Marine Corpse (8 page)

“Up until now that has not presented me with any conflicts.”

“Well, I have a lawyer now, so I imagine we won’t do anything improper. Will we? Won’t you and Mr. Garrett talk about it, work it out? Isn’t that how it’s done?”

I smiled. “That pretty well describes it.”

She touched my arm. “Tell me, seriously. Is there a problem here?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what you have in mind. I don’t even know if there’s anything useful in these notes. I can’t decipher them. I had them photocopied, by the way.”

“Why?”

“Habit, I suppose. I have everything photocopied.”

Heather drummed her fingernails on her glass. I noticed that she cut them short and square and did not paint them. “If I really wanted to, I think I could persuade dear Meriam to let me do exactly what I wanted with Stu’s notes. It is Meriam that I have to contend with, isn’t it?”

“You know better than to ask me a question like that, Heather. I brought you the notebooks as Stu’s agent. But there are some things you and I can’t discuss. Do you understand?”

“The condo, right?”

I nodded.

“You won’t get it from me, you know.”

I shrugged.

She touched my leg and put her face close to mine. “I have a secret,” she whispered, grinning.

I felt my body involuntarily stiffen against her invasion of my personal space, and as I did she squeezed the top of my thigh. “You have lovely quadriceps,” she said, her black eyes crinkling mischievously. “You don’t run, do you?”

I inched away from her, and she let her hand fall away from my leg. “I don’t run, I don’t lift, I don’t do aerobics or isometrics or macrobiotics or anything else that might prove to be painful or unpleasant or wholesome. If I have attractive quadriceps, it’s probably from the stress of hitching myself up to the dinner table. What do you mean, you’ve got a secret?”

She hugged herself into her big sweatshirt and looked sideways at me. “You’re the enemy, remember? Mr. Garrett and I shall keep it to ourselves until we need it. Isn’t that the best thing to do?”

“Oh,” I said. “That kind of secret.” I cleared my throat. “Of course you should keep it to yourself. Consult your attorney. That’s always the best thing.”

“Aw, I’ve hurt your feelings.”

“That’s silly,” I said.

“Poor man. Here you are, fixing me up with a lawyer, driving all the way out here with these notebooks, and being so nice, and I’m teasing you.” She jumped up and stood in front of me. She reached down with both hands. “Come on. Let’s go take a walk in the snow.”

“In the snow? Are you kidding? It’s cold out there.”

She grinned. “Come on. Don’t be a baby.” She tugged at me. I allowed her to help me to my feet. “Let me just run upstairs and throw on some clothes. Think about chestnuts and open fires. Jack Frost nipping at your private parts. It’s nice out there in the snow. It’ll help me cool down from my workout. What do you say?”

“Sure. Fine,” I grumbled.

“Great. I like a man who’s enthusiastic. Go get your coat on. I’ll be right there.”

She was back in a minute wearing jeans and a heavy cableknit sweater. She went to the closet by the front door and took out a ski parka and fur-lined boots, which she pulled on quickly.

“Let’s go.”

I followed her outside. It was dark, except for the pools of light cast by the lamps on poles, that lit the walkways. Powdery snow sifted through the orange funnels of light. Heather hugged my arm as we walked. “There’s something you really should know, if you don’t already,” she said after we had walked for perhaps five minutes.

I stopped and looked down at her. “What is it?”

She frowned. “It’s awkward to tell you. You might think I shouldn’t, since it sort of bears on the condominium.”

I shook my head. “Please don’t say anything about that.”

She squinted her eyes against the soft snow that fell against her face when she tilted her head to peer up at me.

“I’m going to tell you this thing, and then I think you’ll understand why you should know it.”

I shrugged. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Mr. Garrett said he thought it would be all right.”

“You should have said that first,” I said. “What is it?”

She took my arm and we resumed walking. “Stu was gay,” she said.

I stopped. “What did you say?”

“I said that Stu was gay.”

“Are you sure?”

She laughed. “I lived with him for nearly six years. I guess I ought to know.”

“And that’s your secret.”

“That’s it. His family didn’t know, of course. That’s what makes it so delicious when Meriam wants to be a bitch and take my condo away from me—hey, don’t worry. You don’t have to say anything.” She squeezed my arm to reassure me. “Mr. Garrett would tell you this anyway, wouldn’t he?”

