Vixen

by Bill Pronzini

  “I wouldn’t do that. I’m only thinking of what’s best for you. I haven’t betrayed your trust in me so far, have I?”

  “… No.”

  “Okay. You’re positive Cory and Chaleen conspired to murder Mrs. Vorhees. You don’t want them to get away with it, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have to do something. What do you think it should be?”

  Headshake. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. Just not the police.…”

  “Then we’ll figure out another way together.” Runyon let a few seconds pass before he asked, “Does Cory have any idea that you suspect her and Chaleen?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t say anything to make her suspicious.”

  “What would she have done if you had?”

  “Done?”

  “She wouldn’t hurt you, would she?”

  “No. Not like … no.”

  “Has she ever hurt you, Ken?”

  “Slaps a few times, that’s all.” He winced as he said the words, as if he could still feel the sting of those slaps. “She wouldn’t do anything if she knew that I know, just lie and tell me I’m being silly. She keeps saying after the trial everything will be like it used to be, but that’s a lie, too. It’s only going to get worse.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Mrs. Vorhees … that wasn’t the end of it.”

  “You think she’s planning something else?”

  The waitress reappeared with the pint of Bass, waited for Runyon to pay and tip her before she moved off. Beckett was again staring toward the entrance, his hands still crawling the table. Runyon had the feeling that if his sister were to come in, the kid would immediately slide down and try to hide under the table.

  He said, “Ken. Do you think Cory’s planning something else, some other crime?”

  Six-beat, while a shout went up from the dart players. Then, when the noise died down, “Something, yeah. I just hope…”

  “What do you hope?”

  Headshake.

  “Do you have any idea what it might be?”

  “No. I wish to God I did.”

  “Is there any way you can find out?”

  “How? She won’t tell me anything, just lies and more lies. And she’s careful now when she talks on the phone to Chaleen.”

  “Does he come to the apartment to see her?”

  “No. She goes out to crawl in bed with him.”

  “He’s never been there?”

  “Never. Only Mr. Vorhees—”

  Somebody must have come into the tavern just then; Beckett stiffened with his head craned forward like a pointer. But the new arrival wasn’t his sister or anybody else he knew. He sagged back again, drew a shaky breath before his pale eyes met Runyon’s again.

  Runyon said, “Do you know what Cory did with the gun you told me about?”

  “Gun? Oh, Jesus, the gun.…”

  “Is it still in the apartment?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she put it in her car. Or gave it to Chaleen.”

  “Why would she give it to him?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know why she does anything.”

  “Have you looked for it?”

  Headshake. “I can’t while she’s there. And she locks me in my room now when she goes out and when she’s in bed with Mr. Vorhees. I tried picking the lock, but I couldn’t do it.…”

  Good enough, Runyon thought. One worry eased. You couldn’t use a weapon on yourself if you had no idea where it was and no opportunity to hunt for it.

  Beckett’s gaze shifted away from him again. “I can’t stay any longer, Mr. Runyon, I have to get back. Mr. Vorhees is probably gone by now and she’ll be looking for me and she’ll be mad.”

  “All right. But before you go, tell me what Mr. Vorhees said to Cory when he showed up tonight.”

  “Oh, he was pissed, really pissed, about her letting Chaleen do it to her. He called her all kinds of names. Slut, bitch, whore.”

  “Did he say how he found out?”

  “I don’t remember if he did.”

  “Did she deny the affair with Chaleen?”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t believe her. He told her he’d make her pay for two-timing him with that bastard. Make both of them pay.”

  “Make them pay how?”

  Headshake. “That’s when I couldn’t stand it anymore, when I snuck out.”

  “Did he seem to have any idea Cory and Chaleen were responsible for his wife’s death?”

  “He didn’t say anything about that.” Beckett flattened his hands on the table, shoved himself upright—movements so frantic they nearly upset the glass of ale. “I have to go now. Please.”

  “Okay. Just remember, I’m available whenever you want to talk again. Any time, day or night.”

