by Warren Adler
There he was doing his little jig for the powers that be, Fiona thought, resolving all her guilt about her overuse of the derisive Eggplant monicker.
“Sure about the suicide?” Rome asked.
“Yes. I wanted to be sure.”
“So, it was a suicide,” the mayor said hopefully.
The Eggplant looked at him, then shifted his gaze to Fiona.
“We don’t think so,” he said.
“Shit,” the mayor muttered through clenched teeth. Rome shook his head slightly and lowered his eyes.
The mayor was a big man whose former image as a street-wise protestor had been considerably softened by his three years as mayor. This latter incarnation might have been more to the point. The mayor, whose father had been a prosperous dentist in Pensacola, Florida, had majored in English Lit at Florida State. His ghetto intonation was a learned affectation for him, although the southern accents of the Florida panhandle were a good beginning for this argot tongue.
When calm, he was remarkably dignified with his grey cottony hair and eyebrows and penetrating green eyes. He was not calm now. A thin moustache of perspiration had popped out on his upper lip. On the surface, he was attempting to impress Congressman Rome with his sincere desire to keep a lid on this explosive scandal-ridden case. Congress was, next to the overwhelming black majority of the nation’s capital, his most important and affluent constituent.
This had been billed as an informational meeting. The police chief was deliberately kept out of it. It simply confirmed what Fiona had divined. If down the line, they needed scapegoats, the Eggplant, Cates and she would fit the bill nicely.
They were lined up in a semicircle in front of the mayor’s highly polished ornate desk framed by a standing American flag and one bearing the insignia of the District of Columbia.
The Eggplant, as man of authority and spokesman for the homicide division, then reported on Fiona’s meeting in Boston with the new Mrs. McGuire. He was laying his case out carefully, knowing it would be unpopular.
But he had bought Fiona’s assumptions that Mrs. McGuire had no intentions of committing suicide, assumptions based totally on Beatrice Dellarotta’s observations of Frankie’s state of mind shortly before her death. They had, indeed, found her fingerprints inside Mrs. McGuire’s car, concrete evidence that Beatrice’s story was, at least, partially provable.
Under normal circumstances, the Eggplant would have been completely skeptical, but Fiona knew that the assumptions she had made meshed nicely with his own instinctive belief about the manner of Frankie’s death.
Now she was feeling slightly guilty for creating the Eggplant’s predicament, wondering if she hadn’t relied more on the emotion of sisterhood than the cooler reason of a seasoned detective.
Had she overreacted to Beatrice’s story? Had she related too deeply, too personally, to Beatrice’s motives? Were her instincts overpowering her logic? Had she taken advantage of the Eggplant’s own gut feeling that Mrs. McGuire had been murdered? Had she manipulated him into going along with her arguments because Beatrice had touched something deep within her? Of course, she had, a conclusion that added to her present discomfort. She hoped she was right. For both their sakes.
“But what does that prove?” the mayor asked with some sarcasm, after the Eggplant had finished. “Merely that this Beatrice was in the congresswoman’s car. How is that in conflict with a judgment of suicide?”
“We have a theory about that, Your Honor,” the Eggplant said. They hadn’t, after all, expected the meeting to go smoothly.
“They got theories,” the mayor snapped with some contempt, swiveling toward Charles Rome, as if to solicit approval for his reaction. The congressman remained stoic and serene, blinking his eyes, a gesture that might be interpreted either as a signal to continue as well or a sign of approval.
The mayor swivled back to face the Eggplant. “Seems to me that you’ve got a real problem here. Okay, you’ve got the lady in the car. But you admit you can’t find any evidence to place her in Mrs. McGuire’s apartment. Not a shred. What does that mean?” He lifted his hand to stop any reply. “It means that the woman was never inside the apartment. In fact, you have no proof that anyone at all was inside Mrs. McGuire’s apartment. Ergo . . .” He paused now awaiting a reaction.
