The House That Jack Built

11. This is the house that Jack built…

Warren was appalled.

“You did what?” he said into the telephone.

Toots told him again about the bugs she’d planted in the Summerville house and in Leona’s car. She seemed very proud of herself.

“You are not to go back inside that house again,” Warren said.

“I have to go back in. The recorder…”

“I don’t care if the recorder rots and rusts on that shelf, you are not to go back inside that house again, do you understand me?”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Grunt once if you heard me,” Warren said.

He was very tired. He would never be able to understand why a snowstorm in Denver could cause departure delays in New York. It simply did not make sense to him. If an airplane got snowed in out there in Colorado, why should that affect a flight going from New York to Tampa? Did the airline have only one plane? Did they use that same plane for all their flights? In which case, snow in the Rockies would naturally cause a three-hour delay on the Eastern seaboard.

Warren had got to Tampa at two in the morning.

It had taken the taxi another hour and a half to get him to Calusa.

At a quarter to four, he called Matthew, waking him up to tell him what he had learned from Lucy Strong. Matthew was pleased that Warren had called him in the wee small hours of the morning. He thanked Warren profusely. Warren then called Toots, who did not like being awakened at ten minutes to four in the morning. Maybe that was why she immediately told him shed broken into the Summerville house and planted a few hundred bugs inside there.

He waited.

“Toots?” he said.

“Yeah.”

Petulantly.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“I thought you’d be pleased,” she said.

“No, I am not pleased.” he said. “You are not to go back in there for those tapes.”

“Those tapes might tell us who the doctor is. Save us the trouble of…”

“What doctor?”

“She got in a car with MD plates last night. A black Corvette. They drove to a motel called CaluSara, spent almost a halt-hour in there together.”

“MD plates, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you get the number?”

“Of course.”

“Let me have it. I’ll ask one of my cop friends to run it past Motor Vehicles. Did you check the motel register?”

“How could I do that?”

“I’ll teach you sometime. Because maybe this doctor was Wade Livingston, hmm? Though I’m sure he wouldn’t have registered under his own name.”

“Who’s Wade Livingston?”

“An OB-GYN with offices at the Bayou Professional Building, 837 West Bayou Boulevard. Leona visited him on Monday.”

“He makes motel calls?” loots said.

Warren chuckled.

“But today’s Friday,” he said. “And on…”

“The twelfth of February, in fact,” Toots said.

“Correct. Lincoln’s birthday, in fact.”

“Very early on Lincoln’s birthday, in fact,” Toots said.

“In any event,” Warren said, “on Fridays, the lady has a two o’clock aerobics class at The Body Works on Magnolia, two blocks west of the Cockatoo Restaurant on Forty-one. Please be there.”

“I planned to be outside her house at eight.”

“Fine.”

“That was before I got a call at four in the morning.”

Warren looked at his watch.

“It’s only five to four,” he said.

“Better yet,” she said, and hung up.

At ten o’clock that Friday morning, Matthew went back to the Brechtmann house. A fine mist was rising from the water. The mist obscured the sky so that the house seemed rooted not on the ground but instead appeared a part of the mist itself, cloud-borne, ephemeral.

The security guard at the gate recognized Matthew.

Karl Hitler, jug ears, a little black mustache, black hair trimmed close to his head, brown eyes spaced too closely together.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “how can I help you?”

He made it sound sarcastic.

“Would you tell Miss Brechtmann that Matthew Hope is here to see her?”

“Why, certainly.”

Still sounding sarcastic.

He pressed the button on his intercom.

“Yes?”

The old woman’s voice. Sophie Brechtmann.

“Mrs. Brechtmann, there’s a Matthew Hope here to see your daughter, ma’am.”

“Miss Brechtmann has already left for the brewery,” Sophie said.

“Mrs. Brechtmann?” Matthew said to the intercom.

Silence.

“Mrs. Brechtmann?” he said again.

“Yes, Mr. Hope?”

“Mrs. Brechtmann, I had an appointment with your daughter yesterday afternoon, but we…”

“My daughter’s affairs are her own,” Sophie said. “She is not here, Mr. Hope. She left for the brewery at a little past…”

“I called the brewery before coming here, Mrs. Brechtmann. They told me your daughter wasn’t expected today.”

Silence.

“Mrs. Brechtmann?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to talk to your daughter.”

“Good day, Mr. Hope.”

And a click on the speaker.

“Beat it, pal,” Karl said.

“I’ll be back,” Matthew said.

At twenty minutes to eleven that Friday morning, Leona placed a call from the telephone in the master bedroom. She did not know that there was an FM transmitter behind the night table not three feet from where she sat on the edge of the bed. The transmitter batteries were extremely weak by then, but there must have been at least enough power left to activate the tape recorder in the closet across the room; its reels began moving the moment she spoke.

