Beauty and the Beast

12

It was Friday morning already — December 4, 12:06 A.M. by my digital watch — when I called Bloom at home. I had visions of interrupting a sex scene between him and his wife; turnabout is fair play. Instead, he answered the phone in a fuzzy voice that told me he’d been dead asleep.

“Morrie,” I said, “this is Matthew.”

“Who?” he said.

“Matthew Hope.”

“Oh. Yeah,” he said. I suspected he was looking at his bedside clock. Or perhaps his wristwatch. Did Bloom wear his wristwatch to bed? Was it a fine digital watch like mine, with a little button you could press to illuminate the dial?

“Morrie,” I said, “I just had a very interesting talk with Kitty Reynolds.”

“Kitty who?”

“Reynolds.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“I thought you might have got to her by now.”

“Matthew, it’s midnight, past midnight, I was fast asleep. If you want to play games—”

“She and Andrew Owen were having a thing, Morrie. That’s why Sally divorced him.”

“Okay,” he said. “So?”

“There’s more.”

“Let me hear it,” he said.

I let him hear it All of it. The committee, the paintings, The Oreo — all of it. He listened without uttering a word. All I could hear on the phone was his level breathing. When I finished my recitation, he was still silent. I thought perhaps he’d fallen asleep on me.

“Morrie?” I said.

“I’m here,” he said.

“What do you think?”

“I think we ought to ask Lloyd Davis some questions,” he said.

Friday is always the longest day of the week.

This Friday — while I waited for the police to locate Lloyd Davis — was the longest of any Friday I could remember. I did not get back to the office after the closing at Tricity until almost ten-thirty, to find a couple named Ralph and Agnes West waiting in the reception room. The Wests were the nephew and niece-by-marriage of an elderly client who had died without leaving any truly close relatives; they had called me several times since his death to ask if they might come to the office to collect their share of the estate. I had told them each time they called essentially what I told them now. On the phone each time, it had taken four or five minutes. It now took almost an hour because both Ralph and Agnes West were (a) dense and (b) blindly determined not to be cheated out of their rightful share of the estate.

“There are a number of matters that must be taken care of before the estate can be distributed,” I repeated, by rote this time.

“What matters?” Ralph asked. He was a mean-looking man who had neglected to shave this morning. He sat with his knees pressed tightly together, as if he desperately needed to go to the bathroom. His wife, equally mean looking, her blonde hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head, sat beside him and nodded in affirmation.

“As I explained on the telephone,” I said, “there are probate proceedings, and notices to other heirs, and notices to creditors, and tax matters to be cleared up before distribution can be made.”

“That’s what you told us two weeks ago,” Ralph said, and Agnes nodded. “Uncle Jerry died on the thirteenth of November, Friday the thirteenth, this is already three weeks later, and we still ain’t got our money.”

“As I told you—”

“There’s a big sum of money involved here,” Ralph said, “and we aim to get it.” Agnes nodded.

“There’s ten thousand dollars in the estate,” I said, “and you’ll share it equally with the other heirs as soon as we can—”

“He shoulda left a will,” Ralph said to Agnes.

Agnes nodded.

“But he didn’t,” I said.

“Stupid old bastard,” Ralph said. “If he’da left a will, we wouldn’t be havin all them other people comin out of the woodwork.”

I was kind enough not to point out that Ralph and Agnes had themselves come out of the woodwork the moment they’d learned of dear Uncle Jerry’s death.

“So how long is this gonna take?” Ralph asked.

“Four to six months,” I said.

“What?” he said.

“What?” Agnes said.

“Four to six months,” I said.

“Jesus!” Ralph said, and Agnes nodded. “What the hell can possibly take that long?”

So — once again — I went through the entire rigmarole of probate, and notices to other heirs and creditors, and taxes to be paid from the estate, point by point, ticking off each point on my fingers, laying out the details slowly enough for even a pair of trained chimpanzees to have understood, and Ralph kept shaking his head and Agnes kept nodding and by the time I finally got them out of my office it was eleven-twenty and Cynthia buzzed to say that Attorney Hager was waiting on five.

Attorney Hager was a lawyer in Maine who had obtained a judgment there for $50,000 against a man who was now living in Calusa; he wanted my assistance in collecting. I told him to send me the papers so that I could file the judgment here, and I assured him I’d do my best to see that it was satisfied. I then took a call from a local author who had written a book that had sold a modest twelve thousand copies and who had not received a penny beyond the minuscule advance from his publishers, a New York City firm that had ignored his numerous requests for accounting and further payment. I told him that as a preliminary move I would write to them demanding accounting and payment — well, what I actually said was, “Don’t worry, I’ll get on their asses.”

