Paper Doll (4 page)

She was as simply dressed tonight as she ever got. Form-fitting jeans, low black boots with silver trim, a lavender silk blouse partly buttoned over some sort of tight black undershirt. She had on jade earrings nowhere near as big as duck pins, and her thick black hair was short and impeccably in place.

“You look like the cat’s ass tonight,” I said.

“Everything you say is so lyrical,” Susan said.

She had a glass of Iron Horse champagne, and had already drunk nearly a quarter of it, in barely twenty minutes.

“What’s for eats?”

“Buffalo tenderloin,” I said, “marinated in red wine and garlic, fiddle head ferns, corn pudding, and red potatoes cooked with bay leaf.”

“Again?” Susan said.

Pearl the wonder dog was in the kitchen with me, alert to every aspect of the buffalo tenderloin. I sliced off an edge and gave it to her.

Susan came and sat on a stool on the living room side of the counter. She drank another milligram of her champagne. She took the bottle out of the glass ice bucket on the counter and leaned forward and filled my glass.

“Paul telephoned today,” she said. “He said he’d tried to get you but you were out.”

“I know,” I said. “There’s a message on my machine.”

“He says the wedding is off.”

I nodded.

“Did you know?”

“He’d been talking as if it wouldn’t happen,” I said.

“He had a difficult childhood,” Susan said.

“Yeah.”

“You disappointed?”

I nodded.

“You know how great I look in a tux,” I said.

“Besides that.”

“People shouldn’t get married unless they are both sure they want to,” I said.

“Of course not,” Susan said.

“Would have been fun, though,” I said.

“Yes.”

There was a fire in the living room fireplace. The smell of it always enriched the apartment, though less than Susan did. Outside the living room windows opposite the counter, the darkness had settled firmly into place.

I took a small glass tray out of the refrigerator and put it on the counter.

“Woo woo,” Susan said. “Red caviar.”

“Salmon roe,” I said. “With toast and some creme fraiche.”

“Creme fraiche,” Susan said, and smiled, and shook her head. I came around from the kitchen and sat on the other stool, beside her. We each ate some caviar.

“You’re working on that murder on Beacon Hill,” she said.

“Yeah. Quirk sent the husband to me.”

“Because?”

“The husband wasn’t satisfied with the police work on the case. Quirk had gone as far as he could.”

“Was Quirk satisfied with the police work on the case?” Susan said.

“Quirk doesn’t say a hell of a lot.”

“He isn’t satisfied, is he?” Susan said.

“The official explanation,” I said, “is that Olivia Nelson was the victim of a random act of violence, doubtless by a deranged person. There is no evidence to suggest anything else.”

“And Quirk?”

“He doesn’t like it,” I said.

“And you?”

“I don’t like it,” I said. Why.

One of the many things about Susan that I admired was that she never made conversation. When she asked a question she was interested in the answer. Her curiosity was always genuine, and always engendering. When you got through talking with her you usually knew more about the subject than when you started. Even if it was your own subject.

“She was beaten to death with a framing hammer. She had one bruise on her shoulder where she probably flinched up.” I demonrated with my own shoulder. “And all the rest the damage was to her head. That seems awfully careful for a deranged killer.”

“Derangement can be methodical,” Susan said.

I nodded and drank some champagne. I put some salmon caviar on a triangle of toast and spooned a little creme fraiche on top. I held it toward Susan, who leaned forward and bit off the point. I ate the rest.

“And,” I said, “despite what people think, there aren’t that many homicidal maniacs roaming the streets. It’s never the best guess.”

“True,” Susan said. “But it is possible.”

“But it’s not a useful hypothesis, because it offers no useful way to proceed. The cops have already screened anybody with a record on this kind of thing. Beyond that all you can do is wait, and hope to catch him next time. Or the time after that.”

The fire softened the room as we talked. Fire was the heart of the house, Frank Lloyd Wright had said. And if he didn’t know, who would.

“But,” Susan said after she thought about it, “if you assume that it’s not a madman…”

“Madperson,” I said.

Susan put a hand to her forehead.

“What could I have been thinking?” she said. “If you assume it is not a madperson, then you can begin to do what you know how to do. Look for motive, that sort of thing.”

