The Murder of Miranda

by Margaret Millar

  Beloved:

  I want to write that word over and over again because it is beautiful like you. Beloved, beloved, beloved.

  Oh, how hard this masquerade has been on both of us, act­ing like strangers when all we can think about is lying in each other’s arms. But be patient, my dearest. I have made my plans very carefully, and though they may seem strange to you at first, please trust me. We must live as well as love. This is the only way we can do both.

  Your own

  Miranda

  “I couldn’t believe it at first,” Grady said. “I thought she was putting me on. But she’s not the type, she’s deadly serious about everything.” He read the note again before he replaced it in his pocket. “That’s a lot of crap how all we can think about is lying in each other’s arms. Jeez, I never even thought about it when I was doing it, and that was a year ago.”

  “Eight months.”

  “Close enough. I don’t sit around staring at calendars.”

  “In the note she refers to plans,” Aragon said. “What plans?”

  “You’re the one who talked to her, not me. I told you before, I haven’t even spoken to her since I got back. Now suddenly she’s writing stuff about lying in each other’s arms. For all I know, she’s got a church and preacher lined up. I feel trapped, man. Trapped.” He thumped the hood of the car with his fist. It left an imprint in the dust like an animal track.

  “Why did you come back here, Grady?”

  “I needed the job and the surfing’s good. I never dreamed Miranda would be waiting for me with a bunch of crazy ideas. Maybe I should run away. What do you think?”

  “You’re pretty good at it,” Aragon said. “Maybe you should.”

  “I mean it. She might be really far out. She might try something wild, like taking a shot at me or sticking a knife in my back, especially if she finds out I’m interested in someone else.”

  “Are you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Explain ‘sort of.’”

  “Well, Ellen and me, we got something going. She’s a nice girl with class and a steady job. It might work out okay. I could do worse.”

  “Could she?”

  Grady thumped the hood of the car again but there was no force behind it. It was like a gesture he’d seen done in a movie by someone he identified with. “Stop coming down hard on me because of that business in Mexico. It wasn’t my fault. None of it was my idea in the first place, not her and me, not the trip, not even the Porsche, which never did me any good anyway. You know what happened to it?”

  “You sold it and lost the money in a crap game.”

  “I parked it in a garage in Phoenix and it got ripped off,” Grady said. “How’s that for a laugh?”

  “Fair.”

  “You still think I’m a louse, huh?”

  “Close enough. I don’t sit around staring at dictio­naries.”

  “Well, I’m not so crazy about you either, you self-right­eous bastard. You probably never had to do a day’s work in your life, everything handed to you on a platter, college, law school, the whole bit. Me, I ran away from home when I was thirteen, they were going to kick me out anyway. Want to know why? I stole a car. How’s that for laugh number two?”

  “About as funny as laugh number one.”

  “It was my uncle’s car and I didn’t mean to steal it, I only wanted to go for a ride. But once I started driving I couldn’t stop. I kept right on going until the gas tank was empty. I ended up near a ball park in Visalia. I watched the game for a while, then I hitchhiked home and got the hell beat out of me. I left again the next day, this time with the money my aunt kept hidden under her mattress . . . So there you have it, the story of my life, chapter one.”

  “The lady, the mattress, the money,” Aragon said. “You started early and learned fast.”

  “I found out where it’s at and how to get there. Sure. Why not?”

  “Is the word out about you and Ellen?”

  “We haven’t done any advertising, but I guess Mr. Hen­derson has caught on and some of Ellen’s neighbors in the apartment building, people like that. Ellen’s got a lot of friends, and friends talk.”

  “Are you living in her apartment?”

  “Not technically, no. I rent a room on Quinientos Street.”

  “Does Miranda know about it?”

  “I don’t see how, unless she followed me home from work one night, and she wouldn’t do that. She’s always got those two crazies with her. They tag along after her like she’s their mother.”

  “Or stepmother.”

  From Grady’s lack of reaction to the word, Aragon was certain that he wasn’t aware of Miranda’s plans for his future and her own, via the Admiral.

  “What do you think I should do?” Grady said.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Sit tight, keep things alive with Ellen, pretend I never got the letter.”

  “When did you get it?”

  “Three days ago. It was slipped under the door of the guard shack with my name on the envelope.”

  “So you can’t very well pretend you didn’t get it.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Have you showed it to Ellen?”

  “No.”

  “Do you intend to?”

  “No. It’s strictly between Miranda and me, or rather between Miranda and Miranda. I can’t be held responsible for what’s cooking inside her head.”

  Frederic slalomed across the parking lot on his skate­board between parked cars and lampposts and concrete markers. When he reached Aragon’s Chevy he came to a stop by jumping off the skateboard. The board kept right on going, under a BMW and a Lincoln and ending up against the front tire of a Ford van. Frederic retrieved it, spun the wheels to make sure they weren’t damaged and approached the two men. His recent tears had cleared little paths through the dirt on his cheeks.

  “Bug off,” Grady said.

  Frederic shook his head. “Can’t.”

  “Try.”

  “Can’t. Your girlfriend sent me here on an errand.”

