Ed Gorman - Cold Blue Midnight

'I'd like that.'

'Then you're free?'

'Even if I wasn't, I'd make time.'

The pause again. 'Jill, I'm sorry for what you've been going through.'

Jill thought of what her lawyer Deborah had suggested during many of their conversations. Couldn't a bitter old woman with millions and millions of dollars have engineered this murderand made it look as if Jill were guilty?

'I appreciate you saying that.'

'Well, I have my reasons, believe me. That's why I want to have lunch. Just a minute.'

Silence.

Much lower speaking voice when she came back. 'Now I'm sure I heard somebody in the hall. I'd better go.' She named a place for lunch. 'Around noon?'

'That'd be great. It's so good hearing from you, Doris. It really is.'

'We'll have a lot of things to discuss tomorrow.'

'See you then.'

As she hung up the telephone, Jill replayed Doris' whispers. The poor woman. Still having to sneak around so her mother didn't know what she was up to. Jill even felt an errant wisp of pity for Evelyn. Her infant had been killed in one of the most unlikely ways anybody had ever heard of. Easy to understand why Evelyn had turned into a paranoid, over-controlling old witch. But she couldn't be forgiven for what she'd done to Peter and Doris. Not ever.

Jill had just gotten her second boot off when the phone rang again.

This time it was Kate.

Jill, exuberantly, told her all about Mitch tracking down Cini.

The lock took less than five minutes to pick.

Six months ago, Marcy had tailed an unfaithful wife for a husband who didn't have much money. But what he did have, as a graduate of Illinois State Prison, was a nice new set of burglar tools, the kind you just couldn't find at Sears.

Marcy swapped him pictures of his wife entering a place that said M TEL where she was trysting that afternoon with this kind of dorky-looking white guy who sold appliances out to Best Buys.

The client, black, had gotten very angry. 'He's white? She's makin' it with some white guy? White people don't know shit about sex! Nothin' personal, you understand.'

'Right. Now how about those burglary tools?'

This was Marcy's first opportunity to use them, standing in the wind-whipped side door of Rick Corday's house, her face a frozen mask from the biting snow dervishes, her hands a chafed red though they'd been gloveless less than a minute.

The first three picks were wrong.

The fourth one got the lock tumblers to move a millionth of an inch or so.

The fifth one opened the door instantly.

The smell. That was the first thing she noticed, even though she wasn't all the way inside yet. The smell. She wasn't sure she knew what it was. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

She went in, closed the door.

Appliances thrummed; a grandfather clock tocked out eternity. A built-in dishwasher had reached rinse cycle.

The smell wasn't as acrid here as it had been on the landing leading to the basement. Spicescinnamon, paprika, oreganoscented the kitchen pleasantly. The room was done in contrasting yellows. The cabinets new built-ins, the refrigerator a mammoth sunny yellow machine that had an ice-maker set into one of the two front doors.

As soon as she left the kitchen, she picked up the odor again. What was it, anyway?

The living room was a modern blend of natural fabrics and decorative accentsvery feminine but not effeminatea stylish cream-colored button-arm sofa with button-arm chairs in a dark brown and a glass-top coffee table in the center of the ensemble.

Nice. Comfortable. Homey.

Except for the smell.

'Gag me with a spoon,' as she used to say back in the misty days of eight years ago when she'd been in high school.

To the left was a hallway. She took it. The smell faded considerably back here. Wind caught in the chimney and let out a mournful whistle. She felt weird being here. She would be glad to get out. But what kind of self-respecting private investigator would go to all the trouble of breaking into somebody's house and then not go searching through his secret stuff?

The first bedroom was curious indeed for a man, with its rice carved bed with flowery spread. A highboy sat next to the bed, which was supported on a huge platform that lifted it several feet into the air. There was a trellis chainstitch rug and a cheval mirror and a massive burgundy lamp on the night-stand. It was all a little too decorative for her; a little too cloying.

The bureau was pushed against the back wall, next to a bookcase snug with bestsellers that ran to books intent on building your self-esteem. From what Marcy could gather about these books, the only people whose self-esteem they helped was the authors'. They felt just dandy about taking all that money from idiots.

Inside the bureau drawer, she found a tidy array of socks, underwear and T-shirts. Rick Corday was a neat freak. Everything was lined up just so, displayed just so. She hated neat freaks. Life was too short for all that anal-retentive stuff.

She tried the second drawer.

You might call this one The Wonderful World of Sweaters. V-necks, turtle-necks, crew-necks. Red, yellow, blue, green.

She was just opening the third drawer when somebody behind her said, 'Walk away from the bureau and put your hands up. And then turn around and face me. Just like TV.'

She put her hands up.

And turned around real nice and slow as if she were back in ballet class working on her pirouette.

And then she gazed up at the James Coburn-like countenance of Rick Corday standing in the doorway.

He had a. 45 straight out of a Bogart movie in his right hand.

He smiled. 'I knew I faked you out.'

'Huh?'

'When you were parked down at the corner there, waiting for me to drive past. I knew I faked you out.'

'You knew I was there?'

'Sure. I got curious the second time you drove by my house. We don't get a lot of that out here.'

'You're Rick Corday.'

'Right.'

'I can explain this, Mr Corday.'

'Sure you can.'

'What're you going to do to me?'

He didn't hesitate. 'Jeeze, kid, you should've figured that out by now. I'm going to kill you.'

'Ma'am.'

One thing servants in the Tappley house learned immediately: You were to report any suspicious activity to Mrs Tappley or risk losing your job. To keep her happy was to keep her informed, and so the maids tended to eavesdrop on any conversations that the children hadwhen they were growing upor that Doris had now.

The upstairs maid had listened at the door as Doris spoke to Jill.

She went downstairs, saw Mrs Tappley in the cozy warmth of the den, and said, 'Excuse me, ma'am.'

Mrs Tappley sighed. She was at a particularly exciting place in her Barbara Cartland novel. 'What is it, Jess?'

'I'm sorry to interrupt.'

'I didn't ask you to grovel. I asked you to tell me what you wanted.'

'Yes'm.'

'Well?'

'Doris was on the phone.'

Interest flickered in Evelyn's eyes. 'Oh?'

'Yes'm. For almost ten minutes.'

'I see.'

'And she was talking to your former daughter-in-law.'

Evelyn sat up in her wingchair and put the book face down on her lap. 'She was talking to Jill?'

'Yes'm.'

'You're positive? Jill?'

'She said her name two or three times. That's what I thought was so funny, ma'am, her talking to her.'

'I appreciate you telling me this, Jess.'

'Yes'm.'

'I'll speak with you later.'

Jess nodded and left.

Evelyn didn't go back to her Barbara Cartland. Instead, she began thinking of her medicine cabinet, and something Dr Steiner had given her for when she felt a nervous attack coming on…

Mitch spent the early afternoon forcing himself to smile and pretend that he really enjoyed being called a moron.