Fast Women

by Jennifer Crusie

  Marlene was growling.

  It was a weird little growl, which was par for Marlene, a sort of whiny purr with menace, but there was nothing weird about the way Marlene crouched on the bed in the moonlight. It was the first time Nell had seen her looking like pure, unaffected canine.

  “What?” she whispered to the dog, and Marlene crouched lower and growled deeper.

  Nell sat very still and listened and at last heard what Marlene had heard, a faint shuffle from the floor below, so faint she listened longer just to make sure as her skin went cold. There was somebody downstairs, opening drawers and closing cabinet doors.

  “Shhh,” she said to Marlene and eased up the phone. She hit 911, wincing at the tones in her ear, and when the dispatcher picked up the phone, she whispered, “There’s somebody in my kitchen.”

  When she’d whispered everything she knew into the phone, the dispatcher told her to stay on the line, and she sat in her welter of covers, her hand on the still-tense Marlene, praying whoever it was would stay downstairs until the police came or he found whatever he was looking for—

  She sat up a little straighter. What was he looking for? She didn’t even have a TV or a stereo. Surely by now any burglar would have taken one look at her dearth of electronics and decided she was a bad risk. Unless the burglar wasn’t a burglar. Unless …

  She disconnected from the 911 line and punched in the speed-dial code for the office. She was pretty sure it was the same phone Gabe had upstairs.

  “What?” Gabe said on the third ring, sounding half asleep and mad as hell.

  “There’s somebody here,” she whispered into the phone.

  “What?” he said again.

  “This is Nell,” she whispered.

  “I know it’s you,” he snapped. “Why are you whispering at three A.M.?”

  “There’s somebody here. In the apartment. Downstairs.”

  “Jesus, call 911.”

  “I did,” Nell said, exasperated. “Do you think I’m stupid? But I thought since this was Lynnie’s old place—”

  Marlene growled again, and Nell stopped, putting her hand on Marlene to quiet her so she could listen.

  Somebody was on the stairs.

  “What’s going on?” Gabe said. “Damn it, Nell—”

  “I think he’s coming up the stairs,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “And I’m really scared.”

  “Turn the light on,” Gabe said. “Do it now. Warn him you’re awake. Is your bedroom door locked?”

  “It doesn’t have a lock.”

  “Shove something in front of it.”

  “Right,” Nell said and put the phone down to push off her covers. Her hands were shaking, and as she kicked off the last of the blankets, she caught her foot in the Marlene’s chenille throw and tripped. Marlene went wild as the phone slid off the bed with a clatter, and Nell tried to catch herself on the bedside table and fell against the door instead, smacking her head on the doorknob as she went down, hearing somebody run down the stairs at full speed as she fell.

  “Shhhh,” she said to Marlene who was now in full-fledged snarl, flinging herself against the door and scrabbling at it with her nails. Sirens filled the air, and then lights swung across her wall from the street below, and Nell heard her back door slam. She rubbed her head once and then crawled back across the floor to the phone. “Gabe? It’s all right, I think. Gabe?” But he was gone.

  * * *

  “Thank you for taking twenty years off my life,” Gabe said an hour later when the police had gone. He was sitting in Nell’s living room on the daybed, drinking Glenlivet and trying to get his pulse under a hundred and twenty before he yelled at her for scaring the hell out of him.

  “I thought you’d want to know,” Nell said. “Since it was Lynnie’s place and all.”

  “I’d want to know because it’s your place,” Gabe said. She was in pajamas made of some kind of slippery bright blue stuff that slid all over her when she moved and made her red hair look even wilder, especially next to the Technicolor bump she was sporting on her forehead. She was completely unconcerned about her pajamas, her bump, or the fact that she’d just had a near-rape-or-death experience, and she sat next to him on the daybed, pale and fine-boned and delicate, devouring whole-wheat toast with peanut butter and jam with a single-minded appetite that was disconcerting.

  Gabe took a piece of ice out of his Glenlivet and handed it to her. “Put that on the lump on your forehead,” he said and drank the rest of the Scotch.