“Dr. Livingston, please,” she said.

A pause.

“Mrs. Summerville.”

Another pause.

“Wade, it’s me.”

This sentence alone, in a court of law, would have been enough to convince a judge that Leona Summerville and Dr. Wade Livingston were intimately involved.

“Wade, have you given any further…?”

A long silence. Then:

“I’m sorry. Wade, but…”

Another silence.

“Yes, Wade.”

Silence.

“Wade, I have to see you again. I know, but… uh-huh. Uh-huh. But I have to talk to you. Uh-huh. Wade… uh-huh. Wade, I’ll come by at noon. When your nurse goes to lunch. I’ll be waiting outside for you. Wade, all you have to… Wade, please listen to me. After all this time, you can at least… no. Wade, please don’t! If you hang up, I’ll only call back. Listen to me, okay? Please listen to me. I’ll be parked outside the office, all you have to do is walk to the… I just want to talk to you. Ten minutes. Can you spare me ten minutes? That’s all I ask of you, ten minutes. Thank you, Wade. Thank you very much, darling. I’ll see you at a little after twelve. Thank you. And Wade…?”

Silence.

“Wade?”

More silence.

Leona put the receiver back on the cradle.

At eleven o’clock sharp that morning, an unmarked sedan belonging to the Calusa Police Department pulled up to the gate outside the Brechtmann mansion. Detective Morris Bloom was driving the automobile. Matthew Hope was sitting beside him.

The security guard locked at Bloom’s shield.

“Tell Elise Brechtmann the police are here,” he said.

Karl got on the pipe.

Sophie Brechtmann answered.

“Send gentlemen in,” she said.

Mother and daughter was waiting in the living room.

Charles Abbott had described Elise Brechtmann a beautiful woman.

His description was almost on the money — but not quite.

A woman in her late thirties, Elise wore her blonde hair in a virtual crew cut that emphasized high cheekbones and intensely green, luminous eyes. Her full-lipped mouth seemed set in a perpetual pout that added a hint of turbulent sexuality to a face spoiled only by its subversive nose. Despite Elise’s German ancestry the nose could have been American Indian in origin, a trifle too large for her face, its cleaving tomahawk edge destroying the image of an otherwise pale and sudden beauty. It was, Matthew realized, the same nose that imparted a sense of obstinate strength to the face of her grandfather, Jacob Brechtmann, whose portrait glared down at them from the chimney wall.

“I’m sorry” we missed each other yesterday.” she said.

“Yes, so am I,” Matthew said.

“Apparently,” she said, and smiled. “But surely, Mr Hope, a broken appointment needn’t have prompted call to the police.”

Eyes twinkling. She was making a joke. But there was nothing funny about Matthew’s visit here today.

“Miss Brechtmann,” he said, “I wonder if you’d mind answering some questions for me and Detective Bloom.”

“Does this have to do with the Parrish case? Mother told me you were here the other…”

“Yes, it has to do with the Parrish case,” Matthew said. “Did you know him?”

“Who? Your client?”

“No. The victim. Jonathan Parrish.”

“No.”

“You did not know him,” Matthew said.

“I did not know him.”

Matthew looked at Bloom.

“Miss Brechtmann,” Bloom said, “according to what Mr. Hope has told me, there seems reasonable cause to believe that you did know Jonathan Parrish.”

“Oh?”

Pouting mouth forming the single word.

“Yes,” Bloom said.

“And what has Mr. Hope told you!’”

“Miss Brechtmann,” Matthew said, “I spoke to a man named Anthony Holden… you do know Anthony Holden?”

“That rodent, yes, I know him.”

“Who claims that the reason you fired him…”

“I fired him because he was a thief!”

“Not according to him.”

“The man was a thief! He was getting kickbacks from our maltsters. He was stealing, Mr. Hope. Which is why I fired him.”

“Did you have proof of this theft?”

“Of course I had proof!”

“Then why’d you settle out of court’ If Holden was in fact a thief, then you hadn’t libeled him when you called him a thief.”

“Well, of course, don’t you think I knew that? But what would a prolonged legal battle have done to the Brechtmann name? We’re in the business of brewing beer, Mr. Hope, not manufacturing sensational headlines. I paid him off. And felt it was well worth it.”

“You settled for five hundred thousand dollars,isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“Exactly what you paid Charles Abbott,” Matthew said.

“Oh, my,” Sophie said, “here’s that scurvy dog again.”

“I’m afraid so,” Matthew said.

“Young man, you already know that I refused to give Mr. Abbott a penny!”

“Yes, you had him thrown out.”

