The Woman (35 page)

“By the way,” I said, “happy birthday old man. Sorry I didn’t make the party last weekend. Forty-seven, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Fidge said sarcastically. “We go through this every year. I’m forty-seven, you’re forty-six, but only for a couple of months, then you’ll be forty-seven like me. Brenda said to tell you she hasn’t forgiven you for missing the party.”

“Hey, man, you know I would’ve been there if I could. My agent scheduled an out-of-town book signing without checking the date with me; she won’t do that again.”

“No sweat, Matthew. I’m just yanking your chain. Brenda understands.”

“Thanks. Look, I stepped on the cornflakes before I saw them. They blended with the carpeting. It looks like the flakes had been walked on before I got here. You?”

“Who the hell expects cornflakes on gold carpet?” Fidge asked. “Christ almighty, on any color carpet.” Fidge put a steadying hand on my shoulder, crossed one knee with his opposite ankle and looked at his sole, then did the same with the other foot. Neither of us saw anything on the soles of his shoes.

“Did Clarice walk on ‘em?” I asked.

“Says so. Says she got up, threw a load of clothes in the washer, put the coffee on, showered and slipped into what she called ‘a little thing,’ then came in here to wake her old man.”

“What about the uniform at the door,” I asked, “did he come in, too?”

“I cursed when I stepped on the flakes,” Fidge said, shaking his head. “A bit too loudly, I guess. Officer Cardiff came running. Now stop poking around, Matthew. I let the wife call you because she said she had been with you last night and that you might have a key to this place, not so’s you could play detective. Tell me about her, and keep your voice down.”

“What can I say? She’s got her own teeth, great hair, and this and that.”

“Yeah. Right off I noticed her this and that. Also the ‘little thing’ she said she put on this morning is hanging behind her bathroom door. You ought to take a look, or maybe you’ve already seen it, with her in it.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye, and then added, “I haven’t heard you deny she was with you so tell me about her visit.”

“Clarice came down during the night. Said she thought someone would try to kill her husband. Looks like she had that right.”

“What time did she get there?”

“It had been dark for a while. She woke me and I had been zonked. I went to bed around ten. So, midnight would be a good guess.”

“What did she say? I want all of it and I want it exactly.”

“Page one, colon: The doorbell woke me a few minutes after midnight. I found Mrs. Talmadge leaning on my door jamb wearing a man’s white button-down shirt, a strategic gap formed by the mismatching of a southern buttonhole with a northern button. Her blond hair teased her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of shiny gold sandals, her toenails painted red to match the bloody mary she held, a celery stalk standing tall in the short glass.”

“Knock it off, Matthew; this isn’t one of your novels. You know what I want. Give.”

I nodded. “Her opening line was ‘something bad’s gonna happen.’ She brushed past me, her sandals slipping as she stepped down into my sunken living room, her shirttail failing to fully cover her backside. Oops. I forgot. You said no descriptions. I asked her what she was talking about. She said, ‘Somebody’s going to kill Tally.’ That’s her pet name for her dead husband.”

“Then what did she do?” Fidge asked.

“She took a big drink, chomped the end off the celery stick that had poked her in the cheek, and oozed her bottom over the arm of my leather chair, creating two small miracles. She didn’t spill a drop, and her face showed no reaction when her bare bottom settled onto the cool leather.”

Fidge screwed up his face.

“Okay. Okay, just the facts, Sergeant. I asked why she thought that. She said, ‘Three days ago, I answered the phone. Some guy with a raspy voice asked for Gar. Only he made it sound like jar. I told him there’s no jar here and hung up.’”

“Was her dead husband there?”

“No. But her live husband was.” Fidge gave me the finger. I ignored it and continued. “She said her husband just sat at the table drinking coffee but that he turned white when she mentioned
Gar
. To illustrate the color she held up her short white shirttail, her unblemished skin the color of light milk chocolate. She had no tan line. I know you said to can the descriptions, but I figured you’d like that one.”

“What did her husband say?”

“He told her that some former business acquaintances in Europe used to call him Gar. Then he told her to hang up when they called back.”

Fidge put one hand in the air like he had been busted back to directing traffic. “When? Not if?”

“I asked her that, too. She definitely said, ‘when they called back.’ And, before you ask, she said there were no more such calls, at least not while she was home. She got in Garson’s face about that call again the next morning, and they fought.”

“How well did you know this guy?”

“Not all that well,” I said. “I went out to dinner two or three times with the Talmadges. Garson was a bon vivant. He and I played poker with a few men in the building, maybe four times.”

“Did the Talmadges go to dinner with you or you with them?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Who invited whom?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Who drove? That’s usually the person who extended the invitation.”

“That I remember. Clarice. She gets motion sickness in a car. She found it didn’t come when she drove. Garson said it had something to do with her vision and hearing senses getting the same stimulus.”

“When I was a kid,” Fidge said, “my uncle always drove for the same reason. You mentioned you played poker with the deceased and a few other men in the building. The wife’s about thirty-five and a real looker. The dead guy’s around eighty. Was she also playing with some of the other men in the building?”

I ran my hand through my hair, wrinkled my lips, and then said, “Yeah.”

“You?”

“I expect it’ll come out, so here it is. One afternoon, two days before they moved in last summer, Clarice knocked on my door. I had seen her and Garson in the building earlier, but hadn’t been introduced. She said . . . no, she didn’t say, I assumed she and Garson were father and daughter.”

“But she didn’t say otherwise, right?”

“She didn’t say otherwise. Before she left, we, well, you know. Then I found out they were married. It’s rumored several other fellows in the building have also taken turns. I don’t know any names, but I suspect you’ll find wives eager to spill their suspicions.”

