Suicide King (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series)

by Shelley Singer

  “Because my being lovers with Joe has nothing to do with the fact that he was murdered— it’s only why I know he didn’t kill himself. But the police and the press wouldn’t see it that way. I’d be all over the place as some kind of fucking Other Woman. Which is even worse, politically— much worse, I think— than getting caught being an unfaithful husband. No one would ever forget. And after we lose this time, I want to run next time. For Congress, maybe. They don’t elect tootsies to Congress, you know.”

  “And you figure your affair is something we can just kind of skirt around, so to speak?” Rosie said.

  “I don’t see why not.”

  I nodded. “Maybe so. Unless he was killed for some motive that had to do with you. Are you willing to take that chance?”

  “Yes. Because I don’t think it’s a problem. I think he was killed for political reasons, and the killers need to be exposed.”

  I wasn’t so sure about her thinking, and I didn’t have a lot of hope for her political career. A real politician would have let the suicide verdict stand, happily, and gone on to bigger and better things. She was still mucking around in the memory of an affair that was, literally, dead, and worrying about things like political murder.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk about those political reasons you think someone had for killing him.”

  So we did. First we talked about Richmond’s competition for the endorsement. Rebecca Gelber, of course, our own favorite daughter. Then there was a guy in Sacramento, and a guy who, like Richmond, was based in Los Angeles, she said. I wrote their names down in my little book. James X. Carney, L.A., and Philip Werner, Sacramento. Werner, Pam explained, was running hard for the endorsement, pushing a platform based on large-scale, pesticide-free organic farming.

  “The Central Valley,” Rosie interjected, “has some big problems.”

  I had driven through the Central Valley a few times, and I had to agree. I just didn’t think we were talking about the same kinds of problems.

  “He really wants to be governor,” Pam continued. “He’s an ambitious man.”

  “Well, I’d guess that anyone who went to the trouble of running would want to win,” I said.

  “No, not necessarily.” Pam smiled slightly. “James X. doesn’t want to be governor. He wants to be endorsed so he can refuse to run.”

  I remembered Joe Richmond saying something about that. “Tell me more about him,” I said.

  “See, Jake,” Rosie began, “James X. Carney is a Vivo, but he really stands somewhere between us and the Greens. He feels strongly that we should not run a gubernatorial candidate until we’ve made it as a legitimate party. That we need to get more strength at the local level, get some people in the state legislature. He thinks a governor’s race now will squander our resources.”

  “That seems reasonable,” I said.

  “Only if you think we have a lot of time left to be prudent and judicious and stand around with our fingers up our noses,” Pam said. “There’s going to be a big Carney faction at the convention. If they can get him endorsed, there’ll be no governor’s race for Vivo.”

  “Quaint,” I said. “Why don’t they just vote not to have a candidate?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. The party decided to have the closest thing we can have to a nominating convention. And that’s what it’s going to be.”

  I shrugged. What the hell. I never claimed to understand. No matter what kind of politics you have, you get rules for sliding around sideways.

  “Are there any big differences in the way the candidates feel about the issues or about the party— besides Carney, I mean?”

  “Leanings, maybe. Gelber leans more in the direction of the anti-nuclear movement. Werner, as I said, tends to talk most about farming issues. Joe was most involved in clean air and water. Carney, well, he’s into a lot of different environmental things. But I don’t know of any big, essential differences in philosophy. They’re Vivos. The biggest differences have to do with methods, not goals.”

  We talked a little more about the personalities involved, but I knew that Rosie and I would have to check those out for ourselves anyway.

  “You mentioned there are people in the party who were satisfied with the suicide verdict, wanted it to stand,” Rosie said. “How did you find that out? I mean, did you suggest having an investigation and someone said no, or what?”

  “Not exactly. I’ve talked to a couple of people since his death. Rebecca. Noel. I told them both how I felt— that he didn’t do it. Rebecca said she didn’t think there was anything to be gained by an investigation. Noel said we should let sleeping dogs lie, and that Carl Maddux thought so, too. That’s what he said, the little twit. Just those words.”

  “What about this Noel guy. What’s he in the party?”

  “Noel and I are— have been— the local Richmond campaign managers. Bay Area.”

  “Who is this Carl Maddux Noel mentioned?”

  “A man with a lot of money and a lot of connections to people with money. He organized a local recipient committee that backed Joe’s campaign.” I must have looked lost, so she clarified, or tried to. “You’ve probably heard them called PACs. Political Action Committees. But at the state level, they’re called recipient committees. They collect campaign money for candidates.” I nodded, half understanding. I figured I’d have to learn more about that later. “That was Carl’s house,” she went on. “Where the benefit was.”

  “Carl,” I said. “Skinny, dried-up looking guy, middle-aged, dark suit?” I remembered him. He looked like a butler. He was the man who had come up to Richmond when we were talking and asked to have some words with him. Pam said yes, that was Carl Maddux.

  “Anyone else express an opinion?”

  “James X. called, just to find out what had happened. He didn’t get too excited about looking into Joe’s death, either.”

  I didn’t think the political crap was getting us anywhere, so I got down to more meaty subjects, or tried to.

