Going Out in Style (2 page)

“It’s true, Snooks. He does say you make him crazy.”

“You know what I mean.”

Now she got to her feet, called “See you downstairs,” and went down to rejoin her husband at the breakfast table.

When Snooky slouched downstairs fifteen minutes later he went into the kitchen and made himself a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. Then he sat down at the broad mahogany dining room table and eyed his brother-in-law warily.

“Can I ask you a question, Bernard?”

Bernard was eating his way steadily through an enormous pile of flapjacks smothered in syrup. “No.”

“Why in the world is the third floor freezing cold?”

Bernard regarded him sullenly. “Because nobody lives there.”

Snooky was hurt. “I do, Bernard.”

“No, you don’t. Nobody lives there. You just visit from time to time.”

“It’s the end of January, Bernard. Have some pity.”

“No. Please pass the syrup.”

Bernard Woodruff was the antithesis of his wife and her younger brother. He was a big man, solidly built, with none of their pale, lean elegance. He had dark curly hair, a bristling beard, and soft, surprisingly amiable brown eyes. He looked like a different species altogether: like a brown bear mistakenly caged with a pair of whippets.

“Here’s the syrup,” said Maya.

“Thank you.”

“I think you’re making a mistake,” Snooky said. “It’s inhumanly cold up there. Inhumanly cold. You could go up there one day and find me frozen to death.”

Bernard favored him with a pale glance. “I doubt it. I never go up there.”

“I looked up the word ‘inhuman’ the other day. It means ‘of or suggesting a nonhuman class of beings.’ Is that what you consider me, Bernard—a nonhuman class of being?”

Bernard picked up the paper and began to read. Snooky sighed and dug morosely into his scrambled eggs.

Maya looked over at him affectionately. His real name was Arthur, but from infancy he had been nicknamed, for some obscure reason, Snooky. He had shown up at her house two weeks earlier, with a piece of battered luggage, a toothbrush in a brown paper bag and, he claimed, a heart recently broken in two by a siren from California named Deirdre Maxwell. They had been serious—quite serious, he said emphatically—when he came home one day to find that she had removed all her possessions from the apartment and left him for her medieval history professor at UCLA. The professor was a man in his late fifties with graying hair and, Snooky reported, a terrible paunch. Snooky was devastated; he had given up the apartment,
boarded a plane to New York City, and appeared without warning on Maya’s front step. One look at his face and she had taken him in without any questions.

Bernard, however, said he had a question.

“When is he going to leave?”

“Bernard,” said Maya. “Please.”

Bernard shrugged and turned away. He was used to Snooky’s visits by now; they had occurred with a monotonous regularity ever since Snooky had turned twenty-one, come into his inheritance, and graduated from college. “A triple threat,” his older brother William had said morosely at the time. “Rich, of legal age, and loosed upon the world to create havoc and destruction. We’ve created a monster, Maya. Do you understand what I’m saying? A monster of sloth and ingratitude.”

William had raised the two of them after their parents had died in an accident. Maya was only twelve years old at the time and William, who was ten years older and well on his way to a successful career in corporate law, had taken care of them. In his considered opinion, Maya had turned out well: she had a job writing on various science topics for a small magazine called
The Animal World
, she was married and hardworking and respectable, she spent her money on sensible investments like a house. Snooky, on the other hand, was, in his older brother’s eyes at least, a menace to freedom-loving individuals everywhere. He did not believe in working for a living, and he did not seem to want to settle in any one place. He thanked William politely for his part of the inheritance and then took off, traveling around the country, living here and there, depending on his whims. William felt as if he had inadvertently, due to some unlucky stroke of fate, raised the Antichrist to maturity. He spoke about Snooky as if he were dead.

“He was such a nice little kid,” he would say reminiscently, tears in his eyes, “such a nice little kid. So
good
, Maya. So hardworking.”

“I hate to break this to you, William, but Snooky was never hardworking.”

