Accessory to Murder (11 page)

She looked at her friend's worried, pale face, and knew it was time for a serious reality check.

“Of course, I'll help you,” Josie said.

A cold wind crawled up Josie's back. She shivered and turned up the collar on her raincoat. The sky had turned dark and threatening. The golden day had slipped away.

“Brrr,” she said. “It's getting cold. We still have to decide who we should talk to. Want to go somewhere for coffee?”

“I want to go home,” Alyce said. “I know I'm being ridiculous, but I have a bad feeling. Would you mind going back to my place? I'll make us coffee. I have cookies, too.”

“Sure,” Josie said.

Icy rain pinged on the windshield as Josie drove to Wood Winds. But once Josie pulled into the subdivision entrance, the dark clouds vanished, though the wind stayed sharp.

Josie was always amazed by the perfection of Alyce's home. The sun came through the breakfast room window like a designer spotlight, highlighting the vase of gerbera daisies on the table. The room smelled of coffee and warm sugar.

Alyce brought out a plate of wild-animal cookies: hot pink elephants, acid green rhinos, and yellow monkeys. “I made these for Justin. Try some.”

“Are you sure I can eat them?” Josie said. “They're too beautiful. How did you get those gorgeous colors?”

“Easy,” Alyce said. “All you do is whip up some royal icing and use a pastry bag with a plain tip.”

“That's all
you
do,” Josie said. “I couldn't tell a pastry bag from an evening bag.”

“The pastry bag is the one without the sequins,” Alyce said.

Josie bit the head off a pink elephant. “Let's start with Halley's life. Do you know anyone who would want to kill her?”

Alyce thoughtfully nibbled the tail off a yellow monkey. “Her husband, Cliff, according to my neighbor Joanie. She told us the couple fought the night before Halley died.”

“Right,” Josie said. “If Halley wasn't carjacked, Cliff would be the number one suspect. Does he have an alibi?”

“I don't know,” Alyce said. “Maybe that's something we should find out.”

“The shooter was wearing gangsta clothes,” Josie said. “That doesn't sound like Cliff's crowd.”

“Or Jake's,” Alyce said.

“They make their killings in the stock market,” Josie said. “Does Cliff subscribe to
Soldier of Fortune
magazine?”

“Be serious, Josie,” Alyce said.

“OK, but we need to check out the husband. Any other suspects?”

“Halley lived on my street,” Alyce said, “but I don't know much about her.”

“You said Linda Dattilo is her best friend,” Josie said. “Who's she?”

“Linda lives in Wood Winds by the lake. She runs a decorating business out of her home. You've probably seen her. She's very thin, very cute. Her little girl is best friends with Halley's daughter.”

Josie checked her watch. “I have time before I pick up Amelia. Can we see Linda now?”

Alyce stood on tiptoe and looked out her breakfast room window. “That's Linda's house over there. Her SUV is in the drive. She's home.”

Linda lived in an overgrown Cape Cod with three stories, three dormers, and about sixty-four windows. It was a house for aspiring presidential candidates, cabinet members, and CEOs: solid, traditional, and rich without being ostentatious.

Linda met them at the door. Her hair was a rare red gold. Her eyes were a brilliant green. The hall was done in a soft seafoam shade that set off Linda's unusual coloring.

Linda's house was a showcase for her decorating business. No ice white living room for her. The colors and arrangements were striking, but comfortable. Josie could imagine herself living here if she ever won the lottery. Too bad she never bought a ticket.

Josie studied an artful collection of photos on one wall. “How do you do that, Linda? When I put a lot of photos on a wall, they look like I threw them there. That's you in those theater pictures, right?”

Josie pointed to a photo of a younger Linda as a boyish Peter Pan. In another, she was an ethereal Laura Wingfield in
The Glass Menagerie
.

“I was in a few college productions,” Linda said, and shrugged. “Unlike Laura, I married my gentleman caller. That's my husband, Tom, there.”

