She started by recounting yet again how she had been going out with Jack when Jack and I met and Jack dumped her. And how I had left Harry in my haste to take up with Jack. And how in the aftermath of hurt and depression she and Harry had found one another. She wouldn’t have heard me if I’d tried to interrupt to tell my version of the story, so I didn’t try. She told me how her needs and Harry’s had correlated, how they had fallen in love and begun making plans for the future. She felt a tremendous security with Harry and she knew she made him happy. Everything had been going so well …
Then she spent an evening with Peter Venables, just an accident, waiting for Harry, who got held up and couldn’t keep the date for some stupid reason, and something had clicked, something she couldn’t define, something she couldn’t bring herself to tell me about. It sounded like yesterday as she talked about it, recalling what she’d worn and what he’d said, as she saw something in him, something romantic and bruised and sensitive, almost a doomed quality. She had never seen such things in a man before. She’d been thrilled, as if she’d discovered a new and unknown country, a new kind of creature, and she couldn’t seem to help falling in love. And Peter had loved her, too, youthfully and earnestly and forever and ever and ever.
But she’d felt horribly guilty about going behind Harry’s back. And for Peter it was a question of two Ruffians, just as Tony Chalmers had told me. They became obsessive that last winter—their first winter—about keeping everything absolutely secret. Then she had gotten pregnant.
At first Peter had wanted to face up to it, tell Harry. But Sally had grown timid. She told herself that what she felt for Peter was infatuation, that her feelings were too intense to prove durable. She just wanted to have an abortion. But Peter had fought that idea. It was their child, the product of their love—oh, he had been such a romantic, one of love’s fools. So she had agreed to talk with Tony Chalmers, just to hear what he had to say, and the result was that she’d gone to Europe and had the baby and Peter had accepted her going back to marry Harry. Had he believed she’d crack and come back to him? Sally didn’t know. She vowed to go on with her life as planned and had lived for a bit as a tragic heroine, and then her feelings had begun to fade. She had never seen the little girl, had never been told that Peter had named her Delilah. There had been nothing after the pain of labor. It was as if she had had an operation and a period of recovery in the Swiss clinic and then she’d gone to Paris and reshaped her life and gone home to her parents and to Harry. And she had married Harry and I had married Jack and we had driven through the Pennsylvania countryside and Sally had found the wheel-of-fortune and our lives had continued.
The afternoon was gone. It wasn’t like spending it with another person. It was more like dwelling in an echoing archive peopled with memories and feelings and events that were little more than shadows. But shadows that made themselves felt at the core of your soul.
Sally suggested a walk at sunset down beside the lake. There was a rocky shoreline and the breeze across the water was cool and clean. The smell of the trees was everywhere. Bats wheeled in the purple, darkening sky where the clouds lay thinly like strips of paint drying on a canvas.
We sat on rocks and pitched pebbles into the water, hearing the plunk and creatures scuttling behind us in the dark woods. Sally told me the rest of the story.
She did have one terrible fear about Peter’s coming back to New York. She was afraid he might not, after such a long time, still find her attractive. But he had been so sweet, so eager to touch her face and kiss her. So full of stories about their daughter and the life he had led and, always, about how much he had missed her, how he had never married, how he had never stopped thinking about her.
They had spent hour after hour talking about how much they remembered of one another, how they had longed for the touches they recalled.
And they had realized, Sally told me, that they were still in love. Or in love again. Peter wanted her to come back to England with him, to come and live with him and get to know her wonderful daughter. What a wedding present, he’d said. Her mother!
Sally knew she had to tell Harry. She asked Harry to go for a walk in Central Park. It had been hideously hot, but they’d found a shady spot beneath a tree, on the bank of one of the lakes. She had shown him the picture of her daughter and told him the whole story and Harry had sat quietly and listened.
