New, Improved Murder

by Ed Gorman

  She wore a beige outfit with a mink wrap thrown formally over her shoulders. In the hard, gray, winter light from the window in the waiting room her makeup was caked and her jaw a tad too grim to be pretty.

  “Hello, Mrs. Branigan,” I said again.

  This time she heard me.

  She looked up with the eyes of an old woman, a certain bitterness, a certain resignation playing in the mysteries of the irises, like secrets glimpsed through vapors.

  She nodded.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “Oh,” she said.

  Given the circumstances that was a legitimate answer.

  “Dr. Chamales wanted to see me.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Where’s Mr. Branigan?”

  “Sleeping. The hospital fixed up some rooms for us. Nice of them.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “She talked to us for the first time last night.”

  Neither of us knew how to speak to each other with any degree of comfort. We’d been enemies too long.

  “I hope you can help her,” she said and started crying abruptly. The suddenness of her tears alarmed me. What had Jane told them?

  I started over to Mrs. Branigan and was about to put a hand on her shoulder or say something soft, if meaningless, but the old self-consciousness returned and I just stood there, helpless, until my feet took over and led me out of there.

  Behind Dr. Chamales was a poster of Albert Schweitzer holding a starving African child. Next to that poster was a signed photograph of Dr. Chamales shaking hands with President Reagan. Go figure.

  Chamales was a tanned man—you suspected he vacationed a lot—with a flat, strong grip and a flat, strong face. He had a corncob pipe in the corner of his mouth, a pipe that never got lit and showed no signs of tobacco residue in the bowl. Probably it was a pacifier.

  The first two minutes he explained several things in an agreeable and unpatronizing way about trauma and shock and repression. Then he said, “She’s very confused.”

  He was maybe fifty, Dr. Chamales, but right now, despite his tan and his trim tennis-club body, he seemed to slump in his chair. He sighed.

  Obviously he wanted to say something. I had to help him.

  “Do you think she killed Stephen Elliot?”

  He said, “Yes.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Did she tell you that she did?”

  “In so many words. At least, I don’t see what other conclusion could be drawn. She—she broke through shock last night and began talking.”

  “And?”

  “Well, what happened that afternoon was this. She called Elliot’s apartment around dawn, found him home, and went over there. He surprised her by letting her in. They apparently got drunk together. She’d been taking sleeping pills and tranquilizers during the previous twenty-four hours, which means the alcohol could very well have induced a condition not unlike psychosis. About twenty minutes before she phoned you, she ‘came to,’ as she phrased it, standing over his dead body with the gun in her hand.”

  “But if she was drunk—”

  He pursed his lips. “Diminished capacity? I realize you’re looking for legal angles here, but I can’t be very helpful, I’m afraid.”

  “So it wouldn’t be uncommon for somebody in her state to repress knowledge of the actual killing?”

  “Not at all. Most of us have a difficult time admitting to even minor faults. Admitting to being a murderer—well, that would be very, very tough.”

  I nodded.

  No wonder Mrs. Branigan had looked the way she had. “May I see her?”

  “I’ve cleared it with the police for you to spend ten minutes with her. I feel you can help her. She has a very high regard for you. Maybe you can help her find the strength to—face reality, if you understand.”

  I stood up. He pushed out his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  There wasn’t much else to say.

  Her hair had been brushed to blonde radiance and her makeup had been applied artfully. If you didn’t look carefully at the blue eyes, you wouldn’t guess she was doing anything but resting there in the white empty room.

  She sat in a cane chair next to a window. She wore a tailored blue robe and hospital slippers. She managed to look both very old and very young.

  I had almost reached her before she turned to look up at me.

  She said, simply, “Sorry I got you involved in all this.”

  “I know.”

  “They think I killed him.”

  I nodded.

  “The thing is, maybe I did.” Her cheeks, usually gaunt, looked puffy from tears. Her patrician nose was red from crying too. “The funny thing is, I don’t know if I did or not.”

  “You feel up to some questions?”

  “Dwyer, I—”

  “You don’t need to say anything.” I leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. She took my hand and held it, keeping me in my awkward position.

  “I really treated you badly, with Stephen and all.”

  I sat on the window ledge and looked at her. “I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t think it was all your fault. I was pretty crazy from my divorce, pretty demanding—”

  Watching her then, I realized for the first time in two years of knowing her that she was actually a frail sort of woman. Her golden looks misled you into attributing to her a self-confidence she didn’t possess. I’d loved her so long that somehow I’d never managed to just like her. But I did right now. I liked her very much.

  “I don’t think you killed him,” I said.

  “I’m afraid you’re in a minority.”

  “When you called me—when I met you in the park—you never said you killed him. You only said he was dead.”

  She tipped her head into her hand, shook golden hair. “I just don’t remember—”

  I asked her to reconstruct the events surrounding Elliot’s death. The details fit exactly what she’d told Dr. Chamales. Especially the part about “waking up” with the gun in her hand, standing over Elliot’s body. I’d spent enough time getting lost in a liquor bottle to know how things like that could happen.

