Friends till the End (13 page)

“Cancer,” Sloane said. His face collapsed as he said it. “Ate her up alive. Awful. Awful to watch. My poor dear Sally. Sweetest woman who ever lived. She was different from Laura, you know. Very different. She would listen to what I said. She was a good listener, Sally. Laura was more fun, but Sally was a better listener.”

“So you don’t know anything against the Crandalls.”

“Heather and Harry? What a pair!” Sloane gave a sudden loud bark of laughter. “Health food and stuffed shirt! No, I don’t have anything on them, I’m afraid. Can’t see why either of them would want to do me in now.”

“I understand that you and Professor Crandall have had some—ummhm—loud disagreements in the past, most recently—” he consulted his notes—“two weeks before the party in your home?”

The cool blue eyes looked at him in amusement.

“I’m no fool, Detective. Don’t take me for a fool. Yes, Harry and I got into a little spat about something—can’t even remember—he was going on about some novelist, Danish, I think …” He brooded. “Pontoppidan,” he said at last in triumph. “Henrik Pontoppidan. Some damned Danish novelist. Harry was blithering on about his works and I told him to shut up and play tennis. I thought he was going to hit me. Came at me with his tennis racket raised. It was his serve, too,” he added musingly. “Damned fool. Going on about somebody named Pontoppidan when he should have been serving. The man’s impossible. Holds up the whole game.”

He glanced at Voelker again with wry amusement.

“But don’t start telling me that your theory is that old Harry went home, brooded for a while and then put insecticide in my drink. Oh, no. You don’t know Harry, that’s all. He’d write a scientific treatise on it first. He’d entitle it ‘Wrongs Suffered at the Hands of Walter Sloane,’ and he’d have an index, three chapters and a summary.” He roared with laughter. “That’s how these damned academics handle things. Don’t tell me you don’t know
that,
Detective.”

Voelker leaned forward. This was what he had come for.

“Mr. Sloane.
Where do you think your money would go if you and your family all died?
”

Sloane stared at him in surprise.

“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. My whole family? I can’t say.”

“Besides your children, you don’t have any living relatives, do you, Mr. Sloane?”

“No. No, I don’t.” Sloane mused for a moment. “I was an only child.”

“No aunts, uncles, cousins?”

“No.”

Voelker nodded. That was what he had come up with in his research into Sloane’s past. He said slowly, “Do you think it’s possible—just possible—
that your money might go to the Crandalls?
”

Sloane stared, shook his head, laughed.

“What are you suggesting, Detective? You’re crazy! Harry and Heather? You mean you really think they’re planning to kill off all four of us for the money? Assuming they would even get it, which I doubt. Don’t be idiotic. I’m sure the idea has never even occurred to them.”

Voelker did not reply.

“You mean you think Heather plans to poison us with her damned carob brownies or damned sparkling punch, eh? No, no, no. You’ve got it all wrong.”

“I would like to point out, however, that they are your only living relatives, Mr. Sloane, even if their relationship to you is through marriage.”

Sloane grew reflective. “Yes, I guess they are, although I must say I’ve never thought of them that way. Sally’s cousins. Yes, I guess they are.”

There was a silence. Voelker said, “That brings us to Mrs. Simms.”

Sloane shook his head. “Freda hates me,” he said. “No ifs, ands, or buts about it. The woman hates my guts.”

“Why is that?”

“Laura,” Walter Sloane said simply. “Freda was Laura’s best friend in the world. When Laura and I fell in love and got married, Freda nearly went to pieces. She couldn’t share her, you see. She hated me on sight. Jealous woman. She had rages—awful. Laura would cry for days after talking to her. But she eventually settled down. We would socialize, you know. It was never comfortable, of course, but …” He shrugged.

“How do you feel about her, Mr. Sloane?”

“Freda? I don’t like her. Never did. Thought her rages and jealousy were absolutely ridiculous. I told Laura repeatedly
to drop her, but of course she wouldn’t hear of it.”

