Edited to Death (20 page)

And she was right again. The curbside gelateria on Sacramento was doing a brisk business.
Equipped with samplers of pistachio and mandarin orange, we nibbled our way back to
the office.

“So Andrea,” I ventured. “Do I sense a little something cooking between you and Calvin?”

She smiled. “In my family, you never, ever ask questions like that.”

“Good thing I’m a friend, and not family,” I countered. “Plus, I know you’re a few
years older than Calvin, and I’m thinking that’s a trend—older woman, younger man—so
we should probably do a story on it in the magazine. What do you think?”

“And,” she continued, ignoring my question, “in my family, people keep company for
something in excess of fifteen years before it can be said there’s anything ‘cooking’,
as you so delicately put it.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means I don’t see Calvin waiting around for fifteen minutes, never mind fifteen
years.”

“Well, we shall see, what we shall see,” said Andrea, pushing the double doors open
into the lobby of our building. As you so tactfully pointed out, I’ve got a good five
years on Calvin. Perhaps I can teach him a little patience.”

“Is that family code for something?”

“Why, yes, I believe it is.”

We both jabbed at the elevator button at the same time. “Andrea, I was also wondering.…”

She looked amused. “You’re certainly doing a lot of that.”

I gulped. “About you and Quentin.”

Her face went blank. “What about us?”

“Why’d it start? Why’d it end?”

“Well, it’s not really any of your business,” she began.

“I know, I know, but murder changes the rules about being nosy.”

The elevator creaked to the lobby and opened its doors. We stepped in. The doors closed.
Neither one of us reached to press 4.

“I’m not sure it does change the rules, unless you’ve been appointed to the police
force while I wasn’t looking,” she said tartly. “But here’s what I’m willing to tell
you. I met Quentin before I started writing for
Small Town
. He was very charming, and we became go-to-film-opening friends. Claire said movies
gave her headaches, so Quentin and I used to go see films a lot. I don’t remember
why it happened, but it did. We still went to movies but then, there was, you might
say, a post-film agenda.” She reached out and punched 4, hard. She looked me dead
in the eye. “He was a great lay, as I believe you were aware. With virtually no messy
emotional strings attached.”

The elevator creaked upwards. “Why’d it end?”

She shrugged. “It just did. There was someone else. Or a couple of someone elses.
I’m not good at being an ensemble player.”

The door opened.

Andrea swung her coat off her shoulders and turned away. I caught her wrist.

“Thanks for talking to me,” I said.

She looked down at my hand on her wrist, as if wondering how it got there. I let go.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m sorry I was so short. But it’s not something I’m proud
about. Claire’s not anybody I care for particularly, and Quentin never seemed to give
fidelity two pins’ worth of thought, but still.…”

“I know,” I said grimly. “Boy, do I know.”

When I got to my desk, the message slip I’d been waiting for was there.

Sara Jenkins had called.

Miracles of direct dialing, I had her on the phone in under a minute.

“Maggie, what a detective I am! And with so little to go on.”

“Stop congratulating yourself,” I said. “Spill the goods.”

“Okay, here goes. Douglas is Douglas Thurston. He’s a don at Oxford, and yes indeed,
he does have a new biography out on Joyce Cary.”

“That’s great! How’d you figure it out?”

Sara snorted. “Not terribly difficult. Just because I can’t make hollandaise doesn’t
mean I’m a ninny. I marched over to the corner academic bookstore and asked.”

“Oh,” I said. “Good work.”

“So anyway. Douglas isn’t married, exactly. He’s gay. Not like most public school
Englishmen—not temporarily boffing little boys because there’s nothing else around.
He’s permanently gay. And he lives with an architect.”

“Named Leslie?”

“Exactly. Leslie Dover-Couch. They’ve been together for years, since school I gather.”

“The plot thickens.”

“Yes, indeed. And they were all chums of Quentin’s at Oxford.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Called him up and asked. He’d just heard the news about Quentin and was quite anxious
to get details. I told him you might ring up.”

