Friends till the End Read online

  Had she seen anything unusual, he wanted to know. Anything out of the ordinary.

  “Well,” said Freda, “there was something a little strange.”

  What was that?

  “It was something that didn’t happen, rather than something that happened.”

  Detective Voelker looked politely inquiring.

  “It was Walter and Harry.” Freda gave a weary cackle, a faint echo of her usual robust laugh. “They’re always at each other’s throats. Over the stupidest things, really. Like water resources in the Amazon, or something. I can’t keep track of it myself. But last night—nothing! No argument—nothing! I keep thinking of that, and wondering why. That old ass Harry was driveling on as usual about something, Beethoven, I think it was, and Walter didn’t say a word. Well, I ask you, why not?”

  The last two words were said almost belligerently.

  Voelker did not reply, and after a moment Freda said, “Maybe it was because he didn’t know anything about Beethoven. That’s possible. But it seemed significant, somehow.”

  Voelker nodded solemnly and wrote down, Wandering. Drunk? Unreliable witness.

  Freda had not seen much else. She admitted candidly that she had been more than a little drunk. She smiled briefly when Voelker mentioned the name of her companion of the night before.

  “He’s a clown,” she said. “A professional clown. I like unusual men.”

  Yes, thought Voelker. You would. He looked at her hair, its unnatural color, and at the lines on her face. Inwardly he grimaced.

  “Laura was my best friend,” Freda was saying tiredly. “My best friend. We went everywhere, did everything. Traveled. Laura was fun, she was alive, she—” She shrugged. “What can I say? It’s a loss, Officer … a great loss …”

  Voelker asked whether she had seen Laura take the drink from her husband’s hand.

  Freda didn’t think so. No, she hadn’t. She hadn’t paid much attention to old Wally. Not that she ever did. Last night she had been trying to see that Eddie had a decent time.

  “Yes,” said Voelker politely. “Yes, I see.”

  Freda looked up with a sudden flash of interest. “You mean it’s possible the—the poison was meant for Wally?”

  Voelker debated what he should say. “Mr. Sloane himself advocates that point of view,” he said carefully.

  Freda stared at him, her mouth open. Then she began to laugh. She laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Then, just as suddenly, succumbing to the liquor she had been drinking all day, she began to cry. She cried and cried, her shoulders heaving.

  Voelker watched this performance with interest. Was it a performance? He didn’t know the woman well enough to decide.

  “Poor Laura,” Freda gasped at last, fingers rumbling on the table for her drink. “Poor Laura. Somebody tried to kill that bastard, and she dies instead!”

  3

  “Pretty weak story,” said Philip West, he had been listening carefully to Voelker’s report. “Pretty weak story. Don’t you think?”

  “Sloane’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “I agree.”

  Philip West was chief of detectives in the Ridgewood Police Department, and most of the people who worked for him tended to agree when he delivered himself of a judgment. He was a big barrel-chested man with a rumbling laugh and intelligent gray eyes. He narrowed his gaze on Voelker and said, “Somebody slipped poison into his glass and his wife just happened to take it away from him? Doesn’t sound too likely.”

  “No. On the other hand—” Voelker paused.

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s not the kind of story you’d think up beforehand. Not polished enough. If you were going to kill your wife, wouldn’t you come up with a better alibi?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Philip West said dryly. “What about this Sloane? Is he smart or stupid?”

  “Smart.”

  “Hmmph. You think it might just be true, what he’s saying?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You have somebody who says he saw Mrs. Sloane take a drink out of her husband’s hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmmpph.”

  There was a long silence. Then: “What else are you following up on?”

  “The insecticide didn’t come from the Sloanes’ house. They have a garden shed all right, but they only have rose spray and it’s the wrong kind. Of course, if Sloane did it, he could have disposed of the bottle already. So could anyone else. But we’re looking. It’s an unusual kind of insecticide. Might not be too hard to trace.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’ve talked to everyone who was at the party.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing much yet,” said Voelker guardedly. West might be his boss, but he liked to keep some of his thoughts and intuitions to himself.