“Probably,” I said stiffly.

“See, I was Stu’s cover, you might say. His camouflage. His guarantee against a scandal that would devastate his family. Actually, I think he was overreacting. I mean, nowadays who cares if somebody’s gay.”

“The Woodhouses would,” I said.

“Well, right. So Stu thought, anyway. Tricky, though, huh? I mean, the scandal of his living with this Jewish woman was a neat diversion, don’t you think? Can’t you just hear Meriam? ‘Poor Stuart. Hormones running amok. Under the evil spell of the Jewish witch, with her Semitic sexual wiles and unspeakable tricks. Obviously looking to grab a piece of the Woodhouse fortune. Well, thank goodness Stuart has the good sense not to marry the tramp.’”

I had to laugh. Heather had the querulous nasality of Meriam’s voice down pat.

She smiled. I read a touch of sadness in it. “The condo was the deal. Stu bought it for me. The condition was that I’d live with him, in apparent sin.”

“I’ll be damned,” I muttered.

“And I’d just as soon not have to make this public,” she said.

“Um,” I said.

“The thing was, of course, that Stu didn’t have to buy me anything. He was a wonderful guy. I liked living with him. But he had plenty of money, and I didn’t have much, so…”

“You and he weren’t lovers, then,” I observed.

“God, you lawyers are sharp!”

“What I meant was…” I frowned in confusion.

She patted my arm. “It’s okay. Never mind. Look. Stu wasn’t what you’d call a closet homosexual. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. It wasn’t particularly a hangup with him or anything.”

“He certainly knew how to keep a secret.”

“Well, like I said, that was just for the benefit of the family. At least, that’s how Stu felt about it. It was his courtesy to them. Especially the Senator, his Uncle Ben. Stu just felt that there would be a scandal if the word should get out.”

“Hell, this is the twentieth century,” I said.

“The Woodhouses aren’t exactly the Kennedys, if you know what I mean. Stu always said that. ‘We’re not the Kennedys. We are the Woodhouses. We are staid, we are conservative, we are predictable, we are conventional. We are old Yankees. We behave as we are expected to behave.’ That was Stu’s little speech.”

I thought about the fact that Stu had ended up getting murdered. While that, of itself, wasn’t scandalous, neither was it the “predictable, conventional” sort of thing expected of a Woodhouse—especially given the circumstances of Stu’s death. “Something occurs to me,” I said.

Heather glanced up at me and frowned.

“I mean that by keeping his—preferences—such a deep, dark secret, Stu was leaving himself wide open for problems. Someone with an axe to grind could make some mileage out of it, since he wanted it to be kept secret.”

Heather sniffed. “Well, he was very discreet, believe me.”

“You weren’t the only one who knew about it.”

“Of course not.”

“He had lovers.”

“By definition, more or less, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“He wasn’t promiscuous.”

“That’s not what I was getting at.”

“Well…?”

“Look,” I said. “It’s really pretty obvious. Scandalous secrets—especially about public figures like the Woodhouses—are awfully hard to keep. Even you couldn’t keep it.”

Heather abruptly stopped walking, turned, and hit me hard on the chest with the heel of her fist. “That,” she said angrily, “was not fair.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. But do you see my point?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Stu was murdered.”

“Oh, shit…”

“Don’t you see?”

“You mean blackmail or something?”

I shrugged. “Do you know if he spent large sums of money for mysterious things? Did he ever borrow money? Any strange visitors or phone calls?”

“I knew nothing of his finances. We kept that separate. As for the rest of it, no, I can’t remember anything.”

“Well, there’s probably nothing to it anyway,” I said. “The police are probably right. He wasn’t murdered because he was Stuart Carver or because he was gay. I imagine he was murdered because someone thought he was what he was pretending to be. A homeless bum, drunk and out on the streets at night.”

Heather sighed deeply. “This is very depressing.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Would you do me a favor?” she asked hesitantly.

“Sure.”

“Hug me?”

“No problem,” I said. I folded her into my arms. She pressed herself against me hard. Her arms snaked around my chest and squeezed strongly. After a moment she tilted her face to look up at me. Little droplets of melted snow glittered on her cheeks. Or maybe they were tears. I kissed them away softly. She smiled up at me and then ducked down to rub her face against the front of my coat. After a moment we headed back to her condo, I with one arm across her shoulders, she with an arm around my waist.

