Ed McBain - Widows

59

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Mrs Schumacher," Brown said, "would it be all right if we looked through your husband's personal effects? His addrese book, his appointment calendar, his diary if he kept..." "He didn't keep a diary."

"Anything he may have written on while he was making or receiving telephone calls, a notepad, a . . ."

"I'll show you where his desk is."

"We'd also like to look through his clothes, if you don't..."

"Why?"

"Sometimes we'll find a scrap of paper in a jacket pocket, or a matchbook from a restaurant, or . . ."

"Arthur didn't smoke."

Past tense exclusively now.

"We'll be careful, we promise you," Carella said.

Although he had not until now been too overly careful.

"Yes, fine," she said.

But he knew they'd been clumsy, he knew they had alienated her forever. He suddenly wanted to comfort her the way he'd comforted his mother, but the moment was too far gone, the cop had taken over from the man, and the man had lost.

"If we may," he said.

Margaret showed them where her husband's clothes were hanging in the master bedroom closet. They patted down jackets and trousers and found nothing. A smaller room across the hall was furnished as a study, with a desk and an easy chair and a lamp and rows of bookshelves bearing mostly legal volumes. They found the dead man's address book and appointment calendar at once, asked Margaret if they might take them for reference, and signed a receipt to make it all legal. In the desk drawer above the kneehole, in a narrow little box some three inches long and seven inches wide, they found a stack of blank wallet-sized refill checks and a small red snap-envelope containing the key to a safe-deposit box.

Which was how, on Monday morning, they located another bundle of erotic letters.

60

Wednesday, June 14 Hi!

I'm putting on my new sexy lingerie, a red demi—bra (so—called because it pushes up my breasts and leaves my nipples uncovered) a garterbelt with red silk stockings, and the tiniest red panties you ever saw in smooth soft silk. On top of that I'll wear the new suit I got yesterday. It cost an arm and a leg but it was irrestible, a prim—looking blue thing with avshort, double-breasted jacket and — the piece de resistance — a skirt with an interesting arrangement in front: a big split artistically draped with intricate folds so that it looks very decent when I stand up but when I sit down and spread my legs a little I'm practically inviting the man sitting next to me to put his hand through that split and touch me between the legs.

Is this the sort of letter you want me to write? I think I may enjoy this.

In my fantasy, we'll check into a hotel and then go down to the restaurant together and find a booth in.an out-of-the-way corner somewhere and you would be that man sitting next to me and you would put your hand through that split in the skirt and you would touch my cunt, which would be very hot, very wet, and very very hungry for your attention. In no time at all, you would bring me to climax, and then it would be my turn. I would unzip your fly and find your cock, which I'm sure, would already be stone hard. It would spring out into my

hand, and I would play with it under the table until it got harder and harder, and then when nobody was looking, I would pretend to pick up a napkin from the floor, and I would lower my mouth onto your cock, and suck you till you begged me to let you come but I wouldn't let you no matter how hard you begged, I'd just keep sucking your big cock until you were almost weeping, and then I'd say, "Come on, let's go up to the room."

He would compose ourselves, leave the restaurant, and take the elevator back upstairs. And inside the room, I'd take off the blue suit, and you'd tear off that wisp of red panty, and you'd say something about me driving you crazy, and I'd unzip you once again, and sink to my knees, and put your big cock in my mouth again. You'd take off the rest of your clothes, and slowly slip out of my mouth, and then you'd lift me to you and start licking my breasts. I would come again, you always make me come so fast, even just sucking my nipples, but I would know you weren't finished with me yet, I would know you wanted more from me, you always want more and more from me. You would pick me up and carry me to the bed, and you would kneel over me with my legs wide open and your cock in your hand, and you would begin fucking me slow and steady, and then harder and harder and harder, give it to me, baby, fuck me now.

See you later.

Bye!

"Gives me a hard-on, this woman," Brown said, and shook his head, and said, "Whoosh," and slid the letter back under the rubber band that held the stack of letters together. He was sitting beside Carella in one of the squad's unmarked cars, a three-year-old Plymouth sedan with the air conditioner on the fritz, both men sweltering as they drove uptown again to the Schumacher apartment. It had taken them an hour and a half this morning to get a court order to open Schumacher's safe-deposit box, and another half hour to get to the bank, not far from his office on Jasper Street. The box had contained only the letters and a pair of first-class airline tickets to Milan, one in Schumacher's name, the other in Susan Brauer's.

62

There were seventeen letters in all, five fewer than Schumacher had written. The first one - the one Brown had been reading - was dated three days after Schumacher's first letter, and seemed to be in direct response to it. Like his letters, none of these were signed. Each of the letters was neatly typed. Each started with the same salutation and ended with the same complementary close. Hi\ and Bye\ Like a vivacious little girl writing to someone she'd met in camp. Some little girl, Brown thought.

"You think he was losing interest?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, what?" Carella said.

His mind had been drifting again. He could not shake the image of his mother in the bakery shop, wandering the shop, touching all the things that had belonged to his father.

"I mean, he meets her on New Year's Day, and this is only June when he gets her to write him these hot letters. Sounds as if he was maybe losing interest."

"Then why would he be taking her to Europe?"

"Maybe the letters got things going again," he said, and was silent for a moment. "You ever write any kind of letters like these?"

"No, did you?"

"No. Wish I knew how."

They were approaching the Selby Place apartment. Carella searched for a parking spot, found one in a No Parking zone, parked there anyway, and threw down the visor to display a placard with the Police Department logo on it. It seemed cooler outside the car than it had inside. Little breeze blowing here on the tree-shaded street. They walked up the street, announced themselves to the doorman, and then took the elevator up to the sixth floor.

What they had already concluded was that Arthur Schumacher and Susan Brauer had been exchanging intimate letters and that they'd been planning to fly to Italy together at the end of the month. What they did not know was whether Margaret Schumacher had known all this. They were here to question her further. Because if she had known . . .

63

"Come in," she said, "have you learned anything?"

Seemingly all concerned and anxious and looking drawn and weary; her husband had been buried yesterday morning. They had to play this very carefully. They didn't want to tell her everything they knew, but at the same time it was virtually impossible to conduct a fishing expedition without dangling a little bait in the water.

Carella told her they were now investigating the possibility that her husband's death may have been connected to a previous homicide they'd been investigating . . .

"Oh? What previous homicide?"

. . . and that whereas when they were here on Saturday they'd merely been doing a courtesy follow-up for the two detectives who'd initiated the investigation into her husband's death . . .