“Yes. So now you come here again, and you tell me…”

“I’m talking about 1969,” Matthew said. “The money you gave him in 1969. Haifa million dollars.”

“Is that what he told you?” Elise said. “That we gave him…?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a liar. Why would we have…?”

“To get rid of him,” Matthew said.

“Don’t be absurd!”

“And to take the baby off your hands.”

“What baby?”

“Your daughter,” Matthew said. “Helen Abbott.”

“I have no daughter,” Elise said.

“Miss Brechtmann,” Bloom said, “I have here…”

“Get out of here,” Sophie said, “both of you. You have no right intruding on our privacy. You have no right coming here and…”

“Miss Brechtmann,” Bloom said again, “I have here a warrant that authorizes me to…”

“A what?” Sophie said.

“A search warrant, ma’am. I’d appreciate it if your daughter read it. It authorizes…”

“She’ll do no such thing,” Sophie said. “What you’ll do is leave this house at once.”

“No, ma’am, I’m not about to do that,” Bloom said, and shook the warrant at her. “This was signed by a magistrate of the Circuit Court, and it authorizes me to…”

“Then I know you won’t mind if I call my lawyer,” Sophie said, and reached for the phone.

“You can call the Attorney General if you like,” Bloom said, “but that’s not going to stop me from searching these premises.”

“For what? What in hell do you want here, Mr. Bloom?”

“Two things,” he said, and again offered the warrant to Elise. “If you’ll just read this…”

“Don’t touch that piece of paper!” Sophie shouted. “Get out of this house, Mr. Bloom! And take this shyster with you!”

“It’s all right,” Elise said suddenly.

Her voice sounded hollow. Her eyes looked vacant.

“Elise…” her mother said.

“Let me have the warrant.”

“Elise!”

“Give it to me, please.”

She held out her hand.

Bloom put the warrant into it.

She unfolded it, and began reading it silently.

She looked up.

“A thirty-eight-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver,” she said.

“Yes, Miss. Which is the caliber and make of the pistol that killed a police officer named Charles Macklin on Wednesday night.”

“And you think that pistol is in this house?”

“We think it may be here, yes.”

“And these photographs?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“You think they may be here as well?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Photographs of a baby and her mother, the warrant says.”

Her voice caught on the word mother.

“Yes, Miss.”

“Photographs of me and my baby, the warrant says.”

“A little girl named Helen Abbott,” Bloom said. “With baby beads on her wrist. Spelling out her name.”

Elise looked at her mother.

“They know,” she said.

There were tears in her eyes.

From the shelf in Frank’s study, Leona removed the copy of Corbin on Contracts.

Behind it, just where she’d hidden it, was the .22-caliber Colt Cobra.

She took it in her hand, turned, and placed the gun on Frank’s desk. She put the book back on the shelf. She knelt to where Frank kept his volumes of Black’s Law Dictionary. She took down two volumes, and then removed the box of cartridges from the shelf, and placed this on the desk, too. She slid the volumes back into place on the shelf. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Aristotle. Or somebody.

She smiled.

And then she sat at the desk in Frank’s swivel chair, and she loaded the gun the way the chubby little man in the gun shop had showed her. Bobby Newkes. Cute little man who knew all about things lethal. One cartridge at a time. Nice and easy. Squeeze off your shots, he’d told her. Don’t pull the trigger, just squeeeeeeeze it gently.

She snapped the cylinder back into the gun.

And put the gun into her shoulder bag.

And looked at the clock on the wall.

Twenty minutes to twelve.

She took a deep breath and went out to her automobile.

The women were explaining it all to Matthew and Bloom.

Trying to explain it all.

“After the call from Hurley,” Sophie said, “I realized we were in trouble again. Abbott’s visit to the house hadn’t posed a serious threat. In fact, after his… accident, I didn’t expect to hear further from him.”

“But then Helen showed up,” Elise said.

“Yes. Helen.”

The two women looked at each other.

“I must admit…” Sophie said, and shook her head, and sighed.

“Yes,” Elise said, and sighed, too.

“The resemblance,” Sophie said.

“Yes.”

“Your hair, your eyes.”

“But blue.”

“But your eyes exactly.”

Both women sighed.

“We almost…”

“But you see, gentlemen…”

“If what we’d done back then was to have any meaning…”

“Protecting the name…”

“Making certain the name wouldn’t be tainted…”

Sophie sighed again. “Giving away a… a granddaughter was… was not very easy,” she said.

“A daughter,” Elise said.

The word seemed to echo in the vaulting room.

“But, you see,” Sophie said, “I knew that if my husband had learned of this… if we had not kept it from Franz, why… he would have killed them both. First that sniveling dog, Charles, and then Elise. Yes. I believe he would have killed his own daughter. For dishonoring the house.”