“With respect, Your Honor,” Fiona interjected. She looked at the Eggplant who nodded his consent. “We’re theorizing that there were no prints belonging to Beatrice . . . the second Mrs. McGuire because . . .” She sucked in a deep breath. “The murderer wiped them out.”
“Theories again,” the mayor croaked, shaking his head. “And how would he know exactly where they were . . . these prints.” He turned toward the Eggplant. “Really, captain, the logic is awry.” He swiveled back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “Try this on for size. The lady, does indeed, tell her story to the congresswoman, who is shocked, appalled and guilt-stricken, her nerves worn thin because of her own condition. Her marriage has failed, her political career is in jeopardy, her personal beliefs make it impossible for her to abort her child. She is at the end of her tether. The other woman has been the catalyst for her final decision. Suicide. No question in my mind.” He turned toward Congressman Rome.
No, she decided, the mayor was no dummy. Certainly a case could be made for his theory, despite their own rejection on it. She cut a glance to the Eggplant whose expression appeared to echo her thoughts.
“With respect, Your Honor, we speculate,” she continued, “that Beatrice was telling the truth about her visit to Mrs. McGuire’s apartment. We must assume, too, that she might not have actually touched many things. She said she and the congresswoman had coffee together. Well, the coffee cups were all washed. She said she did go to the bathroom, but had used Mrs. McGuire’s, the one in the master bedroom. No prints were found there, either. Our technical staff was quite thorough . . . which indicates that someone had wiped them away.”
“Did it ever occur to you, sergeant,” the mayor asked, “that she might have done so herself . . .” Suddenly he stopped himself, realizing that he was adding fuel to the murder theory with the new Mrs. McGuire as the chief suspect. “Now you’re making me crazy. The fact remains that there is absolutely no proof that the woman was in the apartment. None whatsoever. I really think I’ve heard enough.” He looked at his watch and started to rise.
“Don’t you think we should hear her out?” Congressman Rome said.
The mayor shrugged and settled back in his chair.
“If you think so,” he said grudgingly.
“Our theory . . .” Fiona paused and looked at the mayor. “I’m sorry Your Honor, but there’s no other way to describe it. We think that Beatrice did indeed get the congresswoman to promise that she would grant Mr. McGuire his freedom, that she had every intention to carry out this promise. We believe that her original promise to do this had been broken when she discovered that she was pregnant.”
“I don’t understand,” Congressman Rome said.
“Theory again,” Fiona continued. “When she found out she was pregnant by a man other than her husband she broke the promise because she did not want her child to be born out of wedlock. Bad politics. Especially for her constituency. And she couldn’t by belief or conviction have an abortion under any circumstances.”
“Good politics, considering her constituency,” the mayor interjected. “But odd reasoning. Why then would she make another promise to this Beatrice woman? She was still pregnant?”
“Because she was a decent compassionate woman,” Fiona said. “She was doing what was right. Not necessarily political, but what was right.”
People do that, she told herself suddenly remembering her father’s excruciating dilemma over Vietnam. Like you Dad, she heard a voice within her say.
“Right for who?” the mayor asked.
She could feel the subtle patronizing that lay beneath the question, just as it lay beneath the surface of this overbearing male police culture. How they hate
d any pushy woman, especially one who raised the banner of feminist political courage. This is one for sisterhood, she heard her voice echo in her thoughts. Only a woman had the biological capacity to be in a fix like that. Therefore, she told herself, only a woman could understand such a plight, such painful decision-making. The idea buttressed her courage.
“For her, of course,” Fiona replied in a deliberately respectful tone. She would not, she promised herself, blow this out of pique.
“You’ve lost me,” the mayor said. Rome remained quiet and noncommittal but obviously interested. Their silence meant that she should continue.
“When she got back to her apartment, she called her lover and told him the news. It did not sit well with him. Don’t ask us why. None of us are certain. Not yet.”
“The hole in the doughnut,” the mayor snickered.