“At least … at least he pretended, Maya. Do you know what I’m saying? At least he made an effort.”

After his final exams and college graduation, it was difficult to discern what effort, if any, Snooky made about anything at all. He roamed across the country at will, avoiding only the small area of southern California where William and his shrewish wife Emily lived. Occasionally, if he felt William was living too well or getting too happy, he would pay them a visit, always calling well ahead of time and announcing in advance when he would depart. This was in sharp contrast to his sudden and unexpected ports of call in the small town of Ridgewood, Connecticut. Ridgewood was a beautiful little town with a New England flavor to it; it had a quiet Main Street lined with shops, surrounded by miles of winding lanes with tree-shaded houses, rolling hills and large blue lakes. Maya and Bernard had renovated a sprawling Victorian house on a narrow lane bordered with willow trees. The house was white with blue trim, had three floors and an attic, and was comfortable and cosy, filled with plants and antiques. Snooky had claimed the little bedroom on the third floor in the back for his own. He used the room for his prolonged visits, and sometimes, as in this case, for emotional recuperation.

“When I’m done eating, I’m going to give Bella a call,” he said now. “Find out what’s up. She’s never actually stood me up before.”

“Okay,” said Maya. “Where’s the paper? I want to do
the puzzle. Hmmmm. Hey, Snookers. A Chinese domestic bovine. Four letters.”

Snooky was staring vaguely out the window. “Zebu, Maya. Z-E-B-U.”

“Good. How about ten across—an Estonian island. Seven letters.”

“Hiiumaa. H-I-I-U-M-A-A.”

“That fits. How about a trumpeter’s cloak, Middle Ages? Six letters, starts with a T.”

Snooky was still staring out the window, his thoughts elsewhere. “Tabard. Come on, Maya, you should know that. T-A-B-A-R-D.”

“I hate this,” said Bernard.

“It’s a gift, Bernard,” said his wife. “Fourteen down. Neat and tidy, five letters, blank A blank T blank.”

“Natty,” Snooky said dreamily. Bernard pushed his chair back with a loud squeak and left the room.

“Oh, don’t go, Bernard,” called Maya. “We’ll stop if you want. Oh, well. Let’s see here. How about an ancient Etrurian city, four letters?”

A little while later Snooky finished up his meal and went to the kitchen phone. He dialed rapidly. “Hello, this is Snooky Randolph calling. Is Bella there, please?”

Maya, still seated at the table, could hear the sound of a woman’s high-pitched voice on the phone.

“I’m a friend of hers,” Snooky said. “I was supposed to meet her in the city last night. Why? What’s wrong?”

There was a pause. Snooky slumped suddenly against the doorjamb.

“I see … yes … yes … I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry. Yes. I’ll … I’ll call again.”

He hung up and turned to Maya, who was horrified to see his eyes filling with tears. His face was even paler than usual. He looked like a small animal that had just been hit.

“She’s dead, Maya—dead!
Murdered on her way out the door!
”

She went up to him and put her arms around him.

“I’m sorry, Snookers,” she said. “I’m so sorry!”

Two elderly women stood talking in the kitchen of the Whitaker mansion, a large Georgian redbrick house with white pillars.

“
Murdered
,” said the first one. She was tall and thin with a wizened little face. She spoke with a certain melancholy satisfaction. “Murdered, here, in this very house. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“Shut up, MacGregor,” said her companion, without
heat. She was a short squat woman who formed what appeared to be a perfect cube: all hard angles and edges. She had white hair pulled back into a tight bun. She was drying the dishes as MacGregor was washing them.

MacGregor apparently did not have the slightest intention of shutting up. “Strangled,” she went on with relish. “Who would’ve believed it?”

“Shut
up
, I’m telling you, MacGregor.”

