How I Spent My Summer Vacation (7 page)

To add to my misery, my freshly washed panty hose hadn’t quite dried, so the shoes were pinching toes encased in damp nylon.

At some point the night before, my cream cotton sweater had acquired a bloodred Virgin Mary stain. I borrowed one of Mackenzie’s summer sweaters, a maroon crew neck that was too large for me but had the advantage of being all one color. Besides, it hid some of my rumply slacks and made me feel vaguely like Doris Day borrowing Rock Hudson’s oversized jammies in some schmaltzy old comedy. Maybe we really were a couple if I wore his clothing.

Mackenzie had treated me to a toothbrush at an all-night pharmacy. The hotel provided a hair blower. I did not yet look like one of the homeless, which provided some comfort.

I really missed my eyeliner, though. I felt naked, exposed, something like a cave creature forced into the light.

I’ll say this, the
Atlantic City Press
is quick. I’d gone downstairs to buy a paper, and then I was sorry I had. Jesse Reese’s untimely death was headlined in type just slightly smaller than might announce the end of life as we have known it.

It was obvious that Reese had been a respected somebody, and that Sasha was on her way to becoming a notorious somebody. FINANCIAL ADVISOR BLUDGEONED TO DEATH: WOMAN HELD. There was a great deal about the esteemed Mr. Reese, advisor and teacher, protector of what he’d called the “potentially dispossessed.” There was mention of the first Mrs. R. and of the present wife, Poppy Summerfield Reese, a former Miss America contestant.

There was also an unfortunate overabundance of information about Sasha Berg. This included, much to my horror, mention that she had once been the companion of a reputed gangland figure, the late Peter “Dimples” Bosco, who had, by coincidence, also been murdered.

“Why don’t they just hang her and be done with it?” I said. “Guilty by prior associations and insufficient sexual scruples, is that what they’re implying? Why isn’t anybody saying it’s just a matter of unfortunate room assignment—somebody else’s assignment, I might add. Who, in fact, arranged to have us in that room, anyway? Isn’t it a tad suspicious?”

Mackenzie half nodded, a gesture that meant “I didn’t hear a word you said, but I don’t want you to be aware of that.” He sat on the edge of the bed, thumbing through the phone directories in the night table.

I concentrated on the newspaper. I had to read almost the entire article before I spotted the name of my hotel. It was interesting how scrupulously its reputation was being protected compared with that of the innocent suspect, the former girlfriend of.

Jesse Reese had slightly receding light hair, gray or pale blond. He was a graciously aging clean-cut man complete with the requisite square jaw and earnest expression. He looked like he exercised and ate sensibly. It was a trust-me-with-your-money face, unfrivolous and well-meaning, perfect for an annual report or prospectus. I resented his features—as if he’d shopped for them deliberately, just to make things worse for Sasha. Then I wondered why I was so angry with a dead stranger, why I was having trouble remembering that he was the victim.

And why did he look somewhat familiar? “Do you know this man?” I asked Mackenzie, hoping for a lead. He put his finger on a column to hold his place in a phone book, peered at the photo, and shook his head before returning to his odd reading.

“You think it’s a common face, and that’s why I feel as if I’ve seen it before?” I asked.

He continued to read off names, but shook his head. “Not so common. Head’s almost square. Mouth pulls a little to one side. Eyebrows are heavy. Big earlobes.”

Now that he mentioned it… “I finally know what they mean by trained observer,” I said.

He turned his trained eyes in my direction and observed me like a pro. I awaited his pronouncement, hoping it wasn’t of the nose-slightly-off-center sort. I wanted muzzy generalizations along the lines of
dazzling
.

“No Dunstan Farmer listed in any of the nearby towns.” He leaned over and picked up the phone receiver, punched a few numbers and asked for new listings in each of the small surrounding towns, oblivious to having just shattered another romantic delusion.

Dunstan Farmer was neither a new or old listing anywhere.

“Maybe his phone’s under the name of his company, whatever that is. Photo-Quik, Dunstan Farmer, Prop., or what have you.”

“I looked. His name isn’t visibly attached to any of them.” Mackenzie drummed his fingers on the night table. “We’ll have to interest the police in findin’ him. See if they have somethin’ on him, maybe. I have a gut feelin’ about the man. Bet he won’t be easy to find, and I bet he isn’t at that bar tonight. Or tomorrow, or ever again, for that matter.”

