Working Murder (13 page)

Our lunch arrived, and for the first time in my life, I didn't dive immediately into my
moogoo something. I said: “Could you tell us about it, Mr. Cassidy?”

“It was the first night of Jim's wake.” He started instantly, almost like a dam bursting.
“Those were the days of three-day wakes with open casket. Marty and I had been sitting
there looking at Jim all painted up and his hair slicked down and the rosary beads
wrapped around his hands, and Marty said he thought he was going to throw up.”

With the last words his face changed pathetically, and he looked at Sadd. “And that's the
way Marty died, Mr. Saddlier. He threw up, I swear he did.”

“Mr. Cassidy, I never doubted it.” Sadd stuffed fried rice into his lying mouth.

Father Dever looked bewildered. He said: “Why would anybody—”

“I just want them to know what happened. Mr. Saddlier was asking me about it this
morning. I took Marty home after I'd bought him the drink I'd promised him—that was only
fair—and when we got to his place I told him I wanted the key and he said no and he
fought me for it and then he dives under the bed and comes up with a bottle and I went
out to get some cold cuts and when I got back he was passed out. I didn't dare leave—I
knew he'd vomited before—so I went to sleep in a chair, and when I woke up, Marty was
dead. That's the God's honest truth.”

“Of course it is.” Father Dever put his arm around the vibrating shoulder. “Now eat. I'll
tell about Jim's wake.”

“But you don't know—”

“Sure I do. You told me. You and Marty sat there admiring Jim and talking about
Maura—she'd been dead about a year—and looking around at the measly bunch of relatives
and big bunch of thugs, and Dan Flanagan, Jim's lawyer, came up to you and dropped the
bomb: Jim had told him he was to have Maura's body—what's that word—‘exhumed' from her
grave in Ireland and brought over and buried next to him.”

Sadd said: “I don't think that would hold up in court if the family didn't want—”

“We didn't and it didn't.” Cassidy took up the story warmly. “Marty and I hot-footed it
to a telegraph office and got a message off to Maura's mother in Ireland—she was in her
late eighties—telling her to stand by for this order and let Flanagan know what she
thought of it. Later she wrote me she'd sent his letter back in twenty pieces. She was a
great old lady.”

“Great,” I murmured, entranced.

“Anyway, Jim was buried a few days later. It was a Saturday—my twenty-fifth birthday, I
remember—and Marty and I were doing some painting and plastering in the office of Holy
Martyrs. We saw Jim's hearse go by around noon, and about four o'clock I said I sure
could use a drink but it was cold and rainy and I didn't feel like going out. Marty said
he could fix that, and he went out to his car and came back with a bag of bottles. I
knew he'd hoarded some of Jim's stuff when Prohibition went out but my God, this was
1940 and that booze was ten, twelve years old and it was always filthy but now it
was...”

“Lethal,” breathed Sadd.

“And you never got so crazy drunk in your life,” Father Dever opened a fortune cookie.

“What did it was, we got arguing about the color of Maura's hair. I said it was red and
Marty said it was gold. And I said imagine putting her in with that scum and there
wasn't anything bad enough to be buried with him and Marty looked at the bag of bottles
and said yes there was.”

The waitress brought the check, and Sadd and Father Dever both reached for it. Sadd won,
which was rather remarkable considering that he never took his eyes off Frank Cassidy.

“We lugged the stuff out to Marty's car and God knows how we ever got to the mausoleum in
one piece, but it was after five and the cemetery was closed. Marty had his key and we
walked into the place and the mortar was still wet around Jim's slab. We pulled it off
and starting spitting on the bottles and throwing them in next to the coffin. Then we
put the slab back and tamped the mortar back, and I hope that creepy bastard has been
enjoying his company all these years.”

Father Dever read aloud the slip from his fortune cookie: “'You are a very kind and
forgiving person.' I think I got yours by mistake, Frank.”

I blessed him for the laugh.

When they dropped us off in front of Nice Ugly and declined our invitation to come in,
Sadd said, “I have a rotten sore throat.”

“PETER WILL BE AWFULLY DISAPPOINTED, Sadd,” said Henry. “Are you sure you can't come?”

“I tell you I'm at death's door. What's my temperature, Tina?”