  “What girlfriend?”

  “Don’t rush me, man.” Frederic took off his plastic hel­met, releasing a squashed yogurt carton and two sticks of gum now soft as putty and molded to the shape of his head. He looked up at Grady, red-eyed and reproachful. “I waited a long time in that stinky shed for you to come back with the keys.”

  “The situation changed,” Grady said.

  “You never meant to come back.”

  “Sure I did.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Have it your way. What’s the errand and who sent you?”

  “Maybe I won’t tell you.”

  Grady put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and squeezed. “Then again, maybe you will, right?”

  “Sure. Right. Lay off the rough stuff. I was only kidding. Can’t you take a joke? Ellen sent me to tell Mr. Aragon to come back to the club and call his office. A lady wants to talk to him.”

  “Thanks, Frederic,” Aragon said.

  “You don’t have to thank me,” Frederic said. “A small tip will be enough.”

  “I’ve only got two dimes. You can have one.”

  “One skinny little dime. There ought to be a minimum-tip law like the minimum-wage law. Say, how’s that for a new political idea?”

  “Great. In another twelve years you can run for Con­gress.” It was a sobering thought.

  Aragon used the other dime on the public telephone in the corridor. Only one lady was likely to know where he was, and the switchboard transferred the call to her office.

  “Miss Nelson? It’s me.”

  “Who’s me?”

  “Tom.”

  “Tom who?”

  “Aragon.”

  Charity tapped the ph
one sharply with a pencil by way of reprimand. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’ll ever make the big time in this business, junior. An attorney headed for the larger life doesn’t say it’s me. He says this is Tomás Aragon of Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Pow­ell.”

  “You already know that.”

  “It won’t kill you to practice a little.”

  “All right. This is Tomás Aragon of Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Powell. So what’s new?”

  “Plenty. Smedler just came from the courthouse and the whole place was buzzing with rumors. The report on Iris Young’s death arrived from the crime lab last night by special messenger and the word is she was murdered.”

  “Whose word?”

  “There’s an old babe in the D.A.’s office who has a crush on Smedler—he’s fairly attractive if you squint a little and the light’s not too good—and she’s always getting him in a corner and feeding him goodies to arouse his interest. Ver­bal goodies, I mean. He’s on a diet. Anyway, she told him that the D.A.’s in seventh heaven.”

  “What does it take to put a D.A. in seventh heaven, or even fifth or sixth?”

  “Evidence for a case that will make him look good to the voters in the next election,” Charity said. “You saw Iris Young once, didn’t you?”

  “Briefly.”

  “Was she using a cane?”

  “Yes. It was burned in the fire.”

  “Wrong. There was a lot of intricate metalwork on the head of it which didn’t burn. Where the metal joined the wood some blood seeped into the cracks. It matched the blood taken from Mrs. Young’s body, but there was a dif­ference in the two samples that’s supposed to be very sig­nificant.”

  “In what way?”

  “Smedler’s snitch didn’t know.”

  “Why are you telling me all this, Miss Nelson?”

  “Smedler asked me to clue you in. He thought maybe you could find out more by sort of hanging around the sheriff’s department.”

  “If I sort of hang around the sheriff’s department, some­body’s going to sort of wonder why.”

  “Tell them you work for Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Powell. After all, Miranda Shaw is one of our clients, or used to be, and she was living in the Youngs’ house when the murder occurred and we have a right to—Oh my God, you don’t suppose she’s actually involved. Yes, you do. I can tell by your silence.”

  “I—”

  “And so does Smedler. And that’s why he’s so curious about the report from the crime lab. Well, if he really wants to find things out, I wish he’d pick somebody more competent than you.”

  “So do I,” Aragon said and hung up.

  Ellen Brewster was standing outside the door of her of­fice waiting for him. She wore a short sleeveless white dress which showed off her newly acquired tan but made her look as if she was trying too hard to be like one of the teenagers herded in flocks on the beach and in the snack bar and around the lifeguard towers.

  Her voice was strained. “Do you have time to come in for a minute, Mr. Aragon?”

  “I think so.”

  He went in and she closed the door behind him. The room was still noisy. There was shouting and laughing from the pool area, and outside by the roadway some men were pruning a eucalyptus tree with a power saw.

  She said, “Did you talk to Miranda?”

  “Yes.”

  “It wouldn’t be fair for me to ask what she told you, would it?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t help it, I have to ask one question anyway. Does she know that Grady and I—that we—”

  “No.”

  “I was pretty sure she didn’t but I had to be positive.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess I’m afraid of her.”

  “She’s not exactly formidable—twice your age, about half your size and a little nuts.”

  “She isn’t a little nuts,” Ellen said. “Where Grady’s con­cerned she’s totally irrational. She hasn’t changed since the night you dumped her on me when you drove her here from that clinic in Mexico. She told me then that she’d do anything to make it possible for her and Grady to be to­gether again. She said if he needed money to be happy, no matter how much money, she’d get it somehow and buy him back. Can you believe it?”

