Duplicate Keys (7 page)

“Jim Ellis wasn’t a musician,” offered Alice. “He is my former husband.”

“A wholesale migration, then?” Honey smiled. Alice could not help smiling with him, but Susan remained sober faced. “In those days,” she said, “it seemed perfectly natural. We lived in Chicago for about a year, and before that we were in Minneapolis.”

“You have been close friends for a long time, then?”

“The band formed in the summer of 1968.”

“There have never been any falling-outs in all those years?”

“No,” said Susan.

“What about—” Honey flipped back a couple of pages in his notebook—“Mr. Dale Nolan?”

“Dale was the original drummer in the band. He moved to California some years ago, to be with another band. He wasn’t a particularly close friend, though.”

“There was some friction between him and the band?”

“Some.”

Honey waited for Susan to go on. So did Alice. She did not, until at last he prompted her. “What sort of friction?”

“He couldn’t get along with Craig. Craig thought he dragged the tempo.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t know.”

“And was he successful in this other band?”

“Very.”

“More so, for example, than he would have been if he had stayed?”

“Probably.”

“But he wasn’t a close friend?”

“No. He had other friends all along. He saw the band as just a job.”

“There have been other drummers?”

“Countless.”

“How did they get along with the band?”

“Fine with Noah and Denny. Craig had his ups and downs with them.”

“The latest is Mr. Jake Zimmerman?”

“Yes.”

“How long has he been with the band?”

“A couple of months.”

“How did you get along with Mr. Shellady, Miss Gabriel?”

“Fine.”

“Did you have your ups and downs?”

“Craig was a very moody person, with a hot temper, but also rather charming.”

“Did you see much of him?”

“Yes, he was at our apartment most of the time.”

“That was a satisfactory arrangement?”

“We were used to it, and it is a large apartment.” Susan took the long bobby pin out of her hair and replaced it with deliberation. “Do you have brothers, Detective Honey?”

“Yes, two.” Alice tried to imagine them.

“Craig was very much my boyfriend’s brother. I had to accept that a long time ago.” She paused, thinking, and then, apparently, decided to go on. “I liked Craig, but I understood his limitations. Denny loved him in spite of them, or maybe because of them, and I had to accept them, too. Denny and Craig were a package deal.”

“What were these limitations?”

“His hot temper wasn’t just a hot temper. It was a kind of psychotic interlude. He would become very, very abusive and paranoid. And he couldn’t manage his money very well.”

“Did he give rein to his temper physically?”

“If you mean, did he hit people, no, he didn’t. He was very eloquent. He didn’t need to hit people.”

“Did he take drugs?”

“Drugs weren’t the reason for his problems. Alcohol made it worse, though, and in the last few years he’s pretty much quit drinking.”

“What do you think was the reason for his problems?”

“His parents were both killed when he was twelve, for one thing. I’ve heard that his father had some problems, but I don’t know. They were killed in a car accident.”

“Mr. Minehart remained loyal to him? To the point of practically living with him?”

“Craig loved Denny, like everyone else. Denny could calm him down, and he never really got mad at Denny. Craig lived with
Denny’s family off and on after the accident, except for a couple of years when his aunts and uncles sent him to a military school.”

“He didn’t stay there for long?”

“He attempted suicide, I think.”

“In other words, Craig Shellady was a very troubled person?”

“Not exactly. Not day to day. It sounds worse than it is just listing it like this. He was very charming most of the time. Ask Alice.”

Suddenly both their gazes turned on Alice. She nodded immediately, without thinking. “He was very compelling,” she said, wondering if someone like Honey could understand limitless warmth, limitless oblique and edgy insight. “I can’t describe it.”

“Did he ever abuse you, Miss Ellis?”

“Mrs. No. He hardly ever got mad at women.”

“Sometimes?”

Alice looked at Susan, who said, “He threatened to kill me once. And there was a woman he was deeply involved with a few years ago who brought it out in him.”

“Her name?”

“Iris North.”

Honey wrote the name down. Alice detected a certain elevation in his level of interest, and said, “She’s dead. She died of a drug overdose about six months after they broke up.”

“Did Mr. Shellady take drugs?” This time he meant to be answered. Susan inhaled deeply, to Alice’s dismay. Finally, she said, “Sometimes. Once more than now.”

“What kind of drugs?”

“Marijuana. Speed for a while in California, and heroin, actually, there, too.”

“Cocaine?”