“Very romantic,” Alyce said.

“It seemed so at the time,” Linda said. “Can I get you some tea?”

“No, thank you,” Alyce said. “We had a few questions about Halley for the memorial service. We hope you can help us.”

Josie looked at her friend's smooth face and marveled at how she lied so easily. She decided to let Alyce do the talking. This was her world.

“They asked me to write something, but I was too upset,” Linda said. “I start crying every time I think about—” She dabbed at her eyes with a pale green tissue.

Alyce patted her hand. “I should think so. She was your best friend.”

“My only friend,” Linda said. “We married about the same time, moved into similar houses, even had our daughters within a week of each other.”

“How did you feel when you heard that she was going to New York?” Alyce said.

“Like I'd lost my best friend.” Linda gave a self-conscious laugh. “I didn't know how I would get along without her. She was such a big part of my life. Halley said, ‘Don't worry, Linda. New York is only two hours away by plane, and you can call me anytime.' But a phone call isn't the same, is it? Now I don't even have that.”

Josie wondered how she'd feel if Alyce moved away. Lost, she decided. Linda was right. A phone call wasn't the same.

“It must have been hard for you,” Alyce said.

“It was,” Linda said, “although it got easier as the months wore on. Halley was changing, becoming a different person. In some ways, I wasn't losing my Halley, you know?”

“I do,” Alyce said. “What started the changes? Was it because she became so successful, so fast?”

“It happened before that. Her husband was pressuring her to have a second child. Halley panicked. With another baby, she'd be trapped for good. She started canceling committee meetings and going places she never went before. She went into the city.”

Linda said “the city” as if it was someplace shocking and dangerous.

“Halley began hanging around with the artsy crowd in the Central West End. She took me with her at first, but I don't like hanging around bars. That's where she met Ramsey, the great American novelist.”

“I've never heard of him,” Alyce said. “But I don't read much since Justin came along. I still haven't finished
The Kite Runner
.”

“Nobody's heard of Ramsey,” Linda said. “He was supposed to be the next John Updike. He wrote this opening chapter that people say is the finest modern literature they've ever read. Ramsey spent a lot of time in the West End cultivating people, gaining their confidence, then showing them that chapter. It was powerful enough to get him six months' free rent in a carriage house.

“Instead of finishing the novel, he had a mad affair with the family's teenaged daughter. Her parents were outraged. After they threw him out, he spent a summer at a twelve-bedroom cottage in Maine, where he drank himself into an artistic stupor. Next, it was four months in a luxury condo at the Lake of the Ozarks, where he dried out. People gave him drinks and meals on the strength of that chapter. Women threw themselves at him. All because he had great potential.”

“But he never wrote more than one chapter?” Alyce said.

“Not that I heard,” Linda said. “I still think he's a great talent. Ramsey was the most accomplished sponger I ever met. He got free meals, drinks, luxury houses, and all the women he wanted for writing two thousand words. How many authors can say that?”

Why is she telling us this? Josie wondered. Alyce sure couldn't use it at a memorial service. Perhaps Linda needed to talk about what had happened to her best friend. She'd lost Halley long before she died.

“Did Ramsey take advantage of Halley?” Alyce asked.

Josie wanted to applaud. Alyce always knew the delicate way to ask difficult questions. Josie would have said flat out, “Did Halley have an affair with this Ramsey?”

“Maybe. Halley was an easy target. She was angry at her husband and stuck in a life she didn't want. Ramsey had a sixth sense for which women to pick. But if so, it wasn't for long. Halley was too smart to support him and Ramsey wouldn't waste time on a woman who wouldn't give him money. He did her one favor. Ramsey introduced her to a drunken artist named Evelyn. Her affair with Evelyn changed her life.”

“Halley was gay?” Alyce said.

Linda laughed. “No, Evelyn is a man's name, too. Like Evelyn Waugh.”

“What's Evelyn's last name?” Alyce asked.

