God Save the Child

15

Helping Margery Bartlett overcome her grief involved a lot of housework. The caterer arrived about twenty minutes after they’d hauled Maguire away in a blanket. He had two eight-foot tables in his truck and enough food to cover both of them. It was warm and I had my coat off. The caterer’s assistant stared covertly at the gun on my hip but made no comment. I helped them set up the tables and carry in the food.

Marge Bartlett was hustling about in a passion of haste, directing me where to put the cold ham and what kind of silverware needed to go beside the schmaltz herring. Roger Bartlett got home about six o’clock and was told to set up the bar before he was told about Earl Maguire.

“Sonova bitch,” he said, “sonova bitch.” He kept shaking his head as he lined the bottles up on the counter in the kitchen. At 6:30 Marge Bartlett retired to her room to begin getting ready, and Roger Bartlett went down to the store for soda. I called Susan Silverman. It was late on a Saturday, but there was no harm trying, and if I had to stand around at a cocktail party in the subs, I might as well have a date. She answered on the second ring.

“Mrs. Silverman, I’m calling to tell you that you’ve won the Jackie Susann look-alike contest. First prize is an evening with a sophisticated sleuth at the Bartletts’ cocktail party tonight.”

“And second prize is two evenings,” she said.

“Well, I’m doing guard duty here, and I wondered if you wanted to come along and carry my ammo.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Okay. What is anyone wearing?”

“I would say it’s dress-up stuff. You know, sixty-five people. The food catered. A punch bowl. Ice sculpture. White linen tablecloth. Real silver. Mrs. Bartlett has started getting ready, and the guests don’t come till eight.”

“All right, I’ll dress accordingly. Will you pick me up?”

“No, I’m sorry, I can’t. There was a murder here today and Mrs. Bartlett’s been threatened and I can’t leave her. Can you drive yourself over okay?”

“A murder? Who?”

“The Bartletts’ lawyer, Earl Maguire. I’ll tell you about it tonight.”

“What time do I arrive?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“See you then.”

I said good-bye. There was a pause at the other end, then she said, “Jackie Susann?”

“Maybe it was Jackie O.,” I said.

She said, “Well, it’s better than Jackie Coogan, I suppose,” and hung up.

Bartlett came back in the house with a case of club soda and put it on the floor beside the refrigerator.

“I’m going to take a shower,” I told him. “Lock the door and don’t let anyone in till I’m back down here. Okay?” I was much jumpier about the threats to Marge Bartlett since Maguire had turned up dead.

“Well, don’t be long,” he said. “I gotta get ready too.”

“Ten minutes,” I said.

“Right.”

“Oh, by the way, I’ve invited a woman I know, Mrs. Silverman from the high school. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Mind? Hell no. A man needs some female companionship, long as he doesn’t get carried away and end up married. You know? Don’t need to be married to have fun. Right? Don’t need that.”

“Sure don’t,” I said, heading up the stairs.

I stuck to my word and was out of the shower in four minutes and dressed in another five. I put on a dark blue two-button suit with wide lapels and a shaped waist, a blue and white checked shirt, and a wide red tie striped blue and black. I didn’t have any shoe polish, but I managed to freshen up my black boots with some Kleenex. I clipped my gun on and went back downstairs. I hoped there’d be no gun-play tonight. My hip holster was brown, and it didn’t go with my outfit.

At eight the first guests began to arrive. Marge Bartlett was still getting ready, but her husband was there at the door dressed fit to kill. He had on a green and gold paisley-print jacket that was loose-fitting around the collar, a yellow shirt with long collar points, a narrow green and red paisley tie, brown flared slacks with cuffs, and black and brown blunt-toed stacked-heel shoes which made him walk a little awkwardly. His tailor looked to be Robert of Hall. How he must have yearned for a blue work shirt and khaki pants.

I stood around the hall with a can of beer in my hand as Bartlett let the guests in. He kept saying “Say hello to old Spenser here; he’s a detective,” which produced a lot of warm handshakes. I felt like a weed at a flower show.