“I just might. Give me the number.”

Sara repeated it twice. “So tell me about the job. Is this it? You’re a private eye?”

“Part-time,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’m not packing a pistol yet.”

Sara laughed. “What does Michael think about all this?”

I felt the lightness drain out of me.

“Maggie? Anything wrong?”

“Oh, it’s too long a story to tell over the phone,” I said, “but I wish you were here,
because I could use somebody to talk to.” I sighed. “The short answer is, I’ve actually
sort of promised Michael I wouldn’t be running around detecting.”

“But now you are?”

“Well, I’m worried about… some problems I created. And it seems to me that figuring
out what happened to Quentin will help clear things up. So I’m really not doing much,
just asking around.”

“And putting me to work as your operative,” Sara observed. “Be careful. I love Michael,
but he’s got a temper. I wouldn’t be telling him any tales if I were you.”

“Yeah, I wish I’d taken that advice a while ago,” I said ruefully.

“But now you’re in it, aren’t you?” asked Sara. “I can tell you’re in that steamroller
mode of yours we all find so—”

“Charming,” I finished for her. Then I realized something was bothering me. “Sara,
wait, how’d Douglas hear about Quentin?”

“From someone named Glen Fox. He says they all went to school together.”

Glen Fox. Quentin. Douglas. Something needed to jiggle into place.

Sara was talking “Come on, tell me about this job, if you’re not being paid to be
a private eye, that is.”

“I’m Glen Fox’s boss,” I said. “I took Quentin’s place at the magazine.”

“Well, be careful, love. It sounds like a dangerous spot. Being editor, I mean.” We
chatted a few minutes more, I walked Sara through how to make a stand-up paper collar
for her soufflé dish, and she gave me her new e-mail address.

“It’s good to have this, Maggie,” she concluded. “If I’m going to be your across-the-pond
detecting assistant and marriage counselor, we can’t waste all our capital on trunk
calls.”

“Trunk calls? Isn’t that something people talk about in old Greer Garson movies?”

Sara laughed. “Probably. It’s what my penny-pinching mother-in-law calls them whenever
Richard complains I’ve been on the phone to you again.”

After we hung up, I sat staring at the receiver. Then I picked it up and dialed Douglas
Thurston’s number. A deep voice rumbled in my ear, “Yes? Thurston here.”

“Margaret Fiori, here.” Two can play that game.

“Ah, yes, Mrs. Fiori. You’re Sara Jenkins’s friend?”

I said indeed I was. He wanted more information about Quentin’s death. I told him
as much as I knew and then I got down to cases.

“This is awkward,” I began, “but I read the last letter you sent to Quentin.”

“Yes?” said Thurston coolly. “What interesting manners you Americans have, reading
other people’s mail.”

“We were very close,” I improvised, “and the police, well, they invited me to take
a look at this correspondence.” Some truth in that statement, wasn’t there?

“Anyway,” I continued, “I wondered about some things in that letter.” I took a deep
breath. “Specifically, I wondered about Giovanni. Who was he? Who is he?”

“He’s an old friend of Quentin’s and mine. Someone we went to school with. I can’t
really see what this has to do with you.”

“It doesn’t. Except, now that Quentin’s dead—murdered—anything we know feels like
it ought to be my business.”

“Surely the police have matters in hand.”

I temporized. “Surely they do. But I have some personal reasons for wanting to help.”
A familiar phrase from public television floated into my consciousness. “I’m helping
the police with their inquiries,” I said briskly. “Now, please tell me, who’s Giovanni?”

“Just who I said. An old friend. His name isn’t really Giovanni. It’s Jack Rowland.
But he loved Italian opera. He’s a tenor. Never pursued it as a career, but he’d memorized
whole chunks of the Italian repertoire. And he was rather promiscuous in the old days,
so we called him ‘Don Giovanni’.”

“Where is he now?”

“Well, he’s in San Francisco. That’s what Quentin wrote to tell me.”

“And this falling-out they had?”

