Lily White

by Susan Isaacs

  “You think he’s conning you, Lee?”

  “How would I know? That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

  “Take me with you to see him. I’ll let you know.” Terry noticed I was looking on my desk for something to throw at him. “I’m not saying you’re not smart. You are.”

  “Especially compared to present company.”

  Terry seemed to think I was engaging in banter, not truth telling, so he gave me his wink-grin combo. “But you’re a woman,” he insisted. “That’s his specialty. Conning women.”

  “Stop it. I’m a criminal defense lawyer. I can’t get through a day without someone trying to con me. Let’s just dope this out.” Terry looked agreeable. He loved long, meandering discussions—and why shouldn’t he have, at his hourly rate? “Norman Torkelson used the name Denton Wylie with Bobette.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “Is there any possibility at all that there was a real Denton, that Norman is or was pulling some sort of scam involving a real person—or a dead person—that’s beyond my ability to comprehend?”

  “I can’t see how. This Denton who applied for the marriage license gave his age as thirty-five, which is what Norman says he is. Now, objectively, Norman looks about thirty-five, doesn’t he?”

  “Somewhere around there,” I agreed.

  “And the lovely Bobette gave her real age: fifty-four. That is not your usual age difference: a dried-up old prune with a guy nineteen years younger, so already it sounds for real.” Since by his standards I would be a dried-prune in nine years, I gave him a dirty look, which of course delighted him. “Also, there’s the whole section of the marriage license application form that has to be filled in on former spouses. Bobette’s is blank. Our pal Denton has one former.” Terry consulted his little spiral notepad. “Lorinda Maddox Wylie in Westchester. Salem. It matches perfectly with his story about having a rich-bitch ex up in Westchester, except I checked. Lorinda—Maddox or Wylie or both—doesn’t exist. The address he gave, White Horse Farm on Winding Way, doesn’t exist. Winding Way doesn’t even exist.” Most investigators could have come up with this information, but it would take them two weeks. Terry had gotten it in a couple of hours, which was one of the reasons I put up with him. “You want me to bottom-line it, Lee?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Norman made Lorinda up. He made Denton Wylie up. So Denton Wylie does equal Norman Torkelson.”

  “Would you put money on that?” I asked him. “Your money?”

  “Yeah.” Terry took out his wallet. Instead of the five-dollar bill I expected, he counted out five twenties and slapped them on my desk. Then I was sure Norman Torkelson and Denton Wylie were one and the same.

  I worked on some other cases the rest of the morning. Instead of going over to the Bar Association for lunch, I ordered in and went into Chuckie’s office and watched my cooking shows on his TV. There was a French guy I was in love with—he got very passionate about using veal bones in chicken stock—but I had also taken a shine to an extroverted Chinese guy who was really cute with his cleaver. I was mulling over dinner, what to stew in a clay pot, when I realized I had one big fat ethical problem: What do you do if you believe a client is innocent but he is insisting on taking the rap for the guilty party and ordering you, his attorney, to keep quiet? Abide by lawyer-client confidentiality? Or figure that a larger principle is at stake—Justice—and that your first duty as an officer of the court is not to let an innocent man pay for a crime he didn’t commit. Or try something sneaky. I called Holly Nuñez.

  “Lee! Hi!” Now that a trial day was set and she was convinced she was going to nail Norman but good, her bubbliness knew no limits. “How are you? God, won’t it be great to go out and have a drink together when all this is over?”

  I admit I did stick my index finger into my mouth and make a gagging gesture, but I said: “I look forward to it. Speaking of the Torkelson case, I was wondering if you ever ran that other set of prints.”

  “We did!”

  “Good!” I enthused back, thinking that if I actually did go to trial, I’d have to start hormone replacement therapy immediately. “What did you find?”

  “They belong to a woman named”—I waited while she made noises with paper, pretending to look—“Marissa Shaw.”

  “The thing is, Holly, you’re supposed to tell me about this.”

  “You beat me to the punch! I was going to call you this afternoon!” She read me all the stuff I already knew from Terry’s investigation about the altercation in Maryland, with Mary as Marissa beating up Carolyn Knowles.