“So Mrs. Simms definitely dislikes you.”

“I should say so, yes.”

“Enough to try to poison you?”

There was a long silence.

“Could be. Could be. It’s possible. Freda was always trying to get Laura to travel with her, the way they used to in the old days, before our marriage. It upset Laura to say no, again and again. They had a scene about it—oh, not too long ago.”

“When?”

“Let me see. Oh, about a month before our party. It took Freda that long to cool off. The woman has a temper, I’ll tell you that. She and Laura had just made it up and were friends again in time for the party.”

He sighed. “I don’t like Freda, but I can’t believe she’d be a murderer. Although if she was going to murder anyone, she’d certainly start with me.” He gave another loud yelp of laughter. “The old bitch!”

But it was said almost fondly. He closed his eyes.

“I’m tired,” he said. “Tired. Is there anything more?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sloane. Just a few more minutes of your time, if I may. I wanted to ask you about the other guests at the party.”

“Who was that?” He opened his eyes.

“Your children. Isabel and Richard.”

“Oh! My kids! Don’t be a fool, Detective. Do you really think they’d try to murder me?”

Voelker maintained a cautious silence.

Sloane lifted himself up on one elbow.

“I suppose you think they deliberately poisoned Laura, and now they’re after me, the two of them, for the money? Laura’s money? Don’t be a fool. I tell you, I know my kids. We may not always get along, but they wouldn’t try to murder me.”

“Have there been any problems between you and your children, Mr. Sloane?”

“No,” said Walter Sloane. “No problems. Just the usual stuff, you know, little spats, nothing out of the ordinary. Everybody has them. Go talk to Ruth about her kids,
now
she’s
got a problem. Not me. They’re Sally’s kids, Detective—good kids.”

“So there haven’t been any—long-term difficulties between you?”

“Listen to me,” Walter Sloane said. He was sitting upright now. “I won’t hear anything against my kids, do you hear? They’re not killers. They’re not out to get me or my wife or anyone else. So shut your big fat mouth and do your best to figure out who is!”

Which, Voelker reflected later as he left the hospital, was very definitely the end of the interview.

There was a scream from the den and Ruth Abrams, startled, dropped a spoonful of ice cream into her lap.

“Marcia,
darling
,” she said.

Her daughter, busily knitting, did not even look up.

“It’s just Melvin and Jonathan,” she said. “Playing their usual games.”

There was another scream, a blood-curdling scream from Melvin’s childish lungs.

“What—what are they doing?” Ruth ventured to ask.

Marcia spread out the scarf she was making and gazed at it in satisfaction.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t like to ask. Probably Jonathan has Melvin in some kind of primitive wrestling hold. All I know is that Melvin loves it. Jonathan loves it too. He can pin Melvin every time.”

Given that Jonathan was twenty-eight and Melvin was five, Ruth certainly hoped that was true. She mopped the ice cream off her dress with a napkin and began to clear away the dessert dishes.

Her son, daughter and grandson had descended on the house like locusts a few days ago and showed no signs of departing. Father-daughter relations were tense, with Melvin the point of controversy. Sam felt his grandson should be going to school soon. Marcia, while conceding the general point, felt that he was not ready.

“He can go in a couple of years,” she said carelessly.

“He should be in kindergarten already. Linus is in kindergarten, and he loves it.”

“Linus is Linus. Melvin is Melvin.”

There was no arguing with this kind of logic, so Sam just watched helplessly as Marcia played with her son, who seemed more out of control on this visit than on previous ones. The cat was having an episode of hysterical fugue and had not been seen for several days, although its food disappeared when left out overnight. So far Melvin had destroyed a vase, a cookie jar, several knickknacks and an expensive glass coffee table. Ruth was looking very worn-down and oppressed. The only people who seemed to be enjoying themselves were Marcia and Jonathan, who were getting along better than they had in the past, when their respective lifestyles had diverged so drastically. Jonathan seemed to genuinely enjoy playing with his nephew, and he and Marcia had had some good heart-to-heart talks, locked away upstairs in what used to be Jonathan’s bedroom. Ruth wondered vaguely what it was they talked about. Their parents, probably. Jonathan was twenty-eight
and Marcia was twenty-three, but complaints about parental mistakes, miscalculations and misunderstandings never seemed to go out of style.

