Working Murder (5 page)

I knew it.

Sadd said: “What did the letter say?”

“Funny.” Henry took a white envelope from his breast pocket. “It's everything an
anonymous letter usually isn't. It's not sinister or threatening. It's almost ...
loving.”

As he read it, I felt myself dissolving.

Do not, I beg you, pursue the investigation of your daughter's disappearance. You will
only open yourself to fresh tragedy. Let her rest—or live—in peace. This is not so much
a warning as an urgent and caring request.

“Oh, God, it's from Ellen!” I gasped and burst into tears.

They all spoke and moved at the same time.

Sadd said: “No, Clara, not necessarily,” and held out his hand.

Henry said: “Mom, I'm so sorry,” and stood up helplessly.

Tina said: “Enough of this. You're going upstairs for a rest,” and pulled me to my feet.

I mopped up and apologized for making a scene. Sadd had reached for the letter, and I
moved over to look at it with him.

Five lines typed with a faded ribbon.

Sadd said: “It was too much for her. This is why May took the overdose.”

“That's what we figured,” said Tina.

Sadd looked at me and I guess I nodded, but I was thinking no, no....

I said: “Henry, who else besides you and Tina knew the case was to be reopened?”

“Hard to say.” He took the letter from Sadd. “We certainly didn't discuss it with
anybody. Of course, May had contacted the courthouse in Salem and the newspapers in the
area for back records, et cetera, but as for anyone else she might have told, I can't
say.”

“I can,” said Sadd. “She told me.”

THE OTHER TWO FACES CONFRONTING SADD must have worn the same look as mine, because he
said defensively:

“You don't have to look at me like that. I didn't write the damn thing. What's the
postmark, Henry?”

“Radio City Station, day before yesterday, 8 a.m.” said Henry from memory.

“We're not thinking you wrote it.” I was beginning to feel what my son calls “pissed.”
“We're just thinking you're a rat not to tell us sooner—at least I am! When did May
confide in you?” I knew I was sputtering. “Couldn't you in decency—”

“Time out!” Tina moved determinedly. “Clara, you're going straight upstairs.” She pulled
me to the door as Sadd stood looking properly hangdog and Henry reached for the bourbon.

I was still blubbering as Tina threw pillows on the daybed in their little upstairs study
and pushed me down gently. Henry always joked about this “mini guest room,” but I loved
it because it was next to Hen's room and had all their books and games.

“Sadd should have told me.” I said for the third or fourth time.

“Has it occurred to you”—Tina put an afghan over me—"that ethics might be involved here?
Possibly May swore him to secrecy.”

“He should have told me anyway.” To hell with ethics.

Tina laughed and said she thought she agreed with me, which made me feel better, and I
asked what time we had to leave for the—what was it called?

“Wake. Nice old word. To stay awake with the dead. Some people think it's barbaric.”

“No more so than cremation before you're cold,” I sniveled.

“Nobody's thought of a good way yet.” Tina was at the door. “Try to rest. As if you can.
But, as my grandmother used to say, at least you're ‘off your feet.'”

She went away closing the door, and I lay there stewing, light-years from sleep. Should I
try to sort my thoughts or should I say to myself (as I'm told Churchill did on
retiring) “the absolute and utter hell with everything” and count sheep? Why did I think
something had happened to precipitate May's action? Wait—I hadn't decided on
thought-sorting yet. Better to count—not sheep—they were boring—but what? The games on
the shelf beside me were near enough to read their names without my glasses.

Candyland ... Chutes and Ladders ... Monopoly ... Chinese Checkers—Wouldn't a
strong-minded woman like May be, if anything, spurred on by that letter? That letter,
the more frightening for its benignity? Clara, keep counting.

Tic-tac-toe ... Uno ... Backgammon—No, Ellen couldn't have written it. If she's alive, a
woman my age now, would she be so pitiless as not to reveal herself unless ... unless
her fate had been so unhallowed ... Clara, you're in Stephen King country. Keep
counting.

Parcheesi ... Yahtzee ... Connect Four—Henry had said there might be a connection between
Ellen's disappearance and the mausoleum. Surely nothing so macabre as .... Clara, you're
going bonkers. Start again, don't stop, and you may sleep.

