Murder, She Did Read online

  We sat in a homey, rough circle in the living room. It gave me pleasure to watch the firelight flicker over the timeworn faces. It had been hard as hell keeping this house after my divorce, but when my friends gathered in it, it seemed well worth it. When Celia finally stopped, there was a chorus of reactions. Nobody was overly shocked that depressed Laurel had committed suicide, only that she had made her own death look like murder. I listened to the exclamations. “Timid Laurel framed her husband!” “Who would have thought that of her?” “It’s hard to believe that Jackson’s innocent.”

  I recognized my cue. “Maybe Jackson isn’t innocent,” I said. “Even if he isn’t guilty of pulling the trigger or stealing the netsukes.”

  “I hate word games.” Janet, the newest member, was young enough and still-married enough to believe in absolutes. “Either Jackson Tobias killed his wife or he didn’t.”

  I gentled them toward the idea. “Perhaps the question is when he killed her, not whether.” I waited until they’d absorbed that, then I continued. “Since there are so many ways to destroy someone, and so many steps to the process, why only be concerned with the last one—the issue of whose finger pulled the trigger or lit that match? Why do we endlessly debate when life begins and never consider when death begins?”

  “What are you getting at, Dee?”

  “There are more crimes than there are laws. Surprising as Celia’s discovery may be, I think the issue is not whether Jackson shot Laurel, but whether he murdered her.”

  The firelight played against the walls while the women digested my cake and my words. “Listen, we’re”—Janet counted—“twelve ordinary women who—”

  “A jury,” another woman said. “We’re a jury.”

  “Not really. We aren’t the law.” Janet was disgustingly young and sincere. I had been against admitting her, and now I was convinced I’d been right.

  “There are lots of systems of law,” a woman who’d been part of the group all twenty-five years said. “Erin S. Tisiphone is a reminder that the Furies had their own ways of handling injustice.”

  There was a long silence. I refilled coffee cups and wine glasses and watched our shadows paint the walls.

  “I say we put Jackson back on trial,” someone finally decided. “Tonight. Here. Now.”

  “For what, precisely?” Janet snapped. She was feisty, I’ll give her that. Eleven women versus her, and she held her ground.

  “For murder. By legal methods.”

  One woman hunched over her coffee cup, as if seeing visions in it. “Like, do you remember when she was finally able to stop helping—for no pay—with the business and the kids were launched and she went back to her painting? How he said that only immature children deluded themselves about their so-called talent.”

  “How about,” a second voice added, “when she had her first show and he bought all her work before the opening—to spare her humiliation, he said?”

  “And then never hung a one of them up,” Celia murmured.

  “He was so stingy. She made the girls’ clothing and Halloween costumes and the curtains and drapes and could barely afford paintbrushes while he whooped it up on business expenses and—”

  “Remember his white-glove inspections? And jokes about wishing he could afford the servants Laurel so obviously needed?”

  “I’m not sure I like where this is going!” Janet said. “You’re talking about leaving an innocent man in prison.”

  “Not forever. He’s in for manslaughter and you watch—he’ll be out in seven years.”

  “Which is a shorter sentence than Laurel served!”

  “But still!” Even in the flickering light, I could see Janet’s jaw set in righteous indignation. “You don’t imprison a man because of an unpleasant domestic life or—”

  “We’re talking about justice,” someone countered. “The man eroded her self-esteem, broke her spirit and destroyed her before she put a gun into her mouth. That isn’t innocence!”

  “You didn’t know him, Janet,” an older member said. “You didn’t know her, either. You never saw any of it.”

  “Like how, whenever she said anything, he’d get a patient, patronizing expression, as if she was a cute but stupid pet.”

  “Or how about the food? In front of whoever was there—clients, his friends, us—he’d poke his fork, purse his lips, question ingredients, apologize to guests, say poor Laurel had tried so hard and he was so proud, anyway. She withered in front of our eyes.”

  “Once, when I was away on vacation and Laurel thought Jackson was away on business, I saw him and a young woman in a very unbusinesslike embrace.”

