Murder in the Collective

by Barbara Wilson

  After dinner I told Penny that I was going to visit Zee for a while, see how she was doing.

  “I should go too,” Penny said. “But I’m too tired.” She was flopped on the sofa with the comics, her starchy hair in every direction, her big purple-rimmed glasses down over her nose. I felt a strong wave of affection for her, and sadness too.

  “Ray coming over later?”

  “Nah. I want to be by myself for an evening. I’m glad Sam and Jude are at the movies.”

  I hadn’t thought I’d say it in quite this way, but I did.

  “I’m thinking of moving out, Pen. By myself.”

  She looked at me from under the comics. “Is it Ray? We don’t have to come here, you know.”

  “No…it’s more….You know we’ve lived in this house twenty-five years almost? I’ve never lived alone, had my own place. For one thing, I’m curious to see what kind of place I’d even choose to live in, if I could choose.”

  “We should just get Sam to move out, that’s what we should do. He is so obnoxious sometimes.” She looked at me suddenly as if she were really hearing what I said. “Is it because of Hadley? You don’t feel comfortable bringing her here?”

  “It’s not just Hadley…if I am a lesbian, and I am, Penny, you know my life is going to be different. It’s got to be. I’ve got to find out…what it all means.”

  I thought, And I’m not going to find out living here with two couples and Sam never saying an encouraging word and Jude talking too much and you and me knowing each other far too well. Even if it’s not Hadley I end up with, even if it’s not.

  Penny nodded. She understood me better than I thought. “We’re just regular twins, you know,” she said. “Not Siamese.” She pretended to feel the back of her head. “It still kind of hurts though.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s bound to.”

  Zee answered the door herself when I knocked.

  “Oh, it’s Pam,” she said, a little too loudly. “Come on in.”

  Whoever she’d alerted was just slipping around the corner of the hallway opening when I came in. I thought I caught a glimpse of Benny’s dark head, but I wasn’t sure.

  “Just wanted to see how you were doing,” I said, sitting down in a chair.

  “Tea? Or would you like a drink? My aunt’s working tonight. She won’t wrinkle up her nose if we have some of her expensive Scotch.”

  “Just a light one,” I agreed, wondering why Zee was in such a wrought-up state. I doubted it had anything to do with the pleasure of my company. What had she and Benny been discussing?

  Zee fetched ice cubes and the bottle of Chivas, put them down on the coffee table in front of us. She was dressed up: designer jeans, high heels, a royal blue silk shirt. Six gold chains hung around her slender neck, matched with gold earrings and gold rings. Her heavy black hair hung in a solid mass around her delicate face. She didn’t look much like the woman who’d lectured me about the Philippines up in our attic, and, for many reasons, I was disappointed.

  “Everyone says to say hello—Penny, Ray…” I stopped. Was that really everyone? “Have you heard anything from June since she went to Oakland?” I asked. “No? She’s probably busy, having a good time.”

  I sipped some of my Scotch, racking my brains for more to offer. Why was I so put off by Zee’s glamorous appearance tonight? I’d felt genuinely close to her only a few days ago, felt as if we might be going to be friends. And now?

  “I heard Benny and Carlos visited you,” Zee said.

  “Yes.” I was cautious; I didn’t want to discuss Benny if he could hear us. But what was she doing with him anyway? Carlos was much nicer. Benny had the eyes of a criminal.

  “You showed them the newsclippings.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you see now, Jeremy was spying on us.” She said this matter-of-factly. “He was the cause of the death of Amado.”

  I nodded. Was she going to claim that Benny had done it? Was Benny going to appear in the hallway opening and gun me down because I knew too much?

  “It’s funny,” I said finally. “How many people I’ve suspected in this case. Margaret and Anna to begin with. It was just too much of a coincidence the murder happening right after B. Violet was vandalized. And then, for a long time, I thought Fran had done it. She had seen, or thought she’d seen, Jeremy at B. Violet. She was drunk enough to have killed him in revenge and then to have made up a wild excuse about Jeremy being an agent in the Filipino community.

