Compromising Positions (22 page)

“Bob.” I walked to his side of the bed and touched his shoulder.

“Don’t touch me, Judith. Don’t touch me until you get your head screwed on straight again. Do I make myself understood?”

He turned over and reached for the light. I undressed in the dark and climbed under the cold cover to lie on even colder sheets. “Bob,” I whispered, easing over to his side of the bed. “Bob.” He shook his body, as though ridding himself of a pesty mosquito. I inched away, fluffed my pillow into a high, soft mound, pulled the quilt over my ears and, eventually, fell asleep.

All I saw of Bob the next morning was a gold paisley tie stretched across his pillow with a note on top: “Took early train. Please have stain (prob fr coffee) removed. R.M.S.” I stood, stretched, and made the bed, making certain the spread neatly covered the tie. Then, prancing downstairs, I made the children a more than usually elaborate breakfast and sent them off to school with a showy display of hugs and kisses.

As I poured myself a second cup of coffee, I contemplated washing a pile of wool sweaters or making a call to Hyde Park to make arrangements for examining the Roosevelt-Morgenthau correspondence. Before I could decide, the phone rang.

“Hello,” I said hopefully.

“This is Brenda Dunck.”

“Hi. How are you?” I inquired, as effusively as I could manage.

“Fine, thank you. You know my sister-in-law, Norma? Well, Dicky, my husband, spoke to her and she said it would be okay if you wanted to talk to her.”

“Oh.”

“You see, we’re leaving today for a couple of days’ vacation, and I thought if you wanted to see her, I should let you know before we left. I can give you her number, or if you want, I could call her.”

“That’s really very nice of you,” I said slowly. “Very nice.” I took a sip of coffee. “Brenda, could you manage to hold off for a while? I have an awful lot of notes I have to transcribe.”

“Yes, of course. The only reason I called is that you seemed so interested and you asked me to do it.”

“I know, Brenda, and I truly appreciate your help. But I’ll take a raincheck for a while. Thanks so much.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be in touch with you.”

“Okay. Bye.”

That was that. Anyone else who spoke to me about the case would get the same message, that I was no longer interested. There would be no more anonymous warnings. No more stiff, rejecting backs late in the night. I breathed what should have been a sigh of relief but wasn’t. Another sigh, and I picked up the phone and called information. “In Shorehaven, please. The number of Marvin Bruce Fleckstein, a residence.” I made the call.

“Hello,” said a voice, hoarse and dull-sounding.

“Is this Norma Fleckstein?”

“Yes,” the voice said, hesitantly.

“Hello. I’m Judith Singer. Your sister-in-law, Brenda, told me it was all right to call you. I’m doing my doctoral dissertation on the problems posed by freedom of the press and...”

“Yes. Why do you want to speak to me?”

“Because you’ve been hurt by scurrilous news stories,” I said, trying to sound comforting and outraged at the same time.

“Well, I guess it would be all right. When do you want to come?”

“This morning?” I suggested.

“No. This morning’s not good. The accountant is coming. Is tomorrow all right?” Only the dentalized ts of her slight New York accent prevented her from sounding like a robot. Her pitch didn’t alter, her voice didn’t rise at the end of a question, her timbre was flat, lifeless.

“Fine. Thank you. Would ten o’clock be too early?”

“No, that’s all right.”

“Fine. I’ll see you then.” She hung up without saying goodbye.

Upstairs in the bedroom, I took off my nightgown and sat on the edge of the bed, letting a wave of guilt flood over me. What kind of a person am I who would use this exhausted, grief stricken widow to satisfy my own perverse curiosity? I lumbered into the bathroom and turned on the shower. That poor, frightened creature. It wasn’t right. Well, I’d make certain to be very gentle.

The water was hot, biting, and I let it pelt me, listening to it smash against my shower cap, feeling my skin turn rosy under its sharp attack. Ping, ping, ping, it went, smacking the small of my back. Ping, ping, ding. The ding, I realized, was not part of the score. It was the doorbell. I turned off the shower, grabbed a towel, and half dried myself, feeling, as I pulled on my jeans, clammy, wet patches in the backs of my legs. Ding. Again. Who the hell was it? And then I realized: Jehovah’s Witnesses. Only they would ring my doorbell so early. I was the only one on the block who hadn’t slammed the door in their faces, the only one who told them thank you, but no thank you. They took this very minor courtesy as a sign of my salvageable soul, so every month or two they would drop by, first thing in the morning, a wan, blond girl in her late teens and an older Japanese man, to see if I was ripe for conversion.

