Cold Comfort (7 page)

“Detective Gilbert,” he said. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

He looked emotionally frayed, done in by worry and exhaustion. Gilbert rose. “This is quite a place you have,” he said.

“Thank you,” he said. He poured a cup of coffee for himself. No sign of Sally anymore. “It’s coming along.” He slid into the chair opposite Gilbert; he seemed oblivious to the opulence of his surroundings.

“I’m sorry about your wife,” said Gilbert.

Latham nodded, curling his lips tightly, his eyes fixed on the sugar bowl. “Anything I can do, detective,” he said. “Anything at all.”

Detective Gilbert took out his notebook and pen. “I understand the funeral’s tomorrow. Over in Mount Pleasant.”

“Yes,” said Latham. “Tom’s arranged most of it. I’m still in a million pieces. I can hardly…”

Gilbert studied Latham. If it was an act, it was a good one. He seemed genuinely ripped apart by the death of his wife; not that this in itself proved his innocence, especially if he had killed her out of passion. Yet the crime itself didn’t have the mark of passion; and in that sense, Latham’s apparent grief played in his favor. Gently, gently, he told himself.

“I understand you and your wife separated last year,” he said. “By the way, this is excellent coffee.”

Latham gestured absently at the kitchen doorway. “Sally gets it somewhere.”

“Have you always had…hired help?”

“I’m not much of a cook. Any extra time I scrape from the office I spend in my garden.”

“Do you have any children?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Some day, maybe. I was hoping that Cheryl and I might reconciliate…that we would eventually go on and…Sally and Danny are great. I come home and…I don’t know, I trust them, they like me, not because I employ them, just because…we understand each other. I don’t know why Cheryl couldn’t get along with them.”

Gilbert raised his eyebrows. “Cheryl didn’t like them?”

“It’s not that she didn’t like them, it’s just that she thought she could run the place by herself.” He rubbed his long-fingered hands together, put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Do you have any specific questions, detective? Or any ideas how I can help you in a substantive way?”

“Mr. Latham, we’re still just feeling our way around this right now.”

“Please, call me Charles.”

“I’m just trying to get to know Cheryl. I find that helps. You say she thought she could run this place by herself.”

Latham glanced out the window, where a sparrow landed on top of the bird feeder.

“She was nervous about strangers. She considered Sally and Danny strangers. She wouldn’t make an effort to get to know them. I won’t say we had a perfect marriage, detective. Of course I was willing to make some changes. I knew I would have to make some changes. Marriage is all about change. But I also expected compromise. Cheryl had to have things a particular way. If she couldn’t have things her way, she either got anxious or upset. Things always had to be exact with Cheryl.” Gilbert thought of the glasses lined up in even rows in the glass cupboard at the Glenarden. “I knew she was a fastidious woman when I first met her. That didn’t bother me. I thought it was a plus. I’m a fastidious man. When she first moved in three years ago, everything was fine. But then she slowly tried to take over.”

“And where did you meet her?”

“At a fund-raiser for her father.”

“You filed a missing persons report yesterday morning.” Gilbert took a sip of his coffee and looked out the window; somewhere on the grounds he heard the high thin buzz of Danny using the snow-blower. “To tell you the truth, we find that odd, Mr. Latham. On the security tape, she enters the Glenarden at 9:16 Tuesday night. You call twelve hours later. By definition she has to be gone at least forty-eight hours before she can be considered missing. Obviously you knew something was up. Obviously you expected her to be there Wednesday morning, and when she wasn’t, you called.”

Latham nodded. He got up from the table and walked over to the wall phone. Sitting on a small shelf beneath the phone was a sleek black answering machine.

“I want you to listen to this, detective. I got home around eleven o’clock Tuesday night, and this is what I found on my answering machine.”

He pressed the play button, the tape rewound, and Latham pressed the search button until he came to the appropriate message.

“This is Cheryl,” said Latham.

The tape hummed, and Cheryl spoke. “Hi, Charles.” She spoke in a low voice. The tension cut through. “I’m in a bit of a jam right now. Do you think you could come over? Right away? Or whenever you hear this message? There’s someone I don’t know, I think I’m going to need a lawyer, and I thought—”

But then the message ended; no indication of violence, just a sudden cut-off. Gilbert remembered the phone in the wastepaper basket. But there was something that didn’t jibe with this tape, something that left him unconvinced.