  “Thanks, I—” The kid broke off as if struck by a sudden thought, blinked a couple of times, and then said, “Jesus, the trial. It’s coming soon, on Monday. Will you be there, Mr. Runyon? It won’t be so bad for me if you are.”

  “Count on it.”

  Beckett nodded once, shaped his mouth into what was probably meant to be a smile but came off more like a grimace, then rushed for the door and was gone into the night.

  * * *

  The Becketts were already in the Civic Center courtroom, seated at the defendant’s table with their lawyer, Sam Wasserman, when Runyon walked in Monday morning. Both of them dressed in dark conservative clothing, Kenneth uncomfortable-looking in a suit and tie, his sister calm and cool behind a mask of solemn concern. She sat close to him, shoulders touching, her hand on his clenched fingers on the table.

  Not many of the seats in the spectator section were occupied. Andrew Vorhees was not among the handful of people seated there; neither was Frank Chaleen. The only person Runyon recognized was a Chronicle reporter, probably looking for an angle he could use to stir up fresh interest in a socialite’s “accidental” death. A couple of the others would also be newshounds, the rest the type of courthouse junkies who attend felony trials at random for their own amusement.

  He sat down in the front row to the far right of the defendant’s table, where both of the Becketts would be sure to see him. The kid spotted him first; some of the rigidity in his posture seemed to ease and an expression that might have been gratitude or relief animated his thin face. Cory followed his gaze, frowned briefly when she saw Runyon, then whispered something to her brother that made him turn his head to face the bench and keep it there. After that one glance at Runyon, she ignored him. Making it obvious that to her his presence was nothing more than a minor annoyance: he had nothing to do with the matter at hand.

  Vorhees still hadn’t put in an appearance when the judge, a stern-faced woman in her fifties, came out of chambers and the bailiff called the proceedings to order.

  Runyon had expected the trial to last a minimum of one full day, but it was over in less than half an hour—aborted by a nolle prosequi from an Assistant DA. The reason given was that the complainant was recently deceased and her next of kin—her husband—didn’t wish to pursue prosecution; therefore the DA’s office had decided to accede to his wishes and was recommending that the charges against the defendant be dropped. The Becketts’ high-priced lawyer didn’t have to say a word in his client’s defense. The judge delivered a brief lecture to Kenneth warning against the dire consequences of any repeat offense, and banged her gavel.

  Case dismissed.

  Cory embraced her brother, whispered something to him that caused his head to bob up and down. He looked a little stunned, as if he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the verdict. Runyon thought he might be able to edge in for a word with Beckett, but she didn’t let that happen. She hustled the kid out of the courtroom without a glance in Runyon’s direction, the bulky Wasserman helping her run interference. The reporters followed them out, yammering for interviews, but their luck wasn’t any better.

  Runyon was the last to leave. On his way out of the building he w
as thinking that the fallout from the talk with Andrew Vorhees had been just what he and Bill hoped for. They’d not only managed to destroy or drive a deep wedge into Vorhees’ relationship with Cory Beckett, but to convince him to let her brother off the hook. There was always the chance that he’d be angry and vindictive enough to pay her back in part by hurting her brother, but given what they knew about him and his methods, and what they’d told him about the frame-up, the odds were good that he’d do just what he had done—declined to pursue prosecution.

  Besides, they’d had some insurance: even if Vorhees had pressed the theft charge, Sam Wasserman would likely have gotten Beckett off. The DA’s case was shaky with the plaintiff dead and no one else to testify directly on her behalf, and losing it would have been a black mark on an already less-than stellar record in this election year. The DA would have been only too willing to let the whole thing drop.

  So far so good. Question now was, how would the Vorhees/Cory Beckett/Chaleen mess play out? Volatile, secretive, parlous bunch, capable of just about any action or reaction, which made anticipating what any of them would do next difficult, if not impossible. Runyon’s one hope was that whatever happened, poor Kenneth Beckett wouldn’t get caught in the middle again.

  19

  “I want to establish a memorial for Cybil,” Kerry said. “So she won’t be forgotten.”