Alice felt Susan’s head turn in her direction, but did not lift her eyes from her lap. “Yes.” She spoke firmly. Alice began to be afraid. Honey shifted in his seat, which creaked loudly. He said, “I understand that the bodies are still at the morgue.”

“I’ve contacted a funeral home.”

“Work on them has been completed, so they can be released to you or to Mr. Minehart’s parents any time. May I ask what will be done with them?”

“I don’t know. The Mineharts are Catholic, but I would prefer cremation. The kind of funeral they want, no one can pay for, I’m afraid.”

Honey made a little noise of sympathy, then went on, somewhat expansively. “We also have finished with your apartment, Miss Gabriel, and the police lock will come down tomorrow morning. If you would prefer not to clean it yourself, I can give you the names of firms who would do a good job.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you for coming over.” He made it sound as if they had had a choice. Alice wished he would chew cigars and snarl at them. Then she might trust him.

On the street, once again, she was tempted to turn toward Central Park. As if reading her mind, Susan said, “Let’s go to the zoo.”

It was like coming out of a powerful movie with a date—while yearning to ask what Susan thought, she was afraid to appear so unperceptive that she didn’t already know. To make conversation, because any talk might lead into the subject, she said, “Ray and Noah will be there in an hour.”

“Don’t they have keys?”

“No. You have the only keys to my apartment.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

“Me, too.”

“They can wait. It’s a nice day.” She fell silent. After a moment, she sighed deeply. Impulsively, Alice put her arm through the other woman’s and drew close to her. At last she could say, gently, sympathetically, “What do you think?”

“Have you told him about that thing you had with Craig when Jim first moved in with Mariana?” Susan’s arm, which had pressed
softly into her soft side, seemed to Alice to grow angular and awkward. Nonetheless, she tightened her grip around it, saying, “That wasn’t a thing. It was just craziness.”

“Have you told him?”

“We only slept together three times.”

“The more he knows, the more chance that he’ll solve the murders.”

“What would that tell him?”

Susan extricated her arm, but didn’t say anything. The light changed as they approached Central Park West, and without hesitating they crossed the street and entered the park. When they had walked a short distance, Susan said, “I think the zoo is this way.”

Alice could not help saying sharply, “I don’t think I would call Craig’s tempers ‘psychotic interludes.’ I think that’s awfully strong.” When Susan didn’t answer, she said, “You made him sound like he should have been in an institution or something, as if you and Denny were his caretakers.” Susan looked at her as if to say, Well, weren’t we? and Alice raised her voice. “His temper was uncontrollable when he really lost it, but he didn’t really lose it that often. He was a volatile person. He was also very charming and lots of fun to be with, and he paid attention to how people were feeling and could be very sympathetic.”

“Really?”

“You know that!”

“When he was seeing Iris, he was in a state most of the time.”

“Iris was crazy. She really was. I don’t think you can blame most of that on Craig.”

“He fell for her. He stayed with her for over a year.”

“She was beautiful and she was smart. You said so yourself at the time. After that he was more or less trapped.”

“Now there’s something you can tell me all about.”

“He thought he could help her.”

“By beating her up?”

“Susan, she was picking guys up on the street that nobody knew and bringing them back to their apartment.”

“So she needed to be slapped around a little?”

“I didn’t say that! I don’t know that.” Alice was panting. She pushed her hair angrily out of her face and tried again. “Look, I admit Craig was different from other people. He was a jittery person. A feeling didn’t go by that he didn’t express. It could be irritating.”

“You know what Craig did? He did the same thing all his life. He got a death grip on someone with one hand, and then he beat them up with the other. Or gave them a kiss. You never knew what to expect. The signals were never consistent. I think that’s psychotic, not volatile.”

“Why do you make him into this monster? He was just a guy. He was nice to me.”

