The Night Remembers

21

Marvin Scribbins was listed as living out in the hills east of Marion where the newer rich were building homes in the middle of timberland. A maid answered and told me that Mr. Scribbins was out of town on a business trip until tomorrow. I left my name and number.

In the East Side Maidrite I had a maidrite with mustard and pickles and a bottle of Hamms, the mid-afternoon meal I started eating in my fifties, one of the ways I keep my energy up. Finished, I smoked two cigarettes, one-third of my daily allotment. They tasted better than they had any right to.

In the car again, snow beginning to splatter on the windshield, I drove down First Avenue past the crumbling houses that only thirty years ago had been the special province of the upper middle class, down past Coe College and the refurbished buildings that looked sleek and formidable even in the afternoon gloom, and on down to the beginnings of the business district.

Paul Heckart’s building was a prim three-story brick that had recently been sandblasted. With its tinted and sealed windows, it appeared almost brand new. Inside, everything was brand new — bright wallcoverings, carpeting, doors, even the office furnishings. The effect of all this was apparently good on the workers. Everybody moved around quickly, desk to desk, floor to floor, and when they spoke to one another it was with the kind of pleasantness that can’t be faked. There was a good working atmosphere here.

Paul Heckart’s office was on the third floor.

While I waited for him in a reception area, I walked around and looked at the large photographs of the office furnishings the Heckart Company designed and built. The stuff was gorgeous and not quite real. You just didn’t think anybody could be that creative with something as mundane as desks and chairs and tables, even wastebaskets that did not in any way resemble wastebaskets. No wonder Paul Heckart and his brother were two of the most successful men in the city.

“Hello,” Paul Heckart said.

In the daylight, he appeared bigger than he had last night, a long-striding man who was probably most at home on the golf course, tanned, white-haired, firm-jawed, and with a grip that shamed mine. Adjusting his regimental-striped tie inside his three-piece blue suit, he said, seeming worried, “Has something happened, Mr. Walsh?”

“Not that I know of. I just wondered if I could talk to you.”

“Of course,” he said. “Of course you can.”

To the fetching young receptionist with the Katharine Hepburn auburn hair and the wry Myrna Loy gaze, he said, “Trish, we’ll be in my conference room.”

“Should I interrupt?”

“Not unless it’s really an emergency.”

She nodded, and he led me down a hall that was just as sumptuous as the rest of the layout.

The conference room was very conservative: mahogany furnishings and wall trimmings with dark blue carpeting that made you feel, at first, as if you were walking into quicksand. From the large window in the east wall you could see all of downtown, the Teleconnect building looming especially large only a few blocks away.

He poured us each a cup of coffee from a silver server that probably cost half as much as my car. When we were seated across the conference table from each other, he said, “Now, how may I help you, Mr. Walsh?”

“I thought that maybe you could tell me a few things about the Pennyfeather family. I can’t quite bring them into focus.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” He looked, for the first time, vaguely uncomfortable. Before I could explain further, he said, “Before we start, there’s something I’d better tell you.”

“All right.”

“I’m the closest friend they’ve got, and in turn they’re my closest friends. The entire family. I’m sorry if I looked a little apprehensive there — when you asked me to talk about them — but I just couldn’t bring myself to say anything negative about them.”

“I’m not asking for anything negative, Mr. Heckart. I’m just trying to find out what happened twelve years ago so I can learn something more about last night.”

“You think they’re connected?”

“Possibly; probably.”

“What would you like me to tell you?”

“About the family relationship, for one thing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a family that close-knit before.”

He smiled. “They’re like a TV family, aren’t they?”

“Do they spend as much time together as they seem to?”

“Yes, unfortunately, they do, and I’m afraid that’s why neither David nor Carolyn is married any longer. Their respective spouses just couldn’t handle that kind of closeness.”

“Oh?”

“Have you ever been around a family whose only reality is themselves?”

I shrugged. “I suppose; I guess I’m not sure.”

“Well, no matter how often or cordially they try to include you, you can easily develop the sense that because you’re not a blood part of them somehow you just don’t belong. Again, this isn’t anything the family does consciously. But as an outsider, you certainly could get that impression.”

“Were the Pennyfeathers like this even before George went away to prison?”

“Oh, my, yes. They’ve always been like that. First George and Lisa and then the kids.” He shook his Roman senator head. “That’s what was so ludicrous about the charge that Karl Jankov and Lisa Pennyfeather were having an affair. She was so completely wrapped up in her family that it just never could have happened.”

“ ‘Never’ is a pretty strong word.”

“But in this case it’s the appropriate word.”

“So you don’t think that George killed Jankov?”

“No offense, Mr. Walsh, I know you were the detective in charge of the case, and I know that with that Stacek girl’s testimony the obvious suspect was George — but he didn’t do it. I’m sure of it.”

I sipped some coffee. It was very good. “Could we talk about him? Jankov?”

“Of course. If you’d like.”

