Emerald Aisle (14 page)
KUNERT AND SKYE HAD CALLED him in, separately, polite, receptive, wanting to hear what he had to tell them.
“Your side of the story,” Kunert had said.
He toughed out those interviews, but those were head-on questions that could be answered. Not many others had the right or desire to question him face-to-face. But he could feel the judgment going against him in the firm; nobody had to say anything. Dolores had called in sick and was taking several days off. All he got was a busy signal when he tried to reach her. But it was too much to have Amy acting funny.
“Let's hang that picture,” he said to her, his voice too hearty.
“The one that ⦔
“The beach scene with mother and daughter. I love that painting. I don't want it leaning against the wall until after the wedding.”
Would Amy pass on the word that he was unchanged, chipper, full of beans, whatever? But behind the closed door of his office, he sat at his desk and brooded. The investigation of Bianca's death was in the hands of the Saint Paul police, an advantage; the local rag wasn't covering a death in Highland Village, even if they couldn't make up their mind about the cause of death. How in hell could they even hesitate? Philip Knight had described the half-empty bottles of pills found on Bianca's bed. Wouldn't they have discovered all that gunk in her during the autopsy?
He tried Dolores's number again. No luck. She had the phone off
the hook. Or was she on line? She was dodging him; why kid himself? He thought of the reasons he had provided her for breaking their engagement. Bianca Primero! He had felt only relief that Bianca was dead. Never once had he felt sorrow or regret. Apart from lovemaking, she was a pretty terrible person. In the beginning, Dudley had been fascinated by her. She had money and leisure enough to do anything she damned well pleased. It seemed a definition of heaven, what everyone really wanted. But, close up, it had looked more like hell than heaven. Bianca had been bored stiff. He himself had been a means to alleviate that boredom, a diversion, a toy.
the hook. Or was she on line? She was dodging him; why kid himself? He thought of the reasons he had provided her for breaking their engagement. Bianca Primero! He had felt only relief that Bianca was dead. Never once had he felt sorrow or regret. Apart from lovemaking, she was a pretty terrible person. In the beginning, Dudley had been fascinated by her. She had money and leisure enough to do anything she damned well pleased. It seemed a definition of heaven, what everyone really wanted. But, close up, it had looked more like hell than heaven. Bianca had been bored stiff. He himself had been a means to alleviate that boredom, a diversion, a toy.
But then why wouldn't she let him go? She could go on a cruise, take her pick of dozens of men who would be happy to ease her fretful hours. Young, middle-aged, whatever. So why didn't she just let go of Dudley Fyte? There was still something like pride to be derived from the realization that she could not let him go. Lighthearted affairs with nobody hurt and no lingering claims on the parties were the stuff of myth. Real people get involved. How long had he known Bianca? How much of that time had been spent in bed? A minuscule amount. He had put up with all the rest for the sake of that. Her idea of foreplay was to assert her hold over him. Dolores had become her instrument of torture. Even while he jumped through Bianca's hoops, practically begging her to leave Dolores alone, he was dying to go down the hall with her to the bedroom.
It seemed to him now that it would have been easy to break off with Bianca. What could she tell Dolores that Dolores did not already know? Dolores had learned the worst and that had not shaken her. Now that Bianca was dead it was detectives wanting to talk to him about Bianca that had proved to be too much for Dolores.
He reached out his hand and punched redial but without hope.
“Hello, Mom.”
“Dolores, this is Dudley.”
A long silence. And then the receiver was eased back into the cradle.
“LARRY HAS CHANGED,” NANCY said.
Roger Knight looked at her in bewilderment. “Changed? Of course he's changed. We all do, constantly. Mobile beings, Aquinas called us, everything on earth.”
“That isn't what I meant.”
Roger feared he knew what she meant, but he was not the one for her to talk about such things with. She needed a wise, old, married person or a priest who had heard it all. But despite his denial of knowledge in such matters, Roger had noticed the change in Larry since his return from Minneapolis. But what Larry had said to him was more significant than anything he might have noticed.
“Coming back to campus after being in Minneapolis is weird.”