Susan Silverman showed up at 8:30 and a lot of people, mostly but not exclusively men, turned and looked at her. She was wearing a full-length backless dress with red and black flowers against a white background. The top tied in two thin strings around her neck. Her arms and back were still tanned from summer, and her black hair glistened. She had red earrings and fingernails to match. I introduced her to Bartlett.

“Hey,” he said, “aren’t you down the high school?”

“Yes, I’m a guidance counselor.”

“Boy, they didn’t look like you when I was in high school. Hey, Spenser? I bet they didn’t look like that in your high school, huh?”

“No,” I said, “nothing like that.”

Marge Bartlett appeared. She was carrying a dark scotch and water in one hand and seemed the ultimate triumph of Elizabeth Arden. No hint of flesh showed through the uninterrupted gleam of her makeup. She wore a violet lavender top with long puffy sleeves and a deep neckline that showed a lot of cleavage. The kind of cleavage that required artifice. There were false eyelashes and pale lipstick and lavender nail polish the color of the eye shadow. Her lower half was covered in black crepe that dragged on the floor. I could never tell if it was a skirt or pants, and I forgot to ask Susan. Small black beads, maybe obsidian, hung in several coils from her neck, and black and lavender earrings swayed like exotic fruit from her ears. Her lavender shoes were open-toed with very high black heels. Her toenails were painted the same color as her fingernails.

Everything fitted very snugly, and one got a sense of Latex stretched, of pressures tightly contained. Her bright blond hair was artfully tousled over her forehead and doubtless sprayed in place. She embraced one of the men, a short, fat guy with a long crew cut and a guardsman mustache, holding her head back so’s not to mess her hair and turning away as he tried to kiss her so’s not to mess the makeup.

“Vaughn, you gorgeous hunk,” she cried, “if your wife weren’t such a good friend of mine—”

Two more couples arrived, and she turned toward them, leaving Vaughn with his mouth half-open. The wives, one tall and handsome with early gray salting her black hair, the other small, blond, and pretty, stopped to talk with Marge Bartlett; the husbands headed directly for the buffet spread in the dining room. I watched them go. One was middle height and muscular with rounded shoulders and the kind of rolling walk associated normally with sailors and gorillas. His buddy was shorter and wider with the body of a Turkish wrestler and the haircut of a monk.

“Beer,” I said to Susan. “And I’ll bet they never leave the buffet.”

“The taller one’s the hockey coach at the high school,” she said.

“How about the other guy?”

“I don’t know him; maybe he’s a violinist.”

“Yeah,” I said, “or an elephant tamer.”

Marge Bartlett moved into the living room, where the noise and smoke were already thickening. I said to Susan, “Come on. Whither she goest you and I goest as well. Or at least I do.”

“Whither thou goest...” she said.

“How about whither I liest?” I said.

“I’m going to get us a drink. You want one?”

“Beer,” I said. “I’m sorry it’s self-service, but I’m working.”

“I know.”

She left me and returned shortly with a can of beer and a scotch on the rocks. She gave me the beer. Marge Bartlett had settled herself carefully on one arm of the living room sofa, not far from where Earl Maguire had gotten his neck broken. She was talking with three businessy-looking guys and inhaling her wine-dark scotch and water.

“What happened here today?” Susan Silverman asked. We stood in the archway that separated the living room from the front hall, and she rested one hand lightly on my upper arm. I restrained the urge to flex it.

“Somebody hit a lawyer named Earl Maguire on the side of the head so hard it broke his neck and he died. Or that’s probably what happened. I found him here dead with his neck broken and a large bruise on the side of his face.”

“Do you have any idea who?”

“Nope, nor why. There had been a threatening phone call directed at Mrs. Bartlett which seemed as bizarre and disjointed as everything else going on here. That’s why I’m doing my centurion routine.”

“And she’s going on with the party just like this?” Susan shook her head. “I don’t know if that’s courage or obsession or madness.”

“I don’t either,” I said, “but courage doesn’t seem the most likely choice.”

A middle-sized handsome man stopped in front of us. “A real blast, huh?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, “Fake ones are better than none, though.”