  West grinned. “No one broke down and confessed, eh?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Keep on it,” West advised. “You might get lucky.”

  The funeral was held three days later. Everyone came. Freda Simms had dyed her hair black, in mourning, and was dressed in black from head to foot, with not a piece of jewelry to relieve the somberness; “very unlike her,” whispered Heather to Ruth. Freda loved jewelry and usually wore an inappropriate amount of it. Today she was a still, subdued little figure, the black outfit diminishing her in size. She cried all throughout the service.

  Everyone drove out to the cemetery and stood huddled close together under umbrellas as Laura Sloane’s casket was lowered into its grave. It was early May, wet and dreary, a day with all the colors washed out of it. The cemetery seemed to go on forever, and Snooky found the sight of endless rows of tombstones marching over the hills on either side of them unbearably depressing. Everyone wept; everyone except for Isabel, Richard and Snooky, who stood a little apart from the others. The minister said a few touching words and it was all over. They filed silently back to their cars, the men mutely slapping Walter Sloane on the back, the women giving Isabel a hug. No one seemed to know what to do. There was supposed to be a little reception afterward at the Sloane house, but it was obvious that no one wanted to come. The memory of the party last Saturday night still lingered. Sam and Ruth Abrams murmured excuses and drifted off. So did Heather and Harry Crandall. Freda Simms did not even bother to give an excuse; she simply got in her scarlet Jaguar and drove away, gunning the engine as she went.

  When Snooky got home from the funeral, he sat in the living room with his sister and described how everyone had behaved.

  “Freda Simms looked like she was headed for a nervous breakdown,” he told Maya, who listened intently. “That gray-haired woman, what’s her name—Ruth Abrams—looked confused, as if she had just come from another planet. Nobody knew what to say to the family afterward.”

  “You are the world’s worst gossip,” said Maya. “Go on.”

  “That professor, Harry Crandall, looked as if he wanted to shove the minister aside and give his own sermon. You know the type. His wife looks like a hippie from the sixties. Really. Long brown hair parted in the middle. I went up to her afterward to make sure her necklace wasn’t a peace sign.”

  Bernard sat quietly in the background, drinking coffee and glancing through the newspaper. When Snooky paused for breath he said abruptly, “Who cried?”

  “Well—nearly everyone, Bernard.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Well, Isabel didn’t. Maybe just a little. She’s not that way. Not very emotional.”

  Bernard lapsed back into his habitual silence. After a while he stretched, picked up his coffee cup and left the room.

  Maya watched him go. “It’s so unlike Bernard,” she whispered. “I’ve never known him to be so interested in people he didn’t even know.”

  “Well, frankly, Maya, I’ve never known him to be interested in people he did know. Me, for instance. I don’t feel he’s interested enough in me.”

  “Snooky, you never feel anyone is interest
ed enough in you.”

  They were still discussing the murder a little while later when Bernard drifted back in.

  “There’s no more coffee,” he said.

  Maya gave him a reproving glance. “Bernard,” she said, “what are you going here? Shouldn’t you be working on that new book?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s this one called?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “What’s it going to be about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sounds like it’s going fine,” said Snooky. “Listen, Maya, I’d still like to invite Isabel over to dinner sometime. Is that okay? Do you think she’ll come?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t she?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We were never very close in college. And then with all this stuff happening to her, I’m not even sure she wants to see me again.”

  “I’ve never heard you sound so insecure,” said Maya severely. “Buck up. Go call the woman and ask her.”

  Snooky got up and restlessly skimmed his fingers over the bookshelves.

  “Look at this. Your wedding album. You’ve never showed it to me.”

  “For good reason.”

  “Why?” He took it down and opened it. “You had a wonderful wedding. You did it in style. Bridesmaids, a caterer, champagne fountains, the works. And William in a corner, crying as he made out the checks. It was a perfect day.”

  “Bernard, stop him,” said Maya. “If he sees those pictures he’ll never let us live it down.”

