Working Murder (6 page)

So he hadn't just shown up: Tina had invited him. Typical.

She said quickly: “I'm glad you could get a cab in this weather.”

“It wasn't too bad in Manhattan. You caught it worse here. Is there any more of that
great coffee? Actually, I love the snow. I guess I'm just a confirmed old Yankee. I
brought an extra vest for you, Sadd. A wool one.”

“Thank you. It should fit fine,” said Sadd. “Not more than twenty pounds difference
between us. I'll wear it with Henry Gamadge's overcoat and be the fashion plate of the
wake tonight.”

“Speaking of tonight”—Henry was pouring coffee all around—"let me make a little speech:
We five are in a rather unique position—”

“You don't qualify ‘unique,'” said Sadd. “You can't be ‘rather' unique or ‘very' unique—”

“Oh, be quiet, Sadd,” I said. “Go on, Henry.”

“In deference to our grammarian”—Henry returned the coffee pot to the stove—"let me put
it this way: We five know of May's pitiful plan to reopen Ellen's case. It would be
comforting to think that we alone know of it, but since all of us have disclaimed
sending that anonymous letter, we must assume that someone else with access to a New
York City postbox within the last week also knows. That someone could be the shadowy
Ellen herself, or someone who learned of the matter through the sources May contacted.”

“Or,” said Tully, “someone else she told.”

“Exactly.” Henry stirred his coffee. “In fact, someone who could be at the wake tonight.”

We sat in silence for a few seconds, then he added:

“So naturally, we should say nothing about the matter to anyone.”

Then Tina said what we'd all agreed to say for Tully's sake: “Anyway, it ends with May's
death.”

Tully drew a shaky breath. “I don't think I'd have survived it. I really don't.”

“She dreaded telling you, Tully,” Henry said gently. “She knew it would bring back all
the old pain.”

Tully stood up. “Do you mind if I put a drop of brandy in my coffee? I brought some.”

We all became very busy clearing the table as Tully went to his coat on a rack near the
kitchen door.

Sadd said: “Has it occurred to any of you that we will also probably be the only ones at
the wake who know that May is dead?”

We stopped carrying and looked at each other. Henry said slowly: “She died early this
morning.... Tina called the obituary in for tomorrow's papers.... You're right, Sadd.”

I said: “Maybe we shouldn't mention that either.”

“I agree.” Tina was rinsing plates. “If only for the poor widow's sake. One death at a
time.”

“Won't she be missed?” asked Henry.

“May's been ‘missed' for fifty years.” Sadd said it almost absently, but the effect on us
was instant and somber. I broke the silence.

“I wonder if anybody other than family who learns of May's death will remember about
Ellen.”

Tully said, sipping his spiked coffee: “Crimes of that type are pretty much forgotten in
fifty years—unless your name happens to be Lindbergh.”

“This wasn't a crime,” said Sadd, “it was a disappearance. It isn't a crime to
disappear.”

“You know what I mean.”

Indeed we did. Heartbreak and ruined lives are not crimes; they are much, much worse.
Tully went on, the brandy already making him lugubrious:

“We were all so close, so close. My wife was May's sister. That's why we built next door
to them in Gloucester.”

Sadd and I looked at each other, and I could swear he was thinking what I was thinking.
Why this recitation of known facts? Why is it the essence of a bore—granted, a tortured
one—to prolong the account with which he has the floor by piling on givens?

“Frank Dawson and I were partners in Dawson, Hewitt, and Jerome. Irene and I never had
any children. We adored Ellen. She was only my niece by marriage but I was just as
fond—”

He stopped short, gulped his coffee, and began again:

“Do you know that last night May and I talked about Ellen for the first time in years? We
went out to dinner—I took her to La Maison Bleue on Eighty-sixth Street—and I was able
to say ‘May, dear, don't do it, don't start this terrible business, for
her
sake
don't.' She was quite calm—I don't know if I'd persuaded her—and when we got home she
went to bed almost at once.”

Sadd said: “Tully, when did you last see May alive?”

