"Would you mind leaving us alone?" I asked her. "Yes, I would. I don't want you to hurt him."
"I'm not going to hurt him." She looked at Merle then at me. "You promise?" I promise.
"Is it all right if I leave?" she asked Merle.
He didn't seem to hear her. He was somewhere else.
She stared at him several long moments then left, looking hurt and confused. I wondered what the letter she was writing Merle said. If it admitted to the affair she had had, or was still having, with Clay Traynor, or if it shed any light on the murders. For some reason, I had the feeling that is was a very important letter, and one I needed to lay my hands on.
Merle went back behind his desk and put his hands over his face. Then he took them away. His face looked awful, as if he'd just awakened from the worst hangover of his life.
"There's no way out now," he said.
"From what?" I said, trying to keep my voice friendly.
"You know what I'd really like to do?"
"What?"
"Go back to my wife. Patch things up." He made me think of Sarah Anders-maybe we could have a big group therapy session up here.
"You've got a nice wife."
"Damned nice." He sounded as if he were going to start crying. Then he nodded to the outer office where the sound of a typewriter could be heard. "Clay Traynor strikes again. He and Belinda were seeing each other for a while. Belinda said she just got tired of sitting home alone nights when I had to be with my wife. I guess I can't blame her." But obviously he did.
So he did know. I felt sorry for the poor bastard. Sitting there, his shoulders slumped, he looked much older than his forty years. In high school, I felt sure, he had been head of the camera club or the science club-the classic nerd as seen by his classmates-and now here he was trying to compensate for all that pain and dislocation by having a hairstyle that looked silly and a mistress who was unfaithful. It wasn't funny. Some of the pity I felt for him crept into my voice. "Why was Denny murdered, Merle?"
He shrugged. "I don't know, Michael, I really don't."
"You didn't do it, then?"
The laugh again. "You really think I could commit murder, Michael?" He was copping to his nerd image- using it to his advantage-but it didn't work. Nerds commit their share of murders, too.
"So why the gun?" I said.
"Because it's all such a goddamn mess, why else?"
"There's something you're not telling me."
He shrugged, sighed again, looked miserable.
I took the newspaper clipping out of my pocket and put it on his desk. Right next to the gun.
He didn't notice it for a while. Then his eyes narrowed and he reached out a delicate finger and picked it up.
The way the blood started filling his cheeky cheeks, it was obvious Merle knew the significance of the clipping.
He surprised me. He decided to lie. He threw it back at me. "Hell, I don't know what this means."
I leaned forward. "Merle, I'm going to hurt you. I really am. Unless you tell me what the hell's going on. What's this clipping got to do with the murders?"
I watched him eye the gun on his desk. Was he thinking of using it on me or himself?
From behind me, a voice said, "You'd better leave now." Belinda Matson.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Yes, you are," she said, coming into the office. "Because Merle's going to pick up the gun and make you leave." She looked at Merle. "Aren't you, honey?"
Merle flushed again. He didn't want me to see how dependent he was on others for his strength. But that didn't stop him from picking the gun up and pointing it at me. There was oil on the gun and part of the handle was chipped. The flaws made it all the more real.
"You're a stupid bastard, Merle," I said. "There's a good chance you're involved in something that's already taken two lives. But you're not handling it right, believe me. You're going to die, too."
I watched Belinda this time instead of Merle. I could see her pretty, tiny face stretch with anguish as I spoke. Obviously she was worried about the same thing. All these crazy people I was surrounded with-and the secret that tied them all together, the secret I didn't know.
"Merle-" I started to say, feeling sorry for him again.
"All you need to know," Merle said, sounding much more self-confident with the gun in his hand, "is that I didn't kill either Denny or Gettig. Either one of them. Your man Stokes is working a con game-he's got pictures of all of us who were there that night. He was hiding in the house. He decided to fleece me because he wrongly thinks I have access to certain moneys-" He glanced up to little Belinda. She shot him a glance that said he was talking too much. This is how it had been for all of Merle's life. Never quite knowing how to handle a situation, screwing it up more likely than not.
"He'll be clearing out his desk," Belinda said. "He won't be working here anymore. Neither will I."
"That's going to look great to the cops," I said.
She shrugged. Her sense of desperation matched Merle's earlier mood. "They can't prove anything."
I stood up. "I wish you two would let me help you."
"You just worry about yourself," Belinda said, now the official spokesperson for both of them. "Whoever's doing this may have you included in the plans, too."
I knew there was no point in asking for that obscure sentence to be cleared up for me.
Merle waved the gun at me again, looking sad and silly.
"I hope you know what you're doing," I said.
"I do," he said. But didn't believe it, either.
SIXTEEN
It took me many long minutes to realize that the hands shaking me were not part of a nightmare but were in fact real.
Ultimately, it was her perfume that convinced me.
She got me up and helped me to the bathroom and held my shoulders as I vomited (and didn't seem at all bothered by the sights or sounds) and then she helped me get into the shower and start the sobering-up process.
According to my watch, it was 8:15 p.m. when I belted my robe, put my feet into slippers, and walked into the living room.
She was curled up at the end of the couch, a diet Coke in one hand, a Ray Bradbury from my bookcase in the other, a jazz interpretation of Kurt Weill's music on the stereo.
"You look a little better than you did an hour ago," she said.
After leaving the office and Merle Wickes, I'd come home and, in a frenzy of self-pity, gotten myself hopelessly drunk.
