The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  She looked ashen in the stormy, lowering light. I sat holding my legal pad and recorder thinking, God help me, that I should write her words down, in case they came in handy for the book. I said, “If you don’t feel like going on, I can use the time to talk with the others.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “The others?”

  “Blanche, Ross, and Pedro.”

  I didn’t see her move, but I knew she had stiffened. “Why should you talk with them?”

  To corroborate your story, I thought, but I said, “To get additional background. To suggest angles I might want to explore with you.”

  She was shaking her head. “No. It’s my book. I can’t let you. Not Blanche—”

  If she thought I was going to write the book only on her say-so, she was nuts. At the moment, though, she was upset. I didn’t want to push her into hysterical, nonnegotiable pronouncements. She continued, defiantly, “It’s my book. I’m the only one who should suffer for it.”

  When I didn’t answer, she said, “I can’t work any more today.” That was fine with me. Released, I left her.

  I wasn’t in the mood to transcribe the interview tape. It was a job I hated in any case. I put the recorder and notes in my room and went downstairs to make a cup of tea. The kitchen had the abandoned air kitchens can get in midafternoon. I put on the kettle and sat down to wait for it to boil.

  Steam was starting to escape when I heard running feet outside. In a moment Ross, dressed in a rain-splattered gray sweatsuit, slid open the glass door and came in. He tossed some letters on the table and leaned forward, braced on his arms, breathing heavily. Drops of moisture, sweat or rain, trickled down his face and slid along his chin. His body gave off a smell of healthy exertion. “Mail,” he panted.

  I sorted through the envelopes. There were two official-looking documents for Vivien from a New York law firm and two items for me. One was a postcard of the Eiffel Tower with a note from Kitty saying, “Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.” The other was a no-return-address letter from New York.

  Even as I tore it open, I didn’t want to touch it. I’d hoped, really hoped, I wouldn’t get another one of these. This time, the message was, “Helping a killer is wrong! She won’t get away with it, and neither will you. Think about it.”

  Ross said, “Hey. Do you want me to get that?” and I realized the kettle was whistling. As I got up to look after it, he said, “Something wrong?”

  I handed him the letter. When I poured boiling water in the squatty yellow teapot the kettle seemed terribly heavy. When I faced him again he was staring at me. “What’s this about?”

  “It’s the third one I’ve gotten. Somebody doesn’t want Vivien’s book to be written.”

  “God damn it!” He slapped the counter, and the teapot lid clinked. He looked at the postmark. “New York,” he said grimly.

  “All three were mailed from there.”

  “That narrows the field down to several million people who think Vivien deserves to suffer.”

  “I guess so.” I went on, haltingly, “I don’t suppose you have any idea who might have—”

  He barked out a laugh. “Christ! Off the top of my head I could give you a long list, starting with Carey’s family. But it could just as easily be a stranger.”

  “It’s somebody who knows about me, who knows where we’re staying.”

  “In other words, somebody who reads Liz Smith’s column in the Daily News.”

  I sat down. Rain slid down the windows, turning the landscape into a gray-green blob.

  “Have you told Vivien?” Ross asked.

  “No.”

  “Good. Because I guarantee you this would send her screaming into the night.”

  “I didn’t tell her because it’s— so— upsetting—” I was embarrassed and horrified to feel tears welling up.

  “Sure it is.”

  I sat swallowing, trying hard to breathe and not give in to it. He tore a paper towel off a roll and handed it to me. “You got more than you bargained for when you got mixed up with us, didn’t you?” he said.

  I blew my nose on the towel and nodded.

  He sat across the table from me. “Somebody should have warned you. Stuff like this letter comes with the territory. There’s a lot of hate out there.”

  I felt a little better. Naturally, this book would attract free-floating hostility. Maybe the letters weren’t a serious threat.

  “I’ll get the tea,” he said.

  He poured a couple of mugs and we drank, listening to the wind. He said, thoughtfully, “It was almost two and a half years ago. Coldest night of the year. Snowing like a bastard. I got a phone call from Vivien. My life changed, and it has never been the same, and it never will be.”

