Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes

by Marcia Muller

  “So that’s why Lis insisted she wanted the trial for Judy’s sake,” I said. “Who besides the three of you and James Wald knew about the possibility of a mock trial?”

  “Quite a few. Judy talked it up with any number of people, and I’m sure Wald wasn’t shy, either.”

  “And someone panicked when he heard about it and hired someone else to try to intimidate Lis, Judy, and later, me. Only it backfired, because you and I realized there had to be something to Lis’s claim of innocence and became determined to move ahead with it.”

  “Right.”

  Rae had been listening, eyes narrowed. Now she murmured, “Perfect timing there.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing, just thinking aloud.” She turned to Jack. “Maybe you should try the theater again.”

  “I called just a few minutes before you came in.”

  “What about her house?”

  “She’d never go there.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “The police seal’s off, and she’s free to clean it up. If she’s behaving as irrationally as you describe, you don’t know what she might do.”

  Jack toyed with his beer mug, looking indecisive.

  “Call her there,” I urged.

  He glanced toward the hallway to the rest rooms, where the pay phone was, then shook his head. “Shar, I can’t deal with her tonight. Things have been deteriorating between us ever since Lis’s murder. Before, if you wanted to know the truth, I’m angry. I’ve been drinking, and I don’t want to chance really blowing it with her.”

  “Then I’ll call.” I stood, rummaging in my bag for coins.

  “And say what?”

  “That I want to come up there and talk.”

  He looked both relieved and conflicted. “Shar, you shouldn’t have to—”

  “Jack, she may be your friend, but this is my case.” I went to the back hallway.

  The phone at the house on Wool Street rang several times; I’d almost given up when Judy’s voice spoke a hesitant hello. She didn’t seem surprised that I’d known where to find her, but she was adamant against my coming up there. I had to do some persuasive talking before she relented.

  As I hurried out of the Remedy, Jack was punching buttons on the ancient jukebox. The strains of his first selection followed me onto the sidewalk: “The Great Pretender.”

  The little house on Wool Street was dark and silent when I arrived. As I range the bell, I realized that the neighboring buildings were dark, too; even though their windows must have been open on this warm evening, I didn’t hear any radios, music, or TVs. I felt as if I were the only survivor of an atomic cataclysm.

  After half a minute footsteps approached the door and Judy opened it. She was again swathed in her mother’s black cape and carried a candle in a silver holder. To my questioning look, she said, “We just had a power failure.”

  Such failures were commonplace in parts of the city where the electrical systems hadn’t been upgraded to carry their present-day load; tonight too many fans and cooling units had been pressed into service, and the transformers had blown. “Lucky you could find your candles and matches,” I said as I stepped inside. “Mine’re always missing when I need them.”

  Judy didn’t reply, merely closed the door and led me down the hall, bypassing the parlor. In her long black cape, taper upraised in front of her, she looked like a creature out of a low-budget horror film. Surprised at where she was taking me, I followed her into the room where Lis had died.

  Judy set the candle next to another on the table and sat in the chair I’d occupied the last time I saw her mother. Lis’s chair was still overturned on the floor; the chalk marks remained where she’d fallen, scuffed but plainly visible. The shards from the coffee cup and glass door still littered the tiles. Gingerly I picked my way through them and sat on a stool next to the plywood slab covering the opening. Whatever Judy’s reason for coming here tonight, I thought, it wasn’t to tidy up.

  I said, “Jack tells me you’re very concerned about the mock trial.”

  She shrugged, cape ruffling.

  “Does that mean yes or no?”

  “Does it matter?”

  It irritates me when someone answers my questions with another, and this was no exception. “It matters—to both Jack and me. We’ve gone out of our way for you, and you could at least give me a straight answer. Why do you want to play yourself in court?”

  She was silent, rubbing a fold of the cape between her fingers. A gust of wind swept through an open window above the sink, made the candle flames shiver. Their light distorted the shadows and glistened off the scattered shards of glass. For a moment the vision I’d had of the interior of the dovecote passed through my mind: shadows moving across rough brick walls, deadly metal flashing . . .

  I shook my head to clear it, concentrated on Judy. Even to the softening half-darkness, her skin looked dry and flaccid; the lines that bracketed her mouth cut deep; her light hair straggled lifeless around her forehead. I might have been looking at her mother.

  “Judy,” I persisted, “why?”

  “Who else could play the role better? Who else knows what I do? I wouldn’t have to be coached. It would save Jack a lot of time.”

  But I suspected saving Jack time was just an afterthought. “There’s more to it than that.”

  Silence.

  “Why didn’t you meet Jack at the Remedy tonight?”

  “There was no reason.”

  “You’re being unfair to him. He cares very deeply for you.”

  She sighed, as if the thought of him caring was merely a burden. The sigh was overly dramatic and caused me to make a quick connection.

  I asked, “Does playing yourself have to do with that one great performance you told me about yesterday? The one performance that might have made a difference?”

  “. . . Maybe. But there’s more. If I could relive the trial, I might be able to remember. And then I could put it all to rest.”

  “I see. Why’d you come up here tonight?”

