Death of a Sunday Writer (15 page)

“She isn't about to be picked up,” he reported.

“Not by you, anyway.”

“Not by anybody. She's doing a Garbo. Now she's leaving.”

Then Lucy realised that Brighton was half right, but only half. Suddenly she thought she knew what was going on. She stood up quickly. “You stay where you are,” she said. “Call me tomorrow and I'll tell you what she's up to.”

On her way out she spoke to the doorman. “That man over there has been bothering me,” she said. “Could you stop him from following me out.”

The waiter looked at the two quarters she had slipped into his hand.” Give me another dime and I'll have him killed. What d'ya come in here for, anyway?”

The husband appeared the next morning. Lucy gave him an account of the evening she had spent following his wife's innocent progress, and he put three fifty dollar-bills on the desk. “Plus ten for drinks?” He added two fives.

Lucy swept the money up like a croupier. “Next week?”

He nodded and started to rise.

Lucy squared herself to the desk. She had been thinking about her client for most of the morning and she knew she was right. This wasn't agoraphobia. She had been kicking herself ever since she had realised in Yuk-Yuk's the night before what was going on, kicking herself for not having realised how widespread the problem was. Having lived for most of her life with a man who barred every exit should have made her an expert, and this man was worse than Geoffrey. The woman had obviously fought to get an hour or two of freedom once a week, and Lucy had been hired to make sure she did nothing with it. She said, “You
know, Mr. Lindberg, sometimes she seems to know I'm following her.”

“How's that?”

“She does everything so deliberately, as if she's afraid that
she'll
lose
me.”
Your wife is not stupid, she wanted to say. This isn't going to work.

Lindberg rejected the message. “Be careful. If she catches on that you're on her tail, she'll panic, and I'll never get her out again. Yuk-Yuk's, eh? That's good, isn't it? I mean, that's a pretty public place. This thing of being deliberate, as you call it. It's natural. It's one step at a time with this kind of thing. She's on the edge of panic the whole time, always wants to run back home.”

“Why don't you take her out somewhere nice?”

“I didn't come in here for marriage counselling. I know what I'm doing. Just do it like I say. Keep an eye on her. Okay? It's not dangerous. If you don't want the job I'll get somebody else. But I'm happy with you.”

Lucy pretended to give in. “Same time and place?”

“Thursday. Eight o'clock.”

She thought about the best way of approaching the wife. At some point, if the pattern held, the woman would be sitting by herself, in a bar or a restaurant. Lucy would sit nearby, engage her in conversation, being careful not to alarm her, then reveal herself. It was what she would say next that was important. Maybe she shouldn't reveal herself, but, if the conversation worked, simply declare herself a fellow victim and hope the woman responded. The important thing was to let her know that comfort and help were available. And to give her the strength to deal with the
creep. If necessary, Lucy would offer her the loan of her cousin's apartment for a while.

Unless, of course, the woman liked her situation. There could be some kind of sick symbiosis operating between them, the equivalent of — what was it — S and M? Brighton, she remembered, had been concerned from the beginning, had smelt a rat early. Could it be that it really was some elaborate trap, and she herself the victim? A dozen psychological thrillers ran through her mind. Would she finish up in a dank basement, chained to the wall along with the remains of three other private investigators, her predecessors? Logic, commonsense and courage returned to remind her that it was a long way from Yuk-Yuk's to a dank basement and that she could end her contract the moment her client led her down any dark stairs. “You'll do fine,” the husband had said. Why? Why did she do? Nevertheless, she decided to find out.

By the following Thursday, Lucy had made up her mind, keeping her nonsensical fears at bay, and was concentrating on her duty as a woman.

As for her cousin's death, although there was not a shred of evidence that Trimble had been murdered, she had not proved that he had not been murdered. A man like Trimble, mixed up with the kind of people he knew, could never, in all Lucy's literary experience, have died accidentally. The fact that she had not found any particular reason why he might have been killed, could (and should) be turned on its head. Such reasons simply had not come to light. Thus, while her common-sense put up a struggle against her genre-loaded fancy, she could not resist from feelings of disappointment as much as anything, picking away at the scab over her doubt.