  It was too late.

  “Look at this,” said Snooky, gawking. “Geez, I had forgotten. Six bridesmaids all in purple. Six groomsmen in tuxedos. Here’s Bernard in a tux. You look just awful, Bernard. A little jittery, eh?”

  “I do not look awful.”

  “Terrible. Just terrible. And here’s Maya.” Snooky paused wickedly. “You look beautiful, Maya. Don’t be ashamed. No, really. That gown was worth every penny it cost the family.”

  “Drop dead, Snooky.”

  “And here’s William, looking like he’s at a funeral. Is that his checkbook he’s clutching to his heart? And there’s Emily, the old bitch, looking sour as ever. And their little brats.” Snooky was not a model uncle. “And here I am, looking like a total jerk. Note that I do not spare myself in my criticisms. I never did look good in a tux.”

  “You looked fine. Put that thing away now.”

  “Tell me, Snooky,” said Bernard. “What do you think your wedding will be like?”

  “Oh, I’m planning to get married in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator. They have ministers there who double as Elvis impersonators. That’s just one reason why Las Vegas is the cultural capital of the world.”

  “Go call your friend,” Maya said. “You can invite her for dinner tomorrow, if you want.”

  “Thanks, My.”

  Snooky left the room. Bernard picked up the wedding album. He and Maya leafed silently through the pages.

  “Oh my God,” Maya said heavily. “Look at that. Bernard, we must have been out of our minds. Why in the world didn’t we elope? Look at your cousin there. God, she looks awful. What kind of pose is that? What were we thinking of?”

  “William does look like he’s at a funeral,” said Bernard. “I never noticed that before.”

  “Why are your mother’s eyes closed in all the family group shots?”

  “Why does Snooky look like he’s in a great deal of pain?”

  “What is your cousin doing with that dog? Oh, God, why did we keep this thing? Put it back before it gets me crazy.”

  There was a silence. Maya said musingly, “I suppose Snooky will be getting married someday. Hopefully not someday soon, but still … Bernard, do you have that tuxedo, or did we store it somewhere and lose it?”

  “I think it’s in the guest-room closet.”

  “Good. Maybe if the moths haven’t eaten it, you can wear it to Snooky’s wedding. How does that sound?”

  “I’m not wearing a tuxedo in front of any Elvis impersonator,” Bernard said with feeling.

  Ruth Abrams and Heather Crandall were discussing the murder over cups of grain coffee at Heather’s kitchen table. It was a gorgeous spring day; the sun streamed in and the room was light and cheerful. The windows were open and the green and yellow curtains swayed in the breeze. Ruth was wearing an old cotton dress with a faded floral print; her hair was ruffled and untidy. Heather managed to look neat and self-possessed, as always, in an embroidered caftan. Her hair was smoothly plaited into a long brown braid that hung down her back.

  “Nobody would want to kill Laura,” Ruth was saying with conviction. “Nobody!”

  “I agree.”

  “It must have been some kind of accident.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “But what kind?”

  “I think,” said Heather, “that it comes from too much meat-eating. Meat promotes aggressive tendencies. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. Vegetarianism is the way of the future.”

  Ruth submitted meekly to another cup of the grain coffee. She added skim milk, stirred it and wondered if there was enough coffee and cream left at home for her to have a real cup when she got back.

  “Meat, caffeine and sugar,” Heather was saying. “The deadly trio.”

  “Oh, yes, yes. I tried your brown rice syrup the other day,” Ruth said with forced cheerfulness. “It was very good.”

  “Oh, did you like it?”

  “Mmmm, yes.”

  She omitted to tell her friend that Sam had taken one bite of the overly sweet cake and had refused to eat any more. Even the cat would not touch it.

