No Stone Unturned (22 page)

“I’m older than Jordan Shaw,” I answered, throwing cold water on his flirting.

“Yes, now I see it,” he said laconically, smile gone. “Would you like a drink?”

I ordered another Scotch. The bartender recognized me, looked back to where I had been sitting moments earlier, and raised his eyebrows. He said nothing, though, and fetched me my drink.

“Now what’s this all about, Miss Stone?”

“Excuse my candor, Dr. Jerrold, but would you mind if we skipped the I-don’t-know-what-you-want routine? What’s next, a fainting spell when I tell you Jordan Shaw is dead?”

“I knew she was dead when I came in here.”

“Who told you she was dead?”

“Please, Miss Stone. The entire Engineering Department knew she was dead inside of five minutes of your arrival. Lionel Benjamin rang me at home as soon as you left his office. He said you were asking questions about me and Mr. Nichols.”

“That’s right,” I said. “May I ask you a question now?” He nodded. “Were you romantically involved with Jordan Shaw?”

Jerrold smiled, sipped his drink, then began. “Imagine for one minute that my relationship with Miss Shaw is any of your affair,” he said, signaling to the bartender for a refill. He motioned to both our drinks, and the man raised his eyebrows again. “What makes you think I would know anything about her death? Furthermore, I assure you that Miss Shaw and I had no more than a nodding acquaintance.”

I placed the Indian snapshot before him on the bar. “Was this taken when you were nodding your acquaintance to her?” I asked.

He considered the photograph for several seconds, surely vexed by its inopportune appearance, but too suave to let on.

“Nicely played, young lady,” he said at last. “But this means nothing. I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood. We were in India together, but only by chance. There were twenty-five alumni, twelve of their spouses, and a smattering of children in our group as well. D. J. Nichols went along too, why don’t you interview him? You know the rumors about him and Miss Shaw, after all.”

Our refills arrived. Jerrold grabbed hold of the red plastic sword spearing his olives and drew it out like Excalibur from the stone.

“Garish things, these,” he said, tossing the cocktail sword into an ashtray. “I’m sorry I can’t help you, Miss Stone. You see, contrary to your suspicions, I was not trysting with this Miss Shaw. And although I feel saddened by her passing, I don’t see how I can help you with your investigation.”

Having your neck snapped and pelvis carved up didn’t exactly qualify as
passing
in my book.

“Do you know anyone named Jeffrey?” I asked.

Jerrold shook his head and downed his drink. He turned to look me in the eye. “Afraid I’ve got to run, Miss Stone. Sorry I can’t be of more help, but I barely knew Jordan Shaw.” He paused, leaned in close—almost nose to nose—and said, “I don’t want you phoning my home again.”

He gazed deep into my eyes, and, despite myself, I felt both unsettled and drawn in by his charm at the same time.

“But if you’ll give me your number,” he said, suddenly all smiles, “I’ll be happy to phone you once this has all blown over.”

“But . . .”

“The drinks are on me,” he said with a smile, and he slapped five dollars on the bar. “Good night.”

A hotel is a lonely place. A motor lodge is a depressing, lonely place. I had already met with Jerrold and spoken to my editor in New Holland. By eight fifteen, the excitement in the Minuteman Lounge had leveled off, and last call seemed not far off. I wasn’t looking forward to an evening with the Gideons Bible and the television set in my room. Knowing no one in Boston, I decided to call Bernadette, the White family housekeeper.

She had spent the afternoon talking to the police, so at least I was spared the unpleasantness of breaking the news to her. She remembered me from my phone call on Monday, and, from the sound of it, she was stunned by Ginny’s death and frightened to stay in the White’s big, empty house by herself. I asked her if I could come see her to ask a few questions. She agreed and gave me directions.

I paid my tab at the bar and dropped off my key at the front desk. On my way out the door, I spied D. J. Nichols standing behind a plastic plant near the exit. He was sweating, looking at me over his glasses as if to implore my help.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I’ve got to talk to you.” He glanced around the room. “But not here. Can we go up to your room?”

“I’m on my way to an appointment,” I said, not sure I wanted a strange man in my room. Not this strange man anyway. “Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

“No!” His eyes jumped about, and he snorted back a runny nose. “I’m afraid for my life!” He was whispering. “Please!”

I asked if he’d like to talk in the bar, but he said he didn’t drink. Reluctantly, I retrieved my key and led him to my room on the third and top floor, locking the door behind us.

“They want to frame me,” he stammered once he was seated on a chair in my room.

“Who’s they?”

“Whoever killed Jordan and Ginny. They must think I know something.”

“What do you know?”

“Nothing—I swear it!”

“Then why did you lie to me this afternoon?”

Nichols stopped panting long enough to look at me with the expression of a confused dog. “Lied to you? What do you mean?”

“You said the last time you’d seen Jordan was two weeks before Thanksgiving. Around the fifteenth.”

“That’s right,” he said, wiping his brow. “That’s the truth, I tell you.”

“One of Jordan’s neighbors identified you as the man she saw in the elevator last Tuesday, two days before the holiday.”

“Well, yes, of course. I was there all right, but I didn’t see Jordan. She wasn’t in. I had a cup of tea with Ginny.”

“Where was Jordan?”

He shrugged his shoulders, breathing easier now. “I suppose she was out with
him
.”

“Who’s
him
?”

“Didn’t you get the dirt this afternoon at the department? Surely someone told you. They’re such nasty gossips.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“Everyone knows Jordan and David were an item. Don’t tell me you didn’t hear that.”