“Yes, I know.” They entered the zoo through the back, picked up in the trickle of families with folding strollers. Through her own anger, Alice saw that Susan was angry, too, and she felt thoroughly compromised. Really, so what if Susan was wrong about Craig? If that was the way she had to take the death of her boyfriend, then she should have the right to take it that way. Alice made herself look at the brown bear in his cage. No amount of money, she always thought, could transform this menagerie into a zoological garden. She thought of Craig and their “thing.” It was a pleasant thought. He had been very handsome and very kind when she needed it. As she stood in front of the bear, a shudder of desire closed her eyes, stopped her breath, constricted the arteries streaming from her heart. The soles of her feet prickled and she smiled, loving Craig briefly again; but she was used to thinking of that time in her life as madness. Every memory brought with it the fatigue of unceasing labor. The effort not to call Jim, not to walk past Mariana’s building, not to cry at work, even to go to work rather than stay in bed all day, the effort not to talk about Jim and “it” hour after hour to every ear nearby
had almost submerged her. With Craig, there had been a kind of mad relief to the madness: food and sex and skipping work to see morning movies at the Modern and talk of astrology and self-healing and The Eck and anything else that made the end of her marriage seem trivial. She turned away from the bear, following Susan through the gate into the main quadrangle. Knowing what she knew, how could she fight with Susan, who could have no idea of the tide of pain yet to come? She ran and caught up with her friend. “Susan,” she said, “I didn’t mean to fight with you.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Let’s go home.”

“I have money. Let’s take a cab.” She reached into her pocket and extricated a five-dollar bill, opening her hand and holding it out to Susan as an offering. “Let’s,” said Susan.

A
T DINNER
, Susan told them that she would be arranging for a large Catholic funeral with limousines, then for the bodies to be flown to Minnesota. She told them how much it would cost. They gasped. After a moment, Ray said, “How are you going to pay for it?”

Susan looked around the table with a grimace and a jut of the chin and said, “Go into debt.”

“Can’t his parents help?” suggested Rya.

“With eight kids and two in college? They’re going to pay for the shipment of the bodies and the cemetery plots.”

“No insurance, huh?” said Ray.

“They were self-employed. Do you have insurance?” Susan grimaced again and picked up a tiny fragment of lettuce from her plate.

“As a matter of fact—”

“I found a funeral home up in the Bronx with a time payment plan. They’ve already picked them up.” She looked around the table again, as if daring herself not to cry, or scream, or throw something. Soon, when it was still light, Rya and Noah and Ray
had gone. Alice said, “Susan, why do you think you have to—” Susan turned away from her and walked down the hall to bed.

Alice cleared away the dishes and threw out cartons from the take-out food. Tonight it had been Italian. Except for the anchovy that Alice retrieved and stuck in her mouth, every morsel of pasta, every drop of oil and sauce had been eaten. After wiping the kitchen table, she turned resolutely from the dishes, got out her list of things to do, and spread it out. At the top was that command, “Call home.” How, after hearing the sum of money Susan had quoted at the dinner table, could she persuade her father and mother that she was not in trouble? She looked out at Eighty-fourth Street, where her parents had never been, basking in the long vermilion rays of the late sun. A cab slid beneath her, but only one. Eighty-fourth Street, neatly squared off and deserted, grew blue and then black. Then the streetlights came on, and across from her, a scattering of windows. Her parents never travelled, wouldn’t leave Rochester. When they thought of Alice, they thought of her in her bedroom at home, not in her home in New York City.

During her childhood, they hadn’t taken vacations because her father couldn’t get away from the hardware store, and there was so much to do around the new house (which he built). During her adolescence, her mother, a pediatric nurse for a private clinic, hadn’t felt right about leaving “my babies,” even for two weeks, and now that all of Alice’s grandparents were in their eighties and nineties, there was just no telling what might happen while Doreen and Hugh were away. In fact, between the lettuce season and the raspberry picking, spraying the apple trees at ten-day intervals, and then the harvest of tomatoes, peppers, and beans, not to mention keeping the roses watered, sprayed and mulched, there wasn’t time to get away in the summer, they didn’t like what they’d heard about Florida in the winter, and there was too much to do in Rochester during the rest of the year. Although Alice would have liked to show off for her parents—to call a cab,
to take her mother to Saks and buy a dress for her, to order in French at a midtown restaurant, to sit in overstuffed chairs with her father at the Algonquin Hotel, Alice really didn’t mind that they would never visit her, except that now they wouldn’t know how to think about the recent events. They would imagine her living alone in New York, avoid telling her grandparents, and then spill it to them one by one, so that the clamor about her coming back to Rochester, or at least to Minneapolis, would be deafening. All six of her progenitors would call her secretly, without telling the others, just to let her know how much her safety meant to the other five, how, in spite of the confidence the caller had in her, the others were worried, shouldn’t she come home, a good job couldn’t be that hard to find. The only child of two only children, Alice considered herself the tip of the iceberg breaking the surface of the dark sea into the light of Manhattan. Truly she loved her miraculously surviving family tree (and two great-grandmothers had lived into Alice’s teens) but she didn’t want to live with them. And now they would think she was in trouble.