“If you’d shut up for a few minutes, I’ll explain.”
“Goddamn, Taylor—”
“Shut up Truman. Will ya?”
I told him all about Irene Brown, about how I spooked her into tossing the shoes, about what the Dakota County folks were going to do next. Truman surprised me by not uttering a syllable until I was finished.
“What do you think?” he asked at last.
“You asked me for my best guess. Well, my best guess is that Irene Brown is guilty of murder. Only I doubt Dakota County can make the charge stick even if forensics does discover corroborating evidence. Without a body, a good defense attorney should be able to clobber the county attorney. Hell, Truman, even you could win this one.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” he agreed. After a long pause, he asked, “Is that it?”
“That’s it. I’ll send you a bill.”
“You’re not looking into it anymore?”
“You wanted my best guess. Well, you have it. There’s nothing more that I can do.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m having lunch today at W. A. Frost with someone involved in the case. If I hear anything new, I’ll give you a call.”
“Fine,” he said and hung up.
“Yeah, pleasure doing business with you, too, Truman,” I told the dead receiver.
“I should warn you before you order that I’m not buying after all,” Anne told me as she perused her menu.
“You’re not?” I asked, surprised.
She shook her head.
“What happened?”
“Raymond Fleck confessed to the murder after he learned that the Dakota County deputies arrested Irene.”
“He did?”
“Irene Brown then confessed a few minutes after she learned that Raymond was in custody.”
“She did?”
“Which means Irene did it and Raymond’s trying to protect her, or Raymond did it and Irene’s trying to protect him. …”
I stared at my menu, not really seeing it.
“Or worse,” she added, “they both did it and this is just a nifty way to interject a reasonable doubt into their trials. Both had motive, both had opportunity, both confessed willingly. Who do you believe? Who will a jury believe?” Anne shrugged. “Without the body, neither Raymond nor Irene can prove that they’re telling the truth. Without the body we can’t prove that either or both of them are lying. And neither of them is willing to lead the deputies to the body.”
“I just had a sickening thought.”
“What?”
“What if they can’t lead them to Alison? What if neither of them did it, but both believe the other did, and they’re only confessing to protect each other? Call it the Gift of the Magi defense.”
“People in love do amazing things,” Anne agreed.
“Hell, I didn’t catch anybody,” I griped, tossing my menu onto the white tablecloth.
“Buy your own damn lunch,” Annie told me.
We parted with a hug in the parking lot of the YWCA just down the street from the restaurant. Annie was parked in the first row, my car was way in the back. When I reached it, I found a folded sheet of plain white typing paper jammed under my windshield wiper. I unfolded it, expecting to learn that I was invited to the grand opening of a car wash or some damn thing. Instead, the note, written in black marker, read: STAY AWAY FROM THE EMERTON CASE IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU!
“Annie!” I yelled.
Fortunately her car window was rolled down to hear me, and she stopped just as she was about to exit the parking lot. “What?” she called. “Are Raymond and Irene still in custody?”
“Yes.”
“Damn,” I muttered, reading the note a third time. I really hadn’t caught anybody.
Truman listened patiently as I told him of my discovery of the note.
“What does it mean?” he wanted to know.
“Just what it says. Someone wants me off the case, and it’s not Raymond or Irene.”
“Who?”
“Obviously someone who knows I was working the case. Stephen Emerton. The employees at Kennel-Up. I’m betting on Stephen Emerton, though.”
“Why?”
“Yesterday he admitted to me that he believed Alison was having an affair with Raymond because he believed Alison had had an affair with an unidentified employee, possibly a doctor, while she was employed by the health-care organization. That makes him a stronger suspect, and it could be he’s afraid I’ll pass it on to the cops or his insurance company.”
“That’s bullshit,” Truman insisted. At first I thought he was defending Emerton. A moment later I knew better. “That’s absolute bullshit. There’s no fucking way Alison would do that. He’s lying.”
“He has no reason to lie,” I reminded Truman. “It hurts him more than it helps him.”
“That’s real bullshit.”
“Maybe it’s bullshit that Alison was having an affair”—I thought of the photograph, the black and white number that made her look like a cat on the prowl and the word caught in my throat—“but if Emerton believes it’s true …”
“Yeah?”
“That’s motive,” I concluded. “He didn’t admit it to the cops but he did to me, and now I’m thinking that last night he lost a lot of sleep over it.”
“And put the note on your windshield?”
“It could have been someone else,” I admitted. “But he’s my only suspect right now.” My inner voice was speaking to me again. It whispered, Alison couldn’t possibly have done it if she’s in Bermuda.
“You think we should look into it,” Truman told me.
“Yes. But it’s your nickel.”
Truman made clicking sounds with his tongue; over the phone it sounded like the ticking of a clock.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “If Irene or Raymond or both of them really did kill Alison, digging up another suspect could only help them at trial, am I right?”
“Possibly,” I agreed.
“But you think we should look into it, anyway?”
“Yes.” Although a small part of me wanted Truman to say no.
“Why?”
“Because someone doesn’t want us to.”
“There’s a New York actress named Holland Taylor; pretty good one, too,” Marie Audette reminded me when I met her in the lobby of a downtown Minneapolis recording studio.
“So I’ve been told,” I said.
“Any relation?”
“No,” I answered, without adding that I’ve always wanted to meet the woman.
After speaking with Hunter Truman, I located the names of Alison’s two best friends in my notes. The first was Marie Audette. Her agent told me she was recording a voice-over for a TV spot, and I arranged to meet her before the session began.
“I heard on the radio coming over here that a woman was arrested for killing Alison. Do you know anything about that?” she asked.
I told her that I did, told her I was partly responsible for apprehending the woman. If Cynthia had been there, she would have accused me of grandstanding. I assure you, my motives were pure. I wanted Marie’s gratitude, yes, but only because I figured it would make her more receptive to my questions. The lovely, affectionate smile she bestowed on me was merely a bonus.
“Alison and I were very close while we were at the university,” Marie confided in a throaty, sensual voice—yeah, I could see why people would pay her serious money to speak eloquently about detergent and fax machines. “She was like my little sister, which is kind of funny when you think about it. She was eighteen and I was twenty-two, but she was a senior and I was only a junior. God, she was smart. She could have been a great actress. She had this ability to totally immerse herself into a role, to actually become the character she was playing. Like Meryl Streep … Well, maybe not quite like Streep.”
“I have a photograph of the two of you,” I told her. “You’re in costume. European, I think.”
“The Cherry Orchard?”
I shrugged my ignorance.
“We did Chekhov for the university theater company. She was Anya to my Varya. She was wonderful; great reviews. The critic from the Star Tribune said Alison was, quote, ‘an actor to watch.’”