“I don't know. He has one name, like Cher. I don't know where he lives, but his work is shown at a gallery in the West End. That's how Halley met him. Evelyn looks effeminate, but he's quite the ladies' man.”

“Did Cliff know about him?” Alyce said.

“God, no. A man like Cliff has too much pride to tolerate a wandering wife. Evelyn was a safe choice for a lover. Cliff thought all artists were faggots—his word, not mine.”

“He sounds enlightened,” Alyce said.

“There aren't a lot of liberals in the upper ranks of corporate America,” Linda said. “To be fair, Evelyn is an awful phony. He's got this British accent that's BBC one minute and Brooklyn the next. No wonder Cliff couldn't take him seriously.”

“Did Cliff and Halley fight about Evelyn?” Alyce said.

“I don't think so,” Linda said. “But they fought about everything else. It got bad about three months ago. At least, that's when Halley started talking to me about it. No matter what they fought about, it was really only one argument. Halley hated her life in the suburbs, and she wanted to escape. She was desperate.”

“Do you think Cliff was angry enough to kill her?” Alyce asked.

“Cliff?” Linda laughed. “He wasn't violent. He might bore her to death, but he'd never hurt her. He just didn't want their life to change. It was Evelyn who got Halley out of Wood Winds. He sponsored her for a national contest, the Year's Best Design. Amateurs had to be sponsored by a professional artist.

“Evelyn hasn't much talent himself, but he recognized Halley's. She won the contest. Her design was published in the
New York Times
. The next thing you know, she was starting her own scarf-design business and headed for New York. One week she was going to the supermarket for bread, the next week she was going to Milan for silk.”

“Her scarves are fabulous,” Josie said. “She deserved to be a New York success. I never understood how it happened so fast.”

“She was ready for it,” Linda said. “She had the training. She went to Parsons School of Design in New York. But she met her husband at the wrong time in her life and wound up in St. Louis. Cliff wasn't a bad guy. He just wasn't a good choice for her. He wanted two kids, a gas grill, and a house in the suburbs. He never pretended otherwise.”

“How did they meet?” Alyce asked.

Josie was fascinated, watching how she teased information out of Linda, gently probing, avoiding the painful subjects.

“You can probably use this in your memorial,” Linda said. “It's a safe subject. Besides, most people didn't know their marriage was on the rocks.”

Except the neighbor who heard the fights, Josie thought.

“Cliff was working at his company's New York headquarters then,” Linda said. “He met Halley and they started going out.

“I guess you'll have to soft-pedal this next part. Halley wanted a major New York design career, but poverty wore her down. When she met Cliff, she was twenty-three, tired of working as a waitress and trotting her portfolio around for rejections. Her back ached from sleeping on a futon and her feet hurt from hauling trays of food across hard tile floors. She could barely afford her dingy apartment, even with roommates. Cliff took her to expensive, glamorous places. The rich life made her restless. She was artistic, and the dump she lived in would have depressed someone far less sensitive.

“Halley told me that one night Cliff proposed after dinner at the Four Seasons. He was going to be head of the St. Louis division, making major money. He offered her a six-bedroom cottage with a picket fence and granite countertops. She said she wanted to think about it. She wouldn't let him take her home. She spent the ride home on the subway thinking about the best way to tell Cliff no. She didn't want to hurt his feelings, but she wasn't cut out to be a corporate wife.

“She was probably so distracted composing her rejection that she didn't notice someone lifted her wallet. Halley didn't realize it was gone until she got home. That upset her. Then she opened her kitchen cabinet to make a soothing pot of green tea and found a rat sitting on the shelf. A big, fat rat. It didn't run when she screamed. It sat there like it owned the place.

“Rats and pickpockets are something you live with in a big city. But these two incidents hit her at the wrong time. She accepted Cliff's proposal. For nearly six years, she was Mrs. June Cleaver. Then she went off the rails.”