Going Out in Style (7 page)

“Did she mention to you having to see anyone before she left for New York?”

“Oh, no. She sounded great, said she was looking forward to seeing me. Everything sounded perfectly normal. I think if she had known somebody would be coming by on Friday she would have mentioned it to me. You know, I’ve been thinking about it, Detective, and I’m quite sure she didn’t have the slightest idea that someone was planning to kill her.”

Yes
, thought Janovy. From what he had seen and heard so far, he thought that was absolutely true.

In the kitchen, a big country-style room with plants along the windowsill and copper pots hanging from the ceiling, Maya was chopping vegetables and Bernard had been set to tending the soup. He stirred and she chopped in silence. At last he said mournfully:

“The law, Maya.”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“You can go for years without policemen showing up at your door, and then all at once, one day, there they are.”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“Upsetting, isn’t it?”

“Yes. How’s the soup?”

“Under control.”

“Good.”

Silence.

“How’s the new book going?” asked Maya.

“Not very well.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. I’m having a little trouble concentrating.”

Bernard’s book featured his newest creation, a large dandified white rat named Mr. Whiskers. So far Mr. Whiskers had spent most of his time pirouetting rather foolishly in front of the mirror, instead of getting into exciting scrapes.

Bernard pulled at his beard and frowned. “The damned creature seems to be a narcissist. I can’t get him away from the mirror.”

“Really? What a shame. Do you think there’s anything Freudian about that, darling? Do you think you’re a narcissist?”

“No,” said Bernard. “I’m an anthropophobe. I’m not in love with myself, I just hate other people.”

“Oh.”

Silence.

“Listen to me, sweetheart,” Maya said a little while later. She was chopping tomatoes into a pan. “I don’t want you involved in this business with Snooky.”

“I don’t intend to get involved.”

“I know you, Bernard. You’re thinking about it instead of your work, and you’re going to get yourself all upset over nothing.”

“I will not,” Bernard said with dignity. “I couldn’t care less if all of Snooky’s friends get it into their heads to kill each other off simultaneously. Maybe he’ll come visit us less if everyone he knows around here is dead. What do you think?”

“I think you should drop it.”

“Okay.”

“You’ve got enough on your mind with Mr. Whiskers, don’t you?”

“Mr. Whiskers can go to hell.”

Maya raised an eyebrow. “That bad, huh?”

“Never write about rodents, Maya. Remember that. Never write about rodents.”

“Thank you, sweetheart. I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

The funeral was held on a bright, clear, sunny day. Most of the residents of Ridgewood came to the church service. Mrs. Whitaker had been a favored citizen of the town; most people knew of her if they did not actually know her personally. There was a long, seemingly interminable sermon, the organist played a sad hymn, and everyone wept. Jessie enjoyed herself thoroughly.

“So
nice
to have a good long cry,” she said, burying her face in the folds of a huge white handkerchief. “So
nice
 … don’t you agree, Gretch?”

“Hush, dear.”

Afterwards the family and a small group of friends went out to the cemetery to see Bella Whitaker laid to rest, then back to the house for a quiet reception. Great-aunt Etta smiled grimly as Snooky came up to her and kissed one wrinkled cheek.

“So you’re back in town for a while, are you, boy? Don’t approve of the way you flit around from place to place. Unhealthy, that’s what it is. You should stay in one place, marry and settle down. You can afford that, can’t you?”

“Pardon me, Aunt Etta. For a moment I thought my older brother William was in the room. Strange acoustics in here.”

“Oh, well, the young never listen to the old,” she said philosophically. “No, no, they never listen.”

Susan Whitaker came up and gave Snooky a kiss. Her eyes were swollen and red, but she still managed to glow with a kind of animal cheerfulness and vitality. She was dressed in black velvet, with a simple strand of pearls. Her hair was twisted back into an elaborate knot at the nape of her neck. “Snooky, how wonderful to see you. Even at this awful time. Has Aunt Etta been picking on you?”

