Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery) (16 page)

“My memoirs,” he explained, following my glance.

“Is Lucy McDermott a starring character in them?”

“Not quite. Though necessarily she does have a minor part. I'm afraid I never cared much for her. Consequently, anything I may have to say about her may be rather twisted. I suppose I always blamed her for my wife's not loving me.” He shifted his gaze away from the yard to my face. “That's not fair really, you know, but it's always easier to put the blame on someone else.”

“You sound well aware of your prejudices.”

“Yes, I suppose I am.” He turned back to the view. “She was to blame in a very real way. I made a mistake when I allowed the situation to get the best of me and failed to handle it appropriately. Instead, I allowed myself to sulk childishly and, of course, lost my young wife's respect. I was not seasoned; my marriage to Jeannette was my first although I was almost forty-five years old. She was a very young, immature twenty-five. A charming girl, intelligent, but highly emotional. And so glib. Quite a match for myself in that respect. She was a great beauty, Rafferty.” He screwed up his eyes as if he were trying to bring a hovering vision of Jeannette in closer. “Vivid, sultry brunette, but with those deep, wistful, honest eyes like a child's that touched my soul so deeply it pained me at times.”

He paused and then sighed as if he had lost her. “Perhaps she married me because I seemed so experienced, so worldly. She cared for me the way one is fond of a funny old uncle. I knew when we married that she did not love me, not the way I wanted her to love me, but I felt that in time she would grow to. I hoped that, no I expected that our congeniality and special regard for each other would turn her fondness into love. Yes, I expected that.” His usual light cynicism had crept over the line into bitterness. I could see no trace of amusement in his profile. His eyes seemed set in a spell and looked far beyond the backyard wall into another time.

Suddenly the spell broke and he turned amused, twinkling eyes in my direction. “You must think me a foolish old man who would bare his soul so openly to you, a stranger, and forget why you are here. I am setting the stage for Lucy McDermott's entrance.

“You must remember that I was indeed expecting my marriage to live up to the fantasy I had built around it. Perhaps it would have.” He shrugged. “But I was never to know, for during that first year a mutual friend introduced my wife to Lucy and they formed a friendship that was actually quite enviable. They were inseparable. And constantly up to some mischief or another. Like a couple of children. The house was always full of laughter This did not exclude me,” he added parenthetically. “In those days I was given a part of the fun. And then, let me see—how did it happen? Ah, yes, Lucy was to be married to a boy who lived some distance away or was away for a long time—I can't remember the exact circumstance. A short period of time, perhaps two months, before the wedding, she was jilted. She received a letter stating that he had found another love, he was sorry, etc. You know the story. Within minutes Lucy was here, distraught. My God, the hysterics.” He paused as if the mere thought had made him weary.

“Anyway,” he went on, “I must admit that over the previous few months I had grown to like Lucy, although I must likewise admit that I was a trifle jealous of the time Jeannette spent with her. But I wasn't that jealous, so when Jeannette sprang the suggestion that Lucy move in with us, it was only with slight hesitation that I backed the invitation. Need I say that this was the turning point?

“Lucy was always a handsome woman, never a beauty like my Jeannette, but striking. There was something subtle about her attractiveness that at times gave the illusion that she was quite beautiful. I can't exactly describe the phenomenon, but it had to do with—I know this will sound ridiculous—it had to do with her loss of vitality. Usually she was an exuberant, energetic person. When that energy became drained, like when she was tired or melancholy, then she would be beautiful.”

He made a gesture of impatience. “It does sound ridiculous and it doesn't really matter. What was important about Lucy was her extremely compelling personality, her ability to make anyone like her. She could draw you into her web of confidence. You were certain that you were the only one who knew her secrets, and such exciting secrets they were. That was another of her attributes; she was able to tell the most insignificant event and make it sound as if it had never happened in quite the same, bizarre way that it had happened to her. She could entertain for hours with such stories, always managing to slip in a reminder that these things happened to her because she was a very special kind of person.”

