Lullaby of Murder (11 page)

“I used to pretend to myself that the reason she stayed with Tony was because he provided money to take care of me, but she started The Basil Pot with her inheritance from Granny and made lots of money herself…. Did you ever read a poem called
Isabella, or the Basil Pot
?”

“Morbid,” Julie said.

Eleanor smiled, a tight, wicked little smile, so that Julie could envision the child who made up stories about her stepfather. A child’s vengeance: It was something that would forever fascinate her. That was truly the loss of innocence, more surely than the instance of a child’s victimization.

“It isn’t that I didn’t try to like Tony or to make him like me. I’d come here summers sometimes, but after a week or so it just didn’t work. All this sounds as though I’m sorry for myself. I’m not, but I do take myself too seriously. You were right.”

Someone else must have said that, Julie thought, but she let it pass. She unfolded her legs.

“Please don’t go.”

“I ought to,” Julie said. “I was hoping Fran would come before I had to leave.”

“A little while longer,” Eleanor pleaded. Then an instant reversal: “Oh, damn it, go if you have to. I hate myself when I beg.”

Julie slipped off the bed and into her shoes. “We all beg sometimes. You shouldn’t hate yourself.”

“I feel like a child when I do it. I think of myself as a child, ugly, dirty-minded and whiny, something even a mother couldn’t love.”

“Maybe once you were an ugly duckling,” Julie said, “and you know what happened to her.”

“Was it a her?”

“Why not?”

Eleanor smiled. Her face was beautiful then, her eyes warm, intelligent. Julie held her hand out to her, her left hand to be clasped sidewise. Eleanor lifted it to her cheek, then brushed it with her lips.

Julie kissed the top of her head. Eleanor’s vein grew prominent in her shyness and need for affection. “What are you doing here in New York?” Julie asked. “Hasn’t school started?”

“Yes, but when Tony called and said my mother needed me, I got here as fast as I could.”

“When?”

“He called on Tuesday and I got here Wednesday. And wouldn’t you know, mother was furious? With
me
.”

“And did she need you?”

“Not so that she’d admit it at first…. Julie, can
she
hear me?” She nodded toward the detective.

“I doubt it. Just keep your voice down.”

“I’d kill myself if I thought they were using me to get information about mother.”

“I don’t think that’s what they’re about,” Julie said and sat down on the edge of Eleanor’s bed.

“Mother did need me even though she hated the idea. Tony didn’t come home at all Thursday night and I was there when she fell apart and the whole thing spilled out about Tony and this girl. But the way she told it…like it was something she didn’t think was real, a male menopause fantasy. Isn’t that something?”

“It happens,” Julie murmured almost under her breath.

“He was going to leave her, Julie. And the bastard used me to hold her up so he could get away. He wanted a divorce. She told me how she tried to follow him sometimes, to catch them together, and then she would run away at the last minute. She felt so humiliated she could have died.”

“Do the police know about this, Eleanor?”

“Maybe that’s why they took her away.”

“Did she know the person he was involved with?”

“I don’t think so. She said she didn’t want to know because it wasn’t going to last.”

And yet she had tried to follow them. Poor Fran, Julie thought. Then: did Jeff know? Did Alice Arthur know? It was Alice who’d said Tony hadn’t been at the Tripod lately. And Tim who had explained why: He was interested elsewhere. Did Tim know? She thought back to Thursday night: that was the night Alice said she thought he had stayed in the office. It was the night she herself had been there polishing the Butts story until almost eight. If Tony had returned he’d have had to sign in, and there would be a record.

If Tony had planned to leave Fran—and had called Eleanor home to be with her mother—then when, exactly had he intended to make the move? Had the whole scheme suddenly fallen apart on him? Target practice with Fran and a planned late dinner and show? If that wasn’t reconciliation, what was it?

“Eleanor, wouldn’t Fran have felt things were coming round in her favor yesterday? The dinner date and all?”

“And then what happened? He called to say he’d be an hour late and wanted Fran to know. He wanted me to call her. Why couldn’t he do it himself?”

“There must have been a reason.”

“There was. There was a woman with him in the office. I could hear whispering in the background.