“Is that her bird in the background? The parrot?”

“That’s him,” said Latham. “He’s a squawker.”

Gilbert stared at Latham. The bird was dead. True, there remained the possibility that this message came before the bird was killed. But there was also the possibility that this tape was perhaps months or weeks or even a year old, that Latham had saved it on purpose to use as a decoy when it came time to murder his wife.

“Do you mind if I take that tape?” he asked

Latham opened the cover, snapped out the tape, and gave it to Gilbert. “It’s yours.”

Gilbert squirreled it away in his accordion-style briefcase.

“So you called Missing Persons because you got this message from her the previous night.” Gilbert cocked his head. “Gee, Charles, I don’t get it. She sounds like she’s in legal trouble. Nothing to file a missing persons report about. Did you actually go over once you got home on Tuesday night?”

Latham nodded. “As fast as I could.” He sat down in his chair, lifted his cup of coffee halfway to his lips, but then put it back on the table. “You see, Detective Gilbert, this separation wasn’t my idea. I love Cheryl. I’ll do anything for her. Do you know that old Cole Porter song,
Night and Day
? That’s what it was like for me when Cheryl came along.” He lifted his coffee again and this time managed to take a sip. He nodded at Gilbert’s briefcase. “That message, she asked me to come over, I was hoping for a reconciliation, so of course I went over.”

“So you arrived at the Glenarden at approximately what time?”

Latham’s brow furrowed. “A little after midnight.”

“Do you have a key?”

“Not to her apartment. But she gave me one to her building.”

Gilbert remembered the security tape. “What were you wearing?”

“My parka.”

Four men, all in parkas, all unidentified because of deep hoods.

“I can’t help noticing you have a big bandage on your hand,” said Gilbert.

Latham looked at the thick gauze bandage. “I’m an absolute idiot in the kitchen,” he said. “Thank God I have Sally.”

“So you got in the building and you went upstairs. You went upstairs and you knocked on Cheryl’s door. Did anyone see you?”

“No. The halls were empty.”

“And earlier in the evening you were at work.”

“Correct.”

“And did anybody see you there?”

Latham frowned. “I’m not a suspect, am I, detective?”

“Nobody said you were. But we have routine questions we like to ask. So we can narrow the field. What time did you get to work on Monday night?”

“Around nine-thirty. I had a few things to pick up.”

“So if I were to ask the security guards—”

“I went in through the underground parking lot. You have to have a special access card. No one saw me.”

“And what about when you got up to the office? It’s a big firm, isn’t it? Someone must have been working late.”

Latham’s face grew stony. “No,” he said, “no one was there.”

“Okay, okay,” said Gilbert. “Don’t look so worried. You just tell me what happened. You got home at eleven, you listened to Cheryl’s message, and you rushed over to the Glenarden. You used your key to gain access, you went upstairs and knocked on her door.” Gilbert raised his eyebrows. “Then what happened?”

“She didn’t answer. I couldn’t hear a thing inside. Not even that damn parrot of hers.”

Gilbert contemplated Latham; maybe he was telling the truth, maybe not.

“So then what did you do?”

Latham shrugged. “I went home.”

“And in the morning you called Missing Persons. That’s the part I don’t get.”

Latham took a deep breath, pushed his chair away from the table and crossed his legs. “Maybe I should explain a little bit about what happened between Cheryl and I over the last year. So you can better understand my emotional state on Tuesday morning. I know it’s not a logical thing. Phoning Missing Persons. I can see it bugs you. But I’ve been keyed up for a year.”

“Then tell me about your year.”

Latham glanced toward the kitchen door, collecting his thoughts. “I don’t know how things could have so badly deteriorated between Cheryl and I,” he said. “It wasn’t any one thing in particular, just a lot of small things. For two years we were fine. But then we began to fight. Are you married, detective?”

Gilbert nodded.

“Then you know how married couples argue. They argue for the sake of arguing. They argue because they haven’t had enough sleep, or because they’re feeling cranky, or because they’re hungry. Sometimes it’s about money. Sometimes it’s about other things. Cheryl was always independent about money. She kept her job even after we got married. We argued over just about damn near everything.

