Women Crime Writers

by Sarah Weinman

  “Isn’t it rather a bad time?”

  “It’s a bad time, but it’s not going to get any better. I have to find out why she said those things about Evelyn. If she’s crazy with grief over Douglas, well, all right, I can undersand that, I’ve had a few griefs of my own. But why should she take it out on Evelyn of all people? My daughter has never hurt anyone in her life, it’s so unfair that she should be attacked like this. She isn’t here to defend herself, but I am. I’m here. And don’t try and stop me this time, Mr. Blackshear. I’m going to see Verna Clarvoe.”

  He watched her go into the house.

  The two women faced each other in silence for a long time.

  “If you’ve come for an apology,” Verna said finally, “you won’t get one. A person isn’t obliged to apologize for telling the truth.”

  “I want an explanation, not an apology.”

  “You have the explanation.”

  “You’ve said nothing yet. Nothing.”

  “I gave Evelyn back some of what she gave me. The truth.” Verna turned away, pressing her fingertips against her swollen eyelids. They felt hot, as if they’d been scalded by her tears. “She called me last night. She was quite friendly at first, she said I’d always been kind to her and she wanted to do me a favor in return. Then she told me about Douglas, the kind of life he was leading, the friends he had—sordid terrible things, in words so vile I don’t see how a girl like Evelyn would know them, let alone speak them. That’s your explanation, Mrs. Merrick.”

  “You can’t be talking about Evelyn. Not my Evelyn.”

  “Why not?” Verna said, through clenched teeth. “She was talking about my son.”

  “I don’t believe it. Evelyn would never do such a thing. She felt vindictive, perhaps, for a time after the marriage, but she’s all over that. She has no hard feelings now. You saw that for yourself when you met us yesterday. She was pleasant and friendly, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she nice to you? You said yourself she bears no grudge.”

  “I am not arguing. I am too tired to argue. I told you what happened.”

  “You must be mistaken.” Mrs. Merrick’s plump face was like rising dough. “At least admit the possibility that you’re mistaken.”

  “There’s no such possibility.”

  “What time did she—what time was the call?”

  “About ten.”

  “There. You see? You’re wrong. Evie stayed with some friends last night. They had tickets for a play at the Biltmore Bowl.”

  “It was Evelyn who called me. I recognized her voice. And no one else, no woman, anyway, would know such things about Douglas.”

  “These things—how can you be sure they were true?”

  “Because he admitted them, my son admitted them. And then he killed himself.” She began to sway back and forth, her arms hugging her scrawny breasts. “Dougie. Dougie is dead. It’s his birthday. We’d planned a little party . . . Oh God, go away, leave me alone.”

  “Mrs. Clarvoe, listen to me.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “I’d like to help you.”

  “Go away. My son is dead.”

  She left the way she had come, across the patio. Blackshear was waiting for her on the driveway, his suit collar turned up against the wind, his lips blue with cold.

  He said, “I’ll drive you back to work, Mrs. Merrick.”

  “No, thanks. You’d better go in to her.” She began putting on her suede gloves. “At least Evelyn is alive. No matter what she’s done, at least she’s alive. That’s enough to thank God for.”

  She turned and walked briskly into the wind, her head high.

  Chapter 13

  THE WET patches on her dress, where she’d washed off the blood in the lavatory of the public library, were dry now, and it was safe to venture out into the street again. Even if the wind should blow her coat open, people wouldn’t notice the faint stains left on her blouse, or if they did, they couldn’t identify them.

  She closed the book she’d been pretending to read for the past hour and returned it to the reference shelf. She knew no one in the library, and no one knew her. Still, it was dangerous to sit too long in any one place, especially a quiet place, because sometimes her mind clicked noisily like a metronome and spies could tell from its frequency what she was thinking.

  One of these spies was an old man sitting at a table near the information desk, half-hidden behind a copy of U.S. News and World Report. How innocently engrossed he seemed, like a child gazing at a picture book, but something about the angle of his head gave him away. She began to hum, quite loudly, so he couldn’t hear her thoughts. He lowered the magazine and gave her a sour look, realizing that he’d been outwitted.

  As she passed the table, she bent toward the old man and whispered, “It won’t do you any good to follow me.” Then she headed for the door, pulling her coat tight around her.

  The victory was hers, of course. Still, the clicking of her mind was becoming annoying. It came and went at odd moments, varying with the intensity of her thoughts, and if she was excited by an idea the noise was almost deafening, enough to drive her crazy.

  Crazy. Not a word to use lightly. Terola had tried.

  She walked quickly down the library steps and turned north, thinking of Terola. She’d been perfectly nice to him, perfectly polite. He had had no reason to act as he did.

  When he had answered the door he was wearing striped pajama bottoms and an undershirt.

  “Hello, Mr. Terola.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I just thought I’d pop in and . . .”

  “Look, kid, pop out again, will you? I’m hung over.”

  He started to close the door but she was too quick for him. “I could make you some coffee, Mr. Terola.”

  “I’ve been making my own coffee for years.”

  “Then it’s high time you tried mine. Where’s the stove?”

  Yawning, he led the way to the alcove and sat down on the edge of the day bed while she plugged in the hot plate and filled the coffee pot with water.