  She held the ice to her forehead, frowning as it began to melt and the water ran down her arm.

  “Thank you for calling 911 first,” Gabe said, using a pillow to mop off her arm.

  “I’m not stupid,” Nell said.

  “Never thought you were,” Gabe said. “Just nuts. Do you think it was Lynnie?”

  “I don’t know,” Nell said, and then she thought about it while she chewed toast, her face getting that intense look that usually made him nervous. “No. Whoever it was stayed downstairs at first, and then came up. So he was looking for something down there—”

  “—and didn’t find it. Lynnie would have known where it was.” Gabe put his glass down. “Come on.”

  “Where?” Nell said.

  “Your bedroom,” he said.

  “Your technique needs work,” Nell said and made him wait until she’d finished the last of her toast.

  He stood inside the doorway and stared at the room. There were clothes and books tossed everywhere, her quilts were twisted in a heap on the massive bed that almost filled the room, and in the middle of it all, Marlene sat on the floor on a dark blue nubby-looking blanket and looked balefully at them.

  “Nice,” Gabe said, looking around the room. “I’ll look in the register grates. You find the floor so we can tap the boards.”

  Two and a half hours later, Gabe knew the upstairs of Nell’s apartment like no other place on earth, but they hadn’t found anything. Nell stretched in exhaustion as she got up from the guest room floor, her pajamas doing interesting things while she moved, and then she said. “I’d love to stay and play with you, but I have to be at work in an hour.”

  “Me, too.” Gabe sat with his back against the wall, frowning at the empty room. “Lucky for me I have a secretary who handles the office if I’m late.”

  “She might call in tired,” Nell said.

  “That might be a good idea,” Gabe said. “Let’s not leave this place empty until we’ve taken it apart.”

  “What did we just do?” Nell said. “A quick once-over?”

  “Riley might have some ideas. He doesn’t miss much. And then there’s the downstairs.” He pushed himself off the floor and went into her bedroom and picked up the phone. He punched the numbers in and frowned at her when she came in. She was even paler than usual and the bump on her head was turning purple. “You look terrible.”

  “Thank you.” Nell sat down on the big bed and flopped back against the pillows.

  “The pajamas are better than the Eeyores,” he said. “But your forehead is a mess.”

  “I was injured in the line of duty,” she said, crawling under the quilts.

  “I told you to keep ice on that bump,” Gabe said while the phone rang. “You should—”

  “What?” Riley said, grumpy and half asleep.

  “It’s me. Open the office today. Nell’s not coming in.”

  “I can be in there later,” Nell said, fighting sleep. “I just—”

  “And cancel whatever plans you have for tonight. Nell had a break-in last night and we need to search this place.”

  “A break-in?” Riley said, awake now. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. Just clumsy. All she needs is some sleep and some ice,” he said, directing the word to her, but she was asleep, her face serene for the first time since he’d met her. She looked pale and fragile and fine, like the woman in the Roethke poem, lovely in her bones.

  “Gabe?” Riley said.

  �
��I’ll be in later,” he told Riley. He hung up and pulled her quilt over her, taking care not to wake her. Marlene jumped up on the bed and then hung her head over the edge, moaning at the blue thing she’d been lying on. He picked it up and tossed it at the foot of the bed, and she promptly curled up on it and dozed off.

  “Not much bothers you girls, does it?” he said and took one last look at Nell before he went downstairs.

  * * *

  The Powell residence was a tidy bungalow in Grandview, a good neighborhood that wasn’t obnoxious about it. Gabe knocked on the door and was surprised when the man who opened it was younger than he was.

  “Robert Powell?” he said.

  “That’s my dad,” the man said, offering his hand. “I’m Scott Powell. You must be Gabe McKenna.” He nodded toward the side of the house. “My dad’s had an apartment over the garage since he retired. This must be some great old case. He’s really jazzed to see you.”

  His dad had a terrific apartment over the garage, Gabe saw when he went up the stairs. Big skylights, thick carpet, comfortable furniture, and enough electronics to rival Radio Shack. Scott was obviously making sure Robert had the best retirement possible, and Robert was just as obviously enjoying it.