“We bought a painting, a Louis d’Niberville, a mother toweling a child dry at the seaside, perfect, I thought, for the hallway leading to the indoor swimming pool. She insisted we hang it in the old sewing room. I don’t know why. There’s hardly any wall space in that room. And it’s a big painting, something you have to stand back from to truly appreciate. Isn’t that silly? That was our first big argument. I let her have her way. Why not? I saw that it was upsetting her. I knew she had to have things just so. She got panicky otherwise. Like if she couldn’t control the world the world would somehow control her.”

Gilbert remained quiet. Somewhere off in the house he heard a clock softly chiming. The coffeemaker made a sudden bubbly sound, hissed once or twice, then lapsed into silence.

“Then we began having arguments about Danny and Sally,” continued Latham. “It’s not that she didn’t trust them. Danny and Sally are the most trustworthy people in the world. Cheryl was just a private person. I’ve always had live-in help. My parents had live-in help. It’s never bothered me. But Cheryl felt as if she were being scrutinized all the time. Sally’s the best housekeeper I’ve ever had. Everything’s always spotless. And her cooking’s great. But Cheryl began to hover over Sally. Cheryl could never relax when Sally was around. I don’t know why. Sally’s easygoing. Sally will forgive a lot. But finally Sally asked me to talk to Cheryl. Cheryl and I argued.” Latham smiled in self-deprecation. “I’m probably giving you the impression that we argued all the time. But we didn’t. Most of the time, things were great. We were like two high school kids. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We really loved each other. But then we would have these fights. I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to accommodate her as far as I could. She really wanted to be mistress of her own household, I guess that’s what it was. So I finally let Sally and Danny go. I gave them glowing references. They both got jobs immediately. I had to beg them to come back when Cheryl finally left me. I also had to give them a whopping increase in pay, but I don’t care, they’re worth it.”

A black squirrel climbed the bird feeder, scaring the sparrow away.

“So you resented this?” suggested Gilbert. “You felt like you betrayed Sally and Danny?”

“I felt…not exactly as if I’d betrayed them, but…I just felt sad that we would find ourselves in a situation where I would have to ask them to leave. And whether I resented it…well, yes, I suppose I did. I appreciate order, detective. I like a clean house. I can work better when I know everything’s in order. A lot of people are like that. But Cheryl carried it to extremes.”

Gilbert wondered what this had to do with phoning Missing Persons, but let Latham continue. It was as if Latham had never been able to talk to anybody about this; as a veteran of thousands of interviews and interrogations, Gilbert recognized the syndrome well; Latham was ventilating. Sometimes a detective learned more this way than from a direct question.

“Not so much resentment, but more a mounting frustration,” said Latham. He tapped the kitchen table a few times. “Then…I don’t know…I guess it was a month or two before our separation, she started asking me for money. This was new. She’d never asked me for cash outright. And I gave it to her. It wasn’t the money that bothered me.” He gestured at the house. “I’ve got more than I can use…I just wanted to know what she needed it for. What’s so strange about that? She didn’t want to tell me. It became an issue of trust for her. She was my wife, if she needed money, I should give it to her, what’s mine was hers, etcetera, and I should be able to trust her. After all, I trusted her with everything else.”

“How much money?” asked Gilbert.

Latham gave him a vague shrug. “I didn’t keep track.” He squinted, pushed his glasses up his nose. “It must have been five or six thousand.”

“And this happened about a year ago last Christmas?”

“About that.”

“Do you think it had anything to do with Christmas?” asked Gilbert. “Maybe she had to buy Christmas presents or something.”

Latham shook his head lackadaisically. “I have no idea,” he said. “By that time I didn’t care. I just wanted to keep her happy.” Out in the yard, Danny appeared from behind the indoor swimming pool, pushing the snow-blower before him, sending a cloud of snow into the air. “Then, in January, things really took a turn for the worse. She started looking for fights. Like she wanted to find an excuse to leave me.” He tapped the table. “She wanted to move this table. I had this nook specifically built so I could put a table here. This is my favorite spot in the whole house. I wanted to eat my breakfast here and look at my garden. She was cooking bacon with a spatula over by the island there. I felt like I’d been tackled when she told me we had to move the table. I’d given into her every other wish. I lost my temper. I hardly ever lose my temper. The fight really wasn’t about the table. It was about everything else, about all the small changes I’d been forced to make, about Sally and Danny, everything. My garden’s special to me, Detective Gilbert. There’s nothing I enjoy more than sitting at this window and looking at my garden. I had a furniture-maker make this table specifically for this nook.”