  “How come the ministering angel act, kid?”

  “I like to do a favor for a friend, now and then.”

  “And then the friend is supposed to do a favor right back at you?”

  “That would be nice.”

  “What’s the angle?”

  “Those pictures you took of me,” she said. “Burn them up.”

  “Why?”

  “They didn’t do me justice.”

  His eyebrows humped like black bushy caterpillars. “So?”

  “So burn them up and take new ones. Good ones, the kind they hang in museums.”

  “Look, Elaine, Eileen, whatever your name is . . .”

  “Evelyn.”

  “Look, Evelyn, you go home now like a good girl and I’ll consider your proposition.”

  “You don’t mean it.”

  “Sure, sure I do.” He lay down on the bed and pulled the covers up to his waist.

  “Do you promise, Mr. Terola?”

  “Promise what?”

  “To make me immortal.”

  “You crazy or something?” he said, punching the pillow irritably. “People hear you talking like that, they’ll haul you off to the loony bin.”

  “Mr. Terola . . .”

  “Blow, will you? I’m tired. I had a big night.”

  “Mr. Terola, do you think I’m pretty?”

  “Gorgeous,” he said, closing his eyes. “Just gorgeous, sweetheart.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No, I’m not. Why should I make fun of you? Now blow, like a good girl, Eileen.”

  “Evelyn,” she said. “Evelyn.”

  “All right. Sure.”

  “Say it. Say Evelyn.”

  He opened his eyes and saw her standing over him. “What’s the matter with you, kid? Are you crazy?”

  Crazy. Not a word to use lightly.

  As she turned the next corner she looked back toward the library. T
he spy, disguised as an old man, was standing on the steps watching her, with the U.S. News and Report tucked under his arm. She began to run.

  The old man went back into the library and stopped at the information desk where a red-haired girl sat surrounded by telephone directories from all over the country.

  The girl smiled and said, “Here I thought you were running off with one of our magazines again, Mr. Hoffman.”

  “Not this time. Did you happen to notice the young woman who just left? The one with the dark coat?”

  “Not particularly. Why?”

  “I’ve been observing her for the past half-hour. Very peculiar, she seemed to me.”

  “We get a great many peculiar people in here,” the girl said cheerfully. “Public institution, you know.”

  “I thought perhaps—well, the fact is, I couldn’t help noticing she had stains on the front of her dress.”

  “She probably had spaghetti for lunch. You know how it dribbles.”

  “All the time I was watching her she kept a book open in front of her but she wasn’t reading. A book on birds, I believe, though my eyes aren’t what they used to be. Then, as she was leaving, she leaned down and whispered something to me. I didn’t quite catch it. Odd, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Rather.”

  “I was wondering if I should, perhaps, report it to the police?”

  “Now there you go again, Mr. Hoffman, imagining things!”

  Because of the clicking of her mind and the danger of spies, she tried never to go into the same bar twice, but it was difficult to tell one from another, they were so similar. It was as if the decorations, the neon signs, the furniture, the customers, the bartenders, had all come from the same warehouse in a package deal.

  The important difference was the location of the pay phone. At the Mecca it was in the rear, near the entrance to the men’s room and cut off from the view of the people at the bar by a massive tub of philodendron.

  With the folding door of the phone booth shut tight, she felt safe and warm and secluded, beyond the reach of society, like a child in a playhouse or a poet in an ivory tower.

  She dialed, smiling to herself, breathing the stale air deeply into her lungs as if it were pure oxygen. Crestview 15115. As she waited for an answer, she totaled the numbers. Thirteen. Add one and divide by two, that made seven. Everything had to make seven. Most people didn’t know this, and even when they were told, exhibited skepticism or frank disbelief.

  On the fifth ring (plus two) a woman’s voice said, “Hello.”

  “Is this the Clarvoe residence?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mrs. Clarvoe?”

  “She’s not in.”

  “But I recognize you, Mrs. Clarvoe.”

  A sharp sound came over the wire, like a metallic object striking the floor. “Who . . . Is that you, Evelyn?”

  “Didn’t you expect to hear from me again?”

  “Yes. Yes, I expected to.”

  A pause at the other end of the line, then a flurry as if people were moving about, and a man’s voice, low and hurried, but distinct: “Ask her about Helen. Ask her where Helen is.”

  “Who’s that with you?” Evelyn said. As if she didn’t know. Poor old bungling Blackshear, looking for her all over town, like a blind man feeling his way through a forest. One of these days I will pop out at him from behind a tree.

  “No one’s with me, Evelyn. There was, but I—I sent him away. I felt you—you and I could talk better alone. Evelyn? Are you still there?”

  Still there. Safe, warm, secluded, the poet in the playhouse, the child in the ivory tower.

  A man, barrel-chested, bald, passed the phone booth, and she peered out at him through the dirty, narrow glass door. But he didn’t even notice her. His mind was on other things.

  “Evelyn? Answer me. Answer me.”

  “Well, you needn’t shout,” Evelyn said coldly. “I’m not deaf, you know. I have what you might call 20-20 hearing.”

  “I’m sorry I—shouted.”

