Strangled Prose (12 page)

“You watch too many of them. Witnesses are forever walking out on me, usually in the middle of a question,” Lieutenant Rosen sighed. We let ourselves out and walked down the sidewalk to his car.

“Any theories?” he asked me.

“About the reasons for the libelous material in
Professor of Passion
or about the identity of poor Mildred's murderer?”

“Take your choice.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Well, Douglas had very little reason to strangle Mildred. Now he won't be able to peddle his books under her name and stage presence. Azalea has died, too, and his career as an undercover pornographer is finished.”

“So he had no motive to strangle his wife. On the contrary, he needed her alive and well.”

“Mildred did mention that she might retire,” I countered, shaking my head. “She confided to me at length over lunch last week. Shrimp salad and croissants. Coffee with cream. However, she might have changed her mind after she had experienced anonymity for a few months. She certainly can't now.”

The lieutenant opened his mouth but then snapped it closed, climbed into his car, and drove away. I stared at the brakelights as they flashed around the corner, feeling like Dorothy Gale from Kansas. A flock of munchkins would have been easier to handle than Lieutenant Rosen, I told myself as I walked toward my apartment.

It was after six, and darkness had settled in. Dry leaves blew across the sidewalk like arched spiders; a faint glow from behind the clouds promised the existence of a moon. Houses along the street looked warm and safe behind closed curtains. Murder was not a topic of conversation.

I enjoyed the solitude as I tried to sift through the information that had been thrust upon me—with a bit of my own help. Douglas Twiller, author of thirteen semipornographic novels, employing a private detective to provide fodder for his folder. And he wouldn't explain why, although he must have known a backlash was inevitable. And likely to prove expensive.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” I muttered, squashing an errant leaf to hear the crunch under my foot. I wished Douglas could be dealt with as easily.

Mildred told me that she had intended to retire from the literary world. Douglas had avowed nothing but sympathy, but inwardly he must have panicked. But murdering her would not help; it rather tended to destroy whatever chance he might have in the future to persuade her to resume the Azalea role. He had suggested a vacation, a more civilized solution to bring her around.

The motive had to have arisen from the book. Someone too enraged to accept that the damage was already done had strangled the wrong person—an ironic twist of the silk scarf. Poor Mildred. We had all maligned her, and she hadn't even read the book. Poor, poor Mildred. No wonder she dashed out of the Book Depot like a terrified rabbit …

She deserved to be vindicated, but I had no idea where to seek a sacrificial goat. Douglas? Maggie? Britton? Or even Carlton, up from the grave to avenge his reputation? The whole thing was absurd; I did not drink cocktails with people who went around strangling people.

Caron was sitting on the couch when I arrived at the apartment. Her eyes were rimmed with red, her lip extended to its utmost degree of displeasure.

“Where's Inez?” I asked, trusting it to be a logical question.

“I don't know.”

“Did you have a nice time at the pizza place?”

“Yeah. Just super.”

“Did you have dinner?”

“I don't want anything.”

“Neither do I, so we'll save the Lean Cuisines for another night. Do you have any homework?”

“No.”

I abandoned the maternal efforts to elicit meaningful dialogue. I left her to brood and went into my bedroom to change into my robe. The scotch had not yet worked its way out of my veins, and my head was beginning to throb. I tried to find enough energy to investigate my daughter's latest pique, but instead went to the kitchen for a cup of tea. I heard a sniffle from the living room.

Caron came to the doorway, her arms wrapped around her shoulders. She looked younger than she had in years, and very vulnerable. “I think I know why you didn't want me to read the last Azalea book,” she said. “It was about my father.”

I fiddled with the teapot while I tried to decide how best to handle the subject. At last, feeling grossly incompetent, I settled Caron at the table and told her the whole story. We began with disbelief, moved through indignation, and finished with tears. She seemed to relax; perhaps the truth was more palatable than her doubts—or maybe she suspected that her father had never been as close to sainthood as his colleagues insisted.

“Why did Mildred Twiller put that in the book?” Caron asked. “That was cruel. I thought she was supposed to be a friend of yours. She must have known you'd figure it out.”