André paused to smile a small, embarrassed smile. “I'm not above admitting that this could well have been where the rub was with Lucy and me. As you know, I like to talk, too. It's hard to put a finger on the whys and wherefores even in retrospect. But after Lucy was well established in the household, things began to change between me and Jeannette, and within Jeannette, Lucy, and myself separately. The only thing that remained intact and stronger than ever was the women's friendship. Jeannette and I became ill at ease with each other. We even had a few words on a couple of occasions, something that had never happened before. Jeannette became more emotional, at times sullen, withdrawn, but only with me, never with Lucy, for Lucy only became gayer. Once she got over her unrequited love, and she got over it rather faster than I expected, she developed quite a passion for life. Her energy was excessive. Her taste in clothes became less conservative. She began to wear tight, low-cut blacks or bright, loud colors. Her makeup was applied, more and more heavily until it got garish. I daresay her taste in people changed as well, but this I wouldn't know positively because I became consistently less welcome on any outings until I finally became the fifth wheel. I even began to feel like an outsider in my own house. Naturally, I was resentful of such a state of affairs, but I couldn't decide how to handle it, and so I sat on the sidelines and watched Lucy teach my wife how to be the chic sophisticate, how to live; in short, how to like her drinks, and other things as well, tall and strong.

“I soon became disgusted with myself for my lack of decision and action, and I was on the verge of doing something that I sensed was rash, although it isn't clear, if it ever was, exactly what that something was. But before I was able to take this course, Jeannette got pregnant. Her pregnancy was hard on her and she was forced to halt her activities after the fourth month. Lucy, of course, continued to ‘party,’ but this is not to say the friendship lessened any, only it gave Jeannette and me some time in which to repair our relationship. We were happier in those months than we had been for nearly a year before. Unfortunately, Jeannette's health worsened and she became more and more prone to deep depressions. She died giving me our daughter Lise.”

André had sunk back in the chair and was rocking it slowly back and forth as if he were in a fitful nostalgia. I felt that any comment would be trespassing on his memories and I hoped that he would not come back and realize with a shock that I had been there. It occurred to me that I was trying to shrivel into my chair and not breathe in my effort not to distract him. Finally I cleared my throat to ask a question I was more than vaguely curious about.

“Why didn't you let Lucy go then?”

He answered so fast that I felt foolish at having been silent for so long. “There I was, a man only a couple of years shy of fifty. I couldn't very well take care of an infant alone. Lucy had seemed as distraught as I over Jeannette's death, although I don't think she felt quite the same sense of loss. Anyway, I did need someone to take care of Lise and I didn't know anyone else. Lucy begged me for the charge. I asked myself if I could, in fairness, blame her for anything. After all, Jeannette had a mind of her own. And, too, wouldn't I only be admitting my childish jealousy over her friendship with Jeannette? I tossed it around for a while and in the end I decided to let her stay, provisionally, of course. It would have been petty to do otherwise. However, it turned out to be a good decision. She was very good with Lise. Lise seemed to love her, and Lucy stopped being such an obvious siren, although she was never short of boyfriends. But Miss McDermott was no fool.” He laughed with genuine amusement. “She wanted no part of any housework. She wanted to be my daughter's ersatz mother; she wanted to manage,” he slurred the words, “the household. Really,” he leaned sideways toward me confidentially, “I think she wanted to be the mistress of the household. But after I made it quite clear there was to be only one love in my life, my daughter, we stayed off each other's prospective ground and managed to live quite happily. Is she your chief suspect, too, Rafferty?"

I shrugged and envisioned Lucy as a siren once again. “Well, we do seem to be running out of characters in this case, but, no, I won't single her out for anything until I talk to her.” I asked him if he had any idea where Lucy would have gone or where she had come from.

“Lucy never, that I can remember, talked about her past,” he said. He furrowed his brow in thought. “I don't even remember her ever talking about relatives, if she had any. She may have told Lise something.” I almost stood up and kicked myself for not asking Lise about that. And, of course, now there was no way to contact her without a few days’ wait. I silently called myself the appropriate names. “I don't know if this will help,” André added, “but another one of her passions was for Florida. She continually made trips there during the twenty-odd years I knew her. She and my wife went together several times.”