Candyland ... Chutes and Ladders ... Monopoly —

The door opened a foot, and Henry put his head in.

“You OK, Mom?”

“Of course, dear. Sit here.” I patted the bed beside me and he sat down, his head
silhouetted against the frost on the window. Oh, beloved, familiar silhouette, even to
the cowlick standing spikily up.

“Mom, I'll never forgive myself if you get too psyched—”

“All I am is a little tired. An hour's rest here and I'll be fine.”

“Tina and I have been talking. We don't think you should go to the wake tonight.”

“Certainly I'm going. End of discussion.”

Henry smiled. “Well, not tomorrow for May. The rest of us will go up to White Plains if
you'll stay here with Hen. It's Teresita's day off.”

“That's a deal.” I sat up on one elbow. “And I'll promise not to get ‘psyched' if you'll
tell me this: Why do you think there's a connection between May's death and the
mausoleum?”

Henry sat still for a minute, then he said: “It's far-fetched, but I think it has to be
considered. The summer before Ellen disappeared she worked for Jim Cavanaugh for a
while—as a lark—May kept stressing ‘as a lark' and I gather she hadn't approved. Suppose
Jim had made a play for Ellen, and she hadn't bought it and—well, he was a vengeful guy,
and there are all those stories about how he stashed bodies in the crypts. I don't know
if such a thought ever occurred to May, but it did to me when I saw that anonymous
letter.”

Henry stopped talking, and I lay back feeling ‘psyched' and trying not to show it. “It's
pretty awful.”

“Yes. Sadd says it's grotesque. He won't even discuss it.”

There were a lot of things Sadd wouldn't discuss, I thought impatiently, but this was not
the moment to talk about May's death.

I said: “What became of the boy who took Ellen to the prom?”

“Foster Warren? He was killed at Anzio four years later.”

“I suppose he was thoroughly—what do you call it—?”

“Questioned. Interrogated. Grilled. In spades. So were the other two kids.”

“Other two?”

“It was a foursome that night. Foster and Ellen drove to Marblehead to pick up a friend
of Ellen's and her date. They were all four seen at the prom and then—according to the
other three, and they never deviated from their story—they went for a swim off Bass
Rocks just down the road from the Dawson house: that is, the boys did, and Ellen ran
home to get swimsuits for herself and the other girl. They never saw her again.”

I lay there trying to take this in. “She never went into her house for the swimsuits?”

“Wasn't seen if she did.”

“And she never showed up at Irene and Tully's?”

Henry shook his head. “They waited up till all hours. By the way, Tully's downstairs.
He's going with us tonight.”

“Who was the other girl?”

“Her name was Susan Lozier. She married an Englishman and died last year.”

“And the other boy?”

“You may meet him tonight.” Henry stood up. “Peter Angier, an old friend of Sadd's. He
married one of the Cavanaugh girls and she died and he's remarried—I don't know who to.
A fine rest you're having. Stay put. We'll eat about six. Just pizza.”

He kissed me and went out. I stared at the door for a minute, then went determinedly back
to my count.

Checkers ... Chess ... Tiddly Winks ... Cribbage —

The door, which had remained ajar, was pushed open, and Tina appeared with a steaming
mug.

“Henry said you were awake. This is Ovaltine—don't laugh—my mother still drinks it.”

“Who's laughing?” I accepted the mug and turned on my side. “So Tully's here.”

“Yes. Sadd's got him in front of the fire. Rather a forlorn creature, isn't he? I'd never
met him.”

Tina went to the window to watch for Hen's van, and I sipped my Ovaltine while trying to
recall Tully Hewitt's face ... long, pleasant, horsey, not handsome. He was younger than
his wife, Irene, I remembered, and still lived in the house that had figured in the
tragedy, Sadd had said—at which instant, that reprobate appeared in the door.

“Go away, I'm not speaking to you,” I said and held my empty mug out to Tina. “Thank you,
dear.”

“Here's the van.” Tina waved to someone in the street and went out.

Sadd said: “Clara, you're being childish.”

“So leave. You're not overly fond of children.”