  She announced this as we were finishing dinner that night, without having said anything along those lines previously. She’d been quiet up until then, the thoughtful kind of quiet. Cybil’s death had left her subdued but not withdrawn; she seemed to be coping with it well enough, her grief neither entirely locked up inside nor morbid in her outward expressions of it. She hadn’t thrown herself compulsively into her work at Bates and Carpenter or in her office here in the condo, or avoided normal contact with Emily and me, or suffered onsets of depression in which she suddenly burst into tears. And her appetite had been reasonably good. But it was obvious that Cybil remained uppermost in her thoughts and that she’d had this memorial idea, whatever it was, for some time and was only now ready to share it.

  Emily and I exchanged glances; her expressive eyes told me she had no more idea than I did what Kerry meant. Wasn’t that corner of her office she’d devoted to Cybil’s possessions a kind of memorial?

  I said, “We’re not about to forget her, babe, you know that.”

  “Not ever,” Emily said. “We’ll always remember her and love her.”

  “I know that,” Kerry said. “We won’t forget her, but what about the rest of the world? If we don’t do something to preserve her memory, it’ll be as if she never existed.”

  I pushed my plate away and reached over to touch her hand. “That’s not true. There are those two novels of hers—”

  “Both out of print now.”

  “—and plenty of readers and collectors like me who remember her stories for the pulps.”

  “Yes, exactly. But not enough of them. How many pulp collectors have actually read Cybil’s stories? Not many, I’ll bet. Most collectors are only interested in owning the magazines for their investment value, or their artwork, or because they contain stories by famous writers—you told me that yourself. And what few pulps come up for sale on eBay and elsewhere these days are expensive, prohibitively so for all but individuals with deep pockets. That’s true, too, isn’t it?”

  I admitted that it was.

  She said, “But there is enough interest in pulp fiction among modern readers to make collections and anthologies of obscure pulp stories profitable for small-press publishers. There are several that specialize in that type of book—you’ve bought a few of those reprints yourself.”

  I knew what she was getting at now. “You want to try to sell a collection of Cybil’s Max Ruffe stories. That’s what you meant by memorial.”

  “Yes. I’ve been rereading some of them and they’re really very good—and I’m not saying that because she was my mother. Cybil was a fine stylist, a clever plotter.”

  And had a real knack, I thought, for writing the kind of tough-guy fiction her male counterparts were turning out then and now. The only woman of her generation I could think of who did it as well was Leigh Brackett. It had always been puzzling to me why Cybil’s work had slipped into relative obscurity, while male writers from the forties and fifties of lesser talent had gained various measures of popularity.

  Kerry was saying, “But I don’t mean just a single collection of her stories. There are twenty-seven in all, most of them novelettes, and one in Midnight Detective that’s a short novel. There’d have to be at least three volumes to include them all. That’s doable, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “And reprints of Dead Eye and Black Eye, too. The complete Max Ruffe, by Cybil Wade writing as Samuel Leatherman.” She was more animated now, a little crackle of excitement in her voice. “Also doable?”

  “Probably. But the original publisher of the two novels is out of business now and I doubt a major house would be interested. It’d have to be a small press, probably a print-on-demand outfit.”

  “One that does e-books, too,” Emily said.

  “Right. There are several out there.”

  “And Mom could write the introductions.”

  Kerry said, “That’s just what I was thinking. And not only commentary on the stories, but on Cybil’s life—a series of personal memoirs. I could do it, I think—do justice to her and her work.”

  “I’ll bet it’d be easier than writing advertising copy,” Emily said.

  Kerry shifted her gaze to me, her eyes as bright as I’d seen them in a long time. “What do you think? Can we convince one of those small publishers to reprint all of Cybil’s fiction?”

  “We can sure give it a try.”

  “Good! You know which ones are most likely to be receptive. I’ll write the pitch letters if you’ll give me their names.”

  “Better yet,” I said, “we’ll pick them out together.”

