Wicked, Loving Murder

by Jane Haddam

  TWENTY-TWO

  IT FELT LIKE INSTANT replay, even with some of the characters missing. This time it was Felicity Aldershot who sat behind the ornate mahogany monstrosity of a desk. Jack, Stephen, and Martin Lahler stood at the side. As soon as I came in, Felicity rose, gestured to the conversational grouping, and led the way there. Instead of leaving, as Martin and Felicity herself had the first day, Jack, Stephen, and Martin followed us to the bar. Martin poured me a cup of coffee.

  “We had to talk to the lawyers,” Felicity said, “but everything’s straightened out now. I think we can get back to work.”

  Jack and Stephen sat side by side, grinning tension. Jack was sweating. Stephen looked more than ever like the down-at-heels traitor in a Graham Greene novel. Neither met my eye. Their aunt was dead. It would be logical to expect them to have inherited her authority. Instead, they were under the control of another woman.

  Felicity Aldershot had blossomed. When I first met her, she was deferential and indirect. She had deflected attention from what control she had exercised—which had probably been considerable—by appearing overworked and faintly ingratiating. There was nothing deferential or ingratiating about her now. She was a natural commander.

  She took the coffee Martin handed her and didn’t bother to smile.

  “Maybe I should explain things,” she said. “I suppose you have cause to wonder if we have the means, or the ability, to go ahead as planned. Or the authority, for that matter.”

  I said something unintelligible. Means, ability, and authority were not what I was wondering about. Balls were what I was wondering about. Were they really going to go ahead as if nothing had happened? Did Felicity really expect me, and everyone else connected in any way to Writing Enterprises, to behave as if it were business as usual?

  Not quite. Felicity had decided that at least I deserved an explanation.

  “Miss Brookfield’s will,” she said, “was designed to make Writing Enterprises an independent and autonomous entity. Independent of the whims and wishes of the people who work here, that is.”

  This sounded so blatantly feudal, I decided she didn’t mean it.

  “Instead of leaving the business to an heir or heirs, the will established a trust. The trust will run Writing Enterprises. In fact, all the trust can do is run Writing Enterprises.”

  “I thought a trust was money,” I said. “Or investments.”

  “Writing Enterprises is an investment. A trust has trustees. The trustees will run Writing Enterprises.”

  I said, “Ah,” because I didn’t know what else to say. Stephen got up and put a slug of Chivas Regal in his coffee.

  “Why don’t you just tell her?” he said. He turned to me. “She’s got a contract. A ten-year employment contract. Under the terms of the will, the trustees can’t alter the terms of the contract unless she agrees.” He gave Felicity a sour look. “They can’t fire her, either.”

  “Nobody’s talking about firing anybody,” Jack said nervously. “Nobody’s talking about firing anybody.”

  Stephen tasted his coffee and found it weak. He added another slug of Chivas. “Old Alida was a female supremacist,” he said. “The world would be a much better place if it were run by women.”

  Felicity smiled a thin, tolerant smile. “The world would be a much better place if it were run by Alida,” she said. “That’s all over and done with, Stephen.”

  “A lot of things are over and done with,” Stephen said.

  Felicity ignored him. “Writing Enterprises is not over and done with,” she promised me. “We want to go ahead with the September issue. We want to go ahead with the romance section. We’re just going to have to do it in two weeks instead of four.”

  “Two weeks,” I said. I thought of the pile of manuscripts probably lying on the desk in my “office.” I could not deal with them in two weeks. I didn’t even want to. I wanted to spend the next two weeks at Writing Enterprises the way I wanted herpes. The Brookfields were crazy. Felicity Aldershot made me cold. None of these people cared about the two murders. Felicity didn’t even seem to have noticed them.

  “I’ve been thinking about your problems with the articles we commissioned,” Felicity said. “In fact, I spent all last week thinking about them. I don’t want a fight on that right now.”

  It looked like a way out, so I took it. “You’re either going to have to fix those articles or you’re not going to have the interviews,” I said. “They won’t be associated with that kind of thing.”

