
Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red

By Jacqueline T. Lynch

***

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# Table of Contents

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

The End.

Copyright 2011, 2012, 2015 Jacqueline T. Lynch

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# Chapter One

"The last spring of the 1940s."

Juliet said it aloud this time, with equal parts anticipation and regret. Drumming slender white-gloved fingers on the steering wheel as she waited for the light to turn green, giving it her warmest smile as a thank you, she made a left-hand turn onto Asylum Street.

Past the fashionable Bond Hotel, she stomped her brake hard, with heart-pounding, if momentary, panic on discovering the large and dirty tailgate of the Hampden Ale truck in front of her with the logo: "You Get More Out of Hampden."

Stopping just in time, nearly getting more out of Hampden than she wanted, she chuckled a mea culpa at the motto when the flow of traffic resumed, given a reprieve by still being alive.

Juliet sometimes looked for signposts in her life, more supernatural than what was normally found on beer truck advertising or cooperative traffic lights, and invented them when they were not really there. Only dimly aware of this trait, she would have balked had someone accused her of needing some existential hand-holding. Proud and somewhat vain about her independent streak, nevertheless a vague sense of being imprisoned gnawed at her lately.

Perhaps it was her approaching thirtieth birthday, though Juliet told herself she did not care.

Making love on her free afternoon was all she cared about right now.

She left the car for the parking attendant and shot a glance at the upper floor of the apartment building. Kurt was not expecting her, but she knew he preferred surprises.

Hartford, Connecticut, breathed easy, in its own self-superior way, and the sun-warmed sidewalk flecked with the reddish droppings of buds from the maple trees, with their tentative crop of tiny new leaves seemed to indicate that the winter landscape had all been a mirage.

The trees in front of their apartment house were something that she would have painted. However, Kurt would dismiss the idea with derisive laughter as a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover, and move onto deeper subjects in his conversation and in his art.

Juliet entered the apartment house lobby. Mr. Percy, the desk manager with the paunch and the jet-black dyed fringe of hair around his otherwise bald head, said, "Good afternoon."

She would have painted Mr. Percy, too, if only for the novelty of his dyed fringe of hair. When she joked about it to Kurt, he suggested with his own peculiar effortless sarcasm that she ask Mr. Percy to model for her nude.

Mr. Percy looked up at her smiling, as if pleasantly surprised, on cue. Juliet stifled a chuckle, invariably reminded of Kurt's nude remark, which is all she thought of now whenever she saw Mr. Percy.

The officious desk manager, unaware of her comic fantasies, certainly was surprised, for she usually worked until at least six, sometimes later. It was only four o'clock. Juliet considered announcing she had come home early to make love with her husband, but Mr. Percy was just too easy to fluster. She wondered, with what Kurt might say was disingenuous flippancy, if it mightn't kill him.

Juliet took the elevator to the fourth-floor apartment. The elevator operator, a tall, thin, young black man about twenty named Tommy also gave her a somewhat smile of unexpected pleasure. She wondered if this was indicative of a very well-trained and polite staff or if she really had been so hidebound in her habits, and, if anybody, actually, could be that pleased to see her. She hoped Kurt would be.

"Did you take your car off the blocks, yet, Tommy?"

He caught her eye with a conspirator's look.

"This weekend. I can't wait."

"I'm surprised you've been stalling. Winter's got to be over by now."

"You can stop teasing me. I needed a tire."

Tommy brought her to her floor. When the doors opened, he wished her a good afternoon.

"Thank you, Tommy." Her footsteps echoed in the empty hall, and she touched the key to the keyhole.

She opened the door quietly, with no shouts of greeting. Surprising him was one thing, disturbing his work was another.

Juliet hoped that Kurt was continuing with the series on the Modern Woman. She put her keys in her purse and placed her purse down on the credenza against the wall, above which there was a mirror here in the alcove before the living room. A half wall with a wrought iron railing, which always made the person looking through the balusters seem as if he were in prison, separated the alcove from the living room. She turned and looked into the mirror to remove her hat, a soft, small peach-colored cap that matched her suit and clung to the crown of her blonde hair. She lifted her arms to reach for the hatpin with her right hand and hold her hat with her left, when her eyes were diverted by the flickered reflection of activity in the living room behind her.

She became only then just aware of a low muffled voice or more like a series of human noises. Lowering her arms slowly, pivoting with a gracefulness as if it had been rehearsed, Juliet looked through the thin, ironwork balustrade into the living room.

She noticed for the first time that the furniture had been pushed aside. The two couches were pulled away from each other and the coffee table had been moved against one of them, leaving a large clear area in front of the fireplace. She gripped the wrought iron bars like a prisoner in jail, stood on tiptoe and pulled herself up a couple inches and looked down over one of the couches. Of the two naked people vigorously making love on a blanket on the living room floor, she could recognize Kurt, but not the woman whose face was hidden.

Juliet lowered herself to her heels again. Her heart leaped into second gear, her breathing shot in gasps all the more painful from trying to stifle them. Her throat began to ache. She knew what it was she was seeing, but a fog of more than shock--of resolute stupidity--fell over her. She felt that she needed to look again, really look to make sure she understood the situation.

Juliet stepped quietly around the half wall and almost into the living room. She could make herself look no longer than a moment; it was enough, and too much.

Juliet turned quickly, her head snapping in a jerking movement, an involuntary reaction common to horror, great mirth, and being shot, and stepped back to the door. With a shaking hand, she picked up her purse. Shock and humiliation grabbed her by either arm and escorted her out the door, not even really knowing what she was doing. She only knew where, automatically, to retreat.

Back to her office.

Juliet took the stairs down to the street. She did not want to meet Tommy again. She could not return his smile, or greet him, a friend, without an explanation.

The stairwell behind steel fire doors revealed a quiet refuge, echoing cool solitude down four flights. She shattered the silence with the staccato sound of her heels clicking on the all steps, all the way down to the street. Tingling with cold perspiration, slightly lightheaded as if in the middle of a panic attack, she panted like a runner. Once outside again, she met the spring air, a cool lilac-scented breeze, which, after she had retrieved her car, was the only thing she could remember about the drive back to work. It was like a bookmark between the awful incident and the quiet limbo of her office.

Juliet worked as an assistant director of marketing at the Wadsworth Atheneum, one of the crown jewels of Hartford history. The oldest public art museum in the United States, it had in the 1930s and 1940s begun to shrug off the somewhat stodgy attitude, if not quite all of its reverence for the Hudson River painters, and moved boldly forward to exhibit the works of modern paintings under the direction of its dynamic former curator Chick Austin. Austin brought Italian Baroque, and theater, to the museum, and dance under Balanchine, and created a wing in the modern international style, the first seen in America. Modern Art, Cubism, Surrealism, the works of people like her husband Kurt that she proudly felt were reflective of a parade of modern talent that led right to Kurt.

The scene she had witnessed on her living room floor might have been realistic, but it seemed very, very surreal to her.

Henry, the security guard, looked up at her in surprise when she reentered the building. It was not a look of pleasant surprise, the way Tommy did, the way Mr. Percy did, with solicitude and deference. Just blank surprise. But he gave her an awkward nod, touched his cap.

"Forgot something," she said, though she did not owe him an explanation and he nodded this time with a smile as if, for no reason, he was relieved.

She closed the door to her office and sat there in silence. Only the singular glare from the 60-watt light bulb on her iron desk lamp lit the room, as if she were in a police interrogation office, interrogating herself.

In a way she was, asking the same questions of how could he? Why?

How long she had sat at her desk quietly crying, staring off to a shadowy wall as if she might find answers there was actually about five hours, until it was a little after nine o'clock. A strange muffled sound roused her from misery. She became conscious after a moment that it came from the ceiling above her. In another moment, she saw the ventilation grate in the ceiling tremble. From inside what she supposed was an air duct, the grate shifted from within the ceiling, revealing a dark hole. Then the worn brown shoes of a man slipped through.

Wrinkled brown socks slipped down to reveal two white, rather hairy ankles, wrinkled brown trousers smeared gray with dust slipped down from the open hole in the ceiling.

The stupor that had overtaken Juliet these last few hours evaporated. She snapped suddenly alert and aware again. Sometime in the past few hours, she had taken off her white gloves. They were bunched in her hand, twisted, wrinkled and damp from wiping her tears with them.

Could she alert Henry?

She looked at her delicate gold wristwatch. Nine o'clock. Had she been here so long? Kurt will be worried.

Kurt would be worried? Yes, Kurt would be so worried he might need to go out and get another date. She cursed his immortal soul and wondered if anyone else was working late. Chauncey, would he still be here? No. Chauncey always took a moment to look in on her. She had an idea that Chauncey liked her, maybe more than he should. She tried not to encourage him, but she tried not to discourage him either, because after all, he was her boss.

Karen was not here either, the secretary she shared with Chauncey. All the office staff would have long gone home by now. There would only be Henry the night watchman and his two assistants.

The trouser legs became a jacket of a slightly different shade of brown and likewise streaked gray with dust. Then the man lowered himself, very gently, like an acrobat, and dropped himself with only the slightest noise to the floor.

Too late for her to turn off the desk lamp. He noticed his own shadow on the wall and turned to face Juliet. She attempted to hide under her desk. But it was too late.

He saw her. She gasped, drawing her arms close to her chest as if protecting herself, clutching her crumpled gloves. He quickly touched his finger to his lips, the sign to hush.

Then he held both his hands up, palms facing outward as if he were surrendering to her, and he touched his finger to his lips again, imploring her to be quiet. He called in a whispered stage voice up to the hole in the ceiling.

"We have to go back. I made a mistake."

Juliet heard a body shift and some muffled reply in the air shaft somewhere deep behind the ceiling panels above her in an otherworld of ceiling infrastructure. The man took the chair for visitors and brought it to the hole in the ceiling and stood upon it and called softly into his hole again.

"This office, it's been made over into a supply closet. Door's locked from the outside. We have to go back and try the other way."

Another muffled reply in the airshaft.

"I'm not playing games," he said. "I'm coming back up."

He looked down at Juliet and touched his finger to his lips again. He called again into the air shaft.

"Someone's coming! Go back! I'll hide here."

In another moment, they heard a muffled movement from the ceiling that became more and more faint.

They both knew they were alone. He stared at her intently through the dim glare of the single 60-watt bulb in the black iron gooseneck desk lamp, as if he were deciding what to do. Then he replaced the ceiling panel, and stepped down from the chair, never taking his eyes off hers.

"I won't hurt you. Just don't scream, or we'll both be in for it." He said it in a slow, calm, deliberate way, as if he were talking to a small, fretful child, or training a dog. He kept doing that same gesture with his hands. Both slightly raised, as if he were surrendering, palms facing outward to her, patting the air in front of him gently. She finally began to feel her heartbeat slowing, as if his hand motion was making her slow down. She managed a few deep breaths.

He continued, "There's going to be a heist pulled on this museum in two or three days. A week. I don't know yet. I'm not involved in it. I mean, I am, but I'm not a crook. Until about a month ago, I was in prison, but I never stole anything or hurt anybody. These guys, they've got me over a barrel. They've got my kid. And if I don't help them pull off their job, they won't tell me where she is. They might even hurt her.

"I want to set them up, so they get caught. I want to fix it so that the cops or your security staff knows when it's going to happen. But I don't want to be here. I don't want them ever to know that I squealed. Do you understand?"

He waited what seemed like weeks for her to nod.

"As soon as I find out what's really happening and when it's going down, I'll contact you. Don't tell them that you found out through me. Just an anonymous tip. Okay?"

"I don't believe any of this." Juliet finally said, in a faint, shaky voice, the first thing she had said in hours and it was true, and she meant more than just the strange man falling out of the ceiling, or the museum going to be robbed. She meant Kurt McLeod, that miserable lying cheating pig of a husband, whose superior artistic talent was surpassed only by his lust, and perhaps by his arrogance.

"I swear it's true. I want to stop these guys and I don't want to get involved. I got out of prison a month ago. I want to start my life over."

"What were you in prison for?"

"Breaking into a museum so some guys could rob it."

Swell.

Juliet had been gripping the armrests of her office chair. She pulled her white-knuckled grip off the chair, put her hands in her lap and began to rub them, leaving her white cotton gloves in knotted ball on the desk. Her wedding ring lay on the desk blotter by the gloves. She had wriggled it off hours ago. Rose gold with three diamonds. Kurt bought it with his separation pay from the Army. Or he said he did. Suddenly her entire history with him was a question mark.

She looked up at the man, noticing that he saw the ring.

"You can have it, the ring...and here, my watch, if you just leave me alone."

"I don't want them. I swear, lady, I'm not going to hurt you."

"I'm not alone. I could scream or call and get help very quickly."

"There's a security guard on the outside of the building and one on the inside on the first floor. You're alone and there's no one to hear you."

She swallowed audibly and her heart began to pound again, hammering blood to her temples. Again, he lifted his hands.

"I don't say that to scare you. I know the routines of your schedule and others. You sure weren't supposed to be here tonight.

"But I'm not here to hurt you. We're going to walk out of here, you and I, right through the lobby where the security guy is sitting alone. When we pass him, I'm going to look right at him, so that he knows my face. When the cops get involved, he'll be able to identify me later on if he has to. When we're out of the building, I'll leave you and we won't see each other anymore, but I will contact you when I know what the plans are for the break-in so you can alert your staff.

"I'll even tell you my name, but I'd rather you not tell it to anybody, not yet. But if you need to tell the cops who I am, eventually, my name is Elmer Vartanian. I'll trust you, if you trust me."

The name meant nothing to her. She'd never heard it before. Her first thought was that it was a made-up name. It sounded silly enough to be a made-up name.

"Well, Miss Van Allen? Do we have an agreement?"

"You know my name?"

"It's painted there on the glass of your office door, Miss Van Allen, Associate Director, Marketing." They both looked at the glass and read it backwards.

"You want me to wait for your call to tell me when the break-in is going to occur and to alert my security staff to catch them. But you don't want me to mention your name to the police. Is that it?"

"Yes. That way, I don't get in trouble with these people. And I get my daughter back, and you don't get your museum robbed. Is it a deal?"

"What are these people supposed to be stealing?"

"You've got a collection of gold on the first floor, plates and cups and things on loan from the Southwest Museum."

"It's an Aztec collection."

"They don't care about that. They expect to get a fortune when it's fenced."

"Lord."

"Do we have a deal?"

"I want something else, too."

"What?" He frowned, hesitating.

"I want you to destroy some paintings."

His look of incredulity encouraged her. She explained quickly, with a sense of sureness that had finally returned to her after the last miserable hours.

"There are seven paintings in the third-floor gallery, a collection of modern art by Kurt McLeod. I want them destroyed."

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# Chapter Two

This woman is a screwball. She's going to ruin everything. This is worse than if she had just started screaming.

"I don't know if that can be done," Elmer Vartanian said, as cautiously as if he was trying to placate a willful child, "but aren't you supposed to be in the business of preserving art, not wrecking it?"

"That's my affair," she said, "Do we have a deal or not?"

They were expecting him at the rendezvous point.

"I don't know if I can promise that," he said. "I'll think about it. I'll call you. That's the best I can do right now. These guys have got me. Don't make things worse."

She lifted her chin. Was she really that stubborn or just putting on a brave front? He noticed in a quite irrelevant way that she was pretty. He also took note she had not been working late. There were no papers or pencils on her desk, just the wedding ring. The mechanical adding machine was covered, as if she had left the office hours ago.

"Look, lady," he said, "I already told you the plan, and I told you my name. You're free to call the cops anytime you want. That's already put me on a pretty short leash. If we can trust each other for a while nobody will get hurt."

He opened her office door and paused at the entrance, waiting for her.

Juliet stood slowly on very shaky legs and walked around her desk, a pathetic attempt to parade her dignity around the office furniture.

"Don't forget your gloves...and your wedding ring."

Her eyes darted back to her desk, and she quickly scooped up the ring and the clump of gloves that lay on her blotter. She dropped them in her purse.

"The guard might think you've been crying. We don't want to get him suspicious," he said.

"Just a moment," she said, taking her purse from under her arm. It was a peach-colored clutch purse that went perfectly with her fitted suit. She took out a compact, and he reached for her purse, so her hands could be free. Startled at his natural, almost friendly gesture, she gingerly placed her purse in his outstretched hand.

Juliet took a deep breath and opened up her compact, dabbing at the reddish streaks the tears had left on her pale skin. Her eyes were a light green. There were wide set, under slightly arched light brows. Her eyes almost seemed too large for her face, which perhaps might make her small delicate nose appear even smaller. When Juliet looked at her face, she saw that it was not proportional. She knew that most people's faces were not in proportion, and she consoled herself with that thought.

Elmer Vartanian did not know everybody's faces were not proportional. He never looked for perfection in any one, though he suspected, finally noticing her outfit and the purse he held, that she probably did, and expected it of herself.

She took another deep breath, and with a slightly shaking hand applied a thin layer of pale pink lipstick while Elmer stood motionless by the door, watching her, thinking how if she had been his wife he would be impatient right now waiting for her, annoyed at holding her purse. But she was not his wife. She was a stranger, and her hand was shaking and he did not mind waiting, because at least she wasn't screaming.

She blew her nose, quietly, quickly, and tucked everything away, taking her purse from him. She looked up at him,

"All right."

"Act like we know each other. Like I'm a client who's come to see you on business."

"I understand."

She turned off the metal gooseneck lamp. The only light in the office now streamed across them in a pale swath from the hall.

***

He offered his arm like an usher, and she nervously slipped her right hand in the crook of his elbow. They walked down through the private suite of offices set aside for the museum administrators, down the marble stairs to the Morgan Great Hall on the first floor. Deliberate footsteps echoing through the hall in unison, like tap dancers, and Juliet had a brief hysterical thought of Bill Robinson and Shirley Temple holding hands and dancing down the staircase.

She could sense his periodic sideways glances at her.

A marble bust of Junius Spencer Morgan, for whom the great gallery was named, perched on the second-floor landing. Morgan, born in western Massachusetts, was a nineteenth century banker and financier, which made him a true Hartford man in this city of investment and speculation and insurance. Explorers and poets, Presidents and sports heroes might be honored with memorials based on their contributions of talent to society, but financiers were honored only when their contributions were made in cash.

Now the landing parted into twin marble staircases to the first floor. The stone tablets embedded into the floor before the Great Hall announced that the building was erected "in loving memory" of this "merchant of Hartford" who left Hartford in 1851 and died in 1890 and whom nobody remembered anymore, except for his name on this hall.

Juliet glanced at Elmer and saw that he was gazing upward at the ornate stained-glass ceiling, which crowned the two-story hall.

She distracted him with a light squeeze on his arm and steered him down the hall to the front lobby desk, where Henry sat.

Elmer turned to her and said in a stage voice, "I don't think I can make the appointment, but I'll call you."

She looked at him, confused as if they were both sophomores in a high school play and she had forgotten her lines. She could see Henry look up at them and follow their approach with his squinting dark eyes.

"Oh, yes," she said, a little too loudly, a little too forcefully. "There's no rush. We can always talk later."

"Fine, fine," he said. He turned to face the security guard and smiled and nodded.

"Goodnight, Henry," she called to him, and he touched his cap.

"Goodnight, Miss Van Allen." Henry's eyes darted over the stranger.

"Shall I walk you to your car?" the stranger asked.

Henry the guard heard no more as they went out the exit doors.

A soft, rolling breeze blew up from the Connecticut River on this clear, warm night. It seemed like a completely different world from the one she left, as it always did. The contrast between the quiet, controlled, and orderly world of the museum full of beautiful old things, and the real world so noisy, so wild, and so thrilling. Usually. Tonight, it was the opposite; the museum was the wild and thrilling place of surprises and risks, and they walked out into dewy, quiet and tranquil night.

She had parked around the corner on the north side of Atheneum Square, across from the enormous Traveler's Building. One of many insurance company headquarters that made up Hartford's most prosperous industry, and one of its most solid and imposing edifices, its tiered tower reminded Juliet of a wedding cake.

Elmer Vartanian walked up to her car door but let her open it herself with her key. She got in without looking at him and started the engine. He said nothing but watched her pull away from the curb and turn left onto Main.

***

He did not expect to meet her again an hour later in a bar further down Main Street.

Elmer met Dave Drake there. He had known Dave since they were kids.

Elmer sat on the next stool but did not look at Dave when speaking to him. Both men addressed each other's reflections in the mirror behind the bar.

"Well? What was that all about?"

Elmer said, "A pretty woman working late. It wasn't so much a matter of finding my way out of the museum as it was talking my way out. Sometimes going out the front door is more of a challenge than crawling through the roof."

Dave chuckled, but warned as he sipped his drink, "Just don't ever give these boys the impression that you're running out on them."

"I'm not running out on them. There's too much at stake."

"I know, but Boyer said everything went smooth until you hit that office that turned out to be a supply closet. It shook his confidence in you."

"If he's that nervous, he should find himself another line of work." Elmer said, "I know what I'm doing. I shouldn't have to tell you that."

"I know it. I told Boyer there's no better man for the job."

"Convenient that the best man for the job has a kid Boyer can hide."

"It's not like that, Elmer. He's just an opportunist. He's not a bad guy. Linda's fine. I know she is."

"So, are we still moving on his cue?"

"That's still the plan. It'll all be over soon, old pal. When this job is over, that'll be the end of it. I'll make sure they never call you again."

"It better be over," Elmer said, pulling his eyes away from the mirror behind the bar. He looked at Dave head-on when he said it, because he wanted Dave to know that he was serious. Dave was such a good friend, but so used to always seeing both sides of things and never standing firm on one issue. It was never right or wrong with Dave. He had a way of telling people what he thought they wanted to hear. It made Dave an awfully nice guy to be around, but you couldn't really trust him to tell you the truth.

It was because Elmer had turned to face Dave that he saw her at the table down beyond the end of the bar. The Van Allen woman sitting at a table alone, sipping a martini.

He felt his heart skip, making him feel slightly sick and dizzy, and he took a deep breath through his nose, snorting half the stale and smoke-filled oxygen in the room to steady himself. What was she doing here? Was she following him?

He took another sip from his beer that tasted bitter now, and then stuffed his hands in his pockets and slipped off the barstool.

"I'm going to get a pack of cigarettes before the heading out," Elmer said.

"Before you go..."

"Just one minute."

Elmer walked down to the cigarette machine near her table. He glanced briefly at her as he passed. She had not been looking at him; her nose drifted in the martini glass. He dropped a quarter in the cigarette machine. Its loud pinball plunking sound made her jerk, and she looked up in annoyance at him. Her light green eyes grew wide upon recognizing him.

"Don't look at me," he said.

She looked back down to her drink and clutched the martini glass with both hands.

"Are you following me?" she asked the olive.

"I was going to ask you the same thing. We can't be seen together," he said. "You have to leave."

"Why don't you leave?"

"Lady, I'm not kidding, this doesn't look right."

"Don't call me lady."

He stooped over and picked up his pack of cigarettes from the tray in which they had plunked.

"Don't tell me you're lit already? Can't you get it through your head you don't belong here? There are people you shouldn't see. There are people who shouldn't see you. And nobody should see us in the same place together. Now get your cute fanny up off that chair get out at this bar. Go home where you belong."

"Don't talk to me that way."

"If you don't leave now, I won't do the thing you wanted."

"What did I want?"

"The paintings you wanted destroyed. How many of those things have you drunk?"

"I've had three martinis."

"I think you should leave."

"One is usually my limit."

"I'll meet you by your car in five minutes. I'm driving you home. You leave first. Now." He turned and walked away from her as he ripped open the cellophane on the pack of cigarettes. He did not once look at her, nor did he wait for a response. He walked back to Dave, putting a cigarette between his lips, but not lighting it.

"You were saying?"

"Forget it. It can wait. Just please don't let these boys down. You got a whole new life ahead of you, Elmer. If you just get past this, you're home free, boy."

"Thanks Dave. I know you're on my side. I'm not going to let anybody down."

Dave gave that same old goofy grin he'd wormed his way around people with since they were teenagers. Dave had gotten a little heavier since Elmer went to prison. And he'd started going gray early, but he was still the same. A really nice guy whose only fault was that he sat on the fence so often.

Elmer thought that his own life might have been different, might not be such a mess if only he'd taken a leaf out of Dave's book and sat on the fence sometimes, instead of rushing into things.

Dave left the bar, but Elmer waited a moment to finish his beer. A quick look in the mirror behind the bar to see if there was anyone looking at him. Then she walked past. He sweated for a moment, nervous that she would look at him, gesture, stop and talk to him. Foolish and headstrong, and drunk enough to do anything, but she walked past him on slightly wobbly legs, a slim woman in a very fashionable, expensive peach-colored suit looking like she belonged anyplace but here. She held her purse like it was a baby and walked out into the sweet, cool night.

After a moment, he followed her to where she had parked on the street, near the corner of Elm. She fumbled with the keys. He looked around, mentally congratulating her that she had not parked under streetlamp. His approach startled her.

He said, "It's all right, it's just me."

"Who are you?"

"I told you my name." He leaned closer to her as if he were going to kiss her on the cheek, but whispered, "Elmer Vartanian."

She pulled slightly away from him, but not as if frightened or repulsed. Only cautious, finally cautious and composed.

He opened the car door for her to slide over to the passenger side.

"Give me your keys. You're in no shape to drive. Wrapping yourself around a light pole isn't going to do either of us any good. I'll drive you home, and we can talk a little more."

"Turn onto Elm."

When he was beside her, driving down Elm Street, she rolled down the car window and let the night breeze kiss her face, leaning out the open window. The way a dog does to smell the air.

"Are you all right?"

"I think I might be sick."

"You shouldn't drink that much if it's going to make you sick."

"It's not the martinis. Not entirely. I get like this when I'm really nervous. I throw up. I shouldn't even say 'throw up', because that just makes me want to throw up. But I've thrown up before every major event of my life. My first date, making a speech at assembly in school. The morning of my wedding. I just have to throw up and then I'm all right again."

"Lady, you don't have to worry. I'm not going to hurt you. I told you that."

"Stop calling me lady."

"Miss Van Allen."

"Miss Van Allen. That's ironic, isn't it? I use my maiden name for professional reasons." Then she added with what seemed like practiced sarcasm, "Professional reasons, she said."

"Well, you're safe with me no matter what you call yourself. As for this museum business, I've decided I'm not going to send them on a different route. I'm going to go the original way and bring them right to your office. I'll tell them that I made a mistake thinking it was a supply closet. All you have to do is work late in your office. The same way you were doing tonight. I'll give you a phone call when they enter the building. You just wait about two minutes and then you call security, tell them that you think someone's breaking in. Then leave the office. Go down to the lobby to wait with the guard. Just go on my call to be safe and call the police as well. When those guys come to the ceiling of your office, there'll be so many cops around the job won't come off."

"You need to pull over. I mean it. I'm going to be sick."

He swerved sharply into Bushnell Park, and scrambled out his side of the car while she tumbled out of her side. No sooner had she exited the car that she began to vomit over a clump of fading yellow tulips near the end of their blooming season.

He knelt down beside her and held her head.

"Okay?"

"Yes," she said in between deep breaths. He lifted her to her feet and helped her to lean against the car. He touched his handkerchief to the tears from her eyes, and dabbed the perspiration from her face, and then wiped her mouth for her.

"I can do this myself," she said, irritably swiping the handkerchief away.

"You all right now? Can we get going?"

"Let's just sit in the car. But don't drive anywhere. No movement, yet. Please."

She leaned against the car. Elmer brought his glance up to the lights in the buildings near the park, glistening against the blackness of the night sky, to the enormous dome of the State Capitol building. It struck him then how prosperous life was for some people. Not just the old money families, but money that was close by, waiting to be grasped if a person was smart enough, and in the right place at the right time, and willing to gamble.

Horace Bushnell, for whom was the park was named, was not a financier, but a minister. In a way, he did gamble, for his controversial anti-Calvinist belief in a forgiving God nearly got him tried for heresy.

In 1853, Bushnell declared the city needed a park, and suggested putting it near the Little River, or Hog River, later Park River, where the city dump, a railroad spur, pigsties, tenements, and leather tanneries companionably polluted air, land, and water. Bushnell called it hell without the fire. As unlikely a place for a park as there ever was, but Bushnell had earned respect from the businessmen in an increasingly prosperous Hartford, if he had none from some of his fellow Congregationalist ministers. For the next twenty years, a green and pastoral refuge was carved from the stinking muck of that place.

It was America's first publicly funded park. Among its variety of massive trees were offspring of Hartford's famous Charter Oak.

The trees were just beginning to leaf out now, after months of bare branches that had allowed an unimpeded view of the commerce all around the park. In the summer, all that commerce would be discreetly covered again, at least from this angle.

When they were both seated back in the car, he offered her a cigarette.

"Please, not now," she said, waving him away.

"Well, do you want to keep the pack for later? I don't smoke."

"Why did you buy them?"

"To give me a reason to go back to talk to you. You were sitting by the cigarette machine in the bar."

"I never met a man who didn't smoke."

"I used to, before I went to prison. I stopped."

"I should think prison would be the place you'd really need a cigarette."

"I didn't want to need anything. I got used to not smoking, and now I don't care. Feels good to break free from a habit. Makes you feel like you're in control, even if you're not."

"I suppose you'll be telling me next you found religion."

He chuckled softly. "I guess the only thing worse than an ex-con is a self-righteous ex-con. I seem to have lost my taste for beer, too. But I'm hoping that comes back."

She groaned again, and waved away his look of concern, "I'm all right. I'm not going to be sick again. I just feel terrible."