  “Do you know who Marissa Shaw is?” I inquired.

  “Do you have something to tell me?” Holly countered, with perky anticipation, as if I were about to impart some marvelous cheerleading secret.

  So I told her that Mary/Marissa was a single dame. And what do you know, the man who bolted, the man whom Carolyn Knowles was set to marry, known as Arthur Berringer, was none other than six-foot-five Norman Torkelson. “Do you see a parallel, Holly?”

  “Between what and what?” she asked.

  I finished explaining twenty minutes later, and as I’d feared, it got me absolutely nowhere. She remained convinced Norman killed Bobette. The fact that he had a girlfriend who had once, as Holly put it, “blown her top” was of no interest to her. I urged her, then begged her, to at least interview Mary, but all she said was that she was “crazed, absolutely crazed” with work and couldn’t find the time.

  I put in a call to the chair of the Bar Association’s Ethics Committee to sound him out about being able to tell Holly that Norman had admitted to me that Mary killed Bobette, but I had little hope on that score. He’d probably tell me to withdraw from the case and hint to Norman not to confide in his next lawyer. Even if he said to go ahead, you can talk, the chance that Holly would buy Norman’s Mary-did-it confession was nil. And I knew the chance of my going over her head to the D.A., Woodleigh Huber, who not only was stupid, ambitious, and venal but couldn’t stand me, was nil squared.

  I left the office and picked up a cold bottle of Chardonnay and a corkscrew, then two cappuccinos. I figured one or the other would get me into Mary’s apartment. Sure enough, the wine worked. “We don’t have wineglasses. Just champagne glasses.” She took out a couple of the old-style ones, the kind that are shaped like birdbaths. “I told Norman, we can’t keep doing this forever, you know.” She had just given herself a pedicure. The smell of polish permeated the room. A rolled-up sheet of paper towel, wound between her toes, was keeping them apart and the raspberry polish from smudging. “I want my own things. I want my own dishes. I want to pick out the pattern.”

  “It’s nice to be settled in one place, with things you like, people you love.”

  “Silverware. And wineglasses, all the different kinds. You ever see when they show fancy tables in magazines? They have three or four different glasses. And a water goblet too.” She was wearing a denim minidress with a lot of industrial zippers in what seemed to me to be useless places. Her hair was held back with a matching denim headband. “Do you want some honey-roasted peanuts?” I shook my head. “Pringles?”

  “No thanks. How are you doing, Mary?”

  “Fine,” she said, but she was edgy. She couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything, or to sit still. She showed me a project she was working on, a fabric-covered shoebox she was decorating with miniature fake seashells and a glue gun. She lost interest in it quickly and moved over to a laundry basket and began folding washcloths and towels, but that didn’t last long. Then she searched the living room and the little galley kitchen for a bag of cheddar popcorn she was positive she’d bought. “I know I bought it,” she told me. “It’s a black, shiny bag. I didn’t eat it, and I bought it after Norman …” All of a sudden, like a balloon losing air, she rushed around the room until finally, spent, she collapsed in an armchair.

  “It’s such a strain, isn’t it, Mary …”

  “Yes,” she said, in a peculiar, high-pit
ched tone, as if she had something more to add to the sentence.

  Then I realized it was because she didn’t want to hear what I was going to say next: “… knowing Norman is going to be in prison for such a long, long time.”

  “Don’t you think you can get him off?”

  “It’s possible. Not at all likely.”

  “I love him,” she explained, as if letting me in on this for the first time.

  “I know you do. I know it’s breaking your heart to see him cooped up in that jail for a crime he may not have committed.”

  “He didn’t!”

  “I can’t get anyone to believe that, Mary. I wish I could. But his record is working against him. And worse, all the facts are against him.”

  “What facts?” she demanded angrily. “There aren’t any facts.”

  “There’s an eyewitness who puts him at the scene very near the time of the murder. Now, I know you were there, too, but no one knows about it. And for all I know, there may have been other people there, but no one knows about them either. Only about Norman. And then there are his fingerprints.”

  “But mine are there too!”

  “But no one thinks you did it, Mary. They all think Norman did it.”