  “Well, I saw him right here in town with a real bimbo—wild red hair and skirt that looked painted on, and that was the same day Laurel was—the day she died! It was disgusting how they were carrying on. Poor Laurel, hoping and hoping he’d come back. I’m glad Dee convinced me not to tell Laurel right away or I’d feel responsible for her suicide, now that I think of it.”

  “Jackson once came on to me,” a new voice said, “and when I squawked that Laurel was my friend, he made a sad face and said she was his friend, too, but he wanted a woman.”

  “Husbands,” somebody hissed. The fire crackled and flared. Several women looked at their hands as if studying the imprints that marriage and time and maybe too much giving had made. Then they looked up, confused. I recognized that look from years and years of meetings. We were all waiting for someone to make sense of what happened between women and men.

  “You know how people embezzle money?” I said. “That’s how Jackson embezzled Laurel’s life. He pretended it was still in her account, but little by little, he transferred it to his own. And finally, she was bankrupt.” I rather liked that. A little flowery, perhaps, and heavy on the metaphor, but not bad. In fact, Alexa Fury could use it to break the gridlock. Mikhail, out in the cold, could take Ariel’s hand and say, “Boris has embezzled your happiness.”

  “Jackson crushed the life out of Laurel,” Celia said.

  “Then she was too crushable!” Again, it was Janet, the believer. “Women can be party to their own—”

  “She was an artist, not a Valkyrie,” Celia said.

  “And he was a bully!”

  “But it’s the end of the twentieth century. We’re in charge of our own lives!” Janet’s strength, or bullheadedness, was awesome. But then, she’d been raised on a different kind of food than the rest of us, nourished by what we’d painfully scraped up from below the surface of our lives.

  “Laurel was brainwashed,” somebody said.

  “Even so, what a pathetic revenge—killing herself to make a point. If he were mine—I’d kill him!”

  “Not if you were so destroyed you had no more strength,” someone reminded her. “That’s the whole point.”

  Nobody had more to add. My turn, then. “Time for a verdict.” I ripped paper into twelve slips and each woman searched her purse for pens and pencils.

  “I—I abstain,” Janet said. She scrambled to her feet and headed for the door. “I won’t stop you, but I can’t agree. Who made us jury and judge? You’re not being fair.” And she disappeared into the night.

  Fair. I shrugged. Our view of justice was obscured by marital scar tissue, but we did try to be fair.

  As fair as Furies can be.

  The vote was “guilty.” Unanimous—except for Janet’s abstention.

  “We have our verdict,” I said. “What’s the sentence?”

  “Erin S. Tisiphone, rest in peace,” our oldest member said. “And let your betraying bastard of a husband rot where he is.”

  There were no objections.

  So the group now worships Saint Laurel, clever martyr of the war between the sexes. I consider Laurel’s sanctification my most inventive fiction, because, of course, she was not bright or brave enough to frame Jackson.

  Laurel lived and died a coward. When Jackson didn’t pay support after their separation, she should have dragged him back to court. But
she wanted him back, so to avoid harassing him, she decided to sell the netsukes.

  I discouraged the idea. I suggested that it wasn’t legal to dispose of assets she and Jackson held in common.

  In reality, my motives were less about law and more about myself. At the time, I still believed that anything that cost Jackson, cost me.

  It didn’t matter. As is obvious, she only pretended to listen to me, and she covered her tracks very well with the trip to Chicago and the pseudonym.

  I assume that with some invented excuse for the windfall, she gave her kids the netsuke money while she was alive.

  One thing. I am a fair woman, so let’s set the record straight. Jackson wasn’t a villain. You’ve heard the evidence. He wasn’t much worse than any other man. Certainly better than my poor excuse of a husband had been. Jackson even had moments of decency, like when he gave Laurel his gun. I warned him not to. She was drinking so much by then, she could have blasted anybody who entered the house, including me. As it turned out, Laurel didn’t shoot anybody but herself. But in her own dim way, she managed to do me in, and I resent her for it. After a quarter century of Laurel—and flings with other air heads—Jackson’s system couldn’t tolerate a strong woman.