"I have to ask you to see it through. If you don't show up, I can still tip the police off anonymously and maybe catch these guys. But they'll know it was me, because there's nobody else knows. You being the one to call the police is the perfect out for me."

"I understand," she said. "I'm not upset about all that. It's a little fantastic to believe that it's just come on top of some other things. I haven't had a very good day," she said.

"Will you go through with it?"

"Yes."

"Are you all right now?"

"Yes. I think we'd better be going."

They drove out of the park and back onto the city streets. There was very little traffic this time of night and he wondered what it was she wasn't saying. She was married, but she went by her single name. Took off her wedding ring. She went to a bar alone and got herself drunk. Why wouldn't she go straight home to her husband?

This was a really nice car. This woman was a director of the museum. She wasn't just a secretary. She looked nice. She spoke nice. She was educated. She had this great car. The woman was somebody. It made Elmer Vartanian ill at ease to be with Somebody.

"Where do you live?"

"Asylum Avenue."

"What kind of car is this?"

"It's a Lincoln Cosmopolitan. Kurt bought it a few months ago."

"Kurt?"

"My husband."

He turned onto Asylum Street, and after a while, the business section turned into Asylum Avenue and apartment buildings.

"Which is your...?"

"We're coming up to it. Third from the corner, that side."

He pulled over to her parking garage, handed her the keys.

"I'll slip out, and you slide over to the driver's seat. Get out the driver's side door like you've been driving," he said. "When the attendant isn't looking out his booth, I'll scoot away."

She looked for her purse. When she glanced up, he was gone.

***

The front desk clerk, who relieved Mr. Percy in the evenings, gave her the same friendly and subservient smile, and so did Morton, the elevator man on night duty. Juliet decided coming up in the elevator that she would tell Kurt that she was coming down with a stomach bug, that she was very ill and she would sleep in the spare room by herself. It was not entirely a lie because she was still little queasy, a new wave of nausea came over her from the movement of the elevator.

She did not want to confront him tonight. This was better left until morning. If Kurt were awake and confronted her about where she had been, then she would counter attack. She would leave it up to Kurt.

She had always left everything up to Kurt. The fact was beginning to dawn on her and beginning to shame her.

Juliet entered her darkened apartment. The light from the hallway splashed across the living room like a lighthouse beacon, straight and searching.

She had been raised by her wealthy father to believe a well-bred person did not make a scene. Ridiculing her father's stifling code of ethics had been her hobby since her rebellious teen years. Now she realized, still a little sick and dizzy, that her assiduous avoidance of conflict was something that she had developed quite on her own.

She decided it was time to grow up.

She snapped on the wall switch and gathered what was left of her nerve to confront Kurt. She wanted to get this over tonight, while she was still upset enough not to be soothed and eased and placated into placid victimhood. Or worse, to begin to see his side of the matter.

Juliet glanced through the balusters and noted he had not even replaced the couches to their original positions.

She swore and walked around the half wall.

Kurt lay on the floor, still naked. A clot of dark blood filled the indentation where the left side of his head used to be.

Juliet's first gasp dissolved into an aching whimper, rising to a crescendo of several shrill screams.

She ran out of the apartment.

|  |

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# Chapter Three

Elmer Vartanian walked several blocks down Main Street. His feet began to ache, unaccustomed to this much walking in years, but he was content with the time walking gave him to think. Elmer reminded himself to be grateful, forced himself to be, these past few weeks. But lately, the euphoria of having been set free had worn off, and he was disappointed in himself that it should be so.

At the start, he felt lucky to have left prison with a cheap new suit and a job placement program at a greenhouse. Then he got fired.

Two guys, one the migrant farm worker from the Caribbean and one the Yankee-descendent son of the owner were both a little tired of ex-convicts just being able to walk into a job without having to prove himself, or even being interviewed by the Yankee-boy's grouchy old man, who didn't mind hiring ex-cons because he didn't mind cheap labor.

One remark led to another, and when the unlikely team of owner's son and disgruntled migrant tried to tar and feather Elmer with soil and water in a bit of fun, Elmer put the push-ups and sit-ups he had been doing in his cell every day for seven years to good use. They were the ones dirty and wet, and bruised. And bloody.

Elmer's parole officer was irritated with him already, and they had only just met.

Dave came to the rescue. Elmer kept trying to find a real job he could tell the parole officer about when this museum heist chore was done.

The news Dave gave him about Linda was the shocker that dulled every other sensation of being free. Elmer walked on.

The neighborhood in the south end of town seemed to crumble away in the distance, as some kind of construction sprouted from the empty lots where tenements had been razed. New concrete pilings soared from mounds of earth, and a roadway of some sort crowning the underpinnings, with a growling herd of bulldozers and trucks and cranes.

He came to the last standing block on the side street, a three-story tenement built probably in the late 1800s, its gray clapboards skewed from decades of wind, rain, and snow, its green wood trim dulled by grime and flecked with peeling paint. The rear porches sagged, but the building stood solidly like a lonely fort in the Old West just before the desert. Its age and decrepitude were made more prominent against the sight of the new construction of what looked to be an elevated highway headed this way like a slow-moving asphalt glacier.

Elmer turned his attention from the construction and scanned the names on the mailboxes bolted to the side of the building. "P. Kincaid" was written on the placard he wanted. Third floor, but he already knew that because Robert had told him.

He climbed the dark, narrow and uneven stairs to Robert's grandmother's apartment. A small, cautious black lady with her white hair pulled back from her lined face, and her eyes as bright as when she was a child looked suspiciously up at him.

"Mrs. Kincaid? My name is Elmer Vartanian. I'm a friend of your grandson, Robert. I told him I'd visit you..." He looked briefly down the hall and lowered his voice, "I've just gotten out of State Prison."

She cocked her head with leisurely consideration of the matter. She did not seem concerned any longer but wore the expression of somebody about to enjoy either a pleasant old memory or cup of tea.

"Come in," she said, and would have taken his hat, just as he would have removed it out of respect, but he had none. It was a casualty of the fight at the greenhouse. So they were both without proper etiquette to busy themselves. Impulsively, and as if to make up for not being able to ask for his hat, she put her hand gently on his arm and looked about the kitchen for a place to put him. She directed him to one of the three wooden chairs at the kitchen table. He tried to guess which one was hers so as to avoid it.

"I've just got some gingerbread made," Mrs. Kincaid said, and kept looking at Elmer over her shoulder as she fumbled, holding the edge of a small, hot baking pan with an old dishtowel.

"Do you like gingerbread?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I have some ginger ale. Do you like ginger ale?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Elmer glanced around the kitchen, which was warm with the strong scent of gingerbread. The grimy floral wallpaper had been put up likely when Woodrow Wilson was in office, and it peeled at the seams. The front parlor looked cool and dark behind him, but he did not turn in his chair to look into it for fear of being rude. Down the hall was a bedroom. He could see her bed neatly made with a maroon coverlet, and a framed print on the wall of somebody's idea of Jesus.

Opposite Elmer was the door to the back porch, open to the air and sunshine, and distant sounds of construction.

"My name is Pearl Kincaid. I'm eighty years old. I've got a brother, John, who helps me out some. John's son is a lawyer. He's a good boy, but he never visits me. But other than that, Robert's the only family I've got left. His mother was my daughter, and she died of diabetes when Robert was only a boy. I raised him."

"He talks about you a lot, ma'am. He has very happy memories of you."

Mrs. Kincaid smiled into her chest, and put the gingerbread down in front of Elmer, on a small plate that Elmer guessed was the kind they used to give away at dish night at the movies. The small pink glass, too.

He took a sip of the effervescing ginger ale and tucked a pinch of the gingerbread into his cheek, closing his eyes a brief moment and chewing slowly.

"This is wonderful gingerbread, ma'am."

She smiled again, "Ginger is very good for you. Good for the stomach."

They heard the distant bang of a dump truck that had dropped its load.

"So, you got out of prison, Mr. Vartanian?"

"Yes, nearly a month ago. Robert asked me to stop by. He wants you to know that he's very well. He figured writing you that from time to time wasn't enough, that it might be nice for you to hear from an impartial witness."

They both chuckled briefly.

"That boy." Pearl Kincaid chewed slowly, and took a careful sip of the soda, closing her eyes tightly at the tickling of her nose the bubbles made. She cleared her throat.

"How long do you think they're going to keep my Robert?"

"Well, ma'am, he's up for parole next year, and he thinks he might get it this time."

"That's what we hoped last time."

"Well, he's served nearly all of his time."

"I hope he gets out of that place before I die. I want to see him again. Only good thing about his being in prison was he missed going to war."

Elmer brought his glance down to his hands on her table, one holding the pink glass of ginger ale, one holding the last of his gingerbread, which he popped quickly into his mouth to avoid answering.

"Robert wrote me about you. He said you were his special friend, the one he could talk to about all his thoughts, about what he wanted to do when he got out. I'm sure glad Robert had a friend in that terrible place."

"He was like a brother to me. The only thing I regret about getting out was leaving him behind. We used to joke about starting a business together, and we'd come up with all kinds of crazy businesses we'd have, like stop sign painters, and popsicle stick manufacturing. We were just being silly. We read a lot, too."

"Robert wrote that in his letters. I can hardly believe that; Robert never liked to read."

"We read Shakespeare, a book in the prison library, and we'd take different parts. Just kidding around. I just read, but he'd really act it out. The other fellows got a bang out of Robert's Shakespeare acting."

"Will you help him, if he gets out, Mr. Vartanian?"

"I'll do what I can, ma'am. Right now, I can't help myself much."

"Didn't you go back to your folks?"

He paused a moment.

"They washed their hands of me. I don't blame them."

"Oh, son, I'm sorry. That's a hard thing. It's not good for a young man to be without a family."

He didn't want to talk about that. Another dump truck made another bashing sound. Elmer stepped over to the door and glanced down over to the Connecticut River towards the left.

"Hey, they're building something over in East Hartford, too. What is all this?"

"That's highway."

"Up on stilts like that?"

"They're turning Connecticut into Los Angeles. Big, wide, fast highways with on ramps and off ramps and coming from every which way. They covered over the Park River downtown. It's not even there anymore. They got highway coming from the west and highway coming from the south. Hartford's changing faster than us. We sit here and our heads spin, fast as those cars going to do when they get up in the sky on those highways. Tell you what's going to happen. People will drive right on by Hartford now. Who's going to stop anymore?"

"Of course, they'll stop. Everything is here. People come here from all over just to shop. Just to go to a...museum." He thought of that woman. For the first time today, he thought of that woman, the way someone remembers with a startled sensation a dream from the night before.

"We'll see," Pearl Kincaid shook her head and shot her glum expression out over the distance to the asphalt glacier, and the herd of trucks, and the busy men like clustered ants.

When Elmer felt he had stayed long enough, enough for her to be tired-looking and talked out, he shook her hand, and she showed him to the door.

"I'm really glad you came, Mr. Vartanian."

He looked over the top of her head to the picture of Jesus on her bedroom wall down the hall.

"There's something else. Robert's...found religion."

"Robert! Oh, really? Oh, praise Jesus!"

Encouraged, Elmer continued, "Yes. He's been talking to the visiting ministers we have coming to the prison."

"He never wrote anything about it."

"Well, I think he's...he's questioning things. Yeah. We all get Bibles in prison. I guess if a fellow can read Shakespeare, he can read about...uh, Moses."

"Oh, I am so happy to hear that. What a thing to tell my brother. He's always been a little severe about Robert since he went to prison."

"Oh, one more thing," Elmer pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand. "I owe this to Robert, and he told me to give it to you. He's got no use for it in prison."

"What's this about? I can't be taking any money from you."

"No, ma'am. It's from Robert. We were having a joke one day; we made a bet. Another fellow we know, he's a real hothead. We bet how long it would take for him to get in trouble with the new guard, and Robert guessed right. When I got paroled, I said I'd still owe him the ten dollars and I'd pay him when I saw him. He said, 'No you won't. You'll forget. You give it to my grandmother when you go see her. Tell her to buy a present for herself from me."

Mrs. Kincaid crinkled the bill in her hand, looking down at it and smiling. Elmer could see now that she really was tired, but not from the visit as much from the memories and the hoping that always took so much out of a person, and he said softly,

"Goodbye, now."

She looked up at him, with teary eyes, and nodded, patting his forearm once more.

***

Juliet could hear the popping of flashbulbs and saw the flash go off like ground lightning from the hall, even when she closed her eyes. Two hospital interns dressed in white pants and white jackets wheeled a gurney past her; the body was covered in a blanket.

A detective, like the kind in the movies who never took his hat off, watched her as she watched him through the balusters of the half wall. She would not go into the living room while they were photographing the body to begin their investigation. He had already introduced himself as Detective Connolly, but he knew she was only half listening to him. She paced in the foyer, and stepped aside, looking away, when Kurt's covered body passed her on the gurney. At that moment, her father and his lawyer, strode into the open doorway, and collided with the gurney. The lawyer jumped back with an obviously uncomfortable shiver, but her father just stood like a stone, watching it coldly, with an expression Juliet knew meant contempt.

The moment was the first anchor to reality she had felt in hours.

Detective Connolly introduced himself to the two gentlemen, appraising them with not very subtle thoroughness. He invited them all downtown so Juliet could be questioned.

***

Her father, Jonas Van Allen, sat on the other side of her in the interrogation room at the police department, while his lawyer, Hiram Endicott sat on the other. Juliet, only dimly aware of the magnitude of what was happening, struggled to keep from vomiting from nervousness and the memory of Kurt's bloody face.

"We'll get a thorough report from the coroner and from the forensics unit. The night staff of your apartment building are being questioned. We'll talk to the daytime staff as well." Detective Connolly said, "First of all, Mrs. McLeod, does anybody else live there with you and your husband? Mrs. McLeod?"

"Oh, no. Just us."

"Does anyone else have access to your apartment? A maid? A relative with a key?"

"We have a day maid."

"I'll need to get her name and phone number and an address where we can reach her. What hours and days does she work for you?"

"What? Oh, Monday through Friday. She comes in at noontime. She cleans and makes supper about six o'clock, and then she leaves."

"Did she come to work today?"

"I believe so."

"But, you don't know?"

"I...I would assume so."

"Did you kill your husband, Mrs. McLeod?"

"From this point on," her father's attorney, Mr. Endicott said, "you are to defer to me and I will tell you if you may answer the question. Do you understand?"

Juliet glanced at him. His words seemed to reverberate in the small room. She nodded. She could feel her father's hand squeezed tighter on her right wrist. He had brought his other hand over and covered her right hand with both of his, and this gesture she took as a warning. Only now, she realized he was endeavoring to comfort. Comforting was never something he had ever been very good at, but he certainly was always warning her about something.

Detective Connolly looked at the three of them, his tired-looking eyes rolling from one to the other until he seemed satisfied.

"No." She glanced involuntarily at Mr. Endicott.

"What did your husband do for a living?"

"He's an artist. He works at home...he worked at home."

"Did you discover the body at around the time your front desk man called the police?"

"Juliet," the attorney warned, "just a moment."

"Yes. I had only just gotten home."

"Where were you?"

"I was at work. I was working late. I work at the Wadsworth Atheneum."

Juliet stroked one gloved hand over the other. She suddenly realized that she had not put her wedding ring back on; that it was still in her purse. What would they think of that? Thank God, she had put her gloves on again.

"Do you know of anyone who would want to kill your husband?"

She sensed her father's calm, direct stare, and she refused to glance at him.

"No."

"Did anyone ever come to visit him in the apartment during the day or early evening, a client perhaps, somebody to do with his work?"

"Yes. Yes, he had models who came to the apartment, and buyers. Detective Connolly, could we finish this another time? I'm really not feeling very well."

"We'll continue this tomorrow when I have more information," Connolly said drawing himself up, "and now I'm going to advise you of two things at this point. One, your apartment is now a crime scene, and we can't allow you to go back there. Not until the investigation is completed. Is there somewhere else you can stay?"

"Yes, of course," Jonas Van Allen spoke up. "My daughter will come home with me." He glanced at her, his eyes seeming to plead with her not to argue, but she did not feel like arguing.

"I'll need your address and your phone number. One more thing, Mrs. McLeod, you may be considered a suspect in this case. We are not going to charge you yet, but if we uncover evidence pointing to that possibility, you may be charged with the crime of murder. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she said. It sounded like her voice.

"Until further notice, you are not to leave Hartford County. You understand?"

"Yes." Then she gracefully turned, and threw up the rest of the martinis, thoroughly spattering the lap of her attorney. Hiram Endicott flinched and would not look down. Detective Connolly could not help but smile.

"I guess you weren't kidding."

***

James drove them home. A sliver of pink pierced the far side of the Connecticut River Valley, and the interminable night gave up the ghost.

Red sky at morning, Juliet thought, nestled deep in the plush back seat of her father's limousine and glanced out the window at the flowering trees along his long drive, peacefully inert now that her stomach had settled. She thought how funny that her father's chauffeur was actually named James, like in the movies. Someone in the movies would inevitably say, "Home, James," or "Once around the park, James." It seemed even more peculiar that she could still think of her father's mansion as home.

Juliet had lived away from home for many years, at boarding school, at college and in the apartment she shared with Kurt. This place had not been home in a long time, and in every phase of her life, she had always been pleased to leave it.

James pulled to a slow, smooth, practiced stop under the portico, and she and her father went into the house. They always called it the house, but it was a three-story mansion on Farmington Avenue, a rambling Victorian gothic sandstone relic built in 1870 by her father's father. It reeked of opulence, as it was meant to, a place where wealth could be displayed in terms of ease of lifestyle on terms of showing status. Mostly in terms of having a lot of things. Ornate wainscoting, a mahogany banister gracing a staircase to the second floor. High ceilings and walls with portraits and landscapes of the Hudson River school. Nooks and alcoves with small statues and sculptures, Romanesque figures, a few of Remington's bronze statuettes on marble pedestals. Nothing modern, nothing to remind one that life moved on. It seemed to indicate that civility was to be found only in sameness.

The home that Mark Twain had lived in was just down the street. He had written his most important novels here. He described his own three-story Victorian mansion as a cross between a Mississippi river boat and a cuckoo clock, and so it was, all the grandeur and fussy gingerbread.

The home of nineteenth century novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe was around the corner from Twain's. The literary giants eventually lost out to the insurance giants in the following century for prestige in Hartford. Juliet sensed another change was afoot for the once grand old city but did not know what. She had hoped it would be in art. She had hoped Kurt would lead the way.

Frederick, the butler, opened the door for them.

"Good morning, sir. Good morning, Miss Juliet."

"Good morning, Frederick," Juliet said. Here she would always be Miss Juliet, and it embarrassed her that she liked it.

"Coffee in the library, Frederick, and bring us something to eat," her father said.

Juliet and her father had said little on the ride home. She grew apprehensive over his worry, his scorn and his anger. His displeasure and sarcasm were things that she could face with equanimity. She had always been facing them down.

She knew at some point, Father would be seething at the ignominy of this episode, the public scandal. His daughter involved with public scandal, his daughter a suspect in a murder. Newspapermen and photographers batting around the Van Allen name, decorating The Hartford Courant, and worse, the working-man's Hartford Times, like a neon sign over a cheap saloon.

Juliet glanced at him. He did not seethe yet; his hand actually shook when he picked up his coffee cup. Poor Father.

It then occurred to her that he had not offered her any consolation over the tragic loss of her husband.

"I'll just use the phone, Father. I'll need to call Chauncey and let them know about this."

Jonas nodded and handed her a cup of coffee.

She took it in both her hands, looking at him, at the small trim mustache he had worn ever since he had been a young man before the First World War when he increased his family's fortune through banking and insurance. The mustache had been dark and sleek, and his hair had been abundant and dark and sleek, probably with Brilliantine. Now a man of sixty, what hair that remained was thin and gray, and he looked as distinguished as he had wanted to appear when he was a callow twenty-year-old endeavoring to prove to his father that he was worthy of the name of Van Allen.

His name was more important to him than almost anything. He would never pass it on to a son. He passed it on to a daughter, and here she was throwing it to the wind and an avaricious newspaper linotype machine for the early morning edition.

She took a sip of coffee, and like everything else in the past two days, it had gone the wrong way. After coughing the fire up, if not out, she called Chauncey.

"You poor darling," he said. Quick tears came to her eyes, realizing that she had wanted such a reaction from her father.

"At this point, I don't know what this is going to do to affect Kurt's exhibit," she said.

"His exhibit? How do you mean?"

"I'm not sure if the board or the public would regard it as tacky to continue to exhibit the works of a recently murdered artist. It might seem like exploitation. I've been thinking also about the benefit."

"Does your father want to cancel?"

"He's said nothing about it. We haven't discussed anything that far. I only think the board should be prepared."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"No, I don't think so, Chauncey. I guess I should tell you that I'm likely considered a suspect at this point."

He did not answer.

"I really should get off the phone. I'm exhausted. I'll see you tomorrow, Chauncey."

"You're coming into work? There's no need for that. Why don't you take a few days off, give yourself some time? You'll have to make the funeral arrangements."

Juliet sighed. "Yes. I know. I'm sort of waiting on the police. They'll let us know when we can proceed with the funeral. I hate just banging around this place looking for something to do. At least at work I could keep busy."

"Stay home, Juliet. You need to isolate yourself...."

"Why should I...?"

"...from the press."

She imagined a wolf pack of reporters at the museum.

"I understand, Chauncey. All right."

***

"I would not have had this happen for the world. I'm sorry, Juliet."

"Thank you, Father," she said without looking at him. "That's dear of you, considering you hated him."

He put down his buttered toast and looked up at her.

"I won't comment on that, and neither should you at this time. But, the family's resources are at your disposal."

"That sounds so grand, and yet you and I are only family there is. At least since your nephew died in the war and your cousin died of a heart attack last year. The Van Allens haven't been a very prolific bunch, have we, Father?"

"I wondered when you were going to start a family," he said quietly.

"Kurt didn't want children."

In her father's expression, she read: Did you?

He brought his attention back to his food. He had already intercepted the morning paper from Frederick and hid it inside his suit coat. Juliet went to bed in her old room, where the maid had closed the curtains against the morning sun. She slept very little; her mind would not let her.

***

That afternoon, Detective Connolly arrived, and waited for Juliet in the library. She was a long time in coming down, partly because she had finally dozed off, and partly her dread of being questioned again. She put on the same suit she wore the previous night and brushed her hair while looking hard at herself in the mirror. There was no trace of who she was before all this happened. She looked at a stranger in her suit. She also needed makeup.

Mr. Van Allen protested to Connolly that he wanted his lawyer to be present for any questioning.

"I'll only be a moment, Mr. Van Allen, and I'm really here just to relay some info. I'll continue formal questioning with your daughter tomorrow."

Juliet entered. Both men sat when she did.

"I was just telling your father that I won't be here long. I just have a couple bits of information for you to think about when we continue questioning tomorrow. Okay?"

She nodded.

"I spoke with Miss Dotty, your maid. She affirmed her work schedule as you said, but according to her, there were occasions when Mr. McLeod would call her in the morning and tell her not to come in, usually because he was having business clients over, as far as she knew. Or, he would ask her to clean for a couple hours, and then not to bother to make supper, because the two of you were going out. Is that right?"

"Yes, I guess."

"You don't know that for a fact?"

"I know he sometimes cancelled her services, but I don't know how often, I mean, for business clients."

"Miss Doty said that he cancelled her services several days in the last month, or I should say had her come in only to make supper, but not to clean. She said that yesterday he told her not to come in at all. You two were going out."

"I see."

Detective Connolly masked his suspicions, whatever they were, with a look of abject boredom. She met his look with an equally eloquent expression of exhaustion. Only the slightest flicker in her green eyes showed her surprise.

"Were you going out?"

"I...don't...I don't know. He may have planned a surprise."

He cranked his legs, lifting his large body off the leather easy chair in the corner, and glanced around the room, a half smile on his moon face at the heritage Jonas Van Allen's decor represented. It could not be missed even by a man like Connolly, who had grown up in a slum and felt his own sense of self-superiority over that fact.

"If you'll be so kind as to contact your lawyer, Mr. Van Allen, I'll see you and Mrs. McLeod at headquarters tomorrow."

***

Later on that evening when supper was over, and her father sat brooding in the library, Chauncey showed up at the house.

Her father perked up, visibly relieved and shook Chauncey's hand and thanked him for coming. Chauncey strode over to her, his long, loping steps with the exuberance and energy of the athlete he pretended to be playing squash on weekends, and took both her hands. She did not want to be comforted now. She stood as he half lifted her and wrapped her in a warm embrace, kissing her on the cheek, something he had done only at the office Christmas party annually.

"Don't worry about anything. We'll all look after everything, your father and Mr. Endicott, and myself."

Juliet drew back, grudgingly grateful for the comfort, but wary that it came at a price, and wondering why she had never been so wary with Kurt. Why were there never any alarm bells with Kurt?

"Thank you, Chauncey. If you'll excuse me, I had really rather just go off to bed now. I'm so tired."

"Of course, you are." Of course came like a pompous benediction. She looked at her father.

"Goodnight, Father."

"Goodnight, my dear."

Suddenly, he was the feeble old man again. Was it because the night was wearing and he was tired, too, and showing his age? Was it because Chauncey was here and going to make everything better?

Juliet climbed the grand staircase, slid her hand along the smooth and brightly polished mahogany rail, and went to the familiar door behind which was the bedroom she used when she was a child. She closed the door behind her, with relief to be quiet and alone.

She opened the large oak wardrobe behind her to retrieve the robe and nightgown her father had delivered from G. Fox today. Her arm bumped a garment bag. After a moment of hesitation, she remembered her wedding dress had been put away in the garment bag and stored here. Juliet glanced up at the shelf, and knew the shoebox contained the shoes she had worn on her wedding day. Another box she knew contained some mementos from college, and a few of her canvases lay on the shelf. She did not want to look at them, felt annoyed at having discovered them. The smaller flat object on top she did not recall, and she reached for it out of curiosity.

A small scrapbook and a loose photograph slipped inside that protruded from it. She pulled it out and looked at it, a group photo of her and some friends when they were still in college. She put it back and hung up her jacket.

She could see on the inside of the open door of the wardrobe, in the full-length mirror...a man stood behind her in a dark corner.

Turning quickly, too frightened to manage a scream, Juliet gasped and stumbled, and fell back into the wardrobe. He stepped out of the shadows and put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. She knew the hands. She knew the face. He wore the same clothes.

She had not dreamed him.

He warned, "Don't. Scream."

|  |

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# Chapter Four

"What are you doing here? How did you get here?"

"I read about it in the paper."

"You read about what?"

He lowered his hands slowly and let out a deep sigh and looked around her room as if he were suddenly finding this all very tedious. He brushed his hand through his prison haircut.

"The murder of your husband, Mrs. McLeod. I called you Miss Van Allen at the museum. That was the name on the office door. Who are you, and why do you call yourself Van Allen?"

"My maiden name is Van Allen. I kept it for professional..." She stopped short, and then finished the word with a note of sardonic pride. "Professional reasons."

"The Hartford Times is throwing around both the names of Van Allen and McLeod pretty liberally and printed a picture of you, a studio portrait that looks kind of like one of those debutante shots, from years ago." He thought he detected a slight wince in her expression when he said "from years ago."

He continued, "This was an extra. I picked it up an hour ago. It's how I found your father's address. I figured you might be here."

"Why did you feel the need to track me down? What more do you want from me?"

"I'm here because this makes things a bit more complicated for us, Mrs. McLeod, or Miss Van Allen. What do you want to be called?"

"I'd rather you didn't call me anything. I'd rather you left." She made small steps to the bedroom door, as if planning escape. Elmer noticed, and kept his feet riveted to the floor where he stood so as not to make her more nervous.

"My problem remains of getting my daughter back."

"I don't understand. What you talking about?"

"Those three martinis you had pretty much wiped the slate clean, didn't they?"

She tried to remember.

"Not quite," she said. "You broke into the Wadsworth, or people you know are planning to break in and you're on some sort of a dry run with them, was that it?"

"They have information on where my daughter is, and they won't give it to me unless I help them. I want you to help me catch them, so they go to jail. I just want my daughter back. If this investigation on the murder of your husband gets rough for you...well, you know what I mean don't you?"

"No, I don't."

"The newspaper said you might be a suspect. A good part of last night you were with me. That puts both of us in an awkward position. I don't want to be dragged into a murder case, anymore than you do. And if this gang finds out that I've even been speaking to you, they'll think I tipped you off and that I'm tipping off the cops."

Juliet sat down on the bed and stared down at the floor as if looking for answers there.

"I really didn't know how I was going to destroy those paintings anyway," he said. "You can't still want me to do that. Don't you think it would look funny? Now, I mean?"

"I asked you to destroy Kurt's paintings." She said it like an admission of guilt.

"I didn't know he was your husband at the time you said that. You must have been pretty upset up at him to want to destroy his work. Kind of like destroying him."

She would not look at him, marveling that a common criminal could make her feel ashamed.

"Not that I blame you. I've seen them. They're lousy."

Juliet looked up at him now, sharply, blushing with irritation.

"How would you know what...?"

"I suppose it's not just his paintings that are lousy. It's this modern stuff in general I don't like."

"Much cafe society in prison, is there?"

"Not yet, but that could change." He glanced around the room, but the only artwork here was a small watercolor of a lighthouse, and another watercolor of flowers, lavender lilacs in a vase.

"I like those."

Juliet glanced around the room, at first unsure of what he meant. When she saw the paintings, her expression of disgust was more eloquent than any further disparaging remarks she could have made about cafe society in prison.

Elmer continued.

