Who Killed Mr. Garland's Mistress? (2 page)

Their home, and most of the others, had been built by wealthy Bostonians in the early nineteen hundreds. She and Rob had located ancient photographs in the Maine Historical Society that showed Ruby Island with well-kept lawns and a neat golf course. Scrub pine now covered much of the lawn area, and long ago the golf course had disappeared under patches of rambling strawberry bushes. After World War II the homes had fallen into vacant disrepair until the island was rediscovered and restored. Five years before, they had been one of the last families to buy, but even then the Victorian monstrosity had cost them very little money.

She stood on the cliff overlooking the small beach below and the city of Portland in the hazy distance. To the left was little Pearl Island, connected to Ruby Island during low tide by a sand bar. Below her the children, tended by a trim teen-age instructor, practiced their backstroke. They'd be home soon, their lips blue from the cold Maine water.

This was her oasis. Mornings of solitude and lazy afternoons picking strawberries or gathering shells with the children. Days of quiet during the week, and looked-forward-to weekends when Rob arrived. On Saturday nights they'd purchase cheap lobsters from the year-round inhabitants of Handle Island who ran pots in the bay, then they would cook a fortune of things in her large lobster cooker.

She hoped her walk would wash away the childish resentment she felt toward the alien intrusion. She had given Rob her word that the first hours of the tape would be transcribed by this coming Friday. She started back to the house and the waiting recorder.

She sat at the desk and adjusted the earphones, hesitant to push the “play” button. Her fingers poised over the keyboard of the typewriter. She pondered the irony of what she was going to hear. Not that she believed in capital punishment or that people should spend countless years in jail for faults that might be society's—but somehow there nagged within her a feeling of injustice that the voice on the recorder had killed another person and now, after three years in prison, was able to laugh and tell Rob about it in intimate detail.

She wished Rob had chosen another subject. For a year she'd tried to interest him in doing historical pieces for the Hartford Sunday Supplement, but he kept refusing, saying that it was too much like what he did at the office. “Well,” she sighed, “here goes,” and she pushed the play button.

The voice began its drone: “… after that little argument he kept bugging me about sex, but I told him, ‘No way.' Not after what he'd said to me. That's when he got really nasty, and I locked myself in the bathroom. He kicked at the door for a while. I thought he might kick it in, but he'd done that before and it had only cost him money. So … I guess he had a couple of drinks and went to sleep. Did I tell you how cheap he was? Oh, was that man cheap. If I so much as bought a dress or a pair of panties he raised holy hell.”

“At this point you went into the bedroom.” Tavie noticed that Rob's interviewing voice was a register or two below his normal speaking tone.

“No. This was still Saturday night. After I thought he was asleep, I went to my mother's house, across town. I slept in the same bedroom with her—she testified to that.”

“You went back early Sunday morning?”

“Yes. About eight.”

“Why did you go back?”

“I wanted to see if he'd apologize. He was still in the bedroom, and he started yelling at me again. I went into the kitchen, and he kept yelling things down at me.”

“Then he was awake.”

“Well, yes. I mean he'd have to be if he was yelling down to me.”

“Then why did you go back to the bedroom?”

“I was mad. I mean, I was really mad. He kept yelling those terrible things down to me, and I went in there to give him a piece of my mind.”

“Where was the gun at this point?”

“In the drawer of the nightstand.”

“You stood at the foot of the bed and argued with him.”

“Yes. He just lay there growling at me. I lost my temper and began to pummel him.”

“At this point he's still on the bed.”

“Yes. He kept holding my arms so I couldn't hit him. I wanted to slap him. I wanted to slap him for the things he was saying.”

“He didn't hit you?”

“I guess not. I mean, there weren't any marks on me later, so I guess he didn't or if he did, it didn't show, and I bruise easily.”

“Then …”

“The gun went off.”

“How did the gun get out of the drawer?”

“Hey, come on. You sound like the prosecutor.”

