by Gloria Dank
“I’m sure that’s not true!”
“Oh, well, it is true, I’m afraid. Alicia has all the brains in the family. She has enough for two.”
Snooky did not say what he thought, which was that Alicia Grunwald’s avocation struck him as a perfect excuse to stay home and read historical romances while her unfortunate younger sister did all the work running the house. “Nice tomatoes today, aren’t they?”
“Very nice. Harry always carries the best. That’s why I shop here.”
Snooky flailed about for something to say. “It was nice of the two of you to come by and see Irma,” he said at last, hating himself for his duplicity.
“Oh … well, it’s such a tragedy. We felt so awful … we had to do something.”
“Yes. It’s hard to know what to do at a time like that, isn’t it?”
“Very hard …”
“Hard to know what to say to her.”
“Hard to know …”
“But I think the gesture is what counts, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes … the gesture …”
Snooky began to feel unpleasantly that unless he took matters firmly in hand, the conversation would consist entirely of statements and echoes. But Charlotte surprised him by picking up a tomato, examining it warily, placing it in her basket and continuing in her soft voice, “Of course, naturally I shouldn’t say anything … it’s not kind to speak badly of the dead … but I don’t really think … that is, Alicia and I don’t really think … that everything was just the way poor dear Irma and her family thought it was.”
Snooky leaned his shopping basket against the produce stand. “That’s interesting. What makes you say that?”
“Oh, well,” said Charlotte, picking through the lettuce eagerly. She was enjoying this chance to talk to a young man, to be away from her sister and out from under her dominating influence. Her personality expanded erratically in all directions, like a carnival balloon, all globes and cylinders and long jolly tubes. She leaned toward him in a giggly, confiding manner. “Oh, well, you see … Bobby was … oh, I probably shouldn’t say a word … I’m sure Alicia wouldn’t like it if … oh, well. I don’t think my sister would approve, but I’m sure you wouldn’t … if you know what I mean … oh, it’s awful to speak ill of those who have passed on, especially so … so violently, isn’t it?” She shuddered delicately and pawed at the cucumbers.
Snooky was not sure what she had said in this incoherent little speech, but he nodded knowingly. She leaned toward him again and gazed around the store, a happy expression in her granite-gray eyes. Her cap, under closer inspection, appeared to be made up of a multitude of tiny steel wool pads. “Well, it turns out … we saw something, Alicia and I. We know something about him …”
“Bobby?”
“Yes … he wasn’t what he seemed to be, no, no, not at all. He was … well, he was … a fraud.”
“A fraud?” Snooky thought how ironic life was, that he was now the faithful echo to Charlotte’s conversation.
“Yes! All the time he was dancing around Irma, all that time, he was … he was lying to her.” She leaned closer to him, her hat scratching unpleasantly against his cheek. “He was seeing somebody else,” she breathed, and gave him a triumphant look.
Snooky said the first thing that came into his head. “Why, Charlotte, that’s … that’s amazing.”
She expanded visibly, her confidence billowing out into the wide aisles of the store, wedging itself between the bibb lettuce and the grapes. She clucked and preened herself fondly, like a little gray bird. “Isn’t it?”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes, yes … you see, we actually saw them together … Bobby and this—this hussy … all blond and made up …” She let her voice trail off disdainfully. “Good-looking blonde, but no class, if you know what I mean.”
“You saw them here, in town?”
“Oh, no, Bobby would never be seen with her here. Too many wagging tongues about, if you know what I mean.” Charlotte glanced around, apparently unaware of what her own tongue was busy doing at that moment. “We saw them in Wolfingham one day. Alicia and I were doing some shopping, and I couldn’t find the right color wool here in Lyle for a sweater I was knitting for my godson’s new baby … the cutest little thing you ever saw … the baby, I mean. He weighed nearly nine pounds at birth and his poor mother was in labor for thirty hours, it’s so awful, isn’t it? We women have so much to bear.”
“How true,” murmured Snooky.
