Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

Splitting Heirs by George Baxt

EQMM author George Baxt is becoming well known on the international literary scene of late, with the German translation of his novel The Greta Garbo Murder Case featured at the Frankfurt Book Fair and several other novels scheduled for foreign language publication. Here he treats a theme and characters only L.A. could provide...

Devotees of the obituaries in the Los Angeles Times (and they are legion) were titillated one Friday morning to read this one:

The mistress, who had a mental problem, was not amused, but the widow’s friends, acquaintances, and patients showered her with luncheon, dinner, and breakfast invitations and phoned to praise her audacious bravery. It was standing room only at his funeral and the Times sent a photographer. The widow sat in a front pew with her best friend, Maxwell Trumpet, an occasional writer for television soap operas whose own mountain of debts was all he had in common with the deceased.

Reverend Wister, said to be a descendant of Owen Wister, who had written the Western classic The Virginian, knew it was hopeless to eulogize the deceased as the obituary had itself become a classic within two days of its first publication, albeit it had been denounced by the pope and the Chinese Central Committee. Ruth Bennett had hoped there might be television or movie interest, but none had come forth to date, and she was still hopelessly mired in that pile of debts her husband had amassed and left as his dubious legacy.

Ruth and her friend Maxwell groaned as they heard the reverend extolling the late Armand as a respected certified public accountant (“Who had a problem with figures,” Ruth felt like shouting) who was a fine golfer and excelled at fly-fishing and contributed to the community chest. Said Ruth in a whisper to Maxwell, “I wish I knew how many community chests he’s contributed to.” Maxwell giggled and Ruth squeezed his hand. Good old Maxwell, thought Ruth as the reverend droned on about Armand’s good taste in neckwear, you can always count on good old Maxwell. He’s deeper in hock than even I am, and she was touched when he offered to pawn his late mother’s silver service to help defray the funeral costs. She squeezed his hand again and Maxwell wondered as he had wondered for over two decades if now there was some hope she’d go to bed with him.

Ruth’s thoughts were dwelling on the day Armand keeled over and the police arrived with the ambulance. One policeman questioned her and admired her for skillfully masking her bereavement. There was a tray of chocolates on the coffee table and she popped one in her mouth when he asked her, “Did your husband have a history of heart disease?”

“Not really,” said Ruth as she munched away. “He had a small disturbance about five years ago, but I always suspected it was indigestion. He liked to eat in exotic places, you know: Star of India, Mandarin Dynasty, McDonald’s.” She added with a sigh as she picked at a piece of caramel caught between two teeth, “Only last Monday I tested his heart and his blood pressure. Everything was quite normal then.”

“You’re your husband’s physician?”

“Yes. It’s cheaper.”

“And you signed the death certificate?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that a little unorthodox?”

“Why? We also have — had — a joint bank account.”

A real charmer, thought the policeman, whose name was Aubrey Winthrop. She also had great legs and a pretty face. Maxwell arrived as Armand’s body was being carried out of the apartment. Ruth accepted his hug as Aubrey wondered if there was anything going on between the two of them. But after further examination of Maxwell as he heard him consoling the widow, he decided they were just good friends, Maxwell having the kind of unappealing physical qualities that would consign him to the role of “good friend” for eternity.

Maxwell said to the policeman, “Forgive me for intruding, but the doctor and her husband and I have been good friends for many years. His death is a terrible shock. Why, only yesterday he crowed about swimming twenty lengths in his club’s swimming pool.”

The policeman clucked his tongue and said to Ruth, “Will you authorize an autopsy?”

“What for?”

“Some families permit an autopsy, especially in the case of a sudden, unexpected death.”

“Young man,” said Ruth authoritatively, “there is no such thing as sudden, unexpected death in my private canon. As a doctor, I know that death can strike at any time. Death is unavoidable. It comes to all of us. My husband always said he thought he’d die young.”

Maxwell agreed wistfully. “Yes, he always thought he would. The way he lived life to the hilt: drinking, eating, whor...” he caught himself, “...worn out by high living...”

“...And snorting crack,” said Ruth matter-of-factly.

Aubrey shot her a quizzical look and then decided against further investigation of her statement. He suspected she was pulling his leg. He wished he could pull hers.

A few days after the funeral, Ruth and Maxwell were brunching on the porch of a restaurant in West Hollywood. The topic under discussion was always a pressing one, their financial state. “Thank God for Armand’s insurance,” said Ruth as she bit into a buttered bagel. “It was even more than I dreamt. It’ll cover the funeral, the payments on the apartment, I can settle some of his debts, and...” she went suddenly silent. The way she looked, he was afraid she was about to go teary on him.

