Mom Doth Murder Sleep Read online

  “But if they decide to keep quiet about it, I’d still have this on my conscience, wouldn’t I?”

  “Naturally you would. The question is, what are you willing to have on your conscience and what not? You think you can get through life with nothing on your conscience? Believe me, it never worked that way. Read the Bible already. Look at all those holy people, what they had on their conscience. Like King David sleeping in the bath with the Queen of Sheba. And Moses burning up bushes. And Abraham, he was the worst one of all, he was going to stick a knife into his own son. Every father feels like doing it from time to time, this is only natural, but if the angel didn’t come along, Abraham would’ve done it. So the point I’m making is, nobody’s perfect. And you don’t have to be the exception.”

  I didn’t even need to do much thinking about this. I said I’d turn my evidence over to Dave and Ann, and after that I’d just let things take their course. Already I felt a lot better.

  Then I saw the time and got to my feet, not too enthusiastically because there was still a piece of schnecken left on the plate. But I had a lot of work to do before Dave and I met with Ann at four o’clock. I had to check out when Lloyd Cunningham got home on the night of the murder, talk to the people at the Watering Hole saloon, and take care of a few items pertaining to other cases. I thanked the old lady for the food and the advice. I didn’t know which I was more grateful for.

  At her front door I said, “The way you figured out whose ring it was—that was a terrific piece of deduction. It reminded me of the way Dave deduces things. If I didn’t know better, I’d think maybe he comes to you for advice too.”

  I let the words slip out as if they had suddenly popped into my head, right out of the blue. But of course, even as I heard myself saying them, I knew this was exactly what I’d been wondering about for weeks now. This was my crazy suspicion, and all along I had been intending to confront her with it.

  She looked at me in silence. And with her eyes so steady that pretty soon I couldn’t meet them anymore.

  “Everybody’s a detective” was what she finally said. Then she put her hand on my arm and gave a squeeze. Her expression wasn’t harsh or angry, but it was very serious. “This is something you don’t ever say to Davie, you follow me? This is something you don’t ever let on that you know. If you like him at all, and care a little bit for his feelings, you keep quiet about even thinking such a thing.”

  I nodded hard and gave her my solemn promise.

  Then I said, “Good-bye, Mrs.—”

  But she didn’t let me finish. “Mrs. is what I am to the butcher and the baker and the rabbi. You’ll call me Mom, wouldn’t you, like Davie does? Unless this makes you feel uncomfortable.”

  “No, it’s all right. I’d like to call you Mom.”

  “You’re a nice boy,” she said. Then she was pecking at my cheek again. An old lady’s kiss, dry and quick, like something fluttering against my face. “And you’re a good eater. One thing I like in this world, it’s a good eater. Davie was a good eater too, at your age.”

  * * *

  I had Lloyd Cunningham’s home address in my notebook, so I drove in that direction, hoping to find his wife and kids at home. And while I drove, and subliminally enjoyed the streaks of autumn red and yellow that were beginning to take over the trees on all the streets, I thought about what I had just learned. Of course I would never tell Dave. I could understand how embarrassed he would feel. But I wished I could tell him somehow, so that I could let him know that it didn’t make me think less of him in any way.

  In fact—and this thought came to me as a big surprise—I had never felt so close to him before.

  11

  Dave’s Narrative

  I grabbed a bite of nothing at the courthouse cafeteria, and put in an afternoon clearing up the paperwork on four or five earlier cases. This is how District Attorney Marvin McBride hopes eventually to sink the public defender’s office: he can’t be more efficient than we are, but maybe he can tie us up day and night with forms to fill out.

  I finished the forms at three, naturally in a lousy mood, so I took out the bottle of whiskey that I keep in my desk drawer and gulped down one shot. This isn’t a remedy I turn to very often; in fact, in the couple of years that I’ve had this job, I’ve replaced the bottle only once. My persistent vice, as Mom always reminds me, isn’t drinking, it’s complaining about my life. “You’re a kvetsh,” she often told me. “Kvetshes don’t kill themselves at a young age, like drinkers and dope-takers. They lead long lives, full of misery.”