Jonathan appeared in the dining room, carrying Melvin upside down.

“What a guy,” he said. He released his nephew, setting him carefully upright. Melvin looked around and, seeing something move behind the sofa, streaked toward it hopefully.

Jonathan was looking well, thought Ruth. His thin sallow face was lit up with exertion, and his black hair was ruffled.

“Some wrestler you have there,” he said to Marcia.

“Oh, yes, he loves to wrestle.”

“He’ll be a big guy someday.”

“I hope so. His father was.”

Ruth listened from the kitchen, intrigued as always by these small revelations about Melvin’s father. Marcia rarely talked about him. It was as if he had never existed.

“Have Mom and Dad told you about the double murders in the neighborhood?”

“The what?” Marcia looked up, her knitting needles poised.

“The double murders. Go on, Dad. Tell her. It’s been in the papers and everything.”

“Oh, Jonathan, stop it,” Ruth said, bustling back into the room. “We don’t want to talk about it, do we, Sam? Especially not now, with all the family together.”

“Dad’s taken over for Walter Sloane until he’s better,” Jonathan said. “Hasn’t Dad told you all about it? He called me in Princeton.”

“I never get any family news,” Marcia said. “Everyone thinks California is too far away for a phone call.”

“Well, first Laura Sloane was poisoned at one of her own parties. You remember her, don’t you, Marce? Big daredevil kind of woman with a bossy manner?”

“No,” said Marcia.

“Well, she’s only been around here for a couple of years,” said Jonathan. “I guess you didn’t meet her. Anyway, first she was poisoned, then her husband was.”

“At the
same party
?” Marcia sounded scandalized.

“No. Later. At the Crandalls’ place.”

“Oh.”

Marcia seemed to feel that was all right. She settled back into her chair and picked up her knitting again.

“But he didn’t die. So while he’s recuperating, Dad’s taken over as the senior partner in the business. Haven’t you, Dad?”

“Yes,” said Sam.

Ruth looked over at him proudly. And he was doing an excellent job, too. He had stepped into Walter’s position without any trouble at all. It was a shame how it had happened, of course … it was awful … but then, Sam seemed to be enjoying his work so much more, and the responsibility had been good for him. He flourished on it. And the new salary helped so much in little ways. She could buy so many things that before she would have just thought about. She smiled at him proudly and said, “Some coffee, Sam?”

“Yes, thanks.”

The discussion lingered on the double tragedy at the Sloanes’, then turned to other topics. Jonathan was having trouble with another member of the Princeton mathematics department. Ruth gathered vaguely that the trouble centered around this other person’s delusion that she was the Big Brain of the department, perhaps of the world. This infuriated Jonathan.

“The woman hasn’t done any decent work in her life,” he said irritably. “She’s fiddled around with a little topology and differential geometry, that’s all. It’s crap—complete crap—child’s play! Anyone could have done it. But she sits there in the departmental meetings in front of Professor Hirsch and preens herself and acts like a big shot. It
kills
me, I’m telling you. It just kills me.”

Ruth understood that Jonathan was the one who wanted to act like a big shot and this woman, whoever she was, was crowding him out. She meekly continued clearing away the dishes.

Marcia said sweetly, “It takes many lifetimes to evolve past the bad karma of jealousy, Jonathan.”

“Don’t give me that Buddhist crap. I’m telling you, the woman’s a fake, a complete charlatan.”

Ruth left them squabbling about it—nothing ever changes, she thought; the topics were more mature but here they were squabbling just the way they used to when they were kids—and went into the kitchen. She was up to her elbows in soapy water, humming happily to herself, when her husband joined her.