  “I thought it was crazy at first, thought that Jeremy had just been doing a drug deal. Well, in fact, he was. But with Benny and Carlos, and with people’s lives at stake. Fran had only made a guess, but she turned out to be right. Jeremy was an agent—someone who was involved in the Filipino community, who knew names, who knew cases, who knew enough to blackmail. That was when I forgot about the sabotage of B. Violet. It had only thrown me off the track of the real murderer of Jeremy, the obvious murderer, the one who had done it for justifiable reasons. No, I decided, the destruction of a women’s typesetting business had nothing to do with Jeremy’s murder.

  “But I was wrong.” I stopped for a moment, but Zee didn’t say anything. She was staring down at her carmine-polished fingernails. She hadn’t touched her drink. Whatever excitement had been present at my arrival was gone now. She was merely quiet, waiting.

  “There’s only one person who links the two events together, only one person who was at both places, only one person who is the obvious suspect.”

  “You rang?” said June, standing in the hallway opening. “Or maybe it isn’t really that obvious.”

  She came into the room, sat down next to Zee and poured herself a drink.

  “When did you get back?” I asked.

  “I never went. You think I’ve got money to go to Oakland, when my car needs fixing and my kids need a trip to the dentist? It’s typical of you all that you’re trying to protect me and say get the hell on out of here, girl, before you get in the papers, but you don’t ask me how the fuck I’m going to get there. Nope, I just stayed right here. Keeping an eye on things.”

  “You are not going to tell me you murdered Jeremy, June. I won’t believe it.”

  June was standing again, drink in hand, walking around the room easily but ominously. Her dark skin glowed under Mrs. Reyes’ soft lighting arrangements. “Why the fuck shouldn’t I murder Jeremy? Even when I think about him now I feel like murdering him. Do you have any idea what he had me doing? He had me in his game just like the rest of them, just like you too. He had that whole goddamn collective wrapped around his little finger and you didn’t even know it. Who the hell do you think was printing that stuff for him anyway? Who was staying up all night running the press for little Jeremy’s projects?”

  June thrumped her strong thin chest. “This fool here. This fool who didn’t suspect a thing except she was helping her man somehow. Aw, but you white girls are even bigger fools. You’re so liberal you can’t even see straight half the time. Oh no, June couldn’t have done it, June’s our good friend. Yeah, right. It’s a terrible tragedy her husband got himself killed, but she didn’t do it, she didn’t kill Jeremy.

  “And then you go around acting like detectives, you and that Hadley girl, pointing the finger here and there and here again. You maybe hide Zee but you give her up without a word when the time comes. You say, we’re going to find out the truth, and you, June, get your ass to California. We don’t need you around making any complications. You go around and then you settle back on Zee with any speck of proof.”

  “I don’t care what you say,” I said. “I know you didn’t do it. I know it. I know it.”

  “Why are you so blind, girl? Look in front of your own eyes. The man did me wrong, so I shot him. Isn’t that the way the song goes?”

  “If you really killed him, how come you haven’t turned yourself in yet?”

  “Not because I didn’t want to give you the pleasure of detecting my crime—only you were too stupid to do it—bu
t because,” June paused and sat down again. “I really don’t feel like going to jail, you know.”

  All through this Zee had said nothing. “It’s true, jail is not too good a place to be,” she commented now, quietly and absently, as if remarking on the weather.

  I felt somewhat at a loss myself. I suddenly wondered why it was all so important. What did it matter if Zee had done it, or if June had, as she claimed? Jeremy had been a dangerous person, missed by no one except his family who remembered him the way he used to be at seven or eight, blond, sweet, sitting on a hired horse.

  “June, do you really think I’m so liberal? That that’s the reason I didn’t suspect you…assuming you are guilty?”

  “Honey, you are so liberal you don’t even know how liberal you are. It truly blows the mind.” She sat down on the sofa again as if exhausted. “Though now you’re a lesbian there may be some hope for you.”

