by Ed Gorman
Once again, she changed the subject, now uncertain of herself and the direction of her questions. "The night clerk said he saw a man going up to her room late last night." One last attempt to trap him.
"Oh? Maybe you'd like me to stop by so he can see me."
He laughed. "I'll cooperate with you any way you want, Miss Tolan. I have nothing to hide."
Maybe he didn't, after all. Or maybe he was clever enough to offer himself up this way, knowing she wouldn't call him on it. She felt slow-witted and dull. She was sure she'd been the brunt of many jokes told after-hours at The Players' notorious wine parties. She was just glad Chief Ryan wasn't here to see this sorry interrogation. She wanted to be home suddenly, in Mrs. Goldman's parlor, listening to Mrs. Goldman's stirring stories about the Civil War, and how the ladies of Iowa had worked eighteen-hour days making bullets and knitting sweaters and stockings and mittens for their Union husbands and sons and brothers. Mrs. Goldman said that they'd even loaded up the steamboats when no men could be found.
She angled herself toward the door. "I guess I'll be going now."
"I was just starting to have fun." Then, "You're very pretty, Anna. Have you ever thought of trying out for one of our plays?"
She knew she was blushing. His compliment had cinched his victory. He'd reduced her status from detective to simple young woman.
"I'll talk to you later," she said, and hurried out of his room. He laughed once behind her—an empty, fake laugh that was yet another example of his bad acting.
Anna was about to walk out through the front door when she heard the weeping in the deep shadows to the side. She squinted into the gloom and saw nothing. But the weeping sound remained constant. Anna made her way carefully toward the far wall. A shape began to form. Karen Remington. She paused long enough to say, "Do you have a cigarette?"
Good girls don't smoke, Anna wanted to say. Or so her farmer parents had always told her, anyway. And Anna couldn't get away from their influence, much as she wanted to sometimes. Any woman she saw smoking a cigarette, she automatically downgraded socially if not morally. "I'm afraid I don't smoke."
"I must look terrible. My makeup."
Anna smiled. "Actually, I can't see you very well."
The Remington woman laughed. And that made Anna like her. "If that's the case, I should probably stay here the rest of my life. In the shadows. Then I won't have to see how old I'm getting." She paused, snuffled tears, daubed a lace handkerchief to nose and lips. "I've always read about women like myself—that's why I can't stand to read Henry James, I see myself in so many of his silly, middle-aged women. Vain and desperate." More snuffling. "I told myself that The Players would be good for me. My son was off to Princeton, my husband was always busy. I felt— Oh, it's all such a cliché. You know how I felt. So I decided to help out with publicity. Then I helped with costumes. Then I tried out for a part in a play. And then I got involved with dear Kevin. You know the funny thing? He not only seduced me—though of course I wanted to be seduced—he convinced me to give him money. And large amounts of it. My husband was furious when he found out. Even threatened to divorce me. I actually think he resented the money even more than he resented my being unfaithful. He's not a generous man. But I didn't care. Kevin and I were going to run off and start another theater someplace. I wanted to go east, to be nearer my son. Kevin led me to believe—"
"Nasty Kevin," a male voice said on the other side of the gloom. "Nasty, nasty Kevin."
It was Kevin, of course.
"I didn't 'lead her to believe' anything, Miss Tolan. She believed what she wanted to believe."
"Unfortunately," the Remington woman said, "that's true."
And promptly began sobbing again, even more violently than before.
Soon enough, Anna was on the trolley, headed downtown once again. The sun was out now; the temperature was up in the forties. Anna looked longingly at the stately buildings of Coe College, Main Building and Williston Hall, as they were known. She hoped to take classes there someday. She's seen photographs of college girls in crisp spring dresses. How intelligent and poised and professional they looked. Her secret dream was to be one of them. Anna Tolan, college girl.
Anna had no trouble with Chief Ryan. He understood exactly why she wanted the Murchison woman's coffin dug up. Judge Rollins, who could sometimes be a problem, also understood and approved her request.
