Paper Doll

chapter ten

I NEVER SAW Susan without feeling a small but discernible thrill. The thrill was mixed with a feeling of gratitude that she was with me, and a feeling of pride that she was with me, and a feeling of arrogance that she was fortunate to be with me. But mostly it was just a quick pulse along the ganglia which, if it were audible, would sound a little like woof.

She was as simply dressed tonight as she ever got. Form-fitting jeans, low black boots with silver trim, a lavender silk blouse partly buttoned over some sort of tight black undershirt. She had on jade earrings nowhere near as big as duck pins, and her thick black hair was short and impeccably in place.

“You look like the cat’s ass tonight,” I said.

“Everything you say is so lyrical,” Susan said.

She had a glass of Iron Horse champagne, and had already drunk nearly a quarter of it, in barely twenty minutes.

“What’s for eats?”

“Buffalo tenderloin,” I said, “marinated in red wine and garlic, fiddle head ferns, corn pudding, and red potatoes cooked with bay leaf.”

“Again?” Susan said.

Pearl the wonder dog was in the kitchen with me, alert to every aspect of the buffalo tenderloin. I sliced off an edge and gave it to her.

Susan came and sat on a stool on the living room side of the counter. She drank another milligram of her champagne. She took the bottle out of the glass ice bucket on the counter and leaned forward and filled my glass.

“Paul telephoned today,” she said. “He said he’d tried to get you but you were out.”

“I know,” I said. “There’s a message on my machine.”

“He says the wedding is off.”

I nodded.

“Did you know?”

“He’d been talking as if it wouldn’t happen,” I said.

“He had a difficult childhood,” Susan said.

“Yeah.”

“You disappointed?”

I nodded.

“You know how great I look in a tux,” I said.

“Besides that.”

“People shouldn’t get married unless they are both sure they want to,” I said.

“Of course not,” Susan said.

“Would have been fun, though,” I said.

“Yes.”

There was a fire in the living room fireplace. The smell of it always enriched the apartment, though less than Susan did. Outside the living room windows opposite the counter, the darkness had settled firmly into place.

I took a small glass tray out of the refrigerator and put it on the counter.

“Woo woo,” Susan said. “Red caviar.”

“Salmon roe,” I said. “With toast and some creme fraiche.”

“Creme fraiche,” Susan said, and smiled, and shook her head. I came around from the kitchen and sat on the other stool, beside her. We each ate some caviar.

“You’re working on that murder on Beacon Hill,” she said.

“Yeah. Quirk sent the husband to me.”

“Because?”

“The husband wasn’t satisfied with the police work on the case. Quirk had gone as far as he could.”

“Was Quirk satisfied with the police work on the case?” Susan said.

“Quirk doesn’t say a hell of a lot.”

“He isn’t satisfied, is he?” Susan said.

“The official explanation,” I said, “is that Olivia Nelson was the victim of a random act of violence, doubtless by a deranged person. There is no evidence to suggest anything else.”

“And Quirk?”

“He doesn’t like it,” I said.

“And you?”

“I don’t like it,” I said. Why.

One of the many things about Susan that I admired was that she never made conversation. When she asked a question she was interested in the answer. Her curiosity was always genuine, and always engendering. When you got through talking with her you usually knew more about the subject than when you started. Even if it was your own subject.

“She was beaten to death with a framing hammer. She had one bruise on her shoulder where she probably flinched up.” I demonrated with my own shoulder. “And all the rest the damage was to her head. That seems awfully careful for a deranged killer.”

“Derangement can be methodical,” Susan said.

I nodded and drank some champagne. I put some salmon caviar on a triangle of toast and spooned a little creme fraiche on top. I held it toward Susan, who leaned forward and bit off the point. I ate the rest.

“And,” I said, “despite what people think, there aren’t that many homicidal maniacs roaming the streets. It’s never the best guess.”

“True,” Susan said. “But it is possible.”

“But it’s not a useful hypothesis, because it offers no useful way to proceed. The cops have already screened anybody with a record on this kind of thing. Beyond that all you can do is wait, and hope to catch him next time. Or the time after that.”

The fire softened the room as we talked. Fire was the heart of the house, Frank Lloyd Wright had said. And if he didn’t know, who would.

“But,” Susan said after she thought about it, “if you assume that it’s not a madman…”

“Madperson,” I said.

Susan put a hand to her forehead.

“What could I have been thinking?” she said. “If you assume it is not a madperson, then you can begin to do what you know how to do. Look for motive, that sort of thing.”

“Yes,” I said.

Susan still had half a glass of champagne, but she added a splash from the bottle to reinvigorate it. While she did that I got up and added two logs to the fire.

“Still there’s something else,” Susan said.

“Just because you’re a shrink,” I said, “you think you know everything.”

“I think I know you,” she said, “and it has nothing to do with my profession.”

“Good point,” I said.

I drank some champagne and ate salmon roe, and thought how to phrase it. Susan was quiet.

“It’s that there’s an, I don’t know, an official version of everything. But the objective data doesn’t quite match it. I don’t mean it contradicts it, but…” I spread my hands.

“For instance,” Susan said.

“Well, the home. It’s lovely and without character. It’s like a display, except for his bedroom; it’s as personless as a chain hotel.”

“His bedroom?”

“Yeah. That’s another thing. They have separate bedrooms separated by a sitting room. His shows signs of use-television set, some books on the bedside table, TV Guide. But hers…” I shook my head. “The kids’ rooms are like hers. Officially designated children’s rooms, and appropriately decorated. But no sense that anyone ever smoked a joint in there or read skin magazines with a flashlight under the covers.”

“What else?”

“He goes to the office every day early, stays late. There’s nothing to do. His secretary, who is, by the way, a knockout, is catching up on her reading.”

“This is subtle,” Susan said.

“Yeah, it is, though it’s not quite as subtle when you’re experiencing it. He talks about his children without any sense that now and then they might, or might have sometime, driven him up the wall. They’re perfect. She was perfect. His love was all-encompassing. His devotion is unflagging.”

“And there’s a legal limit on the snow here,” Susan said.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“That Camelotian hindsight is not unusual in grief,” Susan said.

“I know,” I said. “I’ve seen some grief myself.”

“It’s a form of denial.”

“I know. What I’m trying to get hold of is how long the denial has been going on.”

“Yes,” Susan said.

“And what’s being denied,” I said.

Susan nodded. The fire hissed as some sap boiled out of the sawn end of one of the logs. The salmon caviar was gone. The champagne was getting low.

“So what are you going to do?” Susan said.

“Start from the other end.”

“You mean look into her past?”

“Yeah. Where she was born. Where she went to school, that stuff. Maybe something will turn up.”

“Wouldn’t the police have done that?” Susan said.

“On a celebrity case like this, with an uncertain victim, maybe,” I said. “But this victim is a well-known pillar of the community. Her life’s an open book. They haven’t the money or the reason to chase her back to her childhood.”

“So why will you do it?” Susan said.

“I don’t know what else to do,” I said.

“You want to eat?”

Susan drank some of her champagne and looked at me over the rim of her glass.

“How attractive was Tripp’s secretary, exactly?” Susan said.

“Quite,” I said.

Susan smiled.

“How nice,” she said. “Perhaps after we’ve eaten buffalo tenderloin and sipped a dessert wine on the couch and watched the fire settle, you’ll want to think about which of us is, or is not, going to ball you in the bedroom until sunrise.”

“You’re far more attractive than she is, Buffalo gal,” I said.

“Oh, good,” she said.

We were quiet as I put the meat on the grill and put the corn pudding in the oven.

“Sunrise?” I said.

“The hyperbole of jealous passion,” Susan said.