Who Killed Mr. Garland's Mistress?

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Who Killed Mr. Garland's Mistress?

Richard Forrest

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

CHAPTER ONE

After the second hour of listening, Tavie Garland decided the world would be better off if Helen Fraser didn't exist. The voice from the small cassette recorder alternated between a drone and coquettish laughter. Tavie felt immersed in a dark quagmire, sinking-into the blackness of a soul she didn't understand, and she pressed the stop button of the recorder.

Over her typewriter she could see trees along the shore line and beyond the dark waters of Casco Bay. Deep in the bay a constant fight for survival continued: large after small, smaller after smallest, a necessary cycle for each organism's existence. But the waters hid the struggle, and the shimmering surface, moved only by an occasional ripple on this quiet day, was a lid, a barrier, to what went on underneath.

Helen's dispassionate voice on the tapes sliced through the surface—a revelation in almost childlike recitation of what could be. It was the lack of feeling, the guiltless recounting drone, that filled Tavie with revulsion. She stood up quickly and went into the kitchen to heat water for instant coffee.

It was ten o'clock. The children wouldn't be back from swimming lessons for another hour. On other days she had prized these three quiet hours, savored them, turned them over gently, and thoroughly enjoyed the aloneness. The small black recorder on the desk by the window jarred the day and turned the morning hours into apprehensive minutes.

The tapes hadn't affected Rob this way. Last Friday night when he'd arrived on the nine-o'clock boat, he had hardly been able to play the first few minutes for her. She had been caught up in his jubilation, and those first few minutes of listening hadn't affected her the way they had these last two mornings. His enthusiasm had been infectious. He'd paced the room, a drink in one hand, the other making chopping motions as he told her of the first few interviews with his subject.

“It's great getting back to writing again,” he'd told her. “This is a sure-fire thing, and working with nonfiction will give me a chance to slide into the discipline again.”

“What does she look like?”

He stopped in the center of the rustic living room. “Oh, about our age, ordinary enough. In fact, that's the beauty of it. A perfectly normal, middle-class housewife knocking off her perfectly normal, middle-class husband.”

“What sort of legs does our perfectly normal, middle-class murderess have?”

He kissed her on the forehead. “Not nearly as nice as yours. Could you fix me another drink? I'm tired as hell. It's been one long week.”

In the small pantry she stirred the martinis slowly. He stood in the doorway behind her. “Well …” she said.

“I'll get some pictures taken.”

“I'd like to meet her.” She handed him a martini and sipped her own.

“You will, but not just yet. These early interviews are very delicate. I can't tell you how important it is that she learn to trust me completely. By the time summer is over, we'll have all the emotionally hazardous material out of the way and the rest will be routine research …”

She laughed and they sat on the divan together. “I wouldn't want to interfere with your emotional material.”

He kissed her again. “I do believe you're jealous.”

“Oh, no. Just an ordinary, middle-class housewife spending the summer on an island, while her husband is 300 miles away spending every evening with a perfectly pretty woman.”

“All right, she's not bad-looking. In fact, I've already imagined how her picture will look on a dust jacket.”

“You're dreaming.”

“That's it. I want to dream again. I'm getting to the point where I want to throw up every time I write a brochure on auto safety or another speech for Big Balls Banner to give at the Chamber of Commerce … I've done so many of those, they write themselves.”

“You really think you can do this?”

“I'm sure of it. Working with her these past couple of weeks has proved it to me. This summer I'll record her side of it. That'll round it out and reveal any inconsistencies. After that, a review of the trial transcript and some background material. At that point the thing will write itself.”

“You're really excited about this, aren't you, Rob?”

“More than anything in years. And to think that I stumbled across it accidentally. If she hadn't walked in looking for a job …”

“Does the company know about her?”

“God, no. Do you think the powers that be at Connecticut Casualty would get in bed with a convicted felon? A figure of speech, Tav.”

“Let's not get carried away with our research.”

He leaned over to nuzzle her neck. “I have my subject for that. Let's go to bed.”

“Bob, you just got home.”

“We summer bachelors get horny.”

She looked into his face and saw a flicker of passion in his eyes. As he held her, she felt her body stiffen. His hands dropped and she sensed his disappointment. She knew she was wrong. No wife in her right mind would leave a virile man alone and unsatisfied all summer. “All right,” she said, and they went slowly up the stairs.

The coffee had grown cold as she stood by the window holding the cup. She wondered if she was involved in something that could get out of control. Thinking how good it might be for Rob, she encouraged him, offered to help with routine research in the fall, and to transcribe the tapes during the summer. The vision of his thirty-fifth birthday last month hung over her.

The birthday had driven him into a deep depression. He had had too much to drink and had grown gently sodden while mumbling half to himself. “I'm almost forty,” he had said. “It's half over. My life is half over.” And he had sat dazed in the living room of their Hartford home until she had led him upstairs to bed.

So be it. If this book gave him a new lease on life it would be worth it, even if his subject did look like Elizabeth Taylor. On Friday night as they lay after their lovemaking, she had tickled him and told him that since his subject had shot her husband in bed, he had better be careful and sleep with one eye open. He had laughed.

Storm clouds were gathering, and sailboats scuttled across the bay. The rectangular black cassette player stood coffinlike on the desk near the window. She decided to ignore it for a while. The feeling of apprehension still prevailed in the room, in the house, and the intrusion of the recorded voice echoed within her.

She went out onto the broad porch that surrounded the house on three sides. The day seemed shattered into a thousand jagged pieces that she had to try to piece together. Her weekdays on the island had always fallen into what for her was a delicious routine.

The Maine nights were cool, and after the fire died down in the fireplace she'd usually go to bed, just minutes after ten-year-old Robby and eight-year-old Karen. The children were up at first light, and by seven-thirty they were done with breakfast and headed toward the beach. She always went barefoot and wore jeans and an old shirt of Rob's, tied at the midriff. Housework was finished by nine, and until the children returned from swimming lessons, she had the morning alone. The quiet mornings were broken only occasionally by a distant foghorn or buoy bell. She would sit at the desk overlooking the bay and work on her poems.

They always published her autumn poem in the Hartford paper, and occasionally she felt Rob's twinge of jealousy over her small attempts at authorship.

The thin volume she'd been working on for four years lay on the desk near the recorder. Her book,
Reflections on New England Autumns
, seemed strangely out of place in its proximity to the confessions of murder as recounted by Helen Fraser.

She thought she'd take a short walk along the edges of the beach—anything to break the incoming waves of depression that might incapacitate her for the week until Rob's arrival on the Friday-night boat.

It was 200 yards to the small cliff overlooking the beach, and as usual she almost tripped over the hose. The hose was strung perpendicular from the house as required by the rules of the Ruby Island Association. It was to be used as the only fire protection the island afforded.

Her feet were hardened from a month of walking, and she barely felt the graveled path. Stopping midway she turned and looked at their house, perched on the small knoll, probably the highest point on the island.

During the nineteenth century Ruby Island had been a farm, the foundation ruins of the original farmhouse still visible near the dock. The dock, set in a cove, provided boarding for the ferry and mooring for the pleasure boats of the thirty summer families. It was barely three-quarters of a mile from the dock to the most northerly portion of the island. Ruby Island was 800 yards wide at its widest point. The northern half of the island was still owned by the government and contained the vestiges of a vacant World War II naval base.