Canary (20 page)

“I've been cleaning my apartment,” Clarisse said, still not looking at him.

“Uh-oh,” Valentine said darkly, “that means you've been thinking. I remember that just before you decided to change careers you cleaned your old apartment on Beacon for a whole weekend. It was nearly as bad as the time that airline pilot asked you to marry him.”

“Cleaning clears my mind,” Clarisse said. “I've been thinking about this place.” She unwrapped her arms and waved one of them about.

“The roof?”

“No, idiot. Slate. Our lives here.”

Valentine leaned aside and wiped away a handful of loose mortar from under him. “Oh?”

“I was thinking that we were in trouble. That maybe I'll have to drop out of law school and go back to real estate and you'll have to go to work for somebody else again. As soon as Niobe gets back, you know, Sean is quitting. He says he can't bring in decent tips here anymore.”

Niobe had been in Hawaii for more than six weeks, “working out her grief,” as she put it.

“Sean gave me his notice yesterday,” Valentine told her. “He didn't say, but I think he got a job down the street at Fritz. I don't think Niobe will stay, either. In fact, I think she's coming back to Boston just long enough to pack up and move. I don't blame either of them. They've been loyal to us and to Slate, but they can obviously make more money somewhere else. I take it you spent the afternoon slinging Ajax and Endust and entertaining visions of the poor house.”

“More or less.”

“Remember, though, it's the August slump.”

“Is that like the July slump we experienced?”

“Things'll pick up in September when everybody comes back to school. I
know
they'll pick up when they catch the necktie murderer.”

“Nobody's died in the past six weeks,” Clarisse said. “That's something.”

“Nobody we know of,” Valentine amended.

“We'd have heard,” Clarisse said. “But no matter if the killer has stopped or not, our customers have
not
returned. I'll bet they just got out of the habit of coming to Slate. We've been in business less than a year, and we put so much money into it…”

“So,” Valentine said with a sigh, “when you were downstairs scrubbing the linoleum, did you give any thought to the murders?”

“Yes,” replied Clarisse seriously, “I was thinking about Newt. His death has really bothered me, because he's the one I knew best.”

“He was fully clothed, and unlike all the other victims, Newt was killed in late afternoon instead of the middle of the night. Do you think a copycat killer got to him?” Clarisse nodded, and Valentine went on: “Then it was probably someone he knew and let into the building, or it was somebody who was already inside waiting for him when he got home. You think?”

“Yes, and I'll bet either way it was a woman. Suspect number one: Niobe Feng,” replied Clarisse firmly. She couldn't read Valentine's expression but felt he was probably skeptical. “Well, she
was
at home all afternoon and that evening,” she emphasized. “She could have gone down to talk to him and they got into one of their fights. Who would hear it? All the neighbors were at work. Niobe overpowered him in a fit of passion, and that was the end of Newt. Just as she was finishing him off, his door buzzer sounded. Niobe fled in a panic back to her place. We rang, and she let us in. The three of us went to Newt's apartment to find out why he wasn't answering his bell or the door, and there he was. What do you think?”

“Are you saying that Niobe committed the other murders?”

Clarisse frowned. “Perhaps—out of jealousy. Newt had gone to bed with Jed, also with the Shrimp, and we know he had a date with All-American Boy. All those men are dead.”

“But Niobe
wasn't
jealous of the men Newt went to bed with. She only got upset when she discovered that Newt had gone to bed with B.J.”

“Which brings us to suspect number two,” Clarisse said.

“Convince me.”

“Newt was killed on the same day I questioned him at the health spa and the same day B.J. tried to steam me to death—”

“What if it wasn't either one of them, but just some strange person's idea of a practical joke?”

“It doesn't matter. What does matter is that they left the spa together. Maybe they went back to Newt's apartment.”

“Then B.J. killed him?”

Clarisse left the wall and paced about on the gravel, thinking. “Together they were the necktie murderer!” A jumbo jet rose suddenly above the downtown skyline. The roar of the engines was deafening, but when the noise subsided, Clarisse turned back to Valentine. “They did the killings together, taking separate victims. Somehow one initiated the other into it. At the spa, B.J. thought I was onto them and tried to kill me. They went to Newt's apartment to talk it over. Maybe Newt was getting paranoid. B.J. thought he was going to blow their cover, and she killed him. The woman's no slouch. She's got a good body under all that leather, and we know she's been working out.”

“What about motive—sexual thrills?”

“Yes. That and cover-up,” said Clarisse. “The earlier killings were the kicks. Ruder and Cruder were probably just cover-up, just as Newt was cover-up. Trying to get rid of me was an attempted cover-up.”

Valentine thought this through for a few moments and then said, “Do you notice a slight difficulty with these two suspects?”

“No,” said Clarisse definitely. “I'm voting for B.J.”

“We're talking about a string of murders of homosexual men, but your two major suspects are heterosexual women. Doesn't that strike you as a mite improbable—not to mention that now you've got more cover-up crimes than original murders?”

“I don't think it's improbable,” said Clarisse, but uncertainly. She brightened suddenly, “There's something else! How long has it been since the last murder?”

“Newt died on July fifth,” said Valentine. “No murders since then.”

“Niobe's been out of town since Newt's funeral,” Clarisse pointed out.

“What about B.J.?”

“B.J.'s been in Provincetown. She'll be back Labor Day weekend. I did my homework—”

She broke off as she glanced toward the Warren Avenue side of the building and moved closer to the edge.

Curious as to what had drawn her attention, Valentine joined her and saw a Boston Gas repair truck just rounding the corner from Berkeley Street.