Cynthia buzzed ten minutes later.

“There’s a wandering gypsy lady on six,” she said.

“What?”

“That’s how she announced herself. A wandering gypsy lady. From Mexico City. She sounds a lot like your daughter Joanna.”

I stabbed at the lighted button.

“Joanna?” I said. “Are you all right?”

“Who told you it was me?” Joanna said.

“Cynthia guessed. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, but we miss you. Also, all the cab drivers in Mexico City are rip-off artists. And it was a feast day or something when we went to the museum — the big archaeological museum you’re not supposed to miss, you know? — and there were no English-speaking guides and everything was in Spanish. I should be taking Spanish in school, Dad, and not French like you insisted.”

“As I insisted.”

“Yeah, as. We miss you to death, Dad, me and Dale.”

I knew better than to correct the “me and Dale.” There were young people with Ph.D.’s in comparative literature who still used the “me and” locution.

“How is she? Dale.”

“Oh, fine, Dad, she’s a real sweetie pie. We had such a fun time at Xochimilco yesterday, that’s where they have these little boats all decorated with flowers, you know? And you get rowed through these canals, well, poled, actually, the guys on the boats have these long poles they shove the boats through the water — Dad, guess what! One of the boats was Joanna! They all have names, you know, and Joanna was on one of the boats! Not Dale, though. I mean, not her name on any of the boats. She took a picture of the one with my name on it. Neat, huh?”

“Very neat,” I said. “Is she there with you? Can I talk to her?”

“May I talk to her, Dad,” she said, and I could swear she was grinning from ear to ear in grammatical triumph. “Just a sec.”

I waited.

“Hi,” Dale said.

“You okay?”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“The reason we’re calling—”

“I thought it was because you were desperate for the sound of my voice.”

“Oh, sure, that, too,” Dale said. “But I also thought I’d remind you we’re on Delta’s flight two thirty-three tomorrow, arriving in Calusa at 4:05 P.M.”

“I’ve got it on my calendar,” I said. “And also emblazoned on my forehead.”

“I truly do miss you, Matthew,” she said.

“Me, too,” I said. “Dale, the phone’s lighting up again. Hurry home.”

“Delta number two thirty-three,” Dale said.

It was already high noon on the longest day of my life.

Morrie Bloom did not call until eight o’clock that night. He caught me at home.

“Matthew,” he said, “we’ve got Davis here in Calusa. What we did, we called him in Miami and said we were trying to nail down some points about Harper’s alibi and would appreciate it if he could come here to help us. Said we’d pay his air fare, put him up in a motel here, the whole red-carpet routine. He fell for it — which is in itself suspicious, am I right? I mean, why didn’t he tell us to come down there if we wanted to talk to him? Anyway, he’s here now, at a place on the South Trail, and he’ll be in tomorrow morning at eleven sharp. I asked him, incidentally, if he’d mind Harper’s attorney sitting in on the questioning, and he said he’d be more than happy to confirm everything he told you in Miami. Now, Matthew, here’s the problem. We can’t charge him with anything, he’s here as a voluntary witness, and besides we don’t know if he did anything yet. At the same time, in case we hit pay dirt, I want a record of everything he tells us. I could wear a wire, be the easiest thing in the world to tape him that way. I don’t think he’d suspect a bug, do you? But wire or not, the guy’s not going to say anything incriminating unless we lead him down the garden, do you follow me, Matthew?”

“Not entirely,” I said.

“Well, here’s what I think. I think we’re smarter than he is, and I think we can work out a Mutt-and-Jeff routine that’ll get him to open up. Can you be here tomorrow morning at ten? To work it all out, I mean.”

Davis greeted me warmly, and even apologized in advance for what he was about to confirm to the police, the fact that he had not seen his friend George Harper in Miami on the Sunday he’d claimed to have been there. I told him he had to speak the truth as he saw it, and I thanked him for coming to Calusa at Bloom’s request. If Harper was indeed guilty, I said (lying like a professional Mutt), a guilty plea was often better advised than a stubborn claim of innocence. Bloom and I had worked out our strategy in detail, but I still felt we were about to perform a daring trapeze act without a net. One slip, and Davis would bound out of the tent.