“Have you told this to the police?”

“I don’t think they believed me.”

“She’d have had to sign in on the ground floor of the building,” Julie said.

“Not if she got there early enough.”

“That’s so,” Julie said. It sounded as though Eleanor might have reconnoitered. “Did Tony know you heard a voice in the background?”

“Probably.”

“Did you confront him with it? Did you tell him you heard the whispering?” And how could you tell the sex of a whisperer, Julie wondered.

“Certainly not. I didn’t want him using me.”

“For what?”

Eleanor threw out an impatient hand. “He wanted a divorce, didn’t he? I didn’t want him calling on me for a witness.”

As Julie took her departure, hearing the hollow clack of her heels reverberate through the silent apartment, she thought of the number of times Eleanor had spoken of being used. It would take even a Doctor Callahan years to work her way through Eleanor’s labyrinthine mind.

She was waiting for the elevator when Detective Lawler opened the door that Julie had just closed behind her. “Mrs. Hayes, Lieutenant Marks would like you to wait downstairs in the lobby till he gets here. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“G
IVE ME TEN MINUTES
upstairs?” Marks said on arrival. “Then I need your help on a few questions.”

“Where’s Mrs. Alexander?” Julie asked before committing herself.

“She’ll be home within the hour. Have you had dinner?”

“Is she out on bail or what?”

“You’re so dramatic,” Marks said mockingly. “There have been no arrests in the case as of this hour. How’s that?”

“It will have to do,” Julie said. Then: “I haven’t had dinner yet.”

“Then wait for me in that Volvo out front and think of someplace in the neighborhood that’s not too fancy.”

The doorman opened the car door for her. It was a glossy black monster of bustle vintage. The doorman stood a moment in admiration. “You don’t see many of these anymore, not in this condition. It reminds me of my Aunt Mary.” He patted his buttocks to show the area of association.

An early edition of Sunday’s
Daily
was on the seat. The headline read:
Alexander Murder a Family Affair?
In the semi-darkness she was able to read only the heading of the page three story:
Switch of Weapons at Gun Club Possible.

Julie closed her eyes and improvised a possible scenario: Assume the revolvers have been identified as
his
and
hers
by the registration numbers on the permits. Say Fran and Tony each tried out the other’s gun during practice. Mixed up fingerprints on both. Back at the office, while Tony locks the door and opens the copy box, Fran takes out her revolver—whether by design or accident—and hands it to Tony. He stores it away, etc. If Fran switched the guns intentionally, she could have returned with his gun, killed him, and left the weapon wherever the police had found it. She would then have unlocked the copy box with Tony’s key and taken her own gun back to the shop with her. Premeditated murder.

No, no, no. She turned her mind to Eleanor’s story and the case she seemed to be trying to make against herself. Tony, unless the murderer entered the office with him, would have had to open the door to his assailant—someone he either knew or expected. And if that person did not bring the murder weapon with them, Tony must have opened the copy box some time in there and taken out his own revolver. In anticipation of what? And under those circumstances, how had his assailant got hold of the gun?

Marks climbed into the car before the doorman could get round to his side.

“The Galway Bay,” Julie said. “It’s not too far.” She gave him the address.

“Why is that familiar to me? I don’t think I’ve been there.”

“It’s where I went to dinner with Mary Ryan last night—before we went to the funeral parlor next door.”

“Ah, yes.” He slipped the purring Volvo into gear. “You were right about your Mr. Butts going to the mayor’s party, weren’t you?”

“With City Councilman McCord. I went to see him this afternoon. He engineered the Garden of Roses deal—a favor to Phillips in the beginning. Old family friends.”

“But kosher,” Marks said.

“Apparently.”

“Don’t be disappointed. The only way to find the bad guys is to sort out the good guys.”

“I guess,” Julie said. “If the councilman’s right, as soon as Butts found out who Tony was at the party, he introduced himself to him. Then what?”

“Alexander invited him to the office to discuss the promotion of the marathon dance and what he could do to help.”

“At that hour? And when he was supposed to meet Fran?”

“He had to go back to the office for a reason which was probably not Butts. Allow the little man some exaggeration to add a few inches to his stature.”

