Эд Макбейн - Beauty and the Beast

“That’s putting it mildly. Well, look, figure it out for yourself. You get a woman who looks like Michelle, and she’s married to an ape , he’s going to believe whatever he wants to believe, am I right?”

“I don’t think I’m following you. What, exactly, did he believe?”

“He was crazy, that’s all.”

“Crazy how?”

“Well,” Sally said, “let’s say the man was hypersensitive to any other man she even glanced at.”

“ Did she glance at other men?”

“No, no, pure as a lily, Michelle was. It was all in his head , you understand?”

“You’re saying he accused her of—”

“Well, ‘accused’ might be too strong a word.”

“What word would you prefer?”

“Let’s say he suspected she was paying too much attention to other men.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“Used to come to the house in tears, complaining about the way he hassled her all the time.”

“Uh-huh. Confided all this to you, is that right?”

“Confided it to me, right.”

“How often did this happen?”

“Did what happen?”

“Her telling you he’d accused her—”

“Well, not accused.”

“Sally,” I said, “I’m having some difficulty getting this straight. Did Harper, or did he not , accuse his wife of paying too much attention to other men?”

“She said he suspected her of it, that’s right.”

“And hassled her about it?”

“Right.”

“That’s accusing her, isn’t it?”

“Well, if you want to put it that way,” Sally said, and shrugged.

“How often did this happen?”

“You want this exact?”

“Please.”

“It was at least three or four times.”

“She came to your house on at least three or four occasions...”

“Right.”

“In tears...”

“Right.”

“To confide that her husband had accused her of paying too much attention to other men.”

“That’s what she told me.”

“Had you ever witnessed any of this?”

“Witnessed what?”

“Michelle paying attention to other men?”

“No, no. Like I said, it was all in his head.”

“Had you ever been with them socially?”

“Oh, sure.”

“And you never saw Michelle behave like anything but a model wife?”

“That’s right.”

“How did Harper behave on those occasions?”

“He was his usual self.”

“And what was that?”

“Never said a word to anybody you didn’t have to drag it out of him. He’d come to the house sometimes with Michelle, just sit quiet the whole night long, like something was eating him up alive. I mean, this would be like a party, you know, six or seven people in, he’d sit there without saying a word to anybody. All bottled up inside, you know? I’m telling you, I’m not surprised he killed her. It’s the ones who’re all bottled up inside who finally let it out in ways you don’t expect.”

“Did he seem like a violent person to you?”

“Well, he beat her up, didn’t he?”

“You have only Michelle’s word for that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When she came to see you last Monday morning, she was the one who told you her husband had abused her.”

“And I wasn’t surprised, I’m telling you.”

“That she told you this?”

“No, that he finally got around to hitting her. It was what she was afraid of all along. That one of these days, when he got in these jealous fits of his, he’d hurt her somehow.”

“She told you that?”

“Right, that one of these days he’d hurt her. In fact—”

She shook her head.

“Yes?”

“She told me she was afraid he’d kill her one day.”

“When did she tell you that?”

“It was Halloween night. I remember because when she knocked on the door, I thought it was some trick-or-treaters coming around. Instead, it was Michelle again, in tears, telling me Kong was on another rampage, yelling at her, threatening her—”

“Threatening her?”

“Right, telling her if she ever looked at another man, he’d fix her good.”

“And she interpreted this to mean he’d kill her?”

“That’s what she said.”

“That he’d kill her?”

“Or mess her up some way. The morning she came here, last Monday morning, her breasts were all black and blue, her nose broken, teeth missing from her mouth. Hurting her that way, you know? So she wouldn’t be attractive to other men.”

“Uh-huh. But you heard all this only from Michelle, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Which would make it hearsay.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you never actually saw or heard any indication, in public, that Harper actually was a jealous person. Or that he might be capable of doing such extreme violence.”

“Man’s about to beat up his wife, he doesn’t go inviting a crowd in to witness it, Mr. Hope.”

“I realize that.”

I was silent for a moment. Sally took this as a cue that our conversation had ended. She stubbed out her cigarette and then glanced up at the wall clock. Across the room, the would-be “10” was beginning to show signs of impatience.

“How long had you known Michelle?” I asked.

“Since from when they got married.”

“Which would’ve been about a year and a half ago, is that right?”

“Right. I’ve known her about that long.”

“Were you at the wedding?”

“No, I didn’t really get to know her till afterward.”

“The wedding took place here in Calusa, didn’t it?”

“Yeah. Had a big reception afterward. At the house. Cars lined up all over the street.”

“But you weren’t invited.”

“Nope. Kong and I never did get along, and like I told you, I didn’t know Michelle at the time.”

She looked at the clock again.

“Just a few more questions,” I said.

“Sure, it’s just my customer’s getting itchy.”

“There’s one thing I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?”

“If, as you say, Harper had threatened Michelle on several previous occasions—”

“That’s what he did.”

“Why do you suppose that this time his threats erupted into actual physical violence?”

“Go ask him ,” Sally said. “Not that I think you’ll have much luck. Like I told you, Kong isn’t the kind of man who goes opening his heart and soul to you.”

I was thinking of what George Harper, sitting in Bloom’s office during the Q and A, had told us openly and with seeming honesty: “I loved her t’death.” I was thinking of him bursting into tears immediately afterward, and then burying his face in his huge hands, and sobbing as though his heart would burst.

I thanked Sally for her time, and stepped out of the shop into brilliant sunshine that was painful to the eyes.

My partner Frank is a firm believer in his own variation of Murphy’s Law, which states that if anything can possibly go wrong just before a planned vacation, it will most certainly go wrong. Your healthy cat — or in this case Dale’s healthy cat — will suddenly come down with a 104-degree fever that the vet will assure you is not particularly high for cats, whose normal temperature range is somewhere between 100 and 103, but that nonetheless will necessitate a battery of tests in order to determine the cause. Normally — the vet told Dale, and she reported to me on the phone late Monday night — a cat’s fever will be directly related to a fight he or she has just had with some other cat or a dog or, in Calusa, a raccoon. But Sassafras, Dale insisted, was the sort of benign feline who never got into even a spitting contest, much less a bonafide battle. Nonetheless, Sassafras was now at the vet’s, and Dale would have to call tomorrow to find out what the story was, and tomorrow was Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, three days before we were to leave for Mexico, and she hoped it was nothing serious because she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving a sick cat behind while she went off on a holiday.