Cold and Pure and Very Dead (12 page)

“Oh, my God! I thought the police were keeping her identity secret. Poor, poor Milly.”

“You
know
her?” Before I could respond, George glanced at his watch and grimaced. “Sorry, Karen. Gotta run.” He rose from his chair, then paused. “But, you know, the funny thing is that I think I
talked
to the victim once.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. I’d forgotten his name, but he was a
Times
arts reporter, right? Martin Katz … yeah that sounds right. He called me this summer—”

“He did?” I was astonished.

“Yeah. He was researching some article and wanted an expert opinion on 1950s book culture. I told him that I thought the conservative fifties were the cradle of both the counterculture and the postmodern. He liked that … 
the cradle of the postmodern.”
George grinned, amused by his facility at condensing complex cultural phenomena into five-second sound bites. Then he glanced at his watch again. “Yikes, my disciples await.”

“See ya, George.” My little colleague bustled off in his usual Mad-Hatter flurry.

The article continued with details of the homicide and a summary of the writer’s career. In spite of the
Times
’s deliberately understated presentation, Mildred Deakin’s reappearance made a sensational story. “Fame is a bee,” Emily Dickinson once wrote, and it looked as if the reclusive novelist was about to get stung again.

I
thought you
didn’t want Milly Finch’s true identity revealed, Lieutenant,” I said to Paula Syverson over the phone. After finishing the article, I’d headed to my office through a downpour, the first real rain of the season.

“That’s right, Professor Pelletier, as long as it served our purpose that the public didn’t know who she was. But now …” The lieutenant let it trail off. Mildred Deakin Finch had been indicted on a murder charge, and, as far as Syverson was concerned, the case was closed. “I’m curious, Professor … tell me, what business is all this of yours?” Before I could reply, she went on. “I don’t mean that to sound hostile. I really want to know.”

“I saw her, you know … Milly Finch … the other day. At the jail. She told me the same thing she told you, that she didn’t shoot Marty Katz. And—you know what?—I think I believe her.” I tapped on my desk with the eraser end of a number-two pencil.

“Hmm.” It was a noncommittal utterance.

“I assume,” I went on, “that, as part of your investigation, you’ve considered motivation—why Mildred Deakin would want Marty Katz dead. Am I right?”

“Milly Finch—not Mildred Deakin. Well,
that’s
a no-brainer. Obviously Mrs. Finch is pathologically reclusive. Everything about the way she’s lived her life confirms that. So, when the victim showed up, she knew he was gonna snatch her out of her cozy … ah … retirement, she panicked, and—
bam
, he’s a goner. She’s not talking, of course, but that’s the way it musta happened. It’s too bad, really; she seems like a nice lady.”

I paused for two seconds, then burst out: “You know, Lieutenant, as far as I’m concerned, that theory just doesn’t wash. This country has had all sorts of famous literary recluses—Emily Dickinson, Henry Roth, J. D. Salinger—but none of them ever ensured their privacy by committing murder. It’s simply not a strong enough motivation. There’s got to be something else going on here.” This time I tapped my pencil on the phone’s mouthpiece for emphasis.

I heard her sigh. “Professor, I know this is a real sad situation—pathetic, really, that poor old lady—but you can’t let pity blind you to the—”

“Lieutenant Syverson, listen, I’ve had some experience investigating literary crimes. So, I want to ask you—what if we started looking into Deakin’s literary past? See if maybe we can’t uncover some long-buried motivation for this killing. Some reason someone other than she herself wanted to keep Mildred Deakin’s identity secret?”

“We?” There was a long pause; I heard papers rustle. “Your friend? That Massachusetts investigator—what’s his name? Piotrowski, that’s it. He
said
you might start messing around in this. But, I don’t know—”

“Lieutenant, ask yourself one question: Who else would want to keep Marty Katz from dragging Mildred Deakin back into the limelight? Who would benefit from Mildred Deakin’s continued disappearance?”

“That’s two questions. And her name is Milly Finch.
You
tell me. Who
would
benefit?”

“That’s what we need to find out. Did she have heirs? Would someone profit from the recent boom in sales of
Oblivion Falls?”

“Professor—”

“Or did she have enemies? After all, the book was a
roman à clef—”

“A
rommana clay
—what’s that?”