"I mean, those took some effort. Some skill. What kind of effort went into slapping a square of yellow next to a red-colored square? A child could do that."

"Look, Mister...?"

"Vartanian."

"Mr. Vartanian, I really don't want to discuss art with you...modern art is not about how easy it is to do. It's a reflection on an abstraction from the world, a satirical, defiant, even bitter commentary on the dehumanizing, technological world that's emerged since the end of the war."

Elmer's brows knitted, and he raised his chin slightly, not challenging her but certainly questioning her.

"The world has changed a great deal while you were away in prison, Mister...."

"Vartanian. You're telling me."

"...Vartanian. The discovery of atomic energy has pushed us forward to a new threshold, and where that's taking us...to a world of new and wonderful discoveries, or a world of annihilation. We don't know. And because we don't know, these modern artists are creating structure and form as a response to a world without any structure anymore. There is no inspiration for them, this new generation, in fat, Rubinesque nymphs or pretty little lighthouses. There is more comfort for them in complete freedom of expression, even if what to express is spare and bold and abstract. Something is being said here, in a loud and defiant voice, even if you aren't listening, even if you don't like it."

"Is that how your husband would have explained his work?"

"Kurt never explained anything."

They heard a knock on the door, a sharp, quick, three raps. They both looked up and jerked at the voice.

***

"It's Chauncey. I'm coming in, all right?"

Without waiting for an answer, the door opened. Elmer Vartanian slipped behind the full-length drapes at the window. He had disappeared, except for his shoes beneath the drapes, and she turned, and looked at Chauncey with sudden tears as he took her in his arms.

He held her firmly against him, as if trying to hold her from running away.

"I just wanted to tell you that I just got off the phone with Marcus. We're going to have a meeting about it tomorrow to decide what to release to the press, and we're going to give you a two-week leave of absence. That ought to be enough until this whole mess clears up. Marcus thinks continuing with the benefit is in the museum association's best interest. We can keep the press out of it, or at least keep them at the gates."

She inhaled his strong cologne and rubbed her tears off on his tailored blazer. He made no attempt to loosen his tight hold on her, and continued to speak over her head, almost as if waiting for her to yell "uncle" like a couple of amateur wrestlers.

She decided to yell uncle by simply relaxing against him and put her arms around his waist. He was instantly pleased with her and with himself, as she knew he would be. Chauncey's mild outward personality created something of a deception, for inside he needed to be in control. Juliet had not noticed this about him, until now. She had known him for years; since they were teenagers, they had been thrown together in the same social set, because their parents threw them together. But she never knew him very well, and now that he was so forcefully imposing his compassion on her very recent widowhood, she began to know him better.

Chauncey's most intimate expression of tenderness was another kiss on her cheek, holding her, and telling her that he would take care of everything. It was as irresistibly lovely as it was ludicrous. In the corner of her eye, she saw Elmer Vartanian's shoes sticking out from under the drapes.

"What about Kurt's paintings?"

Chauncey's expression darkened, and he muttered quickly in a low voice,

"Marcus wants to leave the exhibit as it is."

"Thank you, Chauncey," she said, lifting her head from his chest and patting the damp spot she left on his coat with her tears.

"I'm all right now. I know you'll handle everything. If you'll excuse me, I think I just need to get some sleep."

"Of course," he said, pasting comfort on her with the phrase as he did before. He kissed her on the cheek again, as if once he'd started this he couldn't get enough. It was a much slower, much softer kiss, much closer to her mouth. It suddenly occurred to her he was working up to that.

He gave her one slight encouraging, and somehow self-satisfied smile, and backed out of her room, closing the door gently. She listened for his footsteps, locked her bedroom door and glanced over to the drapes.

"He's gone," she said, only slightly above a whisper.

Elmer peeked out from the drapes and came out into the open again. He spoke in whispers as well.

"I'll tell you what, Mrs. McLeod...."

"Forget about destroying the paintings. I don't know what I was thinking. Just forget about it."

"Who's he?"

"Chauncey Edwards."

"Relative?" He laced the question with a hint of sarcasm.

"No. He's my boss. Well, and an old family friend."

"He was pretty friendly all right."

"And?"

"If the police ask you where you were after the museum closed last night you should tell them that you had an appointment with me. The security guard already saw me coming down the stairs with you. He doesn't know my name but will recognize my face. So, there's no point in lying and saying that you were working alone. Besides, you need somebody to corroborate where you were during that time. You might as well say you were with me."

"I've forgotten your name again. I'm sorry."

He said it very distinctly, as if annoyed, "Elmer. Vartanian."

"Elmer Vartanian. I'd really rather not have to mention you at all."

"So would I, but we have to be prepared. The police will already know. Or, they'll be able find out soon enough. I just got out of prison. The appointment we had was because I was asking for a job at the museum as a janitor."

"I'm not in charge of hiring."

"I showed up asking to talk to anybody, and you're the only one left in the building. You were just on your way out, and I begged you to give me a shot and told you my sad story. And you agreed to give me a few minutes of your time."

"Do I know about your prison record?"

"Yes. I told you."

She countered, "But, I didn't tell the police I was with you in my office last night. I just told them I was working late."

"You didn't think. If we keep our stories the same, it'll be all right. When you start lying you have to keep track of your lies and you have to keep making them better and better, and nobody is that good. Stick with one story. You don't know anything about me except I'm a down and out bum looking for a job. And that'll be the truth anyway."

He heard footsteps out in the hall again.

"Turn off the light!"

Juliet reached for the wall switch and snapped off the light. They stood like statues in the dark, until the footsteps passed.

Juliet turned and looked around the dark room, letting her eyes adjust to the moonlit sky out the window casting its thin, cold, silvery splash of light into the room.

There was a knock on the door, a softer knock than the one before, gentler, but both Juliet and Elmer flinched when they heard it.

"Just a minute," Juliet called, and Elmer crawled underneath her bed. Juliet took her new robe and slipped it on over her clothes and kicked off her shoes. She unlocked the bedroom door and opened it without turning on the light. Her father stood in the doorway. He noted in surprise that the room was dark, and her eyes squinting at the light coming from the hallway.

"Oh, you were asleep," he said. "I'm sorry." He had a glass of water in one hand and a pill in the palm of the other.

"What's that?"

"I had Hodges call in a prescription for a sedative. It was just delivered."

"You've got Dr. Hodges working overtime on my account? I'm ashamed of all this fuss."

"Juliet," he said, "I don't quite know what to say about this. Except I'm sorry it happened. And I hope that whatever you're going through...whatever it is you're feeling... Oh, you know what I mean."

He held the glass of water and the pill out hopefully to her. She took them as submissively as if she had been a four-year-old. She swallowed the pill and drank the water and handed him back the glass.

"Now, I hope you sleep through the night," he said, "and that tomorrow things will be brighter."

"Thank you, Father." Her voice was as small as if she had been four years old.

As he turned to leave, he hesitated, "Juliet, why did you lock the door?"

"I was undressing," she said, "and Chauncey was roaming around here before."

"Chauncey's gone now," he said, "fine young man. Lean on him like he said. And you may rely on me as well. I am your father." He hesitated again is if there were more to say, but instead he nodded gently and close the door softly behind himself, leaving her in the dark again.

Juliet turned and looked around, and once again, her eyes slowly adjusted to the silvery glow cast in from the moon pinging off the horizontal window blinds and leaving a striped pattern on the walls. Suddenly very tired, she sat on the edge of the bed.

Elmer crawled out from underneath.

"With love's light wings did I o'er perch these walls," he said.

Juliet turned towards the sound of his voice coming up in the blackness from the other side of the bed.

"What?"

"It's from Romeo and Juliet."

"I know. What are you talking about?"

"I was just amusing myself. All Romeo had to avoid was Juliet's nurse. So far, I've had your father and your...Chauncey. I hope there isn't going to be a line of men waiting to comfort you before I've said what I have to say."

"You're really not funny."

Juliet began to cry.

***

Elmer had no desire to comfort her himself and did not want to approach her, this strange woman, in the darkness of her bedroom. He had taken too many chances of late, climbed out on too many limbs. Literally, this evening. But she would not stop, and he was afraid she would attract attention.

"Stop it," he said. "Someone will hear you. Be quiet. Juliet, be quiet."

"How did you know my name?"

"The Hartford Times and your father called you that."

"I didn't say you could call me that."

"What do I call you? Are you really Miss Van Allen right now or are you Mrs. McLeod? And who are you going to be from now on?"

She continued to cry, choking, as if she was trying not to, and she spoke with difficulty. "I-- "

"By the way," Elmer interrupted, "just a little friendly advice, you'd better put your wedding ring back on, at least until this investigation is over."

"He was with another woman. When I went home from the office. He was making love with another woman."

"Who was?"

"My husband."

"After I dropped you off?"

"No, when I went home earlier. It wasn't quite four o'clock and I got home early to surprise to him. Together, on the living room floor like they were playing naked charades. Convention be damned, Kurt always said. It wasn't conventional for him to copulate with a stranger on the living room floor. Or is it? Probably a whole chapter in the Kinsey report, which I still haven't gotten around to reading. Then again, that woman, whoever she was, wasn't a stranger to Kurt. God, I loved him so much."

"What happened? Did you have a fight?"

"No, I just left. They didn't even know I was there. I went back to work, because I didn't know what else to do."

Trying not to cry was not working. Her sobs became louder. Elmer grabbed the pillow off the head of the bed. He walked around to where she sat and pushed the pillow to her face.

***

"Cry into this," he said, whispering. "Just go ahead and cry, cry into this."

She held the pillow to her face and sobbed. Elmer walked decorously back over to the open window.

"Did you tell the police?"

"No."

"Tell them. Tell your father first, and your father's lawyer, whoever you've got working for you, and then tell the police. You got to come clean about it, Juliet, because they're going to find out anyway. It's going to look suspicious when they find out, that you didn't tell them."

"Why? Are they going to think I killed him?" She said it with bitterness and waited for an answer.

"I've been meaning to ask you that. Did you?"

"Get out of here."

"It looks like I really am your alibi now. Don't lie. What I mean is tell them my name."

"What is your name again?"

He sighed, and spoke very clearly, one more time, "Elmer Vartanian."

"Are they going to know your name? Will they know you have a record?"

"They'll check, and they'll find out. The security guard at the museum saw me walking out with you. So, we can't lie and tell them that I'm somebody different, and you can't tell them that you were alone because you need an alibi now and that's me.

"Why do you care that I need an alibi?"

"Because I need you to be mine. Who would I normally see about a job at the museum?"

"Mr. Jeffries is on a leave of absence; he's had surgery, he'll be out for weeks. Chauncey is making hiring decisions in the meantime."

"Tell them that I came looking for a job, a janitor's job, that I told you that I had been in prison. And I want to come clean and make good and start over. And you felt sorry for me. Chauncey's not around, so you decide to do him a favor and let me fill out an application and send me on my way. We have our meeting, and then I left and you left, and...."

"I wasn't feeling well. That's what I told them earlier."

"Nauseous from three martinis."

"I didn't tell them that."

"And where were you from the time you left me until you went home?"

"I don't know." She yawned, "I can't think anymore."

"Lie down, Juliet. Go to sleep."

"Not until you leave. Are you going to leave?" She drowsily pulled the coverlet down.

"I'm leaving now."

When she turned around, she saw him climb out the window. She stretched out on the bed and felt sleep overtake her in a rush, like general anesthesia before surgery, only without the buzzing in her head. She slept very well. Her last thoughts were of Elmer, but she did not dream at all.

***

Elmer stepped down into the soft, damp earth. One story below her window hidden by an enormous shrubbery, he looked around and walked briskly through the shadows of the tall elms and poplars and blue spruce trees scattered about the expansive park-like estate where Juliet Van Allen had grown up and where her family had lived for three generations. The forsythia of April was giving way to the lilac of May. A tall stand of lilac bushes, reaching almost to the second story of the mansion, waved its lavender cones gently in the evening breeze. Their scent carried across the lawn. Elmer remembered that smell.

His mother had a lilac bush by the porch of their rented company row house. Technically, it was not his mother's. It was the landlord's. They always called it Mother's Lilac Bush. She filled jars with the clusters of the lavender-colored cones every May, until his father complained he could gag from the smell.

Pop wouldn't suffer long; it was a short season for lilac. Two weeks, maybe three, and then it was over, and his mother would mourn for them until next year.

About halfway to the road, Elmer stood behind an oak tree on the Van Allen property and glanced back at the brownstone mansion.

"With love's light wings did I o'er perch these walls." He thought to himself again, shaking his head. If the situation weren't so screwy and so serious, it would be funny. And if that weird woman wasn't in such a terrible fix.

He was not sure if she murdered her husband. He thought she probably did or kept herself away from home all those hours so somebody else could.

He climbed fences and trotted through the shadows of backyards. He cut through Mark Twain's yard and across through Harriet Beecher Stowe's yard, but did not know anything about the history of these grand old houses. He figured there were rich people in them sleeping, like the Van Allens.

***

The next day Elmer ate lunch in a diner where he used to eat when he had the money. Nothing about it had changed, which made him feel better. He sat at the countertop and ordered hash because it was the cheapest thing on the menu. Sully, the guy behind the counter, owned the diner. Elmer had known him a little before he went to prison, had done odd jobs for him from time to time, like unloading wooden boxes of Champlain Club soda and cans of Crisco into the storage room. Sweeping the walk. Washing the front window. It wasn't steady, and it felt like charity, but Sully paid him. Sully did not say that he was glad to see him.

"Does David Drake ever come around?" Elmer asked, with a concerted effort to be casual.

"When Drake wants to be found, you'll find him," he said.

"Oh? It's like that? I just wanted to see him."

"You getting in with him now? Too bad."

"He's helping me. I've been out a few weeks."

"So I see."

"You have any work I can do? Or do you have a problem with ex-cons?"

"I have a problem with David Drake. I have a problem with guys who work for him."

"You've changed, Sully."

"You haven't. Still dumb as you were eight years ago."

Elmer took his time eating, and when he left, he stood on the pavement outside the diner and looked around at the bright spring sunshine, noticing it for probably the first time in the weeks since he had been released from prison. The end of April had been, and usually was, pretty cold, pretty wet, and things didn't start leafing out until May, and so there really wasn't much to notice until now. Also, he'd had a one-track mind up until now. Now there was a lot more to think about. It was good to have distraction from the problem. Too bad the distraction had to be another problem.

Elmer went for a walk down one street and soon Dave Drake pulled up alongside in late-model car. Elmer did not know the new post-war models. It was gunmetal gray and Elmer admired it. He got in when Dave waved to him.

"You doing all right, Elmer? No cold feet, I hope?"

"No, Dave, just a complication. You've been reading about the museum dame and her dead husband?"

"Yeah, funny it's the same museum."

"Even funnier. She's the same woman I walked out with."

"You walked out with her?"

"Yep. I got out of that room, and I'm walking down the hall, figuring I could just leave. Who works that late at night? Well, she's working. She's a little scared to see me and I'm a little scared to see her. So, I made up some garbage about wanting to apply for a job as a janitor and didn't know who to see."

Dave struggled with a comical expression on his face like he didn't know whether to be horrified that his plans were in jeopardy or to laugh, because this is only something that would happen to Elmer.

"Jeez, Elmer, you may be the best in the business about getting in and out of a place. But, I swear, you've got this black cloud of bad luck following you." He started to laugh, a little nervously.

Elmer shrugged.

"She's a sport, I can tell you that much. She found an application. Gave me a pencil and told me to fill it all out. She was probably just trying to get rid of me at that point."

"So, what did you do?"

"When you think I did? I filled the damn thing out."

Even a nervous, perpetually on-the-fence guy like Dave had to laugh out loud at that.

"Did you give her any references? Did you tell her why you left your last job?" Dave laughed at his own joke.

"Well, I'll tell you, Dave, I figured at this point truth is stranger than fiction. So, I told the truth. I told her I just got out of prison a month ago, that I wasn't qualified to do anything except push a broom, but I sure could do that. I think she started feeling sorry for me. In fact, by the time I left, I'm almost certain she wanted to hire me."

"Did I say a black cloud? It alternates with your lucky star."

"Anyway, we walked out together. Even the security guard got a good look at me. So, if I end up going to the museum for an interview, nobody'll look twice at me being in there. I can go back any time and just say that I'm looking for an update on what's going on which my application because I don't have a telephone."

"Why do you want to have another look around? I thought you were sure."

"I am sure. But it never hurts to look around. I want to see how I made my mistake on that storeroom that I thought was an office."

"Don't take too long, Elmer. I can't hold these guys off forever. It's going down this week, or early next."

"You might want to hold off until the police find somebody to nail for this murder."

"What you mean?"

"This lady's going to be a suspect. She's got to tell the cops where she was that night. And guess what Dave? She was with me."

Dave swore. "At the time of the murder?"

"Well, I don't know about that. I don't know if it was at the exact time of the murder. I don't even know if the cops know the exact time of the murder, yet. But, here's a thought. Suppose she needs to say where she was at 9 o'clock last night, maybe the security guard didn't see her come in. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I sure know she was there, and she'll need me for an alibi if things get hot for her. 'Oh, I had this poor slob applying for a job' and it's going to be all over the place that Elmer Vartanian the ex-con who was imprisoned for breaking into a museum seven years ago in which a guy got killed, is her alibi. It's not going to look too good for her. Even less so for me."

"Elmer, you're a damned beacon for bad news." He shook his head. He wasn't laughing anymore.

"Just something for you to consider. That's all. If you still want me on site, I might be better put to use in another part of the museum where I can be a diversion. Or just make sure I'm not there that night at all. It's your call, Dave."

"It's not my call," he said. "I'm just the middleman."

"Well, middleman or not, I'm being straight with you, Dave."

"I know you are."

"So how about being straight with me? When do I get to find out where my daughter is?"

"You know those aren't my rules, Elmer. You are going to get the last $1000, and directions to find your kid after the job comes off. Those are the terms and I can't change them now."

"I know you can't change them," Elmer said, "but your business associates can change them. Suppose I get this job at the museum?"

"You really think they're going to hire you?" Dave's smile returned.

"I'll tell you what I think. This woman is Juliet Van Allen. Her father made his money in insurance, her grandfather probably made it in piracy."

"Same thing."

"Either way, she's loaded, and she's probably being surrounded by an army of lawyers right now. They have a lot of influence, with the police, with the city and with that museum and if I'm her only alibi as to where she was, don't you think she's gonna tell daddy to make sure I get my job?"

"We don't really need you to work there."

"Maybe I want to work there. Maybe I don't want to play into the hands of your business associates any longer than I have to. You're holding a sword over my head. You and I are old friends, Dave, but I would never do this job if you didn't hold that sword over my head. Maybe I'll just get that job and push my broom and be a big fat beacon and call a lot of attention myself while I'm standing there sweeping up near that Aztec gold exhibit. I don't know your business associates' names, you've been careful about that. They can be real proud of you. But I know your name, Dave."

"You'd sell me out after everything I've done for you? And made sure Nancy got to see doctors and made sure there was money for the kid?"

"How come I never heard from Linda or Enid? I was in prison for seven years. I've got letters the first few years. Last time I heard from Enid was June of 1944. After that, nothing."

"I told you, Elmer, she thought it wasn't good for the kid. She wanted to give the kid a chance. So, Enid told Linda that her daddy was away in the war. In fact...in fact, and I shouldn't be telling you this, but I found out through my source this outfit didn't kidnap Linda. They're not hiding her anywhere. They're just taking advantage of the fact that Enid and her husband Block moved away. I think to Ohio. Something to do with his business. They figured since the court made her Linda's legal guardian, why shouldn't she do what she wants with the kid? She figured she didn't owe you anything."

"Ohio?!" There was more despair than anger in Elmer's voice.

"Let me talk to these fellows. Let me tell them what you've told me, and maybe I can get some more information for you on your kid."

"Dave, I can't go to Ohio. I'm on parole. I'm not allowed to leave the state."

"Don't go to pieces, Elmer. You'll see your kid again. In the meantime, she's with Enid and her husband, and she's growing up right. Seriously, what chance did she have with you anyway?"

"She would have had every chance I'm going to give her."

Dave patted Elmer's knee. "I ought to know better than to argue with a father, huh?"

Elmer saw himself in the car's rearview mirror. His face bore grim prison pallor, and he looked as if he had aged twenty years being in prison for seven. He began to wonder what chance he had at all.

"How do you know she's a suspect? They didn't say that in the papers, last I read."

"She killed him. Or somebody did it for her. She's a smart woman, careful. She laid a trail all night long of being where people could see her. The one thing she didn't figure on was me. And it looks like I'm playing right into her plans, too."

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# Chapter Five

Juliet joined her father for breakfast in the large mahogany paneled dining room. They were joined by his attorney, Mr. Endicott, and nine empty chairs. Frederick set up the sideboard with warming dishes loaded with scrambled eggs and bacon, sausage and toast, enough for more than just three people. The attorney heaped his plate. Jonas Van Allen sat at the head of the table. He was not supposed to eat sausage or bacon, according to Dr. Hodges, and he took plain unbuttered toast and coffee. Juliet sat at his right hand. She took only coffee.

Mr. Endicott opened a file folder next to his heaping plate and wiped his fingers on his napkin and rifled through some notes he made on a yellow legal pad.

Juliet said, "I need to tell you both something straight away. Oh, before that...I'm sorry I was sick on you, Mr. Endicott."

Endicott cast her a wary glance, then brought his attention back to his bacon.

"That's quite all right, Miss Van...Mrs. McLeod."

"I...have a confession to make."

Both Jonas and Mr. Endicott looked up at her.

"I did not tell the police everything that happened yesterday."

"My dear! No!" Jonas uttered as if preparing himself to listen to her tale of murder. The attorney finished chewing and swallowed his mouthful of sausage. He wiped his mouth expectantly. He glanced apprehensively at his notepad, as if concerned all the work he prepared last night was for nothing.

"About four o'clock in the afternoon, I went back home to the apartment. I don't normally leave work before six, but I got out early, wanting to surprise Kurt. When I entered the house, I saw Kurt with a woman. They were having sex on the living room floor."

She looked down at her lap, feeling the warming blush in her cheeks. She did blush easily, and the fact always mortified her. She could also rarely become angry without crying. Fear brought tears easily as well, and so did humiliation, and frustration. Because her father knew this about her, he was never sure what she was feeling at any given time.

Right now, heartbreak hit again, monstrously hard with the same sick dread standing there watching them hungering for each other, satisfying each other, and discovering that her husband, that handsome, intelligent, talented man who made her feel so wonderful to be with him, did not prefer her after all. He would never love her as much she loved him.

Father never liked Kurt McLeod. He felt that she'd married beneath herself.

Juliet believed Kurt was above everybody. She felt lucky to be with him, that even his smile was a gift to her. She was still in love with him now. Juliet wished a sense of betrayal would set in, so that she might at last find refuge in her hate.

Juliet had fought to have his works put on exhibit in the museum, for him. The directors had been divided. She felt sure Chauncey hated Kurt's work, but not because he was any judge of art.

Once, when standing with Chauncey in the Morgan Great Hall looking at the Trumbulls, the enormous tableaus of the American Revolution, Chauncey remarked only, "They certainly are big, aren't they?"

Kurt only smirked when she first showed them to him on a stroll through the museum when she brought him to meet the directors. He could find no admiration for them at all, even an appreciation for their size.

Juliet had asked Elmer Vartanian to destroy his paintings, because she could find hate for the paintings, but not for the man.

Elmer Vartanian. Dear Lord, that strange man who came into her room last night. The man who slipped into her office from the ceiling. The man who, unlike Chauncey, at least took the time to form an opinion of modern art, even if it was disparaging.

Juliet looked at her father and the attorney and wondered if she should tell them about Elmer and how he popped down from the ceiling, and that they had formed an alliance. Is that what it was? An alliance? Yes, probably so. How deeply would she incriminate herself in the eyes of the law and in her father's careworn eyes?

The attorney cleared his throat. "Why didn't you tell us this yesterday, Juliet? You're making things very difficult for yourself."

"The shock of all of this...finding my husband with another woman...then finding him dead. And being questioned by the police and by you."

"My dear, of course." Her father reached over across the table and patted her hand, such an unusual, unaccustomed gesture for him. Suspicion fought within Juliet, but only because suspicion was an old practice between her father and her, as steady and regular as a game of badminton. The feebleness of the gesture also melted her heart.

She looked at the family retainer. This social-climbing parasite who clung to the cozy job of her father's legal counsel in which all he ever had to do was read contracts suddenly had a real problem to solve, where his counsel was necessary. And he could only fill his plate, gorge himself, and strike lines through his notes on his legal pad.

"Because I was humiliated, Mr. Endicott, and embarrassed and deeply hurt."

Now the attorney lowered his eyes as if her honesty had humiliated him.

***

Detective John Connolly wore no such naked emotions in his interrogation. Connolly was frankly irritated with her.

"Did you know the woman?"

"No, of course not."

"What did she look like?"

Juliet could not remember her features, only her stupid pleasured grunts. Juliet tried to be objective for the detective's sake as well as for her own.

"She appeared to be slender, I suppose, and she had reddish hair. Rather short hair, rather short red hair." Juliet marveled that she had remembered red hair, that she noticed that much.

"You'd better think hard and tell us anything else you know. The coroner has fixed the time of death between five o'clock in the evening and nine o'clock. The staff at your apartment house all remember you came home at about four o'clock, Mrs. McLeod. They remarked that was unusual for you."

"Yes, that's true. I came home early. I wanted to surprise my husband. I mean, spend time with him."

"Then he was still alive at the time you returned home and you discovered his tryst? And then what?"

"I left. I immediately left. I was in shock."

"You didn't say anything to him or her?"

She answered, "No. They didn't even know I came in. I just left."

"Neither the elevator man, nor the front desk saw you leave."

"I think I took the stairs, the back way."

"You think?"

"I don't remember."

"Where did you go?"

"Back to work."

He smirked. "You catch your husband having an affair with another woman, so you decide to put in a little overtime?"

"I...didn't want to confront him right then. I needed to think."

"We'll check if anyone at the museum saw you working after hours. You're going to need to prove where you were. You're now a suspect, Mrs. McLeod."

"Aren't you going to look for that woman with the red hair?" Jonas Van Allen spoke up, unable to contain himself any longer. "Don't you think she's a suspect?"

The attorney shushed him.

"Mr. Van Allen," Detective Connolly said, "I understand your concern for your daughter. Forensics is still working in the apartment, and if we find any evidence of what took place, then we will entertain the notion that there is another suspect. Right now, we have only your daughter's word that there was another woman there."

Juliet spoke up. "Nobody saw me reenter the museum, at least not that I know. A security guard did see me leave. His name is Henry. I chatted with him a moment, but I was with another man as well." Juliet tried to remember what Elmer told her to say. "He was a job applicant. Yes, he came looking for a job."

"And?"

"I gave him an application to fill out. There wasn't anybody there in personnel at that hour to take his application. So, I talked to him a little bit. It wasn't a formal interview. You see, I'm not really in charge of hiring anyone, but I took his information just to get rid of him. And when I left the museum, we walked out together. The security guard saw us together."

"That's good for you; if you've got his application I suppose you know the name of this mystery man?"

"It was... let me see...well, I, I know I left the application somewhere at the museum...Elmer...Elmer something."

Detective Connolly's assistant wrote down the name. "Elmer."

***

It had occurred to Elmer Vartanian after he read the afternoon paper, The Hartford Times, that when the police came calling on him, as they eventually would, they'd want the job application he was supposed to have filled out in Juliet's presence.

He sat at Sully's counter and folded the paper and sipped his coffee. So, something called the Berlin Airlift was ending on the 12th, and the Red Sox were leading the league. Elmer had lost interest in the Red Sox when he was in prison, as he had lost interest in all reminders of life outside those walls. It was safer, saner not to care about what he was missing.

They hadn't won the Series since 1918 anyway and probably wouldn't now.

He wondered if he would ever care about the world again, now that he was back living in it. He glanced over at Sully, who had his enormous fist stuck down a milkshake glass, grinding a dishtowel in it. Sully would occasionally cast his eye around his lunchroom, always as if he were expecting something. Elmer glanced around himself.

Elmer waved two fingers in Sully's direction. He came over, staring with the expectation that Elmer wanted something. No one would be foolish enough to waste his time.

Elmer said firmly, "You know about my kid? They said they'd take me to my wife's cousin, Enid. I don't know where she is. That's why I'm in this, you know. It's not just the money."

Sully's expression did not change.

"Just thought I'd ask."

Elmer left a quarter on the counter, put his paper under his arm and walked out.

A small group of seven people, five men and two women, stood in a cluster on the sidewalk in front of an appliance store and stared at the plate glass window. Elmer stepped into the gutter to get around them. As he did, he glanced up to see what could have them all so interested.

It was a pyramid of cabinets with a small television screen dotting each one, and each one flickering gray images. Elmer put his hands in his pockets and stepped closer, as close as he could get to the display window.

They could not hear the sound from the TVs that were inside the shop, but the images all seemed to be the same thing, something that looked like a children's puppet show.

Some people in the crowd looked brooding, as if trying to concentrate, maybe trying to read the puppets' lips. Some smiled, but Elmer did not know if they were amused by the puppets or by the TVs, or by the sight of a crowd of people watching through a store window. They all seemed to share a strange camaraderie with each other. They were, or would be one day, purchasers of this fantastic invention, and they clearly all marveled at this thought.

Elmer had heard about TV. If this is all it is, big deal.