“The old always pick on the young,” grated Aunt Etta. “It’s their only interest in life.”

“I want you to come and say hello to Albert,” Susan said, taking Snooky’s arm. As she pulled him through the crowd, the musicians in the corner began picking their way with obvious trepidation through the Dvorak Piano Quintet. George Drexler, the leader, was playing with intense concentration and beating time in the air with his viola. Occasionally he could be heard saying in a loud, hoarse whisper, “Bar sixty-four! Bar sixty-four!” as one member or another of his little group lost their place. His large mournful eyes were half closed in ecstasy.

“Just look at him,” Susan said with loving exasperation. “You haven’t met George yet, have you, Snooky? The man lives for his music. I’ve never seen anything like it. I asked him to bring some friends and play for the reception, and he has to go and pick something none of them has ever tried before. The only saving grace, thank God, is that nobody is listening. Albert, say hello, will you?”

Albert was standing with Gretchen by the buffet table. He was looking pale and distraught. Snooky shook his hand and said, “Albert, I’m so sorry. Really. Sorrier than I can say.”

“Thank you, Snooky. Have you met my friend Gretchen?”

As Snooky and Gretchen shook hands, George could
be heard saying in a loud whisper, “Bar ninety-three! Bar ninety-three!”

Meanwhile, Great-aunt Etta had not been idle. She had taken a firm grip on Bernard’s arm, effectively preventing him from bolting, and was now saying in an aggrieved tone,

“Don’t like it one bit. Not one bit. I don’t like having strangers all over this place—why, it’s like my own house. No, I don’t like it.”

“I can understand that,” said Bernard with feeling. There was not much in this world that he disliked more than having a horde of strangers descend upon his house.

“You can, eh? You can? That’s interesting. That’s extremely interesting,” she said in a tone which implied that it most definitely was not. “What did you say your name was again?”

Bernard repeated his name and found his hand crushed in a strong manlike grip.

“I like you,” she said with a wintry smile. “I like the cut of your gib, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m flattered,” said Bernard.

“Although I don’t suppose you youngsters use expressions like that anymore, do you? No, no. It’s only old folk like me who still talk that way.”

She leered up at him in a strangely provocative manner.

“You remind me of my husband,” she announced. “That’s why I’ve taken to you. That’s why it is. My poor husband Vinnie. He’s been dead, oh, more than ten years now. Would you like to know how he died?”

Bernard replied without hesitation that he would love to know.

“His head was crushed underneath a tractor,” she said, with what seemed to be an undue amount of triumph. She let out a cackle. “Crushed underneath a tractor.”

Bernard asked how such a bizarre accident might have taken place, and Etta expounded at length. “We were traveling, you know, in farm country in the south of France, and we were being shown around a working farm on a kind of tour, and Vinnie, who
always
had to stick his nose into everything, got down on his hands and knees while we were all away in the house and …”

The afternoon passed quickly. After a few hours the reception began to empty out. Bernard, his head spinning with details of Vinnie’s unfortunate accident, plus details of Etta and Vinnie’s travels all over the world in the happy early years of their marriage, was released from Etta’s viselike grip with a stern admonition to come back sometime and see her soon.

“I like you, young man, and that’s saying a lot,” she said with icy satisfaction. “That’s saying a lot.”

Bernard liked her too, although he reflected that he could begin to understand why the luckless Vinnie, after thirty-five years of marriage, had gone and stuck his head under a tractor. Great-aunt Etta was a good talker. Anyone married to her would not lead a peaceful life.

On the way home in the car, Maya looked at him with a smile. “Quite the debonair man-about-town, aren’t you, Bernard? Picking up eighty-year-old women at their relatives’ funerals?”

“Wait, Maya. Wait till you hear this. I have an extremely touching story to tell you.”

Dora and Phil Kelly, with Pumpkin in tow, arrived home after the funeral reception to find Detective Janovy waiting patiently on their front step. Dora let out an earsplitting shriek.