“Now, listen to me.” He planted his feet in the aggravated troll stance. “When I got a
letter from May ten days ago, how was I to know she was going to die? She asked me not
to say anything to you yet. She assumed you'd gone to Florida to ‘rest and forget this
sort of thing,' which you had and which I thought rather sensitive of May to consider. I
immediately wrote back begging her not to do this—the very thought appalled me—and how
could I know she'd already engaged Henry, gotten the ball rolling, and left herself open
to that letter? I've just explained this to Henry and Tina, and they admitted they
themselves were hesitant to involve you. So everyone who cares about you was trying to
spare you, and you should be grateful.”

Grudgingly, I said I supposed I was. Then I said: “How's Tully taking this?”

“Badly. You won't know him. He's not much older than I am and he looks a hundred. I have
the impression he's been boozing for years and shocks like this don't help.”

“Did he know of May's plan to reopen the case?”

“Not till yesterday. He was in Rye all day visiting friends, and when he called May to
say he'd be back in time to take her to dinner, Henry answered the phone and had to tell
him why he was there and about the letter, et cetera. Tully took the first train he
could back to Grand Central.” Sadd peered at the bookshelf over my head.

“Anything decent to read here?”

I tried to make my voice casual. “Did Henry and Tina wait at May's till Tully arrived?”

“No, as a matter of fact—” Sadd stopped, eyeing me. “You're not going to start that
again.”

“I asked you a question.”

He heaved a sigh. “No, May urged them to leave. She said she felt better, and since she
knew Tully would be back soon, which he was, there was no reason for them to stay. Hen
was getting restless, so they took off. When Tully got back—he just told me this—he took
May out to dinner and had a long imploring talk with her of the kind I had planned—”

“So May was alone for better than an hour.”

“By golly, so she was!” When Sadd gets sarcastic, he tends to overdo it. “Completely
alone and unprotected! And whoever came in during that convenient hour and forced her
own prescription stuff down her throat—”

“Oh, for heaven's sake let me get some rest.” I turned over and closed my eyes. “And
you'd better do the same or you know what's going to happen; you're going to fall asleep
at that wake tonight.”

“I sincerely hope so,” said Sadd and went off. Scrabble ... Mah-Jongg ... Pinochle ... So
many ways to kill people. You can wait and watch, then appear suddenly from across the
years or across the street, and you can bully or blackmail or threaten or lament, and
you can leave, as guilty of someone's self-destruction as if you had slain her where she
stood. It would be murder, murder that
worked
, just as Ellen's murder, if there
had been one, had worked for fifty years ... fifty years ... fifty years...

I realized dimly, joyfully, that I was falling asleep. Could it really be possible?—that
lovely lifting, swimming, floating.... Was I actually to have a priceless interlude of
nothingness? Even my feet, cold since my arrival, were warm.... Maybe I'm dying, I
thought lazily. But
warm feet
? This was heaven in advance. I moved them and the
warmth shifted and meowed. Loki! Oh, darling cat, you found me! I'd reach down and
stroke you but I'm gone ... I'm really gone....

The door opened.

“Gran, why do monkeys wear green suspenders to bed?”

I LOVED THE KITCHEN OF THIS HOUSE, AN OBLONG room in the center of which Tina had put an
old refectory table and wooden chairs. She and Henry had “modernized” (a word Sadd
refuses to use) only to the extent of the appliances; big windows and old-fashioned
cabinets remained. The pantry housed a small black-and-white television to which Hen was
allowed to repair, providing the volume was kept down to candle power.

He sat there now on a stool, and beside him sat Loki, who made an occasional decrepit
pass at Hen's pizza and was rewarded with tendrils of cheese. The rest of us sat at the
table munching our own delectable slices, conscious that Tully's presence made us less
comfortable than we'd been with just each other. He talked incessantly, devouring the
pizza, his thin legs crossed and sliding around on the wooden seat of his chair.

“Thank heaven I'm out of May's apartment. I'd have gone batty before long what with the
police and the coroner and calls from other people in the place.”

Henry said: “You saved us all that, Tully.”

“Glad I could. Your wife's call was the only nice one. You certainly married a mighty
kind little lady, Henry.” Managing to sound both courtly and corny, Tully beamed at
Tina.