“For bringing shame to the Brechtmann name.”

“A name that stood for quality and wholesomeness.”

Both women fell silent.

In that room, with the mist from the ocean crowding the French doors like a multitude of silent ghosts from the past, they seemed now to be wondering about the wisdom of what they’d done almost two decades ago — and what they’d been forced to do now, in order to protect that long-ago decision.

“We had to get them out of our lives,” Sophie said. “Abbott and the baby both. To protect Elise… to protect the house…”

“The house?” Matthew said.

“Brechtmann Brewing,” Sophie said.

Matthew nodded.

Sophie sighed again.

“And yet,” she said, “when she returned, a grown woman, pregnant… oh, dear God, pregnant the way my daughter was pregnant so long ago…”

“Mother, please…”

“… oh, dear God, calling me Grandma…”

Sophie covered her face with her hands.

“But you see,” Elise said.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Sophie said, as though her daughter were explaining it to her and not to Matthew and Bloom.

“If what we’d done then was to have any meaning now…”

“Yes,” Sophie said, exhaling the word.

“If protecting the house had been important back then…”

“It was even more important now.”

“How could we acknowledge her?”

“A bastard child?”

Sophie shook her head.

“I asked her to leave. I told her she had no mother here, no grandmother, either. I told her never to come here again. She said she had proof. I knew there was no proof. I sent her on her way.”

The clock on the mantel was ticking.

Above the mantel, Jacob Brechtmann glared down from his portrait.

“And then Hurley called,” Elise said.

“And told us he knew all about the pictures.”

“Which is why I went to see Jonathan…”

Jonathan…

Jonathan…

It is not yet dawn on the morning of January thirtieth…

Elise does not yet know how she will handle this confrontation; it has been so many years, too many years. She is dressed for the rain: black slacks and black jersey top, a black raincoat and a black slouch hat that makes her look like Garbo. And because there is a chill accompanying the rain, she is also wearing black leather gloves.

She parks her car at Pelican Reef and begins walking up the beach toward his house. As she walks, she rehearses what she will say to him. She does not like having to go to him this way, begging a favor of him, especially after the way he treated her the last time, when all she was trying to do was protect him.

Because…

Because back then, even though Jonathan was what he was, there were still times when she succumbed to the dream of what might have been. If only. If only he weren’t homosexual — but he was. If only he hadn’t told her their relationship was hopeless — but he had. And then the self-pity: If only I’d never met him, if only I’d never gone to bed with him…

The rain encourages memories.

The whispering rush of the ocean against the shore prompts total recall.

Time has no meaning in the movie of her mind. When she can flip the switch either to fast forward or reverse, what possible meaning can time have? Choose any scene, choose any snippet, edit them in order or in reckless disarray. Seize each memory but only for a moment; most of the memories are painful. For Elise, time is meaningless except as it defines pain.

The movie is titled My Life with Jonathan.

A cheap little film.

Fade in on a luxurious Florida beach house.

Title over: NOVEMBER, 1968.

It is a gloriously balmy night. Japanese lanterns on the terrace, a band playing Beatles tunes. Elise is sixteen years old and attending the birthday party of her friend Marcia Nathanson, who has just turned seventeen.

The boy who comes walking out onto the terrace is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her life. Long blond hair and flashing blue eyes. A dancer’s body, a dancer’s moves. Barefooted. Wearing blue jeans and a white sweatshirt. The other boys at the party are wearing ties and jackets; Jonathan Parrish has dropped in from another planet.

Self-absorbed at sixteen, the curse of adolescence, Elise immediately thinks of him as an adjunct to herself, the perfect partner, the ideal mate, blond and blonde, pale and paler, together they will dazzle! She will capture this gorgeous alien male and keep him in a cage. She will tame this wild and splendid starman and make him her own. Confident of her own good looks, emboldened by her budding sexuality, she fastens herself like a succubus to this twenty-year-old stranger w ho has come not from another galaxy, as it turns out, but only from Indiana.

By the end of the night, she is lying in his arms on the beach.

He insists that she use only her mouth.

But she suspects nothing.

Two weeks later, in the house he is renting on Fatback Key, she persuades him to enter her, and surrenders her virginity to him.

Still suspecting nothing.

In the night, she whispers, “I love you.”

And does not for a moment realize how these words trouble him.

She goes to Abbott for the first time late in December. Deliberately seeks him out in his room over the garage. Goes to him in anger and in tears. Goes to him to get even. Because not an hour earlier, Jonathan Parrish has told her he is homosexual, he is gay, he is as queer as a turnip, he want nothing further to do with her. This entire episode with her — he calls it an episode, he calls what they shared together an episode — this entire episode was merely an experiment, something he still owed himself, something he still had to prove to himself. Prove? But prove what? Why, that girls… women… females cannot satisfy him.

