Bitch Slap

by Michael Craft

  “Apparently not.” Then I added, meaningfully, “They know they weren’t involved with Gillian’s death.”

  I wanted to engage Neil in a discussion of his involvement, not to mention my own growing complicity in the cover-up, but we were reaching the end of the path. A bright patch of sunlight lay just ahead, made all the more dazzling by the glint of chrome from cars parked in the courtyard.

  Emerging from the pines, we spotted Doug in the clearing among the cars, phone to his ear, nodding in conversation. As we approached, he flipped the phone shut and returned it to his belt, asking us, “Did Tamra wrap it up already?”

  I shook my head. “Still hard at it. We lost interest.”

  Neil asked him, “Going back in?”

  “Nah, why bother?”

  Tentatively, I asked Doug, “Didn’t you find the memorial … peculiar? Esmond and Tamra couldn’t come up with a single kind word about Gillian.”

  He shrugged. “I guess they hated her, but I doubt they killed her—not unless one of them bought a typewriter in Green Bay.”

  Neil and I exchanged a glance. One of us asked, “What do you mean, Doug?”

  He grinned. “Just heard from one of my deputies; that long shot paid off. He was phoning around Green Bay and Appleton, and he found a store in Green Bay that sold an old Royal on Wednesday afternoon. I’m driving over there today to question the clerk myself.” Doug had risen through the ranks of his department as a detective, and he still liked to step in when a case caught his interest.

  Neil and I were dumbstruck. Fortunately, Doug’s attention was diverted just then by Todd Draper, who emerged from the pines whisking needles from his hair and his clothes.

  “Doug!” said Todd. “There you are—I was hoping to bump into you today.”

  Doug crossed the parking lot, not quite running (but almost), meeting Todd near the entrance to the main building. They shook hands awkwardly, then leaned together for a brief, stiff hug.

  As Neil and I approached them, Doug told Todd, “Thanks again for dinner last night. I wish you hadn’t—”

  “Stop that.” Todd laughed. “I enjoyed it.”

  “Well, point is, I owe you one. Not sure how long you plan to be in town, so how ’bout tonight? Can I take you to dinner?”

  “Of course.” As a not-so-subtle aside, Todd told Neil and me, “I was hoping he’d ask.”

  Doug told him, “I have business in Green Bay this afternoon, so I don’t know when I’ll be back, but seven should be safe. Suppose I meet you somewhere?”

  “Sounds great.”

  Doug’s invitation had pointedly been addressed to Todd solo. Nonetheless, I piped in, “Why don’t we have dinner at the house? You’ve already eaten at the Grill, the best place in town, so anything else would be a letdown. We’ll cook for you guys. That way, it won’t matter if Doug runs early or late in Green Bay.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” Doug said pleasantly, with no apparent disappointment.

  “We insist,” said Neil, ever the cordial host.

  Todd told Doug, “Fine with me.”

  Doug raised his hands in surrender. “Okay—but let me bring the wine—I can at least do that.”

  I patted his back. “Fine, Doug. You bring wine. Dinner for four, seven o’clock on Prairie Street.”

  With that settled, the four of us left the courtyard, walking the long drive toward the road, where our cars were parked. Todd and Doug led the way, gabbing with each other, getting chummier by the minute. Neil and I brought up the rear, saying little.

  Neil, I was sure, was fretting over Doug’s trip to Green Bay. That was troubling me as well, but at the moment, I was still pondering our dinner plans for that evening and my impromptu invitation to the house. Neil had seconded my suggestion out of a pure sense of hospitality; that was his way. My own motives, however, had been less genteel. I knew in my heart of hearts that I had extended the invitation only because I was reluctant to let Doug spend the evening alone with Todd. I felt bitter disappointment in myself for harboring this petty jealousy, but I was unable to set aside that emotion and deal with it just then. There was something else looming, much bigger and more insidious—namely, whatever information Doug might glean from his trip to Green Bay.

  Arriving at the road, we said a round of farewells, confirming our plan to meet again that evening. Todd got into his Mercedes and headed back to the Reece house. Doug got into his tan, county-issued sedan and headed east, back toward town—and Green Bay beyond. Neil and I got into my car, thumping both doors closed. I fired up the engine and switched off the radio.