“During the trial, I got the impression he’d been your right-hand man, that anything that needed doing in the company, he’d do for you.”

“That’s a fair impression, I suppose.”

“Did you like him as a person?”

“To be honest, no.”

“Why not?”

“With Karl you always saw all the gears working. He never did anything that didn’t advance his career or put himself in a good light. He was like this little animal that needed constant attention and reward. As valuable as he was, his toadying made me uncomfortable.”

“But he was an effective vice president for you?”

“Very. We enjoyed a great period of growth during his tenure here.”

“Did he ever make a pass at Lisa Pennyfeather?”

“Probably.” He laughed. “For Karl there were two kinds of rewards. A pat on the head from the boss and the approval of women who came from a higher social class than he had. Karl was a poor boy who’d been gifted with great cunning and energy — if not exactly brains — and very good looks. He appealed especially to women who wanted some excitement in their lives.” He poured us more coffee. “On any given day, that would describe about half the women at the country club. That was Karl’s ‘circuit,’ if you will.” He chuckled. “He did a lot of ‘recruiting’ out there.”

“Do you think it could have been one of those women who killed him?”

“No, I don’t, Mr. Walsh. I know who killed him.”

The certainty in his voice surprised me. “You do?”

“Of course. His wife, Terri.”

“Why would she kill him?”

“Terri was — and still is, I’d assume — very much like Karl. Graced with cunning and energy, and very much upwardly mobile. She came from the same kind of background. Terri had one problem that Karl didn’t, however.”

“What’s that?”

“Jealousy. In those days, anyway, she was pathologically jealous. If she hadn’t disrupted the work day so much around here, I might even have felt sorry for her.”

“She made scenes?”

“Scenes?” He made a sour face. “Try slapping Karl right in his office with a client present. Or interrupting him with phone calls during key presentations. Or waiting out in his car for him with a revolver she fired into the roof. The county attorney could have brought this out at the trial, but he was interested only in George. George made for bigger headlines.”

Just then there was a discreet knock on the door. I was assuming it would be the receptionist. Instead, it was Heckart’s brother, Richard. He came in without saying anything. He wore a brown suit cut a little more fashionably than Paul’s, and black horn-rims that lent him the air of a man intellectually intent. As he came over to me, he said to his brother, “When you get a chance, go down to the lab and look at my design for the new desk. I think I really hit it this time.”

Paul laughed. “You remember my brother, Richard, Mr. Walsh. He was just trying to tell you in his subtle way that he’s really the brains of our company. He does all the major design work. All I am is a glorified peddler.”

Without being asked, Richard sat down and poured himself some coffee. “I heard you were up here, Mr. Walsh. I thought I’d just come up and say hello.”

Heard I was up here? Who had told him? And why?

“My brother likes to know everything that’s going on,” Paul Heckart laughed. “It’s from his army days. He was a colonel, and he never got over his taste for being in command — even though technically, I’m older and the one that my father left in command.” An uneasy melancholy filled his gaze. “Dad died while Richard was in Korea. He went very slowly.” He offered me a social smile. “It’s funny, I can always get that way about Dad.”

Richard Heckart said, “You’re confusing Mr. Walsh here, Paul. He probably thinks we don’t get along. And we do.”

“Just as long as I do everything you tell me to, little brother,” Paul Heckart said. He spoke with cold authority. There was nothing ironic in his voice. He was quite serious.

“Your brother was just telling me about Jankov,” I said, uncomfortable with the tension between them.

“Ah, Mr. Jankov,” Richard Heckart said. He shook his head with quick and pointed disgust. “I never cared for him. I can’t even say I’m sorry that he was murdered.” He stared at me. “I keep forgetting that you’re the detective who arrested poor George.”

I nodded.

“It’s damned funny how these things turn out,” he said, rueful as always. Last night I’d had the impression that he might be less skilled socially than his brother. What I’d missed was the fact that they simply represented two different styles — the senatorial gloss of his brother, his own barely disguised contempt for most subjects and most people. He’d probably made a fine colonel. “Your representing George now, I mean.”

“I’m just trying to help out a little.”

“And of course you wouldn’t think of taking any money for it.”

“Richard, for Christ’s sake,” Paul Heckart said.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea any of us talk to you, Mr. Walsh. Frankly, given your ties to the local gendarmes, I wouldn’t be surprised if you told them everything you found out.” Richard Heckart smiled as he spoke. “I wouldn’t think that at all unfair of you, either, as far as that goes. A man who was a detective as long as you — naturally your first loyalty is to the force.”

“It wasn’t the ‘force,’ Mr. Heckart. I was with the Linn County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Whatever. You know what I’m talking about.”

Flushing now, his right hand curved into an impressive fist, Paul Heckart said, “You seem to be forgetting something, brother.”

“And what would that be, brother?”

“That Mr. Walsh came to see me. And that what the two of us talk about is none of your goddamn business.”

Ironically, the tension eased after Paul Heckart swore. The animosity was plain and open now, and it was always better this way than hiding behind masks and bitchiness.

