The Question of the Dead Mistress

by E. J. Copperman

  I informed Monroe of Patricia Belson’s location and it took 68 seconds for him to speak to me again. “I have Patty Belson on the line,” the detective said.

  “Your mother is on the phone, Peter,” I said in what Ms. Washburn would later confirm was a soothing tone. “She’d like to speak to you.” I held my cellular phone out to him, a gesture that was difficult. I don’t like to have people touching things personal to me. But the circumstances demanded it and I told myself I could clean the phone or replace it later.

  Belson looked at the phone and seemed to come to some level of awareness that I was addressing him. “Mom?” he said. I nodded. Belson looked at the rifle in his right hand and the ammunition he was holding in his left. He seemed confused.

  I put out my other hand and gestured toward him. Belson seemed to understand but was still not completely present mentally. Naturally right-handed, he reached for my phone and then thought again.

  He handed me the rifle and took the phone.

  I tried not to watch as he put it to his ear. “Mom?” he said again.

  I looked at Ms. Washburn, whose eyes were studying the pistol resting in a holster strapped to Belson’s left hip. She looked up at me and I assessed Belson’s positioning. He chose that moment to turn slightly to the right, instinctively trying to make his conversation that much more private. I nodded at Ms. Washburn.

  She reached over quickly and removed the pistol from Belson’s holster. Her movement was so swift and fluid that Belson did not seem to notice. I heard him quietly say, “No, I don’t want to leave you, but she killed Will and now I can prove it.”

  Ms. Washburn handed me the pistol. I had attempted to determine how to remove the ammunition from the rifle and decided I was not well versed enough in firearms to make a safe attempt. Instead I moved away from Belson and placed the rifle across the seat of one of Virginia’s dining chairs. Then I sat on it, careful to keep the barrel facing the wall. I looked at Ms. Washburn, whose cellular phone was already in her hand.

  Police officers and emergency medical technicians were rushing through the door seven seconds later.

  thirty-four

  “He didn’t even complain while he was being arrested, except that he had to give Samuel his phone back.” Ms. Washburn leaned on the side of my desk in the Questions Answered office and shook her head in wonder. “I’m not even sure Peter knew he was being arrested, even with the Miranda warning.”

  My mother, sitting in her usual easy chair in front of my desk, reached for Reuben Hoenig’s hand. Reuben was seated in a folding chair Ms. Washburn had put out for him when he and Mother had arrived at the office. Once I’d gotten in touch with her to let her know Ms. Washburn and I were all right—a message Mother hadn’t known was necessary before it was delivered, as it turned out—both she and Reuben had insisted on seeing us in person to get the final story on the Question of the Dead Mistress.

  Indeed, Detective Monroe had bounded into Virginia Fontaine’s home after four uniformed officers in protective gear had cleared the area and seemed disappointed to meet no resistance at all from the armed man who had come to kill three people and ended up wounding only one, badly but not in a life-threatening manner.

  “I don’t get it,” the detective said to Ms. Washburn, as he appeared more eager to talk to her than to me. “You knew the crazy lady had killed her first husband.” He said this as Virginia Fontaine was being wheeled out of the house on a portable gurney.

  “The missing bolts from the fire escape indicated it was a calculated murder, a staged accident,” I told him. I had no compunction about talking to Monroe. “The fact that Virginia had established two conflicting alibis indicated she had something to hide. When we discovered that William had in fact been cheating on his wife and that Virginia had actually engaged us to confirm her second husband was doing the same, it became apparent she wanted the information to justify killing Brett Fontaine. But Melanie Mason and Leon Rabinski beat her to the action.”

  “I don’t get it,” Monroe repeated. “She wanted to kill the second husband but she couldn’t do it until she knew he was fooling around on her?”

  “That’s right.” Ms. Washburn spread her hands to indicate she did not comprehend the motivation either. “When she saw the papers transferring part ownership of Fontaine and Fontaine to Rabinski instead of her, Virginia was incensed. But she needed that extra push, the thing that had put her over the line the first time. She wanted to be in the car with me when I followed her husband so she could kill him if we found him with his mistress, alive or dead. That’s why she trumped up a picture of Brett with an empty car and told us it was him driving away with his dead college girlfriend.”

  “Meanwhile this guy was carrying a grudge because the first husband was his half brother,” Monroe said, pointing in the direction of Peter Belson, who was still muttering to his mother as he was led out of the house. He had no phone but that did not seem relevant to Belson.

  “Not according to his mother,” Ms. Washburn, who had spoken to Patricia Belson, told him. “She says they met in college and Peter somehow came to the conclusion that they were related through his father. But she says he never cheated on her.”

  “So it’s all about husbands messing around.” That was Monroe’s assessment of the situation.

  “I guess so,” Ms. Washburn said. She looked at me with a warm smile, something I had been hoping for the past few days.

  “The poor man,” Mother said now in the Questions Answered office, referring to Peter Belson. I thought her sympathy for Belson—who had intended to kill Ms. Washburn, Virginia Fontaine, and me with a rifle—might have been misplaced, but Mother has always been more understanding of others than I am.

  “I know,” Ms. Washburn said. Perhaps this was a type of thought that was gender-specific, although I tend to believe such things are myths. The human brain is essentially the same for either sex.

  Reuben looked at me with a befuddled expression, indicating he did not understand the women’s interpretation of the incident either. “So I’m trying to sort this out,” he said. “The dead mistress was never actually dead, and she killed the second husband?”

