Seven Kinds of Death (6 page)

“Okay, Ms. Townsend. Did you get a glimpse of it? Hand written, typed? Half a page of type, full page, a few lines? What did you see?”

She hesitated, thinking. “Not much. A few lines, typed, I guess.”

“Good. Was there a signature? Ink? Blue? Black? Felt tip? What did you see? Could there have been a map of the area?”

Constance watched this with admiration. He was very good, but Toni could add no more to what she had already told him. If there had been a signature, she had not seen it. If there had been a map, she had not seen that, either. She had gone up with Tootles and Ba Ba before four thirty to do Tootles’s hair, and she had not seen Victoria again.

“When did you miss her?”

Toni looked at her hands, tightly squeezed together in her lap. Her voice was nearly inaudible. “Not until after six. I was so busy. And I didn’t look in the bedroom and see that she hadn’t even unpacked until after that, six thirty maybe, when Paul told me he couldn’t And her.”

“I see. Thank you.”

He took them back over their movements of yesterday. Constance had gone up while the group was still talking and laughing, about four thirty, she said. Johnny had left right after he saw Constance go upstairs; he had gone back to the condos to send home a few guys who were still painting in the sub-basement and to shower and change his clothes. Then at five, he had gone to meet Debra’s train and they had come to the party.

“Did you set the air conditioner at the minimum setting?” Constance asked. “It was freezing in the apartment,” she added to the sheriff.

Johnny shook his head. “We keep it around eighty,” he said, shrugging. “I didn’t touch it.”

Sheriff Gruenwald had looked surprised at her question, but he nodded very slightly, as if to say message received. Fingerprints, she wanted to suggest, might be on the controls. He turned to Paul Volte.

Paul said he had gone up soon after Johnny left, leaving Janet and Victoria.

“She said she wanted to step outside for a cigarette,” Janet said. “I didn’t see her again. I had my other clothes in the studio and I went in there to change.”

Paul said, “She quit smoking three years ago.”

“You’re sure that’s what she said?” Sheriff Gruenwald asked Janet. She nodded. “Okay. We didn’t find any cigarettes in her purse, you see,” he said almost apologetically.

“Oh!” Janet said then. “Something else. She said he,” she nodded at Paul, “was being worn down by his ironic pose. She seemed worried because he was tired and sick.”

The sheriff narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t get it,” he said. “She said what?”

Janet repeated her words and then shook her head. “I didn’t understand either,” she said. “But I felt funny asking her what she meant. I pretended it made sense.”

Sheriff Gruenwald studied her for another moment, then turned back to Paul. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Paul shook his head.

“You handed her the letter you found on the bed. Did you see the contents? Could there have been a map of the property, do you suppose?”

Paul shook his head. “She didn’t open it in the room. I didn’t see it.”

Sheriff Gruenwald said then, “How it looks at the moment, is that the lady went out to meet someone, and on her way she could have stopped in the barn and made the mess you folks found last night. That could account for the missing time. We know she was still alive at ten past seven when John Buell and his friends were in the building. What I’ll need now is to find out where everyone was, starting at seven ten and for the next few hours last night.”

“We were all right here, saying good-bye to the party guests!” Ba Ba cried. “We had a party, you know, dozens and dozens of people were leaving from seven on and we were talking and saying good-bye. And then we were all out looking for her.”

He waited for her to wind down, and then asked softly, “All of you were here? All the time?”

“Yes! Yes, of course,” Ba Ba said shrilly. “You have to tell your party guests good-bye. Haven’t you ever given a cocktail party to celebrate something? Haven’t you ever gone to one? Doesn’t someone tell you good-bye and I’m happy that you came and—”

“Ba Ba, shut up,” Tootles said. “I wasn’t here,” she said to the sheriff. “I went to the little stone house at the end of the property and stayed there until nearly eight.”

He let out a long breath and nodded.

SIX

The sheriff asked
questions, he talked to Paul alone, and then Tootles alone. Although this all took several hours, Constance knew it was not yet a serious interrogation. They didn’t have the time of death yet, the exact cause of death… . All the routine things would take a few days, and then they would come back and start the serious interrogation.