“A
roman à clef
is a novel whose story is a thinly disguised version of actual people and actual happenings—in this case, the death of Lorraine Lapierre, a young woman in Deakin’s hometown. What if someone is afraid that after all these years his involvement in that ancient scandal will become known? What if—?”

“Professor … I’m just not sure you should—”

“Or did she have a professional rival? Marty Katz must have been poking around, asking questions about her. Did he reignite long-extinct animosities?”

“Professor—”

“How much do you know about American literature, Lieutenant?”

She actually laughed. “Probably just as much as you know about criminal investigation, Ms. Pelletier. Now listen, in my own mind I’m a hundred percent that we got the right perp here. But Piotrowski did say you’ve got good instincts, and you’ve been real useful to him in the past. And I’m never averse … Is that the right word?
Averse?”

I nodded—as if she could see me over the phone. How the hell did
I
know what word she wanted?

“I’m never
averse
to a little expert consultation—especially if it’s free. What do you have in mind?”

I swiveled in my desk chair. The heavy autumnal rain continued, and two umbrellas passed directly outside my window. One was large and black, the other a frivolous yellow with a tweety-bird on it, staring directly at me. I wished I had either one of them; I was still damp from crossing Field Street earlier, and was going to get soaked again when I headed for the parking lot.

“I want to talk to anyone I can find who was associated with Deakin’s life and career,” I told Syverson. “The 1950s were a long time ago, but many of those people would still be alive. She must have had an agent, an editor, some family. Or, listen—maybe it’s
not
a profit motive. Maybe there
is
some secret …” I paused to think about that; it was a curiously satisfying—even poetic—thought. “Some
deep, dark
secret.” I could hear a muffled snort on the other end of the line and erupted, defensively, “Well, what
else
would have caused her to flee the way she did?”

“I dunno, Professor.” The police officer was suddenly all seriousness.

“I could talk to the townspeople in Stallmouth, New Hampshire, where she grew up and to people she knew in Manhattan at the height of her fame. If there was any particular …” I tried to think of a synonym for
secret
but couldn’t come up with anything satisfactory. “…  ah, incident, someone should know. And later today I’m getting together with a Deakin scholar who lives somewhere over in your neck of the woods. I thought he might know the names of some people I could contact. Did you interview Sean Small, Lieutenant? He’s a professor at Skidmore in Saratoga.”

“You kidding? Why would we interview a scholar? I’m telling you, Professor, we have solid forensic evidence that puts Finch on the scene—her fingerprints on the gun, her footprints in the mud. And we have motivation.” I sensed a creeping impatience, and wasn’t surprised. This detective didn’t know me from Adam, and so far she’d been quite forebearing. So far—but maybe not for much longer. “And besides, for your information, Professor, Saratoga is not in this ‘neck of the woods.’ It’s way the hell north of here.”

“Oh.”

“Now, Professor, I don’t know why you want to take this on. That’s a hell of a lot of work you just laid out there. But, hey, no skin off my teeth. If you want to ask a few questions around among the literary types, that’s harmless enough. Nothing else, you might get a good scholarly article out of it.” She seemed to think this was funny, and in the background I could hear Rudy Williams chortle. “And as long as you keep within the bounds of the law, I won’t … can’t … do anything to stop you. Just, you know, get in touch if something comes up—which it’s not gonna, you know;
you’re wasting your time here. Oh, and by the way, your lieutenant—” She said the last words in a tone of amused indulgence that irked me.

“He’s not
my
lieutenant!”

“No? I coulda sworn … Well, whatever. Piotrowski says you’ve been known to take an unnecessary risk or two, so … now listen up, Professor Pelletier: no hotdogging. You hear me? Just in case you’re right—which you’re not. I don’t need another homicide on my plate.”

S
ean Small
was a plump young man. What was left of his red hair was curly, pulled back at his nape in a ponytail. He wore a yellow knit shirt with three faux-wood buttons at the neck, the requisite academic khaki shorts, and complicated sandals that strapped around his ankles. His voice burbled over his words like a spring freshet over stones. He was so excited that Mildred Deakin was still alive, he could hardly sit still in his chair.