  So after we finished supper, Kerry and I went into her office and used her computer to pull up the websites of publishers specializing in mystery and detective pulp fiction reprints in both print-on-demand and e-book editions, paying particular attention to their production values and cover art. There were two I’d recommended that Kerry liked as well, and two more we picked out together. At least one of the four ought to be interested; if not, there were a few others we could try.

  “I wish we’d done this when Cybil was alive,” she said. “I mentioned the idea to her once, but she wasn’t interested. She never had a high regard for her fiction.” Kerry added wryly, “Unlike Ivan, who thought his work was about half a rung below the level of genius. Or pretended to.”

  “Hers was better.”

  “By a wide margin. I’m really glad you think this is a good idea.”

  “A very good idea,” I said, and meant it.

  She said she wanted to get started right away on drafting a proposal, so I left her to it and went back into the living room. And there was Emily, curled up on the couch reading one of Cybil’s Max Ruffe stories in a 1947 issue of Midnight Detective on which Samuel Leatherman had been cover-featured. Modern kid, fourteen years old and raised on computers, engrossed in the mouldering pages of a type of popular culture that had flourished more than half a century before she was born.

  I sat down quietly so as not to disturb her, thinking that where women were concerned, I was a pretty lucky guy. All the women in my life, dating back to my childhood, had been special. My mother, and Nana, her mother. Kerry. Emily. Cybil. Tamara. All but one of the half dozen or so I’d been involved with before I met Kerry, even though those relationships, for one reason or another, hadn’t lasted. Smart, caring, loving, every one.

  Thank God for women like them. And that there were only a few, a very few, of the ones like Cory Beckett.

  * * *

  Tuesday was not one of my scheduled days at the office. But after I finished a couple of errands I
didn’t feel much like rattling around at home, so I gave in to impulse and drove down to South Park. I didn’t expect any new developments on the Vorhees/Cory Beckett matter since yesterday’s trial dismissal of the theft charge against Kenneth Beckett, but Tamara had one waiting for me when I walked in.

  “I was just about to call you,” she said. “You’d think Andrew Vorhees would be pissed at us, right? Well, he’s not. He called for another appointment not fifteen minutes ago—the big man himself this time, not one of his flunkies. Seems he wants to engage our services, as he put it.”

  “Oh? To do what?”

  “Hedged on that, said he’d discuss it in person. Could be something to do with his wife’s death, but I’ll bet he’s after as much dirt as we can dig up on Cory. Chaleen, too.”

  “Payback ammunition.”

  “Yep.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t commit us, just said we’d listen to what he has to say. But if it’s Cory and Chaleen he’s after, why not take him on? His money’s good and the dirt is already about nine-tenths dug up.”

  “Did he ask for me, Jake, or both of us?”

  “You. But I told him he’d probably get Jake instead and he said okay.”

  “Why Jake instead?”

  “Well, he wants to have the meeting tonight—eight o’clock, on his yacht. Said he’ll be tied up with other matters all day and something to take care of after he leaves his office. Probably true—he didn’t stay on the line long and he sounded hassled. I figured you’d rather spend the evening with Kerry and Emily. And Jake’s up for it—I just got off the phone with him.”

  “Fine by me. He’ll get as much if not more out of Vorhees as I would.”

  “We’ll know a lot more about what’s happening with Cory and Chaleen when he reports in,” Tamara said. Her smile was wolfish. “And with any luck, a legitimate reason to stay involved in this mess and a fat cat’s fat check for all our troubles.”

  * * *

  At two-thirty I was still at my desk, fiddling with a report on a routine skip-trace. I had written scores like it before, but today, for some reason, I was having trouble getting the gist of it down in coherent English. Committing words to paper, or now to a computer screen, is not one of my long suits; I have to drag them together into intelligible sentences at the best of times. It was a good thing Kerry intended to write all the introductory material for Cybil’s collected works; I’d have been worthless as a collaborator. I was staring off into space, trying to think of a way to frame what should have been a simple statement of fact, when the outer door to the anteroom opened.