Suspects

by Thomas Berger

  “How old’s he supposed to be?”

  “Early twenties, I imagine. He’s somewhat younger than Donna, but a lot younger than Larry.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “He’s a little runt. He’s shorter than you,” she said with a hint of insult. “Kinda muddy-looking hair, brown I guess. You know how blond kids will sometimes, in fact usually, grow up to turn brown. My own youngest is like that, but he’s a fine-looking six-footer. Eyes, I guess you want eyes, but I’m not so good at that. I’m partially color-blind, I think. Call ‘em gray. But then I see lots of things as gray.”

  “Give us a ring if you think of anything else about him we should know.”

  “I will if I feel like it,” Mary Jane said snippishly. Moody rubbed her the wrong way.

  LeBeau chimed in. “We’d really appreciate it, ma’am. You helped us a whole lot, but we can always use more.”

  “How long’s that yellow ribbon gonna stay up? It’s attracting too many rubbernecks.”

  6

  Larry Howland’s boss and alleged girlfriend, Paul and Gina Bisso-nette, lived in a generally expensive district not far from the Holly Hills private golf course, but their one-story house was one of the less imposing on the street, in fact not more than a mark or two higher than one currently owned by Dennis LeBeau, which Moody pointed out as they pulled up at the curb.

  “It’s the neighborhood that always makes the difference,” said LeBeau. As they went up the walk past a lawn that was deeper than it had first looked, he noted, “Nice grass. It’s got a good start. Mine hasn’t recovered from that dry winter.”

  There were two front doors, an inner one of wood and an outer, which probably could be called a storm door, but what took Moody’s eye was the ornamental ironwork in front of the glass: it would not have stopped a bullet aimed through an interstice, but was a good defense against a nonprojectile weapon. He pressed the bellpush.

  He was taken by surprise when Gina Bissonette, a flagrant adulteress with a gaudy name besides, turned out to be a slightly built, elegant, and petite woman who spoke quiedy and had gracious movements.

  It was his partner who displayed the shield and introduced himself and Moody. “Miz Gina Bissonette?”

  “I expected you before now,” said she, opening the ironwork door. “I was almost ready to call you.”

  “Why?”

  “As you obviously know, I was with Larry at the time the TV reports say the murder was committed—the murders, that is.”

  She had a lot of self-possession. Moody knew he had no taste (having heard it said often enough by women), but he was sure he could identify someone who did, and this person was definitely of superior quality. She wore a pearl-gray blouse of some silken material that might well actually have been pure silk, and on it a necklace of pearls that just about matched the blouse. She looked close to the same age as Howland, as opposed to his late, much younger wife. Her hair was what Moody would have called dark blond or, again, light brown with golden highlights. She was small and slender but had all the body she needed. The obvious question was what she could see in Larry Howland, but Moody was aware the same could be asked with regard to the male intimates of any attractive woman since the dawn of humankind, and after all, his own second wife had been considered by many, including himself, to have been a knockout in a bathing suit.

  Mrs. Bissonette led the detectives to a living room that was much larger than you would have guessed from the exterior of the house. It did not take long to realize that it had nothing in common with Dennis’ home.

  The furniture seemed several inches lower than the standard. She offered them the sofa, but they could never accept being manipulated by those they questioned, even when on the latter’s property without a warrant, so Moody seated her in one of the low-slung leather chairs, while LeBeau perched on a wicker-and-wire rig nearby. Moody stayed on his feet, which kept him twice as high as anything in the room except for the pictures on the walls, which were either stark black-and-white or, if in color, distorted when the image was at all recognizable.

  “Let me just check the spellings.” Dennis read her name aloud, letter by letter, from his pocket notebook.

  “That’s correct,” she said, her blue-gray eyes seeking out Moody. “If ‘Bissonette’ gives you trouble, the easy way to remember is that every second consonant is doubled.” She raised her eyebrows to see if he got it, which after a moment he believed he did. He knew what a consonant was, but he had never heard the spoken word for it his life long except maybe in school so very long ago. She had the better of him thus far, notwithstanding that he remained on his feet.