“If we're going to do this, Helen, you've got to be perfectly honest with me.”

“Well, he must have taken it from the drawer, and we struggled over it.”

“He took it from the drawer, not you.”

“I'm not sure. Perhaps the drawer was open. Yes, that's what came out at the trial. The drawer was open and we struggled over it and then it went off.”

“It went off how many times?”

There was a pause and the tape ran noiselessly. “Six times. I don't recall. I don't remember hearing it, but there were seven shots fired.”

“Seven? That weapon only holds six shots in the clips.”

“There was one in the what-do-you-call-it.”

“The chamber.”

“Yes, one in the chamber and then the ones that were in the gun.”

“What happened to the first shot?”

“It hit him here.”

“In the cheek.”

“Yes. They said it probably knocked him unconscious in seconds. He just groaned and pulled the sheet over his head. Then the other shots went off.”

“Where did they hit him?”

“That's all in the trial transcript.”

“Do you recall?”

“Yes. I can't tell the order you know—which is which. The first went in the cheek like I said, then one in the arm and then the other arm. The one that killed him went into the forehead. That's what? That's four. The others went wild, one in the mattress, others in the wall and all over.”

“The ones that hit him all went through the sheet?”

“No. Not the first one. That's when he pulled up the sheet. I remember smelling smoke, then the next thing I remember is sitting on the front steps.”

“Let's go back for more detail.”

“Hey, do we have to right now? Let's take a break.”

“In a minute. You mentioned your brother earlier.”

“That stupid jerk. I went home, to my mother's across town. If he hadn't opened his big mouth, they never could have placed me in the house. I never would have gone to jail, that stupid jerk. Hey, let's take a break.”

“O.K.”

There was a click as the hand microphone was turned off, and Tavie reached for the stop button. She paused. Sound still came from the machine. Odd sounds, a crackling, and then a distant voice. She realized what had happened. Helen had switched off the hand microphone, but the mike inside the cassette itself was still recording and would continue recording until the stop button was pushed. Her finger rested lightly on the stop button when a barely discernible voice became audible.

“Oh … careful, you'll rip it.”

The voices were distant, but if she strained with the earphones she could make out most of it.

“That's nice … that's very nice …” It was Helen's voice.

“You like that.” Rob's voice, tinged with excitement.

“Oh, yes. Don't stop.”

The voices were now faint and incoherent, and there was a rustling sound in the background. Tavie's finger, still poised over the button, was now inflexible and frozen. Again, the laugh, then Helen's voice: “Oh, Robert … baby …”

The wheels of the cassette player turned, and the sound finished as the tape ran out. She stared at the small turning wheels …

Voices near her. Next to her.

“Mommy. Why are you crying?”

The children stood mute and uncertain by her side. Tavie turned and put her arms around them. “Nothing's the matter, kids. Just something very sad Mommy was listening to.”

“Oh.” With the built-in antennae of children they accepted without believing.

As she had expected, their lips were blue from the icy water. “Run upstairs and put on something warm. Hurry now, and we'll have some lunch.”

They clattered up the stairs, and she could hear the slamming of bureau drawers and the usual argument over who wore the Snoopy sweatshirt. Mechanically she went into the kitchen to prepare their usual swimming-lesson-day lunch of cold cuts and soup. She marveled at her ability to go through these mundane motions. In minutes the children were at the table.

“Aren't you going to eat, Mom?”

“Not just yet. I'm not hungry.”

She went back into the living room and sat at the desk with the recorder. Hesitatingly she pressed the rewind button and adjusted the earphones. She started the machine forward and listened again.

It had to be a monstrous joke, the quirk of a mind involved in practical jokes. It had to be. It was a simple sequence to set up, a charade played by two people who'd been working hard and thought a little joke on her would be … It wouldn't be like Rob to do that, not and leave her alone on an island without a telephone, not leave her to suffer alone. She realized with certainty what she had heard and what it meant. No other possibility made any sense.