  Heather’s dog, Mahler, wandered into the room and came hopefully to the table for scraps. Ruth wondered idly if Mahler was also a vegetarian, like the rest of the family. It seemed likely. She could not imagine Heather buying cans of dog food at the market. It was against everything she believed in. Ruth could imagine her friend preparing careful portions of vegetarian fare for Mahler: perhaps stewed carrots, with tofu “meatballs” (Heather’s specialty) and, who knows, maybe lettuce or whole grain crumbs for texture. Poor Mahler. She gave him a surreptitious pat on the head as he stretched out under the table. He would never know the joys of a normal dog’s life.

  “Mommy,” said a voice from under the table. Linus was playing there, unseen as usual. “Mommy.”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “Can I sit on Mahler?”

  “No, darling.” Heather put on what she called her “stern face.” She peaked under the table. “You know better than that, Linus. Mahler is a sentient being, like you and me. Do you like it when Charlie sits on you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then.”

  Apparently satisfied with this line of logic, Linus went back to playing with blocks or whatever he was doing under there. He was such a quiet child, Ruth thought; it was restful to have him about. Not the way her two children had been, certainly; they were grown now, but when they were young it was like having a pair of whirlwinds in the house. And her grandson, Marcia’s son Melvin, was just the same.

  “How’s Melvin, by the way?” Heather asked, in her casually intuitive way.

  Ruth shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “Do you hear from Marcia?” Heather asked gently.

  “Not often. Not nearly often enough, frankly. I’m worried about her,” Ruth said. Her anxious face contracted into tight little lines. “Although what’s new about that? I’m always worried about her.”

  Marcia was her 23-year-old daughter, and she was an enigma and a mystery to her parents. At the ripe age of sixteen she had dropped out of high school and set off, as she put it, to “find her true self.” Apparently her true self was living somewhere in California, because that was where she went, with a battered suitcase and a head full of empty dreams. She drifted up and down the coast, getting odd jobs, writing back enthusiastic letters about her lifestyle and the “fantastically interesting” people she was m
eeting. One of those fantastically interesting people was Melvin’s father, whom Marcia met while she was working in a temporary position at a pizza joint. She stayed only a few weeks, then moved on—that was her rule, never too long in any one place—and a short while later found she was pregnant. Marcia was delighted. She hadn’t planned it, of course; she never planned anything; but she took it in her stride. Ruth and Sam were somewhat less delighted. To this day, the only thing they knew about Melvin’s father was that he had been young, around Marcia’s age, and that, according to their daughter, he made “awfully good pizza.”

  “Hardly sterling qualifications,” Ruth would say miserably. “Hardly Harvard Law School, for goodness sakes. We had hoped for—for something a little better for our daughter.”

  “It’s karmic,” Heather would reply. She was of a different generation than Ruth’s daughter, but sometimes she talked the same way. “It’s karmic, Ruth. You have to accept it. Marcia’s your daughter, not your toy. You have to accept her as she is.”

  This was difficult for Ruth to do because she desperately wanted Marcia to be different. She wanted her to be well-educated and successful and married to a man who was the same. Instead, all she had were letters postmarked from California which detailed Marcia’s wanderings up and down the coastline from small town to small town, and which included details of her jobs at a Dairy Queen in Espolito (“really interesting—great people, and Melvin ate like a pig”), or a little health food restaurant on the beach near San Diego (“heavenly epanadas, honestly, the best I’ve ever tasted”).

  “It’s not fair,” Ruth would wail. “It’s not fair! Where did she come from? She could have dropped in from another galaxy for all I know about her. Honestly, she just doesn’t fit into the family.”

  The family, in Ruth’s world view, consisted of Ruth, Sam, and their son Jonathan. Jonathan was twenty-eight years old and, in Heather’s opinion, a stuck-up prig. He had been a pale shifty child with a nervous face who had grown up into a pale shifty young man with a nervous face. His intellectual prowess had not counted for much while he was growing up, and he had become used to the cries of Nerd and Cauliflower Brain, but it had come in surprisingly handy later when he found himself enrolled for a doctorate in mathematics at Princeton. Jonathan was the Abramses’ idea of what their child should be. He taught math at Princeton and had the uncomfortable habit of staring at you palely when you asked him a question about his work.