Wicked, Loving Murder

by Jane Haddam

  “Felicity thought you’d like to see just how involved we are in romance,” he said. “She thought if you knew more about us, you’d be less—hostile.” That “hostile” was a well-considered word. It was followed by another Richard Burton smile. This one looked genuine. “Felicity,” he confided, “doesn’t want any trouble right now.”

  I could have put a hundred connotations on this confession. I would have had to work to take any of them seriously. There had certainly been enough trouble at Writing Enterprises in the last two weeks to make Felicity reluctant to face any more.

  “Are these likely to make me less hostile?” I asked Stephen about the papers.

  “They’re outlines for the next dozen books in the line,” Stephen said. “You’ll hate them.”

  “Why?”

  “We publish nothing but garbage.”

  I tried a Phoebe Damereaux eyebrow raise: The Queen Expects to Be Displeased.

  “Some people think all romance is garbage,” I said. “As a matter of definition.”

  “We publish garbage,” Stephen said. “You should see our stable. You should see our books. God, you should see our covers.”

  “I’ve seen your covers,” I said. “You should use better artists.”

  “Better artists would cost more money,” Stephen said. “Better writers would want royalty agreements.”

  “You do work-for-hire?”

  “We make work-for-hire agreements, yes. Only work-for-hire. That way we can figure the profit without a lot of fuss. Shit, all we’re doing is cashing in on the genre market. There’s a lot of genre market out there. There’re a lot of illiterates out there.” This smile was a twist. “It’s very appropriate,” he said. “I’m an illiterate, too.”

  “Are you really?”

  “More truly than a lot of people know.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. The conversation was a perpetual motion machine. It was running because it was running. It kept running because it was running.

  “What’s the point of all this?” I asked him. “I thought Felicity wanted this issue done—this section done—in two weeks. How am I supposed to do that if she doesn’t leave me alone to work?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t Felicity,” Stephen said. “Maybe I wanted to talk to you.”

  It was such a blatant lie, it was almost funny. We both looked at each other at once. And giggled.

  It broke the barrier. Stephen Brookfield relaxed. It looked as if the bones under his skin had melted. I reached for my cigarettes.

  “I might have wanted to talk to you,” he said. “It’s conceivable.”

  “About what?” I asked him. “About Writing Enterprises’ romance line?”

  “God no.” He bummed a cigarette. “It was you in the Agenworth case, wasn’t it? You’re the one who figured it out?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. Actually, that was exactly what I’d done. I had a feeling telling him that would get me in a lot of trouble. “I played a very half-assed role. Sort of.”

  “Too bad,” Stephen said. “If you were into that kind of thing, I could hire you to find out who killed Mike. That’d put a poker up Miss Aldershot’s ass.”

  “That’s very interesting,” I said. It was, too. Felicity hadn’t said as much, but the impression she gave was of complete confidence in the police solution. If the murderer was safely caught and out of the way, there was no reason for life not to go on. There was also no reason for the employees of Writing Enterprises not to put the good of the company first.

  “I take it you don’t think Ivy Samuels did it,” I said.

  “Felicity thinks Ivy Samuels did it,” Stephen said.

  “She’s the only one?”

  “Even she only wants to think it. They’re saying Mike tried to blackmail this woman. Michael couldn’t blackmail anybody.”

  “He was short of cash,” I said. “He had an expensive girlfriend.”

  “Yeah,” Stephen said. “So he cooked his books. He was crazy over that female, no question. But Michael was like Jack, you know. He couldn’t do anything so illegal he’d have to know it was illegal.”

  “He didn’t know embezzling was illegal?”

  “He didn’t look on it as embezzling. He had explanations.” Stephen shook his head. “Look at Jack,” he said. “Jack steals the milk money—you know, postage cash, petty cash, loose funds. You’d be amazed how much you can make doing that. He’s supposed to go take some money out of the bank, he takes a little more than he says he did. Business money. You could talk yourself into a lunatic asylum and not convince him he was stealing. He’s got explanations.”