  “Yes.” They were the same words Miranda had used in the cabana half an hour ago. “So what are you afraid of, that he can be bought?”

  “I don’t know whether he can or not. I just don’t want her to try. It’s not fair.”

  “Don’t worry. She hasn’t a nickel.”

  He sounded more confident than he felt.

  “Nothing,” he told Charity when he returned to the of­fice later in the day.

  “Nothing?” she repeated. “You’ve been gone all after­noon, and nothing?”

  “Nothing definite. I did what you told me to—hung around here and there, kept my ears open, asked subtle questions like how are you, got subtle answers like fine. There are the usual rumors which a case of this kind in­spires. But one of them may possibly be worth something.”

  “What is it?”

  “That the D.A. has enough evidence to ask the grand jury for an indictment.”

  “An indictment against whom?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Probably the husband,” Charity said. “It usually is in this day and age. Nobody keeps a butler anymore.”

  Part VI

  Let the record show that all nineteen members of the grand jury are present and have been sworn and the District Attor­ney is ready to continue the presentation of his case.

  “Mr. Foreman and ladies and gentlemen of the grand jury. During the morning session I outlined the general procedure I would follow, since this is the first homicide brought before you. In the course of the afternoon I will deal more with specifics. But first I would like to state that I am aware, as you must be, that the grand jury system has recently been criticized in the media on several grounds: the manner in which jurors are selected, the secrecy of the proceedings, the absence of any attorney to represent the defense and of a judge to rule on what is or isn’t permissi­ble, and the fact that only twelve votes are required to issue an indictment, which allows for seven dissenters if the full jury of nineteen is present, as it is now. It is not my busi­ness to answer these criticisms. The system exists and we must operate within it. I have complete faith in your ability to reach a fair and impartial decision and I believe it will be a unanimous one.”

  The District Attorney stopped to wipe his forehead with a handkerchief. The courthouse air conditioning was on the blink again and the chamber, in spite of its size and high ceiling, was hot. All the windows had to be closed to shut out traffic noises. A fan droned at the back of the room, pushing the air around without cooling it.

  The District Attorney’s name was Zachary Tilford and he was in his early thirties, an age considered by many to be too young for the job. He knew this and in order to counteract it he spoke in an aggressively sharp staccato voice. His words bounced off the walls like ping-pong balls.

  “The house at 1220 Camino Grande is a mansion by today’s standards. Purchased about a dozen years ago by Vice-Admiral Cooper Young, USN, Retired, and his wife, Iris Van Eyck Young, it has been occupied since then by the Admiral and his wife and their two unmarried daugh­ters, Cordelia and Juliet. A housekeeper, Mrs. Paulette Norgate, joined the household a short time later, and last year Miranda Shaw, a well-bred attractive widow, then fifty-two, was hired to act as a kind of social governess for the daughters. These five people lived in the house. During the day other employees came to assist with the cleaning and cooking and general household chores, but for purposes of this hearing we will not concern ourselves with the latter group.

  “Iris Young was sixty-two and in poor health. A chronic arthritic, she had suffered
two heart attacks. She lived the life of a semi-recluse, spending most of her waking hours in her sitting room on the main floor, occupied with her busi­ness interests—she was a wealthy woman—as well as her books and music. For a hobby she played chess by mail with various people around the world. This was among her activities on the afternoon of July the fourth. We know that because she gave Mrs. Shaw two letters to post, one addressed to a professor at the University of Tokyo, the other to a missionary in Jakarta. The rest of the time she spent finishing a book she’d been reading and listening to an opera. For Mrs. Young it was a typical afternoon, ex­cept for one thing. It was her last.

  “Shortly after nine o’clock that night Iris Young died. Preliminary reports indicated that she was attempting to light the gas log in the fireplace when she fell forward, struck her head and lost consciousness. The escaping gas exploded and set fire to the room and everything in it, but an autopsy proved that Mrs. Young’s death was actually due to smoke inhalation. I want to bring to your attention at this point that the official temperature reading in Santa Felicia at nine o’clock on the night of July the fourth was seventy-two degrees after a daytime high of eighty-one. The temperature in Iris Young’s sitting room must have been somewhere between those two extremes, probably about seventy-six degrees, warm even for someone who was an invalid. Yet she allegedly tried to light the gas log. I call this curious circumstance number one.

  “Curious circumstance number two: Mrs. Young was alone in the house. As I promised this morning, I will not waste the jury’s time and the taxpayers’ money bringing in witnesses to testify to evidence already well-documented in the investigative reports which are included in the exhibits.

  “Where was her family and the other people who lived in the house? The Admiral had escorted his two daughters to a fireworks display at the Penguin Club; Miranda Shaw was out walking the dog; and the housekeeper, Mrs. Norgate, had gone to babysit her grandson. The last person to see Mrs. Young alive was Miranda Shaw. I want to bring to your attention at this point that it was Mrs. Shaw’s habit to walk the dog before she retired between ten thirty and eleven o’clock. On the night in question she left the house at eight thirty, claiming the dog suffered a digestive upset. This may be true. Certainly, neither Iris Young nor the dog is in a position to deny it.