“Normal.”

“I don't believe it. It has to be a hundred and ten. I can't raise my head.”

I said: “You just have a bad cold and you're exhausted. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Feel sorry for Tina and Henry. They're stuck with us till you
can
raise your
head.”

“And my ass,” groaned Sadd. “I'm sorry, you guys.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Tina.

We were all crowded into the little study, which I'd reluctantly surrendered as a
“sickroom” when Sadd had announced his impending demise. Tina sat on the couch beside
him, I had the desk chair, Hen lay on the floor with Loki on his stomach, and Henry
leaned in the doorway. He said:

“I just hate for you to miss dinner at Othello's. The scampi is outstanding. Maybe we
should be heroic and all decline.”

“Not on your life,” I said. “I'm not going to miss a chance to talk to Peter Angier. I
want to know if he got a letter from May. Or wrote her one.”

“You want the scampi,” growled Sadd.

“That too.”

Tina said: “When his wife called and said, ‘This is Ruth Angier,' the name didn't
register. Then she said, ‘My husband Peter and I want to take you all out to dinner.' As
the British say, I twigged.”

“Don't mind me.” Sadd turned over with a sigh. “Go and enjoy yourselves. Hen will keep me
company. We'll ask each other riddles, like ‘why did I ever leave Florida?'”

Loki assayed a leap to the couch but made it only to the edge, where his claws caught the
quilt and it slid with him to the floor. Sadd groaned, and Tina hustled cat and son out
of the room. “Hen will have had his supper,” she called reassuringly, “and we'll bring
you a doggie bag.”

Henry took her place on the couch beside Sadd. He said: “Are you sure you feel up to
baby-sitting?”

“Certainly, if the child doesn't require being read to or rocked.” Sadd sat up and blew
his nose. “Clara, what do you propose to say to Peter Angier? His wife may know nothing
about the case. He only married her about ten years ago.”

“If you're trying to tell me not to be tactless, I'll do my best.”

“I only meant—”

“I don't plan to say, over the fruit cup, ‘By the way, Mrs. Angier, did you know that
your husband was once involved in a tragedy and never fully cleared?'”

“Yes he was, Mrs. Smarty.”

“Actually, he wasn't, Sadd,” said Henry. “Neither were the other kids. That is, their
statements couldn't be proved or disproved. It was always rather a shadow on them.
Peter's the only one still living.” We were silent for a minute, then Henry added:
“Sadd's got a point, Mom. It could be ticklish.”

Sadd said: “All you have to do is arrange for Mrs. A. to be locked in the ladies' room
for about twenty minutes. I assume you don't plan to interrogate him all evening.”

“I just want to know if May wrote to him and—”

“Of course she did, if she wrote to someone as remote as Father Dever.”

“—and I want to know if he replied—anonymously or otherwise—and I want to know if he went
to see her.”

“Would you expect him to tell you that?”

“Why not, if he has nothing to hide?”

Henry had been looking from me to Sadd. “What are you two talking about? ‘Went to see
her'? ‘Nothing to hide'? Do you know something I don't know?”

“Your mother”—Sadd slid down on his pillows— “is behaving in true Gamadge fashion—seeing
suspects everywhere. Why don't you question the cat, Clara? Perhaps May wrote to him.
Henry, you'd better watch this woman at dinner tonight if you want Peter to pick up the
check. Now these are my last words: Which of you is going to get me a bourbon?”

“I am,” said Henry and went out.

Sadd sat up and glared at me. “You're back on that kick about somebody walking in on May!
You promised me—”

“I didn't promise you anything. You asked me if I'd given up the thought and I said I
supposed so. Well, I haven't.” I stood up. “And it wouldn't kill you to read Hen one
chapter from an Oz book. You're not that sick.”

I went down the hall to Henry and Tina's room and contemplated my wardrobe. I'd slept for
most of the afternoon on their enormous bed after we'd quarantined Sadd, and Tina had
gone out and bought me a pretty blouse to wear with what she called my “hunk of tweed.”

I tried on the blouse and stared at it in the mirror. Better to say nothing to Peter
Angier about Ellen this evening. I'd ask him to come visit Sadd tomorrow. Poor, sick
Sadd would be so happy if an old friend were to drop by. How could an old friend refuse?