  “I needed to think.”

  “Here?”

  “It’s as good a place as any. Better. I feel close to Lis here.”

  Close to Lis, in the room where she had died, the death scene virtually unaltered? “What were you thinking about?”

  To my surprise, she began to cry—silently, her lips tightly compressed. The tears slid from beneath the round frames of her glasses, made tracks across her cheeks, dripped unchecked from her chin. And then the word began, in stutters and stops, interrupted by shuddering intakes of breath.

  “She was there . . . on the floor with the gun. There but . . . not there anymore. And the reasons . . . the reasons why, she left them for me. I looked in and I saw the letter . . . there for me.”

  She motioned toward me, and I realized she was indicating where she’d been standing. I said, “You were the one who broke the door.”

  “The chain was on the front. She didn’t expect me. But I’d been worried. I sold my ticket on the red-eye to an acquaintance in New York, then caught an earlier flight. And when I got here . . . “

  “You went down the path to the deck and looked inside and saw Lis’s body.”

  “I smashed the door with a piece of firewood . . . so loud. Too late. She was gone. So still. Maybe at peace. Do you think she was finally at peace?”

  “Of course she was. What did you do next?”

  “There were sheets of paper on the table. Like the tablets she used to buy for me to take to school. Mama’s writing . . . a letter addressed to me.”

  A suicide note, I thought.

  “I couldn’t look at it,” Judy said. “I picked up the sheets and put them in my purse. And then I . . . I ran away.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I drove. A long way. Down the Peninsula to the beach where they have the caves. .. San Gregorio. I remember it from back when I was happy, when Mama and Daddy . . . I sat on the rocks for a long time and then I made myself go back
to the car and read the letter. After a while I came home and called Jack.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him about the letter, that Lis was a suicide?”

  “I couldn’t. Because of what she’d written.”

  Judy’s tears had stopped now; she scrubbed at her damp chin, took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. When she removed her hand, I saw they were bleak, unfocused. Quickly she covered them with the glasses.

  I said, “Later when the police came, you let them assume Lis had been murdered.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Silence.

  “Judy, what was in Lis’s letter?”

  More silence.

  “Have you shown it to anybody?”

  “No.”

  “Will you let me see it?”

  She raised both hands defensively, then dropped them to her lap. For a moment they lay limp; then they convulsed, pulling and tearing at the fabric of the cape. Her mouth twisted in sudden anger.

  “I can’t show it to anyone! She made a mockery of everything I ever tried to do for her. She lied and lied and lied . . . She destroyed my life!”

  I got up, put my hands on hers, trying to calm her. She shoved me away, stood, and wrenched the cape from her shoulders. Then she hurled it on the floor and kicked it.

  “I hate her!” All my life I’ve hated her and I’ve felt guilty and she just let me. All my life I tried to make it up to her, and she took whatever I offered. And then she went and made a mockery of everything with her fucking letter!”

  “Do you still have it?”

  “Of course I still have it! Do you think I’d part with my mother’s precious gift?”

  “May I see it?”

  She shook her head, face still showing rage and sarcasm. Then abruptly she began to cry again.

  “Go ahead,” she said after a moment. “It’s in my purse. Take it. I never wanted it in the first place.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  My daughter—The time has come to put an end to this. As long as I live, you will continue to resurrect memories that are better left dead. And frankly I am weary of the effort to protect you. Weary of those memories, of the horror that lives within me, and of life itself. For years I’ve remained silent, and I will continue to do so. I struck a bargain, however poor, and I will honor it for both our sakes. Is it better to think of your mother falsely convicted of murder or to know her for the despicable creature she is? Only time and understanding can answer that, and we have neither. How are you to understand that I forged the letter that lured that woman to her death? That I went to the dovecote that night armed with talismans against failure? How are you to understand my rage and frustration, my awful sense of being thwarted at the very last? The knowledge that if I didn’t act, she would forever be frozen perfect in your father’s emotions? But in some secret place you’ve always known, although I’ve never dared ask. And I well know your own rage and frustration. Let it go, Judy. Let it go, as I am. And forgive me. Your loving mother—Lis.

  I looked up from the flimsy lined sheet. Judy, calm again, watched me, eyes unreadable in the candle glare on her glasses. “See?” she said. “She finally confessed.”

  “It’s a very self-serving letter, but I’m not convinced it’s a confession.”

  “It’s all there, written down.”

  “She admits to writing the letter that sent Cordy to Seacliff. She admits to going to the cote. But she doesn’t come out and say, ‘I murdered Cordy.’”

  “Yes—in typical Lis fashion, she skirts the truth.”

  “I don’t think . . . What’s this about a bargain?”

  Judy shrugged.

  “And ‘talismans against failure’?”

  “I assume she meant the gardening shears.”

  “And she says you’ve always known. Always known what?”

  “Always suspected that she did it.”

  “She says known.”

  “Semantics. Imprecise choice of word.”

  “I doubt that. This letter was important to her. There’re no crossed-out words, no misspellings, no evidence of haste. I wouldn’t be surprised if she drafted it more than once.”

