The Dog Collar Murders (9 page)

“It would be hard,” said Nicky. “You’d have to use a lot of force. That’s why I know Loie wasn’t killed by anyone into S/M.”

“Why not?”

“Because S/M isn’t about force. It’s about consent. About pushing someone up to and beyond what they think they can bear.”

“Wouldn’t it be easy to go past that point—to really hurt someone?”

“No. Because the first thing you learn when you start practicing S/M is the rules and how to do it safely. You don’t do
anything
without the consent of the bottom. You agree on a word that means stop—a word that’s not ‘stop’ or ‘no’—a code word like ‘mercy’ or something. S/M is about the flowing of power back and forth between the top and the bottom—the top remains in control so that the bottom can feel out of control. She can scream ‘No’ and ‘Stop’ and have the top go right on. It’s set up so the bottom can experience the sense of saying ‘No,’ and then being carried past it. S/M isn’t about deliberately trying to
hurt
someone or being hurt. It’s about exploring limits.”

Nicky looked at us with a strange kind of passion. “So it couldn’t have been someone into S/M who killed Loie. I know everyone in the community here. There’s no one who would have a reason to strangle Loie at a conference. We were there to argue with her, not to murder her.”

“You don’t think that Loie…”

“Could have been involved in S/M? The idea’s ludicrous. There was a time once when Loie was more adventurous, but now she makes—made—a living out of puritanism. She totally repressed that part of herself.”

“What do you mean—‘once’? Did you know her?”

Nicky hesitated. “I used to know her and Hanna. A long time ago. Neither of them have spoken to me for years.”

She shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to it. People hating you because you refuse to repress something that they’re trying desperately to squash down in themselves or pretend doesn’t exist. In Loie’s case, going so far as to construct an entire ideology around the things she was most afraid of seeing in herself. I figure it’s not my problem except when it comes to censorship.”

“At the workshop I went to, Loie talked about having had… rape fantasies, and being humiliated and degraded. Do you have any idea what she meant by that?”

A funny smile twisted at Nicky’s lips. “Only Loie could know what she meant by that.”

She got up to leave. Hadley said, “You’re a good dancer. It was a pleasure watching you.”

“Thanks,” she said, pleased, and squared her small shoulders. “If there’s nothing else?” she asked me.

There were still lots of unanswered questions, but I wasn’t quite sure how far I could push Nicky. I wanted to ask her what had happened to the dog collar and leash she’d been wearing during the conference. I’d seen her put her hands up to it as if to take it off. Could she have given it to the person she was talking to? Was it her dog collar that had killed Loie? There were other questions too. I wanted to know if a leash could catch someone by surprise and choke them. And if Loie could have possibly arranged to see Nicky at any time during the conference, to discuss old times. I wondered if Nicky knew what Loie might have been about to say to the audience and what had stopped her from saying it.

But Nicky was halfway to the door, and something told me I should watch what I said. Nevertheless I couldn’t help blurting out, “Who were you talking to outside the auditorium during Gracie’s speech?”

Nicky turned and smiled at me, a dazzling, deceptive smile. “A theology student,” she said. “Who wanted to save me.”

L
OIE MARSH’S MEMORIAL SERVICE
was attended by a crowd that was more indignant than grieved. Loie had made her life into a cause; her death became one too. Hadley declined to go; she said she’d rather hang out with Ray at Best Printing and baby-sit Antonia. So Penny and I went together.

Neither of us had been to a service since our parents had died five years before. It was surprising how much the smell of flowers, the organ music, and the funereal mood brought back the shock and horror of that day. Penny clutched my hand as we filed into the funeral parlor and didn’t let go of it through the ceremony. I tried to focus on what was going on; not to do so would have meant plunging back into a morass of loss and bereavement.

The funeral parlor was a large, very respectable one in the North End. Its middle-class opulence made me realize that I knew little or nothing about Loie’s background and upbringing. Did she have parents and, if so, where were they? Down in the front pew was Hanna Sandbakker, wearing an elegant black dress and a stern expression; her ash-blond hair was pulled back into a low Greek knot. Next to her was the elderly, white-haired man I’d seen her with on the evening of the panel discussion. On Hanna’s other side was a rather glamorous, heavy-set woman in her sixties and a much older woman, long-boned and graceful in a violet coat and hat. They must all be family. Almost everyone in the chapel was a woman, and most of them looked as if they’d been to the conference. Of course no sexual liberals were here, unless you counted me and Penny, and we were more like sexual mugwumps on the fence that divided the perverts from the puritans. I saw Elizabeth Ketteridge, but she didn’t see me. One of these days I’d have to come to terms with the feelings it roused in me to run into her out of her office, and to see her no longer as a counselor but as an ordinary person whose views might well be different from mine. I also saw the therapist who’d been forced to come out as a former sadomasochist at Miko’s workshop. Clea Florence, someone had said her name was.