I took a seat on the corner of the bed and considered Nichols carefully. Studying his eyes in the dim room was no easy task. I leaned forward and delivered my carefully worded answer:

“What I heard was that
you
and Jordan were an item. I asked several people about Jerrold, and they all said no one had ever heard such a rumor.”

“Then they were lying to implicate me. They’ve been together for the past year and a half. They went to India together.”

“A trip you made with them.” I added. He hadn’t expected me to know that.

“Yes, that’s true, but totally irrelevant. Jordan and I were friends, nothing more, and everyone at the department knows that.”

“Are you married?” I asked.

“Yes, why?”

“Any kids?”

“One,” he said. “A boy, Ned. Why?”

I said it didn’t matter and reminded him I had to leave. His panic returned, and he grabbed my arm, begging me to give him some useful counsel.

“Relax and take it easy,” I said simply.

“Thanks loads,” he said. “I’ll be sure to remember that if you ever need help.”

Bernadette was about thirty-five, small and round. Her skin was porcelain white, and she wore her wavy auburn hair short. The line of her lower teeth twisted a bit behind her full lips, and her pale eyes and pug nose were rimmed with red from hours of crying.

I introduced myself, though she was expecting me, and she invited me in. The clapboard house’s cold gentility made an immediate impression on me, and I could see how an outsider like Bernadette, far from home, would feel lost and afraid when left alone inside its polite walls. She took my coat and led me past the parlor and dining room to the kitchen, where she offered me a cup of coffee. I looked around the room as she busied herself at the stove. Nothing out of place, everything polished and in perfect order. The house gave me the same unsettled feeling as had Judge Shaw’s perfect home.

Bernadette, or Bernie, as she liked to be called, had last seen Ginny the previous Friday evening, around ten. Bernie was washing up the dinner dishes when the phone rang. Ginny answered and took the call in her bedroom. Bernie didn’t know who had phoned.

I asked if Ginny had seemed nervous at all, but Bernie said she was the same as always: spirited, worried about her approaching exams, but happy. Ginny had lots of male admirers, but Bernie couldn’t give me any names. I asked her about Ginny’s roommate, but she had never met Jordan.

We pored over Ginny’s habits for two hours, from the most insignificant everyday routines to where she had vacationed in the past two years: Palm Beach, Los Angeles, and Bermuda, all with her parents. Ginny used Johnson & Johnson swabs and cotton balls, Gleem toothpaste, and Listerine mouthwash. She washed with Lux soap, shampooed with Breck, powdered with a variety of talcs, and wore Emeraude spray mist. She liked books, music, and horses, and she owned her own car: a red-and-white Buick Century, which she kept in the lot behind her Back Bay apartment. Ginny was studying English literature at Tufts.

I asked if the police had contacted Ginny’s parents in Florida, and Bernie said they were returning home on the first flight in the morning with Ginny’s eleven-year-old sister, Nora. Ginny hadn’t accompanied them this time because of a busy schedule at school, studying for upcoming finals, and working long hours in the library stacks.

I thought about Virginia White and Jordan Shaw. Two young women of privilege, coming of age in an atmosphere free of parental supervision, answering to no one but themselves: atypical of girls of their age and generation. Were they wrong to live the way they did? To invite grown men in until all hours for “intimate gatherings”? Who was I to judge them? I could give lessons.

Other questions consumed me. Why had they been murdered, both of them, a state apart? According to Doc Peruso, Jordan was killed late Friday night. I figured Ginny died sometime Saturday afternoon or evening upon her return from the Thanksgiving holiday. It seemed her killer had been waiting for her. Or maybe she had surprised him rummaging through Jordan’s belongings? Had her assailant stolen anything? If so, what? Was Ginny killed as an afterthought, by accident, or for the same obscure reasons as Jordan? Had they both known their killer? I was certain that, at the very least, Jordan had known hers. Ginny may have been the unlucky friend, a remainder in the equation, but my gut feeling told me it was her close relationship with Jordan that had marked her for death. She knew her murderer all right.

I asked Bernie if I could have a look at Ginny’s room. She agreed on the condition that I not disturb anything.

The room was neat, cleaned by Bernie herself after the police had pawed through every corner that afternoon. It was a bedroom typical of a teenage girl, I supposed, though I was sure Ginny had outgrown the stuffed tiger on the bed and the teen-magazine cutouts plastered on the walls. This was the world of a thirteen-year-old Virginia White, before she’d shipped out to Dana Hall, then Tufts. I paused to admire the lovingly prepared collages of Tab Hunter and Montgomery Clift memorabilia under glass on her desk. Nearly all the artifacts were datable to the early- to mid-1950s, with few exceptions. One caught my eye from across the room. Above her desk, pinned to a barren bulletin board, a colorful postcard and an airmail envelope stood out. I crossed the room and plucked them from the board.

The letter was addressed to Ginny, written in a neat hand, with colorful Indian stamps on it. I put that aside and examined the postcard.

“What is that?” asked Bernie, joining me at the desk.

“That’s the Taj Mahal,” I said, showing her the card. Then I turned it over:

Agra, August 17th, 1959

Dear G. W.,

Having loads of fun! I had a touch of Delhi-belly from the water, but D. J. took me to a clinic run by a friend of his. He knows India like the back of his hand! He’s so wonderful! And I got it! I feel as bright as a new penny! (wink) I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.