“But he didn’t believe me, Belinda, he didn’t believe me when I said that Peter wanted me to go with him. He thought I was making it up. He laughed at the idea and said he didn’t mind my having an affair with Peter at this late date. He told me to go ahead but he wouldn’t give me a divorce. I could play around as much as I wanted, for all he cared, if I’d be discreet. After all, he said, he’d been discreet. …”
And finally, staring out at the dim light reflected off the lake, Sally began to cry. I didn’t realize it at first but then I heard a sibilant moaning and I went to her, put my arms around her and cradled her, comforted her. It was what I needed to do. I didn’t know how much to believe of what she’d told me about that conversation in the park and I didn’t think it mattered. I couldn’t make it square with what Harry had said to me about his feelings for me, and Venables—well, Venables defied my understanding. Having dinner with me, attacking me, telling me it was his turn—and all the time telling Sally he loved her and wanted her to come back to England with him? None of that made any sense, but maybe it didn’t have to, maybe it just didn’t matter. What could it have to do with anything?
Venables was dead. And Harry …
Sally leaned back, away from me, and wiped her eyes with a fist. “He’s dead now, Belinda, and all that matters is that I loved him. I bore him a daughter and now he’s dead and we’ll never see our daughter together … I’ll never see my baby …”
“Who killed him, Sally?” I held her steady by the shoulders and tried to penetrate the darkness, tried to see her face.
“What? What do you mean?”
“You know who killed him, don’t you?”
“How could I know … ? Jack, it must have been Jack. It was Jack, wasn’t it? Or somebody else … I don’t know … It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Don’t lie to me, Sally,” I whispered, holding her close, feeling her breathing, her body pushing against me. “Please don’t lie to me. Not when they think Jack did it … please!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said close to my ear. But her voice was slipping away from me again, the emotion draining away like the color from the night sky.
“You know perfectly well who killed him, Sally. You can’t lie to protect him, you can’t let Jack be blamed …” But it was no use. She was nodding against my shoulders, humming to herself, a song I didn’t know.
I took her hand and led her up the path, surrounded by the sounds of the night. Mysterious splashes in the lake, the cracking of twigs in among the trees where the trolls were coming to life.
I put her to bed and went to the kitchen, sat looking at the telephone, wondering who should be called. I didn’t know what to do with Sally. I didn’t know what she would let me do. I’d have to see how she was in the morning.
I made myself another chicken sandwich and found some oranges and peeled them and ate them and realized I’d just whetted my appetite. I looked in the freezer and found some pepperoni pizza and some ice cream. In the cupboard I found some chocolate sauce. I heated the pizza, ate it, poured a beer to drink with it. Then I made a chocolate sundae and ate that. I felt like I was making up for not having eaten all summer.
It was cool on the balcony. I put on one of Sally’s sweaters and sat with my feet up on the railing.
What was I going to do?
I needed help.
Harry Granger had killed Peter Venables.
But what good did knowing that do me? What good did it do Jack? And where the hell was that gun? It was so frustrating. Jack’s motives were so public, so widely observed … and Harry’s were so private, ju
st so much hearsay. But I’d finally gotten smart. I kept telling myself that. Things weren’t what they seemed. No matter how bad it looked for Jack. There was another story under the surface and if I didn’t think of something, Harry Granger was going to get away with murder.
I finally went to bed in the small second bedroom where Jack and I stayed on visits in the past. The scents of the trees seeped in at the windows, sweet and evocative. I could see the moon, blue and nearly full, through the window. I stood looking down at the reflection of the silvery globe in the face of the lake. It looked like a painting of the Maxfield Parrish school and I expected to see a jester in cap and bells sitting at the end of the railing. No jesters, however.
I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when I heard something, a creaking noise, that wakened me. Or was it just a tree bending? Then I heard it again. A footstep on the balcony, the wooden floor complaining.
The skin on the back of my neck crawled. It was the sheerest kind of fear, heart-stopping. It was Harry. It had to be Harry. He knew we knew. He’d found out where I’d gone, he knew I’d gone to Boston and seen Tony Chalmers and figured it all out. He knew I’d come to see Sally. To tell her the truth. It was all on top of me, crushing down, driving the breath from my body. I heard another step. Outside my window. Then silence.
