Murder in the Collective

by Barbara Wilson

  “I’ve got my problems too,” Hadley said, smiling back with real affection. “Like, I’m queer, you know.”

  “Yeah, but I’m queer too.”

  Elena suddenly burst into tears and ran from the room. Fran started to rise, then sat down again. “This has all been hard on her…But I guess you came here mostly because you wanted to find out what I know about Jeremy’s death, didn’t you?”

  “Start from the beginning,” Hadley said. “You were at the Bar & Grill, and Elena and Pam left around 10:30.”

  Fran shook her head, rueful. “Let’s leave out the time element for now,” she said. “If I was wearing my watch I don’t remember ever looking at it. I don’t remember how long, really, I was anyplace. I do remember being angry, and drinking, and then leaving the Bar & Grill. I don’t remember driving. I remember going to B. Violet and seeing a light on, going inside and finding Jeremy.”

  “What was he doing when you saw him?”

  “Cutting up negatives. The office and workspace were already destroyed.”

  “Weren’t you scared?” asked Hadley. “Like he might be off his rocker?”

  “Fortunately, I was off mine,” Fran said, “so I just went right for him, picking up the first thing I saw, that piece of glass from the light table. The next thing I knew it was morning.”

  I asked, “Why didn’t you call the police? To report him?”

  “Because at first I didn’t remember anything. I was just lying there surrounded by B. Violet, with an awful headache, and I had no idea what had happened. I didn’t remember coming there and smashing up everything, but I was immediately convinced that I had. My only thought was to get out of there as fast as I could, before anybody came in. I couldn’t find my car keys, so I just started walking. I walked down the hill to the Arboretum and slept for a while, discovered I still had some money in my pocket and went and had breakfast. It was while I was eating that it started to come back to me…”

  Or was it then that you began to concoct your story about Jeremy, I might have said—yesterday. But tonight I was trying hard to put myself in Fran’s place, to understand, if I could, the frightening world she must have been living in—a jigsaw puzzle gone smash, with pieces everywhere.

  Hadley was gentle, but firm. “What did you do after breakfast?”

  “Threw up, felt better. Ate some lunch. I walked around some more, thought about calling you and Elena a few dozen times.” Fran nodded to Elena who’d come silently back into the room. “I should have, I know….Instead I went and had a beer. I thought it would clear my brain a little, steady me up, make me remember. It did, at least the first couple of beers did. I knew I hadn’t done the sabotage and that Jeremy had, and I wondered why. Was it because he hated women so much, because he was so afraid of the merger? Another couple of beers and I decided to call him up and confront him, then I decided it would be better if I went to where he lived and tried to find out the truth, maybe beat him up or something…”

  “Did you think about anybody else during all this?” I couldn’t help bursting out. “Think that your friends might be worried about you, that the rest of us might be getting suspicious?”

  Fran shrugged defensively. “Not really, maybe a little guilty about not letting Elena know where I was—but even that had disappeared after a while. I started to feel sure that I was on to something. The more I thought about Jeremy, the more belligerent I felt. Coming and wrecking B. Violet, he deserved the worst kind of treatment…short of death,” she added, glancing at me. “I’m only trying to explain how I felt. I never did confront him that evening.”

  Once more I distrusted her. Perhaps she just didn’t remember killing Jeremy, perhaps she’d blacked it out. Gone looking for him at his house, then came down to the shop and murdered him, came back later when Hadley and I were there, having forgotten already.

  “How’d you know where he lived?” I asked sharply.

  “Phone book told me his address. When I got there I saw it was a house divided into studios and apartments. I just looked at the card at the bottom of the stairs. Then I waited.”

  “What time was this?”

  “It wasn’t dark yet, but people were starting to come home from work.”

  “Where were you waiting?”

  “There were some back stairs, sort of an old wooden staircase, attached to the house. I went up those to the third floor, where his apartment was, waited in the corner by the railing.”

  “Did he come home?”

