She sat for about thirty seconds and simply looked at me. I was decidedly uncomfortable and wished I had sunglasses. I looked at the kid still chasing gulls. He was getting no closer.
“You’re not here to kill me,” she said conversationally.
“Kill you?”
“I think Raymond is planning to have me killed,” she said turning slightly toward me. “But I think you’re not the one.”
“Why does your husband want to kill you?” I asked.
“Money,” she said and then she smiled. “People thought I married Raymond for his money. I didn’t, Mr. Fonesca. I loved him. I would have gone on loving him. He was worth about one hundred thousand when we married, give or take a percentage or two in either direction. I, however, was worth close to eleven million dollars from an annuity, the sale of my father’s business when he died, and a very high yield insurance policy on both my parents.”
“It doesn’t make sense, Mrs. Sebastian,” I said.
“Miriam,” she said. “Call me Miriam. Your first name?”
“Lewis,” I said. “Lew.”
“It makes perfect sense to me,” she said. “I know that Raymond has been telling people that I am having an affair with Dr. Bermeister. Lew, I’ve been faithful to my husband from the day we met. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about him. I have ample evidence, including almost interrupting a session between Raymond and Caroline Wilkerson in the buff in our bed about five weeks ago.
It seems the man almost old enough to be my grandfather married me for my money. After I carefully closed the door without Raymond or Caroline seeing me, I went out, stayed in a hotel and returned the day I was supposed to.”
“Reason for divorce,” I said.
“My word against theirs,” she said. “He’d drag it on, hold up my assets. I haven’t the time, Lew.”
“So…?”
“So,” she said, “I did a little digging and discovered that Caroline was far from the first. I don’t know if he is just an old man afraid of accepting his age or if he simply craves the chase and the sex. I know he had no great interest in me in that department for the past year.”
“You waited five weeks after you knew all this and then suddenly walked out?” I asked.
“It took me five weeks to convert all my stocks and my life insurance policy to cash and to withdraw every penny I have in bank accounts. I didn’t want a scene and I didn’t want Raymond to know what I was doing, but by now he knows.”
“And you think he wants to kill you?”
“Yes. I don’t think he knows the extent of what I’ve done, nor that I’ve cashed in the insurance policy,” she said. “Raymond claims to be a real estate dealer. He has averaged a little over twenty-thousand dollars on his real estate deals each of the years we’ve been married. As for his investments, he has consistently lost money. I’d say that at the moment my husband, who is nearing seventy, thinks he’ll have millions when, in fact, he has what’s left on his credit cards, ten thousand dollars in his own bank account and a 1995 paid-for Lincoln Town Car.”
“And he’s trying to kill you before you get rid of your money?”
“Yes. But it’s too late. I’ve put all the money, but the thirty thousand I’ve kept with me in cash, into boxes and sent the boxes anonymously to various charities including the National Negro College Fund, the Salvation Army and many others.”
“Why don’t you just tell him?” I asked. “Or I can tell him.”
The toddler’s mother screamed at the boy who had wandered too far in pursuit of the gulls. The kid’s name was Harry.
“Then he wouldn’t try to have me killed,” she said.
“That’s the picture,” I said. “You know a short bulldog of a man, drives a blue Buick? He’s probably about ten years younger than your husband.”
“Zito,” she said. “Irving Zito.”
“He was following me today. I lost him.”
She shrugged.
“Irving is Raymond’s ‘personal’ assistant,” she said. “He has a record including a conviction for Murder Two. Don’t ask me how he and Raymond came together. The story I was told didn’t make much sense. So Irving Zito is the designated killer.”
“If you don’t tell your husband your money is gone and you just stay here, he’ll find you even if I don’t tell him.”
“And you don’t plan to tell him?” she asked.
“Not if you say ‘no,’” I said.
“Good. I say ‘no.’ Did he pay you by check?”
“Yes.”
“Cash it fast.”
“I did,” I said, “I thought it was too easy.”
“Too easy?”
“Finding you. Talk to Caroline Wilkerson at your husband’s suggestion. She sends me to Dr. Bermeister. He sends me to you and you wait for me. You wanted me to find you.”
“I wanted whoever was going to kill me to find me,” she said. “I’ll just have to wait till Zito and Raymond figure it out. If they don’t, Raymond will probably find another private detective with fewer scruples than you who will find me right here. I hope I have time to finish Tolstoy before he does.”
“You want to die?”
“I’ve left a letter with my lawyer, with documents, proving my husband’s infidelity, misuse of my money which I knew about but chose to ignore, and the statement that if I am found dead under suspicious circumstances, a full investigation of the likelihood of my husband’s being responsible is almost a certainty. Now that I know Irving Zito is involved, I’ll drive into Sarasota with a new letter including Zito’s name and add it to the statement I’ve given my lawyer.”
“You want to die,” I repeated though this time it wasn’t a question.
“No,” she said. “I don’t. But I’m going to within a few months even if Raymond doesn’t get the job done. I’m dying, Lew. Dr. Bermeister knows it. I started seeing him as a therapist when I first learned about the tumor more than a year ago. I didn’t want my husband to know. I arranged for treatment and surgery in New York and told my husband I simply wanted six weeks or so with old school friends, one of whom was getting married. He had no objections. I caught him and Caroline in bed the day I returned. I had hurried home a day early Obviously I wasn’t expected. Treatment and surgery proved relatively ineffective. The tumor is in a vital part of my brain and getting bigger. Raymond has never even noticed that I was ill. I don’t wish to die slowly in the hospital.”
“So you set your husband up,” I said.
Harry the toddler was back with his mother who was standing and brushing sand from the boy who was trying to pull away There were gulls to chase and water to wade in.
“Yes,” she said. “You disapprove?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “It’s your life.”
Janice Law
Secrets
from Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
My first and only failing grade in school came in sixth grade, when Miss Solway asked us to write a paragraph about a secret. Patty Tolliver set to work about a surprise birthday party for her dad. I could see “birthday party” and “hiding presents” and the rest of the story emerging in her big curling script. Eric Rodriguez printed something about fireworks in steeply angled lines. His letters grew smaller and messier as they approached the right edge of his paper, then swelled again into big, assertive words with each new line. Even Jon Hansem, the slowest kid in the class, was hard at work, but my mind refused to function. I sat sweating at my desk and turned in a blank page. At the end of the period Miss Solway called me up to her desk. She looked disappointed and asked if I was feeling all right. I said I was fine; I just didn’t have any secrets worth writing about. Miss Solway was unconvinced: I was considered a good, even an imaginative, student.