“I know some of you are from out of town,” Sheriff Gruenwald said to the group that afternoon. “I’ll want statements from each of you before you leave again. We can do it in the morning, nine o’clock. If that isn’t possible, tell me.”

No one moved or spoke. They were all in the living room, where
Seven Kinds of Death
now looked obscene. He nodded at them generally, and told them he would return in the morning, and then he left.

No one moved except for Johnny, who was chewing on a fingernail and looking at his watch. He jumped up suddenly and said, “I’ve got calls to make.” He ran from the room.

Paul said to Marion, “The sheriff thinks you invited her out. I told him she didn’t know you.”

Tootles shook her head. “I know. He was asking me the same thing: did I ask her, why? Paul, just when the hell did she decide to come along? How the fuck did she know about the party if you didn’t tell her?”

“I don’t know,” Paul said miserably. “Last week she called me, the first time we’ve talked in several months.” He looked at Toni. “Since the day I met you, in fact.” He rubbed his hand over his face, over his eyes, and stood up. “She knew about the party, and said she’d like to come along with me. I didn’t ask how she knew. I thought… I thought we might be getting back together again, that maybe this was her way to come back.” He laughed with great bitterness. “We said hello in the taxi, and sat together on the airplane. I asked her how she was doing, and she asked me the same, and that’s all we had to say to each other. I thought during the weekend there would be a chance. I didn’t press it.” He looked at Spence. “I’m going to walk to the village. You want a beer?” Spence nodded and the two men left together, one looking like a tired pugilist, the other like a half-starved art critic.

Janet had watched and listened, as motionless as a carving; when she moved she was as jerky as a badly managed puppet. And Toni was only slightly less rigid; whenever Paul was within sight, she did not shift her gaze from him.

Once more Ba Ba started to describe exactly how Victoria had looked. With a cry Janet leaped up and ran from the room, tore up the stairs; Toni was close behind her.

“For God’s sake,” Tootles exclaimed, “Ba Ba, can’t you stop just for a while?”

“I can’t get over how her face was so swollen—”

“If you don’t cork it,” Tootles snapped, “I’m going to hit you in the head with something hard and maybe lethal.”

“Well, if that’s how you feel,” Ba Ba cried, “I’ll just go home, now. This minute!”

“You can’t leave until tomorrow,” Max said quietly. “And you do have to stop babbling.”

Ba Ba drew in a sharp breath, and walked from the room with her chin quivering.

“Tootles,” Constance said, “I want to talk to you before I leave tomorrow.”

“Yes, of course,” Tootles said. “I mean, you came all the way from wherever you live now and we haven’t had a second together.”

Then Janet came back, red-eyed, jumpy, and nearly in tears. “Johnny’s still talking,” she wailed. “I have to make a call. I have to call my mother.”

Max strode from the room; in a minute he returned and nodded to Janet. Johnny was at his heels. “But make it quick,” Johnny snapped. Then he softened his voice, and looked contrite, even ashamed. “Sorry.” Janet was already out of the room, running toward the office.

“I’ll go to town and finish,” Johnny said abruptly. “I’ll come back when I’m done. God, I haven’t been able to reach Stein yet. I’ll be back.” He hurried out, and soon they heard his car throwing gravel.

In another minute or two, Janet said from the doorway, “I called my mom. And I have a reservation for tomorrow at twelve.” She drew in a quick breath and added in a rush, “I have to get out of here. I have to get out! I have to!”

Tootles had been on the sofa; she got up and went to Janet. “Come along upstairs,” she said quietly. “We can talk, and I’ll help you pack. Of course, you have to go home for a while. Come along.” She put her arm around Janet’s shoulders and walked out with her.

After they were gone Max said reflectively to Constance, “You called her Tootles. I like that. From her childhood?”

She nodded.