  LeBeau put on the grave expression in which his eyes grew larger. He said, as if apologetically, “I’ll make this easy on you as I can, but I’ve got to ask you some questions.”

  “Don’t mind about me,” said Mrs. Bissonette. “Vm okay. I’m just concerned about Larry. I haven’t been able to get hold of him by phone. How is he taking it?”

  “We can’t comment on things like that,” LeBeau said. “Now, you do know Lawrence Howland?”

  “Of course,” she said, with a soft laugh that sounded to Moody like the sifting of sand. “I never go to bed with strangers.”

  Dennis looked down. It was possible that he was actually embarrassed, but more likely that he was pretending. There was a kind of woman who enjoyed being outspoken with cops, because she knew that they themselves could never be when speaking to her. Some of the most ladylike in appearance had the foulest mouths.

  “You are presendy married to”—LeBeau checked his notebook—“Paul Bissonette, and living with him on these premises?”

  “Let me help you get through this quickly,” said Mrs. Bissonette, crossing her slender legs under the dark drape of long skirt. “I am happily married to Paul. One of the things that make us happy, maybe even one of the minor things, is that we each go our own way in sexual matters.”

  Moody finally sat down with a haunch on the edge of the sofa, but he still just listened for a while.

  “Yes, ma’am,” LeBeau said impassively. “You are involved with Lawrence Howland?”

  Her smile took on a very sweet character, perhaps near the edge of the cloying. “Okay. I guess you could say that.”

  “Would you say it?”

  “I’d say I go to bed with him from time to time.”

  “Always at the Starry Night Motel?”

  She looked at the silent Moody. “Once we tried another place along the road there, but it wasn’t nearly so vulgar, and I hated it.”

  Dennis frowned. He probably was genuinely puzzled here. “Vulgar? You like vulgar?”

  Mrs. Bissonette raised her fine eyebrows. “I mean the appointments of the room: the pink bathroom fixtures, the heart-shaped headboard, et cetera. The videos!”

  “You like those things?” It was a flat question of the kind that expects no answer, and insofar as it was, it was unprofessional in Moody’s opinion: LeBeau was at a disadvantage with a woman of this sort.

  “I love ‘em,” said she, smiling graciously.

  Moody spoke at last. It was only respectful to ask a series of questions as to the time she and Howland reached the motel and when he subsequendy left it.

  She said they arrived independently, she not till about 1:30 P.M. Howland was already there, in room 122, their usual. He handled all such arrangements, though she insisted on paying her half of the charges.

  “Did Howland leave the room at any time?”

  “He went to the outside pay phone to call his wife sometime in the late afternoon, maybe four, four-thirty.”

  “How long was he gone from the room?”

  “Three-four minutes.”

  “He came back immediately? Did he say anything about the call?”

  “No. It wouldn’t have had anything to do with me anyway.”

  “Nothing to do with you?” asked LeBeau, one eyebrow rising.

  “I’ve been trying to suggest, without being nasty abou
t it, that our only connection was sex. I have no interest in anything else about Larry Howland. I mean, I don’t dislike him. I simply don’t find him very interesting.”

  It was hard for Moody to hear that Howland would be considered erotically desirable by any woman, let alone this one, but no doubt that was another example of how little he understood the opposite sex. He asked, “How long has this connection been going on?”

  “With Larry?” Mrs. Bissonette counted on her delicate, ringless fingers, the nails of which were either painted in the most subtle of polishes or with nothing at all, but they gleamed. “Two months, give or take. And while I’m at it, you’ll probably want to know where and how we first met: the office parking lot, when I went there to deliver some presumably important papers one morning when my husband left home without them. Larry was just coming out the door. He—”

  LeBeau interrupted. She was taking too much of the initiative. And unlike his partner, he was not impressed by the woman: that was obvious to Moody, who could not help feeling superior to Dennis, for once, in the emotional realm. “Tell me this: did Howland ever do or say anything that had to do with his wife, or make any phone calls when in your company that might have had to do with her?”