  “What’re you trying to say? That you still believe Lis didn’t kill Cordy?”

  “I don’t know what I believe. But we can’t base any conclusion on what she says in this letter.”

  Judy was silent for a moment. Finally she said, “Well, now you see why I need to go ahead with this trail. Need to know more than ever.”

  “And you don’t care what damage that might do your mother’s memory.”

  “Did she care what damage she did to me? Look at the opening of that letter. She practically came out and said she was killing herself because she was tired of protecting me from the truth!”

  “As I said, it’s very self-serving.”

  “That was Lis. She played the martyr. First she was martyred by my father’s drinking and womanizing and abuse. Then she was martyred by being falsely accused of murder. That letter makes it sound as if she nearly martyred herself into the gas chamber—and all so she could protect me from God knows what.”

  I studied the letter some more. “I wonder about this bargain. It supports the cover-up theory. And it fits with something else she said to me one of the first times we talked—that when she was reprieved from the gas chamber she ‘knew what was operating there.’ “

  “You think the bargain was to go to prison but not to be executed? In exchange for what?”

  I shook my head.

  “Who did she make the bargain with? My adoptive father?”

  “Not likely. He wasn’t all that important then. I think he was acting on orders from someone more powerful.”

  “The governor?”

  “More likely one of those behind-the-scenes people who hold the real money and power.”

  Judy slumped, a trifle theatrically. “My first parents were an alcoholic and a . . . I don’t know what. And then I was adopted by a man who would make a deal with the devil.”

  “What was your adoptive mother like?”

  “Cold. I could sense she didn’t really care for me, and she died only a couple of years after I went to live with them.”

  “He never remarried?”

  “He was too busy moving up the political ladder to take the time. I was more or less raised by the housekeeper.”

  “Okay,” I said, “enough rehashing the past. Right now you’re going to have to do something that I guarantee won’t be easy.”

  “You mean tell the police about this letter, and the fact that I’ve let them proceed as if Lis had been murdered.” She bit her lip. “Will they arrest me?”

  “Maybe, but I think we can persuade them not to, or at least to hold off until after the mock trial.”

  She nodded resignedly. “Will you call them?”

  “Don’t you want a lawyer present?”

  “The only lawyer I trust is Jack, and I definitely don’t want him here. I’ll take my chances with just you and the cops.”

  I nodded and started for the phone. As I reached for the receiver, the overhead lights flashed on. The refrigerator’s motor sighed and groaned, then started whirring. In one of the neighboring houses, someone let out a cheer.

  I tried to take it as a good omen.

  “I am so pissed off,” Adah Joslyn said. “Does either of you have any idea just how truly pissed I am?”

  I said, “To hazard a guess – truly.”

  “This is no laughing matter, Sharon. I shouldn’t even be talking to her”—she jerked her chin at Judy—”without her attorney present. She’s admitting to obstruction. That’s a heavy—”

  “Come on, Adah. You’re not going to charge her.”

  “The hell you say!”

  “You are not going to charge her, because if you do there will be no mock trial. And if there is no mock trial, you and Wallace will not accomplish your prime objective.”

  “Our prime objective was to solve thi
s homicide—which now turns out not to be a homicide.”

  “You have—or at least Wallace has—a more personal agenda.”

  Her eyes narrowed. I knew what she was thinking: since Lis had committed suicide, they couldn’t nail Joseph Stameroff for murder, so what sense was there in pursuing either the old case or the new one?”

  Speaking slowly, with emphasis, I added, “I know what Benedict said in the letter about being weary of life, but I also know that the woman was literally hounded to death by graffiti and anonymous phone calls. Both Judy and I have lost sleep and suffered property damage. Now, Adah, someone is behind all that. Someone does not want the facts of that old homicide to be taken out and reexamined. That someone is guilty of illegal acts in the present, and probably in the past as well. I think that you and Wallace could accomplish what you hope to do by attending the mock trial and seeing what’s revealed there.”

  “You sound quite confident that the trial will produce the desired results.”

  “My investigation points that way.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t promising more than you can deliver?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I said yes.

  Joslyn’s gaze flicked to Judy, who was watching us, puzzled and somewhat wary. Then it moved back to me. “Well, it wouldn’t be a foolproof way of taking an individual down, but it’d be satisfying nonetheless. I think Bart would agree.”

  “Does this mean that you’ll forget the idea of charging Ms. Benedict?”

  “I can see my way to that.”

  “What about the publicity on this new development?” I motioned at Lis’s letter, which lay on the table between us. “What’s your feeling about that?”

  “Keeping it quiet would be difficult. There’s a certain amount of media curiosity about the case, as well as a good deal of departmental pressure.”

  “I’m wondering if publicizing it would be such a bad thing, anyway.”

  Judy made a noise of protest.

  “I know how you feel,” I told her, “but if the public assumes that your mother confessed before killing herself, it might put someone off his—or her—guard.”

  “You’re really convinced that Lis didn’t kill Cordy,” she said.

  “As I told you before, we can’t base any conclusion on such an ambiguous letter. So why not proceed on our original assumption?”