At her door she patted her pockets, and then she said, “Oh, shit. I did it again.”

“Forget your key?”

“I always forget my key. That’s why I’ve got one hidden out here.”

She stepped to the left of the door. “Six up, six over,” she mumbled. She pried up a shingle and a key fell out. She bent and picked it up. “Stu was the kind of guy who’d never forget a key,” she said as she unlocked the door and jammed the key back up under the shingle. “I really did love him. Well, come on in.”

We went back inside and shucked our boots off in the foyer. I put a couple of logs on the red embers of what was left of the fire while Heather went to the kitchen to get drinks for us. When she came back she put my glass and her beer bottle on the coffee table. Then she plopped down beside me, so close that our thighs touched. We both put our stockinged feet up on the coffee table. I cradled my drink on my stomach and stared into the flames of the fire as it sparked to life. I heard Heather sigh. “We were like brother and sister,” she said softly. “We fought, sometimes, the way siblings will. We argued over household chores. We competed. We couldn’t jog together. We had to race. But we cooperated, too, and we depended on each other. We hugged each other a lot, and we went out on dates. Movies, dinner, dancing, just like an ordinary couple. It was very nice. Really. I miss him a lot. I think I always will. When I think of him getting murdered…”

I felt her shudder. I put my arm around her shoulders, and she snuggled against me. “It was a senseless thing,” I said. She turned her face to look up at me. “Will they catch whoever did it?”

“The odds are bad,” I said, “and getting worse every day. The police have absolutely nothing to go on.”

“It’s wrong, I know, to want revenge,” she said, still staring at me with her huge dark eyes. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s uncivilized,” I said. “But very human. And I’ll bet you’ve got some imaginative techniques for revenge.”

“You bet your ass I do,” she said.

I grinned at her, and then I leaned down and kissed her forehead. When I pulled back I saw that she was crying. “That’s just the way Stu used to kiss me goodnight,” she said. “On the forehead. And just then, only at those times, I always wished he—he would come to bed with me.” She snuffled and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “I never told him that. It would have hurt him.”

Suddenly she threw both arms around my neck and kissed me hard on the mouth. Her lips moved on mine, and a little humming sound came from the back of her throat. She pressed herself against me. I could feel her breasts, soft and full under the baggy sweater she wore.

Then abruptly she pulled away from me and stood up. “Sorry about that, Counselor.” Her voice was shaky. “That wasn’t fair. I was pretending you were Stu, I think.”

I nodded. “It’s all right.”

She began to move around the room, touching things, avoiding my eyes, talking, as if to herself. “There was such guilt, see. He kept asking me why I didn’t have dates, lovers, why there were no men in my life. He had his—his lover. He worried about me. I couldn’t tell him. It was him I wanted. But he was my brother. That’s how I thought of him. That’s what he was to me. A brother. It was so confusing, so complicated. I wanted to make love to my brother.” She turned to frown at me. “What does that make me?”

I shrugged. “Stu was a good guy. You’re a woman. I don’t see…”

“Stu was gay. My gay brother. To me, it was either incest, or else I…”

I held out my arms to her. “Come here,” I said quietly.

She came slowly. I pulled her gently down onto my lap. She put her face against my chest. I kissed her hair. “It’s not complicated at all,” I said. “You are a woman, that’s all. A very desirable woman.”

She looked up at me, with her big dark eyes and funny nose and scraggly hair, and she said, “Prove it, then.”

I smiled. “Okay. I will. Gladly.”

T
WO DAYS LATER, IN
the middle of the morning, Julie buzzed me, interrupting the current version of my favorite midwinter daydream. This one was set on a remote Alaskan river, and the fish were Dolly Varden trout, big ones, which were taking well on bushy dry flies in the shallow riffles.

I flicked on the intercom. “Yes, Julie. Is it important? I’m pretty busy just now.”

“It’s Mrs. Carver. She sounds agitated.”

I sighed. “Okay. I’ll talk to her.”

A moment later I said into the phone, “Meriam. How are you?”

“I am not at all happy, Brady. Not at all.”