  “They won’t have to be. We’ll throw the articles out.”

  “Throw them out?”

  “As you’ve undoubtedly guessed, I will be taking over the editing of Writing magazine. I’ve been doing quite a bit of it over the last few years—”

  “Doing quite a bit of everything,” Stephen muttered.

  Felicity sailed over him. “There won’t be any long-term problems,” she said. “There are a couple of short-term ones, however. We missed the printer’s deadline with the issue before the one you’re working on. We won’t get that to the plant until today, which means very high late penalties. I don’t intend to be late a second time. The agreements we signed with the writers of the articles in question guaranteed twenty percent kill fees. I don’t intend to let that money go down the drain. I want to normalize the situation, Miss McKenna.”

  I couldn’t stand it any more. “You can’t normalize this situation,” I said. “Two people are dead.”

  Felicity Aldershot looked no more than mildly surprised. “This is a corporation,” she said. “Exxon doesn’t close down if one of its employees dies. It doesn’t close down if the chairman of the board dies.”

  “This isn’t Exxon.”

  “The legal status of a corporation,” Felicity Aldershot said, “is independent of its size.”

  She thought this answered everything. She was so sure it answered everything, she almost convinced me. I got out a cigarette and lit it. I wondered what she expected me to do now.

  Jack must have thought I was angry. He leaped into the conversation, determined to calm me down.

  “It’s like show business,” he said. “The show must go on.” He produced this cliché as if it were enough to convince anybody of his wisdom, perspicacity, and common sense. He almost started Stephen on another laughing fit.

  “About the articles,” Felicity Aldershot said.

  “That section better be the bonanza everybody expects it to be,” Stephen Brookfield said. “If it isn’t, we’re all going to look like idiots.”

  “We’ll throw the articles out,” Felicity Aldershot said. “Your people can write their own articles. They can say anything they want to say as long as it isn’t likely to get us sued.”

  “There’s a catch,” Stephen said. “There always is around here.”

  “There isn’t a catch.” Felicity was finally angry. It didn’t last long. “I don’t intend to pay any more for those articles than I originally offered, that’s all. I’ll offer your people the same fee I offered the original writers, minus the twenty percent I owe on kill fees. That is hardly a catch.”

  “Maybe it’s just cheap,” Stephen said.

  “Will your people think it’s cheap?” Felicity asked me.

  I hesitated. This situation was so bizarre, I was so convinced Ivy had not killed Alida and Michael Brookfield and one of these people had, all I wanted was an excuse. Unfortunately, I knew what “my people” would think of Felicity’s offer. My people would love it. My people wouldn’t care if they were paid nothing. They were so sick of what they called “all the nonsense written about romance,” so tired of listening to people talk about romance novels as something any illiterate with the price of a typewriter could write and publish, they would kill for the chance to set the record straight.

  They’d kill me if I tried to deprive them of it.

  TWENTY-THREE

  FELICITY ALDERSHOT WAS NO Alida Brookfield. She was not crazy. Her temper was under control. Her nerves
were under control, too. She must have given the word to the others. I was to be treated with Kindness, Courtesy, and Cooperation.

  Jack took me back to my office. He brought a fresh pot of coffee and a clean cup. He hopped when he walked, starting jelly waves in his torso that slithered like a Slinky going downstairs.

  “We aired it out this morning,” he said, when he opened the door for me. “It was beginning to smell a little musty.” Then, as if this were not enough, he gave me a big toothy smile and said, “We’d move you into a larger office, but there isn’t one. The police made a shambles of everything.”

  I knew that was only half the truth, but I wasn’t going to press it. I was sure the police hadn’t made a shambles of Felicity’s old office, but I didn’t want to occupy it, either. Besides, it was always so hard for me to be rough on poor, fat Jack. He wanted so badly to be beaten up. I wanted so badly not to give him the pleasure.