  “Some place, huh?” he said, grinning at Gabe from under grizzled brows. He was built like a bear, an older version of the slimmer Scott, and Gabe relaxed a little, liking them both.

  “Great place,” he said, taking the seat Robert waved him to. “Thanks for seeing me.”

  Robert shook his head. “My pleasure. You looking into the Ogilvie suicide?”

  “Not officially,” Gabe said. “I have a personal interest.”

  Robert nodded. “You related to Helena?”

  “No,” Gabe said, and took a deep breath. “Was it a suicide?”

  “No,” Robert said, and Gabe sat back. “I’m not saying she wasn’t thinking about it,” Robert went on. “I’m not saying she might not have done it anyway. But she didn’t shoot herself.”

  “Why?” Gabe said.

  “She had pills,” Robert said. “A lot of them. She’d been saving them for almost two months, telling her doctor she needed tranqs and sleeping pills and filling the prescriptions.”

  “Not conclusive,” Scott said from where he leaned against the wall.

  “My boy’s on the force, too,” Robert said proudly, and Gabe felt a throb of jealousy that Scott still had his dad, had him living close, could see him whenever he wanted, watch the game with him on the wide-screen TV, kick back with him and have a beer. Robert looked up at Scott and said, “There’s more, hotshot.” He looked over at Gabe. “She wrote three suicide notes, practicing.”

  “Two of them were in the wastebasket,” Gabe said, remembering the police report.

  “Yeah, but they were all drafts,” Robert said. “They had words marked out, smudges. And she had good stationery on the desk in that room. She hadn’t written the final one yet.”

  “Still not conclusive,” Scott said, but he was looking a lot more interested.

  “Then there were her earrings,” Robert said. “She was all dressed up, but she wasn’t wearing any.”

  “We noticed that, too,” Gabe said. “You didn’t happen to get a list of the pieces in the set, did you? Besides the ring and the pin she was wearing?”

  Robert shook his head. “The daughter couldn’t remember all of them, and by the time I’d talked to her, her mother was buried wearing them.”

  “Buried in diamonds?” Scott said skeptically.

  “Big diamonds,” Robert said. “Worth maybe a hundred grand back then. Now…” He shrugged. “I did not believe the husband would put those stones six foot under, but I wasn’t about to dig her up to see. By the time I managed to get a description to get to pawnshops, a week had passed. Nobody ever came forward and said they’d seen them. Of course, some of them wouldn’t.”

  “You think somebody killed her and took the jewelry?” Gabe said. “You think it was a robbery?”

  “No,” Robert said. “I think it was a murder, and whoever did it grabbed the diamonds as an extra. And then I think he was stuck with them because they were so unusual. All circles like that? Anybody would recognize those. Unless he broke the stones out and sold them that way.”

  Scott picked up a dining room chair and swung it around to straddle it. “Anybody have a motive?”

  “She was holding her husband up on the divorce,” Robert said. “The dumb bastard had a mistress with a baby on the way, and he wanted to marry her. But the wife was holding out for half of his half of his law firm. It would have ruined the place and, according to everybody I talked to, she knew that and didn’t care.”

  “So the husband,” Scott said.

  “Or the husband’s partner,” Robert said. “He didn’t have an airtight alibi, and he really couldn’t afford to lose any income. He was paying alimony to one wife and supporting an expensive trophy, too. I talked to her. Not a nice woman.” He looked at Gabe. “He still with her?”

  “Jack?” Gabe shook his head. “No. He divorced Vicki about eight years later and married another trophy. He’s still with that one.”

  “So now he’s paying double alimony.” Robert laughed. “Dumb bastard. He struck me as the type who figured that if he wanted it, he should have it, damn the consequences. He was slick about it, but he had the look. You know?”

  Gabe thought about Jack. “I know. How about Trevor?”

  “Trevor?” Scott said.

  “The husband,” Robert said. “He was on the phone with the daughter. We checked, and he was standing in his law office at the time, secretary there and everything.”