  “I’d like to hear some of them,” I said.

  “They’re nonsense,” Stephen said, “but Jack’s got a whole rationale worked out so he doesn’t think they’re nonsense. That’s the point. I don’t think you could stretch those kinds of rationalizations far enough to cover blackmail.”

  “I don’t see how you could stretch them to cover embezzling.”

  “People do it all the time. They’re just borrowing. Michael had it easier than most people in his position. He was related to the boss.”

  “And thought he would inherit?” I ventured.

  “Now, now,” Stephen said. “Actually, we all knew we weren’t inheriting anything. Alida wasn’t keeping it secret. We didn’t know Felicity had her position nailed down so—solidly—but we knew we weren’t getting anything. Oddly enough, it’s working out better than I’d have expected.”

  “Oddly enough?”

  “Jack was right,” Stephen said. “Nobody’s talking about firing anybody. That’s some kind of miracle.” He stubbed his cigarette out, shoved his hands in his pockets, and looked around. “I guess I’d better get out of here,” he said. He actually sounded reluctant. “I’ve taken up enough time to say my piece. Felicity will want a report.”

  “You can tell her we got on famously,” I said.

  “I just won’t tell her why.” He started out the door. He hadn’t made it into the hall before he stopped, turned around, and came back.

  “Let me give you these,” he said, starting to fiddle with something in his back pants pockets. He threw a couple of thin paperback books on my desk, fiddled some more, and came up with another one. “The Amorous Adventure Line from Writing Enterprises,” he laughed. “Have fun.”

  “I will,” I said.

  I waited till I heard his footsteps moving away in the corridor. Then I shoved the three romance books into my bag, got up, and headed for the wardrobe again. I was going to have to work out what had changed between Stephen and me, and why, and how, but I could do that later. Right now, I wanted to move that wardrobe.

  I didn’t have a chance. I was just closing the door to the corridor when the Art Director knocked on it.

  He was carrying mechanicals.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “IT WAS LIKE THAT ALL day,” I told Phoebe when I got her into McGrath’s that night. “It was a screenplay. Felicity had them all lined up. They came to see me one by one. They all had speeches.” I corrected this. “Monologues,” I said. “Except for Stephen Brookfield, all I got was monologues. If I broke in, I got slightly shifted monologues. The general idea was everything in the Brookfield family was much better than it looked.”

  “Was it?” Phoebe asked.

  “How the hell should I know?” I signaled to the bartender for another Drambuie straight up and started searching my bag for cigarettes. “The problem,” I said, “is that I just don’t know if I want to be involved in this thing. If I get shoved into it, I can’t help myself. When I have half a second to think, I want to go to Connecticut for the weekend.”

  “Existential angst,” Phoebe said. “You were always prone to it.”

  “I’m not prone to existential angst,” I said. “I just don’t know what I’m doing.”

  Phoebe sipped at her champagne. It was very bad champagne, very sweet and very pink. Her favorite kind.

  “I know what you should be doin
g,” she said. “You should be calling up Martinez and explaining about the wardrobe.”

  It took a large swallow of Drambuie to keep me from groaning out loud. I had been at Writing Enterprises until almost six o’clock, after having been subjected for over eight hours to a near-constant stream of inane conversation. I’d called Phoebe because she was the one person who could always calm me down, if she wanted to. Even in college she could calm me down, and I spent most of my college career trying to decide if I wanted to go interestingly psychotic or become a violent revolutionary.

  Apparently, Phoebe did not want to calm me down. She sat on her high bar stool, feet dangling over the floor, and looked determined. She also looked stubborn. Phoebe has a great many admirable qualities and a few not-so-admirable ones. As with most people, some of those qualities are more in evidence than others at any particular time. She is, however, always stubborn and determined.

  At the moment, she was stubbornly determined to get “us” involved in the Brookfield murders. Since the only way “we” could be involved was if I were involved, she wanted to have done with what she termed my “Hamlet thing.”