“He needs them…. Lieutenant, I don’t believe Tony was that much interested in him and his whole set-up.”

Marks shook his head at her persistence.

“I guess I’m not qualified to judge that,” Julie said.

“As far as the police are concerned, we know Alexander went back to the office when he probably had not intended to, and when he got there he phoned a message to be passed on to Mrs. Alexander that he was delayed for an hour. According to Butts, Alexander kept him there longer than Butts wanted to stay. He was late arriving at his next destination. But he did arrive—among a crowd of witnesses, so that his alibi for the time of Alexander’s death is solid.”

“A crowd of witnesses?” Julie picked up.

“He went uptown to a Saturday night prayer meeting at Brother Joseph’s Temple.” Marks braked for a traffic light. He looked at Julie. “How does that fit in with your notion of Mr. Butts?”

“It fits.” Julie thought of the bible on Butts desk. “He’ll get Brother Joseph to preach the marathon. That’ll bring ’em in. I did a profile on Brother Joseph once. He believes that money is a divine grace.”

“Amen!” Marks said: Then: “Butts arrived at the temple in time for the hour of witnessing.”

“Pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Julie said.

“Well, yes. He discussed your story with Alexander, by the way. Alexander gave it to him to read, but not to keep. It was on the desk when Butts left. If he’s telling the truth.”

“Of course he’s telling the truth, a man of God.”

Marks made a sound of reproach. They turned onto Third Avenue. They were almost there.

It occurred to Julie that she had just sounded remarkably like Tony.

“
I’D FORGOTTEN ABOUT
the Irish and Saturday night,” Julie said when Marks slid into the booth opposite her. The bar was jammed. Several earnest conversations were going on at high decibel, about politics and politicians, local appointments, the New York Mets, and how things were going on the other side of the ocean. An enlarged photograph hung at the opposite end of the bar to the television set. Having given it some thought before, Julie realized that it was Bobby Sands, the I.R.A. martyr who had starved himself to death in prison.

“Your friend Mrs. Ryan seems to be a charming woman,” Marks said with a grin. “A little garrulous, from what I’ve been told, but very observant.”

“So I’ve been checked out,” Julie said when she made the connection.

“Out, but not off.”

“And Fran?”

Marks sighed deeply.

“What was the business about the overnight bag?”

“Look, Julie…Mrs. Hayes…”

“Julie is just fine, Lieutenant.”

Marks was held up by the arrival of their waiter. He ordered a double Scotch. “Or make it Bushmill.” Irish whisky.

“Much better,” the waiter said.

Julie ordered a vodka and tonic.

“I’ll answer your question, Julie. Then I’d like some answers from you. The inspector wanted to keep the two women apart until a few things were in place. Discrepancies are important. Mrs. Alexander agreed to go to a hotel. But I think when her lawyer got there he persuaded her to return home.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t party to their conversation,” Marks said with an edge, “but my guess is he wanted to force our next step. And we cooperated. We backed off. My turn now?”

Julie nodded.

“I’d like to know something about Eleanor.”

“So would I,” Julie said. “But I don’t understand Fran going to a hotel voluntarily. Or didn’t she know where she was going?”

Marks stared at her for most of a second, making it clear that he wasn’t going to explain the police gambit any further. “Let’s start with the attack on Alexander’s picture this afternoon. What was that all about?”

“I know someone who’d call it a mighty poor sense of reality,” Julie said. “With Tony already dead, why destroy the painting?”

“Does she have a history of violence?”

“She has a history of hating Tony, something she gave me a pretty willing account of this evening. But there has to be a story there that nobody’s ever wanted to talk about.”

Marks glanced toward the bar, impatient for his drink. “I have a feeling this is no place to be an outsider. Never mind. I have enough questions to keep us busy.”

“If I don’t get something to eat soon…” Julie put her hands to a very flat stomach.

“You won’t want it,” Marks finished her sentence. “It happens to me all too often. Was Alexander’s wife really devoted to him?”

“I think so.”

“Everybody says so. Enough to be dangerously jealous?”

“Sorry. I don’t know how to answer that one.”

“I don’t blame you. What is enough?”