  “Neil,” I said, turning to him, “you can reach Doug in his car. Don’t you think you’d better talk to him—right now?”

  He shook his head with resolve. “I had no idea they’d be able to trace where the typewriter came from, and I admit, that has me worried.”

  “It should. It has me worried—plenty.”

  Calmly, Neil continued, “The shopkeeper was this really old guy, Angus Maas. He seemed confused, possibly senile. I had to remind him to charge sales tax, and then he didn’t know how to calculate it. I paid with cash and never gave him my name. I just don’t think he’ll be able to give Doug anything to work with. My best approach, I’m sure, is silence. If the investigation comes up with nothing solid, Gillian’s death will be ruled accidental, and this whole mess will simply go away.”

  He was banking on a big “if.”

  And I had a hunch he would soon regret his risky supposition.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Though I have never approved of nail biting, viewing it as a dark character flaw on a level not much higher than beer drinking or (God forbid) gum chewing, the tensions of that afternoon had me gnawing away. Once I got started, I didn’t stop till I bled.

  Sitting at my desk checking proofs and shuffling mail, I kept waiting for the phone to ring, jumping every time it did. There were only two people I expected to hear from—Doug or Neil—dreading that either of them would call with regard to the other, bearing exceptionally bad news. Whenever anyone else phoned (a frequent occurrence in a newspaper office), I brusquely rang off, informing my none-the-wiser caller that I was on deadline. Glee would have been proud to hear me stoop to such chicanery.

  Watching the clock, I tried to calculate the progress of Doug’s afternoon. Not knowing if he had checked his desk or stopped for lunch, I reasoned he would arrive in Green Bay sometime between one-thirty and two-thirty, locating Angus Maas at the office-equipment store no later than three. How long would they talk? And what would Doug learn? If he made a damning discovery, would he phone me or Neil? Probably not. Would he alert the sheriff’s department in Dumont and send a deputy to do his duty at Neil’s office? Possibly. Or would Doug drive back to Dumont to question Neil himself? I simply didn’t know.

  Around three-thirty, having heard nothing, but figuring that Doug had by now learned whatever he would learn, I began to feel light-headed again and decided I needed some fresh air. Rising from my desk, I put on my sport coat, checking pockets for pen, notebook, and phone. Leaving my office, I spotted Lucy in the newsroom and told her I would be out for a while.

  “Something up?” she asked. It was a logical question, as I rarely left the building in the late afternoon, when deadlines were approaching. Still, I couldn’t help feeling that her simple query was laced with suspicion. Clearly, I was in a foul state of mind.

  “Just need some air,” I told her. “Keep an eye on things. I shouldn’t be long.”

  Traipsing down the stairs and through the lobby, I waved to Connie, telling her, “Back in a few minutes.”

  “Oh, Mr. Manning?” she warbled through the hole in her glass cage. “Do you have your cell phone?”

  “Yes, Connie.” And I slipped out the door to First Avenue.

  Given my mind-set, I half expected the sky to be roiling with black clouds, a portent of powerful storms and general mayhem, but the week’s lovely weather continued unabated. Birds sang,
the breeze rustled through gold-and-crimson foliage up and down the parkway, and the sun, already low in the cool autumn sky, warmed my face as I looked westward. I instinctively headed in the direction of Neil’s office and, beyond that, First Avenue Grill, as they were my usual destinations when walking this street. But I didn’t want to encounter Neil on this trek—not now, with everything so uncertain and with the outcome of Doug’s investigation hanging over us like a razor-edged pendulum—so I simply crossed the street, where Neil would be less likely to see me if he happened to glance from his windows as I passed.

  Trying to clear my mind, trying to breathe easier (which never works), I ceased to notice my surroundings for a minute or two, as if walking through a daydream. When I snapped out of it, I was standing at an intersection, waiting for the traffic light to turn (at least I’d been sentient enough not to cross on red—there was little traffic, but still, it was a matter of principle as well as safety). Beyond the intersection lay the little downtown park where I had stopped on Tuesday to talk to Roxanne, who had phoned me from Chicago during my stroll to meet Neil for lunch. My lawyer friend, I realized, might be able to offer a more lucid picture of the confusing legal thicket in which both Neil and I now found ourselves.