“Well, why don’t we begin then?” Bloom asked in the genial guise of Jeff.

“I think you should first read Mr. Davis his rights,” I said.

“What for?” Bloom said.

“If you’re going to use any of this at the trial—”

“Any of what? We’re not even taping him, Matthew. All we’re trying to find out is whether he can substantiate Harper’s alibi.”

“I still think he should be protected.”

“Against what?” Bloom asked.

“Against the police later claiming Mr. Davis said something he might not have said. Look, it’s up to Mr. Davis. If I were in his position, though, I’d ask you to read me my rights.”

“Look, I’ll read them, I know them by heart,” Bloom said. “But I think it’s a waste of time.”

“Are you going to be taping what he says?”

“I just told you no.”

I looked at him skeptically.

“Why?” Bloom said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“There won’t be any record, that’s all.”

“I don’t need a record,” Bloom said. “I just want to ask the man a few questions.”

“What about his record?” I said.

“His record?”

“Doesn’t he need a record of what he says here? In case he’s later misquoted.”

“We’re not taking a deposition here,” Bloom said. “The man’s not under oath. Save all this crap for later, will you?”

“Look, do what you want to,” I said. “I just thought I’d mention it, that’s all.”

Davis looked at me, and then he looked at Bloom.

“Maybe I ought to have a record of what I say here,” he said.

“If you want us to tape it, we’ll tape it,” Bloom said, and sighed, and went to the door. “Charlie,” he yelled, “bring in the Sony, will you?”

“And I think maybe you ought to read me my rights, too,” Davis said.

“Whatever you say,” Bloom said. “You know, Matthew, I did you a favor asking you here, I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of a few lousy questions.”

“I just don’t like to see anyone’s rights violated,” I said.

“Let’s just get it over with, okay?” Bloom said, and shook his head.

Charlie — a cherubic-faced uniformed cop — brought in the tape recorder and put it on the desk. Bloom turned it on, tested it, read Davis his rights from top to bottom, got his confirmation that he was willing to answer questions without an attorney present on his behalf, and then said to me, “Okay, counselor?”

“Fine,” I said.

The trap was set.

“Mr. Davis,” Bloom said, “George Harper claims he went to your home on Sunday morning, November fifteenth, looking for you. He further states that you were not there when he arrived, and that your wife told him you were off with the army reserve.”

“That’s what I understand she told him,” Davis said.

“It’s important that we pinpoint his whereabouts on that weekend because, as you know, his wife was murdered on Monday, the sixteenth.”

“Yes.”

“But you say you didn’t see him that Sunday, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Where were you, Mr. Davis?”

“With the army. At Vero Beach.”

“All day Sunday?”

“No, sir, not all day. I wasn’t feeling good, so I asked if I could be excused for the rest of the weekend.”

He had just made his first mistake. According to Palmer, the sergeant at Miami recruiting, Davis had taken a phone call at 9:00 A.M. that Sunday, and had asked to be excused because of “an emergency at home.”

“What time would that have been, Mr. Davis?” Bloom asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Nine, ten in the morning?”

“Is that when you left Vero Beach?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How?”

“I had my car there.”

“Where did you go from Vero Beach?”

“Home.”

“To Miami?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And got there at what time?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Eleven? Eleven-thirty? I’m really not sure.”

“Was your wife there when you got home?”

“Yes, she was.”

“Did she tell you that Mr. Harper had been there?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Did you see Mr. Harper at any time that Sunday?”

“No, sir.”

“Mr. Harper claims he went looking for you in Pompano and later at Vero Beach. Did you see him at either of those places?”

“No, sir.”

“Were you in Miami on Monday as well?”

“I was.”

“Did you see Mr. Harper at any time Monday?”

“No, I did not.”

“Because, you see, Mr. Harper says he was eager to see you, and that he spent all day Sunday and Monday looking for you. Claims he didn’t come back to Calusa until Tuesday morning, after he’d heard news of his wife’s murder.”

“Well,” Davis said, “if I’d beaten up my wife on Sunday and then killed her on Monday, I’d say I was nowhere near Calusa, too.”

He had just made his second mistake. Not anywhere — not in the newspaper reports, not in the television or radio broadcasts — had there been the slightest mention of Michelle having been brutally beaten on the night before her murder. I caught the mistake, and I knew at once that Bloom had caught it as well; a slight lifting of just one eyebrow transmitted the intelligence to me.

“Where were you on Thanksgiving Day, Mr. Davis?” Bloom asked gently.