Another sticky problem. I took a long drink of the tepid tea while I ran through my options. “We may never know,” I said at last. I had no idea why Douglas had put the libelous material in the book; I suppose I thought that was close enough to the truth.

“She was your friend,” Caron insisted. “She must have known that she would hurt you if she wrote about Dad and that—that girl.”

“Mildred did say she had an explanation, but we'll never hear it. In the meantime, we'll just have to ride out the storm. There will be gossip at school, but I'd prefer that you not refute it with the same tactics you pulled on Rhonda Maguire. Smile contemptuously and walk away, Caron.”

“Rhonda Maguire happens to be my dearest friend. She knew I was only kidding. It was all Inez's fault.”

I choked on a mouthful of tea. “I thought you were defending your dearest friend, who is Inez.”

“I hate Inez. She probably is a lesbian, and I have no intention of being stared at just because she doesn't date.” Caron daintily wiped her nose on her sleeve and stood up. “I think I'll call Rhonda and see if she wants to go to the library tomorrow after school. Good night, Mother.”

I watched her leave, unable to think of a worthy reply. Caron and Inez were a team and, I had assumed, an unassailable one. What on earth could have happened? Five hours earlier they had been in the Book Depot, squabbling as usual but still the best of friends. Now Inez was out, and the unseen Rhonda Maguire in.

It was too intricate for me. I finished the tea and took a solid, dull, sexless biography to bed.

The following morning I dressed in drab, drank several cups of coffee, and prepared myself mentally for the funeral. Contrary to all the movie versions, the day was crisp and clear. After the customary and tedious ceremony at the church, a lengthy line of cars crept to the cemetery in the oldest part of town. We stood in a respectful circle as the minister intoned a few final words of comfort. The widower was gray about the face, but composed. An elderly relative bobbled beside him. Ashes to ashes, a handful of dirt, and we were free to go.

Lieutenant Rosen must have been lurking from a distance; he appeared by me as I walked to the curb. My car was wedged in; it would be several minutes before I could escape. He and I exchanged polite smiles as we leaned against the side of my car.

“Enjoy the show?” he asked mildly.

“Nothing more fun than interring a friend.” I studied the bare branches of the trees. “Have you made any progress?”

“In a way. I received confirmation about Blake's unadmirable activities in Missouri. The story was still smoldering in a few back drawers, and the people there were willing to talk. It was true, Mrs. Malloy. The authorities were unable to make a case against him, but they had little doubt about his guilt.”

“Oh.” Brilliant. Since I had read the file, I had suspected as much. It still stung. For almost three years I had painted my toenails for the man. Pretended to appreciate the nuances of Hungarian wine. Put up with his beard. And slept with him.

Britton had not appeared at the funeral, despite protocol, and I wondered if he was busy submitting a resignation and packing up his wine collection. Maggie was likely to be similarly engaged. Abruptly I wished I were huddled under an umbrella to escape a cold drizzle; it would have been more suitable than the bright sunshine and cloudless sky.

“I guess I'll go back to the station,” the lieutenant said, unperturbed by my lack of response. He shot me a broad grin. “A policeman's lot, and so on.”

“Expecting more smut about the Farber faculty to come in on the teletype?” I snapped. “Are you checking to see if I left my grandparents buried in the basement?”

“Did you?”

“Dig it up and see, Sherlock.” I fumbled through my purse for a tissue, standard equipment for any funeral. When I looked up, he was gone. The car parked in front of mine was not, however, and I could only seethe impatiently as I searched the dwindling crowd for someone who might be able to afford the shiny red Mercedes. Farber faculty people drove Japanese imports or used station wagons.

At last I perched on the hood to wait stoically, if not graciously. In the middle of composing a wisecrack to the Mercedes owner, I saw a figure slink behind an elm on the far side of the cemetery. Although I hadn't seen the face, I recognized the slumped posture.

I hopped down and jogged across the grass. When Inez saw me, she broke into a jerky lope among the tombstones and memorial statues, leaping over a few with surprising agility.