  “How long had you and Vivien been—”

  “Lovers? Six months. The best, the most magical six months of my life. And I’ve paid for it. The price has been grotesque.”

  My tea didn’t taste right. I remembered Vivien saying her body was going sour. “You’re still together, though.”

  “We are together. We will be together.”

  “Then—”

  “Do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t try to cobble this into a happy ending. Put the book across however you can, but don’t do that.”

  “It’s hard to know what a happy ending is, these days.”

  His smile was brief. “I have a definition.”

  “What?”

  “A happy ending is never knowing what hit you.”

  I nodded. “Did Carey Howard have a happy ending, then?”

  “I hope not,” he said fervently. “I really hope not.”

  Rain lashed at the window. “Now, you talk to me,” he said.

  A Chat With Pedro

  Undivided attention can be very seductive. Since early in my career at the Bay City Sun I’d seen people blossom under my fascinated gaze and end up telling me more than they meant to. Add a few encouraging murmurs, and the family secrets were fodder for the next edition.

  So, basking in Ross’s sympathy, I was moved to discuss not only my early failed marriage to my high school sweetheart but the broken romance that, years later, led to my leaving Florida to remake my life in Paris.

  “His name is Ray,” I was appalled to hear myself saying. The teapot was cold. What was I doing sitting in a Provencal farmhouse, talking about Ray Brown?

  When I wound down, Ross said, “You still feel hurt, don’t you?”

  “A little.”

  “Was he worth it?”

  “Well— he sure could water ski.” I wanted out of the spotlight. “Have you been married?”

  He shook his head. “I lived with someone. A nice woman. We’d split up by the time I met Vivien. It was another life, anyway, because back then all I cared about was being an artist.”

  He looked bleak, the way he did when he talked about his work. “And now you just— can’t?”

  “I can’t. I get ideas. I can see myself doing it. Then a barrier drops.”

  “It’s because of what happened to Carey?”

  He grimaced. “Revenge from beyond the grave because I screwed his wife? Sure, I think so. Don’t you?”

  Later, sitting at the table in my room, still reluctant to put on my headphones and get to work, I had trouble putting Ross out of my mind. He’d told me up front he didn’t want Vivien to write the book, yet he hadn’t used the anonymous letters as an excuse to urge me to ditch the project.

  Why had he been so nice to me? Maybe he wanted me on his side in some as-yet-undeclared battle; or he himself was behind the letters, and he was averting suspicion; or he was bored, and chatting with me beat listening to French radio.

  Maybe he liked me.

  I jammed the headphone plug in the tape recorder and hit the “rewind” button. I had plenty to do without worrying about whether or not Ross Santee liked me. I had donned the headphones and was about to get started when there was a tap at my door, and Pedro Ruiz
put his head in.

  I didn’t have Pedro figured at all. His neck chain and ID bracelet, snappy clothes, crisp gray curls, and handsome, somewhat dissipated look seemed more appropriate to a South American playboy or a Las Vegas high roller than a housekeeper. He was hardly a beloved family retainer allowed to coast on personality, either. I detected little warmth in his dealings with Vivien, Blanche, and Ross. “I’m making cocoa for Vivien. Thought I’d ask if you want some,” he said.

  “No, thanks. I had tea a while ago.”

  My dismissive answer and polite smile didn’t remove him from the doorway. I was reaching to push the recorder’s “play” button when he slipped inside and stood watching me with apparent interest. “Tapes, huh?” he said.

  I took off the headphones, amazed at his unprecedented cordiality. “That’s right.”

  He sauntered into the room. “She talks into the machine and you listen and type it out?”

  “Yes.”

  He was standing over the table now, jingling coins, gazing at my papers, notepad, recorder, typewriter. I got a whiff of spicy cologne mixed with cigars. “Like a secretary?” he said.

  “Sort of. But after the interviews are done and the tapes are transcribed, I go back to Paris and write the book.”