At four that afternoon, Anna, Chief Ryan and two scruffy gravediggers stood over Anthea Murchison's gravesite. The air was fresh, cleansed by the recent rain, and the gravestones glistened as if they'd been scrubbed. Some of them dated as far back as the late 1700s, when some Frenchmen down from Green Bay, Wisconsin, had started trading iron kettles, cloth and knives for some of the Ioway Indians' animal skins. An influenza outbreak had killed at least a dozen of the French traders.
"If there's a body in there, Anna," Chief Ryan said. "I want you to look away. Otherwise, it'll stay in your mind the rest of your life." Chief Ryan was every bit as grandfatherly as he sounded, a big, broad, gray-haired man with the red nose of a drinker and the kind eyes of a village priest. His grandparents had come from County Cork two generations ago. Every Ryan male since had been a law officer of some kind.
"I'll be fine, Chief."
"You're not as tough as you think, young lady."
Remembering her wretched questioning of the glib Kevin Murchison, she had to silently agree.
The exhumation went quickly. The gravediggers knew their business. When they reached the wooden coffin with the cross in the center of the lid, the taller of the two jumped down into the grave with his crowbar. He was able to balance himself against the walls of the grave and open the coffin lid.
He pried it up and flung it back. "Empty, sir," he shouted up to the Chief.
* * *
When they got back to the station, Anna found a man waiting for her. She saw him around town frequently but didn't know who he was or what he did.
He doffed his derby and said, "My name is Peterson. Pete Peterson. I sell insurance."
"This is a bad time to sell me anything, Mr. Peterson." He smiled. He had a boyish face emphasized by the youthful cut of his checkered suit. Salesmen, or drummers as they were popularly called, had come to favor checks. They felt that the pattern put people in a happier frame of mind than, say, dark blue or black. "I'm here about Anthea Murchison."
"Oh?"
"My company issued her a life insurance policy for fifty thousand dollars eight months before she died."
"Oh," Anna said, catching his implication instantly.
They sat in her office for the next hour. The day shift was winding down. Men called goodbyes to each other. The handful of night-shifters came on, their leather gun-belts creaking, their heavy shoes loud on the wooden floors.
"Insurance fraud is what we're looking at," Peterson said. "If we can prove it."
"Why couldn't you prove it?" Anna said. "The coffin was empty. And Dr. Bailey signed the death certificate. He had to know she wasn't dead."
"I think it was for that theater of theirs."
"The money, you mean?"
Peterson nodded. "The way I understand it, they couldn't get any more investors. They'd borrowed everything they could. The theater was going under."
"So they staged Anthea Murchison's death."
"And collected fifty thousand dollars."
"Your company didn't investigate?"
"Of course, we investigated. But as you said, we had a signed death certificate. There was no reason to go into an all-out investigation. We didn't spend all that much time on it. Now, it's obvious we were defrauded."
"They'll probably try to leave town."
"If they haven't already."
"I'm not sure how long I can hold them on what we have now, though."
"But we know what happened, Anna."
"Yes, we know it. But can we prove it? Defense attorneys are very creative people, Pete."
"Don't I know it. They've helped ch
eat my company out of millions of dollars." Whenever he spoke of the company, his tone became downright reverent. Like a cardinal invoking the name of the Vatican.
"I need to talk to the Chief about all this. Pete. There's also a murder investigation going on. He'll want to move carefully."
"What's he afraid of?"
"What he's afraid of, Mr. Peterson," Chief Ryan said, walking into Anna's office, "is that you'll get your fraud case all resolved, and we still won't know why Anthea Murchison came back to town last night—and why one of them killed her."
Peterson frowned. "So you're not going to arrest them?"
"Not right now," Ryan said, "and I don't want you approaching them, either. You understand?"
"My company isn't going to be happy."
"I'm sorry about that, Mr. Peterson," Ryan said. "But that's the way it has to be for a little while longer."
Mr. Peterson's checkered suit seemed to fade slightly in intensity. Even the magnificently bogus gleam in his eyes had dulled. His company wasn't happy, and neither was he.
"Now, if you don't mind, Mr. Peterson, Anna and I need to get back to work."
Mr. Peterson dragged himself to his feet. He looked weary, old. He took his faded suit and faded eyes to the door and said, "I'll have to go and send my company a telegram, I guess." And with that, he was gone.