  “Yes, through his front door. He wasn’t alone though, there were a couple of guys with him. In running suits.”

  Hadley and I looked at each other. I couldn’t help asking, “What kind of state were you in?”

  “Starting to sober up a little. More or less aware of where I was and what I was doing.”

  “Who were the men? Could you see them? Could you hear anything?”

  “At first I could hear. They all came in together, turned on the light. The window was open. I scrunched down on the back porch, heard Jeremy said, ‘Did you get it?’

  “‘Yes,’ someone said. Then some kind of mumbly thing, then ‘Wait,’ Jeremy said and then he closed the window. I sort of peeked up and over and saw one of the men handing him a package. Then there was a door closing. I figured it was the two men. I started trying quietly to open the door that led to the back of the house, but it was locked. I went down the stairs, and when I looked up again Jeremy’s light was off. I was standing next to the side of the house when I saw him come out of the front door, get into his car and leave.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. At least I didn’t see the two guys.”

  “I wonder if they followed him down to the shop and killed him,” said Elena, speaking for the first time since she’d returned to the room. “They were obviously FBI or something. What if Jeremy gave them the wrong information, or he knew too much?”

  “It sounds like a dope deal to me,” I said. “Everyone knew Jeremy did some dealing. Remember he asked, ‘Did you get it?’ But I thought he was strictly small time…”

  Hadley broke into our conjectures. “Let’s let Fran go on with her story. Okay, we’re up to maybe six or seven on the night of the murder. What did you do then, Fran?”

  She looked embarrassed. “Went and had another couple of beers. I guess I thought that if I didn’t come down I could keep my courage up and not have to worry about what Elena or anyone else was doing, and what was going on with B. Violet. So I had some beer and felt better and somehow it occurred to me to go down to Best Printing and see if Jeremy was there. I still didn’t have my car or my keys. I didn’t remember what happened to them. So I took a bus. Walked into your shop and had the shock of my life, thinking it was Elena lying flat out dead there. And that’s when I got scared—of having the cops come because he was murdered, and of having them ask me questions. I just had to get out of there.”

  I recalled her urgency very well. “Where did you go then?”

  “I was going to go pick up my car, but I got kind of sidetracked. Went to a bar, had a couple, had a couple more, went home with some friends of mine and had a few more I expect. Then it was the next afternoon.”

  “That’s when you called Elena and told her you thought Jeremy was an informer.”

  “Yes, I think so. It seemed important to tell someone. I don’t remember much about that day. It was blurred. I was feeling pretty bad physically, shaky, just slept on and off. That night they were having a party…” She trailed off anxiously, looking at Elena’s tight lips. “But that’s all over, all over. This afternoon I called the woman at AA and now I’m back. I’m going to change, and I want to help any way I can. The bad part’s over, it’s really over, Elena…” Fran looked suddenly terribly vulnerable and sad, reaching over to her lover.

  “It’s over, I know,” repeated Elena unconvincingly. “Let’s go to sleep now, okay?”

  Hadley and I sat outside in her truck for a while. “Is Fran off your suspect list?”
she asked.

  “I think so. Unless it’s all some fantasy, some lie she concocted.” I shook my head. “Two guys in running suits….”

  “There may be a way of confirming her story.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How are you at breaking and entering?”

  “Going to Fran’s apartment, looking for evidence?”

  “I was thinking more of Jeremy’s, actually.” She faced me in the car. “Are you up for it, Miss Pam?”

  “That’s Detective Nilsen, and yes, I think I am.”

  20

  IT WAS JUST AFTER two in the morning; the sky was clear black with stars, the air rose-scented. The temperature had dropped enough to make a jacket necessary—and it was just as well we had something to cover our tee-shirts: lavender and light blue weren’t burglar colors. We parked a block away from Jeremy’s apartment and approached cautiously.

  “Let’s go the back way that Fran told us about,” Hadley whispered. “See if we can get inside.”