“Yes,” I said.

Susan still had half a glass of champagne, but she added a splash from the bottle to reinvigorate it. While she did that I got up and added two logs to the fire.

“Still there’s something else,” Susan said.

“Just because you’re a shrink,” I said, “you think you know everything.”

“I think I know you,” she said, “and it has nothing to do with my profession.”

“Good point,” I said.

I drank some champagne and ate salmon roe, and thought how to phrase it. Susan was quiet.

“It’s that there’s an, I don’t know, an official version of everything. But the objective data doesn’t quite match it. I don’t mean it contradicts it, but…” I spread my hands.

“For instance,” Susan said.

“Well, the home. It’s lovely and without character. It’s like a display, except for his bedroom; it’s as personless as a chain hotel.”

“His bedroom?”

“Yeah. That’s another thing. They have separate bedrooms separated by a sitting room. His shows signs of use-television set, some books on the bedside table, TV Guide. But hers…” I shook my head. “The kids’ rooms are like hers. Officially designated children’s rooms, and appropriately decorated. But no sense that anyone ever smoked a joint in there or read skin magazines with a flashlight under the covers.”

“What else?”

“He goes to the office every day early, stays late. There’s nothing to do. His secretary, who is, by the way, a knockout, is catching up on her reading.”

“This is subtle,” Susan said.

“Yeah, it is, though it’s not quite as subtle when you’re experiencing it. He talks about his children without any sense that now and then they might, or might have sometime, driven him up the wall. They’re perfect. She was perfect. His love was all-encompassing. His devotion is unflagging.”

“And there’s a legal limit on the snow here,” Susan said.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“That Camelotian hindsight is not unusual in grief,” Susan said.

“I know,” I said. “I’ve seen some grief myself.”

“It’s a form of denial.”

“I know. What I’m trying to get hold of is how long the denial has been going on.”

“Yes,” Susan said.

“And what’s being denied,” I said.

Susan nodded. The fire hissed as some sap boiled out of the sawn end of one of the logs. The salmon caviar was gone. The champagne was getting low.

“So what are you going to do?” Susan said.

“Start from the other end.”

“You mean look into her past?”

“Yeah. Where she was born. Where she went to school, that stuff. Maybe something will turn up.”

“Wouldn’t the police have done that?” Susan said.

“On a celebrity case like this, with an uncertain victim, maybe,” I said. “But this victim is a well-known pillar of the community. Her life’s an open book. They haven’t the money or the reason to chase her back to her childhood.”

“So why will you do it?” Susan said.

“I don’t know what else to do,” I said.

“You want to eat?”

Susan drank some of her champagne and looked at me over the rim of her glass.

“How attractive was Tripp’s secretary, exactly?” Susan said.

“Quite,” I said.

Susan smiled.

“How nice,” she said. “Perhaps after we’ve eaten buffalo tenderloin and sipped a dessert wine on the couch and watched the fire settle, you’ll want to think about which of us is, or is not, going to ball you in the bedroom until sunrise.”

“You’re far more attractive than she is, Buffalo gal,” I said.

“Oh, good,” she said.

We were quiet as I put the meat on the grill and put the corn pudding in the oven.

“Sunrise?” I said.

“The hyperbole of jealous passion,” Susan said.

“Everybody got Glocks now?” I said.

“Yeah,” Farrell said. “Department’s trying to stay even with the drug dealers.”

“Succeeding?”

Farrell laughed. “Kids got Glocks,” he said. “Fucking drug dealers have close air support.”

The fat cop continued to talk. He was animated, waving his right hand about as he talked. When the cigarette burned down, he spat it out, stuck another one in his mouth and lit it with one hand.

“The background stuff on Olivia says she was born in Alton, South Carolina, in 1948,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Father and mother deceased, no siblings.”

“Yeah.”

“BA, Duke, 1969; MA, Boston University, 1982.”

Farrell nodded. While I talked he unwrapped a stick of gum and shoved it in his mouth. He didn’t offer me any.

“Taught Freshman English classes part-time at Shawmut College, gave an Art Appreciation course at Boston Adult Ed in Low Country Realism.”

