“Wow,” said Lt. Marie, sitting down uninvited, “Lawyered up already, huh?”
“Mr. Kyro is my friend,” said Jacquetta stiffly. Luckily Nelson said nothing.
Clearly unbelieving, Lt. Marie produced a paper. “I’d like you to sign this statement that you made this morning, and answer a few more questions about your roommate’s life. What did you know about her job, for example? Did she ever complain to you about it?”
This guy just wasn’t getting it. While correcting typos with one hand, Jacquetta said, “I don’t think this murder had anything to do with my roommate’s job. My roommate was helping me try to find an anonymous letter writer and I think –“
“Oh? Playing amateur detective, eh? You got any of these letters?”
Jacquetta didn’t know whether he meant had she “received” any or was she carrying, but she had started confiding in him so she might as well continue. “The officer who searched my purse already saw these,” she said laying them out on the table, “But-“
Lt. Marie took one look at the blue stationery and the daisies and said, “Nah. Nah.”
“Nah?” Nelson echoed. It was the first word he had spoken.
“That’s clearly a woman’s letter. This is a man’s crime.”
“It is?”
Jacquetta was grateful for Nelson’s intervention because the detective was defensive with him in a way he certainly wasn’t with her.
“Yeah,” said Marie, “It was a sex crime. She was strangled with a dishtowel – you got any idea how much strength that would take?”
“How much?” asked Nelson.
“A lot. Plus there was a broomstick at the scene. Looks like impotent rage to me.”
“Impotent rage?” Jacquetta echoed faintly. She didn’t dare even think what this could possibly mean.
“Date gone wrong. Enough said,” smirked the detective.
“Honey didn’t date anyone but Barney,” insisted Jacquetta.
“Maybe that’s what she told her roommate, the nun. For all you know, she sent those letters.” He swept them up with her statement as he rose to go.
“They weren’t sent to ME,” argued Jacquetta. But Nelson laid a restraining hand along Lt. Marie’s arm.
“You can’t take those, he said.
Lt. Marie regarded him disbelievingly. “You said it was evidence in the case.”
“And you said it wasn’t.” Nelson took them back. “Get a warrant.”
Lt. Marie seemed incensed.
“When are you releasing my car?” asked Jacquetta.
“At the moment we’re all jammed up with a bunch of uncooperative witnesses,” he said, “So I don’t know. Check back later in the day.”
He flounced out.
“I don’t think Lt. Susan is going to be our savior,” sighed Nelson.
“Well, you didn’t treat him very diplomatically,” protested Jacquetta.
“They had no right to search your car.”
“I said they could! There’s nothing in there but trash. I wanted them to get on with the actual evidence.”
Nelson shook the letters at her. “You see how well THAT worked out!”
“I’m certain he’s completely wrong about the case,” said Jacquetta.
“Well, if he’s right about the dishtowel, I guess it has to be a man. Lundt would be what… twenty-nine? Thirty?”
“Maybe Lundt and Kleinemann are still working together.”
“Maybe.” He stood up.
“So where are you going?”
“With you to the state library, looking up that old case, and then we have to hit the Brass Ass.”
She couldn’t believe it. “Don’t you have work?”
He grinned. “I’m bereaved, remember” The grin faded. “I lost everything.”
They lunched together in the coffee shop. Jacquetta was afraid Nelson would say something more about leaving his wife – thank God he didn’t bring it up. Maybe last night changed his mind – she couldn’t take the time to care. No decisions could possibly be made.
She pulled out the anonymous letters from her bag and going over her notes, he saw the words Kleinemann-Lundt.
“Kleinemann-Lundt!” he exclaimed. “It must mean the crime case – what else could it mean?”
“A crime case? I hope so. I mean, how many Kleinemann-Lundts could there be?” she echoed hopefully.
“Kleinemann was one person and Lundt was the other but I don’t remember who was who. I’ll have to look it up.”
She poured more coffee. “I don’t remember anything about it. Tell me.”
“It was the kind of case I like to follow. Very psychological.” Nelson leaned back in his chair, seemingly better rested and more at peace. “About twelve years back. In upstate New York. A teenage girl and boy killed her grandmother. Actually tortured the old woman to death. There had been a lot of abuse in the family – not that the jury cared. Each kid blamed the other – so the question was, who was really responsible?”
“Well, if it was her grandmother –“
“Yeah, but the boy had a big motive, too. The old lady was preventing them from being together.” “And each said the other did it?”
“Right. But the jury didn’t buy it and locked them both up. Of course, they were minors so they could be out now.”
“And they repudiated each other?”
“Totally. If you’re familiar with the concept of ‘folie a deux’ – “
She couldn’t avoid a sour grimace. “Some people say that’s what all love is.”
He took her hand – “I hope you’re not one of them.”
“I hope I’m not.” She was feeling helpless in the thrall of circumstance.
