Make Out with Murder (13 page)

“I can taste myself on you,” she said. “I like that.”

Then she didn’t say anything any more, and neither did I, and it was a lot like going to heaven without the aggravation of dying first.

I’ll tell you something. It was pretty embarrassing to write that last scene. According to Haig, the less sexual detail in these books, the better. “Archie Goodwin very obviously leads an active sex life,” he says, “but he does no more than allude to it. He doesn’t throw it in your face, doesn’t drag you into various bedchambers with him.”

But Mr. Elder says times have changed, and that if we expect him to publish these books, there better be a lot of screwing in them. “You’ve got to arouse the reader,” he said. “The reports on the murders and what an interesting character Haig is, that’s all fine, but you’ve got to turn the reader on in this day and age. And of course you’ve got to do it in good taste.”

I don’t know if I turned you on, and I don’t know if it was in good taste or not. I have to admit I turned myself on just now, though. Just remembering how terrific it was.

A while later we were back in our clothes. We were also back in the room with the white shag carpet, and Caitlin was drinking another jumbo Martini. I had turned down the Irish whiskey in favor of a Dr. Pepper with a lot of ice.

“Oh, my,” she said. “That was quite wonderful, wasn’t it? I have a confession to make, Chip. I lured you out here for no other reason than to seduce you. Do you think you can possibly forgive me?”

I said I thought I probably could.

“You’re such a charming boy, you know. And terribly attractive, and I’ve been wanting to take you to bed ever since our lunch together.” She stretched like a waking cat. “And it’s so deadly dull out here. There’s Seamus, of course, but when one has sex with one’s servants one is limited to the more conventional approaches. It is considered terribly déclassé to perform fellatio upon the domestic help. Now if only I were Jewish, I could blow my chauffeur all I wanted.”

That’s a pun. Maybe you already knew that. I didn’t, and so I didn’t laugh, which must have annoyed Caitlin a little. The idea is that Jews have a trumpet made out of a ram’s horn which they blow in synagogue on certain holy days, and it’s called a
shofar.

We talked about various things, most of them at least slightly sexual, and I had another Dr. Pepper while she had another Martini, and then I remembered that I had an appointment to see Kim around six. I mentioned this and Caitlin glanced at her watch.

“Hell,” she said. “I’d planned on driving you back to the city myself.”

“I can take a train.”

“No, you wouldn’t want to do that. One trip on the Long Island is as much as should be required of anyone. I wanted to drive you, but Gregory’s due home soon and he likes me to be here when he arrives. I can’t imagine why. I’ll have Seamus drive you.”

“You really don’t have to bother.”

“It’s no bother,” she said. “I’ve no use for him around here at the moment.” She picked up the telephone and made a bell ring in another part of the house. When Seamus answered, she told him to bring the car around in a few minutes.

I kissed her a few times and told her not to worry about the murderer, which was silly in view of the fact that she could not have been worrying less about the murderer.

Then we went out and stood on the porch and watched Seamus drive the car almost fifteen feet before it exploded.

I was going to write that it was like nothing I had ever seen before, but of course I’d seen it a hundred times in a hundred movies. That’s just what it looked like. All of a sudden the car went up into the air and came down in pieces. Most of the pieces were metal, but some of them were Seamus, and they were raining down all over the lawn. One hunk of metal actually landed within a few yards of us, and we were standing half a football field away from the car when it blew up.

“Oh Christ,” Caitlin kept saying. “Oh Christ.”

I didn’t know what to do first. The police would have to be called, obviously, but the most immediate problem was Caitlin. She was shaking and all the color was gone from her face and she looked ready to pass out. I got her inside and tried to make her sit down, but her body went rigid.

“You have to fuck me,” she said.

I stared at her, but she was already getting out of her clothes. “I have to have it right now, right now. I have to, you have to do it for me, that could have been me in that car, somebody planted a bomb to kill me, somebody wants to murder me. It’s true, it’s really true. Christ, you have to fuck me, you just have to.”