“Having recently made the same transition, I haven't the least idea what you mean.”
Larry had looked in the door of Roger's office in Decio and been waved in. “I've been sitting here waiting to be distracted.”
“I'm not much of a distraction.”
“I will be the judge of that.”
Shortly afterward had come the strange remark contrasting Minneapolis and Notre Dame.
“What I mean is that, in Minneapolis I felt like an adult; and now that I'm back on campus again, I almost feel like a freshman.”
“Psychologists probably have a name for that.”
“What does it mean?”
“I said that they had a name for it, not that they understood it. Take a reverse analogy. A young man leaves home and goes out into the world and is a great success. He returns to his native town, and as he crosses the city limits all the experience and authority he has acquired seem to melt away and he is once more the raw, young man who left some years ago.”
“That's something like it. When I come back here now I really do feel that I'm an undergraduate again.”
“Ah, the nostalgia of alumni.”
“That was before I met Nancy.”
That was all he said, but Roger detected a good deal more, more than he wished to go into with Larry. But he had felt fear for Nancy. And now she was voicing that fear.
“A week or so away and he came back almost a stranger.”
“Hardly that.”
“I wonder if he still thinks of Dolores Torre.”
“The girl he was engaged to marry?”
“Whose fiance is in big trouble.”
Larry had told her of the death of Bianca Primero. He would have been in Minneapolis when her body was found. Had he talked with Dolores about that? Such a tragedy could provide an occasion to erase the years since Larry and Dolores had been undergraduates together.
Roger had been brooding on the fact that the missing Newman materials had not been found in Bianca's apartment. It occurred to him that, if they had ever been in the apartment, they would have been there when he and Philip had called on Bianca about the theft from her husband's collection. She had shown little sense of the significance of the loss.
“What on earth difference does it make whether you have a first edition or the latest?” Bianca had asked.
“The content is the same of course. But, ah, the associations ⦔
She had made an angry noise. “Joseph lives too much in the past.”
It was difficult not to see that as an allusion to the lost child. Joseph's long-suffering must have been a difficult cross for Bianca to bear, a constant reminder that he held her responsible for the death of their child. Of course Joseph would deny that he thought that, but didn't his whole manner toward Bianca say otherwise? No wonder she had seen his marvelous collection as a substitute for the life they could have had together?
Roger did not doubt Phil when he reported that the missing items were not in her apartment. Of course this was to accept the findings of the police, but why should they be doubted? It had to be assumed that the search had been thorough. So where were they?
⢠Waldo claimed to have seen Bianca and her boyfriend cruising past the house on Lake of the Isles several times. On this basis, Bianca was a prime suspect.
⢠But Bianca was dead, and suspicion should turn on Dudley Fyte.
⢠But his involvement in the theft depended on the truth of Waldo's story.
⢠And even if Waldo's story of Bianca and Fyte cruising past the house was true, it did not follow that they were the thieves. Maybe she was just showing him the place, and he returned alone to take an untutored look at it.
⢠Joseph Primero seemed convinced that his own custodian had stolen the materials.
⢠Waldo had removed some Newman items from the library to his room, something strictly
verboten.
verboten.
⢠More important. Waldo admitted to sending some Newman letters to Notre Dame, hoping to throw suspicion on Bianca.
⢠If one took Waldo's word throughout, the place to look for the missing items would be wherever Dudley Fyte lived.
⢠The list of missing items Phil had found in the wastebasket in Bianca's apartment suggested that Waldo could be believed.
⢠And why would Bianca steal from her own husband?
Roger did not trust his surmises about the relations between men and women, particularly when the man and woman were married. Could Bianca's flamboyant lifestyle and her silly liaison with Dudley Fyte have been simply a cry for Joseph's attention? And he remembered Phil's insistence on the significance of the lost child. He brought the matter up with Father Carmody.
“It is not that women are irrational,” the priest said, gazing at Roger through his round spectacles, “it is simply that they have a different kind of rationality.”
“That sounds like Newman.”
“How so?”
“He said that it is unreasonable to think that reasonable always means the same thing.”