“I’m sorry in one way about this morning – and in another way I’m not sorry,” he tentatively suggested.
“I’m not sorry,” she insisted, more decisively than she felt.
“Obviously, I’m happy for me – you know I’m greedy and take all I can get – but I’m worried about you. I don’t want to influence you.”
He stroked her palm. Still influencing her. Though maybe it was unconscious.
“I can’t make decisions,” she told him. “Not till this is over. We have to decide what to tell the police.”
“Why now? Why decide?”
“Because Lt. Marie is over there, and I see he’s looking for me.”
His guarded voice had always betrayed him: it usually meant he wasn’t alone.
“I’m at The Coaching House,” she said. “Room 412.”
“Really?” His voice changed immediately. Panic? Longing? Fear?
“Honey’s been killed.”
It was decisive. He said, “I’ll come immediately.”
All the rooms at the Coaching House looked the same, and like Pasteur’s dogs, she had learned to slaver in every one. Would she again? It was hard for her mind to imagine, but the body doesn’t forget.
She sat on the bed in the nondescript chamber, under a blurry painting of The Four Zoas and tried to think what she would say to the man who had once been her lover. How much could she tell him, when what she told Honey had gotten her friend killed?
He didn’t even know Honey. They had never met, but they cordially loathed each other from a distance while they struggled for the rights to Jacquetta’s soul.
He wore a suit; she should have been expecting that; after all, it was a workday. She preferred him naked; but she shouldn’t allow herself to think about that. She had to let him in at the door; that meant they were close enough to hug. At once her disloyal body woke up, just like a dog, re-playing so many delicious feedings from the master’s hand.
She backed away in disarray, sitting down on the single armchair; why hadn’t she met him in the coffee shop for God’s sake? Why a hotel room? Because she craved privacy to cry, to shriek, tear her hair, throw herself down on the carpet wailing…
He sat on the bed.“What happened?”
She was going to have to tell him. She simply could not do this alone.
“If I tell you, your life’s at risk too,” she said first, knowing he never cared for things like that. The interesting part was watching the disbelief in his eyes give way to a kind of confused sadness; how could even the most outrageous statements be taken for hyperbole when Honey was dead?
“I accept everything,” he said finally, “I thought I told you. Just tell me what happened.”
“Coming back from my last day of work I met an old lady on the train and we fell into conversation. She said she was impressed–“ Jacquetta finally had the grace to blush, “with the whole monastery thing and she wanted to consult me about a problem with an evil person in her life. One of us mentioned the word, “sociopath.”
“Probably you,” he said. Same old Nelson. “Accepting everything” obviously didn’t mean agreeing with her, promoting or even soothing her ego. Jacquetta had ignored this as much as she possibly could in the past and she wasn’t going to make an exception now.
“She invited me to lunch to talk, but before we could meet, she – died.”
He picked up on her intonation. “Murder most foul?”
“Nothing else makes sense. But before she died, she put me in her will and left me six thousand dollars.”
Ironic skepticism – his natural pose – surfaced beneath his patient, listening expression and struggled a moment for dominance. She ignored it.
“She also left me a library of books on stained glass where I think she hid a message – but one of the books was destroyed before I could get to it.”
“No other personal directive?”
She could see how this was going to go; he would play lawyer.
“No. It was Beatrix Rainbeaux – one of the Glasstown founders.”
“So, rich,” he put in. “Powerful.”
“Yes. I met the family at the will reading and they are a nasty bunch.”
“But if she didn’t actually disinherit any of them doesn’t that mean –“ She ignored him.
“I sent –“ This was the hard part and her voice faltered – “I sent Honey to Iridium, the Rainbeaux house, to search for something.”
Now he gasped. “How’d you do that?”
I’m going to cry, thought Jacquetta and if I cry I’ll never get this out. She made a monumental effort. “She was excited about playing detective. She met Avalon Powell –“
“Avalon Powell?”
She wasn’t going to ignore his astonished expression.
“You know her?”
“Well…” she hated watching him equivocate while she had undressed her whole soul; “She’s…everywhere. She’s hard to ignore.”
“How well do you know her?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Not THAT well. I’ve met her,” Nelson admitted. “She…wants publicity. And her husband needs it.”
Well, that was true. So far as it went. Rather than believing or unbelieving she moved on. If she didn’t unburden herself, if she didn’t pass this torch to a healthy runner, she’d go under.
“Honey impersonated a home buyer, and I called Avalon to tie her up so Honey could snoop. She found Miss Rainbeaux’s date book and that told us two things more.”
He poured himself a glass of water. She refused one.
“Apparently the day I met her Miss Rainbeaux was coming back from looking up a D.L. LeRoi in Brooklyn, so I thought I ought to look her up, too.”
“Her?”
There was that lawyer again.
“The landlord told me the room was rented by a pretty brunette who described herself as the secretary of Roxelle Shields.”
