Heart of Stone (41 page)

“Don't tell me you didn't know he was here on the lake, because we don't have time for games. Not if we want to get Simon out of here before he does something foolish like sign a confession of murder or manslaughter.”

“Yes, I knew he was here,” she hissed. “He wrote to me to tell me. He told me he loved me. He told me he hated his wife. And I told him it was too little too late. I did not sleep with him. I set him up in that shelter near Arcadia because I hoped he'd come to his senses and rejoin his friends.”

“Why should I believe you?” I asked. “You were in love with Karl. He broke your heart and left you waiting. For years.”

“I did love him,” she said. “Once. And I did hunt him down in Los Angeles. It was stupid of me, I know now. I was obsessed with him. It nearly broke up my marriage to Simon. But that's buried in the past. I told you that I love Simon dearly. He's dying, and I would not betray him now when he needs me most.”

She turned to face the opposite wall. I could see her shoulders rise and fall with her heated respiration. But at length, she calmed.

“I know people think I'm cold,” she said. “And odd. I can't help that. But I do not fornicate with teenaged boys.”

I circled around to see her face. It was flat, expressionless, unless you considered paralysis an expression. I tried to engage her, attract her attention to me. Finally I crouched before her and caught her eye.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Trying to see if you're telling the truth. Liars often look away as they proclaim their innocence.”

“I don't sleep with teenaged boys,” she repeated. “And I didn't sleep with Jerrold What's-His-Name.”

“Kaufman,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“That poor boy had a name,” I said, staring deep into her brown eyes.

“I swear I never spent a moment alone with him,” she said, returning my gaze. “And I never spoke to him except to say hello, good-bye, and you're flat.”

I must have looked confused, because she explained.

“A violin doesn't have frets. He played well, but he was prone to be flat. Sorry; I have perfect pitch.”

“I believe you,” I said, standing up.

“Thanks, but I can prove my perfect pitch if you're being sarcastic.”

“No. I meant I believe that you didn't seduce Jerry Kaufman.”

She cocked her head as a dog might do when confused. “You believe me now? After blackening my name? Why?”

“Because you didn't know Jerry's family name. Only a monster could make love to a boy and not remember his name. And I don't think you're a monster.”

“Just a whore,” she said. “Thanks.”

I ignored her and began to pace the room. She asked what I was doing.

“If you're not Mimi,” I began, “then who is?”

“I have no idea. I barely knew the kid.”

Mimi, I thought.

We fell silent for a moment, and I heard Cousin Max singing slightly off-key, “
Mi chiamano Mimi.
”

And all at once, the fog cleared. The answer had been there all along, but I had missed the clue. I felt that revelatory crawl of my skin. Over my shoulders and up my neck.

“I know who Mimi is,” I whispered.

The answer had been so maddeningly close. Max had, in fact, prompted me for it the night before, but I'd been too tired and full of self-pity to indulge him.

“I confess that I only know the first line,” he had said, referring to the Puccini aria. “Ellie, my dear, surely you know the whole thing. What comes next?”

I indeed knew the whole thing. One of the most famous and best-known arias in the Romantic operatic canon: “
Mi chiamano Mimi
” (“They call me Mimi”). What came next, to answer dear, befuddled Max's question, was,
Ma il mio nome è Lucia
(“But my name is Lucia”).

Lucia Blanchard, cellist and wife-swapper par excellence, was Jerry Kaufman's Mimi. She'd surely come up with the clever pet name to protect the secrecy of her immoral liaison with a sixteen-year-old boy. I imagined her giggling with young Jerry, instructing him to call her Mimi instead of her true name just before she debauched him in her car. I understood some of her motivation, of course. Just not the part about a sixteen-year-old boy. Secrets add delicious spice to an affair, heightening the naughtiness and cementing the complicity between two lovers.

The unmasking of Mimi cleared up other mysteries for me as well. For one it meant that Jerry had indeed met his older lover at Tom's Lakeside Motel after all. Only it wasn't Miriam, but Lucia, who had checked in August 6, just two hours before Isaac met Gayle Morton there.

Now the question was what to do with this information. I had to find my friend, Tiny Terwilliger, and let him know. Miriam Abramowitz was not the link between Karl Merkleson and Jerrold Kaufman. Whether Lucia Blanchard had slept with Karl, I couldn't say. But I remembered something Gayle Morton had told me about women throwing themselves at Karl. One of those she'd mentioned was a Spanish whore from the islands trying to ride her husband to a movie contract.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Isaac, Miriam, and I spent an hour and a half consulting with Bill Hoch on Simon's case. Terwilliger hadn't yet returned from the county seat, Elizabethtown. Hoch had managed to get in to see Simon, despite Bob Firth's attempts to stall him until the chief returned.