“Exactly. People will call it intuition, but that is often a condescending description. Consider a mother with her child. Her understanding is deeper and more intimate than anything even a father can feel, too deep to be expressed in words we can understand.”
“You have heard of the death of Mrs. Primero?”
The old priest nodded his head. “What kind of reasonableness would you call an act like that?”
“It depends on who did it.”
Father Carmody wrinkled his nose. “Original sin is the single cause of an infinite variety of effects.”
“Who said that?”
“I did.”
Later Phil called with surprising news. “Waldo Hermes has disappeared.”
NOTRE DAME'S HEAD ARCHIVIST wondered if the Primero Collection might not be bad luck given the recent tragic events in Minneapolis. Wendy had not yet heard of the disappearance of Waldo Hermes, curator of the collection, and Greg Whelan did not volunteer the information. If she thought the collection was ill-fated, further apparent proof of that was not needed. Besides, Whelan felt a professional solidarity with Waldo Hermes and refused to think that his disappearance meant anything beyond a desire to get away from an increasingly complicated situationâget away temporarily, that is. Whelan could not believe that Waldo himself was the thief.
“Why steal and send off to Notre Dame things that were already in his possession?” he asked Roger Knight, who had given him the news about Waldo's disappearance.
“Avert suspicion from himself? Or maybe he thought it would help Joseph Primero.”
Greg remembered Waldo's account of the strained relations between the Primeros and both Roger's guesses sounded plausible.
“Of course, it was very stupid of him to run off.”
“If he did,” Greg said loyally.
“Good point! Just what I suggested Phil consider. Running off looks like an admission of guilt. But perhaps something has happened to him.”
Here was a sobering thought. Bianca Primero was only a name to Greg Whelan, but he had sat and talked face-to-face with Waldo
Hermes and could only be upset by the thought that he, like Bianca Primero, was dead.
Hermes and could only be upset by the thought that he, like Bianca Primero, was dead.
“Roger, what is going on? Surely you've formed some notion about what has happened in Minneapolis.”
And so he had. As a matter of fact, he had formed several notions.
“There are two, perhaps related, perhaps unrelated events: the theft of items from the Primero Collection and the murder of Bianca Primero. Who might have done one or both?”
And Roger went systematically through the possible answers to that question.
“Our guiding question must be
cui bono?
Who benefits from one or both of these deeds? Let us begin with what may seem the most far-fetched, Larry Morton.”
cui bono?
Who benefits from one or both of these deeds? Let us begin with what may seem the most far-fetched, Larry Morton.”
“Larry Morton!”
Roger lifted a pudgy hand. “Greg, consider this as a logical exercise, something just between ourselves. I speak to you as I do to Philip.”
“Go on.”
“Larry managed to combine a visit to the firm that has hired him and a confrontation with Dolores Torre about the wedding reservation at Sacred Heart Basilica. His best-laid plans have suddenly âgang a-gley' because his former fiancée has claimed the reservation they made in both their names. Of course that is precisely what Larry intended to do himself, and that perhaps made him even angrier. In Minneapolis he meets and instantly dislikes Dudley Fyte. While Larry is still in Minneapolis, things begin to unravel between Dolores and Dudley. Larry, seeing that the discovery of the affair with Bianca was insufficient to bring Dolores to her senses, decides to do something that will implicate Dudley and remove him from the scene.”
“Kill Bianca?”
“I said this was the most far-fetched hypothesis. Of course it is grounded on the assumption that Larry is once more drawn to Dolores and has more in mind than simply freeing her from Dudley.”
Whelan shook his head. “Far-fetched does not begin to describe that explanation.”
“Perhaps not. But there are other explanations. There is Dolores herself. A woman scorned. She has been humiliated by the information that her fiancé is still carrying on an affair with an older woman. Bianca takes her out to lunch and taunts her. She is publicly embarrassed when a very expensive painting is delivered to Dudley's office, courtesy of Bianca. She decides to put an end to the woman.”
“And spirits herself into her apartment and strangles her.”
“We are only discussing motive now. Opportunity is a separate issue.”