“Roxelle Shields!”
“You know her, too?” Jacquetta commented sourly.
“Everyone knows her. Everyone male,” he conceded.
“Well, Honey had heard of her.” The very name was difficult to say. She soldiered on. “I called the bar Shields owned but they wouldn’t let me talk to her and they said she doesn’t have a secretary.”
“We should still pay her a visit,” said Nelson.
Jacquetta relaxed the tiniest bit. At least he was offering to help. He would try to take over of course – that was his nature – but she knew she couldn’t do this alone. It was unsafe, for one thing.
“The apartment was empty. It looked like a love nest to me.”
“What does an empty love nest look like?” He was trying not to smile. Already she was out of love with him.
“Satin sheets? Massage oils?”
“Hardly empty,” he defended himself.
“They were in the trash, along with a box of stationery and a broken anklet with Avalon’s initial. Then I went to Avalon’s Open House and I…took a piece of mail.”
“You stole a piece of mail?”
“I don’t know if it’s stealing when the person is deceased.”
“It is,” he corrected, “But I’ve done worse.”
“Her datebook said she was meeting with a “Benson” every week for months. But there are a lot of Bensons in the world. The letter was a returned one of Miss Rainbeaux’s to a private investigator who turned out to be dead, too.”
That slowed him down! All he could say was, “Wow.”
“Wow. Right. She was sending him an anonymous letter she had obviously received. I’m guessing he asked her to send any more letters on to him.”
“But he died?”
“Shot with his own gun and his office was burned down.”
“Holy cow,” said Nelson, “Do the police know any of this?”
“Thy don’t have it connected up,” said Jacquetta. “They probably don’t know about the letters.”
“So then -?” his face fell. He knew it could only get worse.
“The au pair told me Avalon was having an affair with Neil Dettler, the family lawyer.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. I’d guess there’s a long list of Mrs. Powell’s passions.”
Mrs. Powell’s Passions sounded like a sixties rock band. Jacquetta thought she personally would be surprised to find out Avalon loved anything but lucre, but why bring that up at this point?
“And his wife, Penny Dettler, said she received one of the anonymous letters.”
“So, we don’t know how many people got them.”
“We don’t. And I just got back…just got back today and…” this was a struggle – “Honey was dead.” She wept.
He came to sit beside her. “God, I’m sorry,” he said.
“The apartment as all torn up but – I have the letters. Maybe they got the datebook, I don’t know. The police hustled me out of there.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I don’t know how to tell them anything. They’re looking at Honey’s boyfriend, for God’s sake.”
“I’ll help you,” he said. “We’ll do it together.”
He was taking over, like he took over her body. Right now. But why fight it when she wanted – when she needed him so much? She wanted to be whirled away, outside the reach of her sore brain. She clung to him as to a life raft to prevent her from drowning.
Jacquetta’s home looked like someone else’s apartment. Things were in the wrong places. The lights didn’t work. Jacquetta stood in the doorway for a moment, stupidly staring. It was dark – the drapes were drawn and there was no light but after a moment Jacquetta could discern shapes. The velvet rocker lay on its side; a broomstick was thrown against the couch, an ironing board had been dumped on the upturned coffee table. It reminded Jacquetta of the extensive fort-building of childhood. Except that under the coffee table, under the ironing board, sprawled a litter of white clothes.
No. Nonononono….Oh God deliver us. She pulled the coffee table off the body.
It was Honey, curled impossibly small as if to escape her attacker through the floor. It hadn’t worked. Hair covered her face. Jacquetta reached for her hand, clenched as small as an opossum’s, roadkill to be shoveled aside by an uncaring universe.
She pulled Honey’s hair away and wished she hadn’t: her roommate’s face was unrecognizably purple, tongue extruding like a plague victim’s. Jacquetta scrabbled her fingers in the ashes of a fallen ashtray and drew a cross on the dead girl’s forehead. “I baptize thee in the name of…who?”
That slowed her down. Unbaptized Honey had already belonged to all that was good in the universe. “In the name of those who thirst after righteousness,” Jacquetta whispered. “In the names of the peacekeepers, and in the names the meek who are heirs of the earth.”
The particular peacekeeper who responded to Jacquetta’s 911 call was a man named Lt. Marie. He wanted to talk about boyfriends.
“Barney Douglas”, said Jacquetta, who honestly answered most questions she was asked. “He works at Douglas Cadillac. But he didn’t do this.”
That was the question. What could she tell this man? George Cleese? Avalon Powell? She had nothing.
“He wasn’t the type,” she said shortly.
The quizzical eyes hardened. “Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that.” He looked past her and through her; if she was going to spout the standard forlorn clichés of the bereaved, suddenly he was not interested. “She put up a good fight,” he acceded.