  “You write it? I thought Vivien was writing it.”

  I wouldn’t have expected Pedro to be so interested. “She’s telling the story. I’m going to make a book out of it.”

  “But it’ll say, ‘By Vivien Howard’ on the cover?”

  “It’ll say, ‘By Vivien Howard with Georgia Lee Maxwell.’ ” This had been a negotiating point.

  He nodded and wandered to my window, making himself at home. “Guess you can make a bundle writing a book.”

  I didn’t plan to talk figures. “It depends on the book.”

  His smile might have been called a leer. “I guess it does. And I guess this one is worth a bundle.”

  I smiled tightly and replaced the headphones over my ears. “I hope you’re right.”

  He strolled to the door and stood with his hand on the knob. “I expect you’ll give poor old Carey another beating,” he said.

  I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing. Just he wasn’t nearly as bad a guy as you might have heard. But now he’s in the graveyard, who’s going to stand up and say so?” He left, closing the door softly behind him.

  After I’d taken it in, I wrote, on my yellow legal pad, “‘He wasn’t nearly as bad a guy as you might have heard’ —Pedro Ruiz.”

  I drew a box around the words. What kind of person had Carey Howard been? A supercilious shit who cared only about being in the right place at the right time, a tightwad who wouldn’t pay for Blanche to go to Avignon, or not such a bad guy after all? A People magazine story lay on top of my pile of clippings. I glanced over it. Here was big-eared Carey at prep school, bow-tied Carey in his Wall Street office, tuxedoed Carey at his first wedding, newly divorced Carey dancing at a nightclub. Here was mature, smiling Carey at Vivien’s side. He had a bland, good-looking face gone slightly jowly, crinkly hair receding from the brow, deep smile creases. He didn’t look like an awful person, but neither did he look like somebody you’d jump at the chance to meet.

  It wasn’t my business to pass judgment on Carey Howard. It was my business to write a book telling, in Vivien’s words, what Vivien had to say.

  I turned on the typewriter, punched the recorder’s “play” button, poised my fingers over the typewriter keys. I heard Vivien’s recorded voice say, reluctantly, “Yes, we might as well get started.”

  Report Of A Quarrel

  That night, after dinner, I got an uncontrollable urge to call Kitty. I needed to hear an unguarded voice, the voice of someone unreservedly happy to hear from me. The phone, on a table at the foot of the staircase, was for once not in use for Vivien’s legal maneuvers. I punched in Kitty’s number and perched on the bottom step, waiting for her cheerful, “Hello.”

  The “Hello,” when it came, didn’t register on the “cheerful” scale.

  “Kitty? Is that you?”

  “Georgia Lee. For heaven’s sake.” If there was an attempt at warmth or animation, it was feeble.

  “What’s wrong?” I paused to imagine the worst. “Is Twinkie all right?”

  “She’s fine. She’s right here.”

  “Then—”

  “Georgia Lee, remember my cosmetics story?”

  “The one about the colors based on vegetables?”

  “Right. Celery eye gleamer, eggplant blusher, radish—”

  “I remember.”

  “Remember how I slaved on it for weeks?”

  I had a vague recollection. “You really worked hard.”

  “I got a proof of it today. It’s unrecognizable. They butchered it.”

  Although I felt my own troubles dwarfed a butchered cosmetics story, I waxed sympathetic. “How awful!”

  “I can’t deal with it anymore. It’s not worth it to—”

  She went on and on. Only with difficulty did I shoehorn in, “I got another one of those letters. Two more, in fact.”

  “Letters?” She sounded puzzled.

  “Anonymous letters, Kitty. Don’t you even remember?” I hadn’t really intended to raise my voice.

  “Oh— right. Oh, no!” I was almost sorry I’d added to her distress. “What are you going to do?”

  “At the moment, nothing.” I glanced around. I didn’t see anybody, but lowered my voice anyway. “A lot is going on beneath the surface here. I’m trying to figure it out.”

  “Why does everything have to be such a mess!” Kitty wailed.