So she is here in this room over the garage…

Title over: DECEMBER, 1968…

… to make love to a stranger. In retribution for Jonathan’s abrupt dismissal of her. Here in tears, here in anger and in shame, here to make love — no, not love. Certainly not love. Never again will sixteen-year-old Elise Brechtmann, star of this tedious little low-budget film, make love to any man. She is here to fuck and to be fucked. By the chauffeur. A man in her father’s employ. A menial. She weeps into his shoulder as he claims her.

Fast forward.

Skip the boring months of her pregnancy and the frightening, painful delivery, cut to the goddamn chase. She has grown used to pain ever since Jonathan closed the door on their dream, the dream that still seeps unbidden into her mind, awake or asleep, these two beautiful people moving gracefully through life together, the dream that can never be, he can never be satisfied by a girl, a woman, a female, dig?

So she is understandably surprised (the camera moves in for a close shot of her utterly astonished face) when a few days after she gives birth, who should show up at the hospital but the Indiana Kid himself! Fresh from the recent festivities at Woodstock, he is sporting long blond hair and a long blond beard and feathers and beads, oh, how her girlish heart flutters!

He says he wants to take pictures of her and the baby.

He has taken at least a dozen of them when the nurse comes in and asks him to stop.

He kisses Elise on the cheek when he leaves an hour later.

A brotherly kiss.

He promises to send her prints of the pictures.

And is gone.

She is crying again. The pain, the pain.

He never sends the pictures.

She does not see him again until…

Title over: OCTOBER, 1981.

Twelve years later. Twelve long years, kiddies!

A montage of shots.

In the foreground, Jonathan Parrish on the Whisper Key beach. In the background, the house his brother has bought for him to live in. Jonathan Parrish is back in town, and up to his old tricks, moving into Calusa’s growing gay community, discreetly to be sure, but not so discreetly as to hide his escapades from the all-seeing, all-knowing Elise Brechtmann, the writer, director, and star of this shabby little R-rated flick. Elise still nurtures the dream, you see, she still lives in the land of Might Have Been. It seems to her sometimes that her life is defined by loss. The loss of Jonathan, the loss of the baby, the loss of her father. Loss and pain, this is a three-handkerchief movie, folks.

When she discovers that Jonathan is having an affair with the blatant homosexual who is Brechtmann’s purchasing agent, she decides to put an end to it at once. To protect Jonathan, you see. Because she knows what kind of a man Holden is, knows all about his unwholesome past, the hordes of younger men he’s used and abused. She would, in fact, have fired him long ago were it not for a company policy initiated by her own father that guaranteed tenure to employees who’d been there for fifteen years or longer. But tenure does not apply to thieves. She concocts the story that he’s been stealing from the company, goes so far as to falsify documents showing he’s been receiving kickbacks, and is startled out of her wits (another close shot of her face, green eyes opened wide, mouth agape) when Holden sues for libel and defamation.

She learns later that the suit was suggested to Holden by Guess Who?

(Close shot of Jonathan Parrish, grinning into camera, pointing a prankish finger at himself. He is holding in his other hand a cane that looks remarkably like a phallus.)

She settles out of court.

She is beginning to hate Jonathan Parrish.

But now, she must deal with him yet another time.

On this cold rainy morning at the end of January…

It is, in fact, the thirtieth day of the month, but there are no titles, she does not need titles to remember the morning she put him out of her life forever…

Jonathan…

Jonathan…

She walks up the beach toward his house, dressed in somber black, black in mourning for her lost innocence, her lost love, her lost child, black against the falling gray of the rain and the gray of the sky.

He is at the kitchen counter when she comes in.

He does not look as if he has slept much the night before.

He is cutting a grapefruit in two with a chefs knife.

He explains that he had a dreadful argument with his brother. He tells her he feels rotten. He asks her if she wants half of this thing. She shakes her head no. Some coffee? No. Thank you.

He makes a comment which to her sounds faggoty but which probably isn’t, something about it being a bit early for a social visit, isn’t it, one eyebrow arched toward the clock on the wall, dawn breaks grayly on the horizon.

“I came for the pictures,” she says.

“What pictures? What are you talking about?”

“The pictures you took of us. Me and the baby.”

“God, that was centuries ago.”

“Jonathan, I need them. Are they here?”

“Who remembers?”

“Do you have them?”

“Really, Elise…”

“Try to remember.”

A look comes over his face. She has seen this look before. She knows exactly what this look means. It is a look compounded of opportunity and greed.