More gulping. “The police asked me that and I didn't know how to answer. After she went
to bed, I watched TV for an hour or so and then—in case she was still awake—I opened her
door a little bit and said ‘Good night, May, dear,' and she didn't move, and I went to
bed. This morning when I knocked on her door and she didn't answer—well, Henry knows
what I told him when I phoned him—but how could I tell the police”—his voice began to
go—"I could very well be responsible for May's death because she might have been so
upset by our talk—”

“Tully, dear.” I put my hand on his arm. “It's over. Let's have no talk of
responsibility. Now, I want to know your plans. How long will you be here?”

“Well, it depends.” Tully blew his nose. “There's Lloyd's funeral and May's committal
both tomorrow. How do we decide who goes to which?”

Sadd said: “If I go to Lloyd's wake tonight I've done him full justice. Those R.C.
funeral Masses can be interminable. All that singing.”

Tina said: “The singing at Lloyd's should be worth it. It'll be his own choir, and they
say it's magnificent.”

Sadd grunted, and Henry said: “I'd say our first duty is to May. We'll probably be the
only ones there. Mother has offered to stay home with Hen, so the four of us will go to
White Plains tomorrow. Tonight it'll be another foursome. Tina's not going to the wake.”

I was briefly surprised, then understood when Tina said her sitter's mother didn't allow
weeknights. “So you'd all better get a move on. Come on, Hen, bedtime.”

Hen stalled with all the classic requests for more dessert, something to drink, a story,
then repeated hugs all around and was finally marched off. I took Loki in my arms and
sat down again at the kitchen table, overwhelmed with reluctance to budge. The other
three proposed mourners went into the pantry to get the weather channel and returned
with the depressing word that the forecast was excellent—clear skies, well-plowed
streets, and other regrettably good conditions.

Sadd said grimly: “Onward, Christian soldiers,” and we went for our coats.

By the time we reached the Long Island Expressway, my feet had turned to ice. (Sadd's
boast that in Florida one's feet are never cold was not an idle one.) I thrust them
under the heater vent, and Henry pulled off his scarf and told me to wrap them in it.
Another scarf, borrowed from Tully, was wrapped around my head, making my hair a mare's
nest. The wool suit, which I'd left with Tina after the Christmas visit, itched because
I'd forgotten to bring a blouse, and the one she'd loaned me was too tight and admitted
tortuous, tweedy hairs at every seam.

In the back seat, Sadd was being fiercely argumentative about Florida, Tully having
stated that it was the last place he'd ever want to visit, let alone live. Henry, bless
him, said some nice things about Santa Martina Island (he and Tina had visited us), but
Tully was the complete Philistine; he'd heard that Florida was a wasteland of tackiness.

“Some of it is, Tully,” I said over my shoulder. Then, heaping coals of fire, a Biblical
injunction I've always considered strange in phrasing but saintly in practice, I added:
“Anyway, why would you ever want to leave Gloucester and that lovely house at Bass
Rocks?”

Sadd said, using the defensive Floridian's last-ditch weapon: “Aren't your heating bills
pretty bad?”

“Not really. I don't live in the whole house anymore. When Irene died, I closed off the
second floor and made the dining room into my bedroom.”

My turn. “I remember that wonderful breeze from the Atlantic that filled every room....”

“I insulated ten years ago. Snug as a bug now.”

The heck with it. I gave up and reflected with genuine pleasure on the image of the
handsome old frame house with its widow's walk and the wide veranda overlooking the
beautiful and treacherous rocks of Gloucester's coast.

The white line on the expressway crawled by on my right.

Henry said: “I don't dare go any faster.”

“Please don't,” I said. “Where's the funeral home?”

“Queens Village. Not far from the expressway, thank heaven. I have the exit number here
in my pocket.” He fished for it and then said: “Tully, before we get there—since we're
all sworn to silence on the Ellen matter—I'd like to ask you a question, if it won't be
too painful for you to talk about it.”

Tully said no, of course not, and in the darkness of the car, question and answer seemed
to flash before us like lantern slides of a long-ago summer.

“I'm curious about an episode I dug up in Ellen's rather overprotected life. It seems she
worked for Jim Cavanaugh one summer. Do you remember that?”