I slid out of bed and crouched beneath the window. Slowly I raised my head. Through the screen I saw a shape, then heard something.
A tuneless humming. And I saw the red tip of a cigarette and remembered sitting in the dark garden with Harry.
But it wasn’t Harry. It was Sally, humming to herself and staring out at the lake, alone in the middle of the night with her sorrows.
Chapter Forty
“SO YOU JUST GOT UP in the morning, calmly had some scrambled eggs, and went away so she could drown herself before lunch?”
“Cornbread, too. She got up first and made fresh cornbread. Not the act of a woman who’s going to kill herself. Hot cornbread presupposes a willingness to enjoy it, to finish the pan at breakfast tomorrow. Anybody knows that.”
Hacker had left a couple of messages on my machine, and ten minutes after I’d gotten into the shower the phone was ringing again. So I dashed out and stood there dripping wet, water washing road dust out of my hair and down into my eyes, answering questions and impatiently wanting to ask Hacker some of my own but not knowing how to start.
“I don’t know, it seems to me you’re taking a hell of a chance, leaving her alone up there with the bats and the squeaks in the middle of the night and that hypnotic sun shining on the lake—that could drive a sane person to suicide, let alone Sally.”
“What are you talking about?” I yelled at him. “Who says she’s not as sane as you or I? I hate this easy psychoanalysis—”
“You and I didn’t just try to kill ourselves,” he said patiently. “But okay, sane and insane are stupid categories. I stand corrected.”
“About time!” I heard him laugh quickly. “But really she seemed all right,” I said. “She was livelier and wouldn’t talk about anything … ah, upsetting. She sounded done with that. Nothing about the woman Harry’s supposed to be in love with …” I wondered if he could hear the sudden spurt of tension I felt. “And she insisted that she wouldn’t do anything dumb. She said she’d be back in town in a few days.” I hadn’t told him anything about Venables and Sally because I’d gotten smart about things like trusting people with bits and pieces they didn’t need to know. I didn’t know what he’d been doing in Boston and he wasn’t offering any information about that.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “I thought we were trying to figure this out together.
“Indignation and hurt feelings! That’s beautiful. I tried to call you and you’d gone off on a research trip. Whatever that might be. And I had to call Mike to get that little crumb. You could have left a message on my machine—”
“I know, I know, but I’m a hell of a swell guy, in case you’ve forgotten—to say nothing of being almost supernaturally clean.”
“Don’t try to soft-soap me!”
“That’s good! Soft-soap … clean? Get it? Well, I had a lot on my mind. I had to find out a couple of things. And the upshot is, I’ve got to see you.” He reminded me of Mike telling me he had to see me urgently, arriving with Antonelli, and then lying. “Dinner? The thing is, I …”
“Yes?”
“I’ve got this thing figured out.”
“So have I,” I said.
There was a long pause, long enough to make me think we’d been cut off. Then he said stiffly: “What do you mean?”
“I know who killed Peter Venables. Isn’t that what we’re talking about?”
“Ah. We’d better compare notes, then. Meet me at Emilio’s. Thirty-third and Third. Early. Six-thirty? I don’t want to wait, Belinda.”
Hacker was at the long bar. He bought me a drink and sighed a lot, as if he’d been thinking and hadn’t slept in a while. There were dark circles under his eyes and his seersucker double-breasted jacket was even more rumpled than usual. He was wearing a shirt with broad pale blue stripes and a bow tie that was floppy and knotted a shade off center. He looked at his watch and nodded at my punctuality. “Drink up,” he said. “You’re gonna need it. You’re in for a long night.”
“Wonderful. You know how to lift a girl’s spirits.”
He grunted and I followed him up the few stairs with the piano on the right where the elderly black guy was playing “Perfidia.” A riot of flowers sprawled gorgeously straight ahead and our table was toward the back on the left, out of the main flow coming later. I slid in against the wall and Hacker sat down facing me, ordered two more drinks, and settled in with his elbows on the table, his palms supporting his face on either side.