“Miami.”

“That’s the day Harper broke jail, you know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He claims he went to Miami looking for you again.”

“Can’t understand why he couldn’t find me. That’s where I was.”

“Until when?”

“Until last night, when you called and asked if I’d come up here to talk to you.”

“In other words, you’ve been in Miami ever since you left Vero Beach on the fifteenth of November.”

“Right there in Miami,” Davis said, and nodded.

“And you never saw Mr. Harper there on any of the days he claims he was looking for you?”

“No sir, I never saw him.”

“Well, that’s that,” Bloom said, and turned to me. “Your man claims he was trying to find him, and here’s Mr. Davis telling us he was there all the time, so how come he couldn’t find him?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said, and sighed.

“You want to ask any questions?”

“I couldn’t do that without Mr. Davis’s permission.”

“Stop worrying about his rights, will you please? I read him his rights, he can stop this thing anytime he wants to. Do you want to ask him any questions, or don’t you?”

“If it’s all right with you, Mr. Davis?”

“Sure,” Davis said.

“Okay, Morrie?”

“Be my guest.”

“Mr. Davis, were you in Miami this past Wednesday?”

“Wednesday?”

“That would’ve been... what’s today, Morrie?”

“The fifth,” Bloom said.

“That would’ve been the second,” I said. “Wednesday, the second.”

“Yes, I was there,” Davis said.

“At home?”

“Working, yes.”

“Out back in the garage? Where I spoke to you when—”

“That’s my place of business, yes.”

“And you were there this past Wednesday, you say?”

“Matthew,” Bloom said, “the man just told us he’s been in Miami ever since he got back from Vero Beach. He didn’t leave Miami till last night, after I called him.”

“I was just wondering—”

“I mean, if you’re going to ask the man questions that cover ground we already went over—”

“From what time to what time were you there at the house, Mr. Davis?”

“All day,” Davis said.

He had just made his third mistake. I’d been in Miami Wednesday, at Davis’s house, talking to his wife Leona, and there hadn’t been hide nor hair of him anywhere. I decided to pinpoint it.

“Were you there at five-thirty, six o’clock?”

“All day,” he said again. “Well, wait, I went out for a sandwich at lunchtime.”

“But other than that...”

“I was there all day.”

“I must have missed you,” I said.

“What?”

“I was there on Wednesday, talking to your wife at about five-thirty, just as the sun was going down. I didn’t see you there, Mr. Davis.”

He looked at me.

“Then you’re right,” he said, “you must’ve missed me.”

“Did your wife tell you I’d been there?”

“No.”

“That’s strange, isn’t it? If you were in Miami on Wednesday, and I missed you when I was at the house, wouldn’t your wife have told you I was there?”

“Sometimes she tells me, sometimes she doesn’t.”

“But she told you Harper was there on Sunday the fifteenth, right? When you got back to the house after leaving Vero Beach.”

“Yes, that’s what she told me.”

“And you’ve been in Miami all this time?”

“Until last night, when I got the call from Detective Bloom here.”

“You didn’t come to Calusa, did you, at any time during...?”

“No, sir, I did not.”

“Then how did you know Michelle Harper was brutally beaten on the night of Sunday the fifteenth?”

He hesitated, suddenly wary of me, and undecided as to whether he should brazen it out or simply shut up. He decided to risk a head-on collision. That was his final mistake.

“Sally told me,” he said.

“Sally?”

“Owen. She called to talk to my wife, but Leona was out someplace, so she talked to me instead.”

“When was that, Mr. Davis?”

“Monday sometime, I guess.”

“The day Michelle was murdered?”

“I guess.”

“Well, was it or wasn’t it?”

“Who remembers? Listen, what is this, would you mind telling me? I come up here to lend a hand, and next thing I know—”

“He’s right, Matthew,” Bloom said. “I don’t like this tack you’re on. If I realized for a minute you were going to put the man through a third—”

“Thanks, Detective Bloom,” Davis said, turning to him at once, and nodding righteously. He still didn’t know there were two of us tracking his spoor, still didn’t know that Bloom was also waiting in the bushes to pounce.

“Would you like to call this off?” Bloom asked him.

“He can certainly stop answering questions if he wishes to,” I said.

“That’s right, Mr. Davis,” Bloom said, picking up on it immediately. “Nobody’s going to start thinking of you as a suspect here, instead of a friendly witness, if you decide to call off the questioning. That’s your right, Mr. Davis. You can stop answering questions here anytime you like.”