Ding. “Just a minute,” I yelled and then regretted it. Had I remained silent, they would have gone away. Now I’d have to go down and reject them again. I put on a bra and quickly grabbed an old red sweater and pulled it over my head. Ding. Ding. Persistent little devils, I thought, and ran a brush through my hair. Ding. I ran down the stairs to the door, and with a force born of pique, yanked it open.

“Don’t you even ask who it is?” It was Sharpe, leaning against the door frame, looking quite spiffy in a yellow turtleneck and a tweedy sport jacket. “I could have been the murderer.”

“I was expecting Jehovah’s Witnesses,” I explained. My voice sounded feeble. I thought of my face, without makeup, and took a step back, out of the bright sunlight.

“You had an appointment?”

“No. But who else would be willing to come out and freeze their asses off at nine o’clock in the morning?” I looked at him and asked: “Don’t you ever wear a coat?”

“No. It’s just another thing to worry about. I keep it in the car.” His eyes were fixed on mine, but he let them run down, all the way to my feet. “Don’t you ever wear shoes?”

“I just got out of the shower.”

“I was wondering why you took so long to answer the door. I figured you were out.”

“Or lying in a pool of blood because I didn’t cooperate with you.”

“No,” he said in his soft slow way, “the murderer seems to lean toward thin, pointed weapons. The medical examiner thinks it was something like an ice pick. It makes a very narrow wound that doesn’t bleed too much.” He paused for a second, waiting for a reaction, but I remained impassive, a look I had cultivated before a mirror when I was eighteen and wanted very much to appear blasé. “Are you going to ask me to come in?” he finally said.

“Yes, of course,” I answered, opening the door wider for him to pass through. He walked in, missing a golden opportunity to brush up against me. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Please,” he replied, and walked right into the kitchen. I scurried after him. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?”

The kitchen still smelled of paint, and I saw him looking at the refrigerator door. “I assume you came to browbeat me into talking. Milk? Cream? Sugar?”

“Cream. One sugar. No, if a killer can’t terrorize you by breaking into your house, what can I do?”

“Well, the bloodless fatal wound was pretty effective.”

“Obviously not effective enough,” he said, sipping his coffee and looking at me. “No, I came to save you some time. I figured when you saw the police cars parked across the street, you’d have to spend at least a half hour investigating. So I’ll tell you why we’re here.”

“What police cars?” I demanded, knowing as I said it how stupid I must sound. I walked to the front door, opened it, and, sure enough, two police cars were parked across the street. Sharpe’s blue car was in my driveway. Silently, I closed the door and came back to the kitchen. “You’re right. Police cars.”

“And you’re going to tell me you hadn’t noticed them.”

“I hadn’t. I was in the shower.”

“And when you were talking to me at your front door?”

“I guess it didn’t register. I probably associated them with you.”

“Do I look like I rate a full escort? And you did open the door without asking who was there.” He contemplated me. “Do you have any more coffee?”

I poured him another cup. “It’s perfectly obvious,” I said firmly, “that you’re getting nowhere fast with the investigation, so you decided to come here and make baseless accusations just to keep your deductive processes in order.”

He laughed. “Okay. So I just called out two squad cars so I could impress you with the power of the Nassau County P.D.”

“All right,” I said, leaning against the sink, “why are two police cars parked across the street?”

“Because we found what appears to be the murder weapon.”

The motor on the electric clock whirred, the odor of paint permeated the kitchen, and I noticed that Sharpe wore black loafers, not the brown shoes cops wear in police procedurals.

“Can we go inside?” I asked. He stood, still holding his coffee mug, and led the way into the living room. He sat on the couch and looked at me, his expression bland, blank, unreadable. I set my mug on the coffee table and sat on the floor, about three feet away from him. “You found the weapon? Here?”

“At your neighbor’s, Mrs. Tuccio’s.”

“Impossible.”

“We found it.”

“Where?”

