Heart of Stone (42 page)

Or maybe she was smart enough to deny that she'd known the dead man at all.

“Then you don't remember meeting Karl Merkleson seven years ago either?” I asked her.

“No. Why do you ask?”

“I'm trying to establish some kind of connection between Karl Merkleson and Jerry Kaufman.”

“That's the boy who fell off the cliffs with Karl,” said Nelson.

“You knew Jerry?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Never met him. But I read about the whole thing in the weekly
Pennysaver
. And the entire village is talking about it. Heard it on the radio, too.”

“And you, Lucia?”

She pushed out her full lips in a pout. “No, I didn't know him,” she said.

“Didn't you?” I asked as naively as I could manage. “I thought you and he performed together in the Prospector Lake Chamber Players concert a couple of weeks ago. I saw the flyers.”

Lucia Blanchard knitted her brow, as if trying to remember where she'd left something long ago. Her virginity, perhaps. Then she grabbed the beach towel from the chair next to her. She draped it over her nudity. At least the burlesque show was over. She smiled up at me.

“Yes, of course I'd met him,” she said, chuckling as if to brush aside a misunderstanding. “I saw him a few times for rehearsals. But we weren't exactly chums. He was just a boy, after all.”

“Do you like opera, Lucia?” I asked, throwing her for a loop.

“What?”

“You're a classically trained musician,” I explained. “You must know a good deal about opera.”

“Of course she does,” said Nelson.

I sensed he was trying to make nice but only just beginning to understand that my intentions might not be as friendly as he'd thought.

“What are you driving at, Ellie?” she asked, still making attempts to smile, though obviously ill at ease with my questions.

“Don't you just love Puccini?” No answer. “My favorite Puccini opera is
La Bohème
. What about yours?”

“What's this all about?” asked Nelson.

I ignored him and took a step closer to Lucia. “I know that Jerry Kaufman had a girlfriend earlier this month. An older girlfriend named Mimi.”

Lucia began wrapping herself in the towel. She knotted it above her left breast and stood. “I don't know anything about that,” she said.

“This older woman seduced him. Took him to motels.”

“You're not suggesting that I was that woman, are you?” she asked. “That's absurd. And my name is not Mimi.”

Nelson Blanchard grabbed me by the elbow, and I wrenched myself free.

“But you are Mimi,” I said. “And I'm going to inform the chief of police as soon as he gets back from Elizabethtown.”

“I didn't seduce that boy,” she said, her eyes laughing at me. “Go ahead and tell the police whatever you want.”

“I have proof that you took a room at the Lakeside Motel on August sixth. And you took Jerry Kaufman there. I know it.”

“How can you accuse her of that?” demanded Nelson. “You said the woman's name was Mimi. How can Lucia be Mimi?”

I looked to his wife. “You know so much about opera,” I said. “Do you want to tell him, or shall I?”

Lucia looked down. I'd made the first dent in her veneer. I had her, I thought. Now impatient and annoyed with the discussion, she explained it to her husband as would a child forced to make a confession.

“She's referring to that famous aria in
La Bohème
. The character Mimi explains that her true name is . . .” She paused to glare at me. Her eyes weren't laughing now. “Her true name is Lucia.”

Nelson looked puzzled. “You met this boy for sex?” he asked, betrayed, humiliated, and angry all at once. Or so it seemed. “Without me?”

They both laughed. They made a good team.

“I wanted to invite you,
mi amor
,” she said to her husband. “But you know how selfish I am about my teenaged boys.”

They laughed some more, but I sensed it was an act they'd rehearsed and planned for years. How better to deflect suspicion than with a good-natured belly laugh? No one would believe she'd cuckolded him with a young man if he dismissed it as a joke.

At length the Blanchards' mirth dwindled to intermittent sniggering and eye wiping.

“Where were you last Saturday at noon?” I asked.

“Last Saturday? I don't know where we were,” said Lucia.

“
Querida
, we were right here in the backyard,” said Nelson. “Don't you remember? You held a luncheon meeting of the Prospector Lake Chamber Players.”

“Of course. Now I remember. We had egg-salad sandwiches and ginger ale.”

“Lionel Somers and his wife were here and can corroborate that,” added Nelson. “And Beatrice Eberle, the Chamber Players chairwoman, too.”

“In fact, even Miriam Abramowitz was here,” said Lucia. “But she was a little late.”

We stood there in their backyard at an impasse. While I searched for a way to break their story, they locked eyes. Like longtime bridge partners, they enjoyed a silent communication, a channel of understanding open only to them. And they were expert cheaters with secret signals to reveal what cards they were holding. I watched for clues in their eyes, their mouths, their noses. But their faces were blank. They were communicating to each other, I was sure. But I didn't speak their language.

Finally they exchanged a subtle nod and turned to me. Composed and united, their laughing routine over, they assumed serious expressions.

“My husband and I are modern thinkers,” said Lucia. “For us, jealousy has no place in love. We understand and support each other perfectly. But I did not seduce that boy.”

I had one last ace in my hand, and now was the time to play it. “Then tell me and your husband exactly who you were seducing at the Lakeside Motel on August sixth.”

But Lucia Blanchard was a better bridge player than I. She retrieved her sunglasses from the table and slipped them on, obscuring her eyes once again. Then she produced a trump.