  When the light turned green, I crossed the street and made my way through the patch of turf that marked the center of town, navigating around beds of bright chrysanthemums and low hedges of juniper. The bench under the cannon was vacant—it generally was—so I settled there and slipped the cell phone out of my pocket. Though I’d been careful to bring pen and pad, I’d neglected to bring my reading glasses, a newer habit that was not yet fully ingrained. Flipping the phone open, I found that I could make out the buttons clearly enough in the direct sunlight, so I punched in the number that I still recalled with ease.

  “Mark!” said Roxanne as she answered her direct line; apparently her phone had learned to recognize my cell number. Without skipping a beat, she added, “So it was murder, huh?” When I had spoken to her from my office on Wednesday, Gillian’s death was deemed accidental, but I presumed Roxanne had read this morning’s story from the Register, distributed overnight by wire service. Because of my long tenure at the Chicago Journal, that paper now kept tabs on some of the juicier events reported from central Wisconsin.

  “It wasn’t murder,” I assured her, “though it wasn’t entirely accidental, either.”

  “But the anonymous letter,” she said, sounding skeptical. “The writer had the dirt on Gillian, had something to lose if the merger went through, and stopped the deal by stopping Gillian—dead in her tracks. Right?”

  “Each of your points is true, Roxanne, but you’ve missed the all-important issue of intent.” I repeated, “It wasn’t murder.”

  She paused, digesting this. “You sound awfully sure of yourself.”

  I paused. “I know more than I wish I did.”

  “Hmm, that’s really something, coming from you—Mr. Nose for News.”

  Her comment was more astute than glib. Under normal circumstances, I’d be itching for insights that would allow me to report an important local story with such intimate knowledge. But these circumstances were anything but normal—and far too intimate. I told Roxanne, “Let’s just say this case has hit uncomfortably close to home.”

  “Uh-oh. Don’t tell me—Glee Savage did exact her ultimate revenge on Gillian. Poor Glee. It’s hard to imagine a sweet woman like that … snapping. But it happens. I’m sorry, Mark. You must really have a mess on your hands at the paper.”

  “If only it were that simple.”

  “It’s worse?”

  “Much, I’m afraid.”

  With a tone of genuine concern, she asked, “Do you need a lawyer?”

  “I honestly don’t know. That’s why I called. I hoped you could help me sort this out.”

  “Tell you what—I’ll be happy to help any way I can, but since I’m not representing you at the moment, we’re not protected by attorney-client privilege, so tell me what you can in hypotheticals.”

  I asked, “Like ‘a friend of a friend’?”

  “You’re such a clever lad. Okay, Mark—spill it.”

  As I paused to gather my thoughts, I noticed a tan sedan cruise by on First Avenue. The glare of sunlight on the windshield masked the driver. I wondered for a moment if it was Doug Pierce—on his way to Neil’s office. But then I realized the timing was off; Doug could not have returned from Green Bay so quickly. Then again, I mused, the way he drives …

  Dismissing these thoughts, I told Roxanne, “A friend of mine—”

  “A friend of a friend,” she corrected.

  “Whatever. This friend was involved with building the Reeces’ new house.”

  “How involved? The draperies, for instance?”

  “They’re called curtains, not draperies. But no, he was much more involved than that.” Then the bombshell: “He designed the whole house.”

  “Oh, Christ … ,” Roxanne muttered.

  “So this friend had occasion to be at the house often, especially during the final stages of the project. He came and went as he pleased, checking on various contractors. Late Wednesday morning, he went to the house to discuss a sticky issue with Gillian—curtains, in fact.”

  Speaking in terms of “this friend,” I continued to detail for Roxanne exactly what had happened when Neil confronted Gillian on the library balcony. I concluded, “This friend raced down the ladder and determined that the fall to the stone floor had killed Gillian on the spot. Fearing that the truth was his word against anyone’s, he fled.”