  “Martinez could go in and move that wardrobe,” she said.

  “Martinez has his case,” I reminded her. “Why would he want something that might jeopardize it?”

  “You underrate him.”

  “You overrate him.”

  “Finding out about the wardrobe was what he asked you to do,” she said. “You did it. Call him up and tell him.”

  I sighed and stared into my glass. “The last time,” I said, “I was accused of a murder and I had to do something. There’s no reason for doing anything this time. Nick doesn’t think Ivy will be convicted. I’ve got no interest in the Brookfields. God only knows, if I could think of a way never to go back to that office, I’d take it.”

  Phoebe tapped the edge of her glass. “It won’t be the same this time as before,” she said. “You don’t know those people. You can be objective. It won’t matter so much when they catch—whoever.”

  “I’ll have to testify at the trial.”

  “It won’t matter so much,” Phoebe insisted.

  I said, “I suppose not,” and concentrated on my drink. Phoebe played with the swizzle stick I’d put aside and ruminated.

  “The problem,” she said, “is you’ve got four people, any one of whom might have committed two murders.” She paused. “Maybe five,” she said. She paused again. “Maybe six. I’m adding Mrs. Haskell and Janet.”

  “Felicity Aldershot fired Janet,” I said. “Maybe Felicity knows Janet killed them and doesn’t want the girl around.”

  Phoebe brightened. I was finally Cooperating. “Exactly,” she said. “I mean, I don’t think that’s what really happened, you understand, but—well, we’ll put Mrs. Haskell and Janet to one side and concentrate on the others, but we’ll remember Mrs. Haskell and Janet are there.”

  “The others, meaning Felicity, Stephen, Jack, and Ivy.”

  “No, no, no,” Phoebe said. “Felicity, Stephen, Jack, and that accountant.”

  “Martin Lahler?”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t know Martin Lahler,” I said. I thought of that scene in the Russian Tea Room. “In the first place, he’s not very intelligent. In the second place, he’s a coward. Physical and moral. Phoebe, if you’re going to look at this as a puzzle, you’re going to have to at least start with the assumption that everything fits. You’ve got two people dead and no determining physical evidence of who killed them. That is not the result of stupidity.”

  “It could have been an accident,” Phoebe said.

  “An accident that both times everybody with any possible motive was wandering around Writing Enterprises—wandering, so nobody has an alibi—including two people who didn’t work there and had no reason as far as anyone knew to be expected there—stop,” I said.

  “Stop what?” Phoebe said.

  “That’s the key. Don’t put Mrs. Haskell and Janet to one side. Put Mrs. Haskell and Ivy to one side.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Mrs. Haskell and Ivy. They’re both outsiders. I don’t know why Mrs. Haskell showed up when she did, but Ivy showed up because she’d been contacted. Once by letter and once by phone. She didn’t have a motive until she was contacted, either. She didn’t exactly have one after she was contacted, but there was the inference, and in the event the inference was enough. Now—oh, hell,” I said. I grabbed my bag and started pawing through it. “I need a pen.” I pulled out my checkbook and my card case. I pulled out the three romance novels Stephen Brookfield had given me. I pulled out one of Camille’s defunct flea collars. “We’ve got to write it all down,” I said. I found a pen.

  I got up, leaned over the bar, and took a wad of napkins. “Mrs. Haskell and Ivy,” I said, writing their names on one side of the napkin, “and then on the other side the Brookfields and Felicity Aldershot. I’ll put Martin in for the sake of form. Now look, we make a list of everything that happened. Then we make a list of what we know about the people it happened to. Then—” I was running out of space. I pushed the mess I’d taken from my purse to one side. I opened another napkin. “I’ll make headings for everything,” I said. “Then we’ll fill in the blanks. We’ll treat it like one of those logic puzzles. You know, Mr. Green lives in the red house and the man who lives in the green house is not the carpenter.”

  “You’re going to dump that stuff on the floor,” Phoebe said.