“Well, I suppose we could wait,” Hoch had said in a slow, measured tone. He pursed his lips and gazed up at the ceiling as if putting his facts in order. “Let's see.” He rubbed his chin. “Violation of due process, access to counsel . . .” He counted on his fingers, mumbling to himself but loud enough for poor Bob Firth to hear. “It will certainly invalidate any confession he might make.” He thought some more, never looking at anything but the floor and ceiling and his ten fingers. “Well, young man,” he said at length. “If that's your decision, I think we can live with that. I suppose your chief and the district attorney will understand that you meant well. When the case is dismissed, I mean.”

“I'm sure the chief would want me to let you visit your client,” said Bob Firth, who'd turned positively green.

Hoch nodded. “I thought he might.”

I left Isaac and Miriam to their own devices. They had some business to attend to for Simon's defense. I asked Bob Firth to make sure Chief Terwilliger found me as soon as he returned; then I exited the police station and folded myself into the phone booth on the corner. I flipped through the thin directory, finding what I was looking for in short order.

BLANCHARD, Nelson, MD: Pine Grove Lane, ESsex3-8745.

The house was of recent construction: a ranch-style summer home, set back from the narrow little road beneath some tall pines. A secluded love nest for the wife-swappers and their conquests. I wondered why Lucia had felt it necessary to carry on with young Jerry in motels, cars, and hunters' shelters. But then I figured maybe she didn't want to share him with Dr. Nelson. Or, more likely, Jerry Kaufman wanted nothing to do with him.

The good doctor was pruning some rose bushes in front of the house when I walked up the path. I cleared my throat to signal my presence, and he turned to look up from his kneeling position. His eyes lit up like an H-bomb. He jumped to his feet like a circus tumbler completing a somersault, doffed his gardening gloves, and fired his most lecherous smile my way.

“Ellie,” he said. “How lovely to find you in my little garden. Don't worry, I'm not a serpent.” And he leered at me.

Oh, God. Yuck.

“I'm looking for your wife,” I said. “Is she in?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. She's out back. The neighbors insisted she do her sunbathing out of sight. Something about corrupting the minds of little children. As if the human body were something to be ashamed of.” He grinned his toothy smile at me again.

“May I interrupt her?” I asked.

“Only if you're not offended by the nude form. She finds swimwear . . . er, confining.”

Oh, God.

“I'll look the other way.”

Blanchard escorted me around the house to a clearing among the trees in the back. There, on a chaise longue, flat on her stomach, her hair wrapped in a turban, lay a very bronzed and naked Lucia Blanchard.

“We have a visitor,
querida
,” said Nelson, rolling the R like a Tijuana whore.

Lucia lifted her head slowly—perhaps she'd been dozing—and turned to see who had intruded on her leisure. Her tanned buttocks flexed as she twisted. I confess that I stared for a moment because—well—she
was
stunning and quite shameless. But then I averted my gaze and admired the nearby woods instead. Lucia flipped over to side B, and I glanced back despite myself as she provided me with an unsolicited view of her . . . pulchritude. She said hello. Making no effort to cover herself, she wasn't going to make this easy.

“Ellie,” she said with her sexy little accent.

“Hello, Lucia,” I answered, willing myself to focus on her sunglasses. “I'd like to ask you a few questions about a delicate matter.”

“I have nothing to hide,” she said, punctuating her words with an open-armed gesture. My best intentions notwithstanding, I found myself staring at her tanned breasts.

“You know Simon Abramowitz,” I said. She nodded. “He's under arrest.”

Lucia shifted in her seat. Nelson gasped and grabbed me by the shoulders and asked if I was serious.

“He confessed to killing Karl Merkleson. That is, Charles Morton.”

“I can't believe it,” said Nelson. “Simon and Karl were old friends. They used to be inseparable. Why would he do it?”

“He claimed something had come between them. You told me you'd known him for a long time. Any idea what that something might have been?”

Nelson stuck out his chin, mugging ignorance.

“How about you, Lucia?” I asked. “Did you ever meet Karl Merkleson?”

She was inscrutable behind her sunglasses as she answered no.

“You did meet him once,
querida
,” said her husband. “It was your first visit here after our marriage. It must have been in fifty-four.”

“Was it? I don't remember him,” she said.

“Never saw him in Los Angeles?” I asked.

“I don't believe so,” she said. “But so many men try to talk to me. I can't keep track.”

“She was a blushing young bride,” Nelson said to me. “Just twenty-two years old. I had to beat off all the men who couldn't keep their eyes off her. Karl was one of them. And, yes,
querida
, you met him in Los Angeles. He was the film producer.”

“So many producers,
mi amor
. You shop me around like you want to sell me.”

She removed her glasses, placing them on the table beside her, and batted her eyes hard enough to create a breeze. Maybe she didn't remember Karl Merkleson, or maybe she'd known him better than her own husband knew. The Blanchards had an open marriage, enjoyed naughty games with new partners, but who knew what really went on? Nelson Blanchard was a horny old goat and maybe an unaware cuckold as well.