He walked for a long time on one street and down another with his hands in his pants pockets, breathing deeply the sweet spring air. His wife's cousin Enid had taken his daughter to Ohio. Enid was a good person. She helped to take care of his wife when Nancy was sick with cancer. After Nancy died, Enid helped take care of the baby. When he was sent to prison, she told him she'd look after the baby.

Enid was married to a man named Block. He was in construction. A carpenter? Electrician? Some kind of contracting work. He had told Elmer years ago, when Nancy was dying and Enid was taking care of the baby, that he wanted to set up his own business. He wanted to be his own boss; he kept talking about it.

Ohio. Where would they have gone to in Ohio?

Elmer went to the library, to the reference section and looked up a map of Ohio in an atlas of the United States. Why wouldn't Enid have contacted him? Maybe the courts let her adopt the baby legally, and she was afraid that he would try to take Linda back.

Maybe they didn't move there willingly. Maybe this gang Dave was involved with put them there. Or offered Block a business of his own if he would move.

Elmer took a slip of scrap paper and a pencil off the card catalog and started writing down the names of big cities in Ohio. The library had no directories or Ohio phone books.

He went back outside for another long walk, feeling more trapped than when he was in prison. He stopped into a bar and went to the telephone booth. He asked the long-distance operator for the names and phone numbers of contractors in Columbus, Ohio, named Block. What was his first name? Stanley? Steven? Sammy? He could not remember.

Elmer went through a few towns, but there was no one by that name. He stopped, had a beer, and then went back to the phone, and tried a few more towns.

Elmer folded the paper and put it in his pocket. He walked out of the bar and down Main Street, past the Fox Poli movie theater, the stores: Newberry's, Steiger's, Sage-Allen, and the crown jewel, G. Fox. Lots and lots of department stores that sold anything a person could want, and people coming from miles away on the train to shop here. Mrs. Kincaid feared nobody would come to Hartford anymore when those highways were built. How could they not stop here, when here is where everything was?

She was right about the Park River that ran through town, though. They paved it over for a highway.

That evening, he walked back to Sully's diner and ordered a hamburger. He felt strangely at home here, even if Sully didn't want him hanging around. Elmer could force himself into Sully's diner unwanted because he didn't have the nerve to force himself into his parents' home, and by sheer belligerence, ingratiate himself into their good graces again.

Sully placed the plate in front of Elmer, a hamburger and fries. Elmer reached for the ketchup and knocked a couple of good splats on his plate. That was when he noticed a small corner of paper sticking out from underneath the plate. He looked up at Sully, but Sully's back was turned to him.

Elmer glanced around observing and wondering if he was being observed. He picked up his paper napkin off the side of his plate deftly grabbed the end of the paper pulled out from under his plate and put in his pocket after he wiped his mouth. Elmer devoured the burger in no time, because he was excited and anxious. Sully had obviously placed the note down that way on purpose. When Elmer finished, he left a bigger tip than usual and walked out, with indigestion from eating so fast.

He went to a nearby bar, and immediately found the phone booth, the only sure place of privacy. Even in a confessional, one wasn't alone.

The only words on the paper: Dayton, Ohio.

Good old Sully. A grouch with a big heart. Elmer called the long-distance operator and asked for Block's phone number in Dayton, Ohio. He waited a moment, breathlessly as nervous as he was when he stood before the judge just before the jury a pronounced him guilty.

There were twelve guys named Block. Twelve guys on the jury, too, but no Blocks there.

Elmer asked for them all, not being able to remember his first name.

The woman read the roll call of Blocks and numbers in her slightly nasal voice and her no-nonsense attitude.

He said, "Thank you so much," genuinely meaning it. He fished for coins and dialed the operator. Then he asked to be connected, one by one, to the first five, who were not the ones he wanted. Finally, his sixth try panned out.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Block?"

"Yeah, who's this?"

"It's Elmer Vartanian. I'm looking for my wife's cousin, Enid Block. Remember me?"

"Who?"

He said it very clearly and distinctly, "Elmer Vartanian. I'm Linda's father."

"Linda?"

Elmer could feel his blood pounding in his ears. "Listen, you son of a bitch. I'm your wife Enid's cousin by marriage. My wife Nancy, who died, was her cousin. Now for God's sake, let me talk to Enid or let me talk to Linda."

"You shut your mouth, you stupid piece of crap! Who do you think you are that you can talk to me like that? I'll kick your ass."

"I'm sorry. Just let me talk to Enid, okay?"

"Ain't you supposed to be in prison?"

"I got out. Is Enid home?"

"Look, Enid left me three years ago. She went back to Hartford. At least that's the last I heard. So, get lost."

Then he hung up. Elmer slowly hung up the receiver.

Back to Hartford?

His hands were shaking as he leafed through the Hartford phonebook for an Enid Block. There wasn't one listed. He left the phone booth and trudged outside, not knowing exactly how he felt. He saw the Hartford Courant waved by a newsboy with a headline about Juliet Van Allen having stumbled upon her husband's love nest in her own living room.

So, she had used the alibi about going back to the museum. She would have mentioned to the police by now that he'd come in to fill out a job application. His anonymity wouldn't last much longer.

Elmer sneaked back into the museum that night, because it was something he could do, because being able to do something that he could do made him feel less useless, and because the Van Allen woman needed him for an alibi. To some extent, and he didn't know what, that mattered to him.

Unless she murdered her husband.

And if she did, so what? They would use each other.

That's all people did, anyway.

He took the same route, crawling through the air duct, which he knew by heart now, and did not need his map. He came down into her office and looked around to see if he could find a blank employee application. There was none.

His elbow bumped a big metal box, as big a soda cooler, but with a long, sword-like handle on the top. He lifted the handle, swinging it up to look underneath. There was a glass plate flat on the top. On the side were the words "Xerox Copier Model A."

He frowned but could make nothing of it. There was a strange chemical smell that irritated his nostrils. Maybe it was a kind of printing press.

Quietly and stealthily, he left her office and walked through the administrative suite of offices, wearing a pair of dark cotton gloves that he might not leave fingerprints, until he finally found an application for employment in the outer office. He brought it back to her office and sat at her desk and filled it out as completely as he would if he were really looking for a job. He declared his years in the Connecticut State Prison under "former employment." He took an empty file folder and tucked the application in there. At first, Elmer toyed with leaving it on top of her desk. Then he remembered she had not been in the office for a while. Someone might notice the folder that had not been there before. He tucked it in her top desk drawer in the back, where no one would see if they had not purposely been looking for it.

He heard the impatient thrust of the key in the outer office door. Elmer scrambled to the chair he left below the air duct and pulled himself back up into the shaft as quickly as he could, just as the outer door office opened. He listened to footsteps coming across to Juliet's office door. He replaced the vent panel in the ceiling and held his breath, and lay very still in the dark, dusty airshaft. Through the grate, he could look down into the office. He noticed the dusty imprints of his shoes on the chair below him.

Damn.

A light snapped on that Elmer had turned off only seconds before. The man wore a soft, sporty-looking cap, and looked around the office. His hair was sandy colored at his neck, and he wore a trench coat. He stood, first looking around with his hands on his hips as if about to search for something and was thinking in his mind where he should start.

He opened a file cabinet with a key and rifled through the drawers, evidently not finding what he was looking for. He went through a stack of papers in her inbox, then he rifled through her desk. He evidently did not find what he was looking for in the top drawer and slammed it impatiently. As he did, the file folder that Elmer had put in there was thrust to the back of the drawer. Then it dropped to the floor underneath the desk. At first, this man did not see it when he walked to the door of the office and took one last glance around, his hand resting on the doorknob.

He saw underneath the desk, saw it there on the floor, and he stooped to pick it up.

"Finally," he said as he glanced at the job application. "So, she wasn't lying after all."

Elmer recognized the voice. It was Chauncey Edwards.

Then Chauncey crumpled the job application into a ball and shoved it in his pocket. He put the empty file folder on top of her in-basket, turned off the lights and left.

Elmer continued to lie still in the airshaft, breathing as lightly, as silently as he could and wondering about what he had just witnessed.

Elmer pulled himself out the air vent again and slipped back down in the office. Since he now knew where the blank job applications were kept, he quickly went back and got another one.

He sat down at her desk and filled it out once more.

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# Chapter Six

Elmer read the death notice in the Hartford Courant the next morning and a brief story on the funeral of Kurt McLeod, which was to take place the following day. No calling hours; the service and internment were to be private.

The notice was a sidebar to an article on the murder by a reporter named Dick Rattinger. He had followed the case for days, haunting police headquarters, antagonizing the chief of police, and the desk sergeant, and the detectives he knew well enough to insult. So far, there had been nothing in the newspapers about Elmer being Juliet Van Allen's alibi.

Once she turned his job application into the police as proof that she was, indeed, in the company of somebody during the hours when her husband had been killed, they would discover his criminal record. He would make one more suspect for the police, and he knew he would also be entertaining fodder for Dick Rattinger.

Elmer went back to a phone booth in a drugstore and leafed through the phone book. He tried to remember Enid's maiden name. Maybe if he looked at enough names something would jog his mind. Maybe, since she had divorced her husband, she was using her maiden name again. Not too many women did that sort of thing, but that she could have. Look at this Juliet Van Allen. She used her maiden name. She wasn't even divorced. Married to this up-and-coming hotshot artist Kurt McLeod, but her maiden name was the one painted on her office door. For professional reasons, she said, and then she kind of scoffed as if she was ridiculing herself. She did that a couple of times. What did that mean?

If Sully had known that Enid's husband was in Ohio, why had he not known that Enid had left Block and was back in Hartford? Especially if she had been in Hartford for three years?

Maybe Enid's husband was lying, just trying to get rid of him.

Elmer wondered if they lived in an apartment or house. Block had a trade. Maybe Linda wasn't doing too badly. She didn't even know him. If he showed up at their door, brought her some kind of a present, would she be glad to see him? Would she recoil and hide behind Enid's dress and wish that the strange man would go away?

Elmer looked at the clock on the wall above the lunch counter. The bar down the street would open soon.

***

The police informed Juliet that her apartment was still off limits as a crime scene, but that she was now allowed to take her automobile out of the apartment house garage if she wanted to use it. She asked her father if she could borrow his car and chauffeur to take her to pick up her car.

"My dear, I'd be happy to have James do that for you. You needn't bother."

"I want to get out, Father," she said. "I've felt like a prisoner these days."

"I'm sorry if you feel like a prisoner in your own home."

"It's not my home." In a softer tone she added, "It's the circumstances that make me a prisoner."

"There's no reason to go out. I should think in your grief you would want privacy."

"How delicate of you," she said. "For you, who never liked Kurt, to acquiesce that I might grieve for him."

"Don't let's fight, my dear. We've done enough of that over the years."

She said, "Sometimes I think we haven't done enough. We are rarely truly honest with each other, Father. Part of being honest is being openly good and clean mad at someone. There's something insidious about politeness."

"There is also the press to consider. You haven't seen them, not from the house, down there by the gate. Someone is almost always there. Newsmen, photographers, newsreel cameras. Juliet, you may find yourself running a gauntlet."

"I didn't know that."

He replied grimly, "We'll have to brave them tomorrow when we leave for the funeral."

"As the widow I should've done a better job making the arrangements. It galls me having to leave it up to you."

"It's the least I can do. There really isn't much more I can do if I want to help."

"You've given me refuge and an attorney, Father. Those are the main things that I needed right now and you've provided them. If I am convicted for murder, you can have James visit me in prison."

"Stop it. You are not going to be convicted of something you didn't do. The police have decided to consider this redheaded woman another suspect."

"Thank heavens she lost some of her hair on the carpet. A wild ride on the rug and a few strands of red hair to prove that they had been there."

"That's enough, Juliet."

"Don't scold me, Father. I'm not a child or even a rebellious teenager anymore. I'm a grieving widow and a murder suspect, all of which make me old beyond my years."

"Quite so." He looked at her when he said this and the mournful expression touched her, mourning her maturity while he quietly aged. Jonas Van Allen, still dapper with his neat little trim mustache, his small gold stickpin, and his flared handkerchief from his breast pocket. Old school. That's what he was. Juliet envied him the serenity that seemed to give him.

***

That afternoon, Elmer saw his parole officer for his weekly visit. He told him that he was looking for jobs, and that one of the places he applied to was the Wadsworth Atheneum.

"You'll never guess who interviewed me and had me fill out an application," he said to the parole officer. "It was that Juliet Van Allen, the one who's been in the paper all week, because her husband got killed. Some weird coincidence, huh?"

He wanted to lay down the alibi good and tight. The police would be calling his parole officer soon enough. He confirmed to the parole officer that he would continue to look for a job and that he was keeping his nose clean.

***

That evening, he climbed into Juliet's window one more time, o'er perching her walls. She had been sitting in the dark, sitting on her bed, smoking a cigarette. He could see the end of the cigarette flaring up red and dying down as she brought it to her lips and inhaled.

"It's me, Elmer," he said. He hoisted his bottom through the window.

"I know."

"You don't seem too surprised."

"I'm getting used to it. You're just in time. I've been brooding in repentance over my vanity."

"Is that why you're sitting in the dark?"

"This has nothing to do with mirrors. My independence is my only vanity. With defiance that was rooted more in pride and vanity than rebellion, I chose a husband against the wishes of my father, who thought my choice foolish and who still occasionally reminds me of his displeasure. I took a handsome and talented man for my husband against my father's societal standards. A Van Allen does not consort with Bohemian artists, you know. It's like consorting with Communists. I have habitually done what I wanted."

"So does everyone."

"But, only within the framework by which we all live. I have come frankly to acknowledge even that. I live in a society where I must be married. Marriage still gives a single woman a level of respect, regard, and approval it withholds from 'old maids,' even now...even now as the world approaches the second half of the twentieth century."

"Juliet..."

"My only defense is that if I conformed to society about being married, I had at least conformed on my terms. Kurt McLeod was wickedly funny, intelligent where young men in my set, so I had observed, were usually only educated, meaning they had learned to jump through hoops to get their degrees and their job promotions. Kurt cared for nothing and nobody but his art. That he was sublimely talented he had no doubt, and neither did I."

"Have you been drinking?"

"No. I have been smoking. But if you'd like a cocktail, I can ring for Frederick. You know, Kurt's work spoke for itself. Even if I had to use my own influence to get his work shown at the Wadsworth as part of an experimental incubator scheme to launch the careers of local artists, Kurt's work spoke for itself. Both Kurt and I wanted it that way. I'm such a chump. Maybe I'm not the kind of person that should get married. I don't really need a man to support me."

"What about love?"

"Heiresses have no business getting married. There is no love when your trust fund gets in the way. Emma knew that. Emma had the guts to remain single."

"But she married Mr. Knightley in the end."

Juliet took another drag on her cigarette and looked over in his direction, where his silhouette against the windows told her he stood, watching her.

"You really impress me, Elmer. You read Jane Austen in prison?"

"I read anything that was printed."

"What did the other boys think of that?" she said archly, a cool feminine mocking tone in her voice.

"Some of them couldn't read. I told them it was a Raymond Chandler novel."

Her reply laugh was low, and brief, and half-hearted.

"Well, then maybe you know Jane Austen never got married. She had the right idea. She had guts. There was even more necessity for a woman to marry in her time than me in ours, but she didn't cave in."

"Cave in?" There was a tinge of amusement in his voice that began to irritate her.

"Juliet, I can't stay here all night and listen to you talking to yourself. I've got something interesting to tell you. A mystery. Maybe you can shed a little light."

"Go ahead."

Elmer said, "I snuck back into the museum the other night."

"Wanted to look at some more modern art? There's a great piece by Dali you should see."

"Not without you to explain it to me. I know when I'm in over my head."

"I doubt that. One of these days they're going to catch you doing that. One of these days someone's going to catch you in here."

"Hold that thought. I went back because I wanted to fill out a job application."

"You couldn't have gone back during the day?"

"Why would I go back during the day when I already filled out an application the other night? When your husband was killed, you became my alibi and I became yours."

"Sorry. I'm still learning the rules of this game. We're supposed to have an application already filled out and backdated, is that it?"

"Yes. I wanted to leave it in your office where somebody would find it, so that you could tell the police. Let me see, where did you leave that application? First you put it in a folder in your top desk drawer."

"Okay."

"Until somebody swiped it."

"What?"

"I heard a noise in the office. So, went back up into my airshaft. Your friend Chauncey came in the room. He was looking around your office. Looking in your file cabinets and in your desk. Then he found the file folder with the application in it. Evidently, that's what he wanted. And he said to himself. 'So, she wasn't lying, after all.' That's how I knew it was Chauncey. I had never seen his face, but I knew his voice from when he came into your room that night."

"I wasn't lying?"

"And then he took it out of the folder and crumpled it up and he shoved in his pocket. Do you know why he would have done that?"

"For the life of me, no." Juliet dangled the cigarette in her fingers, tapped it against the ashtray on her night table to flick off a head of ash, and brought it to her lips. He watched the end of the cigarette grow bright red when she inhaled. She dropped her hand holding the cigarette down onto her bed and she blew a long stream of smoke up to the ceiling. He could not see the smoke, because the room was too dark even by the brightness of the moon. He could see her neck arched back in one sliver shaft of moonlight like a spotlight directed at an actress on stage, and her head resting against the wall behind her and he could hear the sound of her breath blowing out through her pursed lips.

"Is it possible he might have wanted to incriminate you?"

She was silent.

He continued, "I can't think of any other reason why he'd want to destroy your alibi. Suppose he wanted to see you blamed for this murder. Is there any reason why he would want that?"

"I don't think so. Chauncey has always been very...very solicitous of me."

"Solicitous?"

"Does that sound too polite? Too evasive? All right. I think he likes me. I know my father has always liked him. I believe he would have preferred me to marry Chauncey rather than Kurt."

"Did Chauncey ever ask you to marry him?"

"No. We never got that far in our relationship."

"How far did you get?"

"I don't think that's any of your business."

Elmer did not reply. Almost as if she was uncomfortable with his silence, she continued quickly,

"I don't think he wants to send me to jail, anyway. Even out of jealousy, if that's what you are driving at."

"Well, you still need an alibi, and to back it up you still need my job application. So, I filled out another one."

She chuckled. "My word, you never quit."

"I figured as long as I was there. I put it in the file folder again, but instead of putting in your office, I went back out to the outer office where the secretary sits."

"Yes, Karen."

"I noticed a small table off to one side. There was an electric coffee percolator, behind it there was this little metal rack of envelopes and file folders that looked like it hadn't been touched in a while. I stuck it in there and mixed it up among the others. If the police ask you where my job application is, you tell them that's where you put it, because you were just leaving the office with me. Your office was already locked up and you didn't want to leave it lying open on this receptionist's desk, because it was personal. I had all kinds of stuff in there about my prison record, and you didn't think that should be lying around and you didn't want to take it home with you. So, you stuck up there behind the coffee percolator and you intended to tell Karen the next day where it was, to give it to personnel. You never got a chance to do that because...things happened. And you'd forgotten about it since."

"You're really quite good at this. I'm surprised you were sent to prison."

Elmer did not reply. After a few moments, and another drag on her cigarette, she said softly,

"I'm sorry."

"What's that big boxy thing in the outer office? It has X-E-R-O-X on the side of it. What is that?"

"It's a xerographic machine."

"Oh, yeah, I should have known that. Come on, what's a...what is it, again?"

"A xerographic copy machine. It makes a copy of a piece of paper you put into it. A black and white copy. It's called xerography, like photography, only you don't develop the image with wet chemicals. It's a dry image. I don't really understand all of it myself, I only know it's a messy thing, but it's a demo. It was donated."

"A copy of what, for instance?"

"A contract, say."

"Why not just use carbon paper when you type the contract?"

"It strikes me, Elmer, that you're going to be running into this sort of thing from now on."

"Xerographic copiers?"

"Technology."

"I know. I feel like I've been in the jug a hundred years. Your car bowled me over."

"My car?"

"Streamlined, no running boards."

"I know. It's a sexy car. That's what Kurt said. Sexy. I miss my old '41 Mercury. Last car made before the war. It was my father's college graduation present to me. Two doors, a hood size of Pennsylvania, and running boards like wings. I never drove it much during the war. Gas rationing. Did you know about that, gas rationing?"

"I heard." He did not bother to keep the irritation out of his voice.

"It was still in pretty good shape, but Kurt wanted to get rid of...I'm sorry. I keep talking about him, and I don't want to."

"Don't mind me."

"No. I'd rather talk about you. If I'm not being too pushy, can I ask how you got into the business of...of being involved in museum robberies?"

"My high school guidance counselor said my grades weren't good enough to be an embezzler. Simple story, I never did a lot of thinking when I was young. But being in prison those years gives you a lot of time to think. And so, I've learned to be more careful."

"What did you do exactly, that sent you to prison? Again, if you don't mind my asking."

"I don't mind. In fact, you should know, because the police are going to assume you read my application. And maybe I'd explain to you my side of the story anyway, hoping you'd have sympathy for me."

"Maybe I would."

"When I was a kid I used to like sneaking into houses and garages. Just for the fun of it. I didn't steal anything. Just to see if I could get in some place and get out without being noticed. I pulled a lot of pranks when I was in high school. My friends even called me Houdini, for a nickname.

"Eventually, I was able even sneak into stores and warehouses. I quit school. My dad was sick at the time. My mother and three kid brothers to support. So, I held different jobs. I got jobs as a truck driver and warehouse worker, that sort of thing. I spent a six-month hitch in the C's. The Civilian Conservation Corps. Smartest thing I ever did. Wish now I'd stayed in longer. But, it was too much work, and I was a fool. Incidentally, I'm not from Hartford. I'm from Waterbury."

"Oh, I thought you were a Hartford boy."

"Nope, I'm a Waterbury boy. Rosalind Russell came from Waterbury; did you know that? Everybody in Waterbury knows it."

"Well, she's pretty famous. You should be proud."

He could hear by her voice she was teasing him, and he grinned.

"In fact, she's world-famous in Waterbury. Anyway, I was working in Hartford at the time I met Nancy, my wife. She and her cousin, Enid, were very close. They worked together as ushers in a movie house one summer and got jobs as waitresses after that. Nancy and I got married. The baby came right away, and I got laid off. Nancy got sick.

"The baby was about a year old. Linda, her name is Linda. Nancy was really sick, with cancer. We called it being sick for a long time, but we all knew it was dying. I didn't know what to do. A friend of mine named Dave knew about some friends of friends of his that were involved in some pretty serious robbery stuff. He passed along a message on my behalf. He knew I needed money. This gang wanted him to get me to get into this museum down in New Haven. Disconnect all the alarms and let them in, and then I was to leave.

"Well, they had some guards who were pretty ready fellows and it was a fight. Some shots were fired and one of the guards got killed. And we got caught and sent to jail. Nancy died during the trial, and her cousin Enid and her husband took the baby to live with them. That's what a mess I've made."

"What if they don't tell you where Linda is?"

"Still working on that one. I got a tip that they moved to Ohio. When I tracked down the phone number and talked to her husband, he said they divorced. Enid moved back to Hartford. But there's no last name in the phone book and can't remember what her maiden name was. You could say the trail's gone cold."

"What did you say she did, a waitress or usher?"

"Yeah, but that was before she was married. She didn't work after she got married."

"She has to work now, unless she got remarried."

"That's right, remarried with a new name. I may never find her."

"Did Enid ever have a trade? I mean, if she had worked as a hairdresser or a seamstress or teacher then she could have gone back to that kind of work. You could try hairdressing salons, and those types of businesses."

"She only worked as an usher and as a waitress, that I knew."

"There are a lot of restaurants in Hartford." She said it as a warning

"Yeah."

"Enid may find you. When it gets into the newspapers that you're my alibi, when the police find out about your record, they may paste your debutante picture in the paper."

"My mug shot's not as pretty as yours. But you're right, if Enid wants to find me, I guess she'll be able to soon enough with that kind of publicity."

"I have another suggestion, Elmer. What would you think about coming to work for me? Say as a chauffeur?"

"If it's a real job, sure. I'd appreciate it. But how would it look?"

"I suppose it would look like I wanted to keep you close to by, which I do. I mean I think I'm going to need your help and not just as an alibi. You seem to be the only one I can really talk to about this mess. And you can't keep sneaking in here at night. We've got to have a reason for us to be together."

"And the museum probably isn't going to hire me anyway. If I was your chauffeur, I can show up at the museum to drop you and pick you up from work. When this robbery job goes down, I could actually find a reason to come inside the building and wait for you. We can arrange it so would look normal. Yeah, that's a good idea. My parole officer's been on me since I lost my last job."

"Since prison you mean?"

"Just out of prison I worked in a greenhouse. Had a difference of opinion with the boss's son."

"Is that on your job application?"

"Yeah, but you were very understanding about it."

She said, "Come to think of it, my father was going to have one of the servants retrieve my automobile from the apartment parking garage tomorrow. Why don't I give you the key and you can pick it up tomorrow?"

"How did I know I was going to pick up your car?"

"I called you on the phone."

"I don't have a phone. You called my parole officer."

"How did I get his phone number?"

"I put it on my job application. I named him as a contact, as a reference."

"Okay. That'll work."

"No, wait. You don't have the job application. It's at the museum."

"Forget it, just meet me there tomorrow. I'll have my father's car. Meet me at the museum after the...after the funeral. Because you don't have a phone, I told you at our interview that you should drop by the museum sometime Friday afternoon. To check on the status of your application. I told you that I might know something by then, that I could have someone else talk to you. You come in my office, and I'll tell you that I haven't been able to bring up your application to the Board of Directors, to the hiring manager, because of this personal tragedy. And I've forgotten all about it."

"So, you put me off and tell me to wait a while longer, but in the meantime, you offer me a temporary job as your chauffeur. You explain about the murder, and that I am your alibi and that it would be in your best interests if you had not only a driver, but a driver who could prove where you were at the time of the murder."

"And you need a job and you don't care. You're willing to take anything."

He scratched his face. "We seem to be getting pretty good at this. All right then. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon at the museum."

He stood silently, and she could see the black outline of him silhouetted against the moon-drenched sky through the window behind him. He was not very tall, only average height, but slender at the waist so his upper body looked powerful. He stood with slightly hunched shoulders, like a boxer. He thought her old debutante photo was pretty.

"I'd better leave now."

"Elmer, have you been talking to that Rattinger fellow at The Hartford Times?"

"Talking? What do you mean?"

She blew another decided stream of cigarette smoke, and Elmer listened to her breathy expulsion of air and nicotine from deep within her lungs.

"Because their continuing expose on my misfortunes today has developed into a rather sordid, if newspaper-selling, tale of lust among the artistic set and sex scandal in one of Hartford's oldest and most prominent families. Mr. Rattinger is humiliating me by putting exclamation points on the topic of my husband having humiliated me."

"Why would you think I told him?"

"Because I didn't. I'm certain the police didn't. They quote their source as anonymous."

"I don't need money that badly. There could have been a leak in the police department."

She said nothing. Her silence felt like a dare to him. Elmer did not like to be dared. When he was young, it was his biggest handicap. It always got him into trouble.

"I have a question for you," he said, "Did Chauncey kill Kurt?"

"Chauncey? Of course not."

"Maybe he did."

"Just because he destroyed your application? I'll admit, it's odd..."

"I noticed when he was comforting you he acted like he was sure you weren't the murderer. The police aren't sure about you. The press aren't sure about you. Even I'm not sure about you. But Chauncey? He seemed pretty sure of your innocence. Did he kill Kurt so he could be with you? And did you put him up to it, to get rid of your husband?"

"Get out."

"Think twice before you accuse me of anything."

"I hurt your feelings, did I? You turn vicious awfully fast. I'm not going to tell you how much I loved my husband." She stifled a sob at the end of her sentence, barely choking out the word "husband." He heard her deep breathing, not from inhaling her cigarette but from trying not to cry. She swallowed several times, and then he heard her crying softly, in between hiccups.

"Why did you feel a need to vomit on your wedding day?" he asked gently.

"What...are...you...talking...about?"

"When we were in Bushnell Park, when I took you home from the bar, and you had to throw up, you said you always threw up from nerves. You said you threw up on your wedding day. Why would you throw up on the happiest day of your life?"

Was it the happiest day of her life? Juliet recalled tension and excitement, and anxiety. Perhaps she had sensed warning bells, alarm bells when she married Kurt, but didn't hear them over the organ. Perhaps the throwing up she had dismissed as her usual nerves was really the truth about how she felt, or should have felt, about committing herself to Kurt.

Juliet cleared her throat.

"Was your wedding to Nancy the happiest day of your life?"

"Yes, and when Linda was born."

"Oh."

"And you?"

"I was happy. Kurt wanted a big wedding. I didn't, really. I had wanted to keep the romance of our, to my father, bohemian lifestyle and just elope. Kurt wanted a big old-fashioned wedding. That surprised me, but I agreed and let my father throw us a real society wedding, rotogravure section in the paper and all. However, it was me who insisted about the gardenias."

"Gardenias?"

"I loved them. I carried a huge bouquet up the aisle, an armful of white. Their scent, their beautiful, sweet perfume filled the church, and I could smell it on my skin even after I took off my wedding dress. Kurt teased me that gardenias were prosaic. I don't how he came up with that decision, considering he was the one who wanted the big wedding. I asked him which flowers he preferred, and he said I should carry fistful of wax fruit up the aisle. He said it would be more avant-garde and daring."

"These paintings on the wall, the lighthouse and the flowers, the lilacs. You painted them, didn't you?"

He wished he could see her face. He listened hard for her reply.

"That was a long time ago."

"I'd better leave now."

"Yes."