  “But he’ll get on the stand and swear—”

  “He has a long record for fraud. As a con man. Even if I let him take the stand, there’s very little hope anyone would believe him.” I took a deep breath. “Of course, he has no history of ever hurting anyone.”

  “He wouldn’t touch a fly!”

  “But you … you have a history.” For a moment, I thought she was going to spring out of her chair and go for me. Her eyes flashed: How dare you! I regretted all the adult-ed self-defense courses I never took. But the fire left her eyes, and she simply sat back in the big chair looking weary, somewhere between a tired child and an exhausted hooker. “You lost it with Carolyn Knowles.” She bowed her head slightly: Yes. “And you lost it with Bobette.” Her head came up. Her eyes widened. “Didn’t you, Mary? Didn’t you panic because you knew Norman was actually going to marry her? You waited till he left, and when you went in you lost it. You must have been overwhelmed with feeling, and you just fell apart.”

  “No!”

  “I think it’s ‘yes.’” She turned her head away from me fast, and looked out past her shoulder. But she was staring at a blank wall. “It must have been an awful feeling.”

  Just when I thought I would be talking till I was blue in the face, she whispered, “Yes.”

  I forced myself not to move, not even to breathe. I kept my voice as soft as I could. “And it must be hell, every day. Thinking that Norman is getting blamed for something you did. Thinking how deeply he loves you, and how much he must be suffering for that love.”

  “Oh, Jesus God!” she cried out, and covered her face.

  “I know you want to help him.”

  “I do!” she said, her voice muffled by her big hands.

  I walked over and sat beside her on the arm of her chair. I wanted to pat her on the head, but I was afraid that she’d get upset if I messed up her hairdo. So rather awkwardly, I patted her shoulder. “There’s only one way you can help the man who loves you so much.”

  It took her a moment, but she finally said: “By telling the truth.”

  “That’s right. By telling the truth. That you killed Bobette Frisch.” She nodded. Yes. I did. But I had to hear it. No, I had to make her say it. If I couldn’t convince her to get it out at that moment, she would never do it in front of Holly. “It must be so awful for you, to have this burden. You’re such a wonderful, sweet young woman.”

  “Thank you,” she said in a little voice.

  “Tell me what happened that evening.”

  “Like I told you. I was there that afternoon, watching them through a window. Not that I really saw anything much. Norman just opened up the envelopes from the bank. Those brown envelopes they give you.” I waited. “He took out the money. It made a big wad. Then he kissed her.” She shivered, as if recalling something hideous, unnatural.

  “Was it more of a kiss than you expected?” I asked, keeping my tone as soothing as I could.

  “Yes. And … I mean, it was like he was enjoying it. I know he’s a good actor with them. He has to be. He told me: ‘Sometimes they make me want to vomit, but they think I’m wild for them.’ But I know him.”

  “And this time he didn’t want to vomit?”

  “No! He kept kissing her, and kissing her and finally she pushed him away. But he kept going after her. And then …” She couldn’t speak.

  “Did they have sex?” I recalled there was no evidence of intercourse on the autopsy report.

  “No. She sat back on the couch, that cow, and let him kiss her for a while. Like she was doing him a favor. Then she pushed him off again and got up. He got up and followed her into the kitchen. Like he couldn’t stand to let her out of his sight. I couldn’t see them in the kitchen, because there’s a big window there and they would have seen me out there. Anyway, the next thing I know, I heard him go out.”

  “That’s when he went to get the champagne?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you go right in?”

  “After his car left, I counted to two minutes. One-chimpanzee, two-chimpanzee … Then I went in.”

  “Which door?”

  “The front. I told you, he doodled the button.”

  “I remember. Where was she?”

  “I heard her clomping up the stairs to take a shower. So then, you know, I went through her things.”

  “Took her credit cards.”

  “Her whole wallet. She had over seven hundred dollars in cash, besides the cards! And then I heard her, so I ran downstairs.”

  “And she came down?”