  A few minutes before four Roger arrived, and then Ann buzzed from her office and said she was ready for us.

  So we reported our latest activities to her. I gave her the details of the interview with Cunningham, and Roger told her about his date last night with Laurie Franz. Then he told her what he had been doing this afternoon after lunch, how he had checked with Cunningham’s wife and family and with the bartender and waiters at the Watering Hole. All this had accomplished was to confirm what Cunningham had told us already: he did get home around eight-forty on the night of the murder, he did arrive at the Watering Hole around seven-thirty and leave around eight-thirty. But he had occupied a booth way in the back, near the fire door to the alley, and nobody could say he hadn’t slipped out before the time of the murder and slipped in again afterward.

  Ann seldom expressed enthusiasm, even for good news. For non-news like we had to offer—a few motives, a few opportunities, but nothing substantial to put up against Sally’s button—she just gave a poker-faced grunt. “Okay, if that’s it,” she said. “I’m trying for a preliminary hearing, two weeks from today. It would be nice if we had something definite by then, we might be able to keep her from going to trial at all. How’s the chances, do you think?”

  I shrugged, my normal defense when Ann tries to pin me down to a promise or even a cautious note of optimism. “Give me tonight to look over my notes and think about what we’ve got, then I’ll tell you tomorrow morning where we go from here.”

  “I don’t see what else we can do,” Ann said. She turned to Roger. “You have any ideas?”

  I expected him to shake his head no, but instead he got this terribly serious, nervous look on his face. “There’s something I didn’t tell you yet,” he said.

  He stopped, while we stared at him, waiting. So he started in again. “The reason I didn’t tell you, I wasn’t sure if it’s something you’d want to know. I mean, if I never told you about it, nobody could ever say you should’ve done something about it.”

  “Roger, what is it?” Ann said quietly.

  So he finally came out with it, and when he was finished I couldn’t keep myself from giving a groan. “Great! Just great!”

  “I shouldn’t have told you! Now you’ll have to report it to the DA, and it’ll make the case against Mrs. Michaels even worse!”

  The expression on Ann’s face had hardly changed at all. One of the best things about her is the way she takes bad news. In her usual businesslike voice she said, “Did Sally wear that ring onstage on opening night?”

  She addressed the question to Roger and me, and we both paused for a while before answering. I was racking my brains over it, trying to bring back an image of what Sally Michaels had looked like during that opening-night performance. I tried to visualize her hands, but nothing came to me at all. And Roger was looking just as blank and frustrated.

  “What about when we interviewed her in the jail yesterday morning?” Ann said. “Was she wearing the ring? No, don’t bother to torture yourself, Dave, I can tell you the answer. She was.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s the person who grabbed hold of me,” Roger said. “The murderer could’ve stolen the ring from her, worn it during the murder, and slipped back to her dressing room afterward. Like with the raincoat. All part of the frame-up.”

  “It wouldn’t be easy to do,” I said. “If she wore that ring onstage, if she never took it off her finger all night.”


  “It has to have happened that way.” Roger’s voice was getting louder. “You can’t tell me she’d be crazy enough to keep that ring on her finger while she was committing the murder! A dead giveaway to who she was?”

  “She’d be crazy enough if the thought just didn’t occur to her,” I said. “She’s so used to wearing that ring that she forgot all about it when she dressed up like the Third Murderer. After all, she had something more important on her mind.”

  “It’s pointless speculating about it.” Ann got to her feet. “Obviously the next step is to hear what she has to say about the ring. Get her on the phone, will you, Roger. If she’s home, tell her the three of us will be right over.”

  “And after we talk to her,” Roger said, “is that when I turn over this information to the district attorney?”