“At that moment,” Fiona answered slowly, nodding in tandem for emphasis. “It’s only a question of time.” It was always impossible to transfer one’s instincts without raising hackles. She glanced at the Eggplant and grew silent.
“May I ask you a question at this point?” Rome asked. Of course, he could. The man exuded an air of distinguished solicitude and fatherly confidence.
“I think your theories are commendable,” he began, rubbing his smooth strong cleft chin with well-manicured fingers. “Very imaginative and resourceful, sergeant. But with due respect for your professional experience, you’re also presenting a scenario that could trigger a suicide,” he said. “My first thought . . . when I heard poor Frankie had died . . . was that she couldn’t possibly have taken her own life. For what reason? She was still young, successful, effective. She had everything to live for.” He continued to rub his chin and studied Fiona. “Now you’ve given me a plausible reason that I understand. If you’re theorizing, why not suicide? The absence of evidence, it seems to me, makes that theory more plausible.” He looked toward the mayor. “Don’t you think so, Bob?”
“As I’ve said, so far I’ve heard nothing that makes me think otherwise,” he said agreeably.
Then there’s the question of the cyanide,” Fiona interjected. These were tough men, used to being prevailed upon, used to all the tricks of persuasion. More important, they were used to saying “No.” “Why would she have had cyanide lying around the house? Makes no sense. She had a bottle of sleeping pills in her medicine cabinet. She could have chosen a nice sleepy way of dying. A certain knowledge of poison is required to make such a choice. Cyanide is not even commonly available.”
“I’m not so sure about that either,” Congressman Rome said. “You’d be surprised what a resourceful intelligent person with strong desire can do. Especially a person like Frankie. As for information on poisons, we have available to us the greatest library in the world.”
She glanced toward Cates, whose research and thoroughness was always impeccable. He smiled thinly. “My partner here, Sergeant Cates, checked the Library of Congress to see if her office had inquired about cyanide. Nothing. As a matter of fact we checked to see if any member of Congress had inquired about cyanide in the past year. We found only one inquiry and that was appropriate enough, a research assistant for a committee that dealt with mining.” She looked toward Cates.
“It’s used in gold mining. Beyond that there’s not much use for it. Not in Washington,” Cates said, then picked up on her explanation. “We also checked all obvious sources of information about cyanide. Libraries, computer banks, druggists, not for information about the substance per se. We just wanted to know if anyone had requested any information about it for the past year. Turned up zero of consequence. In other words we could find nothing linking Mrs. McGuire to the substance in any way.”
“Nor anyone else,” the mayor said.
“That’s true,” Cates pointed out. “But our theory . . .”
“Fucking theories,” the mayor snapped in exasperation.
“The point is,” Cates continued with some determination now that he had the floor, “that the use of cyanide implies some planning.”
“Yes, it does.” the mayor said. “She could have been planning this suicide for a long time.”
“She could have been,” the Eggplant interjected suddenly, obviously worried that his department’s speculations were not cutting any ice with the mayor and the congressman. He glanced helplessly toward Fiona who had briefly retreated into her own thoughts. Poor old Eggplant, she thought. He had bought her theory with such enthusiasm. But the mayor and the congressman did have a point. It was all theory.
“I don’t think you have enough to declare this case anything but suicide,” the mayor said. He looked pointedly at Fiona. “Despite all your fanciful speculations and conundrums.” He turned a withering gaze on the Eggplant.
The Eggplant averted his eyes, looked at his hands.
“Not yet,” he whispered, his words barely audible.
“I would suggest then that you either shit or get off the pot,” the mayor said. It was a sharp blow, crudely executed and she felt awful for having been partially responsible for it. Congressman Rome said nothing, his silence implying that he was totally in agreement with the mayor’s assessment.
“There is still one compelling question,” Fiona said, unable to remain unmoved. Her voice broke for a moment and she cleared her throat. An emotional loudmouthed pushy woman was anathema to these men. Such behavior would have totally destroyed their case, that is, if it could possibly be destroyed further.