  “I’ll pick it up in a minute,” I said. “The first thing is Events. Under Events we put only those things we actually know happened. Not things people told us, or assumed, or—damn.” I pushed the mess one more time. “Under information,” I started.

  The card case clattered when it hit the floor. The rest of the stuff made a sound like dying leaves. I jumped down to pick it up, distracted, and shoved it onto the bar.

  “We’ll have to make a list of what people told us,” I was saying as I climbed back onto my seat, “and who told us what, so we can figure out—what’s the matter?”

  Phoebe had lost all interest in treating the Brookfield murders as a puzzle. She was turning something over and over in her hands. She looked very worried.

  “Patience,” she asked me, “have you been feeling all right?”

  “You know how I’ve been feeling. Etzy-ketzy, as Nick would say.”

  “You’ve been losing a lot of weight, haven’t you?”

  “What’s the matter with you?” I asked her. I grabbed the thing in her hands. “You look like a relative died,” I said.

  Then I opened my hand and looked down at a small glassine envelope full of white powder.

  TWENTY-SIX

  IT WAS STEPHEN BROOKFIELD’S. I knew that as soon as I saw it. It explained a lot of things: the emaciation, the air of being the chief character in a novel about expatriate dissolutes, the pallor, the sudden laughing fit. I had once heard Alida tell Jack she knew “what he was doing in the men’s room,” but Alida frequently got things mixed up. Jack Brookfield could not be a drug addict. No drug addict is ever that fat. Stephen Brookfield not only could be, he probably was. Assuming what I had in my hands was dope.

  Assuming what I had in my hands was dope? I looked at the glassine envelope again. It looked exactly like the glassine envelopes that figured so prominently in syndicated reruns of “The Streets of San Francisco.” For all I knew about dope, it could have been castor sugar. Or Bromo-Seltzer. Or nitroglycerin, for that matter. I didn’t have the faintest idea what nitroglycerin looked like.

  Neither, apparently, did Phoebe. Having recovered from her shock at finding it among my things and her relief at realizing it wasn’t mine, she was as much in need of a solid identification as I was.

  “Martinez will know,” she said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to go to Martinez,” I said. “I’d have to tell him where I got it.”

  “Do you know where you got it?”

&n
bsp; I nodded. “It had to be in one of the romance books,” I said. “It must have been in Stephen Brookfield’s back pocket and so were the romance books and when he took the romance books out it got stuck.”

  “I thought you didn’t like Stephen Brookfield.”

  “He’s creepy. Like the mummy in a fifties horror movie. But I don’t hate him.”

  “Patience—” Phoebe said.

  “Don’t call me Patience,” I said. “We don’t know this has anything to do with the murders. You should see this guy, Phoebe. He’s a skeleton. He’s probably been using a long time. If he’s using.”

  “You think he’s using,” Phoebe said.

  “Yes, I do. That doesn’t mean I have to turn him into the police.”

  Phoebe threw her hands in the air. “What do you want to do, McKenna? Snort it and see if you get high?”

  “Do you snort heroin?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  I put the envelope into my pocket out of sight. I didn’t want the bartender seeing it. Maybe I didn’t want anyone seeing it. On the other hand, I didn’t want to “snort it and see if I got high,” either.

  “Just maybe,” Phoebe said, “something that has to do with that bag is what made him kill two people. You said they didn’t make much money. It takes a lot of money to support a habit. At least, according to the newspapers it does. Your Stephen Brook-field could have been robbing the company blind, he could have been robbing Alida Brookfield’s private funds. He could have—”

  “He wasn’t,” I said. “Martinez told me that. They did an audit as part of the investigation. They didn’t come up with anything financial on Stephen. Martinez told me so.”

  “Stop repeating ‘Martinez told me so,’ ” Phoebe said. “And an audit wouldn’t come up with everything. He could be selling off supplies. Or getting kickbacks. Or something.”

  “All right,” I said. “All right, all right.”

  “And if he’s clean,” Phoebe said. “Pay, for God’s sake. If he is clean, that’s weirder.”