Her next caller appeared as if to confirm her resolution to help Lindberg's wife.

She had created a file on the Lindberg case, and was just calling it up on the screen when the knock came. She shouted over her shoulder for the visitor to come in and turned to find Geoffrey, her husband, advancing towards the desk. Lucy watched him sit down, an instinct telling her to gain an advantage by staying silent. He folded one leg over the other and crossed his arms. He was a large, bony, grey man: an old grey suit, large black battered shoes, a worn-looking and greasy tie, grey and black hair and dark jowls on sunless skin. He looks like a spider, she thought, a giant spider. How did I ever marry him?

“What do you think you are up to?” he began.

It was the worst possible opening for his cause. Lucy had been afraid of a soft question, a smile, an attempted apology, even — it was conceivable — tears. She had felt such a change in herself, slowly over a year, then much more rapidly, that she was very aware of how far she had come from the person he had known, and she had wondered if he, too, might have altered in some way. But his opening question showed that nothing had changed.

Lucy remained silent.

After a very long pause, perhaps a minute, he said, as she guessed he would, “I asked you a question.”

“I heard you. I told you the answer yesterday. Now please go away.” She bit back the politeness of his name.

He reared up from the chair. “Don't you talk to me like that.” His voice rose with him. “I'm entitled to know what you're doing — and who with.”

The door opened. “Everything all right, Lucy?” It was Peter Tse.

“Who the hell is
this?”
Geoffrey shouted.

Tse ignored him, continuing to look at Lucy.

“This is my landlord. Mr. Tse. This is my former husband.”

Neither man moved.

“And now I'd like you to leave,” she added.

Tse came into the room and held the door open. Geoffrey jumped out of his chair and picked it up, holding it above his head. Lucy backed up into the computer, and Tse took three quick steps around the desk to put himself in front of her. Geoffrey half-turned, looked around the room, and threw the chair at the mirror where it banged against the frame without breaking the glass, then he made as if to tip the desk over on to Lucy and Tse, but succeeded only in scrabbling with his fingertips under the very tiny lip that the desk offered. Finally, he gave a giant kick at the wastebasket, and left.

Tse picked up the chair and set it on its legs and tidied up the paper that had spilled out of the basket. “You all right?” he asked.

Lucy, huddled in her chair, gave a tiny nod.

“A cup of coffee?”

She nodded.

By the time Tse returned she was more or less together. He put the coffee on the desk and turned to the door. “I'll be across the hall if he comes back.”

“Do you think he will?”

Tse shook his head. “He's not a fighting man. Did he ever hit you?”

“No, never. I've never seen him like that.”

“He was acting. Not dangerous.”

She saw immediately that Tse was right. Geoffrey had put on a performance of an enraged, dangerous husband, but it wasn't in him actually to lose control. In the catalogue of his faults, that one was missing.

“Yes,” she said. “He would never throw the chair at me. But how would you know that?” She shook herself. “That's the last of him, I think. Perhaps it needed that.”

“When did you leave him, Lucy?”

“Two years ago.”

“After a fight?”

“No. I was gardening at the time.”

Tse looked politely incredulous, waiting for more.

It was true that the moment had finally come in the garden. She had read somewhere that Diaghilev's wife used to garden naked when she was well into her eighties, and she was fantasising imitating her example, just for the pleasure of wondering how Geoffrey would cope with the sight. It had seemed to her that the smallest attempt at self-discovery on her part brought an instant objection from him. “What do you want to join a choir for?” he had asked. “You can't really sing. I've never heard you mention choir-singing. When does this choir practise? Where? How much time will it take?” On and on and on. It was the same with every single attempt to change their world, from taking off the front porch to serving olives instead of peanuts while they were waiting for dinner. The slightest flutter of her wings brought out his clippers.

