Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) (17 page)

“In effect. I wanted to check with you first.”

“Then why didn’t you call me?”

“Something came up.”

“Like what?”

“Busy afternoon at the office,” I said.

“Would you mind if I freshened this?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer, she started for the house. Here we go again,
I thought. Like mother, like daughter. Same magnificent bodies, same blonde hair, same blue eyes, same thirst. She stopped just outside the sliding glass doors.

“Where’s the light switch?” she asked.

“I’ll get it,” I said, and went into the house ahead of her. I turned on the living room lights and then the pool lights. She followed me into the house and looked around, appraising it. “Nice,” she said. “Did you do it yourself?”

“Must be an echo in here,” I said.

“What?” she said.

“It came furnished.”

“Very nice,” she said, padding over to the bar. “How big is it?”

“Two bedrooms,” I said. “My daughter comes to visit every other weekend.”

“You’re divorced?” she asked, and found the bourbon bottle.

“Yes.”

“Would I know your ex?” She put two ice cubes into her glass, and poured liberally over them.

“Her name’s Susan.”

“Does she still keep the Hope?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t know her,” Veronica said, and turned from the bar. “Cheers,” she said, and drank. The white dress clung to her. I was unashamedly aware that she was wearing nothing at all under it. “Are you otherwise attached?” she asked, and looked at me.

“Not at the moment.”

She nodded.

She was silent for what seemed a very long time then, sipping at her drink, looking out over the bayou whenever a mullet jumped, apparently gathering her thoughts before she spoke again.

At last she said, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Jack these past few days.”

I said nothing.

“About how it could have happened,” she said. “How someone could have got in there and stabbed him.”

I still said nothing.

“My son had a gun. A .38 Smith & Wesson that Drew gave him on his eighteenth birthday. The twenty-seventh of June. Two years ago,” she said. “Just before Drew died. I find that ironic, don’t you? Macho Drew giving un-macho Jack a great big symbol of masculinity when he reaches manhood, maybe because he himself—ravaged by cancer—was feeling intimations of mortality. He was right, as it turned out. He died a week after Jack’s birthday. On the Fourth of July, went out in a blaze of fireworks. Here’s
to
you, Drew,” she said, and drank. “I hope there are lots of fat cows wherever you are, all of them
barbecued
, you son of a bitch.” She drank again. “Jack actually learned to use it,” she said. “Amazing. He never
was
worth a damn when it came to practical matters.”

I remembered what she’d told me about her son’s never having learned to brand a calf or ride a horse, and I assumed that on a ranch, learning to use a gun was just another one of those “practical matters.”

“He took it with him when he moved out to Stone Crab,” she said. “Have the police mentioned a gun to you?”

“No,” I said.

“Me neither. They gave me a list of everything in the apartment, right down to a pair of sweaty tennis socks. I guess they do that to protect themselves, wouldn’t you say? Against later charges of theft?”

“I suppose so.”

“Because it’s not unheard of, you know. The police taking whatever isn’t nailed down. The firemen too.”

“In New York, they call them the Forty Thieves.”

“The police?”

“The firemen. My partner Frank told me that. He’s a New Yorker.”

“And you?”

“Chicago.”

“I love that city,” she said. “Hog butcher to the world. Sandburg, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Yes, of course you would. But if the gun wasn’t in his apartment, where
was
it?”

“You’re sure it wasn’t—”

“Not according to the list they gave me. They
would
have listed a gun, wouldn’t they?”

“I’d guess so.”

“A
weapon
? Well, certainly. And another question. Wouldn’t Jack have tried to
use
the gun? On a man intending serious damage with a knife?”

“Assuming the gun was there.”

“Yes, but that’s exactly my point, don’t you see?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“
Was
the gun there?”

“You seem to think it should have been.”

“Well, he took it with him when he moved, didn’t he?”

“Which was back in June.”

“Yes. So where was the gun on the night of the murder? And where is it now?”