A moment later, Chief Ryan said, "The mayor wants me to put Riley on the case."
"I figured that would happen."
"You know this isn't my decision. But there's an election coming up and he doesn't want to have an unsolved case like this hanging over his head." Ryan smiled. "But nobody can stop you from working on the case on your own, Anna."
Their usual bargain had been struck. Anna worked on the case and secretly reported back to the Chief.
Anna smiled. "I guess I do have a little time on my hands tonight."
"Glad to hear it."
* * *
After dinner with Mrs. Goldman, Anna took the evidence up to her room and started sifting through it. Goron had instructed would-be detectives to store all evidence in the same box, and to tag it alphabetically. Fingerprints were beginning to play a role in law enforcement. Even though officers in the United States were still skeptical of such evidence—and no court would allow it to be used—Goron insisted that all pieces of evidence remain as pristine as possible. She also insisted that fingerprints were the surest way to identify a killer. Find a print on a murder weapon and you had your man.
Anna worked till after midnight. On her bed was the button she'd found on Anthea Murchison's hotel bed, the sketch she'd made of some strange footprints on the hotel room floor, a cigarette made of coarse tan paper and heavy tobacco leaves, a man's comb with gray hair in it, a drinking glass across which were smeared two or three different sets of fingerprints, and then the curious H marking she'd found on the headboard of Anthea's hotel bed. The trouble with all her evidence was that she couldn't date it. It might have been in the room for a month. Even the cigarette butt didn't tell her anything decisive. A sloppy cleaning woman might have left it behind a few weeks ago.
There would be no trouble proving that the owners of The Players had perpetrated a fraud; proving that one of them had perpetrated a murder might be something else again.
* * *
Kevin Murchison had planned on only one drink at the River's Edge. He had four in less than an hour. On an empty stomach. Which was not exactly brilliant. With the law now having him under suspicion—even that stupid insurance investigator Pete Peterson should be able to figure things out now—he needed to remain sharp and clearheaded.
But somehow his fear (Oh, he'd do just dandy in prison, wouldn't he?) and self-pity (Why shouldn't a nice decent fellow like himself be able to get away with a little fraud now and then? Insurance companies had lots of money, didn't they?) and loathing (He hated the taverns of Cedar Rapids; all the silly yokel chatter; never a word about theater life or the latest Broadway scandal, which Kevin kept up on via The New York Times, however dated it was by the time it reached this little hellhole of a burg.)—somehow his fear, his self-pity and his loathing forced him to drink more.
By the time he was ready to walk home, he had to make himself conscious of his gait. Didn't want to appear drunk. Drunk meant vulnerable, and oh, how that pretty little piece of a police matron or whatever the hell she was would love to get him when he was vulnerable.
The autumn dusk was chill and brief and gorgeous, the sky layered in smoky pastels of gold and salmon. His Tudor-style home was dark when he reached it. He'd let the last of his servants go shortly after Anthea's "death." He could no longer afford the pretense. Anyway, he needed the town's sympathy—the bereaved husband and all that—to allay suspicion that Anthea's death had been suspicious. People in a place like Cedar Rapids were never sympathetic to people who had servants.
He reheated this morning's coffee and then went to the north wing of the house, where the den was located. He'd just touched a match to the desk lamp when the smell filled his nostrils. He wanted to vomit.
She lay over by the fireplace, the fire poker next to her fine blond head. The tip of the poker gleamed with her blood.
He knelt next to her. Once or twice, he reached out to touch her. But then stopped himself. He didn't want to remember her flesh as cold. In life, it had been so warm and supple and erotic. He had never loved anyone as much as he'd loved Beatrice. They'd been planning to run away tonight, leaving her husband David Bailey to explain things to the police—the insurance fraud and Anthea's murder last night.