“In front of her house, in the grating of a storm sewer.”

“How did you find it?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “We drove over first thing this morning and poked around a little. It was there.”

I took a long, slow breath and stood. “A little elf came to you in your dreams last night and whispered in your ear that if you looked in Marilyn Tuccio’s sewer you would find a nice surprise, better than a pot of gold? Or did a brilliant application of investigative logic lead you straight to that particular section of gutter?”

“Jesus, you’re a pisser,” he said softly.

“What was it? An anonymous letter?”

“Phone call,” he muttered, gazing at his shiny black loafers.

“Man or woman?”

“Couldn’t tell. They called into the precinct and whispered to the desk officer.” He drew his fingers through his hair. “It happened about eleven last night. From about eleven-twenty on, we had someone watching the house, but we had to wait until it was light to search. We’ve been here since early this morning.”

“Hello, police,” I croaked, holding an imaginary telephone receiver to my ear. “Check out Marilyn Tuccio’s storm sewer. We murderers always bury our weapons in our own front yards.” Replacing the invisible receiver, I peered at him and cleared my throat. “What did Marilyn say when you showed her the search warrant?”

“We didn’t need one. The storm sewer is public property. The caller was very specific. Told us to look in the grating in the storm sewer at the right front of the house. It was there.”

“What was it?”

“An awl. Wrapped in a plastic bag.”

“Any chance of identifying it for sure?”

“I don’t know. We sent it to the lab. Can I use your bathroom?”

“Upstairs. First door on the left.” He moved quickly, taking the steps two at a time. The door closed. I moved to the corner of the couch where Sharpe had been sitting. The cushions were warm. I heard the toilet flush. In a moment, he walked down.

“Did you notice anything unusual last night, about nine or ten o’clock?” he asked, sitting right next to me.

“No. I went to sleep early.”

“Yeah. I saw your husband leave about six-thirty this morning.”

“Oh.”

“You know why I asked you about last night?”

“Yes. If someone called you around eleven, it might have been planted right before. Unless you’re assuming that Marilyn put it right into the sewer after she perpetrated the dastardly deed.”

“Well, it seems to have been placed there fairly recently. The plastic bag showed no signs of wear.”

“And if it had been there since the murder, it would be encrusted with gook.”

“Right,” he said. He was leaning back on the couch, his arm casually draped over the back of both his cushion and mine. His face was about a foot away from mine. Sharpe had shaved close that morning; there was a raw, red patch along his left cheek.

I looked away, down to the gold carpet, studying its flat weave. “And so you think that after she committed the murder, Marilyn hid the awl behind her unbleached flour and then, yesterday, decided to wedge it into the sewer and give you a call, just so you wouldn’t be bored.” I felt him looking at me and glanced at him to check. He was. “That’s a pretty sorry hypothesis.” I paused. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so sarcastic.” He stared at the fireplace, not even acknowledging that he had heard me. “I apologize,” I said softly, putting my hand on top of his. It felt so warm that I pulled my hand away.

“It’s okay,” Sharpe said. “Don’t feel bad. It’s just that this is one of the toughest cases I’ve ever worked on. Nothing seems to be going right. Every time I think we have a good lead, it turns out not to be a lead.”

“So you don’t really suspect Marilyn Tuccio?”

“I don’t know. See, on every case that comes in—other than the really obvious ones—we spend the first twenty-four hours convinced we have it almost wrapped up. We know who did it and all we have to do is tie up a couple of loose ends. And this time we knew it was your neighbor. She had a motive...”

“What?”

“Well, it seemed like a motive. She made that announcement to Fleckstein’s nurse that he’d better watch out. And she certainly had the opportunity, being alone with him.”

“And she always carries an awl in her handbag,” I observed.

“I know, I know. Anyhow, by the morning after he was murdered, we knew that dozens of people in this town had a motive. Anyway, we’re thinking about quite a few other people now, but she was told to get a lawyer.”

“She has one,” I said. “Helen Fields, the Assemblywoman.”

“So I heard.”

“Marilyn’s beyond subtlety. One of your people thought she might be linked up with Fleckstein’s Mafia connections because her last name is Italian.” I paused for an instant. “Was that you?”

“Are you kidding?” he asked incredulously. “Do you think I would do something like that?”