  I nodded and we crept around, then sneaked up the stairs. At the top of the broken-down wooden staircase was a narrow landing that led into the third floor hallway. It was open—after Hadley produced a knife and jiggled the lock. She tried the same trick on Jeremy’s door inside the hall but without success. It had a double bolt. Hadley didn’t seem surprised. She motioned me out to the narrow landing again, gestured to a window about four feet away. Jeremy’s window.

  “You’re smaller.”

  I shook my head vehemently, then reconsidered. The window had a wide ledge, and a sort of cornice over it. It might be possible to stretch a leg from the railing of the back porch over to the ledge. You could hold on to the cornice above and hope to God it wasn’t as rotten as the rest of this building looked.

  “I’ll try.”

  I stepped up to the railing and Hadley took hold of my ankle. I stretched and touched the ledge with my left toe, then my whole foot. I leaned up and grabbed hold of the cornice. It felt like it would hold.

  “Let go,” I told her, not daring to look down. The smell of early summer hit me with redoubled force, mixed with a thin, acrid odor of fear.

  I was standing on the window ledge, with my left hand attached for life to the cornice above and my right blindly scrabbling with the window. I couldn’t tell if it was unlocked or not. It might just have been painted shut. My left foot wobbled a little on something that felt like dried gum on the ledge.

  “Is it locked?” whispered Hadley.

  “Can’t tell,” I muttered, pushing with all my right-handed strength and feeling a sudden give. “No, it’s stuck, but it’s opening, it’s coming.”

  I got it up about four inches then felt it stick again. “Wait.” My hand that had held on to the cornice scraped as it slipped down. I crouched on the ledge, with both hands inside the window now, trying to push up with my shoulder, trying to keep my balance. It was no use. I twisted my head so I could see Hadley.

  “I don’t think this is going to work.”

  “That’s okay. Can you get back to the porch all right?”

  I considered the physical arrangement of my limbs. “I feel secure, but not exactly like I can move.”

  “I’ll reach over.” She stood up on the railing and stretched one of her long legs over. I had my entire left arm inside the room now and was still shoving; the other arm grasped Hadley’s leg.

  “I don’t think there’s room for the two of us.”

  “I know,” she said. “Use my leg as a balance. I’m steady. And I’ll give you a hand back.”

  “All right,” I said, and then for some stupid reason I looked down. Instantly my stomach fell about two thousand feet and I blanched. Three stories is a lot higher than it seems from the earth. Instinctively I recoiled, and hit my head on the window.

  “Pam, are you all right? What are you doing? Take my leg, come on.”

  My mother always said I had a head like cast iron, though that was possibly to excuse herself for dropping me on that knobby part of the body at some family picnic. At any rate, the force with which I had knocked back against the window had dislodged the frame enough so that I could slide it up.

  “Hey, we’re on,” I whispered, a little dazed, starting to climb inside. “Go around to the door, I’ll let you in.”

  I didn’t dare turn on any lights, but fortunately it was just one room, with a kitchen and a bath, not difficult to negotiate in the dark. I stumbled and slid on some magazines or newspapers but managed to reach the door and unlock it. Hadley came in and turned on her flashlight.

  “I always did have a hard head, luckily,” I said.

  “I guess you do! What a stunt. You should think about the movies.”

  “Yeah, too bad the Marx Brothers are no longer in business.”

  “I was thinking more of James Bond. I could be the love interest…Do you think the cops left us anything to look at?” she asked, sending her flashlight’s beam on a trip around the room.

  “Someone’s been here, said the little wee bear.”

  “And it sure wasn’t Goldilocks.”

  Jeremy’s studio wasn’t so full of junk as it was littered with stuff that belonged in drawers and closets. A certain amount of it was clothes and linen, but there were also ashtrays and beer bottles and coffee cups, and a smell of all three, mixed with the airless dirty scent of a closed-off room.

  “I wonder what his family will say when they get here?” I said, lifting up a handful of socks strewn over the floor and staring at the magazines underneath: Reader’s Digest, Hustler, Rolling Stone, High Times, Newsweek.