“His name is Matthew Robert, and he’s the sweetest little thing, truly he is,” Charlotte said ecstatically. “But anyway … where was I? Oh, yes. I wanted to knit him a little winter sweater in sky blue and white, and Frasier’s didn’t have the right color blue”—this was the all-purpose store in town—“I wanted something a little bit special, you know, for Matthew, a true robin’s-egg blue. So Alicia and I went into Wolfingham, which we rarely do these days, just when we need something special. They have a beautiful knitting store there, the most gorgeous wool, I’ve never seen anything like it, I really should speak to Frasier’s about it, it’s a scandal, you know, the cheap stuff they carry.” She paused, giving him a buoyant smile. “Anyway—oh, I am enjoying this conversation, I hope I’m not boring you—anyway, we were coming out of the knitting store there, but we weren’t quite out of the door, so he couldn’t see us, and there was Bobby, walking down the street with his arm around this blond woman. And they were … well, the only decent way to describe it was that they were making eyes at each other. Pawing each other, really. It was enough to make your skin crawl. Especially when you think how devoted he always pretended to be toward poor Irma, and how she wanted to marry him and give him all her money and everything. Naturally that was what Alicia and I thought later, that he was with her for the money. A gold digger. Anyway, they didn’t see us—of course they wouldn’t have seen us even if we had been standing on the street in front of them, they had eyes only for each other—and we watched them go by, and then we went on our way. Isn’t that frightful?” She pronounced the last word with relish.
“Yes. Frightful is the very word. But how clever of the two of you to have seen it, and not to be seen yourselves.”
“Yes. Wasn’t it? I’m sure he had no idea—no idea at all that his little secret was out.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, I don’t know. About a month ago.”
Snooky calculated rapidly in his head. “A few weeks before Bobby was killed?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Before he and Irma announced their engagement?”
“Oh, yes, I’m quite sure it was.”
Snooky deliberately gave her an admiring glance. “You’ve been very clever, Charlotte.”
Charlotte licked her lips and nearly began to purr. “Do you really think so?”
“Absolutely. So you have no idea who the woman was?”
“None at all. A hussy, that’s how Alicia refers to her. A brazen hussy.”
“I see. The worst kind of hussy,” remarked Snooky. “A brazen one. And have you told Detective Bentley about what you saw?”
Charlotte shook her head scornfully. “We were going to tell the police, because we knew it might be important, but when that awful little man came to our house it was all so unpleasant that we decided not to say anything. Anyway, Alicia decided not to. I sort of wondered to myself … perhaps we should have said something. It doesn’t seem right that nobody would know.”
“Well, your secret is safe with me.”
Charlotte looked at him gratefully. “Thank you. And I should be going now. Alicia will be wondering what’s happened to me. It’s an amazing story, though, isn’t it? I’ve been just … well, simply bursting to tell somebody. I feel ever so much better now. Relieved. It was kind of you to listen. You won’t tell anyone?”
“No, no, of course not.”
“It would be terrible if Irma found out,” Charlotte said. “That’s partly why Alicia and
I decided not to tell. I think the news would kill her. After all, she was planning to marry the man. You won’t tell anyone about it? Especially her family?”
“I promise.”
Charlotte nodded. “So very nice talking to you,” she said, her voice floating back over the piles of vegetables and fruit. “See you around, I hope.”
“See you.”
Snooky waited until she was out of the store, then grabbed his groceries, paid for them and sprinted for his car.
“… and then they saw Bobby and some woman coming down the street hand in hand,” he was telling Bernard a quarter of an hour later. “Down the street hand in hand. In full view. In her words, they were ‘making eyes at each other.’ ”
Bernard appeared to be sunken in thought. His eyelids flickered.
“I wonder if anybody else knew about this.” Snooky gnawed at a fingernail worriedly. “Maybe there was no reason to kill him. Maybe he wasn’t planning to go through with the marriage after all.”
