Suicide Season (23 page)

“Oh? Why?”

“There may be something in them that could shed some light on her murder.”

“Devlin, I had absolutely nothing to do with that woman’s death!”

“I know that—that’s not the point.”

“Well, it certainly seems to be the implication.”

“It’s not the implication at all.” The welcoming warmth that had been in her eyes was replaced by a mixture of anger and hurt, and I tried to explain. “There may be something in the pictures that has nothing at all to do with you. But something that put her in danger because of what she knew or might figure out.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know, Margaret. I really don’t. Bunch and I are trying every angle we can think of to come up with a reason for her death. This is just one of them, and a long shot, at that. You don’t have to look if you don’t want to.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Tell me who these people are. Bunch and I will check them out and see if there’s any possible connection between them and Busey.” I spread the photographs out on the coffee table along with the list of her visitors. “Anything you can tell me about them.”

“My God—was he watching me do all this?”

“It’s not that hard with the right equipment. Even for Landrum.”

“But so many! And I never suspected …”

“There are a lot of you and me, and I didn’t spot him, either. That hurts my professional pride.”

“It makes me feel”—she shivered slightly—”as if I’ve been fondled in my sleep.”

There wasn’t much to say to wash away that feeling because she was right. In one view it could be fondling; but mostly it lacked even that quirk of passion. It was simply gathered data, factual and unemotional, and that antiseptic professionalism was supposed to sanitize any moral issue. “It was a business for him, Margaret. Just like a newspaper reporter.”

“Or a concentration camp guard? Aren’t there laws against this sort of thing? Invasion-of-privacy laws?”

“The pictures are all taken in public places. They show public, not private, behavior. Here’s someone I recognize: Loomis.”

“Yes—we met for lunch. I wanted to talk about going back to school. The market for MBAs isn’t what it used to be, I found out.”

“What can you tell me about these others?”

She went over the rest of the photographs, naming those she recognized. “This is just the grocery clerk who helped me with my bags. Did that detective think I was meeting him for some purpose?”

“He was making a record of all the people you spoke to.”

“But why? I can understand him taking a picture of someone I went to lunch with or of someone I seemed to know. But why a store clerk?”

Most likely for the same reason I was sitting here with Margaret and looking at the pictures—a fishing expedition for anything at all that Carrie Busey might find useful. I explained that to her.

“That she might find useful! One shouldn’t think ill of the dead, but I’m beginning to dislike Miss Busey.”

I turned to the list of license plates that the gatekeeper had sold Landrum. He had his contacts in the motor vehicle division, too, and the numbers had been translated into owners. “Here’s a list of names. Do you recognize any of them?”

“Well, yours, certainly. What list is this?”

“Visitors to your house.”

“Did he go through my garbage as well?”

“He would have, except he couldn’t get to it.”

“It’s sordid.” She scanned the brief list. “Professor Loomis, again. He brought by some information on MBA programs. This is Beth, a friend whose husband works for McAllister. Sue Graham—she’s one of the carpoolers for Austin’s preschool. So is Anne. Edith Goodrich … oh yes, the real-estate woman.” She glanced at me. “I wanted an appraisal on the house in case I do move out to San Francisco.”

She hadn’t mentioned that in a while and I felt a small stab at the thought that she was still considering it enough to have her house appraised. “Have you made up your mind about that?”

“No. But I want a clear picture of all my options. And Austin’s parents have been more insistent lately—they’ve bought a place in Marin County. They keep telling me how wonderful it would be for little Austin and Shauna.”

“I was hoping you’d stay here.”

“I haven’t made any decisions yet, Devlin. You understand that.”

“And I haven’t tried to pressure you for any.”

“I know. And I’m grateful—I need to make up my own mind about what’s best for the children.”

“What about you?”

“Yes. That too.” Her fingers touched mine. “Lately, that’s become a real puzzle.” She turned back to the list, dismissing that topic. “This name, Mr. Whelan, is the plumber. It was when the disposal backed up.” Her finger paused at the next one. “Efficiency Car Rental?”