“Harry Granger shot Peter Venables with Jack Stuart’s shotgun, which he stole and hid God only knows where. Probably dropped it off the Brooklyn Bridge and nobody will ever find it … unless, of course, he’s not quite through using it. A thought which scares the hell out of me. And I have the feeling that Sally may know he did it.” He took a deep breath. “I think he killed Venables … because of you, Belinda. I don’t expect you to swallow all this right off the bat, but I’m right, I’m sure of it.” He blinked tiredly.
“Yes, I think you are too,” I said, and watched his brows raise and his eyes grow a fraction less tired.
“You do?”
“Yes, I do.”
He took a man-sized gulp of his fresh drink and swallowed hard, like a man taking some very large pills. “Because of you?”
I nodded. “During my memorable evening with Venables he said some things about Harry’s feelings for me that I’ve been thinking about these past few days. He thought Harry had never gotten over our relationship—though Venables thought Harry was trying to find a duplicate of me, not thinking about getting the original back. At least that’s what he said—and he, Venables I mean, was the one who wanted me personally.”
“And you’ve decided,” Hacker said slowly, “that they both wanted the one and only you. I salute you!” He lifted his glass and touched it to mine. “No shrinking violet, our Belinda.”
“Are you a bit drunk or just very tired?”
“Both. So you’ve deduced that Harry killed Venables because they both wanted you and he happened to be the one holding a shotgun. Makes sense to me.” He smiled sourly. The waiter appeared and Hacker brushed away the menus. “Sliced tomatoes and mozzarella, a dozen oysters, then we’ll see.” The waiter nodded gravely and departed. “You are such a smarty-pants,” he said shaking his head. I noticed the gray in his sun-bleached hair, strands of gray against his tanned face. He massaged his lower lip, squeezing it. “Such a smarty,” he repeated.
“Try not to be so condescending and don’t use your tiredness as an excuse. Work up a little sympathy and think—do you have any idea how hard it is for me to talk about myself the way I’m having to do? Believe me, it seems just as ridiculous to me—all these me
n thinking they’re in love with me—as it does to you. But I think—”
“It doesn’t seem ridiculous to me. The fact that you find it ridiculous makes it seem all the less ridiculous.”
“Don’t even try to translate that for me. The point is, however you came to your conclusion, you’re right. The night Sal tried to kill herself after I met Harry at the hospital, he took me back to Turtle Bay for a drink. He told me he loved me, had always loved me, and that he was leaving Sally. I didn’t know what the hell to think, it was just getting crazier and crazier—”
The waiter arrived with the starters and Hacker speared an oyster, dipped it in horseradish, and savored it for a moment before swallowing it. Then he attacked the tomato slices, which were about an inch thick, alternated with thick rounds of cheese. I was too intent on getting the story out to eat just yet.
“It was crazy, Hack,” I said. “First Venables parachuting in and telling me how determined he was to have me. Have me, babbling on about how it was his turn … then out of a twenty-year friendship Harry decides to commemorate Sally’s suicide attempt by telling me he’s never stopped loving me and is leaving Sal because I’m now back in the marketplace.” The drinks and the heat of the drive home from the cabin and not eating enough were all conspiring to loosen my tongue. It was waving like a semaphore and I knew it but it all seemed to be out of my control.
Hacker was munching steadily and the oysters were disappearing but I just kept on talking. “And, listen, you’re a guy,” I gabbled on, “and you don’t know what it’s like to be treated like a prime filet mignon. Everybody seems to have all these plans for me, but nobody consults me … you wouldn’t believe what Tony Chalmers said, he told me about a fight Harry and Jack had a thousand years ago and I was the prize! I was awarded to Jack! I’ve got to tell you, it’s a joke, it’s craziness! So what’s—”
I suddenly realized that Hacker was casting nervous little glances at the next table, where I’d developed an audience, both of whom were grinning broadly. I worked up a dirty look, laid it on an elderly woman with a mustache, who slowly returned to her triple martini.
Guilty Parties Page 23