“Oh, it was silly. Jack got himself in a few scrapes. He always claimed Quentin was
his co-conspirator, but somehow Quentin never got caught. Anyway, last scrape out
at Oxford was fairly serious. Jack got sent down.”

“Sent down? You mean bounced? Expelled?”

“Yes. Something like that.”

“What was the scrape?”

Thurston was quiet, clearly thinking things through.

“You don’t know Jack Rowland, I take it? Paths haven’t crossed?”

“No. Never heard of him before today.”

“Yes, well, can’t think there’s any harm in talking about it after all these years.”

I waited.

“Jack was picking up pocket money by tutoring some local town boys. Latin, I believe.
Anyway, it turned out that promiscuous itch got the better of his judgment. He’d been
buggering one or two of them.”

“Little boys?” I asked, horrified.

“No, no. Not quite. Teenagers, seventeen or so, but still, their parents didn’t take
kindly to it. Especially one of the dads. Probably not a good idea to practice the
love that dare not speak its name on the vicar’s son.”

“Probably not. But what did Quentin have to do with it?”

“Well, this wasn’t the seventies, you have to remember, my dear. It was, let’s see,
mid-1960s, and I’m afraid young Quentin and Jack had also introduced these young men
to the joys of marijuana. Quentin had a little cadre of musician friends, black and
Moroccan fellows he’d ‘jam with’, as you Americans say. They kept Quentin and Jack
well supplied.”

“So Quentin wasn’t carrying on with the boys, I take it?”

“I think not. Quentin was rather intensely a ladies’ man at that stage in his life.”

“So Jack was out, and Quentin was in.”

“That’s right. Jack went back to America and bummed around a bit. He returned to graduate
school in the late sixties. Somewhere on one of your coasts, east, west, something
like that. Can’t say I know which. Then he came back here for a while. We’ve kept
in touch very sporadically.”

“Did he go to graduate school in music?”

“Oh, no. That was just a hobby. But then his parents died, and Jack inherited some
money, so I’m not quite sure what he pursued as a livelihood.”

“So if I understand Quentin’s letter correctly, Jack’s in San Francisco now, and they’d
kissed and made up.”

“Quite so.”

I mused on all this. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I could reach him?”

“No, I’m afraid I wouldn’t. I was counting on Quentin to put us in touch with each
other. You might ask Glen Fox, though. You must know him.”

“Yes, we work together at
Small Town
.”

“Well, interrogate him, then. If Quentin’s been in touch with Jack, surely Glen might
know where he’s hanging about.”

As we talked, I fingered through the “R’s” in Quentin’s Rolodex. No luck, no Rowland.
And nobody in “G” for Giovanni, either.

I thanked Douglas Thurston for his help, and we agreed we’d plan a drink or dinner
to toast Quentin’s memory when he came to San Francisco. I hung up and sat, thinking.

Then I buzzed Glen. He was just on the way out the door.

“Soccer practice for the boys, Maggie. But you said it was quick?”

It was. I asked him if he knew how I could reach Jack Rowland.

“Jack Rowland? Rowland from Oxford?”

“Yes.”

The answer was no. Glen hadn’t heard from him or seen him in many, many years.

It wasn’t the answer I wanted. But it was the one I expected. I put on my hat and
coat and went home.

17

But Not for Love

When I walked in the front door, the unmistakable soy-ginger-garlic scents of stir-fry
were emanating from the kitchen. I threw keys and handbag on the entry table and headed
for the kitchen to investigate. Zach was kneeling on a kitchen stool, wielding a wooden
spoon and agitating slices of chicken breast in a wok; Josh was at the cutting board,
slicing peppers; Michael was leaning against a counter, wineglass in hand, supervising.
Louis Armstrong was blasting out of the kitchen speakers. The whole atmosphere in
the room felt significantly better than it had that morning. “
Cara
,” Michael said, waving his glass to include the boys in the gesture, “just another
dull night of domestic bliss.” I nestled under his arm for a squeeze and whispered
sweetly in his ear, “Screw you.”