Стив Хокенсмит - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 6, June 2006

After a moment, I chuckled. “You weren’t expecting me, were you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

I glanced down at the small pad in my hand and shook my head. “Our office girl, she’s kind of new,” I said, doing my best aw-shucks. “I had a sneaking suspicion maybe she didn’t confirm with you. One of those annoying logistical foul-ups.”

“What’s this about?”

“Well, I have the report from Del Laing, and we need to lock down all the details.”

“Oh,” she said, honestly puzzled. “I thought... Mr. Bumpps said he was through with me till the deposition.”

Deposition? “Of course,” I said. “But before that we want to be sure we have all the facts. So there are no surprises.”

“I see.”

She was obviously on the bubble. I could try a good hard push, but something told me to go for broke the other way. Might as well — I really had nothing to lose. “You know what, this is just plain awkward,” I said, snapping my notebook shut. “We’ll call and set up another time. Sorry I troubled you.”

“No, it’s all right,” she said, quietly calm. “We can talk now, if it won’t take too long.” She smiled briefly. “Please come in.”

Good old Perkins, I thought. All smooth masculine charm. What’s this about evil? Joy Monrho obviously had excellent taste and judgment.

She led me into the living room, from which the street was visible through a large bay window. The room was overly full with heavy, ugly, and uncomfortable-looking Early American furniture. Framed photographs decked the walls and horizontal surfaces. The low glass-topped coffee table was piled with photo albums and magazines. Joy Monrho sat at the end of the sofa and I took the club chair kitty-corner to her right. “So as I understand it,” I began, “you were married to J. J. Monrho.”

“Twelve years.”

“And then divorced.”

“Six years ago.”

“But you two, uh, kept seeing each other.”

“That’s right.”

“Even after J. J. married Faith.”

“Correct.” No self-consciousness in her response. No defensiveness either.

“Which was — when did they marry?”

“A year ago Christmas.”

And, I reflected, J. J. died three months later, just a year ago. Joy sat there, one jeaned leg crossed over the other, arms loosely folded. Her demeanor was calm, her tone willing. She was looking not at me, but past me, expression reflective, bemused. She was, by God, enjoying this — enjoying the act of telling the story. I jotted some dates in my notebook. “A little bit unconventional.”

She shrugged and smiled a bit secretive and, I thought, borderline smug. “There wasn’t much conventional about J. J. and me, Mr. O’Gannon. We married way too young. We broke up dozens of times. But we always reunited.”

“Even after the divorce.”

“Yes.”

“And even after he remarried.”

She shifted. “He swore off me a dozen times. I knew all I had to do was wait. Within three days of his ‘wedding,’ ” and she made quote marks with her fingers, “he was with me again, same as ever.”

“Sounds like he was pretty obsessed with you.”

She shrugged. “We were soul mates. Meant only for each other. Despite the difficulties.”

“You kept his name, I notice.”

“It’s my name,” she said with quiet pride.

Smug was the word, all right. Joy Monrho just plain loved it that this man could never just be done with her once and for all. That I could understand. What was not so understandable was the apparent lack of grief that she exhibited. There was no sign that she mourned this “soul mate” who had been cruelly taken from her.

I shifted gears. “So how did it work? What was your, uh, routine with him?”

“He came here Thursday evenings for,” she arched a brow, “dinner.”

“Every single Thursday?”

“Just about. And we met for lunch a couple of times a week too, usually.”

“Where?”

Her eyes narrowed briefly. “Why does that matter?”

“Please understand: The plaintiffs are going to attack your story. We need for it to be bulletproof.”

“Well, it was a Waffle Wagon about halfway between the scrap yard and the plant.”

“The scrap yard is where you work?”

“Yes.”

“And the Waffle Wagon is where again?”

“The Boulevard, just south of the Ford Freeway. Listen,” she said earnestly, “if what you need is evidence we were still together — I can help with that.”

“Okay,” I said doubtfully. “What do you got?”

From the lower shelf of the coffee table she brought up a couple of leather-bound picture albums. Opening the first, she spun it to face me. The eight by ten showed a smallish sailboat with two people on it. One was Joy, looking pretty fine in a two-piece yellow swimsuit.

“And that’s J. J.,” I said, pointing, gambling a little — but she’d probably expect that I knew what the man looked like.

“Yes. That was Labor Day weekend. He died the following March.”

“Which was... how long after he married Faith?”

“Well, as of Labor Day he hadn’t married her yet. But they were ‘engaged.’ ” Again with the finger-quote marks.

I looked at her. She was quite calm, impassive, unreadable. “You didn’t mind?”

“Of course I minded. But I was sure his... dalliance with her would run its course.”

“Instead, he married her.”

She shrugged. “Some dalliances run longer than others.”

“And you kept on with him.”

“Yes.” She flipped some more picture pages.

“So you didn’t mind being the other woman.”

“I’m not the other woman,” she said without looking at me. “ She is the other woman.” It occurred to me that Joy had not once uttered Faith’s name. She tapped the book. “Look at this one.” The group shot showed probably twenty people, all dressed for holiday revelry. “This was the New Year’s Eve party for J. J.’s work. Three months before he died.” She pointed to a couple in the center. “There we are,” she said softly.

I looked at his round face — long hair, goatee, big smile. A cheerful-looking, bang-about good-old-boy type, and behind that grin, such secrets. “And he married Faith when? Just a few days before this?”

“Yes.” Turning a few more pages, she showed me a few more pictures, mostly of the two of them, riding bicycles, sitting out on her deck, cuddled up on the couch on which she now sat. I realized that many of the pictures on display in that living room were of J. J. Monrho also. There were more of them than I’d thought. Quite a lot, in fact. Almost to the point of making this room a shrine to him.

“Check this out,” she said, picking up a plastic badge that had been tucked in the album. It was credit-card sized, thickly laminated, with a long, red neck fob. On it was imprinted the well known Stone Automotive logo, the name Monrho J., and some kind of serial number. “His plant badge.”

“How’d you get this?”

Her smile was small and, for once, warm. “Oh, it sounds so silly. When he was in the Navy — we were just kids then — he gave me his dog tags to wear while he was at sea. It became a sort of tradition with us. So when he got the job at Stone, he conned them into giving him a replacement plant badge. I wore it twenty-four seven, under my clothes. As a way to—” And here Joy Monrho fumbled, for the first and only time during our talk — “keep him close to me.”

“But you don’t wear it now.”

A phone rang faintly, a wall away. Joy’s green eyes shifted to me, and then went far away. “Will you excuse me?”

“Sure.”

She left. I gazed at the picture album and the plant badge. Keeping that trinket — showing it off — was Joy’s way of saying, This is how much he loved me. I wondered how much of all this Micki knew. My bet was not much. I picked up the badge. It was heavier than it looked. I wondered if it had a metal strip in it. I wondered if it was the type of badge, magnetic or whatever, that opened secure doors. I wondered further if the thing still worked.