  “What about his wife? Obviously, this was not the world’s happiest marriage. The cops, I hear, thought that was important. But even if he didn’t kill himself over her, she might have some connection with his death. What do you know about her? What’s she like?”

  Pam just shook her head. “I have no idea. I never met her. And he hardly ever even mentioned her. And no one else has ever said anything about her in my hearing, except to wonder why she sits down there in L.A. and never comes out, except to visit her family back in Minnesota. I have heard that she’s beautiful. That’s pretty much it. Oh, and rich.”

  Rosie and I talked to Pam for maybe another hour, mostly, I think, to make sure we believed her and wanted to work for her. We got the logistics straight for the morning of the eleventh. She had gone to what she called a “postmortem” meeting in Oakland for the people who had put the benefit together. She had left the house at ten and come home at 12:30, finding Richmond dead and calling me. She said he had not been at her house when she left, and that she thought he might be coming over but he hadn’t been sure, the night before, that he could get away.

  Rosie and I talked about Pam on the way home. We both more or less thought she was probably okay, but agreed to check her alibi, just in case.

  I’d managed to put Lee’s peculiar phone message out of my mind for the evening, but it pushed back into my mind as I walked down the path to my house.

  Since it was after eleven when I stepped in the door, greeted by the usual starving cats, I decided it would be more polite to call her the next morning. Really.

  – 9 –

  MORNING, as it will do in situations like this, came too soon. At 7 a.m. I had a cup of coffee. I dialed her number and stretched the phone cord over to the kitchen table. She answered at three rings.

  “I got your message,” I said.

  “I wonder,” she retorted. What I didn’t understand was why suddenly she was retorting all over the place instead of saying.

  “I don’t unders
tand.”

  “I thought you’d say that.”

  “Lee, for Christ’s sake, knock it off. I understand that you said you were going to get pregnant, that you had decided to get pregnant. What I don’t understand is why, first of all, and whether I’m supposed to be the father, and why, if that’s the goddamn case, I don’t get to have something to say about this goddamn decision.”

  “And what would you say if you had something to say about it?”

  “Just back up, okay? I asked you— three, yeah, three questions and I’m not letting you answer me with one. You drop this on my head in a phone message, for God’s sake, and then you want me to play guessing games with you.”

  She sighed. “All right. Maybe I’m being unfair. What were your questions?”

  Great. She couldn’t even remember them now. “The first one is, ‘Why?’ ”

  “Because it’s time. My biological clock says so. If I don’t do it soon I won’t do it at all. And because I want to.”

  “Okay. The second question is, ‘Am I supposed to be the father?’ ”

  “Only if you feel capable of it.”

  “What the hell kind of an answer is that?”

  “It’s my answer.”

  “Terrific. And the third question is, ‘Why the hell don’t I have more to say about this decision?’ ”

  “Because I think you’re a chickenshit who never makes commitments and I think if I put it to you you’d just hem and haw and stall around and hope I’d forget.”

  “I have another question. Just exactly what kind of role do you see me playing as a father? Weekend visits or live-in and total support and the PTA?”

  “I guess that’s something we’d need to talk about. What you’d be willing to do. What your attitude is. What I would want you to do.”

  “And if I don’t agree to be some kind of stud, you find someone else who will be?”

  “I guess so.”

  My mind was racing, but unfortunately it was racing in panicky little circles. I had a thought.

  “What about a sperm bank?” I had not long before had cause to become very familiar with the ins and outs of the sperm business, in the course of finding out who offed an employee of one such institution located up on the Sonoma Coast. I was wishing I was up there now.

  “Too impersonal. That’s not what I want.”

  “This is extortion.”

  “No it isn’t!”

  I couldn’t believe it. She actually sounded hurt.

  “You’re a fucking attorney, Lee, you should be able to recognize extortion when you commit it.”

  “I wish you could understand.”

  “I do understand. I understand that you’re saying you want to have a baby and if I don’t want to have one with you that’s the end. Do you think that’s fair?”

  “Maybe not. But don’t you think you’re old enough to be able to make a decision about something like this? Don’t you think you’re old enough to make a commitment to something? Anything?” There was a nasty edge to her voice on that last word.

  “Do I have any time to think about it?”

  “Sure.”

  “How much time?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.”

  “Fine. You think and I’ll think. I’ll call you in a few days.”

  “Okay. Talk to you then.” She actually sounded cheerful, chirpy. Was she glad I hadn’t said no? Or was she glad because she thought I was going to say no? We hung up. Neither one of us had so much as mentioned marriage.

  – 10 –

  THE Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport looked just like O’Hare, which looks just like San Francisco’s SFO, which looks just like every other airport of any size I’ve ever been in. There’s something hallucinogenic about arriving in a city and not being able to tell it from the city you just left. I would suspect the CIA of playing mind games with us if it weren’t so well done.

  The illusion was maintained when I exited the dream world; May in the Midwest is a lot like May at home. Warmish, pleasant. For once, in alien territory, I would neither swelter nor freeze.

  I climbed into my rental car— some kind of tacky new Pontiac— and checked out the controls. I found some country and western music on the radio and spread open the map of Minneapolis I’d bought in the airport.