  “Convenient,” Scott said. “How about the daughter? Did she inherit anything?”

  “A nice chunk, nothing spectacular,” Robert said. “But you can forget her being in on it. She was a sweet little thing. She went to pieces when she found her mother’s body. They had her sedated for a couple of weeks afterward, and when they finally took her off the pills, she was still rocky. She didn’t do it.”

  “Did she know who did?” Gabe said.

  “If she did, she wasn’t remembering it,” Robert said. “I’d swear she wasn’t lying to me, but she wasn’t the kind to face reality. At least she wasn’t then.”

  Gabe thought of Margie, playing tea party at The Cup with Chloe. “She still isn’t.”

  “She still married to that son of a bitch?” Robert said.

  “No,” Gabe said, interested. “Stewart was a son of a bitch?”

  “Arrogant asshole,” Robert said. “Dumber than snot. If I could have pinned it on somebody, I’d have pinned it on him, but I’d never have made it stick. He couldn’t have planned a picnic, let alone a murder.”

  “So who did it?”

  “I don’t know,” Robert said. “There was nothing there, I mean, there were even powder traces on her hand. My only real hope was the diamonds, and they never turned up. So the daughter divorced the creep, did she? Good. I liked her.”

  “Margie?” Gabe said. “No. He embezzled close to a million from Ogilvie and Dysart and left, seven years ago.”

  “That dumbass embezzled?” Robert said. “I don’t think so. He couldn’t have embezzled from his own checking account.”

  “Really?” Gabe said. “That’s interesting. Because O&D was sure it was him.”

  “Not unless he had help,” Robert said. “And he’d have needed a lot of help. Did he have an accomplice?”

  “Not that we know of,” Gabe said. “O and D didn’t hire us for that one.”

  “You look into it,” Robert said. “There’s gonna be somebody else standing behind him, telling him what to do.” He sat back. “So your interest is personal, huh?”

  Gabe thought about ducking it, and then said, “My dad was Trevor’s best friend.”

  Robert nodded, waiting.

  “I think he knew something,” Gabe said. “But he died in ’82, so it’s gone with him.”

  “McKenna,”
Robert said. “We didn’t question anybody named McKenna.”

  “I think he might have been called in after the shooting,” Gabe said. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you don’t want to know,” Robert said.

  “He deserves better than that,” Gabe said.

  “If you don’t look, it’s because you think he’s guilty.”

  “Something like that,” Gabe said and felt like hell.

  When Gabe had thanked Robert, Scott walked him back to his car. “Listen, if you need any help, give me a call.”

  “Thanks,” Gabe said, surprised.

  “Hey, if something turned up about my old man, I’d want to know.”

  Gabe nodded back toward Robert’s apartment. “He’s a great guy.”

  “The best.” Scott stood back and gazed at the Porsche with envy. “Great car. What year?”

  “Nineteen seventy-seven,” Gabe said, and watched Scott’s eyes narrow a fraction.

  “Year before the suicide. Any connection?”

  “Trevor sold it to my dad for a dollar two weeks after the shooting.”

  Scott whistled. “When’d you find that out?”

  “A week ago.”

  “Bad week,” Scott said as Gabe got in the car.

  “And it’s not getting better,” Gabe said.

  * * *

  That evening, Suze helped Nell and Margie finish the unpacking, while Riley and Gabe tore apart the kitchen. “So what are they looking for again?” Suze asked Nell.

  “They’re not sure,” Nell said, handing her another piece of bubble-wrapped china to untape. “They figure they’ll know it when they see it.”

  “I think they’re exciting,” Margie said. “Detectives.”

  “Ha,” Suze said and unwrapped the china, only to stop and stare. It was a small, round white china cup, but it had feet, honest-to-God people feet with blue spotted socks and black shoes. Margie had another, with black striped socks and yellow shoes. “What is this stuff?”

  “Walking Ware,” Nell said. “Novelty china from the seventies. I forgot I had it until we had everything appraised, but then when it came time to divide the china, I couldn’t part with it.”