I was positive I wouldn’t be able to. I mean, watching a car blow up isn’t normally my idea of a turn-on. But they say that a close escape from death makes you want to reaffirm the fact that you’re alive in a sexual way, and it had crossed my mind that it could have been me in the car when it blew up, too, and I guess that made the difference. I got out of my clothes in a hurry, got down on the white shag rug with her, and we began screwing like minks, which is a vulgar way to put it, I guess, but that’s what we were doing.

I never heard the door open. I may have left it open, as far as that goes. I don’t think I would have heard an earthquake at that point. It was very basic and intense and without frills, and I don’t suppose much time elapsed from start to finish, but the finish was a good one and I lay there on top of her wondering if my heart would ever go back to beating at its usual rate, and a man’s voice said, “Caitlin, I believe I’m entitled to an explanation.”

“He has always had an instinct for disastrous timing,” she said in my ear. “Always.”

“Caitlin—”

“At least he refrained from speaking until we finished,” she went on. “Breeding tells, after all. That’s something.”

“I come home from work,” Gregory Vandiver said reasonably. “I return to my house at my usual hour. I find my car blown to bits all over my lawn; I find my manservant dead in the wreckage and I find my wife copulating with some strange young man on the middle of the drawing room floor. Now
wait
a minute. I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? Yes, I daresay I have. Don’t tell me, it’ll come to me in a minute.”

Twelve

Between the Sands Point police and the Long Island Rail Road, it was almost ten o’clock before I got back to the city. I did manage to call Kim before that, from the station in Port Washington, but it probably would have been better if I hadn’t called her at all. I didn’t manage to say three sentences to her before Gordie took the phone away from her.

“You take a lot of telling,” he said. “I don’t want you coming here, I don’t want you calling here, I don’t want you sticking your nose in where it ain’t wanted.” Then he told me to do something I wouldn’t have been able to do if I had wanted to, which I didn’t in the first place, and then he slammed the phone down.

I walked from Penn Station to Haig’s house. I had given him a little of it earlier over the phone and now I gave him the whole thing in detail. (I left out the sex part, at least as far as going into details was concerned. I mean, I had to let him know that Gregory Vandiver walked in and found me screwing his wife. That was the kind of thing that might turn out to be pertinent. So I told him what I had done, you might say, without telling him how much I had enjoyed it.)

“The timing,” he said, “is very critical here.

“Right. The killer had about an hour and a half to plant the bomb. The car was all right when Seamus picked me up at the station.”

“Indeed.”

“She usually did her own driving. Anybody who knew her well would probably know that.”

“Do the police know that?”

“No. The police think that the killer did what he was trying to do. It seems that Seamus was involved with some faction of the I.R.A. The police had a sheet on him because he was suspected of playing a role in a gun-running operation. So they think Seamus was the intended victim, and they also think they have several leads.”

“I take it you and the Vandivers permitted them to continue thinking this.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure that was wise.”

“Neither am I, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was passed off as a friend of Mrs. Vandiver’s who happened to be visiting at the time. Her husband could have confirmed that we were friendly.”

“Indeed.”

“Gordie McLeod was back in the Village by eight-fifteen. Because I talked to him on the phone, and no, it wasn’t my idea. I wanted to talk to Kim, but he included himself in. Of course he didn’t have to stick around while a batch of Long Island public employees asked dumb questions and took pictures of everything, but I’m sure he was at work all day.”

“He was not.”

“Oh?”

“Mr. LiCastro called. The fungicide he wants to use will render the discus spawn infertile. I so informed him and gave him some suggestions. Gordon McLeod did not show up today for what I believe is called a shape-up. Mr. McLeod has been betting on quite a few horses lately. With little success.”

“That’s interesting.”

“It is. Nor is he in debt to his bookmaker. His losses, however, have of late exceeded his wages, and yet he has been consistently able to settle his debts promptly, and in cash.”

“He must be sponging off Kim.”

“Perhaps. It would be useful to determine this.”

I nodded. Haig put his feet up on the desk. He tries this every once in a while, but he’s always uncomfortable because his legs are too short and his abdomen too large. He gave it up after a few seconds.

He said, “I had a visitor during your absence. Mr. Ferdinand Bell.”