  “Aren’t you surprised that they aren’t here yet?” Hadley asked, rummaging through the contents of drawers that had been dumped on the pulled-down Murphy bed. “I mean, it’s been two days.”

  “Maybe that’s partly why the cops were here, looking for their addresses. I’m sure Jeremy has family, he’s talked about them often enough.”

  “It could have been the dope mafia here, looking for something, or the FBI, right?”

  I had come to a pile of newsclippings stapled together. They were in a manila folder that had slipped down between the table and the sofa. Flipping through them quickly it occurred to me that Hadley still didn’t know that Zee was staying with us, that there had been more than a casual connection between Zee and Jeremy. I had meant to tell her something about it, not all, yet still couldn’t think how to begin without betraying Zee’s trust.

  But Hadley had discovered a stack of Hustlers and soft-core porn magazines under the bed. “That guy was sick,” she said. “Poor June.” She suddenly ripped one of them in half. “Christ, I’m starting to get the creeps in here.”

  I couldn’t help shuddering too. June had deserved better than that. We all did. Reading porn had never been grounds for expulsion from a leftist collective, much less for murder, but if I’d known that Jeremy was a fan of Hustler I’d never have let him through Best’s doors. And for a moment I was only sorry Jeremy was dead because I couldn’t tell him so.

  I was still holding the newsclippings and wondering if they had any importance. They were from different American dailies, The Seattle Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, as well as some leftist papers. There were also several from Filipino papers, some in English and some in what I took to be Tagalog. They dated from about three years back, and virtually all of them concerned bombings and protests in Manila. When I turned the flashlight on them more closely I could see pencil marks. There were names underlined, some faintly and some with a check mark. Nothing else, no comments in the margin, nothing to indicate the agitators’ interest to Jeremy.

  Hadley had gone into the bathroom. “Yuck,” I heard her mutter. She was opening the medicine cabinet. On an impulse I took the clippings out of the folder and stuck them in my jacket pocket.

  Then I joined her. I’d expected her to be staring at a syringe or something, but apparently her comment had referred to the state of the toilet and the sink, which were obs
cenely filthy. She was now, for some mysterious reason, fastening a beautiful earring in her earlobe, humming. It was gold and turquoise and shaped like an S.

  “It’s too bad there’s only one,” she said. “I just found it in the medicine cabinet. I’ve always wondered what all those people with one hole in their ear do with the other earring.”

  “Jeremy didn’t have one hole, he had at least five.”

  “Same difference…I think I’ll keep it.” She laughed and turned me around, propelling me out of the bathroom. “There’s nothing in here, let’s try the kitchen.”

  Ten minutes later we’d finished our search. We found no dope, no incriminating letters, no mysterious tape recorder or tapes, no stashes of money, nothing that could link Jeremy to either organized crime or organized spying. Just a lot of dirt, a dozen porn magazines and the small pile of news clippings stapled together, with names checked or underlined in light pencil.

  I wanted to get them home, take another look at them, show them to Zee. There was something about one of the names that seemed familiar. I couldn’t remember where or when I’d heard it, but I thought it had been recently. Zee might be able to place it, or jog my memory.

  “You want to do anything with the porn magazines?” I asked Hadley as we prepared to leave.

  “Spare his family? Prove something to June?”

  I shuddered. “No, let’s just get out of here.” I was feeling more and more paranoid. What if the house were under surveillance, what if we were met by plainclothes police outside, what if drug thugs accosted us on the way back to the car? Would Hadley’s new earring and my newsclippings have been worth it?

  We left by the back way again, being careful not to go too quickly and give ourselves away. We didn’t go around the house again out to the street, but instead through the alley, just in case.

  But nothing happened. There didn’t seem to be a soul around, not even any frat boys on this warm, rose-perfumed June night. And we laughed as we got in the car, thinking we’d gotten away with something.