  The elegant woman stared sharply at him and then turned to do the same with Moody. “Oh, no, you can’t be!” she wailed. “You can’t really think that Larry had anything to do with—and his poor little girl! For God’s sake.”

  Moody’s question was put mostly for the pleasure of witnessing her response. “You yourself had nothing to do with these matters, Mrs. Bissonette? You didn’t want to get rid of Howland’s wife so you two could get married?”

  “You just had to ask that, didn’t you? Is it some kind of regulation?”

  He smirked. “You see, Mrs. Bissonette, we take a while in dealing with exceptions. Even in this day and age, the free-and-easy way you are willing to talk about your connection with Larry Howland is still out of the ordinary. For that matter, the connection itself: you two seem like really different people, from two different walks of life. You yourself are an exception to the people we ordinarily deal with, whereas Howland is really not, and I don’t mean just money: it’s state of mind or whatever.” He knew he was not what she would think of as the soul of articulateness. He smiled at her. “But here’s the thing from our point of view: you and Howland are the only people who can vouch for either one of you. The motel clerk says he didn’t even see you, and unless somebody else did and says so, we have only your word and Howland’s that you were there at all, let alone when you say you were.”

  “You’re not serious about this crap?”

  So she had a coarser side. “The clerk can confirm that Howland checked in, but he wouldn’t know if he left, since the parking is all around back and out of sight of the office.”

  “Who was that comedian who made the comment coming through customs about the contraband he was bringing into the country?” asked Mrs. Bissonette, baffling Moody. “And famous as he was, the customs officials took him inside and humorlessly strip-searched him? I forget the name. Anyway, I guess your sense of humor wouldn’t be any better, so I won’t say we sneaked out the back, committed the murders, and returned to the motel to pretend we hadn’t ever got out of bed. I’ll just say this: your idea is asinine.”

  “It isn’t an idea of ours,” Moody said genially. “We’re just exploring possibilities.” He enjoyed using the high-sounding phrase, though he knew LeBeau was probably suppressing a snicker. “Let me ask you something, Mrs. Bissonette. Is your husband aware of your intimate friendship with Lawrence Howland?”

  She lowered her feathery eyelashes. “That takes some explaining. I doubt he knows of Larry. That I go to bed with other men than he, Paul is well aware. I admit I have felt a little guilty in Larry’s case, because he works for Paul. Not that Larry and I have ever talked about that. Well, he probably would have if I let him, but I haven’t. It wouldn’t be right. It’s just by chance.”

  “What is?” asked LeBeau.

  “That Larry happens to work for Paul!” She smiled distantly. “It was purely by chance that I met him. He didn’t even know who I was at the time.”

  LeBeau continued, “You’ve never told your husband, because he wouldn’t like you being intimate with an employee of his? But what about if Howland didn’t work for him? Would it be okay then?”

  She nodded solemnly. “I don’t see why not.”

  Moody clasped his hands. “Your husband doesn’t mind you going to bed with other men?”

  Mrs. Bissonette gazed at him for a while. “This will remain confidential?”

  “We can’t promise anything like that. But if it’s something that doesn’t affect the case—but we’ll have to be the judge of that.”

  She included LeBeau. “I’m going to trust you. Paul is a homosexual. He would never have been taken on by Glenn-Air in the first place if they had known the truth, and even nowadays he couldn’t have gone as far in the company as he has without a wife. So that’s my job, and it’s as good as any other so far as I’m concerned, and I am not apologizing for either of us. I do have needs, and I do what I must to satisfy them. I purposely avoid men I might find attractive enough to threaten my marriage. A deal’s a deal.”

  Moody’s feelings were in something of a turmoil. Had he not been a veteran professional at his trade, he would certainly have asked whether she and her husband had ever desired the same man—and if so, had ever both had him. But what he really said was, “We’ll want to talk to your husband. We won’t dwell on his sexual preferences unless we have to. But you understand, if you’re sleeping with another man while that other man’s wife is being murdered…I can’t make any promises. And we’ll probably want to talk to you again, so if you don’t mind letting us know if you have any travel plans.”

