"How good a singer was Vicky Archer? You're really putting me on the spot, Lieutenant. Let's just say she was very good. Did you know she was on network TV once? The Carson show, I think. After that she played a club date in New York. But she wasn't quite good enough to make it there, so she came back here, where she could be sure she'd always be a star. And for a few years, at least, she had this city at her feet. Well, maybe I exaggerate. But you have to understand, the Fairmount Club Lounge, where she hung out and sang, was a kind of mecca for a number of us. Vicky was a goddess there."
Melissa shook her head. "If I close my eyes"-she closed them-"I can still see her standing in that cone of red light they always put on her, sultry, sexy, her hair red like a flame, crooning those great old songs, 'Black Coffee,' 'My One and Only Love,' 'Don't Smoke in Bed."' Melissa opened her eyes again. "So, how good was she? Still want to know? Let's say she was Cleveland's answer to Peggy Lee. But let's face it, even at its height the Fairmount Club Loun e was no Pe 9 rsian Room. Cleveland just isn't New York, is it? I'm afraid not," Melissa added crisply, a ripe smile signifying a slightly mean satisfaction at finally being able to pin her old friend a little lower on the board of talent than perhaps old Vicky would have liked.
It was past seven when they got back to their motel. Aaron, who'd bought a Cleveland restaurant guide and had been eating his way through it since the day he'd arrived in town, wanted to try a highly recommended Chinese restaurant in a shopping center not far away. they drove there, ordered dinner, but didn't like it much. Every single dish was sweet.
Back at the motel Janek watched TV for a while, then went to bed. At 1:00.k.m. he was awakened by his phone. It was Melissa Walters. She sounded slightly frantic and very drunk.
"Sorry to wake you, Lieutenant, but I had to call. Something's been preying on me ever since you left. Then, when I phoned Millie Cannaday and found out why you're here, I just couldn't rest easy until we spoke." was she a crazy old lady, or did she really have something for him?
"About what?" Janek asked.
"About Bev. I don't think anyone else knows it except for me.
Anyone else living, that is."
"Knows what?"
"It has to do with her being a wallflower. It's a terrible thing, Lieutenant. I'd rather not discuss it on the phone if you don't mind."
She suggested he join her for breakfast the following morning at a coffee shop around the corner from the Alhambra. She would explain everything then, she promised. Again she apologized for waking him up.
He had Aaron drop him off, feeling this was one interview he might handle better on his own. Melissa Walters was waiting for him, ahrady sipping coffee. No powder, eye shadow, lipstick, or rouge was on her face that day. It was a ravaged old lady who sat across from him. Two plastic place mats, doubling as breakfast menus, decorated the table, along with a single rose lying on a dainty plate.
Janek ordered toast and coffee. Then he turned to Melissa.
"Well?" he asked.
"There was something Vicky told me once, back years ago. She was drunk when she said it. I'm sure she didn't remember afterwards."
Melissa paused. "It was a terrible thing, Lieutenant. A truly terrible thing…"
It concerned the two MacDonald boys, Stuart and James. The brothers, it seemed, had had some kind of crush on Victoria. they came around to the lounge all the time, gazed at her intently, mesmerized by the way she sang. Vicky always liked young men, liked their fresh young bodies, but the MacDonalds, still in their teens, were too young even for her.
Still, Vicky was not a woman to waste a pair of infatuated boys. She'd been worried about Beverly at the time, feeling the girl was socially retarded, too shy with males, frightened even by the notion of sex. Her prescription for that was simple. "All Bev needs is a really good lay," Vicky said.
In the end that was how she decided to employ the MacDonaids: as studs to initiate Beverly into the rites and rituals of physical love.
"to use a couple of kids enamored of you to get your own daughter hot and bothered-it was a rotten idea, and I think deep down Vicky knew it was." Melissa shook her head. She seemed highly disturbed by her story, a sign to janek that it was probably true. "But once she got the notion into her head, she couldn't let it go. I don't know what happened exactly, except that there was a formal dance and she chose that occasion to sic the boys on to Bev. The whole thing went sour, as it was bound to do. First, there were two of them, which was crazy on its face. And second, the MacDonaids were just a pair of horny kids, not to mantic at all. they made some kind of crude, clumsy pass, Bev got hysterical (at least that's what the boys reported to Vicky; Bev apparently never said a word), and the end result was just the opposite of what Vicky intended. Instead of learning what sex was about and how great it could be, Bev discovered it was horrible and never wanted to engage in it again.
"When Vicky told me what she'd done, she was practically in tears. She'd botched it, she admitted, and now she didn't know how to make things right. Even now I can remember her words: 'I didn't want her to be a goddamn wallflower, Lisa. Now I'm afraid that's what she's going to be."' That was what Melissa wanted Janek to know. She probably wouldn't have thought of it if Millie Cannaday hadn't mentioned that the MacDonalds had been murdered and their sex organs glued up by Beverly's patient. Then, when Millie mentioned the wallflower signature, the pieces just fell together in Melissa's mind. As he listened, Janek couldn't help feeling sickened by the tale even as he was exhilarated by the knowledge that he had finally found a motive for a least one set of Wallflower killings. He thanked Melissa, paid the breakfast check, and went out to walk the cold, windy streets of Cleveland Heights.
He wandered aimlessly. The story haunted him. Everything about it rang true-except for Victoria Archer's tears. He could give no credence to her regrets. On the basis of everything he'd learned about the woman, he believed she probably did want Beverly to be a wallflower, and that was the real reason she'd set her daughter up.
Monika would understand, Janek thought. She would analyze it clearly.
She'd say that although Victoria may have thought she was sorry about the outcome, deep down in her subconscious she was pleased by it. Very pleased.
So Beverly had sent Diana Proctor out to kill and glue the MacDonalds in revenge for what they'd done to her after a dance years before. And the two toothbrushes Diana had brought back as trophies to be offered up to the image of Victoria on the wall-were they the symbols of the brothers' sex organs, sources of their mutual offense?
It was vile and sick, Janek thought, and also totally wrong. For, even if one believed in revenge, it was not the MacDonalds who deserved to be glued. It was Marna. That, Janek thought, was the ultimate irony in the whole grotesque and monstrous affair- that Beverly, the avenging wallflower, should have offered up trophies to the very woman who caused her to become a wallflower in the first place.
Janek made his way down to the University Circle area, then phoned Aaron at the motel. While he waited to be picked up, he was struck by a powerful idea. He pulled back from it; it seemed too perfect. Then he slowly brought it out again, rotated it, examined it, looked at it from every side. Perhaps, he thought, there was a way to break Beverly, induce her to confess.