She put up a good fight. Jacquetta blanched. Somehow that was even more horrible. She lost, thought Jacquetta. Because she was fighting a monster, and she was fighting a monster because of me…
“Did you touch anything?”
“The phone,” said Jacquetta vaguely. “The bag of groceries somewhere is mine.” She honestly couldn’t have said what happened to it. “I painted a cross on her forehead.”
The eyes swiveled once again. “You..?”
“I didn’t know what to do.” She shook her head. “I tried giving her to God. I didn’t know WHAT to do.”
She could see he had a fear of female hysteria. He backed up a little.
“And you were where? Coming from where?”
“Oh.” She tried to focus. “My alibi.”
Lt. Marie smirked unpleasantly. “Yeah. Your alibi.”
“I was at the Monastery of Holy Calvary in Southport at four-thirty. Then I had dinner with my mother in Pinewood. I ended up at the all-night grocery on Route 1 –“
“Anyone see you?”
Would Penny remember? Still, there were the groceries, expensive, frozen bags of them. Realer, somehow than Penny Dettler ever was. Ever could be.
“Mrs. Neil Dettler. I…helped her shop and I escorted her home.”
She could tell by his eyes that he knew there was more to this story. But he’d already heard too many stories – enough stories for a lifetime. How much should he care about this one? Officiously, he made a note.
“May I use the phone?” she asked.
“You may not. Officer Fuente will drive you where you went to go.”
Fuente means fountain, she thought. Hidden springs.
She was dismissed, but they wouldn’t let her take anything. Her purse was searched, her car keys impounded and she was directed not to “leave town.” Now she was just another character in Dragnet, or worse. Unsolved Mysteries. Where did she want to go?
“The Coaching House on Rt 33?” she suggested. She knew it well, unfortunately. Through her ex, Nelson. It was next to a grocery store which she knew from experience contained many of what she and her lover used to consider the “necessities of life.”
She was learning different necessities now. Life itself was the first necessity. Knowledge is the second.
Sanka and brownies stirred up a passion in Jacquetta for sprouts and bran that was simply irresistible. Luckily there was that all night grocery store out on Route 1.
Usually after Dinner with Mom Jacquetta spent the night on the sofa bed but after an hour’s dressing down she discovered herself to be insufficiently masochistic; yet another disqualifier for sainthood in her mother’s eyes.
But she was out and free. Free, free, free. Even the Datsun cooperated, starting up immediately when she really should have sprung for a new battery. Freedom was so seductive. No job, no boyfriend, no obligations really except those he gave herself. Thanks to Miss Rainbeaux, she didn’t even have the immediate specter of the money running out.
At the moment the long-term plan might be catching a murderer, but the short-term plan was helping Honey by contributing some groceries.
Jacquetta loved supermarkets at this hour. She adored the futuristic lighting making the few daring or sleepless shoppers look like visitors from another planet.
That must have been why she stared so long at the woman with the straggly pony tail without recognizing her. The woman filled her cart with Cornish game hens as bony and breastless as herself, a cart already packed to the brim with frozen food. Alerted by that magnetic sense shared by humanoids she lifted wild, unfocused eyes. It was Penny Dettler.
“Are you following me?” she challenged. This was a very different Penny from the open house attendee, this was a woman who’s rope-end was in full view. Husband said no to the divorce, Jacquetta wondered?
“No,” said Jacquetta and it sounded like a lie even to her own ears. Because in a way she was following Penny Dettler; wasn’t she following all of them, straining to see their private habits, to monitor them especially when they thought themselves alone? With the new table-turning aggression she struggled to master, Jacquetta demanded, “Have you been sending anonymous letters, Mrs. Dettler?”
It was the first thing that jumped into her head – she didn’t really suspect Penny of being D.L. LeRoi, but the response was galvanic. Penny’s eyes filled with tears and her mouth quivered. “Those cruel, cruel letters!” she gabbled. “They said I couldn’t feed my baby but it wasn’t true – I had so much milk my breasts hurt.”
She rubbed her chest as if to make her point. “It was the doctors’ fault,” she wept, “They didn’t want the baby to get the drugs. Why’s that, if the drugs are harmless? They’re poison, that’s why! They were giving me poison!”
Openly weeping, she staggered toward the exit, abandoning her cart. Jacquetta was forced to trail after her, pushing both carts, and then to use her store card to charge all those groceries. Some detective I am! She thought angrily. Who else believes the line, “You broke it, you bought it?”
“Mrs. Dettler!” she accosted the weeping woman struggling with a set of car keys, “You forgot your groceries!”
Penny allowed Jacquetta to load the back of her station wagon, while Jacquetta thought grimly about the humor of a minor legatee providing the estate executor with weeks of free food. In what universe did that happen? Oh well, she thought, you know who would understand? Beatrix Rainbeaux!