Pleased with myself, I started to brush my hair and my eyes dropped to a picture on the
dresser top. I picked it up and swallowed hard. Henry Gamadge was stretched on the sofa
of our living room on East Sixty-third Street and Henry Junior, perhaps three years old,
was perched atop his father's bent knees. I was sitting on the floor beside them, infant
Paula in my arms. My beloved Aunt Robby Vauregard, who had raised me, had wielded the
camera, and it was Thanksgiving Day.

“Isn't that a great picture, Mom? Tina found it in one of the albums—aw, come on!”

I turned, sobbing wildly in my son's arms. Tina and Sadd apparently converged in the
hall, took a look in, and withdrew. Henry hugged me rockingly and said:

“Remember that silly little rhyme he used to sing when he had me up on his knees like
that? ‘Trot, trot to Boston, Trot, trot to Lynn; watch the Mystic River or you might
fall in!' And with ‘IN,' down I'd go between his knees! How did Dad ever learn a nursery
rhyme about Boston....? You OK now?”

I nodded and kissed him and went back to brushing my hair.

“His parents always went to the Berkshires in the summer. What time should we leave to
meet the Angiers?”

“Not for an hour or so. Hey, I have something nice to tell you. It seems Sadd notified
the cemetery office that he wants to pay for Martin's slab to be inscribed. Father Dever
just called to thank him.”

“Oh, I am glad!”

“Something else, Mom.”

His voice made me turn. Henry was looking at me with an expression I couldn't define. He
went on:

“I got the impression, when we were talking with Sadd just now, that you think there was
something fishy about May's death.”

I sat down on the bed and just looked at him. Henry walked about the room as he talked.

“She certainly took her own overdose, we know that. But why? Why, when she was so hot to
pursue the investigation? I haven't even said this to Tina, but would that anonymous
letter really have blitzed May so badly? In fact, wouldn't it have had the opposite
effect and egged her on?”

Oh, Henry Gamadge, you'd have been proud of this son!

I said: “Sadd wants no part of it. He thinks it's crazy. Maybe it is.”

“Yes, maybe it is, and I think I'd let it go except for something that came in the mail
this morning.”

He took an envelope from his pocket and extracted a note and a check. The check was for
twenty-five thousand dollars and was marked “gift.” The note read: “Henry and Tina,
you've been wonderful. This says thank you—May.”

Henry said: “Her lawyer found it in her desk stamped and ready to mail.”

I was overjoyed. “Henry, I couldn't be happier!”

“So if anybody did or said anything to make May destroy herself, I want to know who it
was.”

Tina put her head in the door. She saw the check in my hand and smiled happily. “Isn't
that great?”

“Wonderfully great.”

We walked downstairs and I told them my plan to invite Peter Angier to the house next
day; they thought it inspired. Sadd's voice croaked after us that although he was dying
he was also starving and who was going to bring him some supper?

The Othello was a low-key, very expensive Italian restaurant four blocks from Willow
Street. The three of us walked there through a crystal clear night, and the Angiers were
standing under the canopy. Ruth Angier, an angular woman about my age with a very nice
smile, waved and said, “Bet these are the Gamadges,” and Peter said, “Where's Sadd?”

It took till we'd checked our coats and been shown to a table to make explanations. Then
Peter opened the wine list and said:

“I'm sorry Sadd is sick, but I'm kind of glad he's not here. I want to talk about Ellen
Dawson.”

Fortunately Ruth said something right away about ordering the wine and if we had no
preference she'd like to recommend ... and the three Gamadges sat nodding in dazed
agreement.

Peter said, signaling to the waiter: “When I got that letter from Mrs. Dawson I felt
sick, positively
sick
. To think of that poor woman sitting all alone in her
apartment up on Park—and many's the time I've visited her there over the years because I
felt so sorry for her—sitting there dreaming up this ghastly plan—well, I nearly called
you two, but then the poor soul died and I assumed you'd dropped the thing, am I right?”

He gave the waiter an exotic-sounding wine order and looked at Henry, who was drinking
his water. Tina said, with admirable poise:

“Yes. We were distressed at the idea, too.”