Her knocking and ringing at the door had awakened me.
I sat down on the couch, rubbing my face. "How are you doing?"
"All right," she said. "I just…"
When she didn't finish, I looked up. "You just what?”
She smiled. "This afternoon something strange happened to me."
"What?"
"I found myself actually missing somebody. Somebody I really wanted to be around because it would make me feel better than I had in years."
"I hope you're talking about me."
She laughed. "I am."
"I missed you too."
"Why don't I make you some food?"
"I'm not sure what's in the fridge."
"There's bound to be something."
There was. Eggs and bacon and bread for toast. In fifteen minutes I was at the table, eating. She spread jam on toast and ate with me.
"You're watching me," I said after a time.
"Yes."
"I bet I look great. All hungover."
"You look great to me." She flushed. "God, I'm sorry. I mean, I don't want to come on too strong or anything. I mean, I don't know how to do this very well."
With toast in my mouth, I said, "You're doing just fine."
"I really did miss you."
"Me, too."
"I kept thinking, what if it had been you in that library where I'd met Clay all those years ago."
"Would've been nice."
"Do you have anything against Lutherans?"
"Not a single damn thing."
"Do you think we could go to bed?"
"I think that would be swell.”
***
For a while following separation from my wife, I tried the one-night-stand scene. Not for long. A peculiar loneliness results from sleeping with somebody you scarcely know. At least for me. But then I'm probably doomed to being old-fashioned in many ways. Sex is better for me when I care about someone.
The nice thing with Cindy Traynor was that I cared about her, was starting to fall in love with her.
So I took to bed some long-unsated lust plus a real sense of wanting to know more about the woman, physically as well as psychologically.
Her flesh was silken, the curves of her body tender hollows, the taste of her mouth and the smell of her hair overwhelming there in the darkness. At first there was some awkwardness as I moved down her breasts and stomach but after a few minutes, her breathing sharper, my senses beginning to dizzy, we began making love as if we'd been lovers for years.
She was the right combination for me of sentiment and skill. The things she whispered were as tender as they were sexy, as much about loneliness as need.
There was a lot of thrashing when we both finished within seconds of each other, thrashing and a certain young joy.
Afterward, we lay there listening to each other breathing in the shadows, our hips touching, her cold toes occasionally nuzzling my foot. On the bedroom window I could see snowflakes hit the glass and vanish, big wet flakes making me feel snug inside.
"Do you think you'll get married again?" she said.
"I hope so." I paused. "How about you?"
"I'd really like to be somebody's partner, you know?"
"Yeah. I know. That's what I want, too."
"I really like you, Michael."
"Once all this gets resolved-" I started to say.
She sighed. "I just wish it would get over with. I-asked Clay about it."
"You accused him of it?"
"As I said, I think he knew about Denny and me and I think he killed him. I don't flatter myself that Clay has any special feeling for me. It's just his pride." The snowflakes continued to melt and run down the window in rivulets made golden from the parking-lot light below. "Of course," she said, "I'm not positive it was Clay. Actually, it could have been Merle Wickes."
"Merle? Why would he kill Denny? Denny was his idol."
She exhaled smoke. "One night they all came back to our house very late at night. There was Clay and Denny and Ron Gettig and Merle Wickes. They'd all been drinking and there was a lot of noise. They woke me up and kept me up. Finally, I went downstairs to ask them to quiet down. In the den I saw Merle trying to lunge at Denny and take a bag from him. It was a black bag, like a doctor's bag. Denny was drunk and very mean. He kept laughing at Merle, holding the bag out to him, then pulling it back, like a kid's game. Merle kept screaming, 'If I tell what you three have been up to, you're all done.' It should have sounded ominous. The only person who looked upset about Merle was Clay. Clay finally grabbed him and pushed him against the wall and said, 'You're a part of this, Merle, don't forget that. You're a part of this.' Then Clay saw me standing outside the door and really blew up. He told me to get back upstairs."
"But you never found out exactly what was going on?"
"No. Clay closed the downstairs doors. And they kept their voices down. But I wouldn't consider Merle and Denny the best of friends."
"Good. That's what we need."
"What?"
"One more suspect." She laughed.
"You mind if I turn on the light?" I asked.
"You really want to see me in the nude? I'm not twenty years old, you know."
"Neither am I. If you're self-conscious, cover up."
I turned on the light. She had opted for covering up. I was disappointed.
From my sports jacket draped over a chair I took the newspaper clipping and handed it to her. It was a brief story:
***
QUARTER MILLION IN GEMS REPORTED STOLEN
Police report that Mrs. Bradford Amis, wife of financier Bradford Amis, was robbed of more than a quarter million dollars in gems during her recent house party for the March of Dimes.
Police officials were quoted today as saying that Mrs. Amis did not want any publicity on the matter, which is why the three-week-old robbery is only now reaching the press.
Those close to Mrs. Bradford say that the theft occurred even though a private guard had been hired to protect the gems. The guard's name has not been released.
***
The story went on with more details, none of them seeming to be particularly relevant.
As she read the clipping, Cindy's face looked confused. Then at some point a beautiful clarity came over her face and she smiled. Obviously she had gotten the same idea I had.
"That night downstairs," she said.
"The argument. The doctor's bag," I said.
"But why-?"
"That's the part we don't know exactly-why."
"But we're not even sure they took the gems."
"No, not yet we're not. But I have the feeling if we spend a day or two looking into this thing, we will be."