Ed McBain - Cinderella

The house had the musty smell of all Florida houses. Mildew and dust and fetid growing things. Air plants hanging near the windows. Orchids with their gnarled roots. Silvery slashes of rain hit the louvered windows, rattled on the roof. There was an enclosed feeling, almost claustrophobic, moist and dim. He remembered hiding in closets when he was a boy, overcoats covering his face, boots and galoshes underfoot. The smell of a closet on a rainy day.

She was wearing black. Black designer jeans and a black crew-neck sweater. Pale oval face and dark lipstick. Eyes as green as the plants in every corner of the room. Black enameled earrings. Barefooted. Her feet very white in contrast to the black. Fingernails and toenails painted the same color as her lips.

“What is it you want?” she asked. Facing him now. But her posture still denying him, excluding him. “The police have already been here,” she said.

“Looking for your husband?”

“Yes. I told them I didn’t know where he was. I’m telling you the same thing. Now if you’ll forgive me, Mr. Hope...”

“That’s not why I’m here,” Matthew said.

“Then why are you? I thought I told you your services were no longer—”

“Otto Samalson’s office was broken into last night.”

“So?”

“Someone stole the tape he made of your husband and Rita Kirkman.”

She looked at him in puzzlement for a moment, seeming not to understand the innuendo. And then her green eyes widened in recognition and surprise, and the corners of her mouth turned up in faint amusement.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t be absurd.”

“The tape was stolen, Mrs. Nettington.”

“And you think I stole it, or had it stolen?” She still looked amused. “You really don’t understand, do you?” she said.

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” Matthew said.

“Mr. Hope,” she said, as slowly and as patiently as if she were instructing a backward child, “the moment Otto Samalson was killed... the moment that tape became virtually public knowledge... it was no longer of any possible use to me.”

“I assumed, Mrs. Nettington—”

“Yes, I know what you assumed. You made that clear the last time I saw you. You assumed I was looking for a divorce.”

“That’s what you led me to believe.”

“Yes.” The amused look still on her face, annoying now because it seemed to be mocking him. “But you see, Mr. Hope, things are not always what they appear to be, are they?”

“Apparently not,” he said.

“What I told you when I first came to see you,” she said, “was that I wanted my husband followed because—”

“Yes.”

“—I suspected he was having an affair. And I further said—”

“Yes.”

“—that if indeed we could prove this, I would initiate divorce proceedings.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. But I was sort of lying, you see.”

“Lying?” Matthew said.

“Yes. About divorcing him.”

“You didn’t plan to divorce him?”

“That’s right.”

“Then why did you ask me to hire a private detective?”

“To follow him.”

“Yes, why?”

“To get the goods on him.”

“Yes, why ?”

“Mr. Hope, you’re an attorney,” Carla said, “so I know you’re familiar with Chapter 61.08 of the Florida Statutes. Regarding alimony?”

“Yes, I’m familiar with it,” Matthew said.

“The part about determining a proper award? That would be Section One, do you know it?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“Where it says, ‘The court may consider the adultery of a spouse and the circumstances thereof in determining whether alimony should be awarded to such spouse and the amount of the alimony, if any, to be awarded’? Do you know the section I mean?”

“Yes, I know the section.”

“Well?” she said.

“Well what?”

“Well, that’s why I wanted to get the goods on Daniel.”

“I think you read the section wrong,” Matthew said, shaking his head.

“No, I read it correctly. I once had a friend who was a lawyer.”

“If you were thinking... well, I don’t know what you were thinking, actually, since you just told me you weren’t planning on a divorce at all. But if you had been planning one, and you were thinking your husband’s adultery would increase the amount of alimony...”

“No, I wasn’t thinking that.”

“Good, because you’d have been mistaken. The section was designed to protect a husband with an adulterous wife. The chapter says the court may grant alimony to either party, but very few men ever ask for alimony. In practice, it’s the wife who normally gets alimony, and if a husband can prove his wife was playing around, alimony will often be cut substantially and in some instances even denied.”

“Yes,” Carla said. “That’s my understanding of the chapter.”

“So you see—”

“I am ,” she said.

“You are what?” he said.

“Playing around,” she said.

Behind her, rain lashed the windows, and the palms and pines outside tossed fitfully in the wind.

“I have been playing around for a long, long time,” she said.

Matthew looked at her. Green eyes still amused. Mouth turned up in a smile.

“And I figured if my husband ever decided to divorce me, I wouldn’t get a cent in alimony unless I could show that he was also playing around, which would sort of balance the scales of justice, don’t you think?”

You lift a rock, Matthew thought, and there are all sorts of fat, white-bellied slugs twisting and squirming under it.

“Which is why I decided to protect myself,” she said. “Get the goods on him before he got the goods on me . Make sure I had insurance if he ever told me he wanted a divorce. Show him the pictures, here you go, Charlie, here’s you going down on the fat lady in the circus.”

She was smiling broadly now. Her amusement had turned to absolute glee.

“You see,” she said, “I never want to get divorced, not ever . I like things just the way they are. Daniel paying the bills and never bothering me about where I go or what I do. That’s where I was the night your man was killed, Mr. Hope. Not out with a girlfriend but in bed with a boyfriend.” Her smile was wider now. “That’s what I call having your cake and eating it, too, Mr. Hope. That’s what I call a real good life.”

“That’s what I call...” Matthew started, and then simply shook his head and turned his back, and walked to the front door and out into the rain.

What he called it was a triumph of illusion over reality.

Or something.

We’re going to turn you into a Wasp princess from Denver, Colorado, he told her. Daughter of a rich rancher. Spoiled rotten, there’s nothing any man on earth can possibly give you. It’ll flatter Pudgy to death to think you might , if he minds his fat little spic manners, actually deign to talk to him.

We won’t do anything with your hair, you truly have lovely hair, long and blonde, is it natural? Well, Pudgy’ll find out, won’t he, dear? Put it up in a bun, perhaps, to give you an elegantly glacial look. We’re going for an image, darling. It’s the image that’ll get you into that palace of his and into his bed and into his safe.

And then we’ll find a gown, he told her, sexy enough to cause Pudgy to drool, but not cheap , do you follow me, darling? Something in an ice-blue, don’t you think, to echo those gorgeous peepers of yours. Enough bust showing to entice, but careful, careful, mustn’t touch, Pudgy, uh-uh- uh . Something very clingy, ice-blue, yes, and slit very high on one leg, thigh showing whenever you choose to show it, a long-legged stride into the Kasbah Lounge, Pudgy’s eyes will pop.