“How much are they worth to you?” he asks.

“You son of a bitch!” she says.

“Oh my, such language.”

“You have them, don’t you?”

Her voice rising.

“If I do, how much will you pay for them?”

“You son of a bitch bastard!”

Louder now.

“How much, Elise?”

“You fucking cocksucker fag!”

Shrieking the words.

And reaching for the knife on the countertop.

“No!” he shouts.

And screams.

Like a woman.

And then he shouts, “Put that down!”

She comes at him with the knife.

“I don’t have them!” he shouts. “I don’t know where they are!”

She does not believe him, she no longer cares where the fucking pictures are, she is consumed by rage. She knows only that this is the man who has caused her so much pain over so many years, the man who could never be satisfied by girls, women, females, dig? the man who not moments before has betrayed her yet another time. As she lunges toward him, her green eyes slitted, her lips skinned back over clenched white teeth, the knife in her hand becomes for her what he has always wanted and what she has never been able to give him. With all her might, she sticks it into him, glittering and stiff.

He screams.

And then he is silent.

All is silent.

She lets go of the knife. He sinks to the floor.

At first she thinks she is wet with his blood below.

But it is not his blood.

She runs off into the rain.

Toots was watching when she came out of the house at a quarter to twelve.

Leona was wearing black leotards and tights. Black pumps with a French heel. A black shoulder bag slung over one shoulder. Black Reeboks laced together and slung over the other shoulder. She tossed the Reeboks and the bag onto the front seat of the Jag and then got in herself.

Toots stayed a block and a half behind her.

Followed her up 41, turned when she did onto Bayou Boulevard.

Still with her when she parked the car in front of the Bayou Professional Building, 837 West Bayou Boulevard. Two-story, white clapboard building dead ahead. Doctors’ shingles alongside doors in the wall. One of the shingles read WADE LIVINGSTON, M.D. Must be the place. Toots thought.

She waited.

In the Jag up ahead, Leona lighted a cigarette.

Toots’s dashboard clock read three minutes to twelve.

Short nervous puffs of smoke came from the window on the driver’s side of the Jag.

Hands on the clock straight up now.

One of the ground-level office doors opened. A nurse in white skirts, a little white cap, white pantyhose and flat white rubber-soled shoes came out and began walking toward a little red Toyota. She looked up at the sky, shrugged, got into the car, started it, and drove off.

Toots waited.

Leona tossed her cigarette out the window.

The door to the office opened again.

A tall dark-haired man wearing eyeglasses and a blue suit stepped out, checked the parking lot, spotted the green Jag, and walked toward it.

Dr. Livingston, Toots thought. I presume.

Livingston, if that’s who he was, checked the lot again as he approached the Jag. He opened the door on the passenger side, got in immediately, and closed the door behind him.

“Let’s get the hell away from here,” he said.

Toots smiled.

The bug was working fine.

It was easy when there were only two people. Monitor a bug with four or five people in a room, you could go crazy trying to figure which voice was which. This one was simple. Only two people, one male, one female. Vive la différence.

“All right, Lee, what’s the big urgency?”

Toots guessed he called her Lee. Term of endearment, she guessed. Lee.

“I hate it when you call me Lee.”

Ooops.

“Oh, I’m SOFIA, I didn’t realize…”

“My name is Leona.”

“Yes, Leona, I said I was sorry.”

Silence.

“So here we are. what’s the big urgency?”

“I wanted to say goodbye properly.”

“I thought that’s what last night was all about. Saying goodbye properly Leona, if you intend to…”

“No, I…”

“… drag this thing out forever…”

“No. I know you want to end it.”

“I’ve already ended it, Leona.”

“Yes, I know. But I haven’t. Not yet. Not properly.”

“Where are we going?”

She was making a left turn into the parking lot of the Haley Municipal Arena. The big billboard out front advertised an automobile show coming next week. Trucks, Cars, Tractors.

“We can talk here.”

“We can talk on the road, too. I don’t see why…”

“I don’t like to talk and drive at the same time.”

Toots followed them in.

Several cars parked in the lot. Employees, Toots guessed. A yellow pickup truck with a golden retriever sitting behind the wheel. Man in coveralls walking diagonally across the lot toward the Motor Vehicles Bureau across the street from the arena.

Leona stopped the car.

Toots swung around the lot, drove all the way around the arena, and then parked facing the Jag, some three rows away from it. Risky, maybe, but she wanted to catch every word of this on tape, and if she pulled too close behind them, she might have attracted even more attention. A car parked in plain sight wouldn’t be a suspicious car. She hoped.

“All right, let’s talk.” The doctor’s voice again. “You said you wanted to talk, so let’s…”

And a sudden silence.

