Murder Can Spoil Your Appetite (37 page)

I shook my head. “That was a pretty good piece of detective work,” I remarked.

“Well, chalk one up for me.” And with this, Doris began to cry, silently in the beginning, but soon she was pressing a wad of Kleenex to her eyes and sobbing audibly. The two women in the booth directly across from ours looked at us curiously, glancing away when I glared malevolently at them.

Doris’s crying jag lasted maybe a minute, during which time I reached over once or twice and awkwardly patted her arm. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, sniffling noisily when the worst of the storm was over. Then she excused herself and retreated to the ladies’ room, returning soon afterward with a freshly made-up face and a plucky smile fixed firmly in place.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I tried hard not to do that.”

“Please. Don’t apologize. I’m sure I’d react the same way if I learned that my husband was cheating like that.” And in an attempt to lighten things up a little: “If I
had
a husband, that is.”

“You don’t understand, Detective. I’ve known about Andrew’s catting around for years. Sheila isn’t his first—far from it. My husband and I don’t even have a marriage anymore, just an ‘arrangement.’ You see, Andrew doesn’t want a divorce. He claims he still loves me—which, as far as I’m concerned, is garbage. But I have a seventeen-year-old son by a previous marriage, and my main goal in life is to secure his future. The problem is, Danny’s—well, he’s a little slow. Not what you’d call retarded,” Doris added hastily, “just not as sharp as a lot of other kids his age. Danny’s very good with his hands, though—very artistic, too—and last year he began working for Andrew on weekends and during the summer. Andrew’s promised to give him a full-time job when he’s out of high school—a
decent
job. So I—” Suddenly the woman broke off in confusion. “Why am I telling you this?” she said. “What’s gotten into me anyway? I don’t suppose you’ll believe this, but I’m a very private person. Really.”

“There are times when everybody has to talk to somebody.”

“Not me,” Doris insisted, shaking her head vehemently. “Actually, as long as no one knew about Andrew’s fooling around, I could still hold my head up. Now, though, I discover that my closest friend has been helping him cheat on me. I can’t tell you how humiliated I feel.” Her lower lip began to tremble, but she quickly composed herself.

“Do you think Sheila was sleeping with your husband prior to Frank’s murder?”

“I know she was. I recall how Andrew and I attended a wedding over a year ago, and he was very attentive to this particular woman. I thought maybe
she
was the one. His latest, I mean. I wasn’t upset—I’m used to that kind of thing—but I was curious. Anyhow, I leaned all over her trying to determine if she was wearing Joy. She wasn’t.”

“And you say that Sheila is still sleeping with him?” I asked.

“Oh, yes.”

My God! That . . . that bitch! Here, all this time that Lou’s been so positive they’ve got the love affair of the ages, she’s had herself another man on the side.
“Tell me, have you confronted her yet?”

“No. In fact, I still talk to her on the phone almost every day and pretend that everything’s ducky. Naturally, I’m not any too eager to get together with her, but so far I’ve been able to come up with some pretty plausible excuses.”

“I don’t understand. Why haven’t you just told her to go to hell?”

Doris looked at me ruefully. “I can’t. You’ll probably think this is weird, but I refuse to let Andrew have the satisfaction of knowing that
I
know. And if I said anything to Sheila, it would almost certainly get back to him.”

Well, now I was completely thrown. And evidently it showed.

“Listen, you have no idea what he’s like,” Doris muttered. “It would give that perverted bastard a real kick to find out I’d learned about him and Sheila—and that I was even putting up with
that.
He—But this isn’t about Andrew. Like I said, he’s been seeing other women all along. And for the sake of my son, I can live with that. Where I draw the line, though, is with
her
betrayal.”

“I can appreciate how you feel.”