  Ann said nothing for a while, her face absolutely without expression. Then, in a neutral tone of voice, she said, “It goes without saying that you have to report this to the district attorney. This office has a legal duty not to suppress evidence in a criminal case. You have the same duty as any citizen.”

  She paused, stared into space, then went on, “The only question is when. As an employee of the public defender’s office, your first obligation is to report important information to your immediate superior. Meaning Dave. And his first obligation is to report it to his immediate superior, meaning me. That could be a long-drawn-out process, there has to be time for locating people, working your way into their schedules, et cetera. And even when you finally do get the information to me, my first obligation is to evaluate how important it is, with the ultimate purpose of determining who I should report it to.

  “I might then decide that I should report it directly to the district attorney himself. Well, that could be easier said than done. By this time in the afternoon, if past experience is any guide, District Attorney McBride is at least three cocktails on the way to his nightly celebration of the rites of Dionysus. Is he in any condition to receive important information that might require high-level policy decisions? Will he be in such a condition tomorrow morning, as he struggles to recover from the effects of those rites? Frankly, I doubt it. In fact, my offhand estimate is that it won’t be feasible to get this information to him until noon tomorrow at the earliest. Which gives us plenty of time to have a nice leisurely conference with our client. Roger, didn’t I tell you ten minutes ago to get her on the phone? What’s holding you up?”

  Roger scurried out of there, and Ann gave a grunt and settled back into her chair.

  Sally Michaels lived in an old stone house on the north end of Mesa Grande, the oldest and one of the most expensive parts of town. Sally didn’t have much money, but she had inherited this house from her parents thirty years ago, so all it cost her was the upkeep and the property taxes. When she was married to Bernie, I’m told, she used to rent it out, and they lived in his little house in a much less fancy neighborhood. After the divorce, Sally moved back to the old homestead.

  Ann had called first to make sure she’d be expecting us, but her front door was opened by Bernie. His smile flickered, friendly but nervous, as he let the three of us in.

  “Sally called me after she talked to you,” he said. “She got the feeling something bad was up. She thought she’d be needing moral support.”

  “I hope not,” Ann said. We went into the living room, furnished with faded overstuffed furniture that belonged to an earlier and uglier era.

  “She’s in the kitchen making coffee,” Bernie said.

  “That isn’t necessary,” Ann said, and we all sat down on a large sofa printed with big red and yellow sunflowers.

  “It’s necessary for her.”

  I could understand how intimidating we must be. Three grim-faced officers of the court, sitting stiffly in a row.

  A few minutes later, accompanied by the faint aroma of Magnolia Blossoms, Sally came in with the coffee. She bustled around, pouring for us, asking who took sugar and cream. Finally she settled into an armchair across from us, leaned forward, and squeezed her hands together as if she were doing her Lady Macbeth sleepwalking-washing act. “All right, get it over with, tell me the bad news.”

  Ann took a few beats, then said, “That’s an interesting ring you’re wearing.”

  Sally looked down at it, and so did the rest of us. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the large stone shaped like a grinning face.

  “Oh, yes, isn’t it lovely?” Sally said. “It has deep sentimental value for me.”

  “I understand,” Ann said, “that you and Martin Osborn got into a fight about that ring at one of the rehearsals. He didn’t want you to wear it during the performance—”

  “Oh, certainly not a fight. I don’t fight with people. We had a disagreement on artistic grounds.”

  “And you won the disagreement, did you?”

  “If you mean did I wear the ring on opening night, I certainly did. Imagine that vulgar man telling me about beauty and good taste!”

  “Nobody blames you for wearing the ring, Sally,” Bernie put in. “Everybody understands that artists have more refined tastes than ordinary people.”

  “My white knight,” she said, leaning over to pat his hand. “Always defending me, always rescuing me from the dragons. Why didn’t I have the sense to hold on to this sweet man while I had him?”

  “You could have him again, anytime you want,” Bernie said, blushing very deeply.