Toots turned toward the recorder, thinking there’d been some kind of failure. The reels were still turning, the speaker switch was in the ON position.

“What’s that, Leona?”

The man’s voice. The doctor. Wade Livingston. Whoever the hell. Toots had heard voices like that before. A man trying to sound calm while he was on the thin boil of panic.

“What does it look like?”

Uh-oh, Toots thought.

“It looks like a gun, Leona. put it away right this minute.”

Toughing it out. But the panic bubbling up now.

“No, I want to end this properly.”

Holy shit, Toots thought, she’s going to shoot him!

“You said you wanted to end it. Wade, so let’s end it.”

Toots was already halfway out of the car.

She ran straight for the driver’s side. Neither of them saw her coming. The man, the doctor. Wade Livingston, whoever the hell, was fumbling to open the door on his side, and Leona was holding the gun in both hands now, the way she’d probably seen lady cops on television doing it, and Toots thought Oh, Jesus, don’t shoot him, and grabbed the handle on the Jag’s door and yanked it open, and though she’d never met the lady face to face, she yelled her first name, “Leona!” and then yelled, “Don’t!” and then reached out for her shoulder and pulled her toward her, and hoped the gun wouldn’t go off accidentally and put a big hole in the doctor’s head.

“Toots Kiley,” she said. “Give me the gun.”

She held out her hand. The gun was shaking in Leona’s fist.

“Give it to me, okay, Leona?”

On the other side of the car. Wade Livingston was backed against the door, watching in seeming fascination.

“Who are you?” Leona said.

“I told you. Toots Kiley. Let me have the piece, please.”

Leona hesitated.

“Come on, Leona,” Toots said. “There are better ways, believe me.”

Leona looked into her eyes.

“I mean it,” Toots said.

Leona kept looking into her eyes.

“Okay?” Toots said.

Leona nodded and handed her the gun.

“Good,” Toots said. “Thank you.”

“Are you a police officer?” the doctor said. “If so, I’d like to bring charges against…”

“You think your wife would like that?” Toots asked, taking a shot in the dark.

The doctor’s face went pale.

“I didn’t think so,” Toots said.

The mist on the water was beginning to tear away in tatters. Matthew could almost see the horizon now. Elise sat beside her mother, drained by her bitter diatribe and her equally bitter confession of murder. She had equated her love for Jonathan Parrish with a film of dubious intent, and now she sat with her hands clasped between her mother’s as if the frames of that film were flickering on the screen of her mind all over again.

“Miss Brechtmann,” Bloom said, “I ask you now, did you go back to the Parrish house at any time after the day of the murder?”

A policeman’s voice. Flat. Unemotional.

“I did.”

“For what purpose, please?”

“To look for the photographs.”

“Was there anyone in the house when you went there?”

“You know there was.”

“Miss Brechtmann, could I now have the weapon and the photographs specified in the search warrant? ”

“I’ll show you where they are,” she said, and rose, and slipped her hands from between her mother’s, and then patted her mother’s hands and said, “Its all right. Mama. Really”

She turned to where Matthew was standing beside Bloom.

The sun was almost coming through now.

The panes of glass on the French doors were almost alive with light.

“Nobody counted,” she said, and smiled.

She was looking directly at Matthew. Perhaps because Bloom was a policeman from whom she felt she could expect no compassion. Perhaps because she included her mother among those who had not counted. Looking at Matthew. the smile on her face.

“Do you see?” she said.

“No. I’m sorry, I…”

“The baby was born in August,” she said.

“Yes?”

The smile still on her face.

“I was with Abbott shortly after Christmas. The end of December. Do you see now?”

Her mother was staring at her.

Matthew already knew what she was saying. Matthew had already done the counting.

“The baby wasn’t premature,” Elise said.

“Elise. what are you…?”

“I got pregnant in November, the baby was right on time.”

“What?”

“The baby was Jonathan’s.”

Sophie Brechtmann brought her hand to her mouth.

“He never knew, isn’t that rich? The night I went to tell him… well, you see, that was the night he chose to… to… to tell me it would never work, that was the night he said… goodbye.’ Elise shrugged. She was still smiling. “So I went to Abbott’s shabby little room. In anger and in… in…”

“Elise,” her mother said.

“Such a beautiful child we had,” Elise said. “Jonathan and I.”

“Elise, darling…”

“Such a beautiful family we could have been.”

“Darling, darling…”

“Oh, Mama,” she said, and burst into tears. “I’m so sorry, I’m so terribly sorry, please forgive me.”

“Darling golden girl…”

Matthew watched them.

Mother and daughter.

This is the house that Jack built, he thought.

This is the end of the house that Jack built.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon.

Toots and Warren were in Matthew’s office.