Now she leaned over to pick off the head of a peony, still fantasising playing Mrs. Diaghilev (kneepads, gloves and a hat — nothing else, she thought. It would probably be like vacuuming in the nude), when Geoffrey spoke
from the back door. “I think all this gardening is a waste of time,” he had begun. “You can buy them for almost nothing at this time of year.”

Deep in her reverie, she jumped sharply at being caught naked, then woke up and became furious.

“Lucy,” he called sharply.

“I heard you,” she said to the peony, refusing to look up.

“That Almond woman phoned.”

Betty Almond was a new acquaintance of Lucy's, her friend, not his and hers.

“When?” Lucy asked.

“They only last a few days, anyway. Why bother?”

“When did Betty phone?”

“The Almond woman? Just now. I told her you were busy. Said you'd call back.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“You don't have to be at everybody's beck and call all the time. She said something about some plant you might want.”

“When did you say I would call back?”

“I didn't. I just said you would.”

Lucy continued to address the peony. “You mean she phoned, you looked out the window and saw me in the garden, so you said, ‘She's busy. She'll call you back.'”

“More or less.”

She took off her gloves and went back past him into the house. Half an hour later she had showered, and she had only to wait for him to leave to play golf. When he returned, she had left.

Now she said, “Yes, Peter, gardening. I'll tell you all about it some time.”

“Peter, what time did you come in and find David? Do you remember?”

“For Chrissake, Lucy. Leave it alone. You've got a nice little watching case. You're making the rent. Stick to that.”

“Yes, but what time was it?”

“I'm not sure.”

“But it's
important.
The police said he had been dead for an hour when they examined him at 9:40. So he died between 8:30 and whenever you came in.”

“I can't be too precise. Somewhere between 9:22 and 9:23. I can't get any closer than that.”

“All right, all right. How do you know?”

“Every day I take my little niece to the day-care centre at Ryerson school.”

“Why you?”

“Because I offered. So I can have her to myself for half an hour every day. I don't have any kids. I have two brothers, but only one of us is married and he just has this one girl so we have to share her. I get to take her to
school. I have a place to park in the schoolyard and I get there at five to nine. I leave at nine, when I have delivered her, and I walk here. It takes me twenty-two or twenty-three minutes, depending if the light on Queen street is red or green.”

Tse was grinning, but she pressed on.

“Why don't you park here? It's your building.”

“You giving me the third degree? You think I killed him?”

“Don't be silly. I'm just trying to get it all clear in my head and make sure I've asked all the questions, that I haven't overlooked anything.” And yet, she thought, none of her favourites would have eliminated Tse, even though you were not supposed to make an oriental the villain any more.

“The parking in the school yard is free,” Tse said. “I rent the spaces behind this building for fifty a month. You want to rent one?”

“Is that the real reason why you take your niece to school? To get free parking?”

Tse stopped smiling.

“I'm sorry. I'm a bit upset and taking it out on you. Forget I said that, please. So, if anyone came in they would have to have done it between 8:40 and — what? — nine-fifteen? Earlier. Nina said it was about nine when she saw him. Oh, hell, it doesn't matter what time you came in, does it?”

“Except for my alibi.”

“I said I'm sorry. But no one can get in the building without a key, can they?”

“Right. And the other people already here were Mr. Twomey the acupuncturist and Jessie Kwon the audiologist. It must have been one of them.”

Lucy didn't respond. Tse had earned the right to tease her a little. The phone rang. It was Nina. “What about having lunch today?”

Lucy looked up and waved through the window. “I'll be there at twelve.”

“Look over first in case I've got a customer. If I have, wait there.”

Tse had seen himself out, and Lucy looked around the office for something to do. The phone rang again. It was Jack Brighton. Before he could begin, Lucy jumped in. “I hope you aren't thinking of following me again.”