by Jane Haddam
The dead always void themselves. That was the first thing I thought of when the body fell on me. It was the only thing I could think of now. I thought of Julie Simms on the floor of my old apartment on West Eighty-second Street, of the blood seeping into the cracks in the floor and the smell of feces clogging the air. Trying to breathe near a newly dead body is like trying to breathe Jell-O. Rancid, moldy, soured Jell-O.
I took another swig from the flask. I was beginning to go hot and cold. I was beginning to go stupid. The uniformed men were running through the reception area, running through the corridor, running into the back offices. I could hear them shouting. Thirteen months ago, I wouldn’t have known what was going on.
Up to then I had never read a murder mystery or a true crime book, never bothered with the crime articles in newspapers, never even watched police shows on television. Now I knew what they were going to do before they did it.
“You want to lie down somewhere?” Martinez asked.
I took another swig from the flask. Unadulterated Drambuie has remarkable medicinal qualities. Especially if you don’t drink often.
“It fell on me,” I said. “It fell on me.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I should say he fell on me. Except I never knew him as a he. I only met him as an it.”
“McKenna, for God’s sake. You’re getting hysterical.”
“I’m already hysterical. Jesus Christ, Lu, it fell on me. It had that smell, that smell like Julie had, and then they—” I pointed at the corridor. They were barricaded in Alida Brookfield’s office. Janet was guarding the back corridor, and the body. “You’re not going to think I did you such a favor. You haven’t met them.”
“Keep me working and that’s a favor.”
“Somebody strangled him. With a typewriter ribbon. A silk typewriter ribbon. And they—” I gestured to the corridor again. I took another swig. I started yet another cigarette. Then I shook my head hard, as if physical violence were capable of clearing it. “Look,” I said. “There he is, his eyes are coming out of his head, his skin is blue, in the name of God. Somebody stuffed him in that closet and there’s that smell. And she—I mean, she’s his mother or his aunt or something—she acts like he did it to her on purpose. She’s furious with him. And she’s—”
“McKenna.”
“And then there’s the other one,” I said. “Felicity Aldershot.”
“Felicity Aldershot?”
“I know, I know. Sounds like a romance writer. Sounds ludicrous. Nobody is named Felicity Aldershot.” I stopped. That had triggered something, but between shock and Drambuie I couldn’t figure out what. I brushed it off. “She’s having a nervous breakdown,” I said. “She’s dying and carrying on. She vomits every thirty-three seconds. She keeps saying it’s some woman—”
“Michael Brookfield was involved with some woman?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I explained the situation. Then I told him about the conversation in the hallway and the conversation since. My report about the conversation since was very sketchy. I hadn’t been paying much attention. I hadn’t been willing to hang around those people one minute longer than I had to.
“The general impression I get is he was involved with a lot of women,” I said. “You can’t really trust this, okay? I haven’t been spending a lot of time compos mentis in the last hour.”
“You haven’t been spending a lot of time compos mentis in the last year,” Martinez said. He bummed one of my cigarettes. He had a pack of unfiltered Camels in his pocket. Nobody can smoke unfiltered Camels forever. “I saw you at the sentencing,” he said.
“I didn’t see you,” I said. I thought about the sentencing. “Didn’t she look strange?” I asked him. “Strange and off, somehow. Crazy.”
“She wasn’t crazy. She didn’t look any stranger than a lot of them look.”
“I haven’t seen a lot of them.”
“You’re about to see your second one.” He sighed. “Take my advice,” he said. “You look thin, you look ill, you look tired. You can’t get yourself out of this, but you can minimize the damage. Go have Tony Marsh take your statement. Then get out of here.”
“I’ll only have to come back Monday,” I said.
“Give it up,” he said. “Give up the project. Phoebe will understand.”
“She’ll understand and she’ll get screwed. Take a look around while you’re here, Lu. They’ll make her look like an idiot. They’ll make them all look like idiots. They’ll lie.”