Bernard stirred on the sofa. “Or maybe he was planning to go through with it, and this mystery woman is the one who killed him.”
Snooky was struck by this. “True.”
“We have to find out who she is.”
“Yes,”
“How do we do that?” mused Bernard. His eyes flickered aimlessly around the room, coming to rest at last on the languid figure of his brother-in-law. “You have to find out who she is, Snooky.”
“Me? Why me? How am I supposed to find her?”
“Wolfingham’s not such a big town.”
“No, but I don’t know anybody in it.”
“You can meet people.”
“Yes. I can meet people. Slowly. And I can hope, after two or three years of meeting people, that I meet the person we’re looking for. Especially if she hasn’t moved away by then, or dyed her hair a different color, or joined a nunnery in Tibet.”
Bernard ran a hand through his hair until it stood up like a cockatoo’s plume. “We need help.”
“I would say so.”
“Bentley.”
“I guess.”
“Do you think he has any chance at all of finding her?”
“Well, he has more than we have. He might know who she is from the description—after all, he lives there.”
“A sad day, when you have to ask Bentley for help,” said Bernard.
“I agree.”
“Do you want to call him, or should I?”
“You do it, please. The soup is boiling over and the muffins are burning. I can smell them from out here.”
Bernard was horrified. “Well, get them out of the oven, then, Snooky. You can’t eat burned muffins.”
As Snooky left the room, he saw Bernard reaching slowly and reluctantly for the telephone.
“Where did you say you got this information from?”
“From a concerned citizen,” replied Snooky.
Bentley looked sceptical. He was settled like a toadstool, his short legs dangling off the floor, on the sofa next to the fireplace. “Who?”
“I can’t say. Surely you understand that, Detective. I have to protect my sources. What kind of weaselly faced informer would I be otherwise?”
“A blond woman.” Bentley jotted it down on his pad. “She was described to you as—?”
“As a brazen hussy.”
“And she and Bobby Fuller were seen walking together on the main street in Wolfingham?”
“Yes.”
“She might not even live there. They might have arranged to meet there because it’s close by. I don’t see how I can find her. This description is hardly complete. How old was she, for instance?”
“I don’t know, Detective. My sources didn’t say. I got the feeling she was around Bobby’s age, though, or maybe a little younger.”
Bentley shook his head slowly.
Bernard, from the massive armchair which he favored, said, “I would suggest that you search Bobby Fuller’s apartment. There might be something with her name on it, or an address—something.”
“We’ve already been all through his apartment. Nothing there.”
“Yes, but you weren’t looking for another girlfriend’s address. It might have been overlooked, or tossed aside. Why don’t you go through it again?”
Bentley got to his feet. “Not a bad idea. I’ll do that.” The door banged shut behind him.
Maya came in a few minutes later with the groceries and a worried expression on her face. “Was that Detective Bentley I passed on the way up here?”
Bernard nodded.
“Why was he here again? Hasn’t he tortured us enough?”
“We called him and invited him over.”
Maya leaned against the kitchen door. “What in the world possessed you to do that, darling?”
Bernard briefly outlined Snooky’s conversation with Charlotte. Snooky lay on a sofa nearby, holding Misty on his chest and gazing deep into her soft red-brown eyes. He was murmuring to her under his breath.
When Bernard was finished, Maya said, “Using some more of your famous charm on that helpless old lady, Snooks?”
“I can’t help it, My. Women are fascinated by me. Look at Misty, here. I have her spellbound.”
“She’s not spellbound.” Bernard pushed aside the red shaggy hair over Misty’s face. “She’s asleep.”
“Well, she’s asleep now. But five minutes ago she was spellbound.”
Misty snored pleasantly.
“So Bobby had another girlfriend,” said Maya.
“Yes.”
“This puts a whole new wrinkle on it, doesn’t it, darling?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think this mystery woman could have been the one who killed him?”
Bernard gazed out the window and scratched his beard thoughtfully. “It’s possible. Yes, it’s possible.”
“Do you think … well, do you think that Irma had any idea?”