“Are you going to be all right?” she had to ask, helping Penny disentangle her raincoat from the Volvo door. Wasn’t it lawyers who warned, Never ask a question when you’re afraid of the answer? But all Penny said was, “I think so.”
And so the accusation Penny made came true, and Jacquetta followed her to her door, thinking, “Some detective I am! Who’s in charge here?”
But once Penny stepped out of her car door Jacquetta drove away. She was NOT going to carry Neil Dettler’s groceries to his door!
But she had a lot to think about as she drove home. She was beginning to get a sense of the “personality” of this case. How likely was it that the anonymous letter writer and the murderer were different people? Not likely at ALL, she considered. It would be understandable to murder an anonymous letter writer who’d stumbled on a dangerous fact but look at who was dead. Only people investigating the letters! So the nasty, hidden personality of the killer was starting to emerge, all too clearly. She was looking for a monster.
Jacquetta slipped Mother Xavier’s rosary in her pocket, threw the printed tract in her back seat and waited until she was halfway down the drive before she began to shriek and curse out loud. She was out of breath and out of words by the time the Datsun climbed the highway ramp but she was not out of anger.
Just who was she so mad at? Jesus? St. John of the Cross? Mother Xavier and Sister Thekla? The latter two, definitely. Bad cop and good cop! Of course she was angriest at herself for unconsciously revealing the ugly truth; that she just didn’t want to toil the rest of her life at some exhausting job! But she ALSO didn’t want to spend her days wearing ugly clothes! These humiliating truths had never really occurred to her, but now that they had, she saw herself as no different, really, than a star-struck eleven year old who dreams of becoming a Bride of God in a haze of chiffon and orange blossoms.
Damn, damn, damn. The one person she was not angry at was the one person she should absolutely loathe: the murderer. But she didn’t feel that way at all. She was scared, but she was intrigued. It felt more like awe, really. Awe-inspiringly concrete was the force of her own determination: you are not getting away with this. Jacquetta Strike will see to that. It was a challenge and a dare and she was excited by those.
Damn Sister Thekla and that pathetic lump of “Dunkin Donuts” sugar! Could it have been deliberate on their part, rubbing her nose in a future of bad food and awful art?
I don’t have to decide, Jacquetta promised herself. Not yet. But I do have to catch that murderer. It’s more important than ever now.
Once she had driven all the way to the monastery there was no hope of getting out of dinner with Mom. Jacquetta’s heart sank when she saw the fare her mother had provided: candied ham and sweet potatoes. Hypoglycemic, her mother got a big thrill out of watching others eat the foods she was forbidden. Jacquetta would have far preferred the salad her mother was toying with, but she hadn’t been consulted. Oh well. At least it meant there would be gooey, homemade brownies for dessert.
“So how did it go?” her mother asked anxiously.
Jacquetta always assumed a false heartiness around her Mom, a confidence she couldn’t actually feel. She loathed the Kabuki-style roles they somehow were forced into but there never seemed to be any escape.
“They’re giving me a little more time,” she said. “This is delicious!”
Her mother’s anxiety wasn’t in the least quieted.
“What I don’t understand is why you care about these people,” she wailed. “A suicidal woman? A murderer? These are godless humans!”
“I feel like the old lady put some trust in me,” her daughter asserted as calmly as she could manage. “She gave me a duty to discharge.” She didn’t dare mention the problem of the dead detective Benson. Her mother would have a panic attack right here.
“But you’re supposed to be under guidance,” the older woman protested. “You’re just like your father, always telling the experts he knew best!”
“It’s just a week or so,” Jacquetta argued, fiercely peppering a sweet potato to give it some kick.
“This is exactly what happened with your father,” Marguerite prophesied, “He became a spoiled priest!”
“Mom, if he’d stayed at the seminary, you wouldn’t have had a husband and I wouldn’t have been born!” Jacquetta responded without thinking. Because possibly her mother would have preferred that state of affairs.
The road to the convent was steeper than she remembered. And the monastery itself looked stranger – though that could be accounted for by the time of year; a Mediterranean villa plunked down on leafless New Jersey farmland.
The visiting parlor was attached to the office. The nuns reached it by way of a covered walk so as not to break “enclosure” although once in the parlor they could be clearly seen. The famous separating “grille” was a low iron rail Jacquetta could have stepped over had she been in a rule-breaking mind. Perhaps she was in a rule-breaking mind. Perhaps that was what this was about.
The room was rigidly, even obsessively clean, but not warm. The iron stove inserted into the fieldstone fireplace was not lit. Jacquetta sat down uncomfortably on a wooden bench, eye level from a realistically suffering Christ hanging from a cross. She was a few minutes early. She rose when Sister Thekla burst through the curtained doorway and leaned across for a hug, her old face wreathed in smiles.
“Jacquetta! So good to see you! Mother Xavier will be here in a flash. She asked me to give this to you.”