“Maybe the police confiscated it.”

“Without listing it?”

“Maybe they didn’t want the killer to know about it.”

“Do they think
I’m
the killer?”

“I’m sure they don’t.”

“The list was prepared for
me
, Matthew. As next of kin. If they found Jack’s gun, it would’ve been on that list.”

“Maybe the killer took it with him.”

“Maybe,” she said. She sipped at her drink thoughtfully. “Which brings up yet another question. How’d the killer get in? Jack normally kept his door locked. There’s a peephole in the door. He would have seen whoever was out there in the hall before he unlocked the door. Yet he unlocked it. And let his own murderer in. And didn’t even try to use the gun to protect himself.”

“What does that indicate to you?” I said.

“First, that he knew whoever killed him. Knew him well enough to let him into the apartment. And second, that the gun wasn’t in Jack’s possession on the night of the murder. He’d have gone for it otherwise. To protect himself.”

“Well,” I said, “no one
really
knows what happened in that apartment. Except the killer, of course...”

“And Jack. Who’s dead.”

“Yes, of course.”

There was another silence.

“Could I have a smidgin more of this?” she asked.

I took her glass and carried it to the bar.

“Bloom asked me a lot of questions that night,” she said.

“What night?”

“The night Jack was killed. I think he considered me a suspect.”

“They
have
to ask a lot of questions,” I said, and carried the drink back to her. “Especially of the family.”

“Is that why he wanted to know whether Dr. Jeffries and I had a thing going? Thanks,” she said, and took the glass.

“Dr. Jeffries?”

“My veterinarian. And Bloom’s word exactly. A
thing
. I guess he meant an affair. Wouldn’t you think he meant an affair?”

“I would suppose so.”

“With a man who’s seventy-five years old?”

“Well...”

“I realize I look mummified, but really—”

“You look nothing of the sort,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said, “you’re very kind. But Dr. Jeffries
is
considerably older than I am, and the idea of Bloom suggesting a
thing
with him...” She shook her head.

“He was undoubtedly checking your alibi,” I said.

“Because we were together, do you mean? On the night of the murder?”

“Yes.”

“And if we
were
lovers, of course, we would most certainly lie for each other.”

“I guess that’s what Bloom was thinking.”

“Or
with
each other,” she said.

“Sorry?”

“Lovers. Lying
with
each other. Or
on
each other, as the case might be.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We were watching television,” she said.

“So Bloom mentioned.”

“Did the thought occur to you as well?”

“Which thought is that?”

“That Ham and I might be lovers?”

“Ham?”

“Hamilton Jeffries. My vet.”

“Never occurred to me,” I said.

“Why? Because he’s seventy-five years old?”

“I didn’t know
how
old he was until you mentioned it.”

“But it never occurred to you, when Bloom was filling you in on where everyone was that night, that Ham and I
might
have
been covering for each other? That Ham and I
might
indeed be lovers?”

“No, that never occurred to me.”

“What if I told you we were?”

“Lovers? Or covering for each other?”

“Take your choice.”

“I would say you were suggesting complicity in murder, and you ought to be telling this to the police, not to me.”

“We were,” she said. “Lovers.
Past
tense. He was fifty-one, I was thirty-three. Nice age spread, wouldn’t you agree? My husband was more interested in cows than he was in me. Spent a lot of time running around for the Cattleman’s Association, Drew did, while I languished back at the ranch, swatting flies and wondering what the hell I was doing there in the middle of the wilderness.”

“This was—”

“Twenty-four years ago. Twenty-four plus thirty-three equals fifty-seven. Elementary, my dear Watson. Fifty-seven is what I am, remember? No, I guess you don’t. You once told me you’d already forgotten how old I was.”

“I remember how old you are,” I said softly.

She crossed her legs as though to emphasize the absurdity of discussing chronological age with a woman so emphatically beautiful. The white dress rode up over her knees, and there was a sudden flash of suntanned thigh. Her eyes met mine.