  So the bastard dumped me for a redheaded, tight-assed, brainless bimbo he flashed all over town. At least we had behaved like adults. We had been discreet. Even after he moved out of his house, we kept a profile lower than a mole’s. Not even Laurel suspected. To this day, nobody does.

  But what our discretion boils down to is this: Jackson never took me anywhere or bought me so much as a restaurant meal, let alone jewels or anything else of value. I could have used a financial gift or two. I churn out book after book, but it’s never enough.

  Anyway, given our secretiveness, I hadn’t a clue he was cheating on me until that woman in my book group rushed over to describe, in horrible detail, the passionate scene she’d witnessed between Jackson and the redheaded slut.

  And what I really heard her telling me was that I had absolutely nothing left. No Jackson, no husband, no youth, no money, no pride, no hope of anything good ever happening to me again. I hunted Jackson down and we had quite a scene. I humiliated myself, but the man was scum. He kept checking his watch, because his tootsie was waiting. When you understand how shabbily Jackson treated me, I’m sure you see why he had to be punished, no matter what he did or didn’t do to Laurel.

  Anyway, that day, after the fight with Jackson, I needed to be with a woman friend, and I figured Laurel understood man troubles. Don’t mistake my intent. I wasn’t going to say that it was her husband who’d done me wrong. I just figured we could cry in our beers—her beers—together.

  Except, midway between our houses, I heard the noise. It wasn’t like in the movies or TV. It was massive and definitely final.

  I ran to her door and knocked and rang—then I looked through the living room window. Laurel, or what was left of her, was on the couch. There was a gun on the floor, below her dangling hand. She’d taken the coward’s way out.

  It was awful. Worse than any horror story. I made it back to my place gagging and retching, intending to call emergency, even though I could tell it was all over for Laurel.

  And that was when I realized that it didn’t have to be all over for me. Why waste the material at hand? With all due modesty, I must say I came up with a concept that was beautiful in its simplicity. But, after all, that is my profession. Longtime neighbors like we were have each other’s house keys. I let myself into Laurel’s back door, picked up a chair and bashed in the locked netsuke cabinet. That’s when I found out Laurel hadn’t listened to me. She’d sold all but six of her netsukes. I nearly cried. My imagined profits had just evaporated, but I reminded myself that money wasn’t the main point.

  Still, money would have made it sweeter, and lots of money would have made it indescribably delectable, but I had no such luck. In fact, I eventually had to sell my six netsukes cheap in the black market because the murder case made too many headlines for reputable dealers to touch the things. My paltry take in no way compensated for the grief Jackson had caused me. In any case, as a secret netsuke seller myself, you can understand why I nearly had heart failure when Celia decided to play sleuth. Who knows which netsukes and which sales slips she might have unearthed?

  Anyway, that evening, I stuffed the tiny carvings in a grocery bag I’d brought because I’d been expecting the full three dozen. Then I lit a cigarette and put it and another lit match on the floor, near where Laurel’s hand dangled. When the rug caught, I left by the back door and was in my house in a minute.

  And that was that. Except for calling the fire department once I could see flames from my house. And except for my imaginative testimony, which, I can safely say, was my finest hour of storytelling. Besides, I had a willing audience. The cops were young and male. I was middle-aged and female, which is to say, a sexless, unthreatening, powerless and grandmotherly figure in their eyes. They automatically trusted me. I told them Laurel had told me Jackson was coming over that evening. And I told them Laurel was so pathologically afraid of guns she’d never allow one in the house. And I told them Jackson and Laurel had fought about the netsukes so much that she’d locked them up and hidden the key.

  They thanked me for being such a good citizen.

  Obviously, it isn’t true that all the world loves a lover. The lover’s former lover certainly doesn’t.

  Poor Jackson. He didn’t know that. He didn’t know anything. He never read the classics and didn’t understand what he was saying when he called me a Fury. The fact is, he didn’t even understand nonclassical, garden-variety fury.

  The kind hell hath none like.

  Live and learn.

  Clear Sailing

  Mr. Hackett stood at the entrance to the terrace, straining to hear beyond the cocktail chatter and shush of the palm fronds, out to the ocean. It was music to him—the sound of silent power, stealth, deceptive surface calm. He listened, inhaled deeply and felt ready to take on the night.