It was a booklet entitled TESTING YOUR VOCATION. Jacquetta opened it with a sinking heart. Everything had been thought of. There was nothing new on the planet. According to this book there would always be “work-related” and “family- related” reasons not to enter and as long as they made sense to the applicant, she should refrain from entering; understanding, however, that no place could be kept open forever.
Not like they have to fight away the applicants, thought Jacquetta, watching Sister Thekla make the fire. Harvard Law School this place is not.
And here was Mother Xavier, steel-spectacled, with sharp lines like cat’s whiskers radiating from her mouth.
“Tea, I think, Sister Thekla,” she said, and the older woman lit the fire and bustled gratefully away. Like I’m contagious, thought Jacquetta.
“Why don’t you tell me what this is about,” said Mother Xavier, seating herself in an ancient chair ornamented with creaking wooden lace, “And don’t try to spare me. You wouldn’t believe the stories I’ve heard. Is it a man?”
It took Jacquetta a moment to comprehend. She thought for a moment Mother Xavier was asking for the gender of the murderer.
“It’s not that,” she said finally. “It’s an old lady I met on the train. She invited me to lunch, to consult me about an evil person close to her. But that very night she killed herself, so they say. But I don’t think she did.”
If she had hoped this whisper of suicide and murder would rock Mother Xavier she was mistaken. The old woman was immovable.
“God know what really happened,” she said calmly. “Why don’t you leave it in His hands?”
“What if the murderer kills someone else?” Jacquetta argued, “As in fact they have. They seem to have also shot a private detective and burned down his office.”
Once again, no reaction from Mother Xavier, whose hands remained folded in her lap loosely clutching her rosary.
Tea arrived. Lukewarm, with blue milk. Sister Thekla unwrapped an ancient looking sugar cube with such excitement Jacquetta tried to seem pleased.
“Saint John of the Cross’ advice to contemplatives – perhaps you recall it? ‘She should not become involved in other works and exterior exercises that might be of the slightest hindrance to the attentiveness of the love toward God, even if he work itself be of great service to God.’ “
Sister Thekla’s fire went out. She poked it ineffectively.
“The true contemplative,” Mother Xavier went on, quoting from The Cloud of Unknowing, “does not desire to mix in active life. He does not care what is spoken about him and does not defend himself before his critics.”
This is not about ME, thought Jacquetta, stealing time by sipping her terrible tea, doubtless made with re-used tea leaves. If she thinks I’m going to say I’m not a natural contemplative she’s got another think coming.
Mother Xavier continued serenely, “Have you explored active vocations? I recommend it.” Jacquetta thought of the sisters she had seen on city buses, rushing about in their ugly shoes, polyester skirts and short veils, probably working three or four jobs in every ghetto they could find. And shuddered.
“It’s the contemplative life I want, I’m certain of that,” said Jacquetta.
“It’s not what you want, it’s what God wants for you,” said Mother Xavier. “I will pray for you. Decide soon, my dear Jacquetta.”
She pressed her own rosary into Jacquetta’s hand and disappeared silently through the curtain. There was no hug goodbye. Sister Thekla’s fire still refused to light, and Jacquetta thought she saw tears in the older nun’s eyes.
“Look at this!” Jacquetta cried excitedly. “Look what I got at the Open House!”
“Ooo,” Honey gasped excitedly, “The mysterious Benson!”
“And wait what you see that’s inside!”
It was an anonymous letter carefully scrawled on blue paper ornamented with yellow daisies.
U R ROTING INSIDE. FEEL THE CANCER EATING UR GUTS. MAGGOTS CAN’T WAIT THEY ARE STARTING NOW. U HAVE EEN POISONED BY UR LOVING FAMILY. THEY CAN’T WAIT TO SEE U GO. I WOULD NOT EAT IF I WERE U.
“God, that’s awful,” said Honey, sitting down under the force of it. “But why send it to Benson? Wasn’t there a note?”
“No.” Jacquetta fetched the yellow pages and riffled through to “D”. “I think he was a detective she hired to look into the letters and he asked her to send on any more she received.”
“And he refused the letter because she was dead? I don’t get it.”
“I don’t get it either. But we’re way ahead of Benson because we know who wrote the anonymous letters. Yup, here he is. 115 Glasstown Pike. She went local.”
“I don’t get it. Who wrote the anonymous letters?”
“LeRoi! I forgot to tell you she had a box of this stationery in the trash at her apartment. Distinctive, wouldn’t you say?”
“But we don’t know who LeRoi is.”
“True. And I don’t think it’s Penny Dettler. She was at the open house and I’m telling you it would take quite a job to turn her into a cynosure that would impress a real estate agent.” She was dialing.
“What’s a cynosure?” demanded Honey. “Speak English.”
“A sex magnet.” She hung up. “His phone’s been disconnected.”