  “She and her husband, Leon Rabinski,” I said, nodding. “They had already defrauded her life insurance policy and in the process essentially murdered a homeless woman. The lure of a lost lover was apparently enough for Brett Fontaine to follow.”

  “But she also fooled Officer Palumbo with the same technology and then got you and Mike to go there so she could play ghost,” Mother said. “How did she get the message into your office papers?”

  “Ms. Washburn and I had interviewed Rabinski that day,” I reminded her. “He must have slipped the note into my stack while we were there without either of us noticing.”

  “And the half brother was waiting all these years to get revenge on the wife, so he waits until you two are in the room to run in with a gun?” Reuben had a way of simplifying concepts that made them sound foolish.

  “That’s about right,” Ms. Washburn said.

  My mother shook her head in wonder. “This was all about money. It always seems to be all about money.”

  I stood up and walked to her. I patted Mother on the shoulder. “Neurotypicals are motivated by odd things,” I said.

  “Don’t try and hang this all on us,” Ms. Washburn told me. “Anybody can do something stupid for money. But sometimes it’s about love, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t see how this question was about love,” I told her. “Perhaps I’m missing something.” It would not be unusual.

  “Virginia Fontaine didn’t have to come to us at all,” Ms. Washburn said. “She was so upset by the idea that her husband cared more about his college girlfriend than he did about her that she exposed herself to danger and eventually ended up getting shot and almost dying because she couldn’t bear the thought.”

  “She’s
going to be all right?” Mother asked.

  Ms. Washburn nodded. “She lost some blood but the wound itself wasn’t that bad. She’ll be in the hospital for a couple of days and then Detective Monroe says she’ll probably be out on bail until she faces trial.”

  “They’re going to take the word of a man who busted into the house with a couple of guns and tried to shoot the two of you?” Reuben said. He seemed confused by the notion.

  “There is more evidence than simply Peter Belson’s testimony,” I assured him. “The police reports from the time indicated the loose bolts in the fire escape. And there will be the testimony from Anthony Deane, whom I assume will be subpoenaed, about his giving the police a false alibi for Virginia LoBianco Klein during her first husband’s death.”

  “Tony Deane—another example of how love blinds a person, Samuel.”

  “You think Anthony Deane is in love with Virginia Fontaine?” I asked. “Even though he’s currently married. To a man.”

  She held her gaze on me for a moment, which I took to mean she was trying to formulate a response I would understand. “I can’t think of any other motivation for him to do what he did,” Ms. Washburn said.

  I could think of six but I had to admit to myself that none was as compelling. “It is a very odd way of showing one’s affection,” I said.

  Ms. Washburn’s face took on the inscrutable expression I’d seen a number of times recently. “People have a lot of ways of showing their love.”

  Mother stood up, slowly but not as painfully as she would have before she had the inorganic knee joint installed in her leg. She looked at Reuben. “I think it’s time for us to go,” she said. “Maybe we’ll go crazy for dinner tonight and get a pizza.” Mother turned to look at me. “Plain.” She knows I will eat pizza but not when it has been heaped with other foods incompatible with its own composition.

  “There’s more to the story,” Ms. Washburn said.

  “I imagine there is,” Reuben said. “Perhaps we’ll hear it another time.”

  “Perhaps you and I could meet for lunch one day,” I said.

  The three of them turned and stared at me for a moment. “I would like that,” Reuben said.

  With that, Mother and Reuben left the office, both shaking their heads and looking back at me as if something extraordinary had occurred. The fact that I had offered to have lunch with Reuben was not all that special. He had been living in my mother’s house for months now. It was certainly time to understand him better.

  Ms. Washburn stood and looked at me as if assessing for three seconds. Then she turned and walked back to her desk.

  I considered her facial moods of late and the fact that she had occasionally been less accepting of my personality traits than usual. It all seemed to start at the time we had been disagreeing over the disposition of Virginia Fontaine’s request that we prove her bizarre ghost story. I went over the conversation in my mind for some indication of what might have engendered such uncharacteristic behavior from Ms. Washburn.

  “I did some research into your cemetery spirit,” I told her as I resumed my normal work position. “The gravestone you were considering was that of Nathana Brookins, I believe. She was born on the same date and died on the same date, exactly one hundred years before you were born.”

  “You’re going to tell me I saw a trick of the light?” Ms. Washburn said without looking up. “Or do you think she also faked her death and then set up a series of tin cups and string to speak to silly young people who passed by?”

  “I have no explanation for what you saw,” I told her. “I am certain that you saw it, but I can offer you no theory.”

  Ms. Washburn looked sharply at me. “Samuel, are you saying you think I saw a ghost?”

  That was the crux of the argument we’d had the day her odd behavior had begun. “I am saying that I trust your judgment and your word. I do not believe there are ghosts. But I believe that you do and that you are entitled to hold that belief.”

  Ms. Washburn snorted a tiny laugh. “Nice of you,” she said and turned back toward her computer display.

  I stood up and walked to her side. I had replayed the conversation from that day in my mind and had a suspicion of its importance. Some words are not simply meant to be understood between people, no matter how obvious. They need to be said aloud.

  “Ms. Washburn. I love you too,” I said.

  the end

  About the Authors

  E. J. Copperman is the author of the Haunted Guesthouse series, with more than 220,000 copies sold (so far), the Mysterious Detective series, and the Agent to the Paws series.

  Jeff Cohen wrote the Aaron Tucker and Comedy Tonight mystery series. He is also the author of two nonfiction books on Asperger’s Syndrome, including The Asperger Parent.