She put out her cigarette in the ashtray on the table by her bed. In the moment it took for her to avert her eyes to make sure the cigarette butt snuffed out completely, in the time it took to glance back up to where he had been standing, he was gone.

***

About twenty minutes later, she received a call from Detective Connolly. Her father wanted her to put off speaking to him until the lawyer could be there to monitor the conversation. Juliet said that she would speak with him on the phone.

In her father's study with her father present, she listened to Detective Connolly's recounting of how a couple of his men went to the museum and asked to see the job application of the man she said had been with her that night her husband was murdered, and to interview the staff.

He said, "The front security guard remembers seeing you leave at 10 p.m. with some man, but he's not sure he could identify the man. An ordinary looking man with a very short haircut, dark hair. The man wore no hat. There was no job application on the premises. Are you sure you want to stick with that story?"

"Yes, Detective Connolly," Juliet said calmly, patiently. "In fact, I only remembered this evening that I told the man that I would meet with him on Friday afternoon to check back with me on the status of his application. He didn't have a phone, and he seemed anxious to know as soon as possible. This, of course, was before anything happened. I'd forgotten about it this week, so after the funeral tomorrow afternoon, I intend to drop by the museum for a few moments just to speak with this gentleman as I promised. I'll get the job application for you at that time."

"Why don't you just tell me where it is?"

"If you like. It's in the receptionist area, in the outer office, where the business offices are. There is a small table by the file cabinets on the right as you enter. There's a coffee percolator on the table, and behind it is a kind of a rack of file folders. When he finished the application, I put it in a file folder and hid it back there. I was on my way out and kind of rushed and I didn't feel it was appropriate to leave this lying around, particularly as...well I should probably tell you right now. As I recall, the gentleman had a prison record. Out of respect for his privacy, I felt it was inappropriate to leave it on the receptionist's desk. I was already on my way out. So, I tucked it back there where I knew it would be hidden. I thought I would come in the next morning and retrieve it but, well, as you know, that didn't happen."

"He has a prison record? What's his name, again?"

"Elmer something."

"One more thing, Mrs. McLeod. A reporter by the name of Rattinger working for The Hartford Times wrote in his column today about how you accidentally discovered your husband and another woman in your apartment. How did he come to find that out?"

"Perhaps there is a leak in the police department."

When she hung up the phone, Juliet recalled the obliging smiles of the front desk clerk at her apartment building, and Tommy. What had seemed deferential courtesy now began to seem insinuating, snide...and knowing.

For that matter, how much did Miss Doty, the day maid, know? Juliet never knew her services had been canceled that day, or any other day. Kurt had never told her.

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# Chapter Seven

James, Jonas Van Allen's chauffeur, drove Mr. Van Allen's 1947 Cadillac touring sedan down the long drive and out of the gates. Jonas sat next to his daughter in the back seat, rigidly, with his chin held high and his gaze looking straight ahead, never veering left or right, particularly when they proceeded through the gates. Because she was not as disciplined as her father, Juliet did look, and saw that both to the left and the right of the car there was a crowd what appeared to be news reporters.

Photographers blasted their flashbulbs, creating a constellation of momentary bright and somewhat dizzying lightning. A newsreel camera operated on a tripod followed them onto the street. Though she did not look around behind the car, she wondered if perhaps some of these reporters might even get into their cars and follow them to the church. She wondered in which one was Rattinger.

Is this what she would have waiting for her when Elmer chauffeured her about in her own car? Did they know what her car looked like? It was not a luxury vehicle like her father's car. One would not expect a chauffeur to be driving it.

Juliet thought about Elmer's fascination with her streamlined car without running boards. She wondered what he would think of this, a silver four-door with silver interior and the traditional iconic hood ornament that really told you everything you needed to know, if you needed to know anything about a rich man's auto.

She felt a light touch upon her hand. Her father covered her hand with a tentative grasp. He really did try sometimes, she thought, in his own feeble and brittle way.

The private service at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church was held in the small chapel. Juliet no longer attended regular services here as she had with her father when she was a girl. She was more aware now, than she was as a child, how uncommon it was for a New England Congregational church to be constructed in the Gothic style, but its brownstone blocks gave the church a medieval, castle-like appearance that appealed to her as a child playing at knights and ladies and reading stories of dragons.

Mark Twain attended this church, and in his customary offhand humor referred to it as the "church of the holy speculators" because of the number of bankers and insurance executives in its congregation. Her father would smile archly when she pointed that quote out to him as a callow college girl years ago. He would not laugh, or agree, or comment further. She imagined her father thought Mr. Twain was an ornament to their community when he was quiet, and an inconvenience when he was not.

Chauncey arrived before them, meeting them at the chapel, having taken the morning off from work. Here was another act of courtesy that she felt inclined to suspect. This was to be a private funeral. It had been announced in the papers as such.

He was not family. His only connection to them was that he had been her superior at the museum, and that he had known Juliet since they were both teenagers. They did not go to the same schools, of course, she having been sent to a girls' boarding academy and he being sent to an all-boys' school. Their parents were friends, and Juliet and Chauncey had been thrown together at social functions for as long as either of them could remember. She had even dated his brother once or twice when they were in their different respective colleges.

In the final months of the war in the summer of 1945, she started work at the museum. A few months later Chauncey, when he was mustered out of the Army, also came to work at the Wadsworth. He had been an officer in the Quartermasters Department serving stateside the entire war. She had an idea that alone made him bitter, not to have the battle experience on his war record that Kurt did as an enlisted man. Kurt distinguished himself at Anzio, awarded a Purple Heart, and a Bronze Star.

She could see where Chauncey would have been very good at his job and necessary where he was, a dogged numbers cruncher with an inspired talent for order. He may not have been inspired at all by the art inside the museum, but it was quiet and orderly in the museum. Attention to protocol allowed him to rise to the top without too much fuss. The world of finance and investments that appealed to so many of their family members seemed to have no fascination for Chauncey. His older brother Terence had often teased him that he was not a go-getter.

Perhaps he did not want quite as much as Terence. Or perhaps he wanted something different. Juliet began to wonder what he wanted. Did he want her? Did he want her badly enough to take a job at the museum? It was a flattering thought...and a little disturbing.

Did he want her badly enough to kill Kurt?

Elmer was right. When Chauncey held her, she had not detected the slightest inference that he might doubt her innocence.

***

After the brief service, they went to the gravesite. It was arranged that Kurt should be placed in the family burial plot, something that must have been a bitter pill for father, and was, in fact, beginning to make Juliet resentful.

She listened to the minister intoning words of solace and comfort. Juliet wanted only to leave. She noticed that her father seemed to welcome Chauncey. He probably still wanted her to marry Chauncey. She wondered what Chauncey wanted.

Suddenly her resentment for Chauncey's even being there melted away. Juliet realized that she could get a ride from him to the museum. It would be quite natural, and much easier than asking her father to drop her off. Father would protest and might refuse.

Chauncey would be only too happy to do some service for her, and she would use her woman's trick of letting him, of asking for help, at once a compliment to the male ego and a way of getting something she wanted.

She also began to anticipate and even look forward to seeing the expression on his face when she told him where the job application was. Since he had torn up the first one, he might well be bowled over.

What would he say? Would he confess to tearing it up? Would he think he was going crazy at seeing a duplicate? Whichever scenario, it might be the most fun she had in a week.

When the minister concluded, he shook their hands and expressed his condolences, and they thanked him. Walking back to their cars, she casually, but perhaps a little too eagerly turned to Chauncey and said,

"Oh, Chauncey, dear, if you're going back to the museum, may I come along with you? There are some grant applications and things in my office that I could take home with me and work on over the weekend, and other things."

"My dear, there's no need for you to think about work," her father said.

"No, of course not," Chauncey said. "Take some time off for yourself."

His voice lightly caressed the words as if caressing her, and she knew why. She had never called him "dear" before. He noticed. She looked languidly at the ground a moment, in order not to show the triumph in her expression because he had noticed.

"No, no, I insist. I'm going crazy with nothing to do. I need something to take my mind off all this terrible mess. You understand?" She lightly touched his chest with the back of her gloved hand, and leaving it lingering there a moment.

"Yes, of course."

"Besides, it occurred to me late last night, thinking about today, that I had promised to meet with that gentleman on Friday. It would be a shame to stand him up."

"What gentleman?"

"The gentleman who came in to fill out a job application that night."

"Surely there's no need for you to see him," her father protested.

"I want to," she said. "A promise is a promise."

She could almost sense her father and Chauncey silently questioning each other, and she turned from them and began to walk towards Chauncey's car. Chauncey galloped ahead of her to open the passenger door.

She had never noticed his car before, never paid attention. It was a two-door Lincoln Cosmopolitan, exactly similar to hers except for the color. Hers was maroon; his was hunter green. She was about to ask him when he had bought it but decided to leave it alone for now.

There had been a few reporters at the church, and there were a few here in the cemetery keeping a not exactly respectful distance. They took pictures of her father's car as it drove out of the cemetery, but Chauncey left through the side entrance and they were left alone.

"Thank you for the ride, Chauncey."

"I'll happily do anything I can, Juliet."

She asked him about funding for the new Salvador Dali exhibit. She hoped it would keep him on the subject of finances and from getting too personal with her. She felt under ordinary circumstances, at least in the past, he would have not gotten too personal, or he had a decidedly prudish aboveboard attitude and she supposed that included coming on to brand-new widows.

Perhaps Chauncey was not such a stereotype that she had used to think.

Did he think by destroying the job application that he was destroying her alibi? Was he trying to implicate her? Or perhaps was he trying to protect her? He would not, she decided, make a liar out of her at any rate.

Juliet decided to ask him where he was the night of the murder. No one knew he might be fond of her.

Except her father. This gave Juliet a new and more uncomfortable thought, that her father might be involved in all this, but she let it pass for the moment.

"Chauncey, I have a confession to make." Yes, "confession" was the way to do it. Supplication, submissiveness, lubrication to the male ego.

"Yes, what is it?" Chauncey glanced at her only briefly. It was good to talk to him like this when he was driving, so that his must keep his attention on the road. She did not want to have to look into his eyes, nor have him look into hers.

"I called you, the afternoon of the murder."

"You called me?"

"When I was at the museum. Undoubtedly, you know by now that I had gone home earlier that day to find my husband with another woman. All of Hartford knows by now."

"I'm afraid I did read that. I'm so sorry, Juliet. What a horrible experience for you."

"Yes, it was."

"Why did you call me?"

"I was devastated. I wanted to talk to someone. You were the first person I thought of."

He took a deep breath and glanced at her again, this time for enough seconds for her to see the gratification, even pride in his expression, and for him to drive momentarily over the centerline and need to pull sharply away to avoid an oncoming bus.

"But there was no answer. I tried several times."

"I'm sorry. I wish I could have taken your phone call. I was out. I was out for drinks with an old friend. You remember Elliott Sanderson? We talked about the war and what he's been doing since he got home. I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to you that evening. Maybe I could have helped."

"I'm sure you would have helped. But now I'm glad we didn't talk, because the police have had me going over and over everything I did that night, and if I'd talked to you, then you would be involved in all this as well."

"What did you tell them? Did you tell them you called me?"

"No. Since I never reached you, I didn't think it necessary to even bring it up."

He seemed relieved.

"Do you want to talk about it now?"

"No, dear. Not now."

***

At the museum, the front desk clerk and guards said good morning to her shyly and then averted their eyes.

Oh, so that's how it's going to be, she thought.

She went up to the administration offices, and Karen, their secretary, repeated the shy good afternoon to her, and then Karen's eyes darted to a chair in the corner. Detective Connolly sat there. His assistant, a tall, much younger man stood by. Connolly stood, and she nodded to him.

"Did you find the job application, Detective Connolly?"

"Yes, Mrs. McLeod, it was right where you said it was."

Her eyes darted to Chauncey, who really did look stunned. His eyes widened and he seemed to sway a little. She felt absurdly victorious.

"What job application?" he asked.

"The one I had that gentleman fill out," she said. "The gentleman I mentioned to you earlier. Detective Connolly called late last night and said that they had come here looking for the application, but it wasn't around. In the excitement of what happened that evening, I never got back to give the application to Karen to file. I just tucked it away where it would be safe. There was confidential material in it, after all."

Detective Connolly's eyes widened with the slightest trace of a mixture of surprise and amusement, while Karen simply looked confused and perhaps a little put out that she was left out of the inner circle.

Detective Connolly opened the folder and pulled out the piece of paper. Chauncey scurried over to look at it over his shoulder until the detective glared at him. Chauncey took a couple of steps back. Juliet watched him, imagining his mind racing. They all appraised each other in the outer office, all from their separate perspectives. Juliet, who thought that she had never really thought much about Chauncey before, realized she should have. Her own mind reeled in re-evaluation.

He was a mystery, largely because he was such an aboveboard chap. This is what he would have called himself, she thought. An aboveboard chap.

The kind of man who might pine for a woman silently for years, a romantic gesture in and of itself, and also the kind of man who would never make a play for woman who was married. She did not think him incapable of lying or deception. Dull and steadfast, steadfast and aboveboard. These were the hallmarks of Chauncey and his breed.

But what if Elmer were lying? What if he did not spy on Chauncey and see him destroy the job application? What game would Elmer make of planting a seed of doubt in her mind about Chauncey? She did not know Elmer. Perhaps she just did not know Chauncey either.

No, Chauncey knew something. His reaction was profound. She noticed it. Clearly, he did not expect there to be a job application. But then, neither did Karen or Detective Connolly. Perhaps that's all it was.

Who told Rattinger about Kurt and the other woman? Chauncey? How would he know, unless her father told him? Her father, relying more and more upon Chauncey's opinions and help in this business, and with her father's praise of Chauncey, perhaps he could have confided to Chauncey this secret.

Or, did Elmer tell the newspaper, for a fee?

"I'd like to discuss this with you in your office," Detective Connolly said.

The detective and his assistant, who apparently was supposed to remain silent because that's exactly what he did, went with Juliet into her office and closed the door. Chauncey was unceremoniously excluded. He stood outside the glass for a moment like a dejected child waiting outside a pet shop window and then visibly pulled himself together and went to his own office.

"Won't you sit down, Detective Connolly?"

"Thank you," he said, and would have sat down anyway because his feet were killing him. Detective Connolly had never quite recovered from his years of walking the beat. Also, he'd gained considerable weight since his rookie years, so depositing himself in her guest chair was exactly what he had in mind. His silent young assistant stood at attention.

Juliet slid into her executive chair behind her desk, let her forearms lie gently on the armrests and took a brief glance around her office. It seemed like a hundred years since she had been here, but it had been only a matter of days.

She glanced up at the ceiling vent panel. She hoped he wasn't up there.

"I have to admit, Mrs. McLeod," Detective Connolly said, "this is one of your more interesting alibis. A man who approaches you for a job after the museum has closed. That's number one. Number two is you don't normally work as late as you did that night your husband was killed. We've established that among your staff. Number three, your alibi, Elmer Vartanian, states on this application that he has only recently been out of prison, for about a month. Number four, he was convicted for being involved in a museum heist in which one person was killed. All of this sounds very, very strange, Mrs. McLeod. Would you care to comment?"

His assistant pulled out a notebook and pencil.

"I agree that it sounds strange. And I was here that night, as I told you, because I had stumbled upon my husband's...being...affair, his affair. I didn't know what to do or where to go, so I came back to work give myself some time to think. I let myself in the back door with my own key. I don't know how Mr. Vartanian entered the building. I assumed he must have entered at the end of the day and just wandered around the museum looking for someone to speak to."

"Don't you think he could have been casing the joint, planning a new heist, hiding out and examining the museum for the best routes? The best opportunities, the best items to steal?"

"At the time, no. He just came into my office and I was upset and a little confused. I was quite startled by his being there, and frankly, I just wanted to get rid of him when he said he was looking for a job, and so I got an application for him. I had him fill that out, and that kept him busy for a couple of minutes. By that time, I had pulled myself together and realized that I had to go home and face my husband. So, when he was finished with his application, we both left together."

"Did you face your husband when you arrived at home?"

"No. I lost my nerve by then, and I was feeling quite ill and had a terrible headache and I was frankly rather nauseous. I also, and forgive me, but I had neglected to mention this earlier. I only just remembered. On the way home, I stopped off at a bar a few blocks down and had a drink. It was a martini, if you need to know that."

"You know the name of the bar?"

"No. It's not a place I usually go to. I remember I was at a stoplight and I saw the bar and thought, well, I really need a drink right now. I pulled up to the curb and I went in. I was there only briefly. It wasn't the normal kind of place that I would frequent. Kind of a dive, actually."

"What corner?"

"I don't remember."

"Did you know anybody there?"

"No, but then I wasn't looking for anybody."

"And what happened when you went home?"

"Just as I told you, Detective. I was feeling ill and upset but decided to have it out with my husband. I found him just as you saw. By the way, Detective Connolly, when you interviewed the staff at my apartment building, and Miss Doty, our maid, did they indicate they knew my husband was having an affair?"

"No. But Miss Doty wasn't surprised. I don't think she likes you, Mrs. McLeod."

Juliet struggled concealing her expression of astonishment.

"Why is that?"

"Well, as a married woman, your place was home, not trying to run a museum. What else could you expect but that your husband would stray?" Detective Connolly's sneer was his closest approximation to a smile. "I'm just relaying her opinion, Mrs. McLeod."

"Could she have killed my husband?"

"I'm still looking for what he was killed with. A blunt object with some weight to it, but that seems to be missing from the apartment. Any suggestions?"

"I told you, I don't know of anything being missing."

"I don't think you made a careful examination at the time. I'd like you to take another look."

"I've already given you an inventory of objects that were in the apartment, Detective. Or do you think I'll break down and confess when I see the murder scene again?"

"It'd make my job easier."

"By the way, if you want to question this Mr. Vartanian, you'll have your chance if you wait around a while. Since he didn't have a phone number, he asked if he could come back in a few days and I said yes. I told him he could come back Friday afternoon to check on the status of his application. I told him I would have spoken to someone by then and the personnel department could give him some ideas as to whether or not we were looking for anyone. In the excitement of these last days, I forgot all about it. But I did remember last night as I was preparing for my husband's funeral. So, I decided to come here to make sure you got his application and keep my promise to him."

"Very laudable. Yes, I would like to talk to him. Privately, if I may."

"Of course, you may use my office. There's one thing more, Detective Connolly. I've been thinking about this last night and today. Though it may surprise you, I think I'm going to offer Mr. Vartanian a job myself...of being my chauffeur."

"You interest me very much, Mrs. McLeod. Haven't had too many suspects quite as fascinating as you."

"Thanks. I think."

"And may I ask what your motive is?"

"Motive being the operative word for suspects? My motive is simply this. In considering his prison record for a crime involving a museum, it's rather unlikely that the Wadsworth Atheneum is going to hire Mr. Vartanian."

"You think?"

"And so, I want to hire him, because as my father pointed out to me, while all this scandal has been going on, my father's home has been barraged with reporters. They even showed up at the church for the funeral. They even showed up at the cemetery. I was very upset. I want to get out. I want to try to continue my life in some way. But I feel I need someone to provide a little protection."

"I hope you don't think he's going to pack a gun for you."

"No, Detective. Just someone to drive me around and escort me from work to home in a safe manner. I'd also like to go shopping again. I might even go to the dentist. My father's household staff is not at my disposal and some of them are rather elderly. Mr. Vartanian seems a capable man, and he needs a job. The biggest reason I'm hiring him is for self-interest. I've come to realize how important he is as my alibi, and I'm afraid that a man who just got out of prison, who has no job and no phone may be difficult to contact. When this case is brought to a hearing, he may not even be in the area anymore. I want him to stay close by, and I can assure that if I give him a job close by me."

"Very practical. Have you spoken to Mr. Vartanian since that evening that your husband died, since he filled out that job application?"

"No." Juliet amazed herself by how coolly she lied. Lying never had come to her so easily. She did not even feel a blush coming on. She did not even feel sick. She felt empowered.

"I wonder if he'll accept your offer."

"And I wonder if I am still the only suspect in this case, Detective Connolly. Have you made no progress about the redheaded woman who was with my husband that afternoon?"

"No one saw a redheaded woman enter or leave the premises. Stray red hairs is pretty slim evidence to introduce another suspect in the case just yet. But there is suspicion enough for us to keep looking. I've decided to delay bringing this case before the district attorney until we know a little bit more."

"Thank you for trying to be so thorough, Detective Connolly."

"That is my job, but I will not be able to hold the DA's office off for long. These political fellows like a quick and decisive action. They like to look good. Some will be hesitant to bring to trial the daughter of Jonas Van Allen. Others of the social class of Elmer Vartanian won't care. They'll even be glad that a rich girl can go to prison."

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# Chapter Eight

When Elmer arrived at Juliet's office, Detective Connolly invited him back to the police headquarters to question him, without Juliet present, and before she could offer him a job. There Connolly learned of the details of the Elmer's previous criminal history.

He remarked, in a voice gravelly from too many years of smoking and years of practiced sarcasm, "Doesn't it strike you odd that a man who spent the better part of a decade in jail because of a crime involving a museum would go looking for a job in a museum? Practically the minute he got out? Drunks should stay away from barrooms, Mr. Vartanian."

"I'd been walking around looking for work and found myself at the museum. I went in because I was tired and bored and depressed. I started looking around at the paintings and sculptures, and the more I walked around, the better I felt. It was quiet in there. There was so much to look at, one room led right into another.

"And I got it into my head this would be a nice place to work. But what can I do? Nothing. Except maybe push a broom."

"So, it's late and it's closing time, and you decide to apply for a job?"

"Yes. I saw a sign on the door that said administrative offices, up some stairs. So, I went in there and I didn't see anybody. There was a light on coming from Miss Van Allen's office. I yelled hello, and she said answered. I told her I wanted to apply for a job as a janitor, and she gave me an application and told me to fill it out. She didn't interview me, or anything. She said that wasn't her job. She said someone would get back to me and call me. When I said I didn't have a phone, but that I could come back, she said yes, to come back on Friday afternoon and she would speak with me."

"How long were you with Mrs. McLeod? From what time to what time?"

"I don't have a watch. I guess I got to the museum around 7:00 or maybe closer to 8:00. And I walked around some, like I said. I think must've left about nine or close to nine."

"The museum closes at nine at night."

"I guess it was about then. When we walked out, she said something to the guard at the desk, the night watchman. He looked at me, surprised. I think maybe he was a little embarrassed, like he should have cleared me out of there, but when he must've been doing his rounds clearing people out of museum, I was already in her office."

"And then you walked out? Together?"

"Yeah."

"Did you go to her car together?"

"No. She went one way and I went the other direction."

"Where did you go?"

"Home."

Detective Connolly questioned him a second time over much of the same material but Elmer was unflappable.

***

A squad car drove him back to the museum where Juliet was waiting for him. They went to her office and she started to ask him how it went at the police station, but Elmer took a sheet of paper from her notepad on the desk and a pencil, and wrote in big block letters:

CAREFUL. OFFICE BUGGED?

He replied in a too casual tone, "The police asked me what I was doing here, Miss Van Allen," he said, "but I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about it. They didn't tell me not to. Anyway, I guess, what with my record and all the police heat around the museum, the chances of my being hired for a janitor are next to nil, aren't they?"

She noted the artificial way he spoke, and her mind reeled at the thought the office might be bugged. She craned her neck and looked all over the room, as if she might see the tiny microphone if she looked hard enough.

Her turn to play-act.

"I had mentioned to Detective Connolly while he was here that I had another idea and that was to hire you as my chauffeur. I have a selfish motive, Mr. Vartanian. You being a witness as to where I was during that evening, I'd like to keep you close by. It would be a job, temporarily at least, and we could find you a room above the garage on my father's estate in the servants' quarters. You could live rent-free. You would have employment, and I could give you an excellent reference when you move on to your next, hopefully more permanent, job. I'd like to pick up my car this evening from my apartment building. Detective Connolly said that I could. But, if you'd like to come there with me in a taxi, we could pick my car up and then perhaps get your things?"

Each marveled at the apparent earnestness of the other, and at how easily they were able to invent extemporaneous dialogue.

They walked out together, just as they had that first night they met, the night she found Kurt having an affair and then found him murdered. It gave a curious feeling of deja vu to both of them, though neither said anything. Walking down the marble staircase toward the Great Hall, they turned and headed for the reception desk and saw Henry the night watchman sitting there, just as they had that first night.

Juliet stopped short. "Oh, I'd completely forgotten about the bowling balls. They're still in the apartment." She said to the guard, "I'm sorry."

"Oh, no matter at all, Miss Van Allen. It's not important."

"As soon as I can get them, I will."

"No matter, ma'am. Thank you." He was uncomfortable, as if perhaps he thought the bowling balls were now tainted.

"What was that about?" Elmer asked her in the cab.

"I had a set of candlepin bowling balls I was going to give to his son. His boy is in high school and is very keen on bowling. I happened to mention that I bowled while I was in college in Massachusetts, and that he could have my old bowling balls if he wanted them."

"I never figured a debutante like you for a bowler."

"Oh, I never actually bowled. The butler bowled while I stood on the side and sipped very dry sherry and occasionally muttered, 'Excellence, Jeeves, excellent.'"

Elmer threw his head back and laughed. Juliet chuckled at her triumph.

They retrieved her car and he drove it out onto Main Street, and she slumped low in the passenger seat in case the press was still following.

"I think I should go back for my things myself another time." Elmer said, "It's not a very good neighborhood for a car like this. Besides, never know who'll follow us."

"I understand. Before we head back to my father's house, I'd like to stop first and pick up a few things, toiletries."

They passed the W.T. Grants on the corner of State and Main.

"Oh, should I have stopped there?"

"No, that's all right. Keep going."

"It's your car. You are the boss." He started chuckling, "It's probably not a place you usually shop, is it? Five and dimes?"

She ignored him.

"Portrait of Jennie's over at the Regal. Have you seen it?" she asked.

"No."

"Kurt thought it was asinine, but I loved it. I loved the original novella by Robert Nathan. It's about an artist who meets a young girl, and he wants to paint her picture. And every time he meets her, she's a little older."

"Sounds creepy. It's a ghost story?"

"No, it's very romantic. He falls in love with her, and she becomes his muse. It's very spiritual and lovely."

"Why did you stop painting?"

Juliet warily, curiously considered his profile as she had Chauncey's when riding as Chauncey's passenger this afternoon.

"I wasn't very good."

"I liked the paintings in your room."

She scoffed. "Perhaps you're not a good judge of what's good."

"Kurt was?"

"I didn't stop painting because of Kurt."

Elmer continued in a smooth, authoritative, yet non-confrontational tone, "I think you did. I think you got tired of defending your style or your subject matter to somebody who had a different idea of what good art is. Maybe you thought you were being a good wife, and not competing with your husband. Maybe you were just a coward and couldn't stand rejection when you couldn't make a go of it as an artist after college."

"I never even tried."

"You never wanted to be an artist? Tell me that being a museum administrator was your first choice, and not your consolation prize for not being a professional artist yourself?"

"I wish you'd stop psychoanalyzing me."

"What's that?"

"Post-war party talk by people who think they know what they're talking about and love telling other people about themselves. Elmer, when did you go into prison?"

"Summer of 1941."

"Summer of 'forty-one. I graduated from college that May."

"And your father gave you the Mercury?"

"Yes. The world has changed a lot since 'forty-one, Elmer. I suppose supermarkets will be a completely new thing to you as well? That's where we're going. Let's head out to West Hartford and the suburbs."

"Super markets?"

"You come into the store with me. You can push the cart."

"Cart?"

While they were in the store, Elmer warned Juliet about not saying too much about the case in the car. If the office could be bugged so might the car be. She looked at him and rolled her eyes.

"You can't be serious?"

"I'm serious. Maybe I'm just paranoid. But, it would be a good idea to tell your father and to ask him to get his attorney to hire some guys who can check the car out and remove any bugs if they are there. Your office, too."

"How am I going to do that?"

"After hours. Just work late one night and bring them in."

"This store is pretty overwhelming to you, isn't it? You're walking around bug-eyed like a little boy at a circus."

"What's this?"

She held up the canister. "Frozen orange juice concentrate. See? It's a frozen cylinder of orange pulp. You dump it into a pitcher, and you add water. No more squeezing oranges."

"Is it any good?"

"It's not as good as fresh-squeezed."

"Then why?"

"It's fast and it's easy."

"And that's what matters now?"

She smiled. "Yes, Rip Van Winkle, that's what matters now."

"Rip Van Winkle, you're not kidding. A lot changes in ten years. Not just the prices.

"Linda would be nine years old now. She won't have any memory of me. If I saw her on the street, I wouldn't recognize her.

"I knew her as a little baby. I held her up against my chest with her face on my shoulder, drooling on my undershirt, and I walked the floor with her at night to make her stop crying and go to sleep. That's all I know about her. Warm little body snuggling up against my shoulder, the way she smelled all clean from her bath and how it broke my heart when she got the hiccups. Her whole body shuddered and she got surprised and scared. It was just the hiccups, but it broke my heart."

"I hope you find her." It was all Juliet could think of to say. She turned her face to a wall of canned corn; suddenly afraid her eyes might tear up.

He fished in his wallet and pulled out a photograph. He showed it to her, a photo of a baby with laughing eyes and a pleased expression. He quoted Keats.

"And all that's best of dark and light

Meet in her aspect and her eyes,

Which heaven to gaudy day denies."

"Keats?! Where did you learn to quote Keats?"

"Prison was my university. I never read much when I was kid. I wanted to improve myself for my daughter."

"Is this Linda? She's sweet, and very beautiful. Keats and Austen. I had wondered about your earlier reference to Romeo and Juliet."

