The Twenty-Year Death (60 page)

“I don’t understand,” I said again, but then I flashed on it. Vee had used the murder/arson combination before. How could she be so stupid! I proceeded cautiously. “So what are you saying? Vee killed her husband and set the house on fire?”

“There were those who thought that,” Dobrygowski said.

I looked at him, and he gave me a steel look back. I had been
wrong to dismiss him as an oaf. If there was any danger of being found out, it would come from him, not Healey. Healey came on with all of the talking, but he was a good guy at heart. He didn’t want to do it. It was just his job. I knew how that was. But Dobrygowski...I knew his kind too, they got an idea and they never let go.

“There was some question with the insurance company,” Healey went on. “And the police there—it was just a small town—they just weren’t sure, but they weren’t going to give anything to that insurance company, so they wouldn’t get behind the murder theory, and the insurance company paid up and that was that.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Just that it’s a funny coincidence,” Dobrygowski said.

“Funny!” I flared, and I didn’t care if I was overreacting.

Healey put his hand out again to restrain me. “He didn’t mean anything by it, Mr. Rosenkrantz.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Dobrygowski said.

I took deep breaths and tried to count to ten in my head. If I lost my temper, I was liable to do something stupid.

“You’ve just become very rich,” Dobrygowski said. “That must be some consolation to you.”

“What consolation?”

“We spoke to Mr. Palmer,” Healey said. “He told us that your son doesn’t have a will. That you stand to come into a lot of money. The family might contest it, of course, but that’s something.”

I had to be careful here. “I just lost my son, and you’re talking about money,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s crude. It’s an unpleasant job.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said.

“You didn’t know about the money?”

“Palmer just told me now. But not before.”

They switched back to Vee.

“So you lived with Victoria Abrams?” Dobrygowski said.

“Why?” I said, narrowing my eyes.

“We just want to establish what she might have to gain.”

So they knew. “Yes, we live together. In San Angelo.”

“So she could expect to see some money if it came your way.”

“She could, but she wouldn’t be getting any. She won’t be getting any.”

“No?” Dobrygowski said.

I crumpled my features into a question. I needed to still look confused. I needed to be stupid.

“Do you know where Victoria Abrams is?” Healey said.

“No, I don’t.” It was technically true. They weren’t asking where she had moved when we checked out. Just where she was now. “Why?”

“Can you believe this guy,” Dobrygowski said.

I made as though it had just dawned on me then. “You think she killed my son and set his room on fire?”

There was an uncomfortable silence. “So you have no idea where she is?” Healey said.

And Dobrygowski jumped in, “Did you know her boyfriend was Carlton Browne, a well-known gangster here in Calvert? Her
other
boyfriend, I mean.”

“I...” The caravan of cars had turned and was almost upon us on its way back out of the cemetery. “I...I’m sorry, I’ve told you what I know. And quite frankly, right now, I don’t want to know any more of what
you
know.”

“Why’d you leave the Somerset?” Healey said.

I stepped towards the road. Great Aunt Alice’s car was almost upon us. “Because Vee’s boyfriend found out about me,” I said, my eyes on the cars.

Healey took a step towards me to try to recapture my attention. “So you think she’s with Browne?”

Great Aunt Alice’s car was abreast of us now, and slowed. I walked to the rear door, relieved to have an excuse to be done with them.

“Don’t you want to know what happened to your son?” Healey said behind me.

I jerked open the front passenger door. “I know he’s dead,” I said. “Isn’t that enough?” I slammed the door behind me. I could feel both detectives watching me as we pulled away, but I kept my eyes forward.

Yeah, I was stone cold. On the outside. But in fact I was badly shaken. Only days before it had sounded as though things were exactly as Vee had said they would be. Now it sounded like the police knew just about everything.

I got angry. Vee had done this before! Why hadn’t she told me? How would I have handled it if she had? Badly. Very badly. Like I said, I’m not one for physical altercations, believe me, I’m not. But she still should have told me. Of course the police would put two and two together with something like that in her past. I thought Vee was too smart to make such an obvious mistake. But she had. She’d used the same ploy twice, and now they were on to her for it.