“I guess he IS dead.” Honey looked bleak. “It doesn’t feel like a coincidence.” She shivered. “I think you may have tripped over someone who enjoys killing.”
“Sure looks that way,” Jacquetta agreed. “And what about this “you” stuff. Weren’t you detecting right along side me?”
“Maybe not,” sighed Honey. “Depends on how dangerous this sociopath really is.
“Yes it does, doesn’t it?” Time to hide out in a convent?
115 Glasstown Pike was a burned-out shell. Jacquetta went into the news agency next door. “What happened across the way? Looks like you had fire.”
The beaky-nosed man was happy to share his knowledge.
“Guy burned up. It was terrible. Rumor has it he torched the place and then shot himself.” He produced a tabloid-sized Glasstown Extra ARSON SUSPECTED IN LOCAL BLAZE. “Some say he worked for the Mob and it was a hit.”
Jacquetta tried to pay him for the paper but he waved her money away. “That’s last week’s news – set for the pulper.”
She bought chocolate instead and consumed it nervously while she sat in her car reading. The story backed up the news agent’s first rumor: Benson had been shot with his own gun and the place had been torched by someone who didn’t care to conceal the signs of accelerant splashed every which way, burning up his files, correspondence, anonymous letters, everything. The police had no idea what case he was working on. But which happened first murder or arson? The investigators described the events as “simultaneous”. Jacquetta sat thinking.
Which of her suspects was capable of taking away a gun from an armed detective? George Cleese? Someone the private eye wouldn’t suspect. Certainly not Penny Dettler! Maybe the murderers worked as a team. Avalon and her husband? She didn’t seem to get along well enough with her brothers to keep even the most basic secret, much less one this potent.
I’m out of my depth big time, thought Jacquetta. And I’m making the same mistake Miss Rainbeaux made of underestimating a ruthless opponent.
At The Royal Mess, Honey was agog to hear that possibly D.L. LeRoi had some connection to an exotic dancer named Roxelle Shields.
“I’ve seen her!” she gasped. “Maybe you have too. That cheesy shriek-fest movie Dark Turning a few years back. Traveling theatre company gets stranded in the back of beyond?”
“Never saw it,” said Jacquetta, who hated movies like that. “D.L. LeRoi is really some woman impersonating three other women – Roxelle Shields, Roxelle Shield’s secretary, and Avalon Powell. So she probably isn’t any of them.”
“But we won’t know till we ask,” insisted Honey. “This detecting is so much fun! I mean, there must be a connection, we just don’t know what it is. Give me that number.”
“Don’t you want me to call?”
“Heck no. Suppose it’s someone you’ve already met? It’s NOT going to REALLY be Avalon Powell who’s the only one who knows me. I can do voices. You can’t do voices. You don’t realize how distinctive your voice is.”
“My voice?” Jacquetta felt oddly pleased.
Honey slammed the bar phone down on the Plexiglas so noisily the single patron stirred, then disappeared back into his alcoholic coma.
“Hello? I was told I could reach Roxelle Shields at this number. No? How about Avalon Powell?
No? To whom –“
She looked at the phone with considerable surprise. “She hung up on me.”
“Well, where the heck were you calling? Maybe you should have asked that first!”
“That was it!” Honey barked so triumphantly the old soak moved several seats down where his sleep would remain uninterrupted.
“It can’t have been his office, they wouldn’t have hung up on you. It must have been his wife. Rose-Alice said he and Avalon were having an affair.”
“Rumor confirmed,” said Honey, dialing a new number.
“Somewhere in New Jersey, a business called The Brass Ass.” She covered the speaker to hiss, “It’s in Wildwood.”
“Sure you can dial that for me. Thanks.” A momentary wait. “Hello? I’m looking for Roxelle Shields’ secretary. Oh, she doesn’t? How about Avalon Powell? Does that ring a bell? Well, may I speak to Miss Shields? May I leave a message then? All righty then!” She hung up briskly.
“Roxelle Shields doesn’t have a secretary. That guy seems to think the mere idea is hilarious. He doesn’t recognize the name Avalon and Roxelle doesn’t come in Mondays. But he didn’t rule out me speaking to her. I mean, we could call back tomorrow maybe. But he won’t take messages, that’s for sure. He’s probably illiterate!”
“Wow,” said Jacquetta. “You’ve been really helpful. We’ve got SOME kind of connection to Neil Dettler, but what is it exactly?”
“You mean someone could be trying to get him into trouble,” said Honey. “Him and Avalon. What does his wife look like?”
“God,” returned Jacquetta, “I did meet her but she looked so depressed I was scared to meet her eyes.”
“Could she get herself up all young and pretty?”
Jacquetta wasn’t used to looking at people in this way.
“I guess she must have been able to at one point. Her husband says she’s agoraphobic.” Honey snorted. “Husbands don’t know anything!”
“But why would she use her own number?” Jacquetta was thinking, Mrs. Dettler could probably get her hands on a piece of Avalon’s broken jewelry, too.