“What about Dudley Fyte?”
“Of course. But he is the most obvious suspect, and for that reason, perhaps, the least likely. Of course he has motive to rid himself of this pesky woman who threatens his career and his future happiness.”
“He also has opportunity.”
“Yes, yes. But we are postponing consideration of that. As for motive, Dudley would seem to have the strongest. You and I can imagine the witnesses from his office, from Bianca's condo, from places where the couple have gone, all testifying to the volatile relationship between the older woman and the younger man. A prosecutor would salivate at the possibility of prosecuting Dudley. Perhaps one already is.”
“Has he been arrested?”
“It is only a matter of time. And so we come to our friend Waldo.”
“I have already thought of that.” And Greg stated the case that could be made against the curator of the Primero Collection. It dismayed him that it sounded stronger when spoken than when he'd merely thought about it. He remembered the letters he had hidden beneath his desk blotter for several days. He'd had the sense of physically forcing himself to put them with the other items that had been sent to the Archives from Minneapolis. Of course Waldo could have surrendered to temptation.
“Good, good,” Roger said.
“But I don't think he did it!”
“Next we come to Joseph Primero. Who has a longer and deeper grievance against Bianca than he? She has sullied his name, defied him with her misbehavior, set herself up as a merry widow while still his wife. And there are earlier and deeper reasons for resentment. Under his calm exterior, he must have thought many times of avenging himself on that dreadful woman.”
“It is all very well to ignore opportunity, Roger, but in the end that is decisive, particularly if they all have a motive, however far-fetched. And you have divorced the murder from the theft of those items from the collection. But surely they are connected.”
“Connected they are, but were they the acts of the same person? Take comfort from that thought, Greg. Our friend Waldo Hermes might be responsible for the missing items and have had nothing to do with Bianca's death.”
Late that night, as Greg Whelan sat sipping beer and reading Trollope's
Kept in the Dark,
there was an urgent knock on the door of his apartment. He froze in his chair. The outer door of the building in which he lived was left unlocked so that the doors of apartments
were the first and last bastion against undesired callers. Greg sat still. He thought of turning off the light, then did. The knock came again. He rose slowly from his chair and crept toward the door; focused light streamed through the peephole. He moved to one side to avoid a sofa he could not see and banged into the coffee table, sending things clattering onto the floor. He remained still, his shin throbbing with pain, and listened, hoping the caller would go away. And then he heard his name whispered on the other side of the door.
Kept in the Dark,
there was an urgent knock on the door of his apartment. He froze in his chair. The outer door of the building in which he lived was left unlocked so that the doors of apartments
were the first and last bastion against undesired callers. Greg sat still. He thought of turning off the light, then did. The knock came again. He rose slowly from his chair and crept toward the door; focused light streamed through the peephole. He moved to one side to avoid a sofa he could not see and banged into the coffee table, sending things clattering onto the floor. He remained still, his shin throbbing with pain, and listened, hoping the caller would go away. And then he heard his name whispered on the other side of the door.
When he put his eye to the viewer, he saw a stranger standing there, a bald stranger who bore a resemblance to a frog. The face came closer.
“Whelan, it's me, Waldo Hermes!”
Greg opened the door and Waldo stumbled into the darkened room. Greg threw the switch beside the door and turned to look at his visitor. It was all he could do not to laugh. Waldo Hermes had shaved off his beard and shaved as well the hair from his head so that only the thick thatch of his eyebrows relieved the doughy expanse of his face.
“Would you recognize me?” Waldo asked anxiously.
“Why did you run away?”
“I'll tell you everything. Do you have anything to eat?”
It would have been too much to say that the shaven Waldo Hermes was an aesthetic improvement over the natural hairy version of the man; but once the initial shock was over, Greg found it almost possible to ignore what the curator had done to himself by way of disguise.
“How often do you have to shave?”
“My face?”
“No, your head.”
What used to be called five o'clock shadow relieved the bareness of the curator's pate.
“Just once a day. I have to shave my face twice a day. That's why I grew a beard in the first place.”
“Now tell me what has happened.”
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