“Can you? Can you even
imagine
what it took out of me to let someone else in on what’s been going on between my husband and my best friend? But when I saw that article in the newspaper, I just had to do something. I suppose there
is
some vindictiveness involved here, but I can’t stand the thought that Sheila won’t be taking any responsibility for Frank’s murder.” Doris stretched so far across the table now that I could feel her breath on my cheeks. “I decided that maybe if your partner knew what kind of a person she actually
is
and that she’s been playing him for a sucker all this time, he’d quit protecting her. Do you think it’s possible?”

“I think there’s a very good chance of that.”

“You’ll talk to him?”

“I certainly will.” I was absolutely jubilant. I mean, Lou had killed two people and come close to making a pancake out of me because he was so enamored of Sheila Vincent and so convinced that she reciprocated his feelings. Well, he was about to become acquainted with the
real
Sheila. And that would
have
to make a difference. That is, if he believed me.

And he was going to believe me, all right. I chuckled inside.

Reaching down, I patted the humongous black leather handbag next to me on the seat. Today, besides all of the junk I usually cram into that bag, I’d added one thing more: the tape recorder that some months earlier had proved useful for the very first time in my career.

And now it was whirring away again.

“So,” Doris said then, “I guess that’s that.” She slid out of the booth.

“I can’t thank you enough for coming to me with this,” I told her, getting to my feet, too.

I was about to slip on my coat when she murmured, “I want you to know that a part of me doesn’t feel very good about what I did today.” There was pain on her face.

“Look,” I responded gently, “whatever happens to Sheila, keep in mind that her husband was the one who gave her that perfume. And no matter how much of a louse the man was, I like to think he had a hand in seeing that she gets hers.

“Don’t you?”

Listening to Miriam Weiden’s phone message that night, I was totally dumbstruck. Here she was, frantically informing my answering machine that someone was trying to kill her. And it just didn’t make any sense. Not from what I knew of the woman.

Of course, I have to admit that I didn’t come by most of my knowledge firsthand. In fact, I’d only been in her company once about three years earlier. The man I was seeing then—although I guess I shouldn’t say “was seeing” because I only went out with him a couple of times—had taken me to this formal benefit dinner. He was a big muck-a-muck at one of the television stations, and he went to those things pretty frequently. Me? It was my first—and only—venture into society.

We were seated at the same table—Mrs. Weiden, the muck-a-muck, and I. Initially I had no idea who she was. Her face wasn’t the least bit familiar, and it wasn’t as if her name were Trump or Tisch or anything. But over our poached salmon pipérade, she and I chatted briefly. And I learned that the woman was a true philanthropist—
and
that she refused to take any credit at all for her generosity. She regarded herself as blessed to have the means to be able to help those less fortunate.

At any rate, after that evening I’d spot a line or two in the New York papers every so often mentioning that she had contributed a humongous amount to some worthy cause or that she’d be chairing an important, star-studded charity event. But most telling of all were the photographs I would occasionally come across. I remember a picture of her reading to the children in a hospital ward. And another showing her carrying hot meals to shut-ins. More recently there was even a shot of her dishing out food at a local soup kitchen.

It’s possible you’ve seen her photo yourself: an attractive lady somewhere in her forties, with a better-than-average figure, nice, regular features, and dark, shoulder-length hair, the hairline forming a widow’s peak. (Some mean-spirited columnist had once written that the hairline had been surgically created. Well, that was Mrs. Weiden’s business. And anyway, big deal.) Most likely, though, you’d have had to read the accompanying caption to identify her.

Still, so what if she hadn’t achieved genuine celebrity status? Miriam Weiden was certainly the most impressive person I’d ever met. As far as I was concerned, she was maybe one step removed from sainthood. Believe me, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised to learn that she’d been canonized. But a target for
murder
?

I don’t suppose that anyone is immune from evil, though. And as I listened to her desperate cry for help that night, it was apparent that, for whatever reason, somebody wanted Mrs. Weiden dead. And very, very soon that’s exactly what she was.

Thanks in part, I’m afraid, to yours truly.