“What is that, sergeant?” the mayor asked, his tongue thick with contempt. He looked at his watch. “I know you have to get back, Mr. Rome.”
“We do have a vote on the floor.” He, too, looked at his watch. “I’ve got a few minutes left.”
“You were saying, sergeant,” the mayor said.
“The question of paternity. That is still open.”
“Let’s face it, the woman was married,” the mayor said, looking toward the congressman.
“In name only,” Fiona said. She had already referred to the woman’s anonymous lover. Were they trying to bury such a notion?
“One never knows what goes on between couples, even couples who are separated. Does one?” the mayor said with an intonation that suggested this was a piece of wisdom direct from the highest authority.
“You and your wife were good friends with her,” Fiona said, turning to the congressman. She knew that, in some way, it was a breach of protocol to bring the congressman into it on such a personal basis. “Did her husband ever visit her in Washington?”
“Not for a few years, as far as I can remember. But she often went up to Boston.”
“Had she been up there about eight weeks ago?”
“Really, sergeant, I wasn’t privy to her schedule,” the congressman said. “Besides, our relationship was social but not that intimate. We were colleagues, often together in the House, working on various committees. Barbara, my wife, felt sorry for her, living alone like that. All work. No play. We tried to include her in a great deal of our social plans. Beyond that . . . you’re asking for more than I could give.” He paused and studied her. “I can tell you this. I never saw her in a one-on-one situation with any man.”
“It could have been a closet kind of thing,” Fiona said. This time she could not contain herself. “It goes on very often with powerful men.”
The mayor laughed.
“A cutie stashed under the desk.”
“Something like that.”
“Did you uncover something like that?” the congressman asked.
“Only Foy,” Fiona said lamely.
“Foy?”
“He had access. He was her constant companion,” she said without conviction. Her objective was to keep this case alive at all costs.
“That’s really quite hard to believe,” Rome said. “The man is obviously a homosexual.”
She cut a quick glance at Cates.
“And so it seems. But we haven’t been able to come up with a single bonafide homosexual
incident.” She was stretching it, of course, ignoring Foy’s alleged pass at the apartment desk man. The mayor turned his eyes away and awkwardly shuffled papers on his desk.
“That seems to be pushing things a bit, sergeant. Really.”
“One never knows in a murder case,” Fiona said pointedly. “The least likely are often the guiltiest.”
“But if Foy were the father,” Congressman Rome said, “that only makes the case for suicide stronger. Why would he kill her? What possible advantage would it be to him?”
“Maybe . . .” Fiona hesitated. She had not really thought this one through. “Maybe he was upset that she did not want to marry him. Maybe he was wildly in love with her. Who knows?”
“Beyond the pale, sergeant,” the mayor said. He was right, of course.
“People have motives, they . . .” She felt helpless, inert. Her theories were losing their power, even to herself. She looked toward the Eggplant whose eyes seemed to mirror his defeat.
“I really think you’ve done a grand job,” Congressman Rome said. “You’ve established an excellent motive for Frankie’s suicide.” He shook his head. “It’s fine, as far as we in Congress are concerned, to continue your investigation. Naturally, my own inclination would be to end this once and for all. I want you to be dead sure, of course. But so far nothing said here this morning indicates anything more than suicide.”
“Seems that way to me, as well, congressman,” the mayor said. He turned to the Eggplant.
“I’m sorry, captain. But we can’t let this drag on indefinitely.” The message was clear, succinct. Wrap up the mother.
“I understand,” the Eggplant muttered.
“We’re not saying that you should stop investigating Mrs. McGuire’s death,” the mayor said, growing more and more pontifical as he spoke. “I think I can speak for the congressman when I say that you and your staff should satisfy yourselves so that you can make your declaration without a shadow of a doubt. Only please, captain. Do it swiftly. We don’t want this albatross around our necks. And, for God’s sake, keep any waffling on the suicide issue out of the press.”
