Murder on the Aisle

19

3:48 P.M.

Tobin had always envied Richard Dunphy his house (not to mention, for a time, his wife). The three-story white clapboard sat on a dead-end street that wound up through fir trees and pines. You had the sense of isolation, but your nearest neighbor was no farther away than an eighth of a mile.

Now, as the cab pulled up the curving driveway, Tobin saw a snowman, arms wide in greeting, carrot nose and coal-piece smile, a red stocking cap on its head, standing in front of the house. For the first time since Richard’s death, he thought not of himself and his own problems with the police and with his future career, but of the children involved. He was their godfather and he hadn’t given them a thought.

Walking up to the long, screened-in porch, redolent always for Tobin of the late fifties when you sat through summer afternoons of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov paperbacks and drank lemonade or a bottle of Pepsi that still only cost ten cents. But now there was snow and frost on the porch and it was a long way from the relative innocence of the fifties.

When she opened the door for him he could see that she hadn’t gotten much sleep and he could smell that she’d had more than a little to drink. She wore one of Dunphy’s blue cardigans (he’d worn blue cardigans since their college days) and a white blouse and loose jeans and she still managed, in her suburban way, to look very pretty. “Hello, Tobin.” She didn’t open the door.

“I’d like to come in.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“I really need to talk.”

“There was a report on the news — a very broad hint — that you might be implicated in Richard’s death. The kids saw it.” She winced. “I’m not sure now would be a good time for them to see you.”

“Please. I need to ask you a few questions.”

She smiled. “Playing detective?”

“I don’t have much choice, do I? The police aren’t even seriously considering any other suspects.”

She assessed him, then said, “Do you think I might have done it?”

He looked at the floor and then he looked back up. “I don’t know.”

“You do think I’m a suspect.”

“At this point, everybody’s a suspect.”

“Thank you very much.”

“You’re not at the top or anything, though.”

“The top?”

He patted his pocket. “The top of my list. I’m making a list of all the potential suspects. You’re near the bottom.”

Without humor, she joked, “That’s a relief.”

He couldn’t stop what he said next. “I can’t believe you’re involved with Michael Dailey.”

For the first time, she averted her blue eyes. When she looked back up at him, she sighed. Then she opened the door and held it back so he could walk in.

There was a Christmas tree wide enough to fill an entire corner of the large living room, with spangly tinsel and flashing red and blue and green lights and beatific white angels and a long line of reindeer. Spread around the bottom of the tree were piles of presents, some wrapped with great solemn formality (Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, Carson Pine Scott), others obviously done with the haste and inexperience of a child’s hand. But he did not need to ask what presents the two kids would want most for this Christmas — their father.

She saw him looking around and said, “They’re up in the hills with their sleds.”

“Oh.”

“It’s none of your business, Tobin.”

“Michael?”

“Right. Michael.”

“So you won’t talk about it?”

This time she only shrugged. “You want some Irish coffee? That’s what I’m having.”

“No. I need to be very sober.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

“I didn’t kill him,” she said.

“I don’t really think you did.”

“Then why are you here?”

“For one thing, I’d like to see a copy of that script, if you’ve got it.”

“Oh, yes, the script.”

“You sound bitter about it.”

“It’s not the script that makes me bitter. It’s all the grief the script caused.”

“What grief?”

“For one thing, a man named Ebsen.”

“I met him this morning. Nice guy.”

“He’s a sick man.” As he watched her, he saw an edge he’d never known her to have before — a certain hardness. Then he recognized it for what it really was. She was uncomfortable around him. They’d slept together a hundred times, he’d held her head while she vomited, she’d eased his grief the night he burned his screenplay and swore off writing anything but criticism (a bad and dangerous night, that). And now she was uncomfortable around him.

“I got that impression,” Tobin said.

“He claims that Richard took the draft of a script he wrote and changed it a little, then sold it himself.”

“Do you think that’s possible?”

She stared at him directly. “As you suggested a few minutes ago, Tobin — anything’s possible.”

“He wants money.”

“I know. He’s called here three times today already.”

“He says he’ll go to the press with the story if he doesn’t get his money by six.”

“Do you know how much he wants?”

“No.”

“A hundred thousand dollars.” She smiled and in that moment she was the woman he’d loved for so many years. It was her absurd smile, the one that said the world was just too unbelievable to cope with. “He seems to think I keep that much cash in my cookie jar.”

He laughed. “You mean you don’t?”

It was the right thing to say, and the right way to say it, because she came into his arms almost before he was through speaking. “Oh, God, Tobin, it’s so crazy.”

He let her cry.

“It’s all right,” he said at one point, stroking the back of her head. They used to be good at that with each other — comfort and succor, he the Daddy one night, she the Mommy the next.

When she stopped crying, she pulled back and looked him in the face and said, “Is my nose running?”

“No. But it’s very red.”