"My pal, Robert, and I would read the parts aloud."

"Oh, no!" She laughed. "Who was Juliet?"

"Whoever lost the coin toss that day. He was a better Juliet than me, though. He was a better Mercutio, and a better Romeo, and a better Tybalt."

"Is he still in prison?"

"Yes. Here's a photo of me and my wife, and Linda when we brought her home from the hospital. I have a couple of other photos in my room. The oldest she is in those pictures is four years old. And I never got more pictures after that. That was when Enid moved away."

"Enid never contacted you? That's odd. It's cruel."

"It's not like her either, if you knew her. She was always a really warmhearted person. I never knew her husband very well. Stand-offish guy. Maybe he just put his foot down. I don't know. Enid wrote me that she taught Linda to call her auntie, that her mommy was in heaven, and her daddy was in the war. Everybody's daddy was in the war. So, I guess Enid figured when it was time for Linda to start school, things wouldn't be so tough on her. She didn't have a daddy because he was in the war. I hated myself."

"There's a coffee shop. Let's go in and have a bite to eat."

"Isn't your father expecting you for dinner?"

"I feel more like a burger tonight. We never had burgers in my father's house."

They put her purchases into the car and walked towards the small coffee shop that was part of the shopping plaza.

The waitress came to take their order. She was a short woman, middle-aged, with a short curly hairdo in a tight permanent wave. Her hair was dyed black. She wore a pink uniform dress and the name tag above her right breast read Shirley.

After Juliet ordered, Elmer looked up from his menu, glanced casually around the room and asked Shirley, "Does Enid Block work here?"

"Who?"

"Enid Block. I thought she still worked here. Maybe I have the wrong place. She's my wife's cousin."

"No, sorry, sir. I don't know any Enid Block. But, if you're thinking it's on this street, there's another coffee shop, two blocks down."

"That could be. Thanks."

When Shirley left them, Juliet studied his face, and when he noticed her doing this, he lifted his chin a little, and let her have a good look.

"That's the needle in the haystack approach," she said at last, "How long do you think it will take you to go through every restaurant in Hartford?"

"I know," he said, "but it makes me feel better than doing nothing."

"Elmer, Chauncey went out the night of the murder."

Elmer had been studying the songs on the mini jukebox in the booth, none of which he knew. A Tree in the Meadow by Margaret Whiting, Mañana by Peggy Lee.

He looked up at her. She kept calm eye contact while she sipped from her water glass.

"Where did he go?"

"He had dinner with a friend."

"You just up and asked him where he was that night?"

"No. I told him I called him on the phone. I told him that with the distress of that evening, finding my husband and that woman together, I called him from the museum because I needed somebody to talk to."

"That was taking a chance. Suppose he had been home?"

Ghost Riders in the Sky by Vaughn Monroe.

"Then I would just say I must have dialed the wrong number. I don't know it by heart. I never call Chauncey at home."

"All right. So, he was out. So, what? Do you think he had something to do with the murder?"

"Do you?"

I Love You So Much It Hurts Me by the Mills Brothers.

"I'm just throwing out questions."

"So am I."

"Did you ask him if he told the press about your husband's affair?"

"No."

"You asked me."

"You and I have every reason to be honest with each other. It's to my advantage not to be completely forthright with Chauncey, and to his advantage to not be completely truthful with me."

Elmer glanced back at the jukebox, dropped in the nickel. Those Little White Lies by Dick Haymes.

"Have you thought anymore about how Mr. Rattinger found out about the tryst?" she asked him, watching him make his selection.

"Yes, I've thought about it. The question to ask is who would have benefited by Rattinger knowing about it. I mean, other than your suggestion that I ratted to Rattinger for the money he might have paid me."

"I'm sorry."

"The killer, that's who. It makes it looks like you have a motive to murder."

"Would the red-haired woman have incriminated herself?"

"Only of being the reason you murdered your husband."

"Do you believe I murdered my husband?"

The burger was hot, and juicy, and the mustard and ketchup oozed together, slipping out of the side of the bun and down the corner of Elmer's mouth. He discovered he still had a taste for burgers. He liked them more than ever. He mentally said goodbye to any more self-denial, and filled his mouth with another bite of beef.

He did not answer Juliet's question.

***

Jonas Van Allen balked only slightly less at the idea of having her car examined for listening devices, than he did of her actually hiring an ex-convict to be her chauffeur. It was not long, however, before he saw the sense in both. Juliet had explained to him the necessity of keeping her alibi close by, to protect her best interests. Jonas would ask his lawyer in the morning about whom to approach to debug both her car and the office.

Elmer Vartanian stood at attention in Jonas Van Allen's study, glancing at all the many books on the built-in bookcases and the woodwork, and the ancestral paintings, of the kind that he might have seen at the Wadsworth Atheneum. A photograph of Juliet stood perched on his desk. She must have been college when it was taken. It was a formal black and white studio portrait, the kind they printed along with the newspaper blurb announcing young ladies presented to society at some debutantes' ball.

"I want you to understand one thing, Vartanian. I'm very proud and protective of my family name. Juliet will tell you as much; in fact, it is something over which she has ridiculed me from time to time. There's something else Juliet does not know or fails to recognize, and that is I'm very protective of her as well. I have sufficient clout and sufficient funds to destroy you if you harm in any way my daughter's safety or her reputation. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good."

Juliet replied, "Father, how dare you! You have no right to speak to him as a servant!"

"He's..."

"He's my employee. And he's done nothing wrong. He may very well, by his presence alone if not the good sense of his advice, keep me from prison."

"His advice! And for what do you think I'm paying Hiram Endicott?"

"I don't know, Father. His obeisance, perhaps? I can see no other quality in him which might be advantageous for you."

Elmer spoke up, "If you'll both excuse me, please, I'll return to my quarters. What time did you want the car, Mrs. McLeod?"

"About ten, Elmer."

"Very good. Good night, ma'am, sir." Elmer turned on his heel and left the study. He silently questioned the butler to inquire which way from here were the servants' quarters above the garage. The butler silently indicated the way.

Juliet listened to the echo of his shoes getting softer as he walked down the hall.

"Your chauffeur displays better manners and more tact than you," Jonas said.

"And you."

Jonas turned his back to her. He began to pace up and down his study, his immaculately shined shoes stepping lightly, with the deliberate, careful steps of a man feeling his age, and feeling it cautiously. Some of the wide oak floorboards, eighty years old, creaked slightly under his step. He touched the fingertips of his right hand to his trim white mustache, and drummed them lightly once or twice, before shifting both hands into a firm, prep school-trained clasp behind his back.

Juliet sat on the edge of his mahogany desk.

"Father, The Hartford Times is reporting the information I told the police about Kurt's...about me finding Kurt with another woman. Do you think the reporter got his information from the police? It doesn't seem likely that they would give out all their information while the investigation is still ongoing. Could you have Hiram Endicott look into that?"

"I already have. The police insist there has been no such information provided to the press, nor do they admit to any leaks in their office."

"Then somebody else knows and talked to Rattinger. I never mentioned it to Chauncey. Did you?"

"Did I what?"

She looked at him evenly, now that he had turned to face her again. "Did you tell Chauncey that I found Kurt and that woman?"

"No."

Juliet continued to scrutinize him, clutching the end of his desk with white-knuckled hands, her shoulders hunched in her slightly forward lean on the desk.

"Why do you not ask if I told Rattinger myself?"

She dropped her eyes.

"All right, Father. All right."

She noticed her wedding ring on the same white-knuckled finger. She had put it back on, not out of any heartfelt remembrance of her marriage, but to avoid Detective Connolly thinking her either a callous widow or a murderer. She felt like a hypocrite.

Juliet lifted her hand, and held it in the other, rubbing both to bring back the circulation. Absently, she glanced over her father's desk. It was the neat desk of man whose authority was created behind a desk, and who in retirement, maintained his authority by sitting behind his desk several hours each day, though he had no work to do. Instead, he corresponded with organizers of his college fraternity gatherings, and with his stockbroker in New York, and wrote checks for monthly bills, and sometimes did a crossword puzzle.

His address book lay casually across the blotter. A small slip of paper jutted out just slightly from the bound page of the book. She was not thinking of the slip of paper, or of the address book at all, but of how Elmer left the room so obediently. It bothered her that he did that.

Jonas walked over to the desk and picked up his address book, tucking it under his arm like a restaurant maitre'd with a menu.

"Well, I think I'll say goodnight, Juliet. I'm rather tired this evening."

"Yes."

She shoved off the edge of his desk like pushing a dory from a wharf and continued to rub and wring her hands as she left.

"Goodnight, Father."

"Goodnight, dear."

She sensed, immediately, even before she left his study, that he had not wanted her to see the address book, or at least seemed anxious that she might examine it. Juliet walked up the grand staircase, brooding about how her father visibly seemed to restrain himself from snatching it from her, how he picked it up easily and casually, and tucked it under his arm as if that was the most natural thing in the world for him to do.

But it wasn't. Juliet imagined that if she had been so rude as to pick up his personal address book and leaf through it, he would actually snatch it from her. That would be his right, even if out of character for him.

Picking it up would have been out of character for her.

Juliet decided after much deliberation that it was time she stepped out of character if only to surmise what her father's character really was.

She walked over to the servants' quarters above the garage and knocked on Elmer's door.

She could faintly hear his answer, "Come in." Juliet opened the door and craned her neck through. He was lying on top of his bed. He had taken off his coat, and his white shirtsleeves were rolled up, his tie draped over the plain iron headboard. He clutched his hands behind his head, listening to a program on the bedside radio.

He did not stand, or hurriedly make any servile obeisance, but seemed to regard her absently, if not actually coldly, and he did not move from his apparently comfortable position.

Juliet closed the door behind her and leaned against it.

"Elmer, I'd like to ask you to break into my father's desk."

He said nothing for a moment.

The dial glowed on the bedside radio, and in the brief silence, Juliet recognized Joseph Cotten's voice.

"What's that?"

"Lux Radio Theater. The episode is called 'The Paradine Case.' It's some sort of trial story."

"I think they're making the movie. I think Gregory Peck is supposed to be in it."

"Don't know him."

"Can you turn it down for a minute?"

"Sure." He rolled over onto his side and turned the radio off. The silence was louder and more uncomfortable than talking over the radio would have been. Juliet glanced around the room. She had never been in the servants' quarters.

"I have a hunch there's something my father doesn't want me to see in his address book. It may have something to do with a slip of paper I saw sticking out from the pages. He guarded it rather protectively. I know he keeps his address book in the top drawer of his desk, which he always locks."

"And you want me to break into his desk?"

"You are Houdini Jr., are you not? The man who enters impregnable museums?"

"If they were impregnable, I'd never be able to get near them. Just because something's stone and marble doesn't mean it's invincible. I suppose that's why I did it. My superiority over the architecture and the architect. I'd be just as happy never to have to do it again."

"It's just a desk drawer, Elmer. Don't you have something to pick the lock with, some sort of skeleton key or something? What is it people in your profession use?"

"It's not my profession!"

She looked up, startled, when he shouted. He colored, and immediately called back his emotion just as he drew in sharp breaths. She had an idea then that he had never blown up in all his years in prison, and this was the first time. And she had made him lose his temper at last, and he might not forgive her for it.

"I'm sorry," Juliet said, "That was thoughtless of me."

She turned and put her hand on the doorknob.

"Wait."

He got up from the bed and took a small metal object out of his pants pocket, a many-pronged device not unlike a mini jackknife. He pulled one implement out, a sliver of metal, and handed the object to her.

"Try this."

"Me?"

"You're not on parole."

"What do I do?"

"You prod the lock open carefully, because if you break it and make it look as if it had been pried open, I'm the one that's going to get blamed."

Then he went back to the bed and lay down upon it again, thrusting his clasped hands behind his head. "Return it to me tomorrow in the car. Don't come back here. You shouldn't even be here."

He rolled back over onto his side and snapped the radio back on.

"The big new bath cake makes the most delightful beauty bath a fastidious woman could ask for...screen stars love it...it leaves such a lovely fragrance on the skin, a fragrance like a bouquet of many flowers. Nine out of ten screen stars..."

Juliet left, pocketing the object, and mumbling sarcastically to herself,

"Thanks for everything."

She puzzled at his resolute inaction and resented it.

***

Later, in the small hours of the morning when she felt sure none of the household staff would be awake, Juliet stepped as quietly and carefully as she could down to her father's study. She closed the door and turned on only the small desk lamp. Taking Elmer's gadget from the pocket of her robe, she touched it to the lock of the top desk drawer.

Several gentle scrapings, Juliet felt the lock release, and she pulled the drawer out, feeling so excited as to want to announce her victory to somebody. She took the address book. The slip of paper no longer protruded.

She leafed through all the pages, hoping her father had only tucked it back in more securely.

He did. Here it was, a small note, "Cauley, State7804."

A name and a phone number.

Juliet copied the note, and put it back into the address book, which she put back into the desk drawer. She closed it and locked it again. She stood back from it. It looked fine. It looked completely normal.

There were several Cauleys in the phone book. One matched the number on the slip.

Andrew Cauley, private detective.

***

The next day Juliet planned to go back to work at the museum. Elmer would drop her off and then take the car to a garage directed to him by Jonas's lawyer. They would tackle de-bugging the office another time. Juliet did not mention to Elmer about her father's contacting a detective, because they had not confirmed yet that the car was not bugged. She ached to tell him, but it would have to wait. She glanced at his profile as he drove. They made pleasant small talk about the fine spring day.

He dropped her off, and after having left the car at the garage, Elmer took a walk down the street. He eventually made his way back to Sully's restaurant. He went straight to the phone booth in the back and looked in the Yellow Pages under restaurants. Needle in a haystack was right. You couldn't go hungry in Hartford. You couldn't find Enid, either.

He went to the counter. When Sully brought him coffee, Elmer said to him in a low, quick voice.

"You gave me a bum steer. I just thought you might want to know in case you weren't trying to pull my leg. Maybe your contacts aren't as good as you think they are. So just for your own sake, I thought you should know."

"How'd you like to help me out, buddy," a man slid down on the stool next to Elmer, "and tell me what you know about the McLeod murder?"

Elmer turned and looked into the squinty black eyes of Dick Rattinger.

Elmer answered, "All I know is what I read in the paper."

Rattinger smirked, shook his head, and introduced himself.

"I hear you're Mrs. McLeod's new chauffeur. How'd a convict swing that?"

He knew a lot. Elmer had figured it would only be a matter of time before his own name and face entered the circus, but the suddenness of Rattinger's questions surprised him.

"Your informant must be something," Elmer said, "I hope he's getting something out of this. Or, did you ever ask yourself what?"

"I'm just picking up breadcrumbs and following the trail. Let me ask you..."

Elmer drained his coffee. Mid-sentence, he cut Rattinger off with a curse, and left, quickly ducking into another restaurant and asked for Enid Block, but she didn't work there. He went to two more restaurants and was told the same thing.

Who was Rattinger's informant, and just what did he have to gain? Suppose it were Chauncey? He didn't seem the type to lower himself to talking to the press, unless anonymously. To what advantage would it be for him to steer the press to the lurid aspect of Juliet walking in on her husband's lovemaking with another woman? To make her seem wronged, justified for killing? Could he steer the press into thinking she had hired Elmer for the job of murderer as well as driving her car?

That would still make Juliet a murderer, no matter for what reason, no matter if she hired someone else to do it.

Was he setting himself up by working for her?

Walking along the street, a sedan drove up and parked beside the curb. Though he hadn't even really looked at the car, he felt it was Dave. The car door opened, and Dave popped his head out, jerked his head for Elmer to join him, and Elmer climbed into the car next to him in the back seat.

"How you doing, Elmer?"

"Good. That Van Allen woman hired me. Not to be a janitor at the museum--at something almost as good. I'm her chauffeur."

Dave laughed, "How did you swing that?"

"She's a smart woman. She took a look at my record, knew the museum people wouldn't hire me. She wanted me close by."

"Her alibi. You're the golden boy, Elmer." Dave smiled and shook his head, appreciatively.

"So, when are your plans going down? I was at the museum yesterday. There's still cops all over the place."

"I know. But the DA is pushing for an indictment. It won't be long. After that, the heat will be off the museum, or should be. The scuttlebutt is that it's got to wait until after the charity ball."

Elmer wanted to ask what charity ball.

"At least that's what they're saying in The Hartford Times. That's where I get all my news." Dave chuckled at his own joke.

"And when it does go down, you can tell me right then where and when I can get my kid back, right Dave?"

"Just as soon as they let me know, buddy. I know you're anxious. Just as soon as they let me know, I'll let you know."

"Thanks, Dave." He did not tell Dave he'd heard Enid was back in Hartford. He wanted to see if Dave would tell him.

After Elmer picked up the car from the garage, he went back to the museum and waited for Juliet in the parking lot. He didn't want to come inside the museum too often. He wasn't sure how that would look. He wasn't sure how any of this looked.

***

Juliet had spent the morning brooding about the detective her father had apparently contacted. She resisted the temptation to call the number, realizing that Cauley probably would give her no information anyway, owing to a client privilege.

However, she realized she could confront her father. He would bluster, be outraged, but he would tell her truthfully whether or not he hired a detective. Though he might hide his actions, once confronted with them he would either apologize or defend them angrily, but never lie about them. It was not in her father's makeup to lie. Juliet felt sure of this, and marveled that she could be so sure.

"Miss Van Allen?" Nancy opened her door.

"Yes?"

"Call for you, a Mrs. Welch."

"Welch?"

"She said Betty Ann Welch."

"Betty Ann!" Juliet picked up her phone, and Nancy closed the door.

"Hello, Betty Ann?"

"Juliet, I had to call you. I've been brooding about the sad news for days, and I just had to say something. I know you probably don't want a lot of interference, but please know that I'm truly sorry, and if there's anything that I can do, Leon and I are here, darling."

"Betty Ann! It's so good to hear from you! How long has it been?"

"Well, too long, that's all."

"I'm sorry. It's my fault. I should have been better about keeping in touch."

"Juliet, I had hoped it wasn't anything I did or said."

Juliet frowned. She unclipped her earring so the phone receiver would feel more comfortable against her ear. "What do you mean, Betts? You didn't do anything."

"Well, since you never responded to my messages, I felt..."

"What messages?"

"Darling, I called your apartment several times over the last year. I spoke with your maid, and a couple times with your husband. I'm so sorry for your loss, Juliet, and this whole ghastly business. I'd read in the paper that you were back with your father for the time being, so when I called the house, I was told you'd gone back to work. I decided to just throw caution to the wind, you know how I am, and call you at the museum."

"I'm glad you did, Betty Ann."

"I don't suppose you'll still come to the charity ball, will you, dear?"

The charity ball. Juliet had forgotten.

"I...I don't know."

"I understand."

***

Elmer watched her. Juliet came out of the building and walked across the parking lot, lifting her face back up towards the sky and took a deep breath of air, as he knew he did himself so many times these last couple of weeks. May in New England inevitably astonished. Its sweet warm breath so gentle and so unexpected and so long awaited, but always felt so little deserved. Surely, they would have to pay for it somehow; and they always did in thunderstorms in July, bitter cold and snow and damp rainy spring days. May was rebirth and redemption and payment due.

He got out of the car and opened the passenger door for her the way he'd seen chauffeurs do in the movies, a long time ago when he went to movies. He tried to remember the last movie he'd seen, and couldn't.

She tossed him a glance and a slight smirk because of his servile door opening, but sat down in the car, smoothing her skirt behind her legs in that one sweeping motion women did with both hands sliding down against her bottom.

When they had pulled out onto traffic, he said, "What is this I've been hearing about a charity ball for the museum?"

"It's an annual thing. It's tomorrow night."

"Are you going?"

"Of course not. Not now."

"Is your father going?"

"Certainly not. The place will be full of press."

"I think you should go."

"Are you crazy? Why would I...is everything okay? The car, I mean?"

"Oh, yeah. Car's clean. No bugs. Would you have gone with your husband if this hadn't happened?"

"Yes, of course. I've been going to it for years. Kurt loved it. Of course, this year especially would've been a banner year for him. With his exhibit at the museum, it would have been a prime opportunity for him to put his name out there. Build a reputation, cash in on what reputation he has...or he had."

"So, he was an up and comer in the art world? What was he before he met you? Was he always an artist?"

"Yes, he was always an artist. He did odd jobs, of course, to make a living."

"He didn't come from a wealthy family?"

"No. He did all sorts of work in the thirties, truck driving. He worked on cattle boats, even claimed to be a hobo for a while. Although how much of that is true, I don't know. I can imagine he must have been a vain and dapper hobo."

"When did you meet?"

"Do you really want to talk about this? I don't."

"If he wasn't from your world, let's say he settled into it nicely and liked it. Let's say this up and coming artist didn't hang out with truck drivers and drifters anymore. Let's say he hung out with other artists. Did he?"

"Actually, no. Kurt was almost entirely self-taught. He did not have many colleagues or friends who are artists. In fact, he disdained the work of almost everybody he saw. He was very funny that way. I used to tease him about nobody living up to his standards."

"Is that why you stopped painting?"

"I wasn't good enough."

"Is that what you wanted?"

"I wanted Kurt. Elmer, I had a phone call today from an old friend of mine, a girl I went to school with, and whom I've not seen in over a year. She told me she called my apartment and left several messages. Spoke to Kurt. He never told me. Why do you suppose he did that?"

"Why do you suppose?" Elmer glanced at her briefly. "But, did he go to parties like this with you?"

"He loved them. It was excellent food and wine and rich people to flatter him, and very little competition from other artists. He was like a peacock. I laughed at his vanity. I thought it was a sweet and touching flaw. I really should've taken that man more seriously."

"Here's the thing, Juliet. If the people he hangs out with almost exclusively are society types, the kind of people that you know, then maybe his killer was among that crowd. Maybe it was the woman with red hair. Maybe the killer was somebody she knew. Maybe it's somebody you know. If Kurt's a guy that doesn't spread himself too thin, and finally found a social bracket that might pay off, he's not likely to stray from it."

"He strayed from me."

"I think you should go to this party, Juliet. Since your husband won't be taking you, what about going with this Chauncey guy? He's pretty fond of you, isn't he?"

She didn't really want to talk about Chauncey. What Elmer said about the party hit her with an eerie sort of epiphany. It could be true that she did know the killer. Unless he was a common housebreaker, but the police didn't say that. They felt the killer had some easy access to their apartment. The only people with the key were her and Kurt.

Elmer asked, "You never said if you got the drawer open."

"I did."

"Good for you. You clearly have hidden talents."

"The information my father was trying to hide was the name and number of Andrew Cauley, a private detective."

"What do you want to do?"

"Confront Father."

"Do you think that's best?"

"He'll despise me for going into his private things. But, he'll tell me the truth."

"It impresses me that you know that about him."

"It's the only thing I do know for certain. That, and he despised Kurt."

They were both quiet for another mile, then Elmer cleared his throat and mentioned as they went through the gates of the Van Allen property,

"The cops might just be waiting until this party's over to put through the indictment on you."

"Turn the car around, Elmer. There's somewhere else I want to go."

|  |

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# Chapter Nine

Harriet Doty opened the door herself, with a scowl to ward off everyone and no one in particular, a generic and all-purpose expression to maintain superiority by maintaining distance.

Juliet said, "Hello, Harriet. I have some business to conclude with you, if you have a moment."

Miss Doty, too surprised to register her animosity--that would come later--stood aside and let Juliet and Elmer pass into her one-bedroom apartment, where a flickering blond wood television on a blond wood stand was tuned loudly to Stop the Music on ABC.

Both Juliet and Elmer temporarily gaped, mesmerized by the black and white images; Juliet marveled at the expenditure for a woman who otherwise clearly lived frugally, and Elmer much longer for no reason that he could fathom. The TV just gripped his attention.

Harriet folded her arms, as if to guard her bosom in the faded housedress. She appraised Elmer as Juliet's new boyfriend; and her husband, poor Mr. McLeod, not cold. Juliet realized this after a moment, and perversely decided not to correct her. Elmer, still watching the game show, remained oblivious to either of them.

Juliet continued, "I owe you your last week's wages, Harriet, and I want to leave you with a month's severance as well. I'm terribly sorry you lost your situation under such awful circumstances." Juliet drew out her checkbook. She took her time searching for a pen in her purse, recalling the date, writing the check, as if the seriousness of the moment required deliberateness of thought and action, hoping Harriet did not perceive Juliet was only stalling.

"This is Mr. Vartanian," Juliet added as though an afterthought.

Harriet sniffed and Elmer nodded briefly to her before returning to the Admiral television set.

"Undoubtedly, you've read about this horrible business in the newspapers," Juliet said, filling out the check, "and I wondered if I could ask you a question. You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

"I know that," Miss Doty snapped.

"Were you aware that my husband was having an affair with another woman?"

"The police asked me that, too. They can tell you."

"I know you don't want to get involved. I don't blame you. But, woman to woman, Harriet, I just want to know how I could have been so foolish."

"Woman to woman? That's a joke. I'm the maid and you're the great Juliet Van Allen, the rich man's spoiled daughter."

They finally had Elmer's attention. Juliet, pen paused, also gave Miss Doty her full attention. Without bristling, she smiled smoothly and seemed to encourage Harriet to give her the worst.

"I wouldn't call myself 'great', Harriet, though I have heard the phrase, 'rich man's spoiled daughter' from time to time. Mr. McLeod found that ready remark suitable for many occasions."

"He wasn't a fool. He knew what you were worth to him, but you're wrong if you thought he liked it. He hated being married to you, and you having the nerve not to stay home where you belonged and be a wife to him."

"It seems in retrospect I was more useful to him out of the apartment."

"What did you expect? Any man who's a real man isn't going to waste himself on a woman who doesn't love him. You drove him to her."

"Did you know her?"

"I already told the police I never even seen her."

Juliet ripped the check from the book, flapped it gently in the air a couple times as a holdover habit from a lifetime of writing with a fountain pen, dropped her new ballpoint in her purse and handed the check over to Harriet as if she was handing her a sword.

Harriet regarded the piece of paper only for a second, then snatched it.

"You killed him," Miss Doty said, "you or your boyfriend, here. Maybe you'd planned it for weeks."

"Did you ever sleep with my husband, Harriet?"

"Get out!"

***

Elmer, still mulling over what Juliet had thought she accomplished, or intended to accomplish from her surprise attack on Harriet Doty, wrote letter to his friend, Robert, still in prison, about a world in which there were no more trolley cars on the street, but increased automobile traffic to the point of bedlam.

Groceries were purchased not from a man behind a counter in a mom-and-pop corner grocery, but a big, barn-like building out in the suburbs with shelves piled high with cans and boxes and bottles and jars from which you plucked off shelves and put into little rolling metal carts. Then you proceeded like cattle to a checkout stand where a cash register person tapped out your purchases on the register keys and gave you a printed slip saying what each item cost.

About a world of frozen orange juice concentrate.

No more would the grocer up write on the back of the bag in pencil each item and what it cost and reckon the total himself. You could trust him, but you could trust these cash register people who typed on their keys so fast?

"Robert, how could I not belong in the world after I wanted to get out so much?

"I went to see your grandmother, like I said I would. I told her that you are well and you'd found Jesus. Sorry about that. I couldn't help myself. So if she asks you, just tell her you found Jesus. It seemed to make her happy.

Your friend,

Elmer."

He put down his pencil and got up from the small table and chair. Elmer's room in the servants' quarters above the garage had its own private bath, where he then stepped in for a quick shower. It was nicer than the one-room, rundown residential hotel that he stayed in, that was really more of a flophouse, with the toilet down the hall. This place above the Van Allen's garage was elegant compared to that. Even a radio.

He stepped out of the shower and dried himself. He put on a clean white shirt and the new suit he had bought this morning, a cheap suit off the rack. It was dark, better than the one they gave him when he was released from prison.

He knotted the new black tie and put his handkerchief and his wallet in his pockets. He combed his hair, which in the past month had grown out a little and he no longer look so shorn. He still felt like he had just gotten out of prison, and maybe that feeling would stay with him for a very long time, but he knew he no longer looked like it.

There was something else about him that had changed. He looked and acted less afraid, more with a sense of purpose and less aimless acceptance. He felt sharper. He looked himself in the mirror. He was on the verge of being able to look himself in the eye again.

He went down to the garage, pulled the car out and waited for Juliet in the drive, and he saw Jonas Van Allen draw the curtain back from his study window, giving him a resolute glare.

***

Jonas still had not planned to attend this party and he did not approve of Juliet going.

She stood behind Jonas in his study, tugging on her white opera-length gloves.

"Who is Andrew Cauley?" she asked nonchalantly.

He spun around abruptly, causing himself some slight dizziness, as he faced her. He gripped the back of a Queen Anne chair.

"What do you mean by that?!"

"Forgive me; I did not put that very well. What I really mean to say, Father, was why have you contacted a private investigator?"

"Who told you that?"

"I prefer not to say at this time. What I want to know is if this has anything to do with me. If it does, then I have a right to know. If you tell me it does not, I will, of course, drop the matter as none of my business."

She tucked her clutch purse under her arm. She wore a light green satin dress with a narrow waist, a full skirt and a tiny jacket, ready for the charity ball for the museum. She draped her fur over the companion Queen Anne chair to the one her father grasped for support. The delicate, rather feminine chairs did not compliment the otherwise masculine decor of Jonas Van Allen's study, but they had been put there by his young bride a few decades previously in her eagerness to change him, in the manner of young brides toward young bridegrooms.

To the extent he would not part with her chairs, she did.