Just as the ceremony was about to begin, someone came in the back and marched right up to where the family was sitting. The heavy-set woman didn’t seem to want to make room for the newcomer; it was Hanna who slid over so she could sit down. Harried-looking, with flyaway beige hair and small, cramped features, the woman was carrying a flight bag. She’d obviously just arrived from somewhere, and in a hurry.

The ceremony began. Whoever the reverend was, he didn’t have more than the vaguest of notions who Loie was. His little talk about her referred to her generous and forgiving nature, her untimely death in the flower of her youth and so on. He never once referred to the fact that Loie had been murdered and that even now her body could not be present at her own memorial service, as it was still at the morgue. He spoke instead with a meaningful air of Loie’s enormous contribution to the welfare of society, her constant desire to put the needs of others first, her understanding of and patience with other people’s viewpoints. (Penny couldn’t help pinching my arm at that one.)

Afterwards, of course, there were grumblings.

“Why’d they have that guy?”

“An insult to everything Loie stood for.”

“We should make our own memorial service. A women’s service.”

The main trouble was, nobody really knew Loie all that well. Which was strange, because until she’d moved to Boston and become famous eight or nine years ago, she’d spent her life in Seattle, had gone to the University of Washington, had worked presumably—what had she worked at?

I turned to a woman nearby. “Do you know what Loie did, before she moved to Boston?”

The woman shook her head. “That was before my time. I’ve only been in Seattle a couple of years.”

“I know,” said the woman next to her. “She taught drama at a high school in Kirkland, the same place my sister teaches. I think she was married. But I don’t remember the man’s name.”

“Married?” someone gasped. A married high school teacher—even of drama—was certainly not what you thought of when you thought of Loie Marsh. Still, I supposed everyone experienced twists and turns in life. I wondered what had happened to the husband, and if he was here at the funeral.

The crowd was dispersing and Penny was off to talk to Hanna. From a distance I saw Hanna’s beautifully defined profile lift gratefully in response to some question of Penny’s. She looked exhausted.

I glanced around. The woman who’d come in late had moved from the front pew to a seat by herself in a corner. She was slumping over her flight bag, hugging it tightly to her thin chest.

“Are you Pauline?” I asked. “Loie’s ex-lover?”

“ ‘Ex-lover,’ ” she said bitterly, not looking up. “Is that what she told everyone here?”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “She may not have said that at all. It’s just something I heard.”

“Don’t try to make it better,” Pauline said. “Loie Marsh was in the process of dumping me. Everyone knew it except me. She told everyone except me. She didn’t bother to tell me. Maybe she thought she had.”

Pauline’s voice was extraordinarily unpleasant. It sounded as if she had a cold, but I suspected it might be more permanent than that. Either adenoids or sinus trouble.

“When did you find out?” I asked.

“I wasn’t the first one anyone called,” Pauline said. “That’s clear. Eight years Loie and I were together, lived together seven years and that horror of a mother of hers didn’t even bother to phone. It was Hanna who called me about the memorial service.” Tears began to fall down Pauline’s faintly wrinkled cheeks. “Some people in Boston knew right away, right after Loie was killed. But did anyone tell me? Oh no. No, I helped Loie with her speeches, I practically wrote her book for her, I did all the research for the new book, I made Loie what she was—but did anyone bother to tell me she’d been murdered?”

“Everyone probably thought you knew,” I tried to comfort her. “I’m sure you’re terribly upset.”

“Me?” said Pauline. And there was a frightening smirk on her cramped features when she raised her head. “I’m glad the bitch is dead, if you want to know the truth.”

And, clutching her flight bag, she stumbled past me and out the door, bumping into people along the way.

I went over to Penny and Hanna. “Oh, Pauline,” said Hanna, her velvet voice hardening, when I asked her if she really hadn’t known about Loie’s murder. “By the end of their relationship Pauline had gotten so paranoid about Loie getting the jump on her in everything, that she was ready to believe that Loie had gotten herself killed just so she could die first.” Hanna tried to smile. “I’m sorry. That’s really bad taste. Of course Pauline’s upset. But my aunt said she did call Pauline right after it happened Saturday night. It may be just that Pauline was too upset to take it in. When I called her yesterday to tell her about the service all I got was her message machine. She didn’t return my call so I didn’t think she’d turn up. But she did and now she’s angry with all of us.”

