Women Crime Writers

by Sarah Weinman

  She didn’t have to look up any numbers. She forgot other things sometimes, she had spells when the city seemed foreign as the moon to her and people she knew were strangers and strangers were lovers, but she always remembered the telephone numbers. They formed the only continuous path through the tormented jungle of her mind.

  She began to dial, shaking with excitement like a wild evangelist. The word must be spread. Lessons must be taught. Truth must be told.

  “The Monica Hotel.”

  “I’d like to speak to Miss Helen Clarvoe, please.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Clarvoe has had a private telephone installed in her suite.”

  “Could you tell me the number?”

  “The number’s unlisted. I don’t know it myself.”

  “You filthy liar,” Evelyn said and hung up. She couldn’t stand liars. They were a bad lot.

  She called Bertha Moore, but as soon as Bertha recognized her voice, she slammed down the receiver.

  She called Verna Clarvoe again. The line was busy.

  She called Jack Terola’s studio, letting the phone ring for a full minute in case he was busy in the back room, but there was no answer.

  She called the police and told them a man had been stabbed with a scissors in the lobby of the Monica Hotel and was bleeding to death.

  It was better than nothing. But it wasn’t good enough. The power and excitement were rotting away inside her like burned flesh, and her mouth was lined with gray fur like the tomcat’s in the alley.

  The cat. It was the cat that had ruined everything, it had contaminated her because it saw her refueling. She liked animals and was very kind to them, but she had to pay the cat back and teach it a lesson, not with a phone but a scissors. Like the man in the lobby.

  The man was no longer part of her imagination but part of her experience. She saw him clearly, lying in the lobby, white face, red blood. He looked a little like Douglas, a little like Terola. He was Douglas-Terola and he was dead.

  She returned to the bar. One of the bartenders and the young man who had laughed at her were talking, their heads close together. When she approached they pulled apart and the bartender walked away to the other end of the bar. The young man gave her a hurried uneasy glance and then he got up and he, too, walked away toward the back exit.

  Everyone was deserting her. People did not answer their phones, people walked away from her. Everyone walked away. She hated them all, but her special hate was reserved for the three Clarvoes, and, of the three, Helen in particular. Helen had turned her back on an old friend, she had walked away, first and farthest, and for this she must suffer. She couldn’t hide forever behind an unlisted telephone number. There were other ways and means.

  “I’ll get her yet,” Evelyn whispered to the walls. “I’ll get her yet.”

  The fur in her mouth grew long and thick with hate.

  Chapter 7

  DAWN CAME, a misty, meager lightening of the sky. The storm had intensified during the night. A banshee wind fled screaming up and down the streets, pursued by the rush of rain.

  But it was not the wind or the rain that awakened Miss Clarvoe. It was the sudden stab of memory.

  “Evie,” she said, the name which had meant nothing to her for a long time was as familiar as her own.

  Her heart began to pound and tears welled up in her eyes, not because she remembered the girl again, but because she had ever forgotten. There was no reason to forget, no reason at all. Right from the beginning they had been the closest of friends. They exchanged clothes and secrets and food from home, giggled together after the lights were out, met between classes, invented a language of their own to baffle the interceptors of notes, and shared the same crush on the science master who was married and had four children and large romantic brown eyes. Other crushes, too, they shared, but they were all Evie’s to begin with. Helen just followed along, content to have Evie take the lead and make the decisions.

  We were friends, always. Nothing ever happened that I should forget her. There’s no reason, no reason.

  They had attended their first dance together one Hallowe’en, dressed alike, at Evie’s suggestion, in gypsy costumes. Evie carried a goldfish bowl as a substitute for a crystal ball.

  The dance, to which all the upper school girls had been invited, was held in the gymnasium of a private boys’ school in the valley. Mr. Clarvoe drove Helen and Evelyn to the school and left them at the gym door. They were nervous and excited and full of the wildest hopes and the most abysmal fears.

  “I can’t go in, Evie.”

  “Don’t be silly. They’re only boys.”

  “I’m scared. I want to go home.”

  “We can’t walk ten miles dressed like this. Come on in, be a sport.”

  “Promise you won’t leave me?”

  “I promise.”

  “Cross your heart.”

  “Listen to the music, Helen. They’ve got a real orchestra!”

  They went inside and almost immediately they were separated.

  The rest of the evening was a nightmare for Helen. She stood in a corner of the room, rigid, tongue-tied, watching Evie surrounded by boys, laughing, humming snatches of music, floating gracefully from one partner to another. She would have given her soul to be Evie, but no one offered her the chance.

  She went into the lavatory and cried, her forehead pressed against the wall.

  When the dance was over, her father was waiting in the car outside the gym.

  He said, “Where’s Evie?”

  “A boy asked to take her home. She’s going with him.”

  “She’s altogether too young for that sort of thing. If she were my daughter I wouldn’t allow it.” He pulled away from the curb. “Did you have a good time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “There’s not much to tell. It was fun, that’s all.”