  Sally laughed. “Luckily for you, darling, I won’t take you up on that offer. I’m too fond of you to make your life miserable all over again.”

  “So you were wearing the ring when you went onstage opening night?” Ann said.

  “I wore it all that day; I was wearing it when I got to the theatre.”

  “And you never took it off, not even when you were in your dressing room resting up before the banquet scene?”

  “Why should I have? It’s such a nuisance to take it off, it’s so tight on my finger these days. I have put on just a tiny little bit of weight since my twenty-first birthday, you know.”

  “It never occurred to you that Osborn might be right, about the ring being unsuitable for Lady Macbeth?”

  “He wasn’t right. He was trying to frighten me, telling me the audience would laugh at me for wearing it, pretending he thought it was just some cheap vulgar piece of trash. That was his way of making me jump when he snapped his fingers. Marty loved to make people jump. Well, I was damned if I’d give him that satisfaction! I wore the ring all that night, on my finger, in plain sight. I never took it off, from the time I got to the theatre to the time I left. And I’ll make you a bet right now: nobody in the audience even noticed I was wearing it!”

  She came to a stop, shaking a little. Saint Joan standing up to her inquisitors, refusing to be intimidated even in the shadow of the stake.

  Ann gave a little sigh and turned to Roger. “Why don’t you tell Sally what you’ve remembered.”

  Roger looked positively wretched; I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the kid. He brought out his story in an apologetic voice, as if he were the one who had something to feel guilty about.

  After he was finished, the room was silent for a long time.

  “Now look.” Bernie finally broke the silence. “It was dark up on that stage, you admit that yourself. And this murderer, his hand was on your chest, so you could only see his ring out of the corner of your eye—”

  “It wasn’t that dark,” Roger said, “and the hand was pretty close to my face. I’m not lying about this, believe me.”

  “I never said you were lying!” Bernie’s voice was high and strained. “But look, you couldn’t have seen the same—Wait, wait, hey, isn’t this possible? Somebody bought a ring that looked exactly like Sally’s, found it in a store somewhere, and put it on deliberately when he was committing the murder, so Sally would be implicated!”

  “That’s a pretty unusual stone,” I said. “And the whole style of it is old-fashioned. We’ll check every store in
town, but I’d be surprised if there’s any place that carries anything like this.”

  “Then the murderer didn’t pick up the duplicate ring here in town,” Bernie cried, “he went to some other city for it, maybe some other part of the country!”

  “Cunningham quit the play and Osborn took over the part of Banquo,” I said, “just four days before the opening night. That wouldn’t give your murderer much time to travel any distance and rummage through secondhand stores.”

  “All right, Sally.” Ann directed her gaze straight at her now. “Let’s hear what you have to say about Roger’s story.”

  None of us had looked at Sally since Roger finished talking. Bernie’s interruptions had distracted us. We all looked at her now.

  Her face was very white. Her voice came very low. “I swear to you, I never took this ring off all night. And I didn’t kill Marty. I swear it.”

  “Then how do you account for Roger seeing the ring on the murderer’s finger?” Ann said.

  She shook her head. “How can you expect me to account for things? I’ve never been any good at accounting for things!” A long low wail came out of her, and the tears burst from her eyes.

  Bernie was over to her in a split second, putting his arms around her, letting her sob into his chest. And over her head his eyes were fixed on us with a look of deep reproach.

  But reproachful looks have never been known to stop Ann when she had something to say. So she waited for Sally’s tears to subside, and then she said, “One more question. A few days before the murder, did you and Martin Osborn have an argument in your dressing room? Did he tell you he didn’t like the way you were playing Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, and did you tell him you could kill him for that?”

  Sally’s head snapped up. She wasn’t sobbing at all now. Her eyes weren’t even wet. “Who told you such a ridiculous thing?” she said, facing Ann directly. “Marty and I couldn’t possibly have had such an argument. He loved my sleepwalking scene. He complimented me on it many times. Whatever you say about Marty, he was a superb judge of acting.”