“Someday,” Fidge said, “I need to give you my sex-without-deep-feelings-is-worthless speech. I just don’t have time right now.”

“Oh, too bad, I’ve been so looking forward to that one. But it’s a load of bull. Sex for pure lust is not worthless. Not all of us are fortunate enough to have someone we love deeply in our lives every time we get a case of the hornies.”

“You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought, Matthew. But may I bring you back to why we’re together this morning?”

“You brought it up.” I sighed. “Go ahead.”

“What do you know about Garson Talmadge’s background?”

“Less than I know about his eating habits. During one of the dinners, Garson said he came from Europe, but shied from anything beyond generalities. I can tell you he spoke some words with the softer consonants common to the French. Once when the poker talk came around to Iraq, Garson pronounced ‘Allah’ with the back of his tongue raised to touch his soft palate as is done with Arabic.”

The sun broke through the clouds to reflect off the ocean and brighten Garson’s bedroom. We moved a bit to avoid the glare.

“What else happened while she was at your place?”

“She took another bite from the celery stalk. A drip of bloody mary fell onto her skin to slalom down her abundant cleavage until blossoming into a pink splotch on her white shirt.”

“Knock off the colorful bullshit, Matthew.”

“You know, you’re the only person since my mother who regularly calls me Matthew. Brings back memories. I like it.”

“I told you to knock it off.”

“Sorry. It’s the novelist in me; I think that way now. Clarice said the next morning when Garson went into the bathroom she saw a bunch of passports in an attaché case he’d left open on his bed. They all had his picture, but different names. She didn’t remember any of the names, but from the way she told it he had enough to start his own phonebook.”

“They fight a lot?”

“According to her,” I said, “at least since that call asking for Gar. She also heard him on the phone speaking some language she didn’t understand. Said it wasn’t French. That she didn’t speak French anymore, but had taken French in high school so she’d recognize it. After the ‘Gar’ call, she said her husband never again left their condo except a couple of times to go to the workout room and spa area in the building.”

“What else?” Fidge widened his stance, taking care not to step on more of the cornflakes.

“Did I mention her fingernails were painted to match her toenails?”

Fidge flipped me off again, then asked, “What time did she leave?”

“I didn’t look.”

“Guess.”

“I’d put it at a little after three in the morning. And, yes, the skin on her fanny made a popping sound when she pulled free of the leather chair.”

“She stayed more than three hours? Just what were you two up too?”

“We talked. Her life, well, her life some. Mostly mine, I guess.”

“And you spilled your guts, right?”

“Some stuff. Yeah. The woman knows how to get a man talking.”

“I’ll bet. Her naked under a man’s white shirt, mismatched buttonholes and all. I suppose you told her your wife got a divorce after you went to prison?”

“Yeah.”

“And that she had been ready to file even before that, because you shot her father’s prize hunting dog? You told her that, too?”

“That damn dog was hunting me, Fidge, charged me in the study, saliva hanging from its teeth. For heaven’s sake, you had to be there. That animal took down game with that mouth. What would you have done?”

Fidge laughed. “I’d’ve brought along Milk Bone when I visited the in-laws.”

“Ha. Ha. Hell, my marriage was kaput by then anyway, only a matter of time.”

“So you shortened the time.”

“It was self-defense. Hey, you got a murder here. Shouldn’t you be doing something more important than critiquing my messed-up life?”

“You’re right. I’m here about the murdered man, not the murdered dog. You were telling me about you and Clarice and your three hours in paradise.”

“I can’t really tell you what we talked about. It was late. You know, you get sort of groggy, the mindless talk comes and the time goes.”

Again his silent finger preceded his question. “What about the key?”

“I don’t know why she said that.”

“That don’t answer my question, Matthew. Says you were her old man’s only friend in the building. She figured her husband might have given you a key for emergencies or whatever. That woulda been convenient for you when you wanted to visit with his wife.”

“Okay. Here it is direct. I do not and never did have a key to the condo of Garson and Clarice Talmadge. Is that plain enough, Sergeant Fidgery?”

“Don’t get hot, Matthew. You know how this works.”

“I wasn’t dodging your question. How do you size this up?”

The sergeant stepped closer. “The wife’s a pastry on legs, but her deck is missing a few cards. She plugs her old man, and then leaves the front door dead bolted from the inside.” Fidge gestured toward a .22 revolver on the bed. “Says that there’s her husband’s gun. It’s loaded with longs. Only one shot’s been fired. I expect ballistics will find the missing long is in the old guy’s brain. Says the red scarf draped over the gun handle is hers, so’s that pretty little pink pillow with the ugly little black hole. Her dog sleeps on it, or used to.”

“Why the pillow?” I asked, “a .22’s pretty quiet. An expert would know that.”

“She ain’t no expert.”

“Oh, come on, Fidge.” I shook my head. “Clarice isn’t the kind to kill a man unless it’s with loving.”

“And just what kind is she, Mr. Writer?”

“The divorcing kind. She’d move on and find a new rich guy. Think of it as legal prostitution with fewer customers and better working conditions, with a topnotch severance package thrown in.”

Fidge grinned. “Maybe you should write one of them columns for the lovelorn.”

I imitated his finger, using my own. “What’s the story on the cornflakes?” I asked.

“Says her husband was a very light sleeper. That he sprinkled the flakes on the floor so no one could sneak into his room. How’s that for nutso?”

Clarice’s voice shrilled from the living room. “I didn’t do it, Matt. Honest to God, I didn’t do it.” Her Chihuahua whimpered, perhaps in agreement.

I had never before heard the dog make a sound. Garson had refused to buy the condo unless his wife could keep her dog. She proved to the condo association that Asta had been trained to always stay quiet indoors and, after Garson paid a large nonrefundable deposit, Asta became the only pet in a building posted: no pets.