The broken pieces of twelve years surrounded her. Twelve comfortable and pleasant years. As a young girl she'd convinced herself that she'd never marry, that her shyness would force her into a dull and colorless life, and in fact, she had almost become resigned to spending her life as a small-college English teacher. Some vestige of rebellion finally had forced her to New York after graduation from college. She thought she'd try it for a year, then go back for her Master's degree and settle into a permanent life.

She had gotten a job as a junior editor for a large publishing house. Rob, a year older, worked for the same publisher in the public relations department and wrote unsuccessful plays at night.

She'd noticed him during her first days at work but had been too shy to make any overtures. It was common knowledge that he was going with one of the girls in the typing pool, a dark and sensual girl whose attributes in the forward thrust department were the wonder of the office. Although they developed a nodding hallway acquaintance and enjoyed an occasional chat about plays over coffee, it wasn't until they were assigned to share the same small cubicle office that they really got to know each other.

Rob was fast and facile with his assignments, while her work was more plodding, and often when he'd finish an assignment, he would put his feet on the desk and lean back in his chair to talk. The forced intimacy of the small office allowed her to respond, and he seemed to take pleasure in drawing her out. In this informal atmosphere they got to know one another. Although her work might remain undone and she would have to stay late, she got to enjoy their discussions.

She remembered the day he'd first asked her out. They had been talking about O'Neill and a revival at the Circle in the Square Theatre when he had stopped in mid-sentence, his feet fell from the desk, and he turned to stare at her.

“Good Christ,” he'd said. “You look just like Amelia Earhart.”

“Who?”

“Amelia Earhart. You know, the famous aviatrix of the thirties.”

“I know who she was. I never thought … no one ever said I looked like anybody but me.”

“You do. An amazing resemblance.”

Out of such nebulous strands can lives be changed drastically. In looking back, and now knowing Rob, Tavie knew that his sense of the romantic had been captured. Her slight resemblance to a woman flyer of the thirties was of sufficient interest for him to overcome his attachment to the girl in the typing pool.

He'd asked her out that night to see an off-Broadway play. Afterwards, they'd gone to the White Horse Bar to drink huge whiskey sours and talk about Eugene O'Neill. Their hours together in the small office had given her a familarity with him that allowed her to overcome her natural reticence. Her words spilled out; thoughts she'd had, books read, plays seen but not discussed, tumbled over themselves as they talked and fell in love.

It took her until three o'clock in the morning of their third date to tell him about her poetry. This other part of her seemed to appeal to him, and she knew it deepened his feelings toward her. That was the night he'd taken her to his walk-up apartment in the East Village.

Looking back it seemed as if they'd made love the entire weekend. They delighted in the discovery of each other, and made plans for the future. They were married three months later at her parents' home in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Those first months now seemed a kaleidoscope of nights at the White Horse Bar with other couples, both married and unmarried, and talk about theatre and books. Rob's natural gregariousness exposed her to a life she had never thought she'd have, and she was often content to listen. At least once each evening he'd turn to her and solicit a remark on a subject he knew she knew well, making her appear to others as awfully introspective and bright.

Those were happy months and even if her poems remained neglected in the bottom of her suitcase, it didn't matter.

A subtle change overcame Rob with her pregnancy. His interest in plays diminished, and a slight worried frown began to appear periodically. After little Robby was born, he began to look earnestly for a better-paying job.

The job with Connecticut Casualty Insurance Company paid far more than he earned at the publishing house. They left New York, their regrets tempered by a dream castle of an old stone farmhouse nestling in the Connecticut River Valley. They projected images for each other: reading Dickens to their children in front of a large hearth, sleigh rides drawn by prancing horses.

They made the transition easily and happily. The stone farmhouse did turn into a suburban Dutch Colonial, and prancing horses into a Datsun station wagon. When they'd found the house on Ruby Island she'd slipped into her summer routine with a glad heart.