  Roxanne breathed a long, thoughtful sigh, which rattled through the earpiece of my phone. “What was this letter all about?”

  I explained how “this friend” had driven to Green Bay to meet a cabinetmaker, deciding along the way to write an anonymous letter exposing Gillian’s plot. I detailed how he had bought the typewriter, ensured that the letter carried no fingerprints, disposed of the typewriter, then mailed the letter upon returning to Dumont.

  Considering all this, Roxanne said, “No witnesses, no prints—objectively speaking, I’d say this friend has no problem.”

  “Ah, but he does. Working on a hunch, Doug Pierce determined that an old typewriter of the correct make and vintage had been sold in Green Bay on Wednesday. He’s over there right now interviewing the shopkeeper, whom my friend describes as addled.”

  “Oops. Did your friend have sense enough to pay cash?”

  “He did. But still, I think he’s in big trouble. I’ve been pushing him to come clean with Doug, but he’s afraid of being accused of something far worse than what he actually did.”

  Without hesitation, Roxanne said, “I don’t blame him.”

  “Roxanne,” I insisted, “ethical dilemmas are always best served by the truth.”

  “Tell that to Harley Kaiser.”

  I caught my breath, nearly choking.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about Dumont’s intrepid district attorney. Your DA is not only a hot dog, but a chauvinist, right-wing, homophobic hot dog. He’d have a field day with this.”

  Good God, dealing with Doug was one thing, but Harley Kaiser was another entirely. I’d had many run-ins with him at the paper regarding our reporting of breaking stories. Worse, this arrogant prosecutor seemed hell-bent on making trouble for my household. Just a year earlier, he had nearly charged Roxanne with murder while she was visiting my home. Shortly after my arrival in Dumont, he’d had me arrested, though briefly. And he’d unsuccessfully sided with that harpy feminist, Miriam Westerman, in attempting to steal my nephew, Thad, from his home with Neil and me. With all those strikeouts, Harley Kaiser would be frothing at the mouth to score a solid hit against Neil.

  Roxanne was saying, “So the worst-case scenario is that Doug will get a description of Neil from the shopkeeper. Even if that happens, he may be willing to look the other way.”

  “That won’t happen, Roxanne. Trust me, I know Doug far better than you do.
Sure, he’s become a close friend, but he’s a cop first—a point he’s articulated to me on several occasions.”

  “Then what do you suggest?”

  “You’re the lawyer.” I instantly regretted my testy tone.

  “Mark”—her tone was consoling—“this is Neil’s issue, and it sounds as if he’s already decided how to deal with it.” I noticed we had dropped the hypotheticals; “this friend” was now openly “Neil.”

  “But it’s my issue, too. I know the facts of the case, and I’ve been withholding them from Doug. That’s complicity, isn’t it?”

  “Not if no one knows about it.”

  “Roxanne, listen. As a journalist, I’m committed to a certain code of ethics—”

  “As a lawyer, so am I. But I don’t believe my ears, Mark. Are you actually telling me you’re on the fence as to whether your love for Neil outweighs your duties as a journalist? Get a life, pal. I may be a sworn member of the bar, but my advice to you is decidedly pragmatic: do whatever is necessary to preserve your happy home.”

  “I don’t believe my ears,” I countered. “Are you saying the end justifies the means?”

  “Of course not. I’m saying that Neil occupies a special position in your life. If you were married, you couldn’t be compelled to testify against him, nor would you even consider doing so.”

  “But we’re not married, not technically.”

  “In your hearts you are. It’s not your fault public policy hasn’t yet adjusted itself to the reality of your lives. What do you want to do—hang Neil on a technicality?”

  Though I knew Roxanne’s reference to “hanging” Neil was figurative, it was nonetheless sobering. I thanked her for her counsel and good intentions. Then, after exchanging promises to keep each other posted, we said good-bye.

  Returning the cell phone to my pocket, I realized she had spoken the very words I had hoped to hear: “Preserve your happy home.” Though I valued her advice, I understood that my decisions and my actions would be my own. Ultimately, I had to answer to myself.