“I guess to contain any inquiries – you know, if somebody comes looking for her she’d be forewarned. Don’t ask me.”
“And now she’s forewarned,” Jacquetta said sadly.
“Let me know if you’ve got any more detecting for me to do,” Honey begged her departing roommate. “I just love it! We should open our own detective agency!”
“Honey and Sister?” Jacquetta teased.
“Don’t scoff,” said Honey. “This is the most fun I’ve had all week.”
Ingebrand Realty was a one man shop, Jacquetta was overjoyed to see. A bilious little man imprisoned by ringing telephones and piles of documents, cast a glance over Jacquetta that can only be described as “concupiscent.” Jacquetta cast her own eyes heavenwards, thanking St. Barbara, who had been the patron saint of realtors ever since she was thrown from a tower.
“Sit, sit!” cried the little man, leaping to his feet. “Coffee? Water? Soda?”
The coffee was soldered to the bottom of the pot and the water came from a highly suspect drinking fountain. But the soda, though syrupy grape, was at least cold.
“What can I do for you?” he perched dangerously on the edge of his desk and when the phone rang, he jerked out the cord. She had his full attention.
“A friend of mine has disappeared,” she said, hoping the frantic calculation behind her eyes was invisible to this man. Apparently, it was.
“Oh?” he encouraged, looking ready to discuss her friend for hours.
“D. L. LeRoi,” she confided. “Of course, that’s a pseudonym. Monmouth Place in Brooklyn.” She was hoping he would give her a clue to the gender of the renter and she wasn’t disappointed.
“D. L. LeRoi!” he winked. “No forgetting her. She admitted it was a pseudonym, but as long as it’s not done for the purposes of fraud – I mean she paid the three months in advance.” He leaned perilously close, “You know Roxelle Shields?”
Jacquetta could not conceal her surprise. “It was rented by Roxelle Shields?” Roxelle Shields was a famous – or infamous – burlesque dancer.
“Well, she sent her secretary. She didn’t come in herself. Pretty blonde girl.”
Jacquetta sipped nervously, getting ready to douse him if he fell into her lap.
“I did wonder if the apartment wasn’t for the secretary, really,” he said. “You’d think a famous name would require something a little more upscale.”
“My friend’s the secretary,” Jacquetta said faintly. “You guessed right. She was staying there and now she’s gone. I don’t know how to get in touch with her.”
“Let’s see.” He reflected for a moment but made no move to look anything up. “She gave Miss Shield’s club name as a reference.”
“Do you have that address?” Jacquetta produced a pad and pen.
“Oh, you can look it up,” he shrugged. “Brass Ass! It’s in New Jersey somewhere.”
“I’m afraid something happened to my friend,” Jacquetta lied. “She was hiding out from her husband and he was so angry. You know how it goes.”
The real estate manager looked alarmed. “Oh, my God,” he said, “Did you go over there? Is it –“ “No one there,” Jacquetta reassured. “The door was open so I looked inside.”
“Well, she had to give a reference,” he admitted. Unwillingly he dragged his brass ass off the desk and searching for files, found one. “Glasstown Bank cashier’s check,” he said, “That won’t help.
Oh, here’s her previous address. “Iridium House, 300 Main St, Glasstown.”
Beatrix’s house! Was that how she found out?
“Maybe she used her maiden name,” said Jacquetta hopefully. “I just can’t remember what that was.”
“Powell?” said the man, reading. He clearly wasn’t going to show her the file. “Avalon Powell?”
“That’s her all right,” said Jacquetta. “Any phone numbers?”
“The club listed under “work”. Oh, here’s one under “personal.”
He peered at her over the file. “It’s a Jersey number.”
“Her Mom’s house!” said Jacquetta. “Maybe she went back there.” She wrote down the number the man gave; it meant nothing. She was dying to phone, but not with Mr. Nosey around. She almost knocked him over as she stood up.
“Thanks so much,” she said, putting her unfinished soda into his outstretched hand. “You’ve been so helpful. I’ve got to hurry so I won’t miss my train.”
It was the only true thing she’d said so far.
“Do you want to leave your name and number?” he called after her hopefully. “Just in case.”
“No, thank you,” said Jacquetta. “I’m scared of that husband!”
“Poor girl.” The manager seemed honestly anxious about LeRoi’s mythical dilemma. “She was so young, too.”
Jacquetta was in no mood to visit the Brass Ass alone. It was her only new clue, but how real could it possibly be? Maybe it was some kind of a joke, prank or pun. No one would describe Avalon as “so young”; she was way too carefully made up; a midlife woman if ever there was one. But the Glasstown names connected LeRoi indelibly to the case.
“I’ll call the minute I get home,” thought Jacquetta. “Maybe from The Royal Mess.”
Alysse Aallyn 