  When she finished, I said, “I have to ask you something that’s going to make us both feel very bad.”

  “What?”

  “I found a photograph of you with a man named Davies.”

  “Oh, God.”

  I had to give her a long and painful moment to gather herself.

  “I don’t imagine I’ll ever seem the same to you now that you’ve seen that,” she said finally, almost whispering.

  “Who took the picture?”

  “You know who took it.”

  “Elliot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He said it would make Davies feel better. Davies always talked about me to Stephen—how attractive he found me. I—” She shook her head again. “For several weeks I refused to do it. But Stephen kept after me—you don’t know how he could work on me.”

  But I knew what she was talking about, of course. There’s a certain kind of relationship you get trapped into sometimes that you’ll do anything to maintain. I’d had a few of them myself. It wasn’t hard to believe that Elliot, who was persuasive enough anyway, talked her into it.

  “Anyway, I let Davies pretend that he’d lured me into his motel room. Nothing happened, really. We just took our clothes off and held each other—he was pretty drunk—and then—”

  “This was at a place called the Palms?”

  “Did Stephen ever tell you what he did with the snapshot?”

  “Not really.”

  “He blackmailed Davies with it.”

  I guess I’d expected her to act shocked. Instead, she said, “I wondered about that. He asked me to see other clients that way too—but I never gave in. That was one of the things we argued about.”

  “He found other people to help him.” I told her about the photo with L
ucy.

  “I almost feel sorry for her. She took Stephen from me, but—”

  I lowered my head and let her cry for a time. I had deadline pressure here. A cop would soon be knocking on the door. I had to hurry her along while respecting the crushing forces of the moment.

  “Did Stephen ever mention a woman named Eve?” A bitter laugh. Her head snapped up. “The goddess, you mean?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “His mystery woman. I picked up the extension phone one night, heard them talking— At first I thought she might be his mother. She sounded much older. This was early in our relationship. But then I began to see how this woman dominated him in some strange way. Phone calls, birthday cards, postcards from vacation spots—”

  “You didn’t ask him about her?”

  “Of course I did. I got to be pretty jealous of her. I’d get up in the middle of the night and find our bed empty. Then I’d wander into the den and there would be Stephen on the phone. I always knew who he was talking to. Her.”

  “You don’t know where I could find her, do you?”

  She shrugged. “I’m afraid not. She really was mysterious. In and out of his life. I tried to find out about her, of course. I followed them everywhere. One night in a restaurant she slapped him. I don’t know why.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “Very regal. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful as a young woman. She’s in her mid-sixties now, but she still has an incredibly lovely presence—”

  The knock came.

  The cop peeked in, wearing an apologetic smile. “Gotta ask you to leave.”

  I nodded.

  “One more quick question. Where did Stephen hide when he took the photograph of you and Davies?”

  She looked up. “I think there was one of those two-way mirrors. But Stephen didn’t work alone.”

  “What?”

  “Please, sir, if you don’t mind,” the cop said.

  I waved him away.

  I couldn’t believe what she’d just told me. “Who worked with him?”

  “David Baxter. You know, he was Stephen’s best friend. He’s one of those art directors who are also very talented photographers. That’s why I was surprised when you said that there was also a shot of Lucy Baxter. David’s pretty cynical, but I can’t believe—”

  The tears started again. “What’s going on here, anyway?”

  I was just as confused as she was.

  Chapter 26

  On the way down in the elevator a terrible thought struck me—I had no idea who had killed either Stephen Elliot or Jackie-the-prostitute or Larry-the-motel-clerk. I must have expressed my doubts out loud to myself because the matron standing next to me signaled her displeasure by pursing her lips and rolling her eyes. She probably thought I was an escapee from the junkie ward.

  In the wide reception area, through which you passed to the parking lot, a familiar, weary voice cut through the various conversations. I stopped and watched my friend Detective Edelman work his way toward me. He always seemed to be toting an invisible cross.

  “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I could use a cup of coffee.”

  The way he averted his eyes from mine, I knew why he was here.

  “You arresting her this morning?”

  There was a bloodstain on his collar where he’d cut himself shaving. It did not do major damage to his image, however, because Edelman always wore the sort of neckties that clip on, and there isn’t a lot worse a guy can do to himself than that.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I guess you could, uh, say that.” He added quickly, “Actually, I’m meeting her lawyer upstairs in about twenty minutes. Everything’s going through him. She won’t actually, uh, see me, you know?” He frowned. “Hell, Dwyer, I’m going to make it as painless as I can.”

  “Right,” I said, “Kind of a fun murder charge?”

  He looked at me and shook his head. “I always hoped we’d never cross swords. You’re my friend, Dwyer.”

  “Fuck,” I said. I didn’t blame him, but I wanted to blame somebody. I wanted to blame somebody bad. “She didn’t kill Elliot.”

  “How about that cup of coffee?”

  I sighed. “Yeah.”