“What’s wrong, Ruth?”

“That cow he was seeing.”

“You’ve found out who she is?”

“She could be one of half a dozen. I’ve been through his papers, his address book, his Rolodex at the office. How that bastard covered his tracks! But I’ll tell you this — and may he burn in hell — he bought her an awful lot of expensive trinkets. And I have to pay for them.” She sipped her Bloody Mary. “She was madly in love with him.”

“How do you know that, if you don’t know who she is?”

“She sent him notes. I found some hidden away in the drawer where he kept his sports shirts.” There was a small smile on her face. “I don’t blame him for keeping them.”

“Gee Ruth, that’s very generous of you.”

“They said things I never said to him. I’m a doctor. I’m clinical. Cool. Self-contained.”

“You’re beautiful. You’re very beautiful.”

She shrugged. “The notes are all heat and passion. I was never like that with him. There’s nothing special about me. Not as a doctor. Not as a woman. But I loved Armand, I guess I just didn’t tell him often enough.”

“Did he tell you often enough?”

“Occasionally. We married very young. We were both innocent, unsophisticated, but we wanted each other desperately. And after five or six years, it began to wear off. Maybe if I’d been able to have children. But oh, what the hell, that’s in the past. Armand is dead. The insurance has me solvent again. I can hold my head up again. But once that money’s gone...? Who knows. What a way to live.”

“You should work at increasing your practice. You say you don’t meet expenses...?”

“That’s right. I don’t. I don’t specialize. Maybe if I had gone in for pediatrics...”

“It’s not too late, is it?”

“Right now, I have no enthusiasm for anything but this Bloody Mary. What about you, Maxwell? I can help you with a little cash. I won’t have much after I square all the debts.”

“Oh no no no. I can manage. I’m substituting for four weeks on Where Are My Children? They’re doing a leprosy story. I’ve got the hero at a leper colony off the coast of Madagascar and I’m going to keep him there until he’s found by Mike Wallace and he gets on Sixty Minutes and wins a five-million-dollar advance for his story from Simon and Schuster.”

“Sounds like fun.” She smiled. “And then what?”

“And then I pray my agent finds me something else. Oh God, why do I kid myself. I’m too old-for this town. They don’t want writers over thirty. They don’t want anybody over thirty. I have grey hair.”

“You’re a good writer.”

“There are plenty of so-called good writers in this town. Ah, let’s not get morbid. What we need are some laughs. We need Betsy Bering!”

“And who is Betsy Bering? She’s a new one on me!”

“She’s a nut I met when I was having breakfast the other morning at Angelo’s. I’d seen her there a few times and then we finally struck up a conversation. She’s a very funny lady. Very eccentric. And I suspect she’s very rich.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Her jewels. Very rich. I’ve been to her apartment.”

“Oh? Has it gone that far?”

“Don’t be cute. She invited me to tea. For want of anything better to do, I went.”

“Is she pretty? How old?”

“She’s pretty and she’s probably late thirties, early forties. She saw us at Armand’s funeral.”

Ruth’s eyebrows arched. “What was she doing at the funeral?”

He laughed. “The obituary. She thought it was so funny and she figured you probably wrote it, and it’s her kind of off-the-wall humor, so she wanted to see what you looked like. Anyway, she likes funerals.”

“One of those.”

“She called some local funeral parlors and finally found Dume Brothers, and they told her where and when the services were taking place.”

“Did she talk to me? Some strangers paid their condolences. I don’t remember any pretty woman, though.”

“She was going to, and then she decided not to. You were surrounded by so many friends.”

“Friends,” said Ruth with a snort. “That flood of invitations has certainly trickled down to a faucet drip.”

“You refused so many of them.”

“They were mostly his friends. You’re my only real friend, Maxwell.”

“I love you very much, Ruth. I wish you’d...”

She interrupted him abruptly. “Don’t. Please don’t. I’m not ready.”

He blinked his eyes rapidly and then said, “Betsy Bering asked me to bring you for drinks tonight. Say yes. I think you’ll enjoy her. She’s something new, someone fresh.”

“Does she do anything? Does she have a profession? Was she or is she married?”

“She’s divorced, a couple of years ago. She got a lot.”

“That’s what she told you.”

“I’ve got no reason to disbelieve her. What do you say?”

Betsy Bering lived in a very exclusive apartment building in Beverly Hills. Her apartment was simply, albeit tastefully furnished. It had two bedrooms and two full baths. The guest bedroom had a desk in it, and on the desk was a word processor that looked as though it was in frequent operation.