“That’s the vehicle’s owner. We haven’t yet traced who rented it.”

“Oh.” She went through the few remaining names, most of whom were mothers of children that Austin and Shauna played with or who shared the driving chores in the preschool carpool. The only unidentified number was the rental, and Margaret turned it over in her mind, finally giving up. “I can’t place it at all. This car was supposed to have come to my home?”

“On the eleventh.”

She shook her head again. “I have absolutely no idea who it could have been.”

I drew a circle around that one and stacked the photographs and the list in the manila folder.

“Devlin … “ She frowned slightly and gazed at the fireplace with its half-burned log hidden behind the screen. “Is this the kind of work you do? This,” her hand gestured toward the folder, “photographing and note taking?”

“Sometimes it is. Most of my work is preventive security. But, yes, I sometimes do just what Landrum does: snoop on people.”

She was quiet and I could see her weighing the words before saying them, so that when they did come, I knew they were considered. “I suppose it doesn’t seem important to you. I suppose it wouldn’t have seemed so important to me, either, except now I’ve been the victim of it. Now it does seem important.”

“Bunch and I have argued over whether or not we’re in the pornography business.”

“Do you think it’s a light question?”

“No. But I’m not sure of its relevance. Investigation is just that—there’s nothing salacious about it. And, ninety percent of the time, there’s nothing interesting about it, either.”

“But it’s an invasion … it’s … “ She tapped the folder. “When you saw yourself in these pictures, you said your professional pride was hurt. Wasn’t your sense of humanness invaded, too? Didn’t you resent having been spied on?”

“A little,” I admitted. “I’d resent it more if I’d been doing something to be ashamed of.”

“With or without shame, I resent it.” She sipped at her drink and once more thought over her words before speaking. “How long do you think you can do that sort of work without becoming … sullied?”

“If you’re asking me to defend my work, Margaret, I could make an analogy with a doctor or a lawyer. Both of those occupations deal with human misery; they both make their money off of human pain.”

“But theirs is the attempt to alleviate it. Yours seems to contribute to it. I’m not trying to make you angry, Devlin. I’m just trying to understand. You told me that your uncle raised questions about my fitting in with your line of work, and I’ve been thinking of that. And now, well, this is an aspect of it I never considered.”

“I work with people in trouble or people who want to prevent trouble. It’s not a clean corner of the world and it’s not always a clean business. Sometimes, in fact, it’s pretty damned dirty and mean. But I do my best to keep that outside of me—on my skin so it can be washed off. And despite what the job calls for, there are some things I do my best to avoid. Maliciousness, for example. Or harm to those who don’t deserve it. Maybe even help for those who do.”

“You the jury?”

“Judge and jury, sometimes—if it’s called for. I guess what I’m trying awkwardly to say is that the dirt doesn’t have to be eaten.”

“And yet you,” she selected the word, “investigated Austin before he committed suicide?”

“Yes. What I did might have contributed to his death. That’s a fact, and I am truly sorry for that.”

“But he was guilty, so it all balanced out in the jury’s eyes? Is it fair to say that?”

“I don’t know about the world’s balances, just my own. He was in trouble, and he was getting other people in trouble. I was hired to find out what kind of trouble and how bad.”

“But when you were hired, you didn’t know that. You didn’t know if he was innocent or guilty when you began investigating him.”

“That’s true. That was the thing I was supposed to find out.”

“And so you took pictures of him and made lists of his visitors?”

“I also tapped his telephone and went through his papers.”

“I see.”

I wasn’t sure what she saw. I hoped it wasn’t a vision of saying good-bye to me. But I wasn’t going to soften the facts; the work did involve a lot of things that weren’t clean and nice and well mannered. There was no sense misleading her about that. She was trying to get a picture of her options, and if I was still one of them, I wanted that picture to be very clear. “There are some rights and wrongs we hold to despite the kind of work we do. Bunch has a good sense of them. I like to think that I do, too. Even someone like Landrum has a glimmering of them.”

“You mean you’re some sort of Robin Hoods?”

