Ed McBain - Goldilocks

“I’d like to ask you some questions about last night,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?” The look of bewilderment was turning to something else.

“Mrs. Brenet, I’m Jamie’s attorney. I’m sure you know what happened last night—”

“Yes?” Again the single word as a question. But the eyebrows were no longer arched. They were puckering into a frown above the thick-rimmed glasses.

“Jamie says he was with you last night between—”

“With me?” she said.

“Yes, between eleven and—”

“ Me ? Are you sure you’ve got the right person?”

“You are Catherine Brenet?”

“Yes.”

“And you do know Jamie Purchase?”

“Yes. But I don’t know what you mean about last night.”

“His wife and children were—”

“Yes, I heard that on the radio. But when you say Dr. Purchase—”

“Mrs. Brenet, he told us that—”

“Was with me—”

“Between eleven and—”

“I don’t understand.”

We both stopped talking at the same time. She looked at me, waiting for an explanation. I looked at her, waiting for the same thing.

“Mr. Hope,” she said at last, “my husband and I knew the Purchases only casually. I was, of course, distressed to learn of the terrible tragedy that had—”

“Mrs. Brenet, you’re going to be visited shortly by a Detective Ehrenberg of the Calusa Pol—”

“What on earth for?”

“Because Jamie Purchase says he was with you last night between the hours of eleven and twelve-thirty.”

“He wasn’t.”

“You didn’t see him last night?”

“I haven’t seen him since... I can’t even remember. I believe I met him and his wife at a charity ball, oh, more than a year ago. And I think we saw each other once after that, at a dinner party someplace.”

“Jamie said—”

“I don’t care what—”

“He said you’ve been lovers for—”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m repeating what he told us this morning.”

“Told who ?”

“My partner and me. In our offices this morning.”

“Well, he was obviously... I can’t imagine why he said anything like that. I don’t know whether to be offended or flattered. I’m hardly the type of woman—”

“Mrs. Brenet, if Jamie wasn’t with you last night, then he was somewhere else. And the police will want to know where.”

“I’m sure that’s his problem, not mine.”

“I don’t think you understand me.”

“I understand you completely. You’re asking me to provide an alibi for Dr. Purchase.”

“I’m asking you to verify his story.”

“How can I possibly do that?”

“Mrs. Brenet, Jamie told us that you and he have been renting a cottage on Whisper...”

“This is really too ridiculous.”

“That you’d decided to seek divorces...”

“I’m a happily married woman. I would no more consider divorcing my husband than... I simply would never consider it.”

“Then Jamie was lying.”

“If he said he was with me last night, why yes. Of course he was lying.”

“Where were you last night, Mrs. Brenet?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” She looked up at the wall clock. “I was just closing the shop when you got here. My husband and I have a dinner date, so if you don’t mind—”

“Was your husband home last night?”

“Again, that’s none of—”

“Are you asking me to believe that Jamie picked your name out of the air? Made up a long story about you on the spur of the moment—”

“I don’t know why he told you what he did. If, indeed, he told you anything at all.”

“He did.”

“I’ll accept your word for that. In which case, all I can say — again, and for the last time — is that he was lying.”

“Will you tell that to the police when they get here?”

“What have you told them, Mr. Hope?”

“Nothing. They found out about you on their own.”

“There was nothing to find out, so I can’t imagine—”

“They talked to one of Jamie’s nurses this afternoon. They know all about your frequent phone calls to his office.”

“I’m sure I’m being confused with someone else.”

“I don’t think so.”

“When the police get here, if they get here, I’ll tell them I went to a movie last night. My husband, as it happens, was in Tampa visiting his mother — he goes to see her two or three times a month. She doesn’t particularly like me, we try to avoid each other. When I got back to the house, my husband was already home. I asked him how his mother was. He said she was fine. We both went to sleep.”

“Is that what you told your husband? That you’d gone to a movie?”

“I generally go to a movie when he’s in Tampa with his mother. He stays with her most of the day and doesn’t get home till quite late. There’s nothing unusual about my having gone to a movie.”

“So let me understand this...”

“I’m terribly pressed for—”

“Even if Jamie’s in danger—”

“Really, Mr. Hope—”

“You won’t admit he was with you last night. Because such an admission—”

“Mr. Hope, I read in this afternoon’s News that his son has already confessed to the murders. Is that true?”

“It’s true.”

“Then good day, Mr. Hope.”

So there we were.

There was Jamie Purchase’s “startlingly beautiful” mistress, who had worn a black raincoat and a green hat that first day they met secretly. There had been rain in Calusa, so unusual for February. He had put his hand on her thigh the moment she’d entered the car, “the touch was electric,” he’d told us. There had been the aroma of wet and steamy garments in that small contained space, the windshield wipers had snicked at the rain, snick, snick, snick — ah, l’amour . And ah, how that love had blossomed over the space of a year and a little bit more, till last night in a cottage by the sea, they had both sworn fealty, fealty forever, and had discussed the imminent demise of their respective mates — yes, that was the word Jamie had used. Mates. Not demise, oh no. The demise, presumably, was metaphoric, they had only talked of leaving their spouses. The waves had crashed in cinematically against the shore, Soon, my darling, soon , Burt and Deborah, Kim and Kirk, Elizabeth and Richard, and now, for the first time together in embrace on a beach, spume flying, JAMIE and CATHERINE, he kisses her face, he kisses her throat, he kisses her eyes — I wanted to vomit.

A memorable moment, to be sure. So memorable that the dumpy little lady in the green smock seemed to have forgotten it completely less than seventeen hours later. Give her twenty-four and she’d forget her own name. But for now, at five-fifteen on a lovely Calusa afternoon, it was enough to have forgotten Jamie Purchase. Because remembering him would be endangering her marriage. Catherine was simply protecting her turf, that was all. She may have sworn to the stars and the sea that together she and Jamie would wend their way down life’s thorny path; she may even have meant it. But the chips were down now, as surely as they’d been down in that poker game Jamie had tried to lose and could only succeed in winning. Her hand was being called. She could declare the pair of deuces or bluff a royal flush.

Jamie was safe, she thought. His son had confessed to the crime, there was no way Jamie could become involved, even if she denied having been with him last night. So Catherine was taking the odds on today, never mind the long shot on eternity; eternity was for graveyards. Catherine was opting for the good life she had with the surgeon; love and marriage, so to speak, house and garden, seashells arranged in an orderly row on a Lucite shelf, another charity ball next year, and the year after that, and the year after that after that. If she and Jamie ever got past this one — and she had to admit it looked a bit dicey just how — they might be able to pick up right where they’d left off before all the unpleasantness, same old stand next Wednesday or next Sunday, business as usual.