I didn’t accept the bet. The odds were all on Mackenzie’s side.

* * *

The arraignment felt like something out of Kafka. We sat in a small but intimidating courtroom. Sasha, up in front of a dark wood barrier, looked as stained as the mahogany, like a sepia print of herself, a browned-out reproduction of what had formerly been living color. I waved at her, smiled, but she looked too frightened to respond.

The judge listened impassively to a full account of the violence of the crime and its damning circumstances. I wished I knew more about the mechanics of raising bail. Did you have to put something up as collateral? Were there good and bad bail bondsmen? Was there some expertise we lacked that would lead to further complications? Did Mackenzie know about this side of it, or did his interest flag after he’d caught someone?

What
did
those trained eyes see when he looked at me?

My reveries came to a sharp end. So did a lot of hope. The judge did not grant bail. Sasha would stay behind bars. She was a real and present menace to society.

I couldn’t believe it and neither could the lawyer. “I protest, Your Honor!” he said. “This woman has no prior record, and is innocent of this crime as well.”

“File a motion,” the judge mumbled.

The lawyer nodded curtly.

They apparently were comfy with the pas de deux of law, the dance of power, but meanwhile, Sasha, wide-eyed with fear, was taken back to jail. I thought I had seen this movie already on the late show, starring Susan Hayward. They were going to fry my friend for a crime she never committed, and worse, everyone was behaving as if this were proof positive that the system worked.

* * *

I was allowed to see the real and present menace to society—but only after Mackenzie had a series of good-old-boy consultations with his peers on the Atlantic City force, and only for five minutes, they warned me.

It was like watching somebody emotionally drown. Sasha would bob up to the surface, her old, buoyant self, then be pulled under, over and over again. I reassured her that all would be well, but her IQ wasn’t sinking, only her spirits, so I stopped making nice or treating her like a child and cut to the chase. We had problems.

“The old man saw somebody who looks like you, or who was pretending to be you,” I said. “Somebody who knew how to set you up—somebody who knew you had that room. Who?”

She shrugged. She was being dragged under the waves again. “Didn’t find Dunstan, did you?” she asked in a lifeless voice.

“No. You remember anything more about him that might help?”

“Not much, except one stupid thing that probably doesn’t mean anything. The night I met him, three weeks ago, before I’d really even spoken to him much, a person—a very drunk Brit—came up and called him Edgar.”

“Called Dunstan Edgar?”

She nodded. “Insisted he was Edgar, and in fact, was somebody named Jeannie’s husband, too, from some little town in Yorkshire. Said how glad he was that Edgar wasn’t dead after all. Always thought Edgar was too good a sailor to fall overboard, like they said. And he really did seem pleased, as if he’d found a long-lost friend. I thought it was funny, everybody did. One of those drunk things that you have to be there for. Except Dunstan just got more and more annoyed, and finally said something like, ‘Whoever Edgar is—or was—he’s still dead, so get lost.’ The Brit finally said he was sorry and backed off. That was all there was to it, completely forgettable, except that Dunstan was unduly pissed for a long while after. I mean, people are always mistaking me for somebody they knew back in high school. That’s all it was. Not much, I guess, except maybe to show he has a temper or a poor sense of humor and tolerance. And other than that, all I know about the man is that he drinks vodka, knows how to do the two-step, is an only child and allergic to shrimp.”

Okay, then we’d drop back five yards and try again. “About the room,” I prompted. “Who knew what room you were in?”

She sighed. “I appreciate your efforts, Mandy, but really, who cares? The police think the case is closed. They aren’t interested. Won’t do a thing.”

“I care. I’ll do something. Mackenzie, too. So who knew what room you were in?”

“Frankie,” she said in a dull voice. “He’s the one who got it for us. Well, really for me. He thought I was alone.”

“The bartender?” Was he, then, the second man the witness had seen? I tried to remember whether Frankie was shorter than Sasha, then realized she’d been seated last evening, and he’d been behind the bar. I’d have to check it out myself.