“You’d like me to leave?” Richard said. There was a tartness to him that was neither appealing nor amusing.

“Please,” Paul said, “so we may finish our conversation.”

Richard was on his feet now. He looked at me. He smiled again. “Would you like me to tell you what Paul will tell you about me as soon as I leave the room?”

Now, I was the one with red in my cheeks. I dropped my gaze. My palms were gummy with sweat. This was like having Sister Mary Frances make me stand in front of the fourth-grade class that time and apologize for writing the word “shit” on the blackboard.

“He will say,” Richard Heckart went on, “that I’m just overprotective of both him and the company, that I’m as reclusive as the Pennyfeathers, and that the reason I hated Jankov was quite simple — he had an affair with my wife. It took me a long time to get over it. A long time. It wasn’t good for my wife, me, or our children. We spent thousands of dollars seeing a marriage counselor before we had any kind of home life again.”

“None of this came out during the trial,” I said.

Paul Heckart said, “For just the reason I hear in your voice — because if it had, Richard would have been a prime suspect. And I knew for certain that Richard had had nothing to do with Jankov’s murder.”

“How could you know that?” I asked.

“Because during the established time of death, Richard was with me out on my boat. It was just a small craft, one I generally keep moored out at Ellis. I use it sometimes for fishing trips. We went to a lake home owned by a friend named Delaney. Usually, we would have gone to our own cabin, but I’d given that to the Pennyfeathers.”

“I see.”

Richard said, “The cabin’s been in the family for three generations, Mr. Walsh.” He looked directly at his brother. “We’ve all taken guests up there. Paul used to take George fishing, and sometimes he’d take young David for a weekend every once in a while. Is there something about the cabin that interests you?”

Something had changed his attitude. He was no longer bitchy; he wanted to understand my curiosity, and that meant good behavior.

“I just thought it might look awfully convenient to a county attorney — a prime suspect with such a good alibi. A respected brother and a cabin in the woods.”

“Meaning what, Mr. Walsh?” Richard asked.

I decided to rattle him some. “Meaning that it might have looked contrived. Your alibi. To anybody of a suspicious nature.”

“And is that your nature, Mr. Walsh? Suspicious?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, whether you believe it or not — and I don’t give a damn if you do — I was with Paul that whole evening.”

“That’s true, Mr. Walsh,” Paul said.

“I wasn’t making any accusations,” I said to Richard Heckart. “I was only making a comment.”

“I’ll accept it at that, then.” He surprised me by putting out his hand. He had the steely family grip. “I’m sorry if this got nasty. I’m naturally upset over what’s happened with poor George. You can understand that.”

“Of course,” I said, and in fact I supposed I could.

Richard Heckart nodded goodbye to his brother and left. He closed the door quietly.

“Well,” Paul Heckart said, “I don’t know about you, but that isn’t something I’d care to go through again.”

I laughed. “I’ve been through a lot worse.”

He frowned. “He’s just very afraid we’ll let Dad down.”

“How would you do that?”

“By letting something get beyond our control. That’s the military man in Richard. He wants to control everything. He always looked at this mess with Jankov as something that could ultimately hurt the company. That’s why he gets so angry about it, though he’d never admit it. We were raised to believe that the business our great-grandfather started several generations ago was something to be kept in impeccable condition — like a shrine of some sort. I’m afraid Richard got a little too much of that instilled in him. He tends to get feisty and arrogant any time he perceives the company is threatened.”

“You really were with him the night of Jankov’s murder?”

“You think he’s lying to you, Mr. Walsh?”

“That isn’t exactly an answer.”

“Well, here is an exact answer, Mr. Walsh. Yes, my brother was with me all the time that night.”

“Fine. I’ll accept that then.”

He laughed. “Now we’re getting into it, aren’t we?”

“Nothing major, Mr. Heckart. You’ve been very helpful, and I appreciate it.”

“I just hope you or the police can find the person who killed that poor woman last night. Have the authorities learned much about her yet?”

“Not much.”

“In the gazebo. It seems such a waste.”

“It generally is, Mr. Heckart. Murder.”

I tugged up the collar of my car coat. I put out my hand. We shook. I walked to the door.

“If you think of anything about the Jankov case that you think is useful, please call me.”

“Why don’t you try Terri Jankov? As I told you, she would be my first suspect.”

“Maybe I will. Well, thanks again.”

At the door, he said, “Please don’t judge either my brother or me on our little disagreement this afternoon.”

“I won’t.”

“We’re just concerned for George.”

“Of course.”

“But I really would look up Terri. She tried to kill him a few times before somebody actually did kill him.”

“Something else that didn’t come out at the trial.”

“I’m not sure anybody took her attempts very seriously. Sometimes murder attempts — especially between lovers — are like suicide attempts. Really just calling out for attention.”

“I suppose.”

“I hope you’ll look her up.”

I smiled. “After all you’ve told me about her, I guess I don’t have much choice, do I?”