  “That’s not a very good description. Your mother and I went to considerable trouble to get you to this dance. We’d like some report on it at least.”

  She knew from his tone that he was angry but she didn’t know what caused the anger and why it should be directed against her. “I’m sorry if I kept you waiting, daddy.”

  “You didn’t.” He’d been waiting for three-quarters of an hour but it was not her fault. He had come early deliberately, because it was her first dance and he was as uneasy about it as she was. He had sat in the car, listening to the chaos of laughter and music coming from the gym, imagining the scene inside, and Helen in the very center of it, bright and gay in her gypsy costume. When at last she came out, alone, with that stiff sullen look on her face, disappointment rose up and choked him so that he could hardly breathe.

  “Did you dance with anyone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  She didn’t want to lie but she knew she had to, and she did it well. Without hesitation she described some of the boys she’d seen dancing with Evie and gave them names and invented conversations and incidents.

  She talked all the way home, while her father smiled and nodded and made little comments. “That Jim sounds like a real cut-up.” “Too bad the Powers boy was shorter than you.” “Now, aren’t you glad we made you go to dancing school?”

  Later, when she kissed him good night, he gave her an affectionate little pat on the bottom.

  “I’ll have to watch out for you now, young lady. One of these days I’ll be driven out of house and home by those little idiots hanging around.”

  “Good night, daddy.”

  “I forgot to ask about Evie. Did she have as good a time as you did?”

  “I guess so. I was too busy to pay her any attention.”

  She went to bed, half-believing in her own lies because her father’s belief was so complete.

  The following day the dean of Helen’s school, who had been one of the chaperones, telephoned Mr. Clarvoe. She wanted, she said, to check up on Helen and see if she was all right, she’d been so unhappy
at the dance.

  Nothing was said at dinner in front of Verna and Douglas, but later Mr. Clarvoe called Helen into the den and shut the door.

  “Why did you lie, Helen?”

  “About what?”

  “The dance.”

  She stood, mute, scarlet with humiliation.

  “Why did you lie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If it had been just one lie—but it was a whole string of them. I can’t understand it. Why?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nothing of what you told me was true?”

  “No, nothing,” she said with a kind of bitter satisfaction, knowing he was hurt almost as much as she was. “Not a word.”

  “All the boys—they weren’t even real?”

  “I made them up.”

  “Helen, look at me. I want the truth. I demand it. What really happened at the dance?”

  “I hid in the lavatory.”

  He stepped back, as if the words had struck him across the chest. “You hid—in the lavatory.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? For God’s sake, why?”

  “I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

  “My God, why didn’t you phone me? I’d have come and taken you home. Why didn’t you let me know?”

  “I was too—proud.”

  “You call that pride? Skulking in a lavatory? It’s almost obscene.”

  “I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” she repeated.

  “What about Evie? Was she with you?”

  “No. She was dancing.”

  “The entire evening she was dancing and you were hiding in the lavatory?”

  “Yes.”

  “For heaven’s sake, why?”

  “She was popular and I wasn’t.”

  “Going off and hiding like that, you didn’t give yourself a chance to be popular.”

  “I wouldn’t have been anyway. I mean, I’m not pretty.”

  “You’ll be pretty enough in time. Why your mother is one of the prettiest women in the state.”

  “Everyone says I take after you.”

  “Nonsense. You look more like your mother every day. What on earth put the idea in your head that there’s anything the matter with your appearance?”

  “The boys don’t like me.”

  “That’s probably because you’re too standoffish. Why can’t you try to be more friendly, like Evie?”

  She didn’t tell him what he should have known for himself—that she would have given anything in the world to be like Evie, not just at the dance, but any time, any place.

  His anger, which in the beginning had boiled out like lava, was now cooling, leaving a hard crust of contempt. “You realize, of course, that I’ll have to punish you for lying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sorry you lied?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s only one true test of penitence. If you had a chance to repeat the lies, knowing you wouldn’t be found out, would you do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “It would have made both of us happier.”

  It was true and he knew it as well as she did, but he shook his head and said, “I’m disappointed in you, Helen, extremely disappointed. You may go to your room.”

  “All right.” She lingered wanly at the door. “What about my punishment?”

  “Your punishment, Helen, is being you, and having to live with yourself.”

  Later in the evening she heard her parents talking in their bedroom and she crept down the dark hall to listen.

  “Well, heaven knows I’ve done everything I can,” Verna said. “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

  “What about my idea of giving her a big party, inviting a bunch of boys . . .”

  “What boys?”

  “We must know some people who have boys about her age.”

  “I can think of exactly two, the Dillards and the Pattersons. I loathe Agnes Patterson, and besides, the whole idea of a party wouldn’t work.”

  “We’ve got to think of something. If she goes on like this she may not even marry.”