“Police everywhere, swarming all over the house like—like insects. I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“MacGregor, I’m telling you to shut up. Do you hear me? Don’t you go shooting your mouth off to the police, either. You’re just hoping for a chance to talk to them, even though you don’t know a thing about it, aren’t you? Now, close that rattling mouth of yours and go ahead with what you’re supposed to be doing, which is the dishes. And for heaven’s sake, stop splashing that water everywhere, you’re getting me wet. And no more talk about my poor niece Bella. It’s none of your business, you understand?”

“Yes, Miss Pinsky,” MacGregor responded meekly. “Whoops! Watch that water!”

Detective Paul Janovy looked around him with a dissatisfied air. He was standing in the luxuriously furnished living room of the Whitaker mansion. Janovy was a tall, fair-haired man with a broad, rather coarse face and a normally cheerful disposition. At the present moment, however, he was unhappy. One of Ridgewood’s leading citizens had been murdered and so far he had not the slightest clue as to who had done it.

He said, “Fish?”

His subordinate, Detective Martin Fish, materialized at his side. Janovy’s eyes dwelt on him with approval.
Martin Fish was an excellent second-in-command, a careful and reliable detective who happened to have been cursed with a marked resemblance to his own name. He was tall and thin, with a long sad face, large bulging eyes and a round mouth habitually pursed in thought. He looked, thought Janovy with affection, exactly like a flounder. When he was thinking hard he would open and close his mouth as if flapping his vestigial gills.

Now he flapped his mouth several times before saying, in a querulous tone, “Sir?”

“Fish, let’s go over it one more time.”

Fish nodded and said: “Bella Whitaker was found by her son, Albert Whitaker, when he arrived home last night at approximately twelve-thirty
A.M
. The deceased was lying, fully dressed in black evening clothes, on the floor of the front hallway near the door. She had been strangled with a narrow cord which lay on the floor nearby. We did a complete search of the house. Nothing was missing except the deceased’s left earring, which could not be found.” Fish paused. He was much too fond of the word “deceased,” thought Janovy in irritation. He would have to mention it to him.

“What did your men find? Had any of the doors or windows been tampered with?”

It was a cold night, replied Fish, and the windows were all locked from the inside. So was the back door. Albert Whitaker had stated that the front door was locked, as usual, when he came home. Fish’s men confirmed that the lock had not been tampered with.

Janovy nodded. So the murderer, whoever it was, had a key to the house. Either that, or was well enough known by Mrs. Whitaker to be allowed in. “What did the medical examiner say?”

Fish consulted the report. “Death by strangulation,
between seven-thirty and nine o’clock
P.M
. No signs that the deceased put up much of a fight. She must have been taken by surprise.”

I’ll really have to talk to him about this “deceased” business
, Janovy thought irritably. Aloud he said, “I imagine death by strangulation is nearly always a surprise. All right, Fish. Please tell Albert Whitaker I’d like to see him now.”

Fish ushered in a big, hulking giant of a man, who crossed to where Janovy was standing, shook hands affably, looked around vaguely as if trying to figure out where he was, sat down on the opposite sofa, and knocked over a small brass table lamp. Albert Whitaker muttered, “ ’Scuse me,” righted the lamp, wiped his hands hastily on his trouser legs, ran a hand agitatedly through his thick fair hair, looked around, dropped his wire-rimmed glasses, and spent a minute or two fumbling for them on the sofa. Finally he put the glasses on with a certain dignity, sat up, and said, “Yes. How can I help you, Detective?”

Detective Janovy had watched all this with curiosity and interest. Naturally Albert Whitaker was his primary suspect—he had found the body, after all—and the man certainly had the strength necessary to strangle his mother. Not, Janovy reminded himself, that it would have taken much strength to overcome Bella Whitaker, who was, after all, nearly seventy years old. But now, upon first acquaintance, it seemed somewhat unlikely that Albert Whitaker would murder anyone. He didn’t seem coordinated enough, for one thing. And there was a gentleness in his face that seemed at odds with the idea of violent death.

“Mr. Whitaker, please believe that we’re very sorry to have to trouble you at such a time.”