And then it hit me. They were on to
her
for it. They thought
she
’d done it. For all of Dobrygowski’s innuendo, they had only asked about her. Because if they’d asked at the hotel, they’d know that I’d come back that night before the fire could have started. Because I had. And if the deskman told them that, he’d probably also told them that Vee had gone out. She’d had a car brought up from the garage. The garage people would remember that, too, that time of night. If the police thought Vee had done
it, well, then part of her plan had worked. The important part. The part about me.

But probably it was just a matter of time until they stumbled upon me. And when they did, I was going to be arrested. And thinking more on it, I was pretty certain they had the death penalty in Maryland. Sure they did. I was going to die here, and there went all of the Rosenkrantzes in one fell swoop. No, not all. Clotilde in her clinic out west was one more. What would become of her?

I had to warn Vee. The way they’d get me for sure was if they got her. She’d spill everything, especially if she thought it might save her.

At Great Aunt Alice’s I went right up to my room. I called the Somerset. The front desk answered after only one ring. “Somerset Hotel. How may I assist you?”

“I’d like to reach a party in Suite 12-2,” I said. For some reason I knew that I shouldn’t ask for Vee by name.

“Of course, sir.”

There was a dead click, and then the phone was ringing. “Hello?”

It was a man’s voice. I couldn’t tell if it was Browne’s or someone else’s. My tongue was frozen. If it was Browne, the last thing Vee needed was for him to know I was calling. I hung up the phone without saying anything.

I lay back on the bed and tried to think it through, only my mind was caught on a loop thinking the same thing over and over. Vee needed to be moving, she needed to get out of Calvert, and she needed to get as far away as she could, because with that other incident in her past where she’d used arson to cover up murder, there was no way that they wouldn’t try to hang Joe’s death on her now. How could she be so stupid to use the same
scheme? She needed to get out of Calvert. I needed to get through to her, and she needed to get moving. How could she be so stupid?

When it got where I couldn’t stand it anymore, I tried the hotel again. Twice. And each time the desk would put me through to Browne’s suite and a man would answer the phone and I’d hang up and start my worrying all over. After the third call, I decided that a whole bunch of hang-ups would be just as bad for Vee as if I were to say who was calling so I resigned myself to waiting until I saw her at our rendezvous the next day. And my thoughts circled and circled all night.

The next day was overcast. Thick ash clouds blocked the sun, but they didn’t do one thing to help with the heat. Instead they just trapped the humidity, making the day heavy and draining. I walked from Great Aunt Alice’s and arrived at the Somerset ahead of our meeting with a sheen of sweat covering my whole body, my shirt stuck to my back. I took out my handkerchief and wiped my brow and the back of my neck and put it away. My nerves were as frayed as they could be, thinking on it all night, and the only thing that kept me from ducking into the bar for a drink was my heartburn, so bad I thought I might throw up.

Since I was early, I went to the desk to check if I had any messages. I’d asked for them to be forwarded to Great Aunt Alice’s—that’s how the police had found me last week—but I thought it was odd that I hadn’t gotten any messages from
anybody
. I didn’t recognize the man at the desk. They had an awful lot of people working there.

“I just checked out about a week ago,” I said. “I was wondering if I had any messages that might not have reached me. My name’s Shem Rosenkrantz. I was in room 514.”

“One moment, sir,” the deskman said with no change of expression. Then he turned and went through a door behind the counter.

I looked around nervously. Did the police have the lobby under surveillance? We probably didn’t rate that much attention.
They had more important things to do than wait around for some woman who
might
have been involved in a death years earlier that
might
have been a murder. It was just my guilty conscience. But I felt exposed and I worried that I was making a mistake even if I didn’t know what it was. At least checking my messages gave me a legitimate reason to be at the hotel.

The deskman came back, and said simply, “No messages, sir.”

“No telegrams even?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said.

No phone calls. No telegrams. I wouldn’t need the money now that I had come into the Hadley estate, but still, the idea that my people in New York had forgotten me... All the work we’d done together over the years, all the books we’d published—and I had made them some money, my books had sold pretty well for a few years in there—the idea that a desperate telegram no longer elicited even a response, even a no. I had expected a no, but nothing...