Now, he knew who had murdered Anthea. David Bailey. Anthea'd stopped by the house here late last night and demanded more money, said she'd been living in New Orleans but had run out of money. They'd been planning to divorce anyway at the time they faked her death—so she took one-third of the insurance money and fled, and they put the rest of the money into the theater. He'd lied to her last night and said he'd get her more this morning. Anything to get rid of her. So, apparently, she'd next gone to visit and blackmail Bailey. And he must have killed her. As he'd killed poor Beatrice tonight. Bailey, a jealous man for all his own unfaithfulness, had likely learned about Beatrice and Kevin. And killed her for her betraying him.
He wasn't given to tears and so his sobs were fitful. He leaned in. He couldn't help himself. He kissed her cold dead lips.
And then he stood up and knew what he had to do, where he had to go.
Right now, nothing else mattered. Nothing else at all.
* * *
"You could've killed Beatrice," Anna said.
"No, I couldn't," Murchison said. "I loved her too much."
"So," the Chief said, "you admit to the insurance fraud."
"Yes, of course. I've told you that already. We were just trying to save the theater."
"But not to murdering your wife," Anna said.
"Or Beatrice," the Chief said.
It was near midnight in the small back room of the station the police used to question suspects. The room was bare except for a few fading dirty words prisoners had scribbled on the wall from time to time.
Kevin Murchison had gone to Anna's and told her what happened. His version of it, anyway. Then she'd taken him downtown and used the telephone to call the Chief and ask him to come down, too. She still got a thrill every time she used the telephone. They'd spent the last two hours going over and over Murchison's story. The atmosphere wasn't hostile but it was certainly intense. The dancing light of a kerosene lamp threw everything into soft shadow.
"Who do you think killed them, then?" Anna said.
"I've told you that already."
"I wish you'd quit saying that," the Chief said, lighting his pipe with a stick match. "We're well aware we keep asking you the same questions over and over."
"It's damned annoying is what it is."
"So," the Chief said, "who do you think killed the two women?"
Murchison glared at him. Sighed. "I've told you and told you. Davi
d killed them."
"Why would he kill them?"
"He's got a terrible temper. Anthea must've seen him last night and demanded money. The same way she did from me. He got angry and killed her."
"But why would he kill Beatrice?" Anna said.
"Because he found out about us. Not only that we were lovers but that we were running away together."
"And so he killed her?" Anna said.
"You'd have to see him lose his temper to understand how easily he could kill somebody. He's terrifying when he's like that."
A knock. The Chief said, "That's probably Henning, Anna. Why don't you take it? I'll keep on questioning our friend here."
"I didn't kill either of those women," Kevin Murchison said, sounding like a sad little boy. "I really didn't."
Anna opened the door. Henning was one of the older officers, a big, bald man with bushy eyebrows and a chin scar from a long-ago altercation with a hobo. Anna stepped out into the hall. "Bailey wasn't at home."
"Did you find a train schedule?"
Henning nodded, handed her a pamphlet.
"Thanks," she said.
"I need to make my rounds."
She nodded. There was a train leaving for Chicago in forty-five minutes.
She opened the door and peeked in and said. "I'm going over to the train depot."
"Good idea," the Chief said. "You know where my Navy Colt is. Take it."
"I probably won't need it."
"Take it, anyway."
While Anna didn't much like firearms, the Chief had turned her into a fair marksman. She preferred to think of herself as a Goron-type of peace officer. "Brain power" Goron often said was more important than "brute power." But she reluctantly went into the Chief's office, went to his desk, opened the wide middle drawer, and took out the Navy Colt.
* * *
Cedar Rapids had a crush on its train depot, one of those crushes that made folks just about absolutely goofy. Some folks would bring their own chairs to the depot just so they could sit and watch trains arrive and depart all day long. Other folks even brought picnic lunches, just to sit and watch the panoramic show that trains put on. People loved everything about trains, the bold colors of the engine cars, the gray billowing smoke, the stink of coal, the smell of oil, the clatter of couplings. They were especially interested in the fancy dining cars and parlor cars. "The envy of sultans!" as one advertisement boasted. They liked to see exotic strangers disembark. New York people or Chicago people or Boston people, fancy people stepping down to stretch their legs before the train roared away again, women in huge capes and big important hairstyles, and men in dove-gray vests and top hats and spats, money and culture and a self-confidence that Cedar Rapids folks could only daydream of.