Bloom had just performed a triple somersault in midair and had caught the trapeze bar just before heading for a fall. According to the rules of Miranda-Escobedo, a police officer interrogating anyone isn’t supposed to offer any advice (and certainly not threats) as to whether a person should seek counsel, or answer questions, or stop answering questions, or even blow his nose, for that matter. Bloom hadn’t given Davis any advice at all, telling him only that he could stop answering questions whenever he wanted to, which was merely a repetition of the rights he’d earlier read to him. Nor had I openly suggested that a refusal to answer any further questions would constitute a presumption of guilt. All was innuendo in the sly little game of Mutt-and-Jeff we were playing. And try to prove innuendo on a played-back tape. But the seed had been planted.

“Shit,” Davis said. “I came up here to answer questions about Georgie, and now—”

“Of course, you did,” Bloom said.

“So what should I do?”

“About what?”

“Should I answer his questions?”

“I’m not permitted to give you advice on that,” Bloom said, covering himself again, everything neat and clean, everything in accordance with the Supreme Court decision.

Davis looked me straight in the eye.

“Sally Owen called on the Monday Michelle was murdered, yes,” he said.

“What time, would you remember?”

“Sometime in the morning.”

“How early?”

“Not too early. Eight o’clock or thereabouts.”

“And told you Michelle had been beaten up the night before?”

“Yes. Actually, she wanted to tell this to Leona, you understand, but Leona was out—”

“At eight in the morning?”

“Well... yes. We needed... orange juice. For breakfast. She ran out for some orange juice.”

“Which is when Sally Owen called.”

“Yes.”

“And told you all about Michelle’s beating.”

“Yes.”

“Did she tell you George Harper had been the one who’d beaten his wife?”

“Yes.”

“How’d she know this?”

“Michelle told her.”

“At eight in the morning?”

“I guess so. If Sally called at eight...”

“Then Michelle must have told her this before eight, isn’t that right?”

“I suppose so.”

He was lying like a used-car salesman. In my office that Monday morning, Michelle had told me she’d gone to see Sally Owen at nine o’clock. Sally couldn’t have known about the beating by eight, and neither could Davis. Unless—

“How well did you know Sally Owen?”

“Not particularly well.”

“But she chose to reveal this to you?”

“Well, she wanted to talk to Leona, actually.”

“But she settled for you.”

“Well, yes. Any port in a storm, right?” he said, and smiled.

“Did you know Sally well enough to have posed for her?”

“Posed for her?”

“For a painting she made?”

“A what?”

“In black-and-white?”

“I don’t know what you—”

“A painting of Michelle Harper going down on you,” Bloom said suddenly and flatly, and Davis realized in that moment that it had been a trap all along, even his friend and ally was in on the hunt, and the hounds were barking at his heels.

“What... what... makes you think Michelle would ever have... have...?”

“A woman named Kitty Reynolds was there the night Sally made her sketch,” Bloom said, no longer the friendly Jeff, hard as nails now, fire in his eyes and molten steel running through his veins. Davis looked into those eyes and must have known the party was over. But he hung in there, anyway.

“I don’t even know anybody named Kitty Reynolds,” he said.

“Why’d you leave Vero Beach?” Bloom snapped.

“I was sick, I told you.”

“Who phoned you there Sunday morning?”

“Phoned me? Nobody. Who says—”

“Your first sergeant says you got a call there at nine o’clock on Sunday morning. Who was that, Mr. Davis? Was it Michelle Harper?”

“Michelle? I hardly even knew Mi—”

“Calling to say she’d spilled the beans the night before?”

“No, no. Why would—”

“Calling to say her husband was on his way to Miami—”

“No, hey listen—”

“...looking for you?”

“No, that’s wrong. Really, that’s—”

“Looking to kill you, Mr. Davis?”

Davis said nothing.

“Were you afraid he’d found out about The Oreo, Mr. Davis?”

Davis still said nothing.

“Afraid he’d kill you because he knew about The Oreo?”

He was silent a moment longer. Then he said, “Oh, Jesus.”

“Was it Michelle who called to warn you?”

“Oh, Jesus,” he said again, and then, almost as if he were glad to have it over with at last, he buried his face in his hands the way Harper had done in this same office almost three weeks earlier, and began weeping as he told us all of it from the beginning.

The tape unwound unmercifully, and the recent past was suddenly the immediate present.