He stared at me. “What are you talking about?”
“Patty thought you and I made a good team. She’s always been fond of you.”
“No, she hasn’t.”
“It’s Lorna she didn’t like.” I sighed. “Trouble was, you and I argued. We’d both had a few beers. I took a swing at you and missed. Patty decided it was time for us to go. Not long after nine o’clock; she checked her watch. By then, you weren’t in a fit state to go anywhere, and anyway, according to what I’ve heard, the authorities are convinced Lorna was already dead.”
His face was stripped of expression. I guessed he was calculating pros and cons. That was Max: He always played the percentages.
“Are you serious about this?”
“Never more so.”
“We don’t have to drag Patty into this.”
I noticed the “we.” Progress. “Yes, we do. After all this time, we need to make it look credible. People might think I was simply trying to save my old partner’s good name if I was the only one giving him an alibi. Trust me, Patty and I have been tossing it around for a few days now. She agrees it’s for the best.”
He rubbed his chin. “I don’t know, Steve.”
“Yes, you do. It’s the only way. I’ll put the word around that I’ve only just got wind that people are seriously pointing the finger at you. You and I may not be working together anymore, but I’m keen to set the record straight.”
“But...”
“No buts. You want to spend the rest of your life like some pariah? Think about it.”
I could imagine his mind working, testing my proposition, checking it for flaws. Of course he would go along with it in the end. He had no choice, if Lorna was not to destroy his life the way she’d almost destroyed mine.
Lorna, Lorna, Lorna. I can still smell the gin on her breath the last time we were together. Still hear her striking the match to light yet another Lucky Strike from the crumpled pack. Still see her cupping her hands over the sudden flame. Still see her flicking ash all over the imitation Versailles rug. She was just waiting for me to call her a slut, but I said nothing, let her scorn wash over me like breakers on the shore. Even now I cringe at the memory of the coarse words, all the more shocking because they came from a scarlet mouth as cute as a bow-ribbon on a candy box.
“So how are you today?” asked Alice as she set up the tape recorder.
I made a slight movement with my shoulders. The doctor had talked to me that morning. There wasn’t much time left.
“You’re flying back home tonight?”
“Uh-huh.” She studied me. “I just want to say thanks for all your help. It can’t be easy for you, reliving the past when you aren’t well.”
“Those were the best years of my life,” I said. “It’s no hardship to bring them back to mind. You know, I never had another Top Thirty hit after the spring of ’sixty-seven. Thank God for Muzak. The royalties never stopped dribbling in, enough to keep Patty and me fed and watered.”
“What happened to her career?”
“Same as happened to mine, I guess.” I sighed, spoke almost to myself. “Doesn’t matter, it’s been a good marriage these past forty-odd years.”
“She’s coming to see you again this afternoon?”
“Never fails. The arthritis gives her hell, but she fights through the pain.”
“Did you stay in touch with Max?”
“Not really. We bumped into each other now and then. Last time I saw him must have been in the early ’seventies, just before he was killed in that plane crash.”
“You never wrote another song together after Lorna died?”
“No, things never seemed to jell. Our time had passed.”
“So why did you alibi him for Lorna’s death?”
Her voice had never sounded so sharp before. I flinched under her laser stare. “I told you before,” I said. “He didn’t kill her.”
“Maybe he didn’t,” she said. “Maybe someone else did.”
All of a sudden, I felt very cold. “What do you mean?”
“I talked to Lorna’s best friend. After all these years, she’s broken her silence, as the saying goes.”
“And?” My voice was no more than a croak.
“Lorna confided in her. Max’s affair pissed her off. So she decided to take revenge by bedding you. Dear, dependable, happily-married Steve. It helped prove how irresistible she was.”
“Girls talking,” I said. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”
She bent over me again. “Did she taunt you? Or threaten your security? Maybe it was that. Perhaps she said she would spill the beans. You couldn’t risk having Patty find out the truth. Was that why you shoved her down the stairs?”
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”
Lorna, Lorna, Lorna. The contempt in her glazed eyes that last time, when I told her life wasn’t like writing songs. You can’t keep changing partners. Nicotine-stained fingers jabbed into my gut as she told me to get out. No one ever dumped her, she said, no one. And certainly not a two-bit rhymester like Steve Jackson.
I could have killed her right then. Oh God, how I wanted to.
Patty arrived an hour later. All the time I’ve been in this place, she’s never missed a day. Her love for me has never skipped a beat. She’s been so faithful.
When I’d finished telling her about my conversations with Alice and the doctor, she took my hand. Hers was knobbly, deformed by the disease in her joints. I closed my eyes, recalling the smoothness of her skin when she was twenty-one.
“So she has her scoop, something to help sell her book? Lorna Key wasn’t killed by her husband but by her lover, Steve Jackson?”
“By the time she publishes, I’ll be dead and buried. She’s made sure of that by taking a good look at me and having a few words with the doctor. No need for her to worry. A corpse can’t sue for libel.”
Patty squeezed my hand tighter. “I won’t let her do it. I won’t let you do it.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“It doesn’t matter now. I may be losing you, but not for long. I still have those pills I told you about. You must tell her the truth.”
“Why me?”
“You’re the one who always had a way with words.”
“Lorna deserved to die.”
“No, she didn’t,” Patty said. “I was just a jealous bitch who killed another woman because I was afraid she’d wreck our marriage.”
Funny, she’d never talked about it before. And I’d never asked; there was no need. I’d guessed her secret as soon as she came home that night, the stench of Lorna’s Lucky Strikes clinging to her clothes, to her hair, to her skin. She’d never meant it to happen, I always told myself. Lorna was just killed by an unlucky strike.
“She didn’t succeed, did she?”
She kissed me lightly on the cheek. “No, darling. No one could ever tear us apart.”
So there it is, Alice. How wrong you were. This isn’t a murder mystery at all. It’s just like one of those trite old lyrics of mine, you see. A tearjerker, a heartbreaker. A story about love.
The Forest Forge
by Beatrix Kramlovsky
Translated from the German by Mary Tannert and Beatrix M. Kramlovsky.
Author of five books (two crime novels, a drama, a surreal novel, and a collection of stories), Austrian Beatrix Kramlovsky had an artistic profession prior to writing. She began drawing and painting at the age of three and became an exhibited artist (despite a prohibition against the display of her work) during the several years in which she and her husband lived in East Berlin. Since the family’s return to Austria in 1991, she has worked as an artist, writer, and teacher.