I’d called the Deakin scholar immediately after I’d returned home from visiting Milly Finch in jail, and we’d set up a Wednesday date for coffee at the Homestead Restaurant in Chatham. Respecting her desire for anonymity—and Syverson’s injunction to keep quiet about it—I hadn’t told him then about Mildred Deakin’s reappearance. Today Small had shown up at the Homestead clutching a clipping of that morning’s
Times
article, absolutely agog over the news. My account of the jail visit blew him away.

“You
saw
her? You actually
talked
to her? What did she say? How did she seem? What does she look like now?”

“She said nothing. She seems miserable. She looks
like hell.” I hated to burst his bubble, but there was no romanticizing the situation. “She’s in jail, Professor Small, charged with homicide. How do you think she feels?”

He plowed on, oblivious to the very real and present—nonliterary—nature of the tragedy. “Call me Sean. ‘Professor Small’ always makes me think someone’s talking to my mother. You, know, Karen, I’ve started collecting material for a Deakin biography. Now I’ll be able to talk to her in person, get her own story in her own words.”

I recalled what the novelist had called me:
Professor Jackal
. And I wasn’t even
her
biographer. “Don’t count on it, Sean.”

He paid no attention to me, he was so deeply into the myth of the beautiful, lost, tragic writer. “A firsthand account of literary history! You know what this is like, Karen? It’s just as if Charlotte Brontë had come back to life again. Or Virginia Woolf, or—”

“Sean …”

“—or Sylvia Plath. It’s much more like Sylvia Plath, don’t you think? Did Deakin know Plath? Hmm. I’ll have to ask her.” He scribbled on a yellow lined pad.

“Sean …”

He put down the pen, picked up his fork, and broke off a piece of flaky apple pie. “How did you get in to see her, anyhow? Did you just show up at the jail—”

I glanced around the restaurant cautiously. Not very many people out on this rainy Wednesday—a few pie-eaters and coffee-drinkers at the counter, and, in a booth by the window, the good-looking white-haired man who’d been flirting with the waitress during my last visit to the Homestead. I’d chosen Chatham as a meeting place because it was just about halfway between Saratoga and Enfield. But perhaps meeting here
had not been such a good idea; it was, after all, Milly Finch’s home turf.

“Sean, please keep your voice down. People around here know Milly Finch; Nelson Corners is practically next door.”

“Re-e-e-ally.” His head swiveled, as if he were looking for someone to interview about Mildred Deakin right then and there.

“Listen, Sean,” I said. I’d told him on the phone that I was researching a book on sensational fifties literature. Well, maybe someday I would. Only it would be the 1850s. “My study focuses on identity construction in novels that violate social codes of personal disclosure. My thesis is that the female subject position in fifties popular fiction transitions hegemonic domestic gender constructions intertextually, prefiguring feminist resistance narratives, particularly in the realm of female sexuality.” I paused, hard put to come up with any further jargon. He nodded; it all made sense to him. “Now, what I thought you might be able to help me with … In your research have you uncovered anything that would explain Deakin’s decision to vanish like that? Just walk out of her life the way she did?”

Sean’s plump pink lips turned slowly upward in a smug pink smile. “We-e-e-ll, maybe I have.…”

“What?” I beckoned to the waitress for a refill on the coffee.

“Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it.” He gave me a sidelong look from his amber eyes: the scholar as irresistible tease. Then he rearranged his face in a more serious expression: the scholar as man of the world. He granted me a level look. “But, seriously, Karen, you can’t really expect me to disclose to you a piece of extraordinary biographical information that will solve a forty-year-old literary mystery and make my biography
the final word on this significant novelist?” He ran the tines of his fork over the remaining crumbs of pie crust.

This smug young man knew something, and I could sense that, against his professional best interests, he was bursting to tell. I sat back in my chair. “No, of course not. How foolish of me to ask.” The waitress—it was Betty Anne again—arrived with the coffeepot. My companion was still scraping the empty pie plate. “Sean, can I get you another piece of pie? Maybe you’d like to try the lemon meringue?”

No sooner had Betty Anne brought the slab of pie than Sean leaned over the table toward me as close as he could get without smushing the airy white meringue. His voice was hushed, almost sacramental. “What the hell, Karen. With Deakin’s reappearance, this isn’t going to stay secret very long, anyhow. You might as well know. She had a baby, Karen. Just before she disappeared, Mildred Deakin gave birth to a baby boy out of wedlock, and then she gave him up for adoption.”