  I’d been in the city once before, a long time ago, when I was just a kid, on a trip with an aunt and uncle up through Wisconsin and Minnesota, destination Black Hills. All I remembered about it, though, was that there were a lot of lakes.

  I was looking for one of those lakes now. It was called Lake of the Isles, which sounded nice. I found it in the southwest quadrant, one of a cluster of four. I was sitting at the southeast edge of town. All I had to do was cut over to the interstate— 35— head toward downtown, and turn off at West Lake Street. Actually, I was tempted, first, to head due north and take a look at Lake Nokomis, Lake Hiawatha, and Minnehaha Falls. I’m a sucker for a love story, even one written by Longfellow. But I decided to try to take care of business first and leave the tour for later. I had scheduled three days in Minneapolis. Today I had appointments with Joe’s wife and with his mother. Tomorrow was the funeral. Wednesday was for whatever came out of Monday and Tuesday.

  The wife was staying at her family home— she and Joe had met and married here eight years ago, just two years before the move to California, according to Pam. The family home, I had been instructed, was just across the road from the lake. I drove halfway around, slowly, taking it all in. Yes, Lake of the Isles had isles. It also had canoes. And it was watched over by some of the most beautiful houses I’ve ever seen. Big ones, made of stone and brick. Castles and palaces and mansions wearing smug and impeccable expressions on their expensive facades. Pacific Heights mansions in a more gracious setting. All of them faced the serene beauty of the small, perfect lake. They felt safe from dirt and crime. This is a vision out of the past, I thought, a beautiful, safe neighborhood in the heart of a city. The city boy allowed himself to dream for a few seconds, even though he’d already spotted the burglar alarms. Then I woke myself up.

  Okay, so this wasn’t heaven, either, maybe, but I was jealous as hell of everyone who lived in these houses, people who drove Cords and Bentleys, I guessed. And Rolls Royces. I was jealous of Joe Richmond for being one of these people, until I remembered he was dead, and that what must have been a beautiful life— or was it?— had ended in an ugly death a couple of thousand miles away from Lake of the Isles.

  The house was built of big stone slabs. It had an iron entry gate set into a stone archway. Set into the stone was a brass plaque that said Anderson. There was a button beside the gate. I hopped out of my cheap transportation and pushed the button. Half a minute later, the gate swung open. I drove in, about seventy-five feet to the turnaround near the front door, and parked behind a BMW. Big deal, I thought, disappointed. I could see a BMW anytime in my own neighborhood.

  As I walked up the steps, the big dark wood front door opened smoothly and a pleasant-looking woman of sixty or so greeted me by name. I had called from the airport and been told to “come along anytime this afternoon” by this same slightly high-pitched voice. When I inquired, on the phone, I was told she was not Mrs. Anderson. The Andersons were out. She was the housekeeper.

  So the housekeeper let me in. She did have the caution to put a question mark after “Mr. Samson?” but she seemed to assume I was not there to sell her magazines. I was grateful.

  Emily Richmond was sitting in a lounge chair beside the pool, a book with a flowered cover in her hand. A swimming pool is no big deal in California, where lots of middle-class people have them and get to use them most of the year. But in a place like Minneapolis, I guessed, with three warm months a year, a pool represented real luxury.

  So did Emily Richmond. She was wearing a loosely belted ankle-length robe, a pearl-gray confection I was pretty sure was silk. I caught a glimpse of swimsuit under it. The day was not warm enough for sunba
thing. Either the pool was heated or she was pretending she was home in Southern California. For my benefit, or rather for my non-benefit, still holding the book, she wrapped the robe more securely around herself. Then she stood and walked over to me. She was tall and slender, five-nine or ten. She transferred the book to her left hand and held out her right.

  I took it for just a second, a long and graceful hand. Even her hair was long and graceful, fine and ash blond, falling down beside one eye, along the curve and angle of cheek. Her eyes were gray, like the robe, and like the eyes of a woman I once loved. Her lips were finely made, not full and not thin, and her nose was long and perfect. She smiled at me, just the tiniest bit, and invited me to sit at a poolside table. The housekeeper was still hovering. Mrs. Richmond asked if I would like some iced tea and I said I would be grateful. The housekeeper was dispatched.

  “I’m sorry about your husband,” I said. She nodded, a slight tilt of the head, a slight dropping of the eyelids.

  “Thank you. You’ve come a long way to tell me that.”

  She was serious.

  “I don’t understand. Didn’t you get my phone message? That I’m investigating his death?”

  She looked at me, perplexed in a dreamy way. “Yes, but there’s nothing to investigate, is there? I mean why would you do that? He killed himself.”

  “Well, there are some people involved with his campaign who don’t think he would do that. So they hired me. Just to check things out.”

  She nodded. “That explains it.”

  I looked for some sign of anger that she’d been left out of the decision, left out of the conviction that someone had done her husband in. I saw none, I did see some slight amusement. Our tea arrived. Emily Richmond thanked the servant and dismissed her. I took a long drink.

  “Why doesn’t it bother you that someone hired me without consulting you?”

  “Because I really have no involvement with them. With the campaign.”