She wore a red tube top and tight, black designer jeans. How perfectly, color-wise, her top and lipstick coordinated with her throat.
Jimmy hoped his necrophilic fantasies weren’t too obvious. He must mention them to Dr. Larsen tomorrow.
Jimmy Peyton was a fat little boy in a blond, blueeyed hunk disguise. He had fooled many women, since he always took off before the disguise slipped.
Lieutenant Peyton surveyed the huge, decadently ornate bedroom. He was a great, bloated version of his son with a cloud gray crew cut. “Judging by that crap on the dressing table, she liked spending money.”
“Or knew how to get some guy to spend it for her.”
Lieutenant Peyton winked approvingly, which gave Jimmy a glow, then turned his attention to the bed. “Black silk sheets. Now, what does that tell you?”
“I don’t think you should jump to conclusions, Dad.”
“You want to get to my rank, you’d better.”
The glow faded.
The Welch living room was expensively furnished, spotlessly clean, and coldly neat. Jimmy couldn’t wait to leave it.
George Welch had a thin, vinegary face and rust-colored hair, parted down the middle.
“I understand,” said Lieutenant Peyton, “you were divorced?”
“Separated,” said Welch as if he were about to have the lieutenant beheaded. “We were happily married; but we were having difficulties, so we decided to spend some time apart.”
“I see. So what happened tonight?”
“We were supposed to go to dinner and that play at the Birmingham Theater. I came by to get her; and I found her like that.”
Jimmy noted Welch’s granite formality. Indifference to his wife’s death? Shock? Or something else?
“Did you,” asked Lieutenant Peyton, “notice anything unusual as you pulled up?”
Welch hesitated. “No.”
“Sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. Now, did your wife have any enemies?”
“Yes.” Like he was a cat and the question was a nice, juicy mouse. “She recently became friendly — just friendly — with a man named Eric Dimke. According to Lucy, he was used to getting his way with women; and when she turned him down, he didn’t take it well.”
“What did he do?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. But I got the impression she was scared of him.”
“You know where this guy lives?”
He gave them an address in Flat Rock.
“Think he’s telling the truth?” asked Jimmy back in the car.
“Not completely. Maybe not at all. Not about that trial separation; that’s for sure. Once she got her hands on his money and that house, that little bitch was through with him.
“And all you need to jump to conclusions about that is eyes.”
The address was in a sparsely populated area.
They turned into a driveway, the headlights revealing a bedraggled Oldsmobile parked so close to the road they almost rear-ended it.
They crossed what felt to Jimmy’s ankles like a balding, unmowed lawn.
Lieutenant Peyton sidestepped something. “Look out for this junk.” A lone streetlamp and the light from the house dimly illuminating scattered auto innards.
“I don’t believe it,” said Jimmy.
“Believe what?”
“That a woman as well off as her would take up with anyone who lived here.”
“Now who’s jumping to conclusions?”
The big, black leather reclining chair was the only piece of furniture in that room that did not need reupholstering, distinctive in a room whose walls bore cheap prints of flowers, gleaming on an unshampooed rug; and as anyone who had known him ten minutes might have expected, Eric Dimke occupied it.
He was a great bronzed ape with a creamy white Elvis pompadour. As he leaned back, his unbuttoned shirt spread open, displaying his pectorals.
Only Jimmy seemed to notice the woman. She viewed the proceedings as she had greeted the Peytons at the door: with dumb animal indifference through which muted anger only occasionally flickered. Blotches marred otherwise satisfactory features.
Lieutenant Peyton repeated Welch’s accusations.
“He’s full of it.”
“Did you know Mrs. Welch?” asked the lieutenant.
“Sure I knew her. Lotsa guys knew her. She was hangin’ around the Flat Top Bar — I dunno, five, six weeks before I got talkin’ to her.”
“What would a woman from Indian Village be doing in a bar around here?”
Dimke shrugged. “I wouldn’t go to no bars in Detroit after dark. I got the idea she went to bars all over the place. I mean, she was lookin’ for action. Or maybe she just didn’t want to go to no bars around where she lived ’cause she thought her old man might catch her.”
“She was afraid of him?”
“I think she was. I got the idea he was this wimp she’d just married for his money; and I asked her why she didn’t leave him; and she said, ‘That’s something I’d rather not go into’; and she got this funny look in her eyes. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah. You got to know Mrs. Welch quite well, didn’t you?”
Dimke’s face went cold. “Like what do you mean?”
“Well, she told you about her marriage. She told you about other bars she went to. Welch knew your name and address, which kind of suggests she did too. I mean, you can’t blame us for — uh — jumping to conclusions.”
Jimmy flinched.
Another shrug. “So I let her talk to me. So I let her think I was comin’ on to her.” He and Lieutenant Peyton studied each other. “So maybe I was. Hey, I been married — what? — twelve years? I used to be real big with the ladies. So I let some fine-lookin’ chick make some moves on me, show me I still got it. Even the most happily married man’s gotta do that or he gets stale. Right, hon?”
“I guess so.”
They were precinct bound.
“What do you think of his story?” asked Jimmy.
“Story’s fine. But did you notice Mrs. Dimke’s wrists?”
Jimmy vaguely recalled bruises.
“And the way she acted?”
“She acted bored.”
“She acted scared. She was scared to let us see how scared she was, so she held herself in. There’s plenty she could tell us; but she knows what he’ll do to her if she does.”
“So it’s between Welch and Dimke?”
“One thing’s sure: it wasn’t him.”
“Him?”
Lieutenant Peyton grinned. “You know.”
The lieutenant flipped on his office light. “The bloodstains show she was killed in the bedroom. And there was no sign of a struggle, so it was evidently someone she trusted.” He started going through the mail on his desk. “I mean, can you see anyone letting him get that close — and in her bedroom yet?”
He glanced at one of the envelopes, started moving it to the bottom, then glanced at it again.
His face went blank.
“What’s wrong, Dad?”
The old man struggled to smile. “Now, you got me doing it. Where’s the letter opener?” He went through his top drawer, then the second drawers on each side, then the next, growing more frantic with each drawer. “Where the hell is the damn letter opener?”
“Dad.” He grabbed the envelope and ripped off an edge.
Lieutenant Peyton snatched it back, clawed out the paper inside, shook it open, and read it.
He offered it to his son with a trembling hand, looking as if he were going to vomit.
The hand-printed words flew up like fists: “Lucy Welch was my return performance. Mephistopheles.”
Jimmy foggily heard his father: “First good hunch you had since you got promoted out of uniform; and it had to be about him.”