Toots was telling him all about how close Leona had come to shooting Dr. Wade Livingston. She was telling him there was no question but that Leona and the doctor had been intimately involved. No question, either, but that the affair was now over and done with.

“So what do we tell Frank?” Warren asked.

“I don’t know yet. I want to think about it.”

“I mean… it’s over with, Matthew.”

“I know.”

“Well… let me know what kind of report you want.”

“I will,” Matthew said. “You both did a fine job. I hope we’ll be working together again. Miss Kiley.”

“Toots,” she said.

“Toots, yes.”

“You want to go have a beer or something?” Warren asked her.

“Love to,” she said.

“Talk to you, Matthew,” Warren said, and followed Toots out.

The phone began ringing. Matthew picked up.

“An Irene McCauley on five,” Cynthia said.

He punched the button.

“Hello?”

The time was three-ten.

Irene was calling to tell him that Helen Abbott had died in the hospital last night.

“I tried to get you early this morning,” she said, “but you were already gone. The son of a bitch did a real number on her, Matthew.”

“Who?” Matthew said.

“Hurley. She named him before she died. The police are looking for him now.”

“The police already have him,” Matthew said. “I’ll call over there, get them working on the same track.”

“Matthew…”

“Yes.”

“The baby’s dead, too.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He was thinking that this was the true end of the house that Jack built.

At five o’clock that afternoon, he and Leona met again at Marina Lou’s.

The first thing she said was, “I told you I wasn’t having an affair, didn’t I?”

“A technicality,” Matthew said.

“No, Matthew, we’d already ended it.”

“He’d already ended it.”

She looked at him.

“How do you know that?”

“We have tapes. The bug saved you a lot of grief, Leona. If Toots hadn’t heard that conversation…”

“I’d have shot him, yes.”

“Probably.”

“Most likely.”

She sipped at her drink.

Second martini.

“You drink too much,” he said.

“I know. Was it Frank who put the tail on me?”

“Yes.”

“Then I ought to thank him.”

“For what?”

“If Miss Kiley hadn’t placed a bug in my car, I’d have shot and perhaps killed Dr. Wade Livingston. Miss Kiley was hired by Frank, ergo…”

“By Warren Chambers, actually. Who was hired by me. At Frank’s suggestion.”

“It still all goes back to Frank.”

“Does it?”

“Well, if he’s the one who…”

“You know what I mean, Leona. Does it go back to Frank?”

“Oh.”

“What do you want me to tell him?”

Leona shrugged, lifted her glass, drained it, and signaled to the waiter for another one.

“No, Leona,” Matthew said. “No more.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m your friend.”

“I believe that, you know.”

“What do I tell Frank?”

“Let me tell him,” she said.

“All right, what will you tell him?”

“Everything.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see, won’t we?”

“When did this thing with Livingston start?”

“Two months ago.”

“That’s not too bad.”

“No, not too bad.”

She was silent for a long time. Then she looked directly into Matthew’s eyes and said, “I still love him, Matthew.”

“Then either stop loving him or get out of the marriage,” Matthew said.

“Okay.”

Matthew sighed heavily.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, and sighed again.

“Really.”

“Frank’s going to ask my advice, you know. After you’ve talked to him, he’s going to want my opinion. We’re partners, Leona.”

“And what will you tell him?”

“I’ll tell him he ought to do everything in his power to keep you. Short of looking the other way while you fuck a stranger. That’s what I’ll tell him, Leona.”

“Thank you,” she said.

And suddenly she was crying.

Parrish was catching a nine o’clock plane to Indianapolis. He was packed and ready to go when Matthew went to see him at the hotel early that evening. Now that all charges had been dropped, he wanted to get the hell out of Calusa as soon as possible.

He took Matthew’s hand.

“Thank you,” he said.

And then, because Matthew had saved his life, and because he still hadn’t the slightest idea what sort of man he was, he said, “If ever you’re in Indiana, stop by. I’d be mighty happy to see you.”

“I rarely get out that way,” Matthew said, and smiled.

He was thinking You do your very best, you make it work at last, you make it all come together — and then there’s nothing more to do but shake hands and say so long.

“I guess that means I won’t be seeing you ever again,” Parrish said.

“I guess that’s what it means,” Matthew said.

It sounded very much like goodbye.

This is the house that Jack built.

This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the man all tattered and torn that kissed the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the priest all shaven and shorn that married the man all tattered and torn that kissed the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cock that crowed in the morn that waked the priest all shaven and shorn that married the man all tattered and torn that kissed the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that jack built.

This is the farmer that sowed the corn that kept the cock that crowed in the morn that waked the priest all shaven and shorn that married the man all tattered and torn that kissed the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.