“Whatever that is,” Farrell said.

“Vermeer,” I said, “Rembrandt, those guys.”

“Sure,” Farrell said. He chewed his gum gently.

“Worked on the last couple of Stratton campaigns, volunteered on the United Fund, and a bunch of other charities.”

“Okay,” Farrell said, “so you can read a report.”

“And that’s it?”

“You got the report,” Farrell said.

“Anybody go down to Alton?”

Farrell stared at me.

“You heard about the state of the economy around here?” he said. “I gotta work extra detail to fucking buy ammunition. They’re not going to send anybody to Alton, South Carolina, for crissake.”

“Just asking,” I said.

“I made some phone calls,” Farrell said. “They’ve got a birth certificate on her. The Carolina Academy for Girls has her attendance records. Duke and BU both have her transcripts.”

“Perfect,” I said.

“You going to go down?” Farrell said.

“Probably,” I said. “I’m getting nowhere up here.”

“Join the group,” Farrell said. “Incidentally, we got an inquiry on you from Senator Stratton’s office.”

“If nominated I will not run,” I said. “If elected I will not serve.”

Farrell ignored me.

“Came into the commissioner’s office, and they bucked it on down to me.”

“Because he mentioned the Nelson case?”

“Yeah. Commissioner’s office never heard of you.”

“Their loss,” I said. “What did they want to know?”

“General background, my impressions of your competence, that stuff.”

“Who did you talk to?”

“Guy named Morrissey, said he was the Senator’s aide.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Said you were cute as a bug’s ear,” Farrell said.

“You guys,” I said, “are obsessed with sex.”

“Why should we be different?”

It was a busy downtown, maybe two blocks wide and six blocks long. The first building on the left was a three-story white clapboard hotel with a green sign that said Alton Arms in gold lettering. Across the street was a Rexall drugstore and lunch counter. Beside it was a men’s clothing store. The mannequins in the window were very country-club in blue crested blazers and plaid vests. There were a couple of downscale restaurants redolent of Frialator, a store that sold yarn, and a big Faulknerian courthouse made out of stone. The cars parked nose in to the curb, the way they do in towns, and never do in cities.

I parked, nose to curb, in front of the Alton Arms, and walked around a Blue Tick hound sleeping on the hot cement walkway in the sun. His tongue lolled out a little, and his skin twitched as if he were dreaming that he was a wild dog on the East African plains, shrugging off a tse-tse fly.

The lobby was air-conditioned, and opened into the dining room, up one step and separated by an oak railing. At one end of the room was a fireplace sufficient to roast a moose, to the left of the entrance was a reception desk, and behind it was a pleasant, efficient-looking woman with silvery hair and a young face.

Her looks were deceptive. She was as efficient as a Russian farm collective, although probably more pleasant. It was twenty minutes to register, and ten more to find a room key. By the time she found it I had folded my arms on the counter and put my head down on them.

She was not amused.

“Please, sir,” she said. “I’m doing my best.”

“Isn’t that discouraging,” I said.

When I finally got to my room, I unpacked.

I put my razor and toothbrush on the bathroom counter, put my clean shirt on the bureau, and put the Browning 9mm on my belt, back of my hipbone, where the drape of my jacket would hide it in the hollow of my back. Nice thing about an automatic. Being flat, it didn’t compromise any fashion statement that you might be making.

I had considered risking Alton, South Carolina, without a gun. But one of Spenser’s best crime-buster tips is, never go unarmed on a murder case. So I’d packed it under my shirt, and clean socks, and checked the bag through. I’d probably need it checking out.

I got walking directions to the Carolina Academy from a polite black guy wearing a green porter’s uniform, and lounging around the front porch of the hotel. The Blue Tick hound was still there, motionless in the sun, but he had turned over on the other side, so I knew he was alive.

Carolina Academy was a cluster of three white frame houses set in a lot of lawn and flower beds, on the other side of Main Street, behind the commercial block that comprised the Alton downtown.

The headmistress was a tall, angular, whitehaired woman with a strong nose and small mouth. She wore a long white gauzy dress with a bright blue sash. Her shoes were bright blue also.