  I hadn’t pictured a conversation where I was trying to make her feel better. To strike a happier note I said, “You’re having a good time with Twinks?”

  “Great.” Kitty still sounded wan. “She did the most adorable thing yesterday. You know my jacket with the gold buttons?”

  “Sure.” The jacket also had epaulets, lavish braid trim, linebacker-size shoulder pads, and cuffs and lapels a yard wide.

  “I’d left it on a chair to take to the cleaners, and she pulled off two buttons. We found one in her food dish. The other one hasn’t turned up yet.”

  I remembered the buttons. Heavy gold, embossed with some sort of design. Undoubtedly irreplaceable. “God, Kitty, I’m so sorry. I’ll pay—”

  “Don’t be silly. It was darling.”

  I was more than ready to end this pick-me-up phone call. I told Kitty I’d be in touch, she told me to be careful, and we said good-bye.

  Not nearly as restored as I’d hoped, I went to see if the rain had stopped so I could take my evening stroll before bed. Marcelle was loading the dishwasher. She left her task when I walked in and followed me out the back door.

  We stood on the stoop under the overhang of the roof. Rain was spitting and the wind was high. Not walking weather. Marcelle took a cigarette from her apron pocket and lit up. In the glow from the kitchen I saw a crease between her dark eyes, a hard set to her chin. She inspected the tip of her cigarette and said, “Madame, is everything all right here?”

  Good question. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean with— them.” She jerked her head to indicate the house and its occupants.

  “Why do you ask?” When in doubt, act evasive.

  “Because” —she dropped her voice, although we were speaking French, and nobody else could understand her— “I heard them quarreling this afternoon.”

  A lover’s spat between Vivien and Ross, perhaps. “You heard—”

  “Madame Howard and Monsieur Pedro.” She crossed her arms as if daring me to dispute, which I immediately did.

  “Pedro? Are you sure it wasn’t Ross?”

  A vigorous nod sent her black curls flying. “Absolutely sure.” She leaned toward me. “I was dusting the upstairs hall this afternoon. I passed Madame Howard’s door, and I heard them. I heard her.”

  “What was she saying?”<
br />
  As soon as I asked, I realized the stupidity of the question. Marcelle couldn’t understand English. She shrugged and continued, “I could hear a man also, but not so loud. I didn’t want to seem to be listening, so I moved down the hall. I was about to go downstairs when the door opened and Monsieur Pedro came out.”

  I was at a loss. “I guess they had a disagreement.”

  “She was crying, Madame. I heard her when he opened the door.”

  Rain sprinkled my face. I dabbed at the cold drops and said, “Did he see you?”

  “I don’t think so. I moved into the alcove by the window. I didn’t want him to see me, you know? I felt afraid.”

  “When did you say this was? What time?”

  “Perhaps three-thirty or four.”

  I’d been downstairs in the kitchen, talking with Ross. Later, Pedro had come to my room offering cocoa. He’d said he was going to make some for Vivien. First reduce her to tears, then make her cocoa so she’ll feel better. I thought back over dinner. All of them had seemed as normal as they ever did.

  Marcelle went on, “So I’m asking you, Madame, if something is wrong.”

  Marcelle probably didn’t know these people had been involved in a murder case, and I hated to think how she’d react if I told her. I said, “Madame Howard and I are working hard on a difficult book. She’s nervous about it. That’s all, I expect.” I knew I didn’t sound confident.

  “I see.” Marcelle didn’t sound convinced, either.

  The high-pitched whine of a motorcycle cut through the noise of the wind. That was unusual. The road had almost no traffic. It got louder, then receded as the cycle whizzed by. In seconds it was gone, and we said good night.

  Les Baux

  I saw the motorcyclist the next day, after we returned from Les Baux.

  The weather had cleared. At breakfast Vivien kept up a stream of chatter, her eyes hectically bright. She turned to Blanche. “How did you sleep? Better?”

  Blanche was listlessly pulling apart a croissant. “Not really.”