She laughed. “Red I can live with.” She sort of snuffled and then angled her head and looked out through the big window on the side at the firs that sloped all the way up to the horizon line in the bright sunlight outdoors. “You want me to tell you about Michael?”

“You don’t have to.”

“But you want me to.”

“I guess I’m curious, if that’s what you mean.”

“He’s actually got a nice side.”

He sighed. “I just realized something.”

“What?”

“You really do care about him, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“Boy, maybe this won’t be so much fun to hear.”

She touched his cheek. Gently. “Then let’s talk about something else.”

But of course he had a lover’s terrible fascination for the worst news of all. “How did it happen?”

“It started at a party.”

“Why Michael?”

“Because you and I were long past any kind of relationship and because Richard had stopped coming home completely, thanks to Sarah Nichols, and because I saw Michael hurt very deeply one night. At the party, I mean.”

“What happened?”

“He found his wife Joan in the back seat, of the car with Peter Larson. Making love. It was like high school. And Michael — just sort of came apart.”

“Michael?”

“Yes. I know the veneer he’s cultivated — very slick and indifferent. But actually he’s not that way at all.”

“So you played Mommy.”

“You’re being sarcastic.”

“I’m jealous.”

She touched his cheek again. “You’re not jealous. You’re just confused. We used each other as kind of a buffer against the world — you kept me from facing just how bad my marriage was, I kept you from realizing how lonely you are, Tobin. You’re a very lonely and angry man and the problem is, I don’t think there’s anything anybody can do for you about that. Anybody. Even yourself, Tobin, and that’s the saddest part of all.”

He looked around at the Christmas tree and the comfortable living room and realized she was right. “Goddamn, but I loved you when we were rolling there.”

“And I really loved you, too.”

“But now you love Michael?”

“I’m not sure what I feel — yet.”

“What’s he going to do about Joan?”

“Oh, she’s safely in the arms of Peter Larson.” She laughed. “The funny thing is, I think both of us got together partially out of spite.”

“What do you mean?”

“We both thought Joan and Richard were having an affair. There was a period of a month or so when they were inseparable.”

He thought back and then remembered that, yes, there had been a time six or seven months ago when Joan was around the studios a great deal.

“One night after you’d taped a show where Richard was particularly laudatory about one of Peter Larson’s films, she even called here to thank him. I thought she had a lot of guts.”

“I think the word you want is balls.”

“Yeah,” she laughed, “that is a better word. Balls.” She shrugged. “But as it turned out, anyway, the person she was having an affair with was Peter Larson, her boss.”

“She works for Larson now?”

“Yes. You didn’t know that?”

“No.”

He patted his pocket and took out the wrinkled piece of paper that had become so important to him. In addition to names, he had also started writing down one-word memory-joggers.

“That’s your list?”

“Right.”

“It’s not very impressive. Don’t policemen carry reporter’s notebooks and flip the covers back when they start an interview?”

“I’m not really a cop. Just a junior G-man.”

“That explains a lot.”

He smiled and looked at his list. “Did Ebsen ever mention anything about reviews?”

“What reviews?”

“I’m not sure. When I was at his place today he said something to the effect that I didn’t know what was going on with the reviews. I don’t know what that means.”

“Neither do I.”

“You think I could take a copy of the script?”

“Sure. If you like. There’s one in the den.”

While she went to get it, he walked over to the Christmas tree. He thought of his own mother and father and then of his own children. It was one of those moments when a man tries to make sense of his life and how badly he’s lived it; it was one of those moments when his existence made no sense whatsoever.

“Here.”

The script was in a nice black leather cover. He hefted it, then leafed through it. “Thanks. Oh. One more question.”

“What?”

“Starrett says Michael was embezzling from Richard. Did you hear anything about that?”

“Richard found a note that Michael wrote me. Right after that, all this talk of embezzlement came up. Michael and Richard were going to formally end their relationship next month, when Richard tried to get a new show for himself.”

“That isn’t how Michael acted the night Richard was killed. He didn’t give any hint they weren’t getting along.”

“He didn’t have much choice. You don’t exactly walk around broadcasting that your biggest client has left you.” Then she paused and said, “I see where this is leading.”

“I have to put Michael on my list.”

“He didn’t kill him.”

He sighed, looking at her in a kind of disbelief. He recognized her expression, had seen it many times. Love. Her very own kind of protective love. Only now it was not for him or for Richard but for that most unlikely and undeserving man, Michael. Tobin stood in her living room and felt invisible worlds crashing in on him. No one is more of a stranger than someone who loved you once but loves you no longer. A burdensome sadness came over him — for both of them — and he said quietly, “He still needs to go on the list, Jane. At least for now.”

“I don’t think I want you here anymore.”

“I know.”

“Are we even friends now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Do I need to see you to the door?”

“No,” he said. “No, you don’t.”

Then he was gone.