“You bet your ass,” he said. He slurred the s’s, and I realized he was drunk already. “Marge and Rog really know how to throw a blast. What you do?”

“I’m a grape stomper at a winery. I stopped by here to get my feet bleached.”

Susan Silverman giggled at my elbow. I said, “It’s an old George Gobel line.” The handsome man said, “I’m into confidence training myself. If you believe in your product, then, by God, you can sell it, ya know? And the greatest product ya got to sell is yourself. Right?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m for sale.”

“Oh, yeah. Look, you wouldn’t believe the change a confidence seminar can make in your whole approach to living. I mean, it’s like getting psyched up for a football game, ya know? I’m going all over the state having these confidence seminars, and the results are fantastic, fan-tas-tic.”

“How about not giving one right now though; my ears are beginning to smart.”

“You got some terrific sense of humor. What did you say your name was?”

“Spenser.”

“Well, Spence, you got some terrific sense of humor. I like that. This the little woman?”

Susan Silverman looked as if she were carsick.

He went on, “I was into losing, ya know? And so I took this confidence seminar and they showed me how I wasn’t using all my potential and now I’m part of the team and running the seminars myself. What’d you say you did?”

“I said I was a grape crusher at a winery, but I was only kidding.”

“Yeah, I got that. What’s your real job? I mean, maybe I could help you or your people, ya know? Maybe you could use a little confidence.”

Susan Silverman said, “Do you have a program for overconfidence?”

He frowned. “No. But you know, there might be a market there. You got a pretty good head for business for a lady. By God, I never thought of that.” He moved off.

Marge Bartlett said something to one of the businessy types and stood up. He gave her a slap on the rear end, and all three men on the couch laughed. Marge Bartlett moved away and headed for the kitchen. I moved along after her. Susan said, “I’ll be along. I think I’ll sample the buffet before those two guys finish it.”

As I passed the dining room, I noticed the coach and his buddy still at the buffet. A colony of beer cans had sprung up on the highboy beside them. In the kitchen Roger Bartlett was mixing drinks at the counter from half-gallons of booze. A plastic trash can was filled with chopped ice and beer cans, and a whole ham garnished with fruit was being readied for the buffet table. I wondered if the two gourmets in the corner had already polished off the first one. It would be fun to join them and comment on the broads and make wisecracks about the other guests and eat and drink till it became self-destructive and have your wife drive home. That would be more fun than finding a guy with his neck snapped, or going one-on-one with a weight lifter. Or following Marge Bartlett around all evening. I looked around for Mr. Confidence. I needed a booster shot.

Bartlett poured a glass near full of Scotch, added an ice cube and a teardrop’s worth of water, and gave it to his wife. She took a big drink and said, “Whoooo, that’s strong. You want me to get drunk so you can take advantage of me.”

“Dear, by the time I get to the bedroom tonight, you’ll be snoring like a hog.”

“Roger!” she said and turned away. She saw me standing in the doorway and came over.

“My God, Spenser, you’re a big handsome brute,” she said and leaned against me with her right arm around me.

I said, “You’re really into words, aren’t you?”

“He’s my bodyguard,” Marge Bartlett said to a woman with bags under her eyes and a pouty mouth. “Don’t you think I ought to keep my body very close to him so he can guard it?” She made snuggling motions at me. Pressed against me, she felt tightly cased and ready to burst, like a knockwurst.

The woman with the baggy eyes said, “Someone should guard your body, sweetie, that’s for sure.”

I said, “You’re leaning on my gun arm.”

She put her mouth up close to my ear and said, “I could lean on something else, if you were nice.”

“It wouldn’t carry the weight,” I said.

“You’re awful,” she said and stepped away from me.

I said, “All us big handsome brutes are like that.”

Baggy-eyes snickered, and Marge Bartlett spotted Mr. Confidence across the kitchen and went after him.

“Are you really a bodyguard?” Baggy-eyes said.

“Yep.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“No,” I said. “I have this mysterious power I acquired in the Orient to cloud men’s minds so they cannot see me.”