“Inez!” I called, flabbergasted by her actions. “Come back here, or I'll—” I couldn't think of a suitable threat in my gaspy condition, so I settled for a glower potent enough to bring one of the cemetary residents to his feet. The only response was an increase in velocity.

Inez reached the gate and headed down the sidewalk toward a row of shops. I knew that I looked like a rabid child molester as I raced after her; my eyes were still glowering and my mouth distorted from the effort. I shouldn't have dropped my aerobics class, I told myself in a tortured tirade.

Finally Inez yielded to what she must have thought the inevitable, since she couldn't hear my death rattle. Clutching her purse to her chest, she stopped and waited for me to catch up with her. Her face was carved of the same marble as the stones she had leaped over, cold and impenetrable.

“Why on earth did you run away from me?” I managed to gasp.

“I didn't run away, Mrs. Malloy. I didn't want to be late for fourth period, that's all. I have office duty third period, and I just sort of slipped out of school for the funeral.” She tried to sound earnest, but we both knew she was lying. I wondered why.

“I'll drive you back to the school, Inez,” I said firmly, grabbing her arm in case she decided to try another sprint. The child was a damn gazelle, I thought as I pulled her back toward my car. One more effort like that and I could have checked right into the cemetery for a plot of my own.

“So you're AWOL from school?” I said, with the voice of a sympathetic confidante rather than of a parent, I hoped.

“Only office duty and lunch. It doesn't matter.”

“And you were determined to attend Mildred's funeral?”

Inez slithered out of my grasp and stuffed her hands in her pockets. Her purse thudded against her thigh as she hurried up the hill. A flush crept up her neck. Breathless but determined, I willed myself not to beg for a rest and caught up with her. I repeated my question.

“I had to, Mrs. Malloy,” she answered solemnly. Behind her thick lenses, her eyes glistened. “It was for Azalea. I asked Caron to come with me, but she said she couldn't miss algebra without getting caught. She could have, though. I would have paged her from the office and said there was an emergency at home.”

“Caron wouldn't come to the funeral with you?” That was not a surprise. Azalea had slipped in Caron's popularity poll.

“No,” Inez sniffled. “She doesn't want to talk about poor, departed Azalea, and she said she didn't even want to read her books anymore. I wrote the eulogy for the school newspaper all by myself. I'm the only one who cares about Azalea Twilight.”

“Caron does change her mind,” I said. “Did she tell you about it?”

“No. She just said that stuff about missing algebra.”

“Will you tell me why you ran from me, Inez?” I asked gently. Deviously, but gently. I would have patted her shoulder if I could have kept up with her at the same time, but I needed my last bit of energy to climb the hill.

Inez shrugged but remained silent. We arrived at my car without further discussion. The Mercedes had disappeared. I put Inez in, went around, and climbed into the driver's side. Inez's behavior earlier mystified me. I was not, after all, a truant officer with a net. The girl had spent a goodly portion of her adolescence in my living room; she was not usually terrified by my attractive face and kindly demeanor.

“Did Caron say anything about why she refused to go to the funeral?” I persisted as we pulled away from the cemetery. There were about twelve blocks to manipulate the conversation. I unobtrusively slowed to a steady ten miles per hour.

“No. She just doesn't want to talk to me anymore. She thinks I'll tell the police what we did Sunday—” Inez slapped her hand over her mouth and ducked her head, but I had seen the look of terror flash across her face.

“What would you tell the police?” I steeled myself not to overreact, despite the sudden icy clutch of fear in my stomach. “You and Caron aren't exactly juvenile delinquents, after all. The police aren't interested in silly pranks.” Dear God, let her giggle, I added to myself. An exercise in futility.

“I can't tell you,” Inez groaned.

“You and Caron saw something Sunday?” I watched her out of the corner of my eye as I tried to make sense of her chopped sentence. It took only a block, but by now I had slowed to a turtlish creep. “Inez, does this have anything to do with Mildred Twiller's murder?”

“Not really, but Caron said—never mind, Mrs. Malloy.”