  Zee was still not saying anything, not admitting anything one way or the other. She fished for one of the ice cubes in her drink and sucked on it, like a small, sad child trying to pass the time.

  It was suddenly as if none of us knew what to do or say anymore.

  Then the doorbell rang, and it was Hadley.

  32

  SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO make a stunning entrance; we’d had it all figured out. But no one noticed.

  Hadley sat down, looking from me to Zee to June, all of us slumped, wordless. “Oh well,” she said. “So how was California?”

  “That big earthquake got there just before I did, everything was gone, it was a tragedy. You didn’t hear about it? Hmmm, that’s strange. There must have been too much going on here.”

  “Yeah,” said Hadley. “It’s been hectic all right.”

  A further silence, and then Zee spoke softly. “You have my earrings on, Hadley.”

  If I’d had any doubts at all concerning June, they were gone now. She didn’t have the slightest idea what was happening, while Zee appeared to understand it was all over.

  “Benny told me you found one…I hoped you would think it was Jeremy’s,” Zee paused and sighed. “I was in Jeremy’s looking for some marriage certificate. I thought afterward that it would be best to find the paper and get rid of it, I couldn’t find it…I had lost one earring earlier, in the darkroom…I thought if I put one in Jeremy’s bathroom, they would think it was his too….But you found both….”

  “You don’t have to tell them anything,” said June. “I told you, we’d figure out a way. They’re not the cops, you don’t have to tell them anything.”

  “I know,” said Zee. “I guess that’s why I want to tell them, to see if they understand.” Her black eyes sought mine briefly and then looked away. She had trusted me and I had tried to trap her, Hadley and I both had.

  She sighed again. “Okay, where to start. We knew he was an agent, we couldn’t do anything about it. We have known for some weeks now, when Amado was killed. It was like you told Benny, he came and said, if you don’t want this to happen anymore, pay up. And we paid, we paid with dope, we paid with money, we paid and paid. I didn’t want to do the documents anymore, but he…he made me. That night, we went to B. Violet’s. Jeremy said he wants to look at their equipment for himself, in case we really do merge, if we can use it for our work.

  “Elena, she was there, standing there like a crazy person. Of course she wrecked and messed everything, you could see it. But she pretended Fran had done it and we pretended to believe her. Afterwards, Jeremy says he is going to blackmail her. He thinks it’s so funny, you should have heard him laugh. He says, the way she acts in meetings, and now he will make her pay. He called her up, he made some time for her to come to the darkroom. I heard him, I decided to go, to try to talk him out of it.

  “Now, you have got to know this—Jeremy had got a gun. He always carried it. He had it in his jacket pocket, a small one. I don’t know what kind, I never used a gun before. That night I went there, before eight. I was trying to talk to him. He was saying he had asked Elena to bring him a hundred dollars, but maybe he wouldn’t make her pay. He said he would tell her that if she fucked with him that he would forget it. He had never fucked with a lesbian before, he said. He was telling me the things he would like to do with her….I don’t want to say, but then, I don’t know, I took the gun—he had the jacket hanging on the hook behind the door—I just took it and shot it. I didn’t know about guns, how to shoot, I wasn’t thinking, knowing anything. I don’t know but he fell and that was the end. I ran away outside, I still had the gun, in my hand. There was nobody around, nobody came out and looked.

  “Like in a dream I put the gun inside my jeans and then I walked to the ferry. I waited a little bit and then I went out to Winslow. On the way I put the gun over the side. It fell, I saw it fall in the water, they won’t ever find it.”

  “So now’s your chance,” said June. “Which side are you on? Are you going to say anything?”

  “How long have you known?” I asked her.

  “I came over here yesterday, mad as hell, when I should have been in Oakland, to find out the truth. How Zee could have been married to the fucker the same time he was with me.”

  “We were talking,” said Zee. “We had some common things we were feeling about Jeremy. I told her what he had done to me and to everyone.”

  “He never tried any of that blackmailing shit with me,” said June. “But it was probably only a matter of time. He was sick.”