  “I just don’t understand you, Harrison. For years you’ve been treating Helen as if she were about four, and now suddenly you’re thinking about her marriage.”

  “Are you blaming the situation on me?”

  “Someone’s to blame.”

  “But never you.”

  “I,” Verna said righteously, “am bringing up Dougie. The girl is the father’s responsibility. Besides, she takes after you. Half the time I don’t even understand her. She won’t speak out, let anyone know what she’s thinking or how she feels about things.”

  “She’s shy, that’s all. We must find a way to get her over her shyness.”

  “How?”

  “Well, for one thing, I think we should encourage her relationship with Evie. The girl’s a good influence on Helen.”

  “I agree.” There was a silence, and then a sigh, “What a pity we didn’t have a girl like Evie.”

  Barefooted, shivering with cold and fear, she trudged back to her room and got into bed. But the walls and ceiling seemed to contract, to press down on her until they fitted her like a coffin. She knew then that her father had been right. This was her punishment, to be herself, and to have to live with herself forever, a living girl inside a locked coffin.

  She lay awake until morning, and the emotion that was strongest in her heart was not resentment against her parents but a new and bitter hatred for Evie.

  She did nothing about this hatred. It was buried with her inside the coffin and no one else knew it was there. Things went on as before, with her and Evie, or almost as before. They still shared a crush on the science master with the romantic eyes, they wrote notes in their secret language, and exchanged clothes, and food from home, and confidences. The difference was that Helen’s confidences were not real. She made them up just as she’d made up the boys, and the incidents at the dance, for her father.

  At the end of the spring semester, when Evie acquired a boy friend, Helen acquired two. When Evie was promised a horse as a reward for good grades, Helen was promised a car. It became as difficult for Evie to accept these lies as it was for Helen to keep on inventing them, and the two girls began to avoid each other.

  There was trouble about it at home, but Helen had anticipated it and she was ready.

  “Why didn’t you bring Evie with you for the week-end?” her father asked.

  “I invited her to come. She didn’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  She hesitated just the right amount of time to rouse his curiosity. “I promised not to tell.”

  “I’m your father, you can tell me.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Well, is it anything we’ve done?”

  “Oh no. It’s just—she’s busy, she wanted to stay at school and study for the Latin test.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Evie to me, staying at school when she could be here having a good time.”

  “Oh, she’ll be having a good—I mean, she likes to study.”

  “You mean she’s not going to be studying, isn’t that it?”

  “I promised not to tell.”

  “This sounds like the kind of thing I’d better get to the bottom of, right here and now. Where is Evie?”

  “At school.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you. I made a solemn vow.”

  “I want an immediate and truthful answer to my question, do you hear me, Helen?”

  “Yes. But . . .”

  “And no but’s, if’s and when’s, please.”

  “She—she has a boy friend.”

  “Yes? Go on.”

  “She doesn’t want her parents to find out about him because he’s a Mexican.”

  “A Mexican.”

  “He works on a lemon ranch near the school. She climbs out of the window after the lights are out and me
ets him in the woods.” She began to cry. “I didn’t want to tell. You made me. You made me a liar!”

  Miss Clarvoe lay in bed with her right arm across her face as if to shield herself from the onslaught of memories. The ceiling pressed down on her, the walls contracted, until they fitted her like a coffin, tight, airless, sealed forever. And locked in with her were the mementos of her life: “Your punishment is being you and having to live with yourself.” “What a pity we didn’t have a girl like Evie!”

  Chapter 8

  THE HOUSE was set in the middle of a tiny walled garden on Kasmir Street in Westwood. An engraved card in a slot above the doorbell read: Mrs. Annabel Merrick, Miss Evelyn Merrick.

  The house needed paint, the woman who answered Blackshear’s ring did not. She looked like a farmer’s wife, plump and tanned and apple-cheeked, but her clothes were city clothes, a smart black-and-white-striped suit that hinted at severely disciplinary garments underneath.

  “Mr. Blackshear?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Annabel Merrick.” They shook hands. “Come in, won’t you? I’m just making breakfast. If you haven’t had yours, I can pop another egg in the pan.”

  “I’ve eaten, thank you.”

  “Some coffee then.” She closed the front door after him and led the way through the living room into the kitchen. “I must say I was surprised by your early phone call.”

  “Sorry if I got you out of bed.”

  “Oh, you didn’t. I work, you know. In the flower shop of the Roosevelt Hotel. Sure you wouldn’t like an egg?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I’ve been divorced for several years, and of course alimony payments don’t rise with the cost of living, so I’m glad to have a job. Somehow it’s not so much like work when you’re surrounded by flowers. Delphiniums are my favorite. Those blues—heavenly, just heavenly.”

  She brought her plate of eggs and toast to the table and sat down opposite Blackshear. She appeared completely relaxed, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to entertain strange men before 8 o’clock in the morning.

  “Blackshear, that’s an odd name. Do people ever get mixed up and call you Blacksheep?”