“Right after we acquired the land for the condos,” he said, walking to a sideboard where there was a bar setup, “I took a stroll over this way to meet the artist and her crew. I’d been warned that it was an unconventional bunch over here. They were all out in the front wrestling a tall wooden figure, eight feet, nine feet, into a truck. It wasn’t even her work, but Marion was right there with the kids, all of them filthy, sweaty. I pitched in and helped, too.” He poured a glass of mineral water and sipped it. “Next thing I knew she was asking me if I’d had dinner yet, and we all came in to eat chili and homemade bread. Marion’s bread; one of the kids made the chili. I don’t think they had a cent between them, her or the kids. It was the best food I’d had in years.” He drank the water and said, “I wish I’d known her when she was Tootles.”

Constance wanted to tell him that would have been a mistake. Before Ed Holbein, or after? Before Spence Dwyers, or after? Before Walter Buckman, or after? None of that really mattered, she understood, not to Tootles, possibly not to Max.

“You’re going to live in the condo?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m out here about half the time, in downtown Washington the other half, and this is better. I’m ready to slow down a little, and, of course, she wants to be close to the work, to the kids.”

“I’m just surprised you got her to agree to go even that far,” Constance said. Then she added, “Max, I think you should talk to a lawyer, you and Tootles, maybe before the sheriff asks any more questions.”

His face became very still, the smile frozen in place. “You think it’s going to come to needing an attorney?”

She nodded. “It could. Maybe I can get to the telephone now.” She went into the dinette-turned-into-office and dialed, only to get the answering machine at the other end. She frowned and said that she would be delayed, please call her, and gave the number. Then she cursed under her breath.

That afternoon Constance mounted outside stairs that led up to a sun deck that ran the length of the house, facing south. Her bedroom, which Toni and Janet now shared, opened to it, as did a number of other rooms. Up here there were lounges, chairs, pillows, tables—Toni and Janet were sunbathing on mats.

“Hi,” Constance said as she approached them. “Toni, I wonder if I might borrow Paul’s book. I noticed it in your room earlier, but it isn’t there now.”

“Oh,” Toni said. “Marion has a copy.”

“She doesn’t know where,” Constance said.

“I’ll look for mine,” Toni said after a moment. “I’m not sure where I put it.”

“It’s on the table by your bed, the bottom shelf,” Janet said. “I remember seeing it there.”

Toni stood up finally; she was in a bikini that revealed a beautiful body evenly tanned all over. She pulled on a terry shirt that reached to her knees, and went to the bedroom window, where a screen had been removed and propped against the house. She stepped over the sill to enter the room. Constance sat in a chair near Janet.

“Yesterday, when Victoria and Paul came downstairs, you introduced them to Johnny Buell, and then you were all laughing. Remember that? It seemed such a lively and pleasant little group, telling jokes so soon, having a good time.”

Janet raised her head from the mat in order to look at Constance. “I know. And then…” She buried her face in the mat again.

“What was the joke?” Constance asked, ignoring the young woman’s distress.

“I don’t know,” Janet said, her voice muffled. “Something about opposites attracting.”

“Ah,” Constance said thoughtfully. “Like Max and Marion. Or Spence and Marion in the distant past.”

“Yeah, just like that. I was thinking of Spence and Marion, in fact. You know, how crazy he is about her and all. Victoria said jocks often were attracted to artists, like that. And, how often real ladies seem to love prizefighters. Spence used to be a fighter. Victoria said she got a proposal from a jock recently. That’s why she came out here, to get away from him or something.” She had raised her head to speak, and now lowered it again. “It doesn’t sound a bit funny now, but it did then.” Her voice became muffled again.

“Then Johnny left,” Constance said. “Did she say anything then? Maybe something to you and Paul?”

Janet shook her head. “Next thing she said was when Paul left, how his ironic pose was wearing him down.” Janet scowled at Constance. “It sounds so dumb, but I can’t help it. She said it, I didn’t. Then she said she was going to check out a smoke. And she went out to have a cigarette. That’s all she said.”

“Check out a smoke?” Constance repeated. “Were those her words?”

“I don’t know,” Janet cried. “It’s how I remember them. I don’t know!”