  “I’ll be right here,” said Gina Bissonette, with the languid kind of smile that could mean anything.

  The detectives pressed her for every detail of her activities on the day of the murder and then widened the area of inquiry to include the history of her affair with Howland and her acquaintanceship, if any, with his wife, child, and brother. She stated she had never seen any of them, and never even heard of the last-named.

  On leaving, Moody gave her his card, which she accepted with the fine tips of two long slender fingers and brought slowly before her limpid eyes for an inspection which, for all that, looked indifferent.

  LeBeau drove the car. He waited until he had turned the corner before glancing at his partner. “How about that?”

  “Classy woman.”

  Dennis snorted priggishly. “Not exactly the words I’d choose.”

  “You think she’s cheap?”

  “What I’d say is cold and calculating.”

  Moody shook his head, which caused it to throb slightly owing to his usual hangover. “That would be true only if she was sneaky. But she’s not. She came right out and said it.”

  LeBeau was driving carefully, obeying the stop sign posted at every corner, unlike Moody’s practice. “But what kind of woman would make a deal like that? That’s what I’m talking about. What about love? She’s some kind of pervert.”

  “You’re looking at everything through your own eyes.”

  “Whose else have I got?”

  “I mean, it takes all kinds. What do I know? You actually like liver, for God’s sake.” Moody turned it into a joke because he was taken with Gina Bissonette, the kind of woman he had no hope of ever getting.

  * * *

  For half an hour Lloyd thumbed cars and got no takers, then despite the NO RIDERS sign at the corner of its windshield, he tried a big tractor-trailer, and with much aspiration of brakes it pulled to a ponderous stop.

  He made the considerable ascent to the cab. The driver was a not fat but rather thickset young woman who looked about his own age. Her round pink face gleamed beneath a smudged red baseball cap. She put the big rig in motion again with much shoving of the gearshif
t levers and kicking of pedals with her heavy work shoes, meanwhile introducing herself as Molly Sparks.

  After giving his own real name, Lloyd nodded toward the sign in the windshield and said he almost did not put up his thumb.

  “Yeah,” said Molly. “I keep it there so I can pick my company. A girl on her own, you know.” She glanced at him. “Not that I always been right by any means. Couple months ago, out in Illinois, this kid, college kid, he gets too friendly right while I’m at the wheel, for God’s sake. I don’t know what was wrong with him. I gave him a good shove”—she demonstrated, with a thick straight-arm—“and I says, ‘I don’t know what ails you but you’ll have to get out if you don’t behave.’ Turned out he wasn’t the worst kid you ever saw, but he had a goofy theory about interstate truck drivers: he thought a girl behind the wheel would be the same as a guy. Guy would pick up a girl hitcher for one reason, therefore so would a girl driver. I says, ‘You din’t learn much in that college, I’ll tell you that, if you din’t learn girls and guys are totally different. Something’s wrong with anybody doesn’t know that.” She glanced again in Lloyd’s direction, her smile showing a hint of tip-of-tongue. “So he ups and apologizes. Nice kid. He learnt something, I guess. I hope.” She chuckled now. Hefty though she looked, she did not have a double chin. The plaid work shirt was stressed at the button line down the center of her bosom. “How far you going?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Lloyd said. “I ran out of opportunities here. I think I’ll try someplace else.”

  “What kind of work you do?”

  He surprised himself with his candor. “Anything that doesn’t call for much in the way of ability.”

  Molly kept her eyes on the road. “You’re pretty good at knocking yourself to somebody just met you. That’s one talent you got, anyhow.”

  He thought for a moment about what she said, something he rarely did with anybody but Donna. “Sorry. I guess I never considered it that way. I say stuff like that about myself, but usually to myself. If anybody beats me to it, I get mad.” He was in a weakened state after the big drunk, not so much in physical condition—he had steadily recovered from the hangover symptoms since the initial shock of waking up that morning in a pool of urine—as in a sense of identity. It was not like him to have been so passive with the policemen at the variety store. He had lost his spirit.