Susan appeared with an assorted platter from the buffet table and offered me some. “I have two forks,” she said. Baggy-eyes moved off. Marge Bartlett and Mr. Confidence were in close proximity across the kitchen. I wondered if she had called him a big handsome brute.

“Having a nice time?” Susan asked.

“It’s better than getting bitten by a great white shark,” I said.

“Oh, it’s not that bad. In fact, you kind of like it. I’ve been watching you. You look at everything; you listen to everybody. I bet you know what everyone in the kitchen is talking about and what they look like. They fascinate you.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m into people.”

“Oh, you’re such a big tough guy, and you think you’re funny, but I’ll bet if that fool with the confidence courses got in trouble, you’d get him out of it.”

“A catcher in the rye,” I said.

“You’re being smart, I know, but that’s right. That’s exactly what you are. You are exactly that sentimental.”

The wall phone in the kitchen rang. A thin woman said, “Oh, Christ, that’s my kid, I’ll bet anything.” And a tall white-haired man with a red face and a green polka-dot bow tie answered. “Duffy’s Tavern, Archie the manager speaking.” He listened and then he said, “Anybody here named Spenser?” The thin woman said, “Whew.” I took the phone and said hello.

“Mr. Spenser? This is Mary Riordan at the State Police. Lieutenant Healy asked me to call you and tell you that Earl Maguire died of a broken neck apparently the result of being struck on the side of the face with a solid blunt object.”

“Son of a gun,” I said. “Thank you.”

She hung up. Susan looked at me and raised her eyebrows.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just a confirmation on the cause of death. I asked Healy to let me know, and he did. I didn’t think he would.”

“Who’s Healy?” she asked.

“State cop.”

I looked across the kitchen and was suddenly aware that I didn’t know where Marge Bartlett was. “Where’d Marge Bartlett go?” I said to Susan.

“I don’t know. Just a minute ago she was over there talking to a fat guy with a mustache.”

I walked through the kitchen to the dining room. And on into the living room. No sign. I felt the first small tug of anxiety in my stomach. Atta boy, lose your goddamned assignment in her own house. On either side of the fireplace in the living room were French doors, thinly curtained. One was slightly ajar, and I walked toward it. Outside I heard someone say in a half scream, “Don’t, don’t.” The little tug in my solar plexus darted up to my throat, and I jumped through the door. I was on a screened porch that ran the whole side of the house. In the dim light I could see a man and a woman struggling. The man had his back to me, but I could see the woman’s face across his shoulder, white in the dimness. It was Marge Bartlett. She wrenched away from him as I came onto the porch. I took one step with my left foot, planted it, turned sideways, and drove my right foot into the small of the man’s back. He said, “Ungh,” and went headfirst through the screen and into a mass of forsythia. I went after him. Marge Bartlett was screaming. The man was sluggishly trying to get out of the forsythia. I got his right arm bent up behind him and my left hand clamped under his chin and dragged him back on the porch.

He was protesting, but not coherently. The porch light snapped on. People were crowding out on the porch. The guy I had hold of was Vaughn, the fat man with the crew cut and the big mustache who had been one of the first to arrive.

“Goddamned tease,” he was yelling now. “She got me out here; I didn’t do anything. Goddamned stinking tease. Get you hot and then scream when you touch her. Bastard. Bitch.” There were scratches on his face where he went through the screen. There was lipstick on his face too. I looked at Marge Bartlett; her lipstick was smudged. The deep V-neck of her blouse was torn, and some of a black long-line bra showed.

“Let him go, Spenser. Are you crazy? We were just talking. For God’s sake, haven’t you ever been to a party? We were just talking, and I guess he got the wrong idea. You know how men are.” Dimly visible through her makeup her face seemed to be red. “They always get the wrong idea. I was just surprised. I could have handled this. Look at my screen. Look...” I let the man go.

“Goddamned liar. You got me out here and started playing goddamned kissy face with me and rubbing your boobs up against me and when I get serious you start screaming and yelling and your goddamned gorilla comes charging out and hits me from behind.”

“Gorilla?” I said.

Susan Silverman had come up beside me. “Goddamned gorilla,” she said.