“They’ll lie,” Lu Martinez agreed, “and not just to their readers.”
He sighed, stood, searched through his pockets again, and came up with the small bottle of Drambuie from which he’d filled the flask. “It wouldn’t all fit,” he said. “There’s a little brass funnel thing on a chain around the flask neck. You fill it with that.”
I took the bottle.
“Don’t go see Tony Marsh,” he said. “Stick around for the end. Go keep an eye on the menagerie.”
FIVE
IT WAS LIKE WALKING into the cast of suspects scene in a really old Ellery Queen. Felicity Aldershot, Jack and Stephen Brookfield, and Martin Lahler took up the chairs in the conversational grouping. Alida Brookfield was seated behind her desk. They all looked up when I walked in. They looked away immediately.
There was a red leather wingback chair to the left of Alida’s desk, with an ashtray on a stand beside it. I sat down and took out my cigarettes. I had the refilled hip flask in my bag. I left it there. I didn’t want anyone asking for a snort.
The wet bar boasted forty-one different kinds of liquor. I counted them. No one else seemed to notice them.
I turned my eyes toward the window and watched the snow. It was already coming down fast and thick, blotting out the lights of the city in the distance. Snow is my favorite weather. It’s quiet, beautiful, benign. In Weston, Connecticut, where I grew up, it almost always snows by the first of December.
“Love is a lot like snow,” Nick told me once. “It’s lovely to look at, but if you lie down and go to sleep in it, you freeze to death.”
It was not one of our better weekends.
The snow, I decided, was making me think about Nick. I turned away from it and faced the conversational grouping. My relationship with Nick isn’t bad, just draining. How draining may be inferred from the fact that I preferred to look at the tearful countenance of Felicity Aldershot than be reminded of the latest developments in the War of Commitment. Nick wanted a Commitment. I wanted a commitment without having to say I’d made a Commitment, which he didn’t think was good enough.
Felicity Aldershot wanted an excuse to cry again. I tried to think of a way not to give it to her.
I needn’t have worried. Felicity had no sooner put the sodden lump that had once been a white linen handkerchief to her eyes than Alida Brookfield rapped on the desk behind me. Every movement in the conversational grouping stopped dead. Felicity looked ready to swallow her tongue.
“What are they doing out there?” Alida said. “Why don’t they come in and talk to us?”
They looked at me, suspicious, demanding. I was supposed to know something about these things. I had had experience. I couldn’t deny it, either. A great deal of my experience had made the front page of the New York Post.
I gave the wet bar a hungry look and said, “They’re photographing things. They—um—they’ll probably have the body removed. The man from the medical examiner’s office has to get here.”
Alida tapped the desk again. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. He was strangled. Anyone with half a brain could see he was strangled.”
“Shit,” Stephen Brookfield said. “Remind me never to end up dead around this place.”
“I’ve never been quite that lucky,” Alida said.
“You just got luckier,” Stephen said, trying to sound tough through the flush spreading over his face. “Now you don’t have to figure out what to do about Mike’s cooking his books—”
> “Mike wasn’t cooking his books!” Felicity Aldershot shouted.
Alida sat back in her chair. The chair was one of those executive swivel arrangements that threaten to tip over with any backward movement. Alida kept her balance perfectly. She folded her hands over her stomach.
“Of course Mike was cooking his books,” she said. “Marty’s known that for several months.”
Marty Lahler looked pained. “It wasn’t much of a recipe,” he said. “It was just—” He stopped. He was trying to find the polite word. It wasn’t possible. “He needed fifteen thousand dollars and he took it,” he said finally. “He didn’t even try to cover it up. Not really.”
“Meaning he tried to cover it up, but he was bad at it,” Alida said. “Par for the course.”
“Even Mike could add.” Felicity Aldershot was very angry. “And now he’s dead and you’re—”
“We’re wasting our time,” Stephen said. “Embezzlers kill accountants. Embezzlers kill heads of companies. People don’t kill embezzlers.”