  “That’s better.”

  “Listen to me, please. Have you seen Helen? Have you talked to her?”

  “Why?” She smiled to herself because she sounded so sober and earnest when all the time she was bursting with laughter. Had she seen Helen? What a marvelous joke. Prolong it. Draw it out. Make it last a bit. “Why do you want to know about Helen, Mrs. Clarvoe?”

  “She was due here hours ago. She said she was coming home.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “What do you mean? Have you . . . ?”

  “She changed her mind. She didn’t really want to come home anyway. She didn’t want you to see her in her present condition.”

  “What is her—condition?”

  “I promised not to tell. After all, we were friends once, and I ought to keep a promise to a friend.”

  “Please. For God’s sake . . .”

  “You keep shouting. I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “All right,” Verna whispered. “I won’t shout. Just tell me, where’s Helen and what’s the matter with her?”

  “Well, it’s a long story.” It wasn’t really. It was short and sweet, but Mrs. Clarvoe must be taught a lesson. It was rude to shout.

  “Evelyn, please, I beg of you . . .”

  “No one has to beg me for the truth. I give it freely, don’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whatever else people say about me, I’m not a liar.”

  “No. Of course not. You’re not a liar. About Helen, she’s all right, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you said . . .”

  “I didn’t say she was all right or all wrong. All I said was that she changed her mind, she’s not coming home.”

  “Where is she?”

  The barrel-chested man passed again, on his way back to the door. He had glass eyes and wooden lips.

  “She’s working,” Evelyn said, “in a call house.”

  She had begun to tremble in excitement and anticipation, waiting for Verna’s reaction, shock, disbelief, protest. None came.

  “Did you hear me, Mrs. Clarvoe? Helen’s working in a call house. It’s down on South Flower Street. No place for a lady, I can tell you. But then, Helen never wanted to be a lady. A little excitement, that’s what she needs. She’ll get it, too. Oh my, yes. She’ll get it.”

  Still no answer, not even the click of the receiver. The excitement began to spill out of her, like blood from a severed artery. She stuffed words into the wound to stem the flow.

  “I got her the job. I met her outside her hotel this morning. She said she was sick of the idle life she was leading, she wanted to have something interesting to occupy her time. So I said I knew of something. Come with me, I said. And she came.”

  “Now I know you’re lying,” Verna said flatly. “Helen would never have gone anywhere with you. She’s been warned.”

  “Warned? About me?”

  “What have you done with her?”

  “I told you, I got her a job.”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  “Is it?” She hung up softly.

  It was preposterous, nothing could be more preposterous than poor old Helen in a call house. Yet it was true.

  She began to laugh, not ordinary laughter, but sounds with claws that tore at her chest and at the tissues of her throat. Burning with pain, she stumbled out into the street.

  Chapter 14

  DURING CLASSES she was known as Dr. Laurence, but after five she was Claire and she lived near the U.C.L.A. campus in Westwood with her husband, John, and an overweight spaniel called Louise. She was a tall, well-built young woman with long beautiful legs and black hair which she wore in a coronet of braids. The style was old-fashioned and not particularly becoming, but it made her look unique, and she was well aware that this was about as much as she could expect with her limited equipment.

  Frank, intelligent and unpretentious, she got on well with her students and had a great many f
riends, most of them university people. Her closest friend, however, had nothing to do with the faculty.

  She had met Evelyn Merrick about eight months previously on a double date with one of John’s fraternity brothers. On the way home she asked John, “Well, how do you like her?”

  “Who?”

  “Evelyn Merrick.”

  “She’s O.K.,” John said.

  “You certainly are enthusiastic.”

  “Thank God one of us doesn’t form snap judgments of people.”

  “Snap judgments are the only valid ones.”

  “How so?”

  “Otherwise you get to like people just because they satisfy a need in you and not because of their intrinsic worth.”

  “Don’t look now but your Ph. D. is showing.”

  “Let it show,” Claire said. “I’ll bet she’s suffered. And don’t say who again. You know perfectly well who.”

  “Most of us suffer here and there.”

  “I don’t think it was here and there with Evelyn. It seems to me that she’s had a tremendous shock of some kind, and not too long ago, either.”

  “Maybe she had shock treatments.”

  “You meant that to be funny, I suppose.”

  “Very, very slightly funny.”

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve seen people after they’ve had shock treatments, and they often show the same kind of wary attitude. Even if they hear a question the first time, they like to have it repeated. Things like that.”

  “So you think your new friend is a parolee from Camarillo.”

  “I think nothing of the sort,” Claire said briskly. “My opinion is that she’s suffered a shocking experience. I wonder what it could have been.”

  “Well, if I know you, angel, you’ll have the whole story out of her the second time you meet.”

  He was wrong. During the next few months the two women met quite frequently, sometimes accidentally, since they lived only eight blocks apart, and sometimes by arrangement, for lunch or dinner or an early movie; but whatever Evelyn’s shock had been, she didn’t mention it, and any hints that Claire put out or direct questions she asked, were met with silence or a gentle remonstrance. At first, Evelyn’s ability to keep a secret tantalized and annoyed Claire, but in time she came to respect it.