“Do you know where in Florida?” I asked hopefully.

He shook his head. “No, Lucy never said where, unless, of course, she told Lise, and she and my wife went there during the time that Jeannette and I were estranged. Looks as if it's time for you to do some detecting, Mr. Detective,” he said playfully.

I couldn't have agreed more. “Do you know if Lucy owned a gun?” I asked, but in my heart I was back in Connecticut asking the same questions.

“That seems to be the question of the hour,” André remarked. “Yes, she did. Three or four years ago she got a bug and started carrying on something awful about how a woman wasn't safe on the streets anymore, and she went out and bought a gun for protection. The police, by the way, have extracted this information already.”

“I'm not competing with them. Do you know what caliber?” Once again I was hopeful.

“No, I never saw it, but she said before she bought it that she wanted a small one that wouldn't be heavy to carry around in her handbag.” A .22 would meet those specifications. “I remember because she carried on about it for days. But that was Lucy, always terribly dramatic.” He started on his cynical chuckle but I interrupted.

“And she didn't bother to show it to you after all the fuss?” He shook his head. That was rather puzzling. “How did she react when you dismissed her from her duties?” If I started talking like André I would sound pretentious, I thought.

“Oh, I'm afraid she was quite bitter. I believe she felt she was being thrown out of the only home she had ever known. I told her that I would be happy for her to stay, but that I simply couldn't afford to pay her anymore. I was able to give her a show of my appreciation, but it was rather small. She pulled her theatrics on me, crying about how she was too old to get a job, which was nonsense, and I told her so and told her to stay at least until she got settled into something. But Lise was talking about leaving even then, and I think the prospect of the two of us living here alone was as bleak to Miss McDermott as it was unsatisfactory to me, so she left.” He was beginning to look tired from his journey to the past.

“Did she know Stanley Garber twenty years ago?” It was my final question, but it was one too many.

“That I can't tell you,” André said with finality. I got up to leave having about as much feeling for myself as I'd have for a snake. I'd asked a question that had a No Trespassing on it since I had arrived, a question that I already knew the answer to. I thanked him, rather lamely I thought, for his time and the luncheon, but he assured me that he rather enjoyed our little chats, although he would prefer that I would come back when I had something more pleasant than murder on my mind.

I realized when I left why I had liked him even when he was giving me a hard time. He really was a fine old gent.

22

I Want to See Catherine

I drove straight to the Garber house. The notion that I was getting warm on Lucy McDermott's trail was pulling at the back of my brain. André's story had created a fairly substantial mental image of her for me which, because of Mrs. Parry's description and the long reddish hairs I'd found in the brush, was of the forty-five-year-old Lucy trying to revamp herself into the younger sophisticated Lucy, the Lucy who was Jeannette's friend. I realized that Mrs. Parry's tongue would be rough on anyone who didn't oil it with a little liquor. There was a missing link and I was counting on Catherine or Mrs. Garber holding it. All it would take would be a little coaxing, a tug on the memory string and I would be finding out for myself who Lucy McDermott was and what she'd been up to. The question was, would Mrs. Garber be up to even a gentle tug.

I scrambled from my car and bounded up the path, anxious to find my missing link, an extra pulse reminding me that I was even more anxious to see Catherine Garber.

The gloominess of the house shortened my stride. It seemed more closed off than before, like the window shades had been nailed down, not just pulled. I waited a long time for an answer before I went around to the back of the house and exercised my knuckles there. A bird fussed at me from the top of a tree in response.

A car came up the alley and pulled under the carport next door. As I turned, the lady at the wheel averted her eyes and got very busy unloading groceries. I stepped over but she pretended I wasn't there.

“Excuse me.” Her eyes darted like the sun glinting on a mirror and she ducked back into the car for her last package. “Have you see Mrs. Garber today?”