“I hate to pry,” I said. “But are you sure they’d really broken up?”

“According to Loie, it had all been over months ago. Pauline had just refused to believe it.” Hanna sighed tiredly. “I hope she’s not going to make a big fuss and hang around Seattle. I suppose she’s going to want some of Loie’s things—that’s only natural.” Hanna touched a graceful hand to her forehead and suddenly I was caught by her look of absolute sorrow. Here I’d been thinking her rather callow—now I saw her wretchedness. Or her impersonation of wretchedness?

“Has there been any progress with, with…?” Penny couldn’t quite say it.

“With finding the one who did it, you mean? No, not really. One of the problems is that Loie just wasn’t in Seattle long enough. If she had enemies they’re most likely in Boston.”

“Unless it was someone she’d tangled with here before,” I said. “Like maybe her ex-husband?”

“What do you know about her ex-husband?” Hanna’s fine eyebrows drew together.

“Just something someone said…. “I trailed off. “But you’re right, it must have been someone from Boston, someone who…”

Penny took my arm. “We really should be going.”

“Wait,” said Hanna, almost desperately. Loie’s mother came over. She was wearing a dark wool suit and rather flashy clip earrings. She looked like a woman who owned her own business, something small but not tacky—flowers perhaps, or Hallmark cards. Her face was like Loie’s, fleshy, somewhat swollen. Her auburn hair was most certainly a wig.

“Hanna, dear,” she announced. “We’re all coming over to your place. Granny simply must lie down after all this excitement and your house is closest.”

“It’s a mess, Aunt Edith.”

“Nonsense, darling. At a time like this who could possibly care?” Loie’s mother included us in her wave, “Come along, come along.”

We found ourselves being herded into Mrs. Marsh’s late model Ford sedan. Mrs. Sandbakker was in the front seat, absolutely silent, and Mrs. Marsh drove. Hanna and her father were coming in another car.

“Shocking, shocking,” said Mrs. Marsh, when Penny and I expressed our condolences. “Twenty years ago there was absolutely no crime in this city. Now it’s everywhere. Brutal, random violence. It’s drug addicts, there are drug addicts everywhere nowadays.”

“So you don’t think it could have been anyone Loie knew?”

Mrs. Marsh stared at us in the rear view mirror. “Knew? With Loie so prominent as a feminist? How could Loie know a drug addict? Loie was far too clean-living. None of us could be pure enough for her. She loathed the idea that her widowed mother might even think of sex, much less have it from time to time. She couldn’t bear me wearing make-up or heels, and if I was watching
Dallas
on TV she’d come over and give me a lecture. My dear, a woman like that isn’t murdered by anyone she knows—she couldn’t know anyone capable of such a crime. No, it just means that the drug situation in Seattle is getting worse and worse. It’s terribly frightening, absolutely terrifying. What’s that, Mother?”

The straight-backed old woman had said something under her breath.

“We can’t hear you, Mother.”

In a slight Norwegian accent, Mrs. Sandbakker said, “I think maybe Loie did something to deserve it… maybe.”

“Mother!” Mrs. Marsh cut her off. “How can you say such a thing! Of course Loie didn’t deserve to be a victim of random violence. It’s so ironic, so horribly ironic when you compare the murder statistics in Boston and Seattle and think that it had to happen here. Of course Loie couldn’t have
done
anything to deserve it.”

But I wondered.

Hanna’s house was a crisply painted wooden frame in a large lot that had been recently and probably professionally landscaped—hence its bare, almost ascetic look in contrast to the others on the street, which were filled to the brim with dahlias and roses. In Hanna’s yard there were small, unusual looking bushes, a lot of gravel and nothing in flower at all. The neighborhood was in Ballard, where most of the Scandinavians had settled in Seattle. Although inevitably newcomers had moved in, looking for housing bargains and predominantly white schools, Market Street was the only place in Seattle where you could still hear people speaking Norwegian, Danish or Swedish, and Johnsen’s Scandinavian Foods still the best place to go if you were looking for cardamom rolls, pickled herring or bars of Freia’s chocolate. King Olav of Norway himself had dedicated the little town square.