  “I knew he was sick,” said Zee. “He was sick about the Filipino people. He hated us. I don’t know why.”

  “I think Jeremy hated a lot of people,” said Hadley. “He was a weak man who needed a sense of power. The more he got the more he used it. I wonder if we’ll ever know who was paying him for his information?”

  We sat in silence. June had an arm around Zee and Zee was looking at her lap. They were united in a way they’d never been before, a way that was good to see, even if it made me feel excluded. June’s sense of direction had been as keen or keener than ours, but she hadn’t pursued Zee like a detective, she’d confronted her like a woman and stayed to comfort her like a friend.

  “It seems so strange,” I said. “It was Elena who wrecked B. Violet and Elena who was really the cause of Jeremy’s death. You protected her from Jeremy, Zee, and she doesn’t even know.” I suddenly realized who Zee had been looking for the other day in the crowded courtroom.

  “Yeah, Elena, the big feminist heroine,” muttered June.

  “I think it’s funny, somehow, you know, Pam, you and me were talking in the attic. And I said I wanted you to understand about women in the other parts of the world and how you had to learn to care about them to be a feminist. And now maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison because of a white woman in America.”

  Zee said it quietly, as if it didn’t concern her, but her black eyes burned into me, asking for something that I was finally ready to give.

  “No,” I said, “You can’t.”

  “No,” Hadley repeated firmly. “The weapon’s gone, they’ve got nothing on you other than that you married him. You’re going to be trusting a few too many people with your secret, but I swear you’re not going to jail. Not for Jeremy Plaice. You’ve got too many things to do to be spending your life in prison.”

  And June, without letting go of Zee one instant, said, “Amen to that.”

  Hadley and I walked out to our separate cars, stood under the streetlights talking like strangers. The weather was changing; purple clouds moved against the smoked glass sky, there was a taste of rain in the air.

  “Somehow I always thought the solution of the case would hinge on you and Penny being twins,” Hadley said. “It never even came up.”

  “You made a great entrance anyway….” I paused. “I guess this means our detective story is kind of at an end, doesn’t it?” I was giving her another chance, a way not to break my heart.

  Her long legs kicked at the tire of her truck. Under the streetlamp her hair was silver a
nd her eyes like cool blue stones.

  “I can see you know what I’m going to say,” she said. “But believe me, it’s not usually a practice I make, to bring women out and then….”

  “Just don’t tell me you want to be friends.”

  “What about starting our own detective business. Amazons, Inc. Have labyris, will travel.”

  “What did we ever really solve? Nothing that we can ever talk about to anyone.”

  “Hell, Pam, please don’t be mad. I like you, I’ve always liked you. You’re uncomplicated, nice, it’s been…”

  “Nice…give me a break. I’m sorry I’m not a violent drug addict or something. Would you like me better then?”

  “Listen, I told you I’m the rescuing type. And you’ve never needed rescuing. Fran needs me right now, to keep going to AA, to change her life.”

  “You don’t have to keep rescuing her! You stopped rescuing your father.”

  “And maybe I’ll leave Fran again too.”

  “What about Elena? Or is that just twice as good? Two people to save now?”

  “They’re through with each other. I can tell. If Elena knows what’s good for her she’ll go back to Indiana.”

  I was silent.

  “If I thought you could handle a triangle…”

  “Forget it.”

  “I bet, in a few months, I could get her out of my system.”

  “I’m not waiting.”

  “And you don’t want to be friends?”

  “No!”

  “Look. I want to show you something. Maybe it will make it easier.”

  She turned away, bent over, put her hands to her face, as if pulling out eyelashes. When she turned back her face was strangely different, colorless under colorless hair.

  “They’re blue contacts, the strangest blue I could find,” she said, handing them to me.

  Her real eyes were pale green and unfocused under the glow of the streetlamp. The two round turquoise blue drops glittered in the palm of my hand. Like tears. I handed them back.

  “It didn’t make it any easier,” I told her.

  “I thought it might not,” she said, kissed me and started walking away.