Эд Макбейн - Snow White and Rose Red

I was not amused.

I felt... I don’t know. Duplicitous? Unfaithful, somehow? Certainly rotten. By all reasonable standards, Terry Belmont was a beautiful, desirable, and passionate woman. But as I held her in an embrace, it was Sarah whose lips opened to mine, Sarah whose breasts yielded to my questing hands, Sarah whose legs...

When the telephone rang, I was almost grateful.

“Don’t answer it,” Terry said.

I lifted the receiver from the cradle on the bedside nightstand.

“Hello?” I said.

“Matthew?” Frank said.

My partner Frank says I do not know how to handle women. He says that is why people always phone me when I am in bed with a woman. If I knew how to handle women, he says, people wouldn’t always be calling me up at inopportune moments. I do not see what the one thing has to do with the other, but I must admit that I am frequently called while I am in bed with a member of the opposite sex.

“I cannot believe you signed this thing,” Frank said. “Are you a lawyer or are you a plumbing inspector?”

I said nothing.

“A lawyer would not have signed this thing,” Frank said. “Is this a bad time for you?”

“No, no,” I said. “Just sitting here reading.”

In bed beside me, Terry rolled her eyes.

“In that case, I refer you to page one, paragraph first of the separation agreement. Are you listening, Matthew?”

“I’m listening,” I said.

“Page one, paragraph first,” Frank said. “Titled ‘Separation.’ I am about to quote, Matthew. Quote: It shall be lawful for each of the parties, at all times, to live and continue to live separate and apart from each other, to reside at such place or places as either may select for himself or herself, and each party hereto shall be free from any and all interference, restraint, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, unquote. That means that Susan can live wherever the hell she damn pleases.”

“Except as hereinafter provided,” I said.

“We’ll get to the hereinafter hereinafter,” Frank said. “You are aware, of course, that you gave Susan custody of the child.”

“I am aware of that, yes, Frank.”

“Then I needn’t read from page six, paragraph tenth, regarding custody and visitation.”

“No, Frank, you needn’t read that.”

“Are you sure this isn’t a bad time for you?” Frank asked.

“No, no, just sitting here,” I said.

Terry rolled her eyes again.

“I call your attention then to page three, paragraph fifth, titled ‘Additional Child Support,’ and again I quote: In addition to the aforesaid payments, the husband does further agree to pay for all education costs of the child as hereinafter set forth. The husband shall pay for all private school education, which shall include tuition, fees, books, stationery, uniforms, and transportation if public transportation is not available. The private school as hereinbefore referred to is deemed to include any private day school or any boarding school.’ Now, Matthew, that is the first real knot in the hangman’s noose around your neck. I can’t believe you actually signed this thing.”

“But I did.”

“Yes, apparently you did.”

“Yes.”

“Did you really fantasize about Leona when you were married to Susan?”

“No.”

“Good. The second knot is in that same paragraph, on page four this time. The language reads, “The wife shall consult with the husband on the choice of boarding school or college—’ ”

“That’s exactly it, Frank. I hardly think that Susan announcing she’s about to send Joanna off to school is consul—”

“Hold your horses, friend. May I continue?”

“Please.”

“ ‘—shall consult with the husband on the choice of boarding school or college for the child.’ Are you ready? Here it is. ‘The husband shall not object to any choice of the wife on the grounds of geographical location.’ Period, end quote. Leaving Matthew Hope dangling in the air above the scaffold.”

“I’m sure there’s something in there about negotiating in good faith if—”

“Yes, the ‘hereinafter’ you mentioned earlier. But Matthew, that only pertains to visitation rights in the event that Susan should move beyond fifty miles from Calusa County. She is not moving, she is merely sending Joanna off to school. And you cannot object to her choice of a school on the grounds of geographical location. She can send her to the North Pole if she likes.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I’m only the king’s messenger,” Frank said. “you’re the one who signed this fucking thing.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Matthew, I’m sorry. Truly. But I don’t think You’ve got a leg to stand on.”

“Okay, Frank. Thanks. Really.”

“Good night,” he said. “Sleep well.”

I put the receiver back on the cradle.

“About your daughter again, huh?” Terry said.

“Yeah.”

“She sounds like a real bitch, this ex of yours.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Why don’t you come kiss me?” she said. “Take your mind off all this.”

I kissed her.

I kissed Sarah Whittaker.

Terry Belmont was a woman who said whatever came to her mind.

She pulled away from my kiss.

“you’re not really with this, are you?” she said.

I did not answer.

“What is it?” she said. “Somebody else?”

“Terry...”

“No, listen,” she said, “that’s okay, I mean it.”

She was already getting out of bed.

“I mean, there’re no strings here, really.”

She was dressing now. There was not much to put on. She was wearing neither panties nor bra. She simply slid into her sheath dress and stepped into her high-heeled shoes.

“You call me when you think You’ve got it sorted out, okay? I’d like to see you again, Matthew, but not if you’re a million miles away with somebody else, okay?”

She came to the bed and kissed me on the cheek.

“I hope you sort it out,” she said, and looked at me a moment longer, and then left.

On Thursday morning, April 25, Bloom and Rawles finally located the house on stilts that Tiffany Carter (née Sylvia Kazenski) had described to them. It had not been as easy to find as Sylvia had supposed. She had said it was “the only one up on stilts, right on the bay,” and had led them to believe it was “out near Whisper Key, but on the mainland — that spit of land just before you cross the north bridge to Whisper, on the bay there, where there are a lot of mobile homes and shitty little dumps crowding the waterfront.” Admittedly, Sylvia had been there only twice, but her faulty geographical memory cost the detectives almost three working days. Bloom later told me that whereas time was usually of the essence during the investigation of a homicide, in this case — where the murder was some seven months old before the police even knew it had been committed — a three-day loss didn’t matter all that much... unless the killer hoped to lure another young girl into the bird sanctuary. As he told me this, however, he could not help commenting sourly on the unreliability of witnesses.

The house, as it turned out, was not on the bay. Instead, it was on a lagoon some two miles from the spot Sylvia had described. Neither was it on the mainland approach to the north bridge. It was across the bridge, a good way across the bridge, in fact, on Whisper Key itself. Sylvia’s only valid memories were of the mobile homes and shacks bordering the lagoon — but it took Rawles and Bloom three days to find those shacks and the stilted house nestled among them.

The apartment Tracy Kilbourne had apparently been living in until sometime in July of last year was now occupied by a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Joyce Epstein, who had been living in New York until February, when she came down here on vacation, fell in love with Calusa, and decided to make her home here. In New York she had worked as a receptionist at a publishing house; in Calusa she was selling real estate, not a particularly lucrative occupation at the moment, since mortgage interest rates were so high and nobody was buying. In New York she had lived on the second floor of a tenement on Eighty-Third Street, near First Avenue. In Calusa she was living in a ramshackle wood-frame house overlooking what was surely one of the most beautiful lagoons in the world. Herons elegantly stalked the shallow waters outside her windows as the detectives talked to her. A pelican perched on the railing of her deck. Her apartment in Manhattan, she told them, had been far more spacious than this, but when she looked out her window there, all she saw was alternate-side-of-the-street parking. Here — and she gestured grandly toward the lagoon — she had “the Garden of Eden” on her doorstep. I remembered thinking, as Bloom related this to me, that Joyce Epstein should have a long talk with my partner, Frank.