  I sat on the inadequate desk chair and poured myself a cup of coffee. Over my head, what had been a naked bulb was now covered with a green and yellow Chinese paper lampshade. Jack noticed me notice it. He acted as if I’d made his day.

  “We tried to fix it up,” he said. “Felicity is very big on the importance of working conditions. Working conditions determine productivity.”

  “Do they really?” I said.

  “I think it’s going to be very nice around here with her running things,” Jack said. “I mean, she always ran a lot of things, but now she’ll run everything. She has some very good ideas.”

  This was not natural. “Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked him. “Alida was your aunt. As far as I can tell, she cut you out completely.”

  I don’t think Jack realized he should have had expectations of being cut in. “Alida didn’t cut me out,” he said. “I’m director of Literary Services. I’ve always been director of Literary Services.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “We’re all getting a raise in salary,” Jack said. “Stephen and I, I mean. That was one thing about Alida, you know. She didn’t realize what it costs to live these days. She didn’t understand.”

  “Maybe she didn’t care,” I suggested.

  It was not the kind of suggestion Jack welcomed. “Of course she cared,” he said. “She had very strict ideas on living and earning a living. Old-fashioned ideas. Good ideas. It’s just that she bought her apartment in 1960 and she didn’t realize what had happened to rents. Five hundred a month for rent was a lot of money in her day. It was more than the maintenance on her apartment the day she died.”

  That he didn’t believe a word he was saying was obvious. I couldn’t understand why he was saying it. Even a compulsive liar lies for effect. I thought of Alida throwing him out of her office, kicking him in the ribs. I considered that fight as a motive for murder. It didn’t explain Michael, but I didn’t know anything about Michael.

  “Fifteen thousand a year was a lot of money in her day, too,” Jack said. He gave me another smile. The smile said, “Don’t be mad at me. I don’t want anyone in the world to be mad at me.”

  I had to call Phoebe and tell her to call the others. I had to make a list of necessary articles. I had to get my mind on the work I was supposed to do. Jack Brookfield was like a drain clog, something soft and wet cutting off passage.

  “Executives don’t bring coffee,” I told him. “Next time send Janet.”

  He was impossible to offend. “She fired Janet,” he said. “We don’t have a new receptionist yet.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE WARDROBE HAD BEEN moved five inches to the right along the wall. I saw it almost as soon as Jack Brookfield left my office. Putting a paper lampshade on the naked bulb had made the room darker, but it had also got rid of the glare. Between the muted lighting from the ceiling and the indirect from the open door, I could just see the faint outline in the linoleum. That wardrobe must have stood in the same place forever. The outline was less dirt and scuff marks than indentation, and the indentation was deep.

  Martinez’s people had been over that wardrobe like termites. In the process, they had moved it. That was very sloppy work, and because it was it annoyed me. I sympathized, but it annoyed me. With that naked bulb swinging overhead, it was hard to see anything. I had spent the Monday following Michael Brookfield’s murder in this room and never noticed anything wrong about the position of the wardrobe. I certainly hadn’t noticed any indentations. With half a dozen policemen tramping in and out of a space too small for one, it wasn’t surprising Martinez hadn’t noticed anything.

  If there was anything there to notice.

  I tapped my fingernails against the desk and broke one. I could think of two possible explanations. One: the wardrobe had been moved by Martinez or his people during the initial investigation. This would mean the wardrobe had been five inches to the left of where it now stood when Michael Brookfield entered it. There was a hole in the back of that wardrobe, eye-level for a small man. If this theory made any sense, there would be a corresponding hole in the pasteboard wall that divided this room from Martin Lahler’s office. Michael Brookfield would have entered the wardrobe in order to look through the hole into that office. This had a certain elegance. Michael Brookfield was cooking his books. Martin Lahler was the firm accountant. Michael was spying on Martin. Fine. But if there was a corresponding hole in the wall of Martin Lahler’s office, why hadn’t the police found that? Or hadn’t they been looking?