Juliet, who resembled her mother, wore no hat. She had not been to a hairdresser, as she would normally have done preceding such an event, but only had brushed it, and sprayed it, and it looked better for a casual wisp around her ears and the nape of her neck than if her hair had been professionally manipulated. Jonas Van Allen considered all this and was struck that his daughter somehow suddenly looked younger to him.

No, he would not lie to her.

"I was suspicious of Kurt."

"Suspicious? In what way? Why?"

"In the manner you discovered him, with that other woman."

Juliet lifted her chin slightly, and a knowing expression crossed her pale green, wide-set eyes, which she then lowered to the floor.

"You suspected him of...infidelity?" What a polite-sounding word for such an obscenity, she thought.

"Yes. I wanted to be sure before I said anything to you. Cauley was investigating this matter for me."

"How long were you fishing for information about Kurt? Since our marriage?"

"I was not fishing. If you think I enjoyed this sordid business...even just contacting Cauley made me sick. Well, not that I actually spoke with him myself."

"Hiram Endicott?"

"Yes, of course. He assured me that Cauley is a very discreet man. Endicott knows of some of his other clients, confidentially. Juliet, I did not like to do this. When Chauncey remarked he'd seen Kurt out in the middle of the day some weeks ago with a woman in a restaurant, it gave me a bad feeling."

"Chauncey told you that?"

"Yes. I know she could have been a client of Kurt's, someone intending to buy one of his so-called paintings. But I had to be sure. I didn't want to worry you until I knew."

Juliet wanted very much to sit down. Or throw up. To do either would tip her hand that this came as a shock to her, and she didn't want to do anything that would stop her father from giving her more information. Also, if she sat down in her evening dress, it would wrinkle, bad enough she had to sit all the way in the car.

She stepped casually over to the chair over which her fur stole was draped. Blond mink from G. Fox, it was her father's birthday present to her last year. She had left it, somewhat churlishly now, she realized, in her closet here in his home rather than take it to hers. She plucked it up, and draped it over her arm, running her gloved hand smoothly over the fur.

"And was this woman a client?"

"Yes."

She exhaled, only then just realizing she had been holding her breath. Then it occurred to her that did not matter if this particular woman was a client. The woman Juliet found him with could have been a client, too. He could have had affairs with any of his female clients.

Jonas continued, "Yesterday Hiram called, and told me that Cauley recently had been suspicious of a woman who visited your apartment house repeatedly. He first noticed her after he had followed Kurt and the woman, who turned out to be a client, home to your apartment. Cauley waited across the street, evidently with his camera, I suppose. I imagine that's how these fellows do these things, but the client came out of the building ten minutes later with a painting under her arm. At that moment, another woman passed her on the walk, and nearly collided with her. This woman then walked around to the back of the building.

"What struck Cauley was that on at least two other occasions when he waited in front of your building for a sight of the woman he had been following, this other woman also arrived and walked around to the back entrance. Cauley remembered her, though he did not see her features very well, because she had red hair.

At first, he assumed she was a day maid or cook hired by someone in the building. As the days passed, it occurred to him her manner of dress was superior to what a domestic would wear. Hoping to learn more about her, he went into the lobby after she arrived one day and asked the desk clerk if this lady had entered the building. He described her but was told no such woman was known to them."

Juliet watched her father's face as he haltingly told her details, which were clearly painful to him. She wished she had not asked him, not for her sake but for his.

"I suppose," she began slowly, "this would at least corroborate that a red-haired woman frequented the building. Has Cauley told the police?"

"No. He was not aware of a red-haired woman being part of the whole miserable case until he read it in the newspaper. That's when he called to update Endicott on his observations."

"Could he be used in my defense?"

"Perhaps. Endicott will lead us through this."

She hoped Endicott knew what he was doing. She placed her fur around her shoulders.

"Well, I'm off." She said it somewhat sadly.

"Yes, well, if you must."

"Father, did you tell Chauncey that you had hired Mr. Cauley?"

"No, my dear. Filthy business. It's not something I care to discuss. Now that you know, I hope we can put the matter to rest."

"Yes, Father." She turned to leave, then suddenly on impulse, stepped over to Jonas, and kissed him on the cheek.

"Goodnight, Father."

"Goodnight, Juliet."

She knew that she had both startled and pleased him.

Juliet stepped through the door Frederick had opened for her and walked over to her car where Elmer waited. Elmer opened the car door for her.

Once again, he watched her do that womanly smoothing of her hand along her bottom, down the back of her thigh as she tucked herself into the seat.

They started down the long drive and Elmer said nothing until they pulled out into the street.

"It's a nice dress. You like springtime."

"Thank you. I debated about widow's weeds, but then I thought it might be a nice gesture to independence. This could be the last chance I ever get to wear this dress, what with prison staring me in the face and all."

"Did you kill your husband, Juliet?"

She did not answer for a moment. At last, she said, "What do you think?"

"My gut tells me no."

"Now you see, we couldn't have such fun conversations if Chauncey were with us."

"Do you think he killed Kurt out of jealousy?"

"I don't know."

Elmer did not look at her but continued to address the hood ornament. "Don't you think it would've been better if you were to walk in with him? He would have been the proper escort, your boss and an old family friend."

"Proper is right. No, I think it would have just made Chauncey uncomfortable. Besides, he would've wanted to pick me up in his own car, and then I couldn't have you with me."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"For now, you can just listen: Father admitted to hiring a detective, who also discovered a red-haired woman entering the apartment building on various occasions, but since he'd been following someone else, it didn't click that the woman had anything to do with the murder until he read it in the paper."

"Some detective. Another woman?"

"Someone who was just buying a painting. Probably. Hopefully. Do you know why my father hired a detective? Because Chauncey told him he saw Kurt at a restaurant with another woman. Who turned out to be the client buying the painting."

"Chauncey likes to make himself useful."

Juliet said nothing in reply.

"What's my job for this evening?" Elmer asked, briskly changing the subject.

"You can stay out in the foyer, possibly in the kitchen area. I called the organizers and told them that I'm just making an appearance. Just to support the museum, but that I have no intention of staying long. It will look all right if my chauffeur is at hand to take me right out of there, and I want you there, because I want you to get a good look at the room. You can be objective in a way I might not be able to be."

"I can't judge people."

"I wonder if I could have killed Kurt."

"You wonder? What do you mean?"

"Elmer, I don't remember going back to the museum that afternoon. I remember seeing them on the floor, and the next thing I remember is you sliding out of my office ceiling, hours later. Shock, I suppose."

"Did you tell the police that?"

"No."

"Maybe you'd better not."

***

The Hotel Bond on Asylum Street had been the showcase of Hartford since the 1920s. The immense ballroom crowned the twelve-story hotel, with a thirty-foot ceiling and Palladian windows overlooking Bushnell Park and the Capitol. Gilt chandeliers gently illuminated the rose and gray damask Louis XIV drapes and made beacons of the seventeen towering arched windows.

When they got to the hotel, Elmer was careful to walk one step behind her down the hall, and even stood silently behind her in the elevator, as if he was a model servant who would not have the impudence to stand next to her. It annoyed Juliet.

When they arrived at the penthouse ballroom and the elevator doors opened, she remarked, "I haven't been here since I went to a bond rally during the war. The next morning, I went over to East Hartford and got a war plant job at the Pratt & Whitney aircraft factory. I think I had made up my mind over the shrimp cocktail and the sight of a soldier in a wheelchair with no legs."

Elmer said nothing, too deep in character as a humble servant, too embarrassed that he had done nothing during the war.

Juliet got back into character, and turned to say, "Just wait here for me, Elmer."

He said, "Yes, ma'am," clearly enough so others could hear.

Juliet entered the ballroom and stood perfectly still for a moment as people in the crowd slowly turned to her. A small orchestra played On a Slow Boat to China, but few couples were dancing so early in the evening when greetings were still being exchanged. It occurred to no one that the choice of music was ironic when daily newspaper stories brought news of battles between the Communists and the Nationalists in China, battles the Communists were winning.

Amid the party talk was random mention of Chiang Kai-shek resigning his presidency a few months ago, when the inept Nationalist commanders failed to turn around the red menace. The Nationalists were in Formosa now, and Peking in the hands of the Communists. The Communist armies had recently taken Nanking and were pushing for Hankow. One commenter said further U.S. aid was now futile; another said it was even more imperative.

It was the way of the world, he argued. Just like after World War I, formerly downtrodden peoples were going their own way. For some, their way was Communism.

Look at Ireland. The Republic of Erie had been proclaimed only weeks ago, and in the coming week, London would recognize Irish independence.

What did Ireland have to do with the Communists in China? Besides, that Irish business didn't include Northern Ireland, did it?

Well, no, not yet, he winked.

And Siam. Good lord, Siam just changed its name to Thailand.

What does that have to do with the Communists in China?

And Vietnam, they just got their independence from France.

France is still in there. They're fighting Ho Chi Minh and his communists, aren't they?

Oh, everything's communists with you.

For others, it was talk of the unemployment up from last year, and the Dow falling to the 160s after reaching 193 last year.

For others, in this room of art patrons and society hangers on, it was about Jackson Pollock, and Picasso.

Have you seen Death of a Salesman, yet?

Depressing, isn't it?

Oh, Lee J. Cobb is wonderful. We went down to the City to see it when Freddie came back from Miami. We all went together, and it was wonderful.

That Arthur Miller one of those socialist fellows?

He's a writer, a playwright.

That's what I mean.

We went to the opening of South Pacific at the Majestic. Fantastic.

Mary Martin?

Yes. You know, Rogers and Hammerstein.

Based on Michener's book?

Yes.

A little preachy, I heard.

What?

About the race thing.

Oh, nonsense. Now you're just being an idiot.

He a Socialist? Michener?

Happy, happy talk in the ballroom.

Someone mentioned the atom bomb should be used against the Communists if they took over all of China. They did not know their Aetna Life & Casualty of Hartford, the Insurance Capitol of the World, insured the Manhattan Project that ushered in the Atomic Age.

People walked across the oak floor to work the room. The musicians played a romantic hazy backdrop to the soft tinkling of glasses, the muffled buzz of conversations with people broken into groups about pizza and what a craze it was becoming since American GIs returned from Italy, and about President Truman ordering the Army to run the railroads to avoid a crippling strike.

Some, with a dutiful eye toward the purpose of the evening as a gala to raise funds for their beloved Wadsworth Atheneum were discussing Jackson Pollock's paintings of abstract expressionism, dividing into camps of those who thought his work was intriguing and those who thought it was frankly junk.

Daniel Wadsworth had founded the museum. His Puritan ancestors helped found the colony of Connecticut.

Born in the last years of British rule in the colony before the Revolution, Wadsworth's father was one of the wealthiest men in Hartford, whose myriad interests included banking and insurance, as well as manufacturing. Daniel received his education in the arts among the royal courts of Europe and became the patron of the first great American artists. His wife's uncle was John Trumbull, the artist of the enormous historical scenes on display in the Morgan Great Hall of the Atheneum. Wadsworth, with his banking and insurance blood, was Hartford bred, and gave to his town, and to his young nation, the first public art museum.

The benefactors at his party linked their own lineage, culturally at least, along with his.

Perhaps because they were benefactors of a great museum, the oldest art museum in the United States, art was really too touchy a subject to claim. It was somehow easier to discuss the lifting of the Berlin Blockade, and the founding of the German Federal Republic, as if they had actually mastered those topics.

Some discussed television, but that was no challenge to the intellect or to the political perspective. It was so far a grayish, blurry, block party where Uncle Miltie loitered with Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, and Gorgeous George, and the flocks of utter boobs who wasted time and brain cells to watch them.

Some conversations stalled as one, or two, then small groups of people turned and noticed the Van Allen woman whose husband was murdered, whom would they all felt would be regarded as the chief suspect, possibly even be arrested on Monday morning. Those who did not turn discreetly away grinned and waved with energetic hypocrisy.

***

Elmer watched from a glass panel in the door leading to the foyer. He watched her with admiration.

Some flashbulbs went off and he could see that the press was there. A woman came up to Juliet, the chairwoman and called her my dear and brought her to a small group of people who had been discussing vacation plans in the south of France before she entered the room. Another woman eagerly approached Juliet, and they kissed each other lightly, not brushing each other's cheeks to avoid spoiling their makeup, but on the lips as if they didn't care. Then they grinned and wiped each other's lipstick from each other's mouths with the thumbs of their white gloves, giggling like girls at school. Juliet called her Betty Ann, held both of her hands in hers, and seemed glad to see her.

The volume level of conversation in the hall, dropped noticeably to a low respectful whispered hum. Two members of hired security warned a couple of the men of the press that they would be ejected if they turned this dignified affair into a carnival. One of them was Rattinger. Elmer looked away, not wanting Rattinger to notice him.

Elmer wondered if there were any detectives here. There probably were. People craned their necks to get a look at Juliet. She stood in the small cluster of people that had received her and looked as though she were trying to pay attention to what they were saying, as if she were interested. Her manner was subdued. She appeared somewhat tired, but not tragic. Elmer realized that the role she played was true to life.

A few people came up to her chirping brief salutations before moving on, either to the buffet table or to another vantage point in the room from which to observe her. One man walked towards the door, and as he moved closer across the room, Elmer could see him occasionally throw glances across to Juliet. He could not tell if the man was wary of Juliet, or if he wanted to get her attention. As if he did not feel brave enough to try to get her attention but wanted to be ready to notice and to respond to her if she noticed him.

The chairwoman called him over.

"Elliott," she called him "I was just telling Juliet of your generous donation."

Elmer had heard this much, because a waiter went to the door and swung it open, and it took a few moments to close. Elliott sidled over to her, and Juliet took his hand and kissed him on the cheek. He seemed stiff and awkward. He seemed embarrassed. Perhaps he was one of these rich fellows who can't stand to be near scandal, feared being pulled into it, feared for his family name.

Chauncey walked by, with another man, and caught this Elliott's eye. They both appeared to look away from each other briefly, but then what appeared to be mutual misgivings apparently became mutual resignation, and they shook hands and nodded to each other.

"This is Marcus Wright, Elliott, our director," Chauncey said. "If you'll all excuse me, Marcus has to make a speech about now, so I hope I can chat with you all later."

"Keep it short, Marcus," someone bellowed affably, and those that chose to, laughed.

Chauncey and the man he called Marcus Wright made their way to the far end of the room where the band was pausing for a podium to be set up.

Betty Ann clapped Elliott on the arm and began an eager discussion on a mutual acquaintance.

Elmer noticed that Elliott kept taking steps to back away from Betty Ann as he spoke to her, and then someone waved to him and he waved back. Elliott took leave of Juliet with a nod and backed away and broke off from her. He came briskly towards the door where Elmer stood aside pretending not to be watching.

Juliet remained at the party about thirty minutes, had nothing to eat or drink, and fastidiously stayed only with the chairwoman, and the woman called Betty Ann, and with whoever brave souls or just curious souls came up to approach her for moments at a time. She felt she had made enough of an appearance. She made expedient goodbyes and headed for the door. Elmer opened it for her, but there was a man in the foyer he thought might be a detective. The man had been watching him pretty closely, and the waiters kept passing by back-and-forth, so Elmer didn't question her here.

"All right, Elmer. That's enough for me, take me home, please."

"Yes, ma'am."

He followed one step behind her out the building, opened doors. When they were on the street, driving in the car, he asked her if she learned anything.

"No. They were all too uncomfortable, and so was I. I didn't see anybody who I thought would have been involved with Kurt or this whole ghastly business. What motives could they have had, professional jealousy? There were no artists there. A jealous husband? I don't know who this redheaded woman was married to, but perhaps her husband found out. Or, maybe some other woman's husband. Who knows for how long Kurt had been involved in the sort the thing. She probably wasn't his first."

"Who was that man you were talking to, who came up to you and left shortly before you did? That lady called him over to your little group there, she called him Elliott."

"Elliott Sanderson. I hadn't seen him in a long while. We were old friends from the time we were children, just like Chauncey." She chuckled. "That beard is new. I overheard someone teasing him that he was trying to look like a starving artist since he couldn't ever be one, starving or artist. Betty Ann was there. I knew her from school. Oh, it was so good to see her again. Why would Kurt keep her messages from me? What could he possibly have against Betty Ann?"

"Maybe he didn't have anything against her. Maybe he was just possessive of you. Did you see your friends much after you married?"

Juliet thought about this.

"I had other things going on in my life."

"Kurt."

"I had less time."

"You had Kurt."

"He never told me I couldn't see my friends."

"Then why did you placate him by not seeing them?"

"I wish you'd stop analyzing me."

Elmer was quiet for a few moments. She watched the slashes of light across his cheek from the streetlamps they passed.

"Does he have a sister, this Elliott Sanderson?"

Juliet chuckled. "Why, do you want me to fix you up?"

"He was the only guy in the room with red hair."

Juliet said nothing. She glanced out the car window and lowered it a few inches, letting in the fresh, damp night air. The streetlights cast diamonds in the dew on the sidewalk. She shivered at what Elmer said. She hadn't made that connection while she was talking to Elliott. It would be absurd to be wary of red-haired people from now on.

"He does have a sister. Her name is Barbara. I never knew her very well. She's about four or five years younger than we. In fact, I think the last time I saw her was just before she went away to college. She had curly red hair and very pale skin, very freckled. Very sweet, shy, awkward sort of girl. I hadn't seen her in years."

"Could she be the woman you saw with Kurt?"

"Oh, no. I doubt it. This one was an older woman."

"If she's four to five years younger than you, she would be a grown woman, not the kid you remember. How old are you? Yeah, I know I'm not supposed to ask a lady her age. But how old are you?"

"I'm going to be thirty next month, on June 10th."

He liked the way she said it without any hesitancy.

"Then she'll be twenty-four, twenty-five. Mightn't she be more sophisticated than you remember?"

"Sophisticated enough to be having a relationship with my husband? Oh, Elmer, I don't know about this. It's very unlikely."

"Unlikely that she can be having a relationship with anyone's husband, or just yours?"

"I'm getting tired of your interrogations. I don't really know the girl. I guess I never really knew Kurt either. Just because she has red hair is pretty slim."

"It's slim. But it's all we've got. She's involved with the museum in some way, wasn't she? I mean, if her brother was there."

"Their family had been benefactors for generations. The same as mine. I believe she's probably carrying the banner for her family now, since her father died last year."

"She's carrying the banner? Then what was her brother Elliott doing at the ball and not her? Elliott, why are these guys always named Elliott?"

"Rich guys, you mean? What's the difference between Elliott and Elmer?"

"He's probably Elliott the third or Elliott the fourth."

"He's Elliott Jr."

"Big deal. I'm Elmer Jr."

"Really? Then there's not much difference between you. Anyway, I guess perhaps it was unusual for Elliott to be there to represent his family and not Barbara. Suppose I call her house? I could express my regrets for not seeing her last night at the ball. I could tell her that I'm calling all the benefactors and thanking them for their support."

"Then what?"

"Then ask her if she had sex with my husband on the rug."

"That tactic didn't work too well on Harriet Doty. Or did you just want to goad Harriet into accusing you of being the murderer?"

"I suppose I wanted to know who knew all along."

"That's hardly going to bring you any satisfaction."

"What's your middle name?"

"John."

She smiled. She liked that name; it was simple and strong and masculine. She did not like the name Elmer.

"Mine's Hardwyck."

"Hardwyck? That's your middle name?"

"What were you expecting, Mary? Jane?"

"Yeah."

"Not in my social set, pal. It was my mother's maiden name."

He glanced at her sideways.

"You don't talk about your mother."

"How would you know? I don't remember her. She died when I was three."

"That's too bad."

"I don't know why Elliott was there and not Barbara. Perhaps she was ill."

***

They arrived back at the Van Allen mansion early enough for her father still to be pacing in his study where she had left him. She would have to discuss the ball with him, but she had rather not. Juliet felt that she and her father had said enough to each other this evening, that they had met their quota, the limit of their mutual understanding.

Elmer opened the car door for her. She unfolded herself from her seat and stepped out, breathing in the fresh night air with a hint of lilac.

Elmer stood only a little taller than she. He kept his chin up, as if he were suddenly aware and embarrassed by it. She seemed distracted, about to say something, but she did not speak.

"Could your father have hired someone to kill Kurt?"

She looked frankly at him, now that she had permission to. She had wanted to; and now she was given leave by his impertinence. She studied his dark eyes, and the thin red nick under his chin he got from shaving earlier.

"No. If hiring a detective made him squeamish, hiring a gunman would have been beyond what he is able to stomach. Sometimes I wonder, Elmer if in asking such questions you are not so interested in my father's motives, as you are in my reactions to them."

"You might be right, Mrs. McLeod."

"Did my father hire you to kill Kurt?

Elmer smiled and dropped his glance, drumming his fingers on the frame of the still-open car door.

"It's getting late. If we stand out here much longer like this, your father's going to be peering through his study curtains in a minute, wondering if we're kissing."

Juliet blushed, but she knew he could not see that in the dark, so it did not matter. "Let him think what he wants."

She stood aside for him to close the car door.

"Good night, Mrs. McLeod."

"Good night, Elmer."

***

Juliet entered the house as Elmer drove her Lincoln Cosmopolitan to the garage in the rear. She was about to climb the grand staircase to her room, when her father came out of his study with a book in his hand which he had not been reading, and his reading glasses in his other hand which he had not been wearing.

"Juliet? How was the ball?"

Juliet sighed, and descended the two steps she had accomplished, and followed her father into his study.

"You look tired," he said.

"Oh, the anticipation of it wore me out a little, I suppose. It really went rather smoothly. There was some whispering, of course, but some good old friends stood by me and the evening went off without a hitch. So, you see, Father, you needed have hidden away here."

He stiffened. "I wasn't hiding."

"You weren't on my arm, either."

"Wasn't Chauncey there?"

"Chauncey was busy with Marcus. Well, after all, Marcus is the director. Chauncey's job, his standing at the museum is obviously more important than lending legitimacy to a suspected murderess among the hoi polloi of Hartford, Connecticut."

"You're in one of your abrasive moods, I see. I was hoping an evening out would release some of the tension."

"You were hoping nothing of the sort. You didn't even want me to go."

"Well, it's done. Now it's over. The police called...."

Juliet froze, and swallowed audibly.

"No," Jonas saw her panic, "no, it's nothing serious. They're just responding to Hiram Endicott's request on your behalf that you be allowed to retrieve more of your things from the apartment. They said that would be all right. If you want to go tomorrow, they'll have a man meet you there and let you in. Then I gather they have to re-seal it or some such procedure until they're finished with the investigation."

Juliet let out a sigh, deep and carrying with it the tension she had not let herself admit she felt.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. I'll have Elmer take me over tomorrow."

Then suddenly, surprising the both of them, Juliet burst into tears, breathing in hoarse sobs in her failing effort to control herself.

"My dear...my dear..." Jonas said, and took a few tentative steps toward her, but hesitated anxiously over the unaccustomed role of comforter, especially to this young woman who was his daughter. He could no more sweep her into his arms and comfort her when she was five than he could now.

"I'm...I'm...sorry. I'm...I'm...all...right."

Her weeping had dissolved into tearful gasps. She fumbled in her purse for her handkerchief and dropped the purse on the floor. Jonas stooped with difficulty to retrieve it, just as she made an attempt to do the same. They cracked heads.

With exclamations of pain, they both straightened, and Jonas, rubbing his head, put his other hand on her shoulder and patted her roughly.

"There now, Juliet."

She began to wipe her eyes with the back of her gloves, until Jonas fished his own handkerchief from the breast pocket of his smoking jacket and pressed it in her hands.

"I'm sorry."

"It's just nerves."

"The sudden reality of going to prison. When you said the police called...."

"You're not going to prison, Juliet."

"They may very well indict me quite soon, Father."

"They'll do nothing of the sort, not as long as there is a question of this other woman being a possible suspect."

"They won't wait forever. Especially if the public starts getting angry at their failure to solve the crime."

"You leave it to me."

"Oh, Father!" she said impatiently, finally regaining control of her tears, "You're not as powerful as you think. You're a retired banker with a few cronies in the statehouse, in city hall, insurance, and your college fraternity. You're old, they're old, and nobody gives a damn about fair play anymore, or chivalry or family ties or whatever it is you think is supposed to keep order in this crazy world."

He stiffened and drew back from her. He picked up her purse from the floor and handed it to her.

"Perhaps you should go to bed. You're over-tired."

"I've been rude. Just tell me I've been rude. Just face me and tell me that, tell me something meaningful to my face."

"I don't know where your penchant for confrontation comes from lately, but you're right. I am old. I am old, and tired, and since you don't need me, I'm going to bed myself."

He walked out of the room.

"I need you, Father."

She did not know if he heard her. He did not come back.

***

The next morning, when James drove her father to church, Juliet closed the door to his study, and sat at his desk. From a list of committee members on fundraising for the museum, Juliet called Elliott Sanderson's sister Barbara.

When she called the family home, she was told that Miss Barbara was not at home. Upon pressing the butler, asking when she could possibly reach her at home, he said Miss Barbara was in Florida, at the Kenilworth Hotel in Miami Beach.

There were two phones on Jonas Van Allen's desk. The other phone was the house phone, with lines to the garages, which had been the old stables, and to the conservatory, the kitchen, the butler's pantry, the drawing room, and his own room. When she was a child, Juliet had to be discouraged from playing with the house phone, speaking to imaginary friends and disturbing the staff.

She called the garage, and after a long interval, Elmer answered the phone.

"Garage. This is Vartanian speaking."

"How formal you sound, Elmer, as if you were to the below-stairs-of-the-manor born."

"I read a lot of Agatha Christie in prison."

"I've just called Barbara Sanderson. She's not home; she's in Florida."

"Then she's not our redhead."

"According to the guest list, she was supposed to be at the ball. She is a standing member of the fundraising committee."

"So, was her brother Elliott being there normal, or was he a last-minute replacement?"

"Replacement. I heard someone, I think it was Betty Ann, ask him where Barbara was, and he said he was filling in. I was nervous when I called her house," Juliet told Elmer, "but I'm not now. I really feel like calling that hotel just to hear her voice to hear her reaction when I tell her it's me."

"Be careful. I didn't say for sure it was her. It's easy to make mistakes when your blood gets up."

Juliet knew her blood was up, but she wanted to see it through before her nervousness returned.

"The police called last night. I can go back to my apartment and collect a few more things. Someone will meet us there. Let's go this morning."

"All right."

Juliet hung up the house phone, and immediately dialed out on the regular phone. She asked the operator for long distance, and her call was put through to Barbara's room at the Kenilworth.

"Hello, Barbara. This is Juliet Van Allen."

There was no immediate response, except for a quite audible swallow. Juliet's heart began to beat faster.

"I hope the weather is good for you. Kurt and I wanted to get down to Miami for February, but it never happened. Hello, are you there?"

A small long-distance voice said, "Yes. Hello, Juliet. You surprised me. That's all."

"Well, I've been phoning all the benefactors, and since we missed you at the ball last night, I just wanted to speak with you personally. I did speak with your brother, Elliott. He's looking very well. I never expected to see him with a beard."

"Oh, Juliet, you'll have to forgive me. There's someone at the door. I'm going out momentarily. Please forgive me. I'll give you a call when I come back, will that be all right?"

Juliet was about to say don't bother or call me when you can, but she suddenly felt the advantage of pressing her and said, "Yes, as soon as you can, Barbara, please. There is something urgent I really must discuss with you. It's personal."

Barbara stuttered an agreement and hung up the phone. Juliet listened thoughtfully to the dial tone a moment, then slowly lowered the receiver from her ear and placed it gently back down on the hook.

"Well?"

Juliet jumped from her seat and looked over at the face in the open door. It was Elmer.

"You scared me."

"I knew you were going to call Barbara or try to. How was the call? What did she say?"

"Very flustered. As if she was guilty of something. Maybe not murder. But something." Juliet shook her head and sat down behind her father's desk again. She looked thoughtfully up the ceiling. She closed her eyes.

"It's worse when it might be someone you know, isn't it?"

She nodded.

"You know something, Elmer? She never even expressed condolences."

She added with a sigh. "I'll go get ready. Get the car, Elmer." Then she caught herself and looked at him. "Please."

***

They drove to her apartment, and she asked that Elmer come in with her. They walked past Mr. Percy, the front desk clerk, exchanging diffuse glances of suspicion. So different from his normal greeting, part salesman and part sycophant.

She nodded to Tommy, the elevator operator, who briefly took off his cap and offered his condolences since it was the first time he'd seen her. She lifted her chin and looked at him thoughtfully and said earnestly, "Thank you, Tommy. Thank you very much."

They were quiet in the elevator for the first time since he had come to work for the building. It felt awkward to both of them.

"I suppose you were questioned by the police," she said to Tommy, "I'm sorry."

"Yes. I told them I just thought the lady was another of Mr. McLeod's clients or models."

"What lady? Did you see her go into the apartment? What did she look like?"

"I only saw her from the back. She must have come up the stairs; she never took the elevator. It was Thursday before...it happened. Mr. Kent, you know, Apartment C?"

She nodded.

"He was coming home from a business trip, I guess, because he had a suitcase along with his briefcase, and also a shopping bag. He asked me to just put his suitcase outside the elevator, in the hall there, and he'd come back for it after he'd let himself in his apartment and put down his other things. So, that's how come I noticed her. I had to step out of the elevator and leave his big suitcase in the hall. I noticed her standing outside your apartment, and just as I looked up, the door opened, and Mr. McLeod let her in."

"Did he say anything to her?"

"Not that I heard. It was real quick. I got back into the elevator. I didn't think anything of it."