“My husband knows all about it,” she said, her voice oozing wicked delight. “I was with Isaac Eisenstadt.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I drove back to Cedar Haven, my head in a fog. In the space of a week, I had fallen hard for a man, allowed myself to dream of a love affair greater than any I'd ever experienced, then discovered he had bedded half the women on the Eastern Seaboard. I was no prude, but this man was testing my patience and my better instincts. Isaac had slept with, in order, Miriam Abramowitz, wife of one of his oldest and dearest friends; Gayle Morton, also wife of one of his oldest and dearest friends; and Audrey Silber, cousin of one of his oldest and dearest friends. Then, if the wife-swappers were to be believed, he'd helped himself to Lucia Blanchard's charms two weeks before he'd had his way with me. It seemed no woman in Prospector Lake was immune to his magnetism. I wondered if he'd also bedded Ingve Enquist, the baker, and Mrs. Edmunds from the market. And I knew he'd lusted after my aunt Lena.

The thought made me laugh despite myself and brought me back to sanity. I had a doubt. If Lucia Blanchard was Mimi, she had seduced young Jerry Kaufman at the Lakeside Motel. Would she also have had the energy and inclination to give Isaac a roll as well? Perhaps. She was some kind of nymphomaniac, after all. But there were holes in her story, I thought as I pulled into Cedar Haven. And I believed she'd made it all up to get under my skin.

What did it matter anyway? I hadn't even met Isaac at that time. But the idea, the accumulation of undesirable partners, gave me pause. It made me feel like the lobster thermidor that's just discovered that the diner who's about to consume me ate a hot dog for an appetizer.

By the time I'd dragged my sorry carcass into my little cabin, it was four. I threw myself on the bed and set my mind to the task at hand. I had to crack the Blanchards' united front and force her to admit to her illicit affair with Jerry Kaufman. I was fairly certain she also had a notch on her bedpost for Karl Merkleson, but I knew of no witnesses who'd seen her with either of the victims. She'd been careful, covering her tracks and fooling even her husband. I racked my brain, visualizing the village from end to end, looking for a hook that might have snagged her. My thoughts circled 'round and 'round, always coming home to roost at Tom's Lakeside Motel. Had Tom Waller perhaps noticed a teenaged boy in the company of the village's most notorious siren on or around August 6? Wouldn't he have told someone? I intended to ask him.

And once I'd obtained an admission from Lucia Blanchard, I wondered how I would figure out what roles she and her randy husband had played in the deaths of two of her sexual conquests.

The rumble of distant thunder caught my ear. The beautiful August day was going to end with lightning storms, it seemed.

I pushed the weather to one side and thought about the Blanchards. As I did, my eyes grew heavy, and I soon drifted off into a deep slumber. I didn't wake until nearly seven. Feeling hot and wooly-headed, I slipped into the shower behind my cabin. The cold water did me good, bracing my skin and chasing away the last traces of my drowsiness. As I buttoned my sundress, I wondered if Tiny Terwilliger had returned to town and sprung Simon. That was perhaps too much to hope, but I was confident my new information and Bill Hoch's skill would convince the chief that Simon's confession was bogus. I brushed my wet hair into submission and tied it back with an elastic and a hairband. Now it was time to find my pal, Tiny.

Before setting out, I stopped by the main cabin to see if Aunt Lena and Max had, by any chance, left me a cracker or two. The sky was dark with thunderheads, but still no rain. I unlocked the door and pushed it open, discovering an envelope on the floor. Someone had dropped it through the mail slot. I sat at the kitchen table, stuffed a couple of green olives into my mouth, and tore open the envelope. It was from Esther Merkleson. The autopsy report.

Dear Eleonora,

Please read this report and contact me tomorrow. I am staying at the Sans Souci Cabins.

Yours truly,

Esther Merkleson

The pages consisted of a case report, a diagram of the body with injuries noted, and a narrative of the observations and conclusions of the examiner.

The case report gave the details of the deceased: height, weight, and cause of death, which was listed as internal injuries. In the space reserved for time of death, the pathologist had written “Saturday, August 19. Time unknown.”

The diagram of the body showed a generic line drawing of the front and back views of a male figure. The examiner had shaded the right side of the torso with dark pencil and labeled it “livor mortis visible.” The pathologist had also scribbled abrasions on the right side of the face and arm. He had noted fractures of the frontal, zygomatic, sphenoid, and mandible, all on the right side.

On the left side of the body, the doctor had circled the lateral rib cage and written “blunt force injuries, broken ribs, internal bleeding, ruptured spleen.” Also noted were the broken ilium and hip, and at the very end “evidence of livor mortis.”

The typewritten narrative provided the most interesting reading.

OBSERVATIONS:

The deceased is a white male in his mid-thirties. Health and condition appear to be excellent. Death was caused by internal bleeding and lacerations, resulting from massive blunt-force trauma to the left side of the torso. Observed intra-abdominal hemorrhage, hemothorax, and rupture of the spleen of sufficient severity to cause death. Other injuries contributing to death include fractures of the left anterior lateral ribs four through nine, the left ilium, and left greater trochanter. Presence of subcutaneous glass fragments discovered on left side.

Additional injuries observed: multiple contusions and abrasions on right side of face, arm, and torso, externally and internally, consistent with a fall from a great height. Fractured greater tubercle, clavicle, and two ribs. No internal bleeding observed on right side, indicating that these fractures occurred post-mortem.

Examination revealed the presence of lividity on the right side of the body, from the upper thorax to the thighs and, to a lesser degree, on the left side.

TIME OF DEATH:

Witnesses reported seeing the victim fall from a height of approximately seventy-five feet at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 19, 1961. No evidence found to contradict the time of the fall.

CONCLUSIONS:

Death was caused by a blunt-force injury to the left side of the body. Postmortem injuries and presence of lividity on the right and left sides indicate conclusively that the body was moved after death. While I am unable to determine if death was accidental or inflicted by another party, it is evident that death occurred elsewhere other than the site where the body was found, unless the body fell twice from the top of the cliff, hours apart.