She smiled with a hint of the real Sasha’s personality. “Frankie always had the hots for me, way back to Dimples, can you blame him? He knew the suite was vacant, and a guy at the front desk owed him a favor, so he—wait a minute!” She sat up straighter. “Last night, at the bar. He made some kind of joke about the room. Anybody could have heard, at least anybody nearby.”

Finally. The field had opened, the possibilities of a setup had become real. “Who was there? What was said? Think. Whatever you remember might help.”

She took a deep breath and ticked items off on her fingers. “First of all, this guy in a pin-striped suit. Gray hair, nice-enough looking, must be a high roller because he was usually comped the suite we were in. That’s what Frankie’s joke was about, that I was in the guy’s room, and did anybody object. He made it sound like I was in there with the guy, of course.”

“Did anybody object?” I wanted her to say that yes, indeed, somebody had leaped up—his furious six-foot-tall wife with curly black hair and her short but loyal man friend—and had publicly vowed to destroy both Sasha and the man in the suit. I wasn’t asking for much, just a clear, speedy, and unambiguous finale to all of this.

But Sasha shook her head. “The suit made some really stupid joke back about what a thrill it was to share it with me, how much I had improved its decor. You know the riff. Very stale stuff.”

I tried to think quickly, to get something to hold on to before the matron’s stopwatch reached home. “Backtrack, then. Who else was there besides Frankie and the suit?”

“Who knows? A bunch of people. An Indian couple—Hindus. She was in a green and gold sari, and he had eyes to die for.”

“Control the libido until you’re free again, okay?”

“They were amazing eyes, Mandy. And another great-looking man. I thought he was Harry Belafonte at first. He went off with some girl in a black straw picture hat, like nobody except maybe Princess Di wears when she’s off to a garden party. Looked great, though.” She squinted her eyes. “I’m going to get a hat like that if—when—I get out of this mess.”

“Good, that gives you some motivation.”

She rolled her eyes. “And there was a young guy—soft, flabby fellow with acne. Wearing a bowling shirt and a baseball hat. He was with a pregnant girl with straw-colored hair in a ponytail. She had to be his wife, and that was about it, except for a couple of other women.”

“What about those women?” Sasha had a genetic eye affliction that made her blind to humans with double-X chromosomes. She didn’t fully perceive members of her own sex. Sometimes she noticed their accessories, but seldom their personalities, features, words, or actions. “Think hard. What do you remember?”

She tilted her head. “Okay. There was a flashy one who looked bolted together.”

“Like Frankenstein?”

“Not her head. Her clothing. Brads down the side of the slacks and the sleeves. Gold chains, gold rings.”

“Gold hair?”

“No, dark. And big. You know the type, all teased up and out. And a loud voice that sounded like it had rivets in it, too.”

“Age? Looks?”

Sasha shrugged. “Thirty-something, probably? And okay looks, except for the metalworks.”

“And that’s it? Nobody else? You said
a couple
of women.”

“Oh…” she said. She shook her head. “No, okay—there was a drab one in there, too. That’s what I remember about her. Drabness.”

“Come on, Sasha. That’s not at all helpful.”

She shrugged. “What’s to notice about drabness?”

“How old? How big? No rivets?”

The matron cleared her throat. I interpreted the sound as a warning bell and leaned forward, literally pressing for information.

“Not so young,” Sasha said. “Not a kid and not ancient, you know? But she had a great bag.”

“Her
pocketbook
?”

“Uh-huh. Blue and purple leather.”

“For God’s sake, Sasha, isn’t there anything more relevant?”

“I noticed because I’ve been eyeing one like it forever. It’s Italian and way too expensive and they never mark it down, not anywhere.”

“Okay, then, forget her. Nobody would confuse you with a drab woman, anyway. Can you remember anything or anybody else?”

She shook her head just as the matron tapped her watch with great, pursed-lipped solemnity. I stood up and gave up. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Is there anything you need?”

“I need to believe I’ll be out of here before tomorrow,” Sasha said. “My cousin Herb the lawyer’s coming down this afternoon. We aren’t telling my parents until we have to, okay?”

I nodded. Her parents were far away, one in Canada and one in Arizona at last check. Maybe, just maybe, they’d never have to know.

Sasha suddenly looked panic-stricken. “Oh, God—it’s Tuesday, isn’t it?”

I nodded. What was wrong with her?

“What time is it?”

“A little after nine.”