“I’m trying to write a novel,” explained Betsy after giving Ruth the tour and mixing vodka martinis. “You know, something awful that’ll become an instant bestseller like that Steel woman and Ivana. I read dozens of them before plunging in on my own, but they’ve left me intellectually paralyzed. Like when I go shopping, I find myself thinking in terms of heavy-breathing prose.”

“Such as?” prodded Ruth.

“Well, such as this.” Betsy got to her feet, breathed heavily, and then spoke in what she hoped were seductive tones. “ ‘Elvira entered Bullocks. Once inside, her chest was out of control. It took on a life all its own. He was there. The clerk at the ribbon counter. He didn’t belong there. Elvira could see him galloping across the desert, his steed snorting and puffing, ahead of him the oasis where Fatima awaited him. Instead he was measuring yards of ribbon for a middle-aged matron who was oblivious to his magnificent looks. Why was he a clerk at Bullocks?’ ” Betsy stood against a wall; her chest rising and falling like an ocean tide running amok. “ ‘Was he a spy? Had he been placed there by Macy’s?’ ” She burst into laughter. “It’s no use. I sit at that damned processor trying to write this stuff, but I can’t do it.”

Said Ruth, “My husband read those things. He doted on them.”

“Millions read them,” said Maxwell. “And like you, Betsy, I wish I could write them. I’m having enough trouble with my leper. The network warned me against anything falling off, you know, like his nose or his index fingers. Soap audiences don’t go for that sort of thing. They don’t mind suicides, car crashes, or latent homosexuals... but they draw the line at sophisticated physical disability.”

Soon the three were heavy into a discussion of mediocre writing. This led to another round of drinks and then the decision to dine together, and within a few weeks, Ruth, Betsy, and Maxwell were phoning each other daily, sometimes twice and three times. They learned that Betsy had come to Los Angeles from Toronto three years earlier following her divorce from a lawyer who not only came from wealth, but amassed a fortune of his own from representing a number of well-heeled shady characters, including a number of Caribbean dictators and South American drug dealers.

The three became inseparable, and soon, when Betsy realized Ruth and Maxwell were strapped for money, she insisted on helping. Ruth accepted Betsy’s contributions with alacrity, saying to Maxwell in private, “Well after all, Maxwell, Albert Schweitzer accepted donations.”

Betsy seemed to enjoy showering them with largess, though this largess never came in big sums. It was a tenner here, a twenty-dollar bill there, and once she let Ruth try on her tiara, a gift, she claimed, from a prime minister of Canada.

One afternoon, when Maxwell was busy at a television studio pitching an idea to a twenty-four-year-old production genius who ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches washed down with spring water, Betsy and Ruth were in Ruth’s apartment and the talk got around to the men in their lives.

Ruth asked, “The prime minister. Was it Massey? Were you very much in love with him?”

“Who? Massey?” Betsy seemed to be caught unawares. “Oh. Him. No. I promised him never to talk about him.” She sounded so reverential, Ruth wondered if she meant hymn. “The great love of my life is dead. And there will never be anyone to replace him. Never.”

Ruth cleared her throat. “I’ve never known a great love.”

“Armand wasn’t the great love of your life?”

“He was a fine person. He was fun at first. But I like to think there’s someone out there looking for someone like me.”

Betsy was fingering the strand of pearls around her neck. “You were married to him for twenty years and he was never ever your great love? Not even a great lover?”

“I have no way of making a comparison. He was the only man in my life. Like I told you, I was young, naive, and a slow starter. After the first three years of our marriage, it was Armand who accelerated, and I found myself marooned in a perpetual cloud of dust left by my accelerated husband.”

“How you must have hated him.”

“Oh no!” Ruth was quick to defend herself. “I never hated him. I don’t think I could have gone on living with him if I hated him. There were people in the past whom I grew to hate, but I dropped them. I don’t tolerate hatred, not in myself, not in anyone else.”

“Do you suppose you might grow to hate me?”

“Oh Betsy, what an awful thing to ask!”

One night at dinner at Betsy’s the hostess said to her two guests, “I have something to tell you.” She poured brandies and led them to the sofa and easy chairs. Comfortably seated, Betsy said, “You’re my two best friends. In fact, next to my lawyer, Bartlett Campbell, you’re the only people I trust. I have come to love you both. So I want you to know that I have made a new will, and you, my dear friends, are my sole beneficiaries.”

Maxwell heard Ruth gasp as he felt the blood rush to his cheeks. My God, he was thinking, how can you tell a poverty-stricken writer, one who deserves to be declared a disaster area, that he’s now the heir to a share of a great fortune. Ruth was struck dumb. The insurance money was long gone, and she was too shy and embarrassed to ask Betsy to increase her generosity.