I nodded, and forced a grin, though it didn’t feel like it fit my face just then. “Well, thanks,” I said.

“Of, course, sir.”

I turned back to the lobby, and as I did, Browne went by with two other men in suits. They were intent on the door and didn’t see me, but my heart rate jumped so fast I felt lightheaded. Browne scared me back into childhood. I was a killer now too, I reminded myself; so what if it had been an accident, with the police and my “motive,” it had almost gotten to the point where that didn’t matter, the whole thing confused in my mind the way it was. But with all that, I certainly didn’t feel like any killer watching the gangster and his bodyguards stroll out of the hotel.

I swallowed and forced myself to move. I didn’t want to give
the deskman an extra reason to remember me, and standing around like a halfwit was exactly the kind of thing that might get remembered if someone made a point of asking. I started for the luncheonette, but after only a handful of steps it struck me, if Browne had gone out, that meant Vee would be alone on the twelfth floor. We could meet in Browne’s suite, and that would be much better than meeting downstairs where anyone could see us and remember the two of us together. I hurried to the elevator, praying that we wouldn’t miss each other as I went up to twelve and she went down to the lobby. I pushed the call button, and waited, watching the dial run down the numbers until it reached one, and a bell rang, then rang two more times in quick succession, and then the elevator door slid open.

A slender young mother ushered two children—a boy with Air Force insignia pins on his shirt and a girl in a dress with a bow—out into the lobby. Why had Clotilde and I never had any kids? She would have been such a beautiful mother. And now my only son...

I got in the elevator, and tried once again to organize my thoughts, how the police were onto her and she needed to get out of town. I jiggled with nervous energy, and when the elevator door opened on twelve, I practically ran to Suite 12-2. I knocked at the door, looking along the hallway, hoping to get inside before anyone else went by. When I heard no movement inside, I pounded with a closed fist, painfully aware of the sound traveling.

At last the door jerked open, Vee already saying, “What’s the idea—” She was dressed in what was a modest dress for Vee. The bruise on her face had faded to a piebald mess of greens,
yellows, purples, and blues. She registered that it was me and said “Jesus H. Christmas, Shem, what the hell’s the matter with you? I said downstairs.”

“I saw Browne leave and thought it would be better if we met up here out of sight.” I pushed her back into the room and closed the door behind me. “We’ve got trouble.”

“ ‘We’ve’ got trouble? Ha!” She turned her back on me and stalked across the room. “
I’m
the one living like a prisoner.” And she disappeared into the master bedroom. From there, she called, “What’s this trouble, you bastard?”

I took a step towards the bedroom, and stopped. The sight of the place hit me hard, almost as if I had only just seen Browne beating on Vee, and my mouth went dry.

“Hello? Idiot! Back here!”

I followed her voice back to the bedroom. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, reaching down to sling a pair of black and white heels over her stockinged feet.

“This is the last time I let you pimp me out to a gangster. You nearly got me killed the other night, you know that?”

“Will you lay off of me on that. I’m not a pimp.”

She ignored that. “Did you talk to the lawyer yet? You find out when you’ll be getting that money? Then I can get out of here.”

How had this conversation gotten away from me? I was there for a reason. “You need to go now,” I said, but it came out weak.

“And wait for you like a fool, just hoping you show up with the money? Right.” She stood up and went over to the bureau, where she picked up a silver pendant earring and cocked her head to put it on.

“Vee, the police...”

She paused, her head still turned to the side. “What about
the police?” Her features grew pinched, and if I didn’t know before, I knew right then that I could not let Vee hang around and get caught under any circumstances. Because even if right now the police genuinely thought that Vee had acted alone, once they had her in custody she’d be quick to set them straight about that. Hell, she’d probably have a way of putting me in the hot seat without her in it at all. She’d show that broken face of hers and say that I had done that to her if she didn’t go and clean up Joe’s body. That’s exactly what she’d say, and then I’d be right back in it, on my way to death row. If she left, I could sit easy waiting for the money while they chased Vee around the country.