“Somebody killed him,” Felicity Aldershot said.
“So somebody killed him,” Stephen said. “They didn’t kill him for cooking his books. That wouldn’t make any sense.”
“You better hope not,” Alida said.
Stephen got out of his chair, shoved his hands in his pockets, and walked to the window. The snow was coming down harder now. It was possible to see the other side of Park Avenue South. It was impossible to see farther.
Stephen found an unopened pack of cigarettes in his pocket and began fumbling with the wrapping. The pack was green. I’d never known a man who smoked menthols.
“You know,” he said, “there are a lot of policemen out there. There’s a spy in here.” The others looked at me. “Instead of playing out the family psychosis, it might make sense if we tried to do something.”
“We’ve already discussed doing something,” Alida said. She blew smoke in my direction. “Before,” she amended.
“Not the kind of doing something I meant,” Stephen said.
“What do you suggest?” Alida was thoroughly exasperated.
She was making it clear. “Maybe we should launch our own investigation, catch Michael’s murderer, and hand him over to the police.”
“It wouldn’t hurt.”
“You’ve been reading detective stories.”
“You haven’t been.” Stephen turned away from the window, went to the wet bar, and poured himself a drink. The rest of them reacted to that the way racehorses react to a starting bell. They rose in a body and attacked the liquor.
Stephen waited for them to get what they needed and sit down again. Jack had a small glass of milky green stuff that looked like crème de menthe on the rocks. Felicity Aldershot had a ten-ounce tumbler of straight gin. Marty Lahler had a Perrier and lime. He looked depressed.
Stephen leaned against the side of the wet bar and smiled benignly down at them. Stephen Brookfield smiling benignly had something in common with Dracula asking for an invitation to lunch.
“I don’t think it would do us much good to find Michael’s murderer,” he said. “In case none of you realize it, one of us is Michael’s murderer. One of us has to be.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Felicity Aldershot said.
“One of us or Janet.” Stephen considered. “I can’t think of any reason for it to be Janet. Can you?”
“Maybe it was one of Michael’s girls,” Felicity Aldershot said. “Maybe she just walked in off the street. Anyone could have just walked in off the street.”
“Janet would have seen him.”
“Janet could have been away from her desk at the time.”
“Whoever it was would have had to get out again. Janet would have seen him, then if not before.”
“You don’t know when any of this happened,” Felicity said. “It could have been hours ago. He could have taken his time. He—”
Stephen Brookfield was shaking his head. He was also smiling again, but nobody wanted to look at his smile. He gestured at me with his glass.
“Ask our spy,” he said. “He was still warm. He couldn’t have been dead ten minutes when we found him.”
Felicity Aldershot sank back into her chair. Jack Brookfield made a strangled sound, downed his crème de menthe, and headed to the bar for another one. Marty Lahler stood up and started pacing.
Only Alida didn’t move. She was staring at Stephen. She looked venomous.
“You little bastard,” she said. “You conniving, bloodless, predatory little bastard.”
Her voice was perfectly emotionless. Even so, I was the only one who looked surprised when she picked up her marble-based appointment calendar and hurled it at Stephen’s head.
SIX
MARTINEZ GOT ME OUT of there in time. I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t. I felt as if I ought to do something. If Alida had hit Stephen with that desk calendar, she would have killed him. She didn’t hit him, of course. Her aim was execrable. I was still glad to see Officer Marsh stick his head through the door. If something hadn’t stopped her, she would have gone on throwing things until she got what she wanted.
What she wanted was Stephen Brookfield, dead.
Officer Marsh looked even younger than the last time I’d seen him. An additional year on the police force had made him look more, not less, naive. He took me out the hall corridor to the reception area and deposited me on a chair.
“Lieutenant’ll be right along,” he said. He put his face close enough to mine to bite my nose and said, “Thought it was you. You don’t have no luck no way, do you?”