  Two: the wardrobe had been moved since the police investigation, possibly since the last time I had been at Writing Enterprises. This was less elegant. There might be a corresponding hole where the wardrobe was now, which would explain why someone had moved it. It would not, however, explain what Michael had been doing in it.

  The only way to solve the problem was to move the wardrobe back into its original position. I had a certain amount of ambivalence about that. Hadn’t I just been telling myself I wanted out of this investigation? Hadn’t I just been doing everything I could think of to get myself out, including starting a fight with the cop in charge?

  My ambivalence lasted just long enough. I had hardly managed to convince myself that checking out the wardrobe was a secret act to be committed behind a closed door, meaning it would not commit me to anything, when Stephen Brookfield walked in for a visit.

  They weren’t going to leave me alone. Alida Brookfield wanted to pretend I wasn’t there. Felicity wanted to make me part of the Writing Enterprises Family. Stephen Brookfield didn’t say that, but he didn’t have to. As soon as I saw what he was carrying under his arm, I knew it.

  “I’ve brought you the cover proof,” he told me. “We went through a lot of trouble with this cover. We hired outside talent.”

  He had the cover proof in his hand. He looked at it upside down, turned it right side up, and put it on my desk. The left half of the board was a mock-up for an ad for a literary agency in Oklahoma. It was headlined $2,000 FOR THE BEST NOVEL! The right half was the result of “outside talent”: pink, with lots of hearts, flowers, and curly writing.

  I was just ambivalent enough about looking into that wardrobe not to mind the interruption. Stephen Brookfield was just strange enough to make me want that interruption over as soon as possible. He’d looked sick at the morning meeting. Now he looked a skin layer away from being a skeleton. Every time he smiled, he surprised me. I expected a rictus. He gave me Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

  “They didn’t give you a chair,” he said.

  “They gave me the chair I’m sitting on,” I said. “Not that it’s much of a chair.”

  He made another Richard Burton smile. The thick stack of papers under his arm quivered and threatened to spill. Unlike Jack, Stephen had no interest in making a good impression, creating an illusion of family unity, or being polite to visitors. He thought I was an inconsequential person, and it showed. I wondered why he had come. Felicity had insisted, I was sure. It didn’t seem like enough.

  I tried to sit back in m
y chair like Nero Wolfe considering the evidence. That put the wardrobe directly in my line of vision. I moved. Stephen was not going to leave before he showed me the papers under his arm and said his set piece. Thinking about what I was or wasn’t going to do about my wardrobe theories wouldn’t make the time go faster. I didn’t know what would.

  Stephen was eying my desk with a view to sitting on it. He was small and light. It would have been just possible. In the end, he decided not to risk it. He moved to the side, put the papers under his arm in front of me, and backed off. I got the impression he was putting as much distance between us as the space in the office would allow.

  “We’ll have to give you a visitor’s chair,” he said. Richard Burton flashed on again. Reluctantly.

  Waiting for Stephen to get started was apparently only going to prolong things. Jack could not shut up. When he thought people were looking at him, he filled every silence. Stephen was a journalist’s nightmare. He could let silence continue forever. He was waiting for me.

  “Stephen Brookfield is clean,” Martinez had said to me. “He makes fifteen grand a year, he lives in a rattrap, and he’s clean. Does that make sense to you?”

  It did not make sense to me. A clean Stephen Brookfield would not have made sense to me if he made a hundred fifty thousand a year and lived in the Dakota. Stephen Brookfield oozed.

  I tapped the pile of papers he’d put on my desk. “Am I supposed to look at these?” I asked him. “Are they for the romance section?”

  “They’re for the romance line,” he said. “For the Publishing Division.” He decided to be magnanimous. “I’m director of Publishing,” he explained.

  It was going to be like that. “I know you’re director of Publishing,” I said. “What am I supposed to do with a lot of papers belonging to your romance line? Are you publishing someone I know?”

  Stephen Brookfield thought I was being very, very stupid. He also thought I was being willfully recalcitrant. It put him in a bad mood. He didn’t want to be here. He wouldn’t have wanted to be here even if I were willing to cooperate.