“Erika?”
“Dear, sweet, lovable, little Erika.” Carson’s voice dripped acid. “But you don’t know the girl you love, so how could you possibly know Erika?”
“I think I know her,” I said.
“A greedy, self-interested—” He jammed out his cigar in an ash tray on the desk. “She’s a cannibal, Vance. She been feeding off people all her life — off Mike, off Joan, off her friends, off Waldo. You know, I actually felt sorry for Waldo when he fell into that trap. It served his chiseling soul right, but I wouldn’t wish Erika on my worst enemy. She sucks you dry and leaves you for the Sanitation Department to collect with the morning trash. As I said, she’s a cannibal.” He smiled grimly. “Well, maybe this time she over-ate!”
“But what could Joan be covering?”
“Vance, you can’t read anything but the large print, can you? Who did kill Waldo?”
Carson had been a shot in the arm to me. Why hadn’t I relied on my certainty about Joan instead of accepting her story? Well, maybe it wasn’t going to be too late to make it up to her.
I picked up a paper on the corner and then took a taxi downtown to where they were holding Joan. I turned the ceiling light on in the cab and looked at the front page. Waldo had made it, with pictures. There was a background piece on his marriage to Erika and, of course, some mention of Mike. But there was nothing about Erika being missing. If McCuller had sent out a general alarm, as he threatened, it hadn’t been picked up by the newspaper boys, at least for this edition.
I was about to put the paper down when I noticed a follow-up story on the fire at the Spain. All but three of the twelve dead had been claimed by relatives or friends — two men and one woman. The unclaimed body of the woman was assumed to be that of Eloise Morton, Joan’s friend. That was odd, I thought, because Joan had been on her way to break the news to the Morton girl’s family when she’d left me at the Spain. The answer, I figured, was that the girl wasn’t Eloise Morton. Then I read the piece over again. No one had come forward to identify the body assumed to be Eloise Morton’s! The reporters must have slipped on that one.
Instead of the regular visiting cage at the jail I was ushered into a captain’s office.
“McCuller’s orders,” I heard one of the cops say.
Five minutes later they brought Joan in and left us alone. Poor darling, she looked all in. I didn’t say anything, but I did something I’d never dared do before. I walked over to her and put my arms around her, and the next thing I knew she was clinging to me and her whole body was shaken with sobs. I just hung on to her and stroked her hair and let her cry it out. Finally I gave her my handkerchief to blow with, and that made her smile a little; and then I moved her over and sat her down in the swivel chair at the captain’s desk.
“Listen,” I said. “For two years I’ve been wandering around like a smooch waiting for you to give me some kind of sign before I said anything to you. Well, I quit! I’m telling you, sign or no sign, that I love you, that I was a fool to believe that line of yours about Waldo, and that I’m going to keep on loving you whether you like it or not.”
“Oh, Vance,” she said shakily.
“Sign this,” I said, and put Carson’s authorization down on the desk in front of her. “It’s a technicality,” I told her. “Carson has to have this to show you want him on your side.” No use telling her Mike had walked out on her. Mike would be back, I told myself.
She signed the authorization and I put it in my pocket. I pulled up a straight chair and sat down.
“Now let’s start this thing over from the beginning,” I said. “Why did you go to the Wakefield to see Waldo last night?”
She turned her face away.
“Look, darling, I’m sure you have a reason for telling the story you did,” I said. “But I’m Vance, remember? You can tell me what the real reason was.”
“I can’t,” she said, her face still turned away.
My heart did a bump against my ribs. Those two words were an admission that she’d been lying.
“Where’s Erika?” I asked her quietly.
Her head turned quickly back to me and I saw that her eyes were wide with fright. “You know where she is, don’t you?”
She just stared at me, and I tried again: “She killed Waldo?”
“No!” It was just a whisper.
“What is it, darling? Did you suspect she was going to do it, and get there too late to stop her?”
“No. Erika didn’t kill him, Vance. She couldn’t have!”
“But you thought she might and you went there to warn him?”
“No.”
“Joan, for heaven’s sake, let me have it straight!”
She shook her head slowly. “I can’t, Vance. I wish I could.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“With my life,” she said. She gave me a little twisted smile. “If you were to ask for it”
I kissed her on the mouth then. We didn’t say anything for quite a while.
“We’ll announce it right away,” I said. “That’ll kill this other story.”
“No, Vance. We’ll have to wait.”
“For what?”
“For things to be cleared up,” she said. “Please, darling, don’t keep asking me to tell you something I can’t.”
“If it isn’t Erika you’re protecting, who is it? Is it Mike? Because he’s got an almost foolproof alibi.”
“Please, Vance, it has to be this way,” she said.
I could see I wasn’t going to break her down then, at least. “You better get as much rest and sleep as you possibly can,” I said. “McCuller will probably start to work on you when he wakes up. Don’t talk unless Carson is here.”
“I won’t talk,” she said.
I reached in my pocket for a cigarette, and felt the folded newspaper. “Oh, by the way — there’s a piece in the paper tonight that mentions your friend, Eloise Morton.”
“Who?” Joan said.
“Eloise Morton, the girl at the Spain!”
“Oh.”
“It says no one has claimed her body. Didn’t you get in touch with her parents?”
“I?”
“You were going to get in touch with her parents when I left you this morning.”
Joan had been pale when I arrived. Now her face was the color of chalk.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“You saw them?”
“No... no, they’re out of town.”
“Look, honey; you better tell me where they live, so the department can get things straightened out.”
She just stared at me. She moistened her lips but she didn’t say anything.
“Darling, what is it? I know it’s hard for you, but if you’ll give me the Mortons’ address I’ll handle it for you.”
She twisted her body around in the chair as though she was suddenly in mortal pain.
Then it hit me, right between the eyes, and it had been there all day for me to see and I had been too stupid to see it. Eloise Morton — E. M. Erika Malvern — E. M. The grief and panic on Joan’s face when I’d met her in the lobby of the Spain. The death of a school friend could have shocked her that much, but surely it would have had to be a close friend, someone Mike or the rest of us would have heard of.
I took Joan by the shoulders. I had to push my breath out hard to make a sound. “Erika?” I asked her.
She didn’t have to answer. It was there in her eyes.
Joan didn’t cry. It would have been almost better if she could have. Now that it was out between us, she talked, dry-eyed. It wasn’t a pretty story.
Most of the people who stayed at the Spain were permanent residents, elderly, not too well off. There was no smart bar or cocktail lounge. You just wouldn’t go there unless you knew someone who lived there.