I agreed with him and took out the hip flask. I was drinking from it when Martinez came to see me.
“Crazier than I thought,” he said, dropping into the chair beside mine. He waved his blue stenographer’s notebook in the air. “I shouldn’t tell you what I’ve got till I get your statement,” he said. “You want to hear it anyway?”
“You want to prejudice your case?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “Maybe you’ll get another book out of it,” he said. “You should be working on another book now, right? Before the last one comes out? So you won’t get,” he searched for the word, “spooked. By the reviews.”
“Who’ve you been talking to?”
“Phoebe,” he told me. “She’s worried about you. I’m worried about you. That guy the lawyer is worried about you. You go around telling everybody you weigh one-twenty-five, but it ain’t true, lady. You weighed one-twenty-five the first time I met you.” He glossed over the first time he met me. “You’re a lot skinnier than you were then,” he said.
“Please,” I said. “Don’t try to feed me. Not now.”
“I’m not trying to feed you,” he said. “Drink the Drambuie. It’s fattening. Phoebe says you go two-three days without eating anything sometimes.”
“Not lately,” I said. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want to tell me.”
“I want to tell you a couple of things. In the first place, I don’t think you’re going to be much of a noise on this one. You’ll explain about finding the body, that will be it. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Also, you’re going to be here,” he said. “You’re going to be here for a legitimate outside reason, and I’m not idiot enough to think I’m going to talk you out of it. Not after the last time.”
“So?”
“So you can help me out. You want to hear what I’ve got?”
I nodded. I really wanted to hear it, too. That was the other thing that got the guilt machine working. No matter what had happened or who it had happened to, I was capable of putting myself outside it and working it like a crossword puzzle. I liked working it like a crossword puzzle. When the crossword puzzle was solved, I wanted more crossword puzzles. It was not the sort of inclination I was brought up to think of as “decent.”
Martinez was not worried about decency. It was his job to work crossword puzzles.
“It’s the body that’s got us all crazy,” he said. “The ME’s guy is pretty sure it was strangulation, but that’s all right. Strangulation is strangulation. Thing is, the ME’s guy thinks Mr. Brookfield was strangled in the closet. Not strangled and then shoved into the closet. Strangled in the closet.”
“What the hell would he be doing in the closet?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“You sure he wasn’t pushed into the closet first, then strangled?”
“No,” Martinez said, “I’m not sure. Nobody is sure. I’m just telling you what the guy thinks. He says first look shows no bruising, the way you’d have bruising if Brookfield had been shoved in. There’s a frame around the doors. You’d have to step up to get yourself inside. You get shoved in, you bruise. No bruises.” Martinez paused. “Could change with the autopsy,” he said.
“But in the meantime, you want to know what he was doing standing in the closet. Because you think that’s where he was.”
“Right.”
“Even if it sounds crazy.”
“It fits,” he said. “I don’t know why it fits, but it fits. I can see it happening that way.”
This was a side of Martinez I had never before suspected. It fascinated me.
“I always thought you were so rational,” I said. “I thought it was Phoebe and I who were supposed to be the muddle-headed mystics. You and Nick were supposed to be rational.”
He started to say something. I stopped him.
“Don’t tell me you get an instinct for this sort of thing after a few years on the job,” I told him. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“You don’t have to hear it.”
“What do I have to do?”
He stared at the ceiling. “I had a guy in the closet. I had a couple of guys going over the closet. I had a guy in the next room, in the accountant’s office. You couldn’t hear anything.”
“No,” I said. “Not through the pasteboard wall and the closet. I don’t suppose you could.”
“Don’t know what anybody would want to eavesdrop on from there, anyway,” Martinez said. “Lahler’s assistant is a puffball. She hasn’t got the intelligence to decipher a fifth-rate comic book. God only knows what Lahler talks to her about, but it sure isn’t company policy.”
