultures. Literature is, after all, simply the voice of the culture.”
I nodded. Elizabeth nodded. My mother stood.
“Have to check on the dessert,” she said.
She took her glass with her when she went to the kitchen. When she returned, her glass was full.
“Well, I can’t wait any longer,” my mother said. “Let’s dig in.”
“I’ll serve, Mother,” Elizabeth said.
My mother seemed to have no objection. She handed the big serving spoon to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth began to put tuna-noodle casserole on our plates as we passed them. Sure enough, there were the bright green peas.
“So,” Charles said. “Sunny, tell me a little more about yourself. You used to be on the police force?”
“Boston,” I said.
“Like father, like daught
er,” Charles said.
“Exactly,” my mother said, “like father, like daughter. What kind of work is that for a girl?”
“And you left?”
“I did.”
“Because?”
“Too much protocol,” I said.
“Yes,” Charles said. “The academic world is similarly burdened.”
“Is that a nice job for a girl,” my mother said again. “We spent good money to send her to college.”
“Oh, now, Mrs. Randall,” Charles said. “In your heart, I’ll bet you’re pretty proud of her.”
My mother’s second bourbon was half gone. Elizabeth and I both knew what that meant, but any effort to slow her down would be loudly counterproductive.
“I’d be proud if either one of them gave me a damn grandchild,” my mother said.
Elizabeth had grown slightly pale, I thought.
“Sunny paints as well,” Elizabeth said to Charles.
“Really? Portraits?”
“Cityscapes, mostly,” I said.
“Another self-indulgent waste of time,” my mother said.
Her l’s were beginning slush on her, and she had a little trouble saying “self-indulgent.”
“So, tell me, in your experience what would cause the biggest reduction in crime?”
“A cop on every corner,” I said.
“A police state?”
“I don’t know if that would be a police state or not, but that would cut back on a lot of crime.”
“Don’t you think eliminating poverty and racism would be more effective?” Charles said.
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