  “A little later. Wearing this ugly negligee. I mean, can you picture a cow in a lavender negligee? I mean, it got me so mad! How could he marry her? She’s old enough to be his mother. How could he want to … I saw the way he kissed her. It was like it didn’t bother him. Like he … liked it! Like he wanted more. And then I was standing in this little, like, vestibule, right by the front door, kind of peeking out but hiding and she’s in the living room, and all of a sudden she says: ‘Who’s there?’ In this big, scary voice. You wouldn’t believe how scared I was! And then she comes running over and sees me and grabs me by the arm. She hurt me! She was screaming: ‘Who the hell are you? What do you want in my house?’”

  Mary started to shake violently, almost as though she was going through it all over again. “Take it easy,” I soothed. “You’re doing fine. What happened next?”

  “I pushed her away, and she went, you know, like backwards into the living room. I felt better, because I’d been so scared she was going to beat me up. Or kill me.”

  I assumed this was Mary’s way of testing to see if a self-defense theory would fly. I just said: “It must have been terrible. What happened? Did you follow her into the living room?”

  “I guess I must have. I mean, all of a sudden there I was, standing right in front of her. By the couch. She was screaming that she didn’t have the money anymore, that someone had taken it. I guess she thought that’s why I was there. That some way I found out that she took all the money out of the bank. Then she started screaming at me again to get out. And louder, because I was right next to her. And she had this pukey bad breath, and I was thinking: How could he kiss her? And then all of a sudden she stopped screaming and moved back. She was trying to run away. But I grabbed her.” So much for a self-defense theory, I thought. “And she got all panicked. I mean, you could see it in her eyes. Like I was going to hurt her. And she started begging me: ‘Please, please, I’ll give you anything you want. I can get money—’” Mary started to shake again, and this time she gulped huge, terrified mouthfuls of air.

  I knew I had to get her through, to the end. “She offered you money,” I said, as though this was a terrible affront.

  “I said, ‘I don’t want your
fucky money, you fat old bitch.’ Then she started acting real scared. And like, instead of that awful, scary voice, she sounded so pathetic. ‘Please don’t hurt me! Please!’ I swear, I wasn’t going to hurt her. But she kept begging me and begging me, and finally I just wanted to shut her up. So I grabbed her.”

  “Her neck?”

  “And the next thing I knew, her tongue was out, and then I put her down on the floor ’cause she was so heavy and she was …”

  “Say it, Mary.”

  “Dead.”

  Eighteen

  How nice,” said the real estate agent as he drove Lee and Jazz around the Estates section of Shorehaven. “That is what I call a love story.” Mr. Chadman, for that was his name, then sang a few bars of “The Boy Next Door.” He liked to think of himself as a late-twentieth-century incarnation of a Victorian eccentric, whimsical yet lovable.

  When they passed the modern stone and glass house that Sylvia, Leonard and Robin White lived in, he nodded in its direction and decreed: “An important house.” Its importance had to do not with the family that lived inside or the house’s architectural distinction but with the fact that in that year, 1976, it would have brought at least half a million dollars had it been put up for sale.

  “Important,” of course, was too small a word for Hart’s Hill. Mr. Chadman stopped his car in front of the driveway, gazed greedily through the trees that obscured the house, and remarked: “What can one say?” He twisted around to pay homage to Jazz, who was sitting in the back seat.

  “One can say we’re looking in the wrong neighborhood,” Lee remarked. All right: Her temper was a little short. But there she was, stuck in the passenger seat beside the agent—a place she did not want to be. To be honest, Shorehaven was a place she did not want to be. But Jazz, of all people, had pronounced Connecticut too Wasp and Westchester too pretend-Wasp. New Jersey, he declared, was overrun with unassimilated members of obscure ethnic groups—none of whom could be trusted behind the wheel of a car. As for Long Island, all the towns other than Shorehaven were either glitzy or overly quaint or run-down. In the end, Lee had let him have his way. She knew she had lost the Battle of Manhattan and, as prisoner of war, her fate was in the hands of her captor. Nevertheless, she realized he was a captor who was generous in victory. Whatever you want, he kept telling her. Colonial. Tudor. Ranch. What she didn’t want was a house within shouting distance of his and her parents—not that she could picture any of them shouting. “We really can’t afford—” she tried to explain to Mr. Chadman, trying for honeyed tones to soothe whatever raw spot her last outburst had left.