“It’s the police, Phil—run for your life! Quick, take the
baby and make a break for it! You reach the trees and I’ll delay him here!”

Detective Janovy remarked that he didn’t think that was very funny.

“It’s not, doll-face, you’re right,” Dora said, unlocking the door and motioning him inside. “What can we do for you today?”

Janovy said he’d like to have a few words with Mr. Kelly. Dora let out another shriek. “All right, doll-face, but don’t work him over too hard, okay? Phil is a sucker for torture, he won’t last a minute, will you, Phil? And Phil, you remember that story I told you to tell him, okay?—about where I was the night Mrs. Whitaker was killed?”

Janovy decided that he really did
not
like Dora Kelly.

“Pumpkin and I will be in the next room,” she said, waving them into the living room. “You know what I’m saying, Phil. We’ll be listening in on those wiretaps I just had installed.”

Janovy sat down and took a good look at Dora Kelly’s husband. Phil Kelly was a big muscle-bound guy with short blond hair and handsome clean-cut looks. He was wearing a suit and tie, but now he took off his jacket with a sigh of relief. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and said politely, “Yessir?”

“Mr. Kelly, could you please tell me where your wife was last Friday night?”

“She was over at Susie Whitaker’s.”

“Are you sure of that?”

Phil Kelly shrugged. “Course I’m sure. Where else would she be? Those two women are together all the time, yacking, yacking, yacking. Can’t get a word in edgewise. Yeah, she took Pooh and the two of them went over there
for a couple of hours. I remember because she was so late getting back.”

“Can you tell me what time she left here and returned?”

“No problem.” Phil rummaged around in a big pile of newspapers and came up with a
TV Guide
. “Last Friday, right? Let me see. Yeah, that’s right. She left in the middle of
Gilligan’s Island
and came back at the beginning of
Wheel of Fortune
. That would make it six forty-five to a little after ten. I tell you, those two girls can talk your ear off. Never seen anything like it.”

Janovy gave up. “Thank you very much, Mr. Kelly.”

“No problem.”

As he left, Dora Kelly came to the door. “So long, doll-face. Did you get what you wanted? Did you have to pull his toenails out? Oh, Phil, you big slob, you told him everything, didn’t you? Bye-bye now! Pumpkin, wave bye-bye to the nice policeman!”

“All right, Fish, let’s have it,” said Detective Janovy.

The two of them were sitting in his small cramped office. Fish closed his eyes, propped his chin against his steepled fingers as if praying, and said, “I talked to the waiters and waitresses at the Golden Eagle. Three of them remember seeing Albert Whitaker and Gretchen Schneider there last Friday night. They said the two of them are regulars there. Of course, who isn’t?”

Janovy nodded. Everyone in Ridgewood was a regular at the Golden Eagle.

“The guard at the art gallery, Happy Dreams, doesn’t know the two of them and didn’t recognize them when I showed him photographs, but he’s new in town and that doesn’t mean much. He said the gallery was overflowing on Friday night because of the opening of the show, and there were too many people for him to remember. The bartender at The Painted Man said the two of them come in every Friday night for a drink. As far as he remembers, last weekend was no exception.”

Janovy nodded. It didn’t matter about the bar, anyway;
the critical times were seven-thirty to nine o’clock. “In other words, Whitaker’s story checks out; but except for Dr. Schneider’s word, he has no real alibi for the time his mother was killed, when they say they were at the art gallery.”

“No, sir. No alibi.” Fish coughed delicately. “And neither does she.”

“That’s right. What else, Fish?”

“Susan Whitaker placed a call to her friend Dora Kelly’s house at six-thirty that evening. The call lasted three minutes. She could have been inviting her over, or—”

“Or not.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No way of knowing.”

“No, sir.”

Fish waited respectfully while Jonovy pondered this.

“What else, Fish?”