  The group of executives—his team, his people—were backlit by the sunset over the ocean. They looked elegant in their tropical finery (“resort casual” the agenda had suggested). Dressed for success, even at play, with their wives as their most spectacular accessories.

  As the company’s annual profits rose, the annual retreats had been set at ever more opulent, spectacular and exotic resorts. As if to keep up with the scenery, the wives were likewise upgraded, becoming ever younger and more aesthetically pleasing. A quick check by Mr. Hackett failed to reveal his own, unupgraded, wife, so, he decided, he was free to openly appreciate the flowerlike beauties as they posed, laughing excessively at whatever anyone said. Honing their wife-acts, Mrs. Hackett would say. She, the queen of fake-laughter, made fun of newcomers who copied her act. She didn’t like the ingénues, as she called them, the ever-younger wives, and she nastily suggested that they were evidence of some failing on their husbands’ part. Some childish belief that a spouse could turn back the clock. “They confuse women and mirrors,” she’d murmured—Hannah Hackett lacked the oomph to raise even her voice—“as if what they see is their own reflection, their own youth. Their wives are their very own portraits of Dora Ann Gray.”

  He had no idea what she was talking about, except that it was more proof of her menopausal jealousy. He smiled with pleasure at the young women’s animation, their overlarge gestures, their bright laughter. Their great legs. Their great tans. Their everything.

  He was starved for such views. The sight of Mrs. Hackett across a patio, let alone a marital bed, had long since lost its charm. And his short-term changes of scene were no longer enough. Why should he have to sneak a few hours of pleasure? He was the boss, the Number One Man. Look what his underlings had! It was time for a major revision of his landscape. He deserved it. He’d earned it.

  Hannah Hackett had been a ball of fire when they met, but the sad truth was, she was down to cool embers now. Whatever had once be
en had melted into a lump, with all the beauty and interest lumps had. His wife, as they said, hadn’t grown. Except in the hips. And waist. And thighs and upper arms. And her mind and interests were so narrowly focused on him, his career, his children, his home, he felt as if he were in a straitjacket.

  The young women gazed adoringly at their men. They knew which side their bread was buttered. And their men’s jowls almost jiggled with smug contentment, as well they might. They’d made it, and they had the wives to prove it.

  A person of consequence attracted the best of breed. It was nature’s way, survival of the fittest, nothing more, nothing less. Made the struggling and scrimping and clawing your way up worthwhile. To the victor goes the spoils. Speaking of something spoiled, where was Hannah? The least she could do was be here, do her one and only job.

  He frowned as a deafening buzz obliterated the sound of the ocean. A helicopter, he realized, circling the darkening sea. Jesus! Hannah was out sailing. Was she still out there, and in trouble? Sailing was Hannah’s one remaining passion, if the word “passion” could be applied to something basically dull. Hannah-like: quiet, solitary and interminable.

  So she could be out there, in trouble… His mind raced around that possibility until he realized he’d seen her in the lobby an hour ago, back from the day’s sail. The helicopters weren’t searching for Hannah.

  Damn.

  What was he going to do about that woman? He wanted her away. Permanently. Out of his sight. Didn’t want to start a mess, but somehow… She’d probably be relieved to be retired from being the CEO’s wife. Even phlegmatic Hannah must be bored with her do-nothing life.

  Problem was, judges tended to be over-generous to long-term first wives who had no life or income of their own. He’d have to get the accountant on it immediately, move funds, take care of things before he said a word to her.

  It wasn’t as if Hannah cared about him. If she did, she’d notice him, including noticing where he went, with whom he spent time. Wonder where he was when he wasn’t home. But she had no idea, zero, about his extra-curricular activities. Didn’t that mean she didn’t care? That he was below her notice? That she had no interest in him? Given that, there was no reason for him to feel guilty when his own wife didn’t notice his playing around. He was tethered to the most overly-domesticated woman on God’s green earth, and if it didn’t have to do with recipes, child-rearing or gardening, she wasn’t interested.