And apparently her memory was all they had to go on, since Paul would have missed whatever Victoria had said about smoke, and whatever she said about his ironic pose. Constance studied the young woman in silence for a time, until Toni stepped through the open window again carrying Paul’s book. “I couldn’t find my copy,” she said. “But I remembered where I saw Marion’s down in the music room. This is hers.” Her face was sweatshiny and her breaths were coming hard and fast. She had been running.

Constance stood up to take the book, and then started back toward the stairs. “Thanks,” she said. “See you later.” Toni lay down again, her head turned so that she could watch Constance.

The deck had been added by inept carpenters; the floor was not level, and the slope was toward the house, not away from it. At the far end where the steps had been built, there was a walkway that led toward the rear of the house. Constance followed it to an outside door that opened to a very narrow hall, then to the central hall of the upper floor, and on to her own room that overlooked the back of the property, the kitchen garden area, the ancient oak trees in the distance, shrubs that needed pruning. It was very quiet out there today. She sat at a window in her room with the book in her lap, wondering why Toni did not want to lend her copy. She must have written in it, Constance decided, underlined passages, highlighted it, annotated it in some way. And by now probably no one would be able to find it without a prolonged search. She opened the copy she held and began to read.

Alice Weber, the woman from town who had made lunch, returned to cook dinner. Ba Ba joined her in the kitchen and their voices rose and fell, rose and fell. Spence and Paul returned from the village; Paul looked as if he had been sleep deprived for a week; his eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot, and sunken deep in the sockets. Spence went straight to the little bar. Johnny came back and talked in a low voice with Max for a few minutes, exactly like a child checking in, making a report. Afterward, he said to Tootles, “I had to leave this number for calls to be returned. You can’t find anyone on a Saturday afternoon.” It sounded almost like an apology, but not quite; it was too sullen for that. He glanced at his father as if to say, okay, I did it. Max’s expression was unreadable. Tootles shrugged.

Dinner dragged interminably. No one except Ba Ba had anything to say, and no one paid any attention to her flow of words. As soon as possible Constance went up to her room to finish Paul’s book, only to find that after she was done with it, she was too restless to settle down. What did he believe? She saw again his haggard face, his trembling hands, and realized that she did not have even a clue about the man behind the appearance. She knew his column, read it with some regularity, in fact. He was witty writing about art, with a dry humor that was lacking in personal exchanges, as far as she could tell, and that wasn’t a fair judgment, she knew, not under the circumstances. And, of course, he was so knowledgeable, recognized as a world authority. But what did he believe? Possession? A jealous muse? A price that must be paid for every success? What did he believe? And more important at the moment, what had happened between him and Victoria Leeds? Tomorrow, she thought, she would find an opportunity to have a little conversation with Paul Volte, not more than that. Just a little talk to satisfy her own curiosity before she started for home. She finally went to bed and was lulled to sleep by the music of crickets, tree toads, a frog chorus.

When she woke up, it was fifteen minutes past eight. She started to roll over, to pull the sheet over her head, to go back to sleep, but she remembered that today she was going home, that she had packing to do, and she forced herself out of the bed, to her feet.

Spence was in the kitchen drinking coffee, reading the
Washington Post
. He had already been down to the village. He grinned his crooked grin at her silently and she was just as silent. What a homely man, she was thinking, and such a charming man. Years ago she had not seen the charm, or had it developed with maturity? He seemed to have traded in a certain belligerence for a great dollop of charm. A fair exchange, she thought, a fine trade. She poured coffee, sat opposite him, and started to read another section of the paper. Yesterday Toni and Janet had made breakfast; Alice Weber had come in to fix lunch, and again later to make dinner. Whatever the arrangements were between the young people and Tootles, teacher and students, hostess and not-quite-guests, boss and slaves, chief and Indians, it seemed to include a bit of work on their part, and they seemed to find that perfectly acceptable. Constance found it perfectly acceptable also.

The others were drifting down, helping themselves to coffee, no one talking much that morning. Spence got up to make another pot of coffee. “Don’t touch that paper,” he said over his shoulder from the sink. He had left it open to the editorials. Max was homing in on the newspaper. He looked sheepish and drew back.