One message my brain had gotten through was “go look at the scene at night, dummy,” so after I dropped her off, I drove back to the hill. A line of trash containers and bags had joined Mrs. Guidron’s twenty year collection of old utility bills at the curb to await the morning pickup.
Big problem these days — trash. Time was when all our back yards had a perforated fire barrel, primarily for burning leaves but also very handy for disposing of anything combustible — like old utility bills. Environmentalists had killed that.
The lab in my mind was still gurgling, flashing, snapping, and crackling.
On the night Alfie had died, the trash trucks would have already been through. Anything you wanted to get rid of since then would have to await tomorrow’s pickup after which it would disappear forever in a landfill. Bodies had been known to disappear into landfills.
I looked at the forlorn, halffull trash bag on Marji’s curb and at the heavy container on Mrs. Guidron’s.
Boom! The lab exploded. Twenty years of old utility bills? Which could have been discarded at any time. Why now? Possibly to help conceal something in a container only half-filled because she would normally generate only as much trash as another single person like Marji? I’d always told Woody that if I wanted to get rid of something, I’d wrap it well, bury it deep in a trash bag, and be reasonably sure it would never be seen again, which couldn’t be said for dropping it in a river or burying it somewhere.
I left the car, lifted the lid, and queasily slipped my hand into the dark interior. If I was wrong, my only reward would probably be some heretofore unknown disease that would send the entire country into another spasm of health hysteria.
My fingers worked their way through dry sheets of paper — among other wet and slimy things I dreaded even to speculate about — until they felt a plastic bag holding something soft and yielding. I pulled it out and kneaded it. Beneath the softness was something very hard. Like metal. And although its wrapping prevented sharp definition, it felt suspiciously like a gun.
I sat on the curb under the soft yellow light of the street lamp, holding it in both hands and looking at the church across the way. Behind me, I knew she was watching. Impossible for anyone to sleep until that empty trash container hit the sidewalk the next morning.
The gun was an old Luger wrapped in a white sweater and a dark blue skirt. The labels said they could only have come out of Maison de Jeanine — the mandatory local chic shoppe for the elite.
She’d looked at them in Woody’s big hands and smiled. No, she didn’t want her lawyer present. Nothing he could do for her.
The two families were always very close, she said softly, lives intertwined in a kinship as close as blood. The others scattered, she and Marji were the only two left here, so she felt she had to look out for her.
Her living room was so huge that the polished furniture faded into the shadows. The grand piano in the corner was probably worth more than some of the houses farther down the hill. There were framed photos everywhere of solemn people, laughing people; studio portraits and snapshots, many yellow with age. I had the feeling that all were still somewhere in the house.
A banker friend told her Alfie was using Marji. Cars hadn’t been selling, and the banks were threatening to take over his dealerships. He was talking Marji out of enough money to hold them off. Fine. It was her money, but he was bragging he’d found an enjoyable way to stay out of bankruptcy at the cost of a little time. Once he’d drained her dry, he’d leave. No point in talking to Marji. She wouldn’t have believed her. So when she saw the weasel leave the house, she went down and talked to him. She told him that if Marji’s father was alive, he’d shoot him. He laughed. Her father is dead, he said. I’m not, she said. And shot him with the Luger her husband had brought back from the war in Europe. She went back to the house and came out again when Marji began to scream.
She shrugged. “What can the justice system do to me? Send me to a women’s prison? At least I’ll have someone to talk to during the day.” She waved at the room. “Holding conversations with memories puts you in a white coat eventually, sheriff.”
Woody turned off his tape recorder and sighed. Women committing crimes made him uncomfortable. He preferred his perpetrators to be men.
“I’ll have this typed up for your signature,” he said.
“Don’t waste your time,” I said. “It’s a good story, Mrs. Guidron, but let’s start again. To the sheriff, you’re the dignified descendant of one of our old families, whose father was once mayor. Too honorable to lie. But I know what you’re trying to do and why.”
She frowned at me. Woody leaned forward, looking stunned.
“I hate to do this, but in loco parentis has its limits. If you’d killed Alfie, you’d have no reason to mention a running figure at all, much less one that disappeared alongside the church. Which means there was a figure. Unfortunately, you told Woody before you figured it out. You knew that eventually he’d ask himself, as I did, why the killer ran under the light of the street lamp with a dark neighborhood to choose from. Answer — only that route would take him where he wanted to go. Not to a car. No point in parking around the corner when it could have been parked in the darkness down the street. So he didn’t turn right. He turned left. Why? To get to the back door of Marji’s house and then out the front. I thought of it, but dismissed it because of the people who saw her emerge robed and barefooted. Very clever of her. She gave them what they expected. But no one is equipped with X-ray eyes. What was under the robe? Sexy nightgown? Nothing?”
Her glare could have brought on another ice age.
“Marji might have been naive, but she isn’t stupid. When she decided to shoot Alfie for making a fool of her, she certainly didn’t want attention focused on her. She knew he’d leave at about eleven whether she was there or not. So she waited and walked up to him. If she sensed things weren’t quite right, Alfie would get an apology and a goodnight kiss instead of a bullet. But afterward? The shot could wake someone up, so she needed a little misdirection. She zipped past the church, through her back door, stripped off shoes, stockings, and skirt, messed up her hair, and threw on a robe. Two or three minutes later she was screaming over the body. Barefoot woman in a robe. How else would one be dressed after entertaining her lover? Who would think for a moment she hadn’t been inside? Or connect her with the running figure? I’m sure you didn’t. At the time.”
Her silence was enough.
“Neither would a cop. And even if he did, he’d never have the nerve to peek under the robe of a screaming, weeping woman. I know I wouldn’t. But Marji said or did something that gave her away. You picked it up.”
Her lips tightened almost imperceptibly. I smiled.
“That was it, wasn’t it? When you helped her into the house, you noticed she was half dressed. When she told you how she planned to dispose of the clothes and gun, your experience in the D.A.’s office told you it was risky. You had a better idea. Why not put them in your trash? If the container had been at the curb that night, it would have been searched, but a week later? Not likely. And if someone did, your story was ready. Better your life, almost over, than hers, just beginning. No prints on the gun? You’d know enough to wipe them off. The clothes? Perhaps not your exact size, but close enough.”
I waited again. “No protest? Good. Determining who bought and wore the clothes should be no trouble at all.”
The glare had subsided into resignation.
“Don’t hold it against me,” I said. “If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t have said a word.”