“What did he want?”

“To be helpful. A noble ambition, but I’m not sure he achieved its realization. He described the swerving of his automobile with an excess of detail. Listening to him, I very nearly felt that I was in it at the time. It was not a feeling I particularly enjoyed.”

“Did he have anything else to say?”

“He had some things to say about Miss Andrea Sugar. He brought to my attention the possibility that a lesbian relationship might have existed between her and Jessica Trelawney.”

“No kidding.”

“He seemed shocked by this. I find his shock more interesting than the relationship itself, certainly. He also said that Mr. Vandiver is in serious financial difficulties.”

“You couldn’t prove it by the house.”

“So I gather. Mr. Vandiver has apparently suffered some financial reverses.”

“How would Bell know that?”

“I’m not sure he knew that he knew it. He was letting his mind wander in my presence, talking generally about the flightiness of the sisters Trelawney. Jessica’s homosexuality, Melanie’s hippie lifestyle, Kim’s hour upon the stage—”

“Kim seems pretty straight-ahead to me.”

“Your bias on the subject has already been noted. He also alluded to Caitlin’s liberated sexuality, which he cloaked with the euphemism of nymphomania.”

“I’m not positive it’s a euphemism.”

“Be that as it may. And that led him to Gregory Vandiver’s infirmity of purpose. Vandiver made some substantial investments in rare coins about a year ago. He consulted Bell, and purchased the pieces through Bell and on Bell’s recommendation. He specifically sought out items for long-term growth, the blue chips of the coin market. Barber proofs, Charlotte and Dahlonega gold, that sort of thing. Then a matter of months ago, Vandiver insisted that Bell unload everything and get him cash overnight. It seems Vandiver did realize a profit on his investment, if a tiny one, but that Bell would have advised him to hold indefinitely, and certainly to hold for several months, as an upturn could be expected in the market. But Vandiver insisted on selling immediately, even if he had to take a loss.”

“Meaning that he needed cash, I guess.”

“So it would seem. The money involved was considerable. I had to pry this from Bell, who evidendy believes that matters communicated to a professional numismatist come under the category of privileged information. Gregory Vandiver liquidated his numismatic holdings for a net sum of $110,000.”

“He had that much invested in coins?”

“I find that remarkable. I find it more remarkable that he had a sudden need for that much cash.”

I nodded. “I wonder,” I said.

“If he could have placed the bomb in the car?”

“Yeah. I suppose it’s possible. Say he gets a train earlier than his usual one. He comes straight home and goes straight to the garage and wires the bomb to the Mercedes. He knows he’s safe because he’s not going to drive the car. He doesn’t even think about Seamus because Caitlin usually drives herself.” I stopped for a moment. “No, it doesn’t add up. He wouldn’t know she was going to use the car then. He didn’t know I was there, so there was no way to know she would drive me home.”

“He could assume she would use the car eventually, however.”

“But why bother getting home earlier than usual? He could have planted the bomb some other time.”

Haig leaned back and played with his beard. I asked a few more questions that he didn’t respond to. I went over and watched the African gouramis while he did his genius-in-residence number. While I was watching them, I saw the female knock off a guppy. It didn’t bother me a bit.

Haig said, “I would like to know at what time Gregory Vandiver left his office.”

“So would I.”

“I would also like to know where Gordon McLeod spent the afternoon. And his source of income.”

“So would I.”

“There are other things, too. Several extremely curious things. I am going to have to know considerably more about Cyrus Trelawney.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Hmmmm,” he said.

Wong brought us some beer and we sat opposite each other drinking it and arguing about where I was going to spend the night. “There is a pattern to all of this, Chip,” he told me. “There are going to be more deaths. One develops the ability to sense this sort of thing. There have been four deaths already since the case engaged our interest. Melanie’s was the first. The other three have been gratuitous. The prostitute, the sailor, the chauffeur.”

“Manservant,” I said.

“When a manservant dies at the wheel of his employer’s car I have difficulty in not regarding him as a chauffeur. Three gratuitous deaths. There will be more deaths, and they will be more to the point. I sense this.”