“I’m Dr. Pauline MacCallum,” she said. She was trying, I think, for crisp and efficient, but her South Carolina drawl masked the effect. She gave me a crisp, efficient handshake and gestured toward the straight-back chair with arms in front of her desk.

“My name is Spenser,” I said and gave her one of my cards. “I’m trying to develop a little background on a former student, Olivia Nelson, who would have been a student here during the late fifties-early sixties-I should think.”

The small nameplate on the desk said Pauline MacCallum, Ed.D. The office was oval shaped, with a big bay window that looked out on the tennis courts beyond a bed of patient lucies. On the walls were pictures of white-gowned graduating classes.

“We provide for K through 12,” Dr. MacCallum said. “What year did Miss Nelson start?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “She was born in 1948, and she graduated from college in 1969.”

“So,” Dr. MacCallum said, “if she came for the full matriculation, she would have started in 1953, and graduated in 1966.”

She got up and went to a bookcase to the left of her desk, and scanned the blue leatherbound yearbooks that filled the case. On the tennis courts there was a group of young women in white tennis dresses being instructed. The coach had a good tan and strong legs, and even from here I could see the muscles in her forearms. Each of the young women took a turn returning a gentle serve. Most of them swiped at the ball eagerly, but limply, as if the racket were too heavy. Rarely did the ball get back across the net.

“I hope that’s not your tennis team,” I said.

“Miss Pollard is a fine tennis coach,” Dr. MacCallum said. “But this is a physical education class. All our girls are required to take physical education three hours a week.”

She took the 1966 Carolina Academy Yearbook out from the case and opened it and thumbed through the pictures of graduating seniors.

“Yes,” she said. “Here she is, Olivia Nelson. I remember her now that I see the picture. Fine girl. Very nice family.”

She walked around her desk and offered me the yearbook. I took it and looked at the picture.

There she was, same narrow nose with the dramatic nostrils, same thin mouth, shaped with lipstick even then. Eighteen years old, in profile, with her hair in a long bob, wearing a high-necked white blouse. There was no hint of Vietnam or dope or all-power-to-the-people in her face. It was not the face of someone who’d listened to Jimi Hendrix, nor smoked dope, nor dated guys who chanted, “Hell no, we won’t go.” I nodded my head slowly, looking at it.

The chatter beneath her picture said that her hobby was horses, her favorite place was Canterbury Farms, and her ambition was to be the first girl to ride a Derby winner.

“What’s Canterbury Farms?” I said.

“It’s a racing stable, here in Alton,” Dr. MacCallum said. “Mr. Nelson, Olivia’s father, was very prominent in racing circles, I believe.”

“What can you tell me about her?” I said.

“Why do you wish to know?”

“She was the victim of an unsolved murder,” I said. “In Boston.”

“But you’re not with the police?”

“No, I’m employed by her husband.”

She thought about that for a bit. Outside the girls continued to fail at tennis, though Miss Pollard seemed undaunted.

“I can’t recall a great deal about her,” Dr. MacCallum said. “She was from a prosperous and influential family here in Alton, but, in truth, most of our girls are from families like that. She was a satisfactory student, I think. Her transcript will tell us-I’ll arrange for you to get a copy-but I don’t remember anything special about her.”

She paused for a moment and looked out at the tennis, and smiled.

“Of course, the irony is that I remember the worst students best,” she said. “They are the ones I spend the most time with.”

“You were headmistress then?” I said.

“In 1966? No, I was the head of the modern languages department,” she said. “I do not recall having Olivia Nelson in class.”

“Is there anything you can think of about Olivia Nelson which would shed any light on her death?” I said.

Dr. MacCallum sat quietly for a moment gazing past me, outside. Outside the girls in their white dresses were eagerly hitting tennis balls into the net.

“No,” she said slowly. “I know of nothing. But understand, I don’t have a clear and compelling memory of her. I could put you in touch with our Alumni Secretary, when she comes back from vacation.”

I accepted the offer, and got a name and phone number. We talked a little longer, but there was nothing there. I stood, we shook hands, and I left. As I walked down the curving walk I could hear the futile bonk of the tennis rackets.

“You and me. Miss Pollard.”