“Did you know that Bander was seeing Sean again?” Clarisse asked suddenly.

“No,” said Valentine, genuinely surprised. “Is this rumor or fact?”

“Sean told me. He wouldn't tell you because you've made it abundantly clear what you think of Bander.”

“How long have they been seeing each other?”

Clarisse thought for a moment. “He didn't say exactly, but I got the impression it's been a while. Over a month, at least.” Then her brow wrinkled. “That means that Bander has been out of circulation for a while, too—just like Niobe and B.J.”

“Clarisse, please tell me you don't have this theory about the necktie killer being an unhappy and unpleasant homosexual Boston Gas repairman desperately looking for a lover but every time he falls for someone they reject him and he strangles them. Please say that's not what you're thinking.”

“Well…” Clarisse hedged. “Something like that. Anyway, who said murder couldn't be romantic?”

Valentine rolled his eyes. “So why aren't we accusing Father McKimmon?”

“Father McKimmon?”

“That's right, Lovelace. I haven't seen him once since July.”

“Oh, God.” Clarisse sighed. “I'd forgotten all about Father McKimmon. He knew Newt, and he knew Jed and the Shrimp and…”

“Do you think this roof is wired?” Valentine asked suddenly.

“Wired?”

“You know—bugged. State-of-the-art listening devices disguised as gravel or something.”

Clarisse turned and looked up at the moon, visible this late afternoon. “It's not even a first-quarter moon yet and already you're acting strange.”

Valentine leaned slightly forward. “Look down at the police station. Third floor left window. There're two of them with binoculars, and they sure aren't star gazing.”

“Oh, them,” Clarisse said calmly. “They've been there since I came up here a while ago. You know, I think they probably suspect that you and I committed all those murders.”

Valentine looked directly into the window of the police station, and bared his teeth in a broad grin.

“O
H, MY GOD, VALENTINE!”
Clarisse screeched as she clambered up onto the car seat and squeezed herself though the open skylight of the rented Thunderbird. “It's beautiful here!”

“Positively bucolic,” Valentine replied unenthusiastically as his eyes swept across the thick forest surrounding River Pines Lodge. He let go of the steering wheel and turned off the ignition.

“Your heels are going to rip the fabric,” he called up to her. “I didn't take vandalism coverage on this thing, remember?”

Clarisse lowered herself and settled back into the seat. She adjusted her wide-brimmed tan straw hat and picked at the bow of the pink ribbon securing it under her chin. She tossed the trailing ribbon ends over her shoulders, pushed her large octagonal dark glasses up on the bridge of her nose, and looked at Valentine.

“Val, I'm well aware of your dislike of a landscape minus a view of a distant city skyline, but I do not want to hear it today. I
need
a day in the country.” She breathed contentedly and then leaned over to catch sight of herself in the rearview mirror. “How do I look?”

Valentine pressed back against his door to avoid a slashing with the edge of her straw hat. He observed her briefly. She also wore a white blouse with short puffed sleeves and pink cuffed and pleated Forties-style shorts.

“You look like you're in drag as Katharine Hepburn.”

“Is Katharine Hepburn
still
alive?” a garbled female voice rasped from behind them.

Valentine and Clarisse both turned as Niobe rose blearily from the backseat where she had been sleeping since they left Boston two hours earlier.

“How do you feel?” Clarisse asked.

Niobe sat all the way up and yawned loudly as she rubbed her eyes. When she dropped her hands into her lap, her eyes were still closed. “I still have jet lag. What was that squealing about a minute ago? Did we run over a pig?” She yawned again.

“We've arrived, Niobe. We're here at River Pines, and it's lovely.”

Niobe raised one eyelid. She turned her head slightly and then opened the other eye. “Oh, God, we're in the woods!” she shrieked. “How did we end up here? Do we have any food? Are we going to starve?”

Clarisse shifted back around. “This is River Pines Lodge. Remember? Labor Day weekend? Bartenders' Weekend? All your old friends from around New England and New York? A smart barbecue followed by a smart tubing contest?”

Niobe threw herself forward and grabbed Valentine's shoulder. “I said I'd go out for drinks with you two. I
didn't
say I wanted to be dragged to the end of the earth for them! I hate trees,
especially
ones with pine needles and leaves on them! How did this happen to me?”

“I asked you last night after you got back. You said ‘yes.' That's how.”

“You took advantage of my jet lag. Fresh air makes me nauseous.”

“Come on, Niobe,” Clarisse persisted. “We'll be back in Boston by midnight and, for all I care, you can inhale fumes directly from the exhaust pipe of a Greyhound bus. Right now though, all three of us are going to try to have a good time.”

“Fresh air may make you sick, Niobe,” Valentine said over his shoulder, “but being confined in a small space with a cheerful woman is a real killer.”

Clarisse opened the glove compartment and took out three plastic-encased name tags reading “SLATE—BOSTON” and gave one to Valentine and another to Niobe.

Clarisse opened her door and got out of the car. “I'm going to reacquaint myself with Mother Nature for a few hours,” she said, pinning on her own tag.

“All I want to do is reacquaint myself with a stiff gin and tonic,” Valentine said as he got out of his side.

“Make that two gins,” Niobe said as she crawled out of the back seat. “Then maybe I can handle all this green hanging around everywhere.”

The River Pines Lodge, three-storied and made of logs, lay deep in the forests of southern Vermont. From its wide, deep veranda, there was a view to the west of the Green Mountains, and to the south of a stretch of the narrow, turbulent Cold River. The forest hugged the lodge on every side.