“Oh, my poor darlings, this is such a shock. I didn’t mean it to be. I wanted to make you happy!” She lowered her voice. “I have no relatives; you see. I’m alone in the world. And, well...” she arose dramatically and positioned herself against double doors that led to a balcony that afforded a magnificent view of the San Diego freeway. “I didn’t want you to know. But now you must. I’m very ill. I’ve been ill for years. The real reason I came to L.A. was for medical treatment only available here.” Ruth and Maxwell found their voices and were remonstrating. “Please, please don’t, please. Let’s enjoy ourselves. Let’s have our luncheons and dinners and go to the theater and see terrible plays about ugly people in the barrios, and revivals of George Bernard Shaw with an all black cast. Come on now, let’s have more brandy and swap terrible jokes!”

Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and bills began piling up. “It’s awful,” Ruth said to Maxwell one Saturday evening when they dined alone, Betsy having arranged dinner with her lawyer, “knowing we’re to inherit all that money and today we can’t pay our bills. I have to admit it, Maxwell, I have to admit it,” the texture of her voice darkened, “I’m thinking a very terrible thought.”

“Me too.” He was barely audible. “Umm, er... Betsy’s been losing weight. The circles under her eyes are turning into crevasses.”

“And she’s barely eating. You know, I’m going to ask her if I can give her some vitamin shots. I wonder if her doctors give her any. She won’t tell me who they are. Has she told you?”

“No. As a matter of fact, I feel she’s gone a little quiet of late. Like, well, like she might wish it was all over with.”

“I wonder. Do you think she does?”

Betsy brightened at the suggestion of vitamin shots. “Not that I think they’ll really help.” She and Ruth were speaking on the phone. “Do you want to come over now?” Betsy asked Ruth.

“There’s no time like the present, if you’ll forgive a cliché!”

Betsy replied solemnly, “I do forgive a cliché.”

Several days later, the obituary in the Los Angeles Times read:

Betsy’s lawyer, Bartlett Campbell, invited Ruth and Maxwell to his office. Before going, they spoke on the phone, very excited at the prospect of hearing the terms of Betsy’s will, which, they presumed, was why they were asked to Campbell’s office. He was a handsome man in his sixties and introduced them to an associate, Walter Trance, who grunted his hellos and sat next to Campbell.

Campbell held a small white, sealed envelope. “Betsy left instructions for me to open this envelope in your presence in the event of her sudden death.” Ruth’s heart sank when she heard “sudden death.”

Maxwell said innocently, “Is this her will? She told us she was leaving everything to us.” Ruth bit her lower lip while hoping Maxwell might blissfully go mute.

Campbell extracted a folded sheet from the envelope. He read clearly and distinctly. Walter Trance leaned forward, looking as though he intended to pounce at the sheet of paper.

Campbell read, “ ‘Dear Bartlett, If I am dead of a sudden heart attack, you must tell the police you suspect foul play. Have an autopsy performed on my body, as I suspect they will find a foreign substance, a subtle form of poison that induces heart attacks. I strongly suspect that is what happened to Armand Bennett...’ ” There was a sharp intake of breath. Maxwell and Trance stared at Ruth. “ ‘My darling Armand, my heart, my soul, my lover.’ ” Ruth’s hands were so tightly clenched her knuckles showed white. “ ‘I have had no reason to live since his death. He was all I had, all I cared for. If it is proven that the vitamin shots given to me by Dr. Ruth Bennett were the same kind of vitamin shots that she insisted she give Armand, then for crying out loud nail the bitch. I’ve been playing her friend for months now, and let me tell you, it’s no cinch being a pal to someone I hate. I deserve an Oscar for my performance.’ ”

Campbell looked at Ruth and Maxwell. “Mr. Trance,” he explained, “is a detective. He’s a good friend. I suspected what this letter might contain, as she made it plain before she died that she suspected you, Dr. Bennett, of murdering your husband. And if you’re wondering about her will, she had very little to leave. She was nearly broke. Her jewels are mostly paste. The apartment she was living in was my wife’s. She lent it to Betsy.”

Ruth was frozen in her chair. Maxwell was aching to phone his agent. He needed a job desperately. Anything. Detective Trance said, “Don’t try to leave the city, either of you. The autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow. Until its results are known, you’re under constant surveillance.”

Maxwell was staring at Ruth. She looked different. She wasn’t the Ruth he loved. In this instant, he no longer loved her, he realized. In death, Betsy had succeeded in separating them. He wondered what Ruth was thinking. She was staring at the floor.

Ruth was thinking, I’m not feeling well. I feel weak. When I get home, I must give myself a vitamin shot.