“About this other woman, you mean? No, I’m sure she didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because she wouldn’t have gotten engaged to Bobby if she knew about it. And I’m sure he went to great lengths to keep his two lives totally separate.”
“Do you think Detective Bentley has any chance of finding out who she is?”
“I doubt it,” Bernard said bitterly. “Given his abilities.”
There was a long silence. The fire leaped and crackled, reaching tendrils of flame up the blackened chimney. Snooky sighed, the weight of Misty on his chest and her placid breathing lulling him to sleep. Bernard sat quietly, his eyelids drooping. Maya sat on the edge of his armchair, curled up in the crook of his arm, half-asleep.
After a while, Bernard picked up a small notebook and a large green Magic Marker that lay on the coffee table in front of him. He opened the notebook and uncapped the pen. Maya, on his shoulder, was fully asleep now. She sighed and murmured something. He shifted his weight so he was more comfortable, put his arm closely around her, and with his other hand wrote:
JLSY?
This stood for “jealousy.” He looked at that for a long time.
Then, in rapid succession:
MNY? (“money”)
GRLFRND (“girlfriend”)
DD SMON ELS NO? (“did someone else know?”) and
GRD (“greed”)
It always came down to greed. So many things did. It was a shame, Bernard thought. He suspected that if Bobby Fuller had been a little less careful about concealing his mystery girlfriend, he might still be alive. The killer might not have seen Bobby as a threat if they had known about his other life. On the other hand, it was possible that this girlfriend was the one who finished him off. She might have heard about the engagement and lost her head.
He made a few more notes in large green letters, and sat looking in self-satisfied absorption at his notebook while the fire burned low in the grate. Around him Snooky, Misty and Maya slumbered peacefully, their faces relaxed and quiet. Misty’s mouth was open an
d she was dribbling happily all over Snooky’s newly washed shirt. Bernard looked up from his notes and smiled.
For the next few days, life in the cabin went on as usual, except that Bernard grew increasingly fretful. He gnawed on his pencils until Maya remarked that he was making himself a candidate for lead poisoning. He switched to gnawing on his erasers. He decapitated the bunny eraser and gnawed thoughtfully on first one ear, then the other.
“What’s with Bernard?” Snooky asked Maya one night in the kitchen, after dinner. “I don’t get it.”
“He’s got murder on the brain. He’s thinking more about Bobby’s death than he is about his work.”
“Watching him chew on the furniture is making me ill.”
“He’s not sleeping too well, either.”
Finally Maya, in irritation, suggested that Bernard call the police station and find out what was happening. “Honestly, if it’s bothering you so much, Bernard, then do something about it. I can’t stand seeing you like this.”
Bernard looked up, a pink bunny leg dangling from his mouth. “Like what?”
“Like this. Here, I’ll dial for you.” She picked up the phone book, riffled through it, then dialed rapidly. “Here. You talk.”
“Is Detective Bentley there, please?… Hello?… Yes. Thank you.” Bernard waited. “Detective Bentley?… Bernard Woodruff here. I was wondering … uh-huh … uh-huh … uh-huh … Oh. I see … Uh-huh, yes, I see. Thank you … Really?… Thank you very much.” He hung up.
“Well?”
“Nothing,” Bernard said heavily. “He said they’re ‘pursuing some clues,’ but I could tell he has nothing. There was a sort of surly, defeated tone to his voice.”
“Maybe he always sounds like that.”
“Yes, but this was worse than usual.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“That’s all right. It’s none of my business, anyway.” He turned away and bit off one of the rabbit paws savagely. “I’ve got my work to do. I don’t have time for this.”
Sarah and Snooky were in bed together the next afternoon, in her room upstairs at the Ditmar mansion. This was a small, functional closetlike space, filled with stuffed toys from her childhood, small framed watercolors, and study guides for the law boards, which she was planning to take soon. Irma had gone off into town to do some shopping. Gertie, as always, was out in the woods.