“Vividly. It was the summer before she graduated. The job came about as an afterthought
to a visit with the Martin Cavanaughs in Patchogue, Long Island.”

“She hadn't gone expressly to work for Jim?”

“Good God, no. Her parents would never have let her.”

“How did the job happen?”

Tully sighed. “Martin and Sara had a big family, as you know, and their eldest daughter
was Ellen's age. The girls hadn't seen each other in some years. May was always rather
snobby toward her sister's family—Irish Catholic and all that. I thought they were
charming. Anyway, Sara invited Ellen down for a visit—their summer place in Patchogue
was very nice—Martin did all right—and Frank told me they were going to let Ellen go.
Perhaps they felt it was about time Ellen saw someplace besides the north shore of
Boston. In any event, she went.”

I'd forgotten my cold feet and was hoping we wouldn't arrive before Tully finished.

“As I got the story from Frank afterwards—May was so angry, she never spoke of it—what
impressed Ellen most was that her Cavanaugh cousins—those around her age—all had summer
jobs. They worked in shops and restaurants around Patchogue and apparently had fun.
Ellen thought this was great—she was that kind of girl—and maybe she felt a bit useless
hanging around with the younger kids all day. Then one morning, Jim Cavanaugh showed
up.” Tully cleared his throat. “Now, remember, I got all this second hand, some from
Frank, some from Ellen—”

“We remember,” I said.

“Well, Jim was still something of a pariah because of the bootlegging years—did you know
that his own wife died from the stuff?—but now he'd started a legitimate contracting
business and was trying to get in the family's good graces. He'd come to invite Martin's
brood out to his splashy new beach house in Far Rock-away, but at the moment he arrived
Sara was out, the kids were on the beach, and Ellen was the only one home. He'd never
seen her before.”

In the silence that followed, I thought: And her name was Dawson. A name he hated.

The car slowed, and Henry said: “Here's our exit. Everybody keep an eye out for the Mowry
Brothers Funeral Home about a mile up on the left. Talk fast, Tully. Jim offered Ellen a
job?”

“Not only offered but said he'd pick her up every morning and deliver her home at night.
His office was twenty minutes away, and she could do some filing, answer the phone, et
cetera. The fact that she'd never been inside an office except when she went into Boston
to have lunch with her father—what matter? And Ellen, of course, was delighted. Cousin
Jim was ‘an old sweetie.' I remember her exact expression, ‘an old sweetie.'”

Sadd said dryly: “Jim would have been thrilled. Let's see—he'd have been late forties,
maybe fifty. What did he look like, Tully?”

“I never saw him.”

I said: “How did Ellen ever square this with her parents?”

“They were in Europe. They decided to go when Ellen went to Patchogue, and they weren't
expected back for six weeks. I gather Martin and Sara did have some qualms about
allowing the job, but maybe they felt it would do Ellen good to get some practical
experience. Of course, when Frank and May came back, all hell broke loose. Ellen was
pulled home overnight, and May never spoke to her sister again.”

We rode for a while, subdued by the depressing conclusion of the story. Then Henry said:

“How much longer after that did Jim die?”

“A couple of years.” Tully's voice was weary. “He had an ‘accidental' fall from one of
his buildings. It was an open secret he'd been fighting with some of his former
associates, and one of them probably shoved him. Anyway, he was buried in that awful
place he'd built, disgraced to the end. And then came those preposterous rumors about
his having buried other bodies there, which is such hogwash because that cemetery is
very secured—even families don't have keys to the mausoleums—you have to get one at the
office when there's a burial—”

“Here we are,” said Henry. Arc lights blazed up on our left, flooding a packed parking
lot. “Will you look at the cars!”

I started to unwrap my feet and said: “I wonder if anybody ever asked Ellen point-blank
if Jim made a pass at her.”

Tully said primly: “I certainly never asked her.”

“Of course”—Henry turned into the lot—"she probably would have kept it to herself if he
had—might even have liked it.”

Tully suddenly went from prim to passionate. “You'd never say that if you knew Ellen
Dawson! She was the sweetest, most honorable—”

“Oh, come on, Tully”—Henry expressed my own irritation—"she was a woman.”