“Nothing so glamorous or fabled. But I’ve known some people who have very respectable jobs but whose private lives—and hearts—are cruel and greedy and petty. I like to believe that Bunch and I are the reverse of that. We work among the cruel and greedy and petty, but there are some moral standards we hold to—a sense of human dignity that’s even more important because we see too many who are without it.”

“I believe I understand. I mean, we pass judgments on people every day, don’t we? But I’m still confused.” She glanced at the folder on the coffee table. “And I’m still a bit shocked at what was done to me. And at how you explain the need for it. I have to think, Devlin. I want time to think.”

I finished my drink and gathered up the papers. “While you’re thinking, Margaret, please remember that I love you.”

She nodded, silent, as I went to the door by myself.

“She’s doing a lot better,” said Bunch. “Did you hear that sentence? Three words— ‘I like it.’”

We had been driving Mrs. Faulk around on last-minute errands—she was to fly back to Des Moines for a few days to stitch up the fabric of that abruptly torn life, and then drive back to Denver in her own car. After that, we had gone by the hospital to visit Susan and that left Bunch in high spirits, reliving everything she said and did and finding reason for hope in each tiny change.

When the last aspect of our visit with Susan had been savored, Bunch asked me what Margaret had said about Landrum’s file, and I told him that part of it which was relevant.

“There was a car she didn’t recognize?”

“I talked to her again this morning. She still couldn’t place it.” But at least her voice no longer held that distant, musing tone that had chilled it last night. In fact, she sounded genuinely pleased when I asked her to a show at one of the local experimental theaters.

“So we’ve got two possibles: one unidentified and one repeat.”

“A repeat? You mean Loomis?”

“I don’t mean you, partner. He has two contacts with Margaret Haas and his name was in Busey’s purse. In sleuth talk, that’s a notable coincidence.”

“It’s not so notable if she was only going to ask him why he was talking to Margaret.”

“But we’ll never know that for certain, will we?” Bunch asked, “What do you have on the guy?”

“About the same as you do: he was my father’s business partner, he’s a consultant to and friend of McAllister, and he was Margaret’s professor. That seems reason enough for him to keep turning up.”

“Sure it does. But suppose you didn’t know the guy? Wouldn’t you check him out because he’s a repeater?”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

“I’ll flip you for it. Heads is Loomis, tails is the car rental.”

I said heads and it came up Loomis. Bunch said “Ciao” and headed for the airport and the Efficiency Auto Rental office; my first call was to the private university that housed Loomis’s business school. I explained that the Denver Post financial editor wanted me to do a story comparing the local business schools and asked the secretary if she would be kind enough to answer a few questions. I underestimated the press’s power to tremble the ivied halls; with a breathless eagerness, she quickly turned me over to the dean, a fat voice that hovered around the first person singular and spelled its own name twice. Among the myriad facts, I learned about one of the finest programs of its kind in the state, about one of the finest faculties in the nation, about one of the finest administrations in the world. We approached the galaxy and the universe as I was told that, yes, Professor Loomis was an especially prized member of the faculty and an internationally recognized expert in his field of—and here the dean had to clear his throat—and that he had established very strong relations with the local business community, who often requested his consultation. The professor had been at the institution for several years, coming with the highest recommendations from—the dean believed, no, was certain—Columbia University. To facilitate my interviewing of Professor Loomis or any other of the outstanding faculty, the dean finally turned me over to the secretary who had a list of telephone numbers and office hours and who would be happy to assist in any way possible. And could I give her an idea of when the story would be coming out?

The next call was one of those that had to go through two or three operators and half-a-dozen secretaries before being halted by a female voice of crisp and authoritative officialdom. “Yes, Mr. Kirk. Professor Loomis was on our faculty. He resigned his position four years ago.”

“Did you know him?”

“I did.”

“Can you tell me something about him? Something I can use to fill in the human-interest side of my story?”

“I would prefer not to.”

It seemed Columbia University never heard of the Denver Post. Or did I detect a faint aroma of animosity there? “Was he difficult to get along with?”