“Does it embarrass you to hear me talk about my youthful escapades?” she asked.

“Not particularly.”

“In that case,” she said, “
there
I was. Thirty-three years old, married for six years, and sitting on a cattle ranch while my dashing husband raced off to Denver and Tallahassee and God knows where else to talk about
cows
. I
hated
cows, still do, for that matter.
I don’t think I’d even
seen
a cow till I met Drew. Well, that’s an exaggeration. But it
was
an alien world to me. My father used to be an investment banker in Dayton, came down here to open his own bank. Calusa was still a fishing village then; you have no idea how beautiful it was, Matthew. Drew borrowed a sizable amount of money from my father. That’s how we met. I was a late bloomer, twenty-seven when I got married, didn’t have any children till I was thirty-four. If I’d been a heifer, they’d have sold me off in a minute. Anyway, there I was, alone on the M.K. one steamy night at the end of September, with a sick calf and Ham there to fix her. And to fix
me
as well. Am I shocking you, Matthew?”

“No.”

“He fixed me, all right. Delivered me straight out of boredom and loneliness into a rapture I hadn’t thought possible.” She sighed deeply. “‘But that was in another country,’” she said. “‘And besides, the wench is dead.’” She paused. “Marlowe,” she said. “
The Jew of Malta
, circa 1587. I used to read a lot while Drew was off talking cattle.”

“How long did it last? This...
thing
with Ham?”

“Are
you
checking my alibi, too? Or have I captured your interest?”

“I find you interesting, yes,” I said.

“I thought you did,” she said, and smiled over the rim of her glass and uncrossed her legs. There was the briefest flash of thigh. She sat with her legs slightly apart, fully aware of the intimate knowledge we shared: she was wearing nothing under that pristine white dress.

“Not too very long, I’m sorry to say, Ham and I. We fell in love in September, and it was already over by February. Short season, easy come, easy go. I settled down—isn’t that the expression one uses?—and became a faithful wife and loving mother, not necessarily in that order. Sunny was an August baby, full of rain, cried
day and night, I sometimes wanted to strangle her, sometimes wish I
had
. A lost cause, that girl. Jack came three years later, Drew’s son exactly, same dark hair and dark eyes, spitting image except for the swagger and bravado, in which departments he was sadly lacking. Which is maybe why he got rid of a gun he should have kept—and ended up dead for it. While
I
was watching television with a former lover.” She smiled wanly. “Why is it that people
watch
television,” she said, “whereas they go to
see
movies? Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘Let’s go
watch
a movie tonight’? Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘Let’s go
see
television tonight’? It’s peculiar the way language evolves, isn’t it? Or is the choice of words a qualitative one? Do people
watch
television only because there’s really nothing to
see
on it?”

She looked into her glass.

I had the feeling that the last little verbal exercise had served to transport her safely and easily from her past memories of Hamilton Jeffries and her present concern about a gun her son should have had in his apartment on the night he was killed. She kept staring into her glass.

“What makes you think he threw that gun away?” I asked.

“Well, it wasn’t
there
, was it?”

“Why would he have got rid of it?”

“Who knows? Maybe he robbed a bank to get that forty thousand dollars. Maybe he felt the gun would incriminate him. My son was a
dip
, Matthew—Sunny’s word for him. By the way, Bloom called me today, wanted to know whether Jack was in the habit of
spanking
Sunny. I couldn’t believe my ears.
Spanking?
He does come up with some good ones, your Bloom.”

I didn’t mention that Sunny was the one who’d come up with it.

“First he gives the third-degree to a pair of former lovers—”

“Former lovers, Veronica—”

“Yes, don’t say it. Can lie for each other through force of habit. No, Matthew. We really
were
watching television when my son let someone he knew into his apartment.”

“Who do you think the someone was?”

“I have no idea.”

“Sam Watson didn’t have a Spanish accent, did he?”

“My former manager?” She shook her head. “No. A Texas drawl, if anything.”