  During two cups of Sanka—my nerves didn’t need any help working toward overload—I laid it out for him, all the suspects, all the strange parts that didn’t fit, but that indicated that Jane Branigan was not a very good suspect.

  I told him about my visit to Carla Travers’s apartment and how she’d hit me with a gun and accused me of breaking into her place the night before (“Why would somebody who sells TV time be carrying a .45?” I asked reasonably enough); I told him about the pornographic photos with Jane and Davies, and Davies and Lucy Baxter, and how Jane had told me that she thought David Baxter had taken her photo (“I mean, right there, Edelman, is a guy with some pretty strong motives—he’s in on the blackmail routine and his wife is in one of the photos”); I described Phil Davies and how he’d been at the Palms motel the night the clerk and the hooker were murdered, and how Stephen Elliot had seemed to be blackmailing him (“Just in case you need somebody else with a strong motive,” I said, more sarcastically than I needed to); next I related the incident with the two punks wearing the Dracula and Frankenstein masks and telling me to give up the investigation; then I informed him of Grandma’s black eye and how Jackie’s daughter told me of Dracula and Frankenstein visiting the house and taking Jackie’s phone diary; and finally I described how all the suspects had been gathered in one hotel room last night—and how odd I found it that people who didn’t hang around each other, didn’t really even know each other, should get together like that.

  “I think the phrase, Edelman,” I concluded, “is beyond a reasonable doubt and I think there’s a lot of reasonable doubt where Jane’s concerned.”

  Then he said a very coppy thing. The sort of coppy thing I probably would have said myself if I’d been sitting on his side of the desk. “Hell, Dwyer, I’m not saying she had anything to do with the deaths of the motel clerk or the prostitute. You’ve told me enough about them that I’m going to rule out the murder-suicide thing and open an investigation. But as for Jane—” He shrugged. “Right now, she’s still our chief suspect. Motive, means, and opportunity, Dwyer. I can’t get around them—and she’s got all three.”

  “How about the mystery woman? This Eve?”

  “What about her?”

  “You going to look into her?”

  “I don’t see where she’s got a lot of bearing on the case.”

  “Dammit, man, she’s probably the key.”

  He made a sad, wan face. He was a good guy. I was flogging him with my own desperation.

  We sat there and listened to a Jerry Vale song on the Muzak speakers. It was one of those sunny winter mornings when the light makes everything look almost too vivid—more like a painting than reality. I rubbed my eyes.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”

  “Maybe there’s something to the mystery woman after all.”

  He didn’t think so. He was being nice. “Right,” I said.

  “Damn advertising people,” he said. “They sure seem messed up, don’t they? The more I know about Elliot, the slimier he sounds.”

  “But there’s a piece missing.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve heard Elliot described by maybe half a dozen people now, and he seems to have been all things to all people. There’s something—” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, on the one hand he’s this real creative type, very much into his work—which is easy enough to accept—but then on the other hand he’s this very dark, scheming guy who manipulates everybody.”

  “No reason people can’t be both.”

  “I know. But still—”

  He glanced at his watch. Tucked a frown into the corner of his mouth again. “It’s time.”

  “Yeah.”

  I thought
of Jane and her parents. Their panic.

  Fear.

  “I’ll do it as easy as I can.”

  “I know.”

  He stood up, dropped two singles on the Formica.

  “You find out anything about the mystery woman, let me know.”

  He was being nice again. I appreciated it.

  “Take care, Dwyer,” he said.

  Then he was gone.

  Chapter 27

  I didn’t need that particular call that morning, but it was there nonetheless. My talent agency. I was among the finalists for the daddy in the pizza commercial. “You got a cardigan sweater?” My agent asked.

  “Yeah. I got a cardigan sweater.”

  “Put it on and get your ass over there. The guy from the pizza company’s there and he’s waiting for you.”

  The president of Good Times pizza turned out to be a Santa Claus of a man in a three-piece suit. He even had the downy white hair. All the people from the production company hovered around him as if he were about to dispense a map giving the whereabouts of the world’s biggest uranium strike. All except the director. He was an arty type I’d worked with once in stock. He liked to give the impression that he hated everybody and everything he worked with. Hell, he’d convinced me of his sincerity a long time ago.

  “Daddy Number One,” the production assistant announced. This was a blond guy. Troy Donahue twenty years and a heavy beer habit later. The Good Times president kept looking at the guy’s belly. Not happily.

  When they said “Daddy Number Three” I got up and walked toward the table where four guys, including the prez, took notes.

  “Hi, there. James Todd,” the prez said, and we endured a pasty handshake.

  He asked each daddy different questions. Kind of a verbal shell game.

  “You like Good Times pizza?”

  “Really,” I said, shamelessly, “it’s my favorite.”

  “What’s your favorite topping?”

  “Sausage.”

  He smiled. “Then you should sue us, young man.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Good Times is meatless pizza.”

  I was waiting for the other three guys to turn their thumbs down. Then somebody would open the gate for the lion.