"What did she look like?"

"Well, the police asked me if I had seen any lady with red hair. That's how I remembered this woman, she had red hair. You could see it in the back underneath her hat. She had a big hat on, with a wide brim."

"You never saw her face?"

"No."

"What else did you tell the police?"

"Well, they asked me what she was wearing and all, but I couldn't help much there, I didn't remember. Only that she dressed like you, ma'am, real nice. Very professional and...and nice. I thought she was there to buy a painting."

They looked into each other's eyes, without speaking, but with relief that the awkwardness had gone because in her reluctant questions and in his reluctant answers, they had broken the ice.

"Tommy, I hate to ask you this, but can you tell me if you or any of the other staff here were ever aware my husband was having an affair with this woman or any of his visiting clients?"

"Not me. Closest thing I ever heard was Mr. Percy say once to somebody that most of Mr. McLeod's visitors were ladies. I don't think he knew anymore than anybody else. He was trying to just to be funny."

"Did he say that to you?"

"I'm an elevator operator. Mr. Percy wouldn't lower himself."

"I really miss you, Tommy. Thanks for everything."

"Watch your step, ma'am," he added in a low, gentle voice as she left his elevator, though he had never said that before. It felt like he had wrapped a warm blanket around her.

The police at least knew that she hadn't made up the red-haired woman.

***

A uniformed officer and a plainclothes detective waited at the door of her apartment. The detective followed her into her bedroom, observing her as she filled a suitcase with some clothing. The uniformed officer stood in the foyer with Elmer. Elmer glanced down at an object that caught his eye by the door. It was a red canvas bowling bag. This must be the bag she'd meant to take back to the museum to give to the night watchman's son. Elmer wondered if he should mention it to her, if perhaps she could get permission to take this along with her as well.

The top of the bag was unfastened and open. He glanced over at the uniformed officer. They were not supposed to touch anything. Elmer quickly dropped to his knees and pulled the shoelace of his left shoe. By the time the officer glanced down at him, he could see Elmer was tying the shoe. The officer glanced away. With his elbow, Elmer poked open the bowling ball bag to look inside. There were no shoes. There were only two blue candlepin bowling balls, about the size of grapefruit.

Elmer stood up and folded his arms across his chest and yawned loudly.

In a moment, Juliet and the plainclothes detective emerged from her room with her suitcase, and they all left the apartment.

"I don't think I can live there again," Juliet said on the ride home. She glanced at Elmer's profile, thinking that if he were wearing a chauffeur's cap she would almost feel as if she'd been going away to college again, or boarding school. But then, she would be sitting in the back of the car.

"I don't really want to live with Father, either. He asked me to stay as long as I want. It's this kind of life I ran from when I was in college. Why should I want refuge now, when I'm going to turn thirty? I don't want refuge. I want a little modest apartment with a few manageable rooms. I want my modern Scandinavian furniture. I want my modern artwork on the walls, not the pictures of great-great-grandparents looking forbidding in dark, dusty oils. I want always to be a few steps away from the phonograph. My collection of records and books that I want to read or have read. I still want to read the Kinsey report. I don't want...."

"I noticed your bowling bag in the foyer. Was that the one you wanted to bring...."

"Oh, no! Yes, I should've asked if I could take it. Henry's poor son will have to wait forever to get that stupid bag. Oh, what a fool I am. I walked right by it."

"Did you play candlepin or ten pin?"

"Candlepin, of course. I went to school in Massachusetts. Did you ever play?"

"Yeah. When I was in the C's up in Stafford Springs at Camp Connor...."

"You were in the Civilian Conservation Corps? Oh, that's right. You said you were."

"Yeah, for one hitch, six months. I couldn't stick it. Too regimented. I was a fool. I should have stayed with it. Anyway, we'd go up into Springfield on passes and haunt this old alley. I got to be pretty good."

"I'll bet you weren't as good as me."

"What was in that bag?"

"What did you think? Bowling balls."

"How many?"

"You use three bowling balls in candlepin bowling. What kind of New Englander are you that you don't know that?"

"I do know that. Like I said, I've been candlepin bowling. Humor me. So, how many balls were in your bag?"

Juliet said, exasperated, "Three."

"The bowling bag wasn't fastened up. It was open. Was it, when you put it there?"

"No, it was fastened. Why?"

"Without the cop noticing me, I glanced inside. I didn't touch it with my hands, in case of fingerprints. I just used my elbow and nudged it opened. There were only two bowling balls in there. I wonder if we've just discovered what the murder weapon was?"

"Oh, lord. No wonder I didn't notice anything missing in the apartment."

"When we get back to your father's home, we should call Detective Connolly. He could fingerprint the bag, or maybe they have already. Obviously, the missing bowling ball's probably gone for good, if the killer knew enough to take it with him or her. There might still be fingerprints on the bag."

"Certainly, my fingerprints."

"Suppose we take a shot in the dark?"

"What do you mean?"

"Let's say, the redheaded woman is Barbara. But let's say she didn't kill your husband. Let's say that her brother did."

"Elliott? You still don't like him because of his name."

"The way he looked at you at the party. The way he couldn't help glancing at you, and at the same time trying to look away. Trying not to be noticed, embarrassed that he was. Maybe it was more than just a look of someone who felt awkward about expressing condolences to someone whose husband just got murdered. Maybe his obvious discomfort went beyond that. And if his sister had been expecting to go to this party and then didn't at the last minute...people don't schedule vacations at the last minute. Well, maybe rich people do. You'd know about that better than me. Maybe he was being protective of her. Not only representing her at the party but committing murder for her."

"I don't see he'd have any reason to commit murder. Unless this whole thing goes a lot deeper."

"Maybe he didn't plan it. Maybe it just happened. Maybe he barged in on their love nest, threatened Kurt, and a fight broke out. You said his beard is new? Maybe he grew it to cover up a bruise on his jaw, or a fat lip. Maybe Elliott reached for something to hit him with and grabbed the bowling ball. And then got his sister out of there. And then got her out of the state. And got rid of the third bowling ball."

"And left me..."

"Holding the bag."

They were quiet for a few moments, then Juliet groaned, "Oh, no."

"What?"

"When I told Chauncey that I called him the evening of the murder, he said he wasn't home. He was having drinks with Elliott Sanderson."

"What time?"

"I don't know."

"What do you want to bet it was just before the murder?"

|  |

---|---|---

# Chapter Ten

They drove up Farmington Avenue, and even before Elmer made the turn into the Van Allen drive, he could see a police car parked in front of the house. Immediately, he pressed the gas pedal down, and sped away.

"Elmer, what are you doing? You've passed the house."

"There's a squad car in the drive. Let's keep going."

"Do you think they're looking for me? We've just left the apartment. The officer there could have talked to me if they wanted anything."

"He was just a beat cop. They could have only just issued a warrant for your arrest, and he wouldn't know about it. Pretty soon every cop in a squad car will hear about it, though."

"My lord. Elmer, what do I do?"

"Let me think."

"We can't just run away. Maybe Hiram Endicott can do something, he is our lawyer."

"He can defend you in court. He can't stop them from taking you in if they've got an arrest warrant."

"Oh, lord." She put her head in her hands.

He turned down Ridgewood Road, driving past the West Hartford country club where her father was a member, and then onto New Britain Street, heading back eastward.

"We can't just keep driving, Elmer. I'll be a fugitive if I don't comply with an arrest warrant. And you're on parole."

"Yeah, we're a pair all right, aren't we?" His joke fell flat and she could hear his voice shaking, and the expression of fear in his eyes that stole occasional glances at her.

They drove by Hartford Hospital.

"When did that go up?" Elmer asked as they passed it.

"That's new."

"Everything's new in this damned city. I go to jail for a handful of years and I've turned into Rip Van Winkle all right. What are all these...these highways, these roads on pylons doing all over the place? North, south, east, west!"

"Calm down, Elmer. Calm down. I've got to go back. You'll get in trouble."

"No! Not yet. I've just got to think."

They were heading towards the river, the wide Connecticut River, which on a few occasions in recent memory had become destructive and deadly when in flood and ate sections of the towns on both sides of it. From its puny beginnings up near the Canadian border down to its broad farewell point when it left the New England hinterland for Long Island Sound, the river meandered a bit, but ran a fairly straight course north and south, and the new highway that was being built beside it seemed to take the river for a role model.

Elmer turned down the street where Robert Kincaid's grandmother lived. Juliet glanced at the neighborhood of brick and clapboard tenements cheek-by-jowl, how they blocked the sunlight on this street, how the warm spring sunset that gave her a little comfort driving past the open areas of the country club, did not reach here to this dark street where, because of the shadows thrown by the tenements, it was already twilight.

Elmer parked the car in an alley where he felt it would be hidden. He opened her door for her, and Juliet said nothing as he took her arm and quietly led her to the rear door of a gray clapboard apartment house. He quickly led her up the dimly lighted stairs, three flights, all the while she said nothing to him, sensing that he knew where he was going and that it was best to hold questions for now.

They were both slightly winded when he knocked on an apartment door. Mrs. Kincaid answered the door.

"Ma'am," he said softly, "do you remember me? I'm Robert's friend."

"Of course, I remember you."

"May we come in and talk to you for a moment?"

She opened the door for them, but it was not until the door was shut behind him, and Elmer listened a moment and looked around, making sure that they were alone, that he spoke.

"Mrs. Kincaid, this is...my friend. We were wondering...."

"You're Juliet Van Allen."

Juliet glanced at Elmer. He looked flushed, teetering on the edge between making excuses or jumping out the window. She suddenly felt like his dirty secret.

"Yes, Mrs. Kincaid," Juliet answered for him, "I guess you've read about me in the newspaper."

"Sure have. Why don't you come and sit down?"

Elmer said, "We were just driving by...."

"We're hiding from the police," Juliet interrupted him. He glared at her, but Mrs. Kincaid only nodded.

"Can I offer you folks some gingerbread? I was just about to have myself a little piece."

They sat down at her kitchen table, and Juliet's right eye was zapped with a streak of golden sunlight from the western window. She turned toward the blinding pink sunset, which had found the top floor of the building and gave it a double portion of sunset since it could not light the darkening street below. All this while ruminating on whether gingerbread would really fix things.

"Do you want the shade pulled?" Elmer noticed her squinting, faced turned toward the window.

"No. Leave it, please. It's lovely."

Gingerbread and ginger ale, the last of the day's sunlight splashed across the table.

"Ginger's good for the stomach," Elmer said to Juliet.

Mrs. Kincaid nodded contentedly, her mouth full.

Juliet felt warm and relaxed, as if she could take a nap at any moment, in a quiet and serene tree-top apartment, with the sun on her face, and the warm scent of gingerbread filling the small kitchen. She glanced down the hall at Jesus and could hear the ticking of a wind-up alarm clock all the way from the bedroom. Juliet thought of her own apartment, so purposefully stylish, so forcefully chic. Had she ever felt as contended there as she had here in these few stolen moments?

"I always fancied myself such a rebel for marrying Kurt," she said suddenly. Elmer looked up, with eyes warning her not to continue. He glanced warily at Mrs. Kincaid, who only sipped carefully from her glass and wrinkled her nose when the carbonation from the soda, and the effervescent magic of the ginger, shot into her sinuses.

"I'm real sorry for all your trouble, Miss." Mrs. Kincaid patted Juliet's hand, and Juliet held it a moment, not giving it back to her.

"It's wasn't rebellion, or taking a stand, or making any kind of a point at all. It was just being head over heels in love, and a lot of healthy, common lust."

"That's all it ever should be, child."

Juliet nodded, and reluctantly gave Mrs. Kincaid her hand back.

"Juliet is innocent, Mrs. Kincaid. She didn't kill her husband."

Juliet looked at Elmer, felt foolishly pleased that he said she was innocent, when she knew that he had never been really very sure.

"Did you ever patch things up with your folks, Elmer?" Mrs. Kincaid turned to him. Elmer looked as though he had been caught at something.

"No."

Juliet realized that she had never wondered if Elmer had more family than the wife he had lost and the daughter for whom he was searching.

"Your parents?" She asked, "Do they still live in Waterbury?"

He nodded and looked out the western window, his face splashed with the sunset so brightly that she could see every line on his forehead, and the 5 o'clock shadow on his sallow cheeks and under his chin.

"It's a little complicated. Prison to them was bad enough, naturally. But my younger brother George was killed in the war. My other brothers served, too, but George was killed. I had a good friend that died in it, too. My pal from when we were kids."

Elmer kept looking out the window and huffed a little as if he were attempting to laugh, but had no energy left even for what it took to be sarcastic.

"My friend Dave, he warned me they wouldn't want anything to do with me. I figured he was trying to spare me, but I had to see for myself how they felt. I never even made it to the porch. My father yelled every filthy name he could think of at me while I was still standing in the road. My mother looked out the window at me. I thought for a minute she would tell my father to stop or make some silent gesture to me that she was glad to see me. She only pulled the shade down. Dave was right. I should have listened to him."

Elmer turned back to Mrs. Kincaid.

"You said you were glad Robert was safe in prison so that he missed being in the war. Missing the war, that's the thing that shames me more than anything."

Juliet cleared her throat. "Here we are enjoying your hospitality and burdening you with our troubles," she said, attempting to chuckle. Mrs. Kincaid patted her hand again.

"That's all right. I don't get too many visitors, except for my brother, and he's not half so entertaining as you."

Finally, Elmer smiled, and they all seemed to take a deep breath.

"Well, none of this solves our current predicament. We've still got to stall the police so they don't pick you up. We can't stay here forever, especially if it might get Mrs. Kincaid into trouble."

"Seems to me if you're not the guilty person, then you got to find out who is," Mrs. Kincaid said.

"We have an idea. We need to prove it. Juliet, suppose there were a way to get fingerprints? Could you meet with him, hand him something, and get his prints for comparison? The police would need a warrant to search his home, and probably wouldn't ask for his fingerprints just because the guy's got a red-headed sister."

"You think?"

"But if we just happened to innocently get fingerprints on something belonging to you, it could speed things up. Especially if it was witnessed."

Juliet's face lit up, "I found a picture! When I was home in my old room, I found a picture of all us together, when we were younger. It's tucked into an old scrapbook. What if I put it into a frame behind glass, and wore gloves to keep my own fingerprints off it, and just handed it to him? That would be a normal thing to do, if we could meet, say over lunch, and I could hand him this photograph just to talk about old times."

"Good. It's all we've got. But we can't do this alone. We've got to get the police involved now."

"Oh, Elmer, are you sure?"

"If they issue a warrant for your arrest, you're not going to be able to be seen in the streets, let alone a restaurant. Your friend'll read about it in the papers and won't want to get within fifty yards of you."

"You're right. Can we trust Detective Connolly not to arrest me in the meantime?"

"We have to. Mrs. Kincaid, where's the nearest phone?"

"There's a pay phone in the hall on the first floor, towards the front of the building."

"Thank you. Juliet, let's go down and call Connolly now."

They both hugged Mrs. Kincaid, despite the typical New England reserve that had been bred in all three of them; now they were beyond handshakes.

***

Down in the first-floor hall, Elmer's heart sank when they found someone else using the phone. He took Juliet further down the darkened hall, out of sight underneath the stairwell, where they waited and eavesdropped. The lady on the phone rattled off a list of complaints about her no-good children and stopped at long intervals to say "Uh-huh" in answer to the other speaker's complaints.

Elmer had never wanted to murder anybody in his life, but he felt the urge coming on.

After ten minutes, the caller hung up, and walked back up the stairs to her apartment. Elmer practically dove for the phone.

"Before we call Detective Connolly, let me call Elliott."

"No..."

"Yes. We have to set it up before Connolly will agree. Until we have a real plan in action, he's going to think it really is just stalling."

"Okay."

"I need to call information for the number. I need a pen. Here, hold my purse."

"I feel like I'm always holding your purse. Hey, what's this?"

"It's a pen. What did you think?"

"I've never seen one like this."

"Oh? Oh, for heaven's sake, Elmer, it's a ballpoint pen."

"Ball-point? What, do you have ink inside the barrel like a fountain pen?"

"Yes, but the ink doesn't run out because of this different nib. It's different kind of ink. Here, watch." She shook the end of the pen at him, and he flinched, looking down at his shirt.

"See? No ink. Just comes out on the paper, not on you."

"I'll be damned."

"I'll let you play with it later. Right now, I have to get Elliott's number."

The operator giving information sounded bored. They always sounded bored and annoyed.

Juliet wrote the number, plunked the nickel in the phone box, and dialed, and took a deep breath. Her heart skipped a beat, and she took another deep breath.

"You're not going to throw up, are you?" Elmer whispered.

"Don't say 'throw up' or I will."

Then her expression changed to one of ridiculous joy, as if she were really facing Elliott Sanderson at a party, and her voice took on an equally artificial note.

"Elliott! I'm so glad I caught you got home. This is Juliet Van Allen...McLeod...Van Allen. I'm calling to invite you to lunch tomorrow. Are you free?"

She glanced at Elmer, her expression losing some of its gaiety now that she was not talking but listening. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and took another deep breath through her nose.

"G. Fox, the Connecticut Room, is that all right?" Juliet continued. "Just a quick friendly lunch to catch up. There's something else, I don't really want to talk about it over the phone..." Juliet slapped her hand over the mouthpiece again as two children slammed the door down at the back of the building and ran down the hall, laughing and shouting.

Elmer went over to them and herded them away. "Shh, kids. The lady's making an important call. Somebody died in her family. Here's a buck for candy. Could you just go off and give her some peace for ten minutes?"

He gave them a dollar bill, and kids stole curious glances around his body at the supposedly bereaved lady, then took the money and ran just as noisily out of the building.

"...but it's about Barbara. Your sister, Barbara. I called her to enlist her support for the upcoming drive...yes, I called her in Miami. I'm rather concerned about her, Elliott. She didn't sound well. I hope we can talk more comfortably at lunch tomorrow. Shall we make it one o'clock?"

Elmer watched her hang up the receiver with careful gentleness and regarded it for a moment with a brooding stare, as if she were a boxer that had faced an opponent in the ring and won.

He was amazed at her coolness on the phone, feeling sure that Elliott could sense in her voice and in her carefully chosen words, a kind of double meaning. She barely concealed coy insistence behind her nonchalance, and there might even be a threat in her expression of concern. If Elliott was completely innocent and had no idea of what had transpired, he might well think his old friend Juliet had gone nuts. But if Elliott was guilty, he would be sweating right now.

Now that the call was over, Juliet was sweating.

"Why the G. Fox tearoom?" Elmer asked, "Is he really going to want to hang around a hen party?"

"Hen party?"

"Well, isn't that a favorite of lady shoppers, stop by for chicken salad and watch the fashion show?"

"Pretty frivolous, huh? That's exactly why I chose it. If I had suggested a more elegant restaurant or bar, he'd think this was a serious meeting of some kind. He'd be more apt to be nervous and suspicious. If I just let him think I'll be down shopping at my lunch hour and I don't have a lot of time, and it's in an environment where Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith have just bought Junior's shoes and need a break, well, wouldn't you think it was all pretty off the cuff and innocent?"

Elmer smiled, for probably the first time she'd ever noticed. A smile so wide she felt compelled to return it.

"Except for planting a seed of doubt about Barbara. You're a devious woman."

***

The call to Detective Connolly was somewhat more difficult and took a somewhat less coy tone. First, she had to explain about the theory of the bowling balls.

"Bowling balls?"

"There was nothing else missing in the apartment...."

"So you say."

"... except for the missing candlepin bowling ball. Oh, come now, Detective Connolly, you know that candlepin balls come in three."

"So does trouble."

Juliet swallowed that one and explained their theory about Elliott and her plans to meet him for lunch, especially her plan to obtain Elliott's fingerprints by handing him a photograph of their group of friends in a frame and behind glass.

"That would be new and completely clean. I'd be wearing white gloves, of course, so there would be none of my fingerprints. I will simply hand him the photograph for him to see. We'll discuss old friends, he'll hand it back to me, and I'll tuck it back into my purse."

"Then I compare the prints on the photo to the ones on the missing bowling ball?" he chided her.

"Oh, for heaven's...."

"Calm down, Mrs. McLeod," Detective Connolly chuckled, "I'm just enjoying your police work. All right. If you get his prints, we can check with what prints we've picked up at the apartment. Has he ever been to your apartment before, as a guest?"

"No. At least not while I was home."

"You are now officially a suspect. I was planning on having you picked up, but under the circumstances, I can wait another day."

Juliet said nothing.

"Mrs. McLeod?"

"I'm listening."

"I just want you to understand this isn't a game."

"I know."

"I'll be there, and so will a few of my men, but undercover. He won't know we're there. We won't arrest anyone on site. We'll be there simply to witness your attempt to get his prints, and to get a visual ID of him. You'll play your part with care, won't you?"

"Yes, Detective."

"All right. Then I'll rescind the order to have you arrested. I'll see you tomorrow at G. Fox."

Out into the twilight, the darkening sky and the first blinking stars, Juliet and Elmer returned to her car in the alley. The kids that had interrupted her phone call were sitting on the lids of some old coal bins farther down, with a stash of Hershey bars, Cokes, and comic books. Elmer waved to them, and they waved back.

"Sorry for your loss, ma'am!" one of them yelled. Juliet waved back.

They got in the car.

"My loss?"

"I told them you had a death in the family. Then I bought them off."

He opened the car door for her.

"Actually, I'd rather we left the car and just went for a walk. I've never felt so relieved, and happy and free in my life."

"There's nothing like getting a reprieve, is there?"

She said, "I wish you'd stop making prison references. It makes me feel terribly guilty for talking about it."

"I'm sorry. You're right, I should. That's behind me now, or will be for good, hopefully, once I get out of this mess with the museum heist."

"Nothing's open on a Sunday night. Is there an all-night drugstore we could go to for a picture frame?"

"Oh, for the photo?"

She said, "It doesn't matter. I have frames. I'll take something down. One of those pictures in my room. I'll use that, clean the glass and the frame."

"I like those pictures. You should never have stopped painting."

"What makes you think I stopped?"

He said knowingly, "You stopped."

They drove around Hartford in a wide loop, just to relax, and to discuss how they were going to approach the luncheon with Elliott. In the Meadows section, Elmer noted more signs of highway construction.

"Pretty massive, isn't it?"

"It will be when it's done."

He asked, "Where's it going?"

"To the future."

***

They pulled into the Van Allen drive, the car's headlights piercing the darkness. Elmer was about to dismiss himself and put the car in the garage, but Juliet encouraged him to come inside with her.

"I have to explain some part of this to Father."

They found him in his study. He sat behind his desk, cupping a brandy snifter in both hands, looking blankly at the far wall.

"Well, Father...."

"The police were here."

"I know."

"They had a warrant for your arrest." He spoke to that far wall, not to her.

"I know. They've rescinded it."

He turned to her for the first time.

"Rescinded it?"

"I spoke with Detective Connolly on the phone earlier. Elmer and I have hatched a plan to get Elliott..." she glanced at Elmer. He shrugged and nodded.

"What?" Jonas asked.

Juliet walked over to the leather couch, and sat down, pulling off her white gloves in an unhurried gesture of someone suddenly very fatigued. Elmer remained politely standing, his hands clasped in front of him like an usher. It irritated Juliet, but she directed her irritation to her father.

"We believe we know who the red-haired woman is, Father, and we think we know who the killer is, too."

Jonas shot Elmer a glance for the first time, at the word "we." It was a glance of doubt and mistrust, and it enraged Juliet, though Elmer took it in stride. It occurred to her that Elmer had seen that look of mistrust and dismissal many times and would continue to see it the rest of his life. He bore it well. His demeanor calmed her and shamed her.

"Barbara Sanderson is the mystery woman, and the killer is likely her brother, Elliott. We think."

Jonas set his glass down upon his desk, and planted his hands, his thin hands that showed his age, upon the blotter, looking thoughtfully at his daughter.

"The Sanderson family is nearly as old and established and respected as ours, Juliet."

"Oh, Father! Will you stop!" Juliet stood with sudden energy she had not felt in hours and began to pace the room. "What has pedigree to do with this? It has nothing, no meaning. It never did, not to anybody but you."

"It bears a great deal of meaning to a great many people, Juliet. Not everyone shares your regrettable disdain for heritage."

"I have disdain for the superficial...."

"No one who admires modern art has disdain for superficiality."

"Will you come down off your Olympian arrogance! Your opinions for the art world, and thereby for my husband...."

Elmer cleared his throat. "Mrs. McLeod, if I might say something...."

"I don't like your subservient attitude anytime you get anywhere near anyone who matters, Elmer. Anyone who thinks they matter, that is, such as my father. You don't act this way with Mrs. Kincaid. Is it because you think she's beneath me? Or beneath you?"

Elmer colored, but he persevered. "Sir, Mrs. McLeod set up an appointment to meet with Mr. Sanderson tomorrow in order to obtain proof of his connection with this case, and then Mrs. McLeod phoned Detective Connolly. The Hartford Police are now involved with this plan, under their sanction, and have cancelled the arrest order until this new lead can be investigated."

Jonas did not reply, did not appear particularly pleased to be addressed by a servant on such a personal matter as his daughter's imminent arrest, but seemed relieved. "You shouldn't be involved. I'll call Hiram Endicott. I'll let Hiram to go instead."

"I will not. I am going. It's all arranged. Elmer, I'm sorry I said that about Mrs. Kincaid."

Elmer replied, "I don't think Mrs. Kincaid is beneath me. And I don't think Mr. Van Allen is above me."

Jonas glared at Elmer, offering him what he had never offered before, his full attention.

"I know..." Juliet began.

"I'm not finished."

"Kindly return to your quarters, Vartanian." Jonas said.

"In a moment, I will, sir. Juliet, you are so caught up in anger and frustration over your father's way of life that you've mistaken courtesy for subservience. Your father is older than me, has more money than me, and a pedigree going back to the first settlers."

"Oh, yes, the first opportunistic little Dutchmen who settled Hartford. Hurray for bloodlines!"

"I have nothing, except for my dignity. I intend to keep it. It's all I've got."

"Of course...."

Elmer continued, "Kurt McLeod wasn't a bit subservient, was he? He was a cock of the walk, wasn't he? I have to wonder if you married Kurt just for the romantic healthy lust you described earlier, or just because he didn't give a damn, and you liked that. As far as I'm concerned, the one with the social prejudice isn't your father, it's you. I've never met anyone as intelligent as you are with such a chip on her shoulder about class consciousness. Go ahead and begin the revolution, but start it without me, and don't use me for your soapbox.

"And you!" Elmer turned to Jonas, "Your daughter has guts. Where are yours?"

Elmer left the room.

Juliet sat down again, with a gesture of defeat.

Jonas muttered, "If we didn't need that insolent young man, I'd have him thrown out this minute."

"Father, you shouldn't talk about him that way. You shouldn't talk to him so rudely."

"There was nothing inappropriate in the manner in which I spoke to your chauffeur."

"He's more than my chauffeur."

"I was hoping not to hear that from you Juliet."

"And what do you suspect? What does your narrow-minded judgmental reasoning suspect?"

Jonas looked at her with hollow eyes, his trim white mustache elegant above the hard line of his firm mouth. "God knows I never knew with you, Juliet. You never intimated what your next move was, whether to work in a factory, or to marry a slob like Kurt McLeod. You just did it, whether it was meant as an affront to me or simply an example of your own lack of self-discipline, or both. Haven't you both been through enough? Hasn't this last week been more than enough for you to make you learn your lesson at last?"

"I worked in a war plant because our country was at war. I didn't go there for fun or to affront you, but because I didn't think teas in support of the Red Cross was all I could be doing to help. I married Kurt because I loved him. There was nothing wrong with my motives in either case. What lesson is that, Father? Not to love?"

"Are you saying that you love this man, too? This convict? So far beneath you?"

"I was referring to Kurt. I thought this argument was about Kurt. I don't love Elmer. But, he is more than the chauffeur. He's become a valued confidant. A man whose instincts and if I may say, morals, I trust."

"Morals?!"

"With you, Father, morality is another word for a lack of mistakes. It's not the same thing at all."

***

Juliet took the scrapbook from the wardrobe shelf.

She took out the photograph of what had been "the gang" and looked at it again, more closely. There was Elliott. There was Betty Ann. There was Chauncey. There was Martine, who married a Texas oil millionaire; and Clarice who shamed her family by trying to be an actress. There was Ted, who was killed in the war.

Juliet thought of Elmer talking of his brother, who was killed in the war, and how being in prison during the war made him ashamed.

There was herself, a college girl, nine years younger, before Kurt, before the war, before she even had a clue as to what life was about.

Juliet glanced over to her watercolors on the wall above her bed. She took the one of the New London Lighthouse. Betty Ann's father had a summer cottage on the shore, and Juliet and Betty Ann wandered all over the coast for a month that summer, Juliet with her sketchpad.

She pulled it out of the frame, tucked it into the scrapbook, and put the photograph in the frame instead. Then she put her gloves back on and cleaned the glass and the frame until each were spotless, shinning, and wiped clear of everything but memory.

***

The next morning, Elmer drove her in the car out the gates, past the reporters and the newsreel cameras downtown to the museum. He did not see Rattinger among them. Evidently, Rattinger was not the kind of reporter to get up too early or follow the pack.

Elmer parked the car, got out and opened her door for her, and escorted her up the steps into the building. Their movements were precise as if they had rehearsed them one hundred times. They had not rehearsed. Each sensed how they must look to people watching. The reporters from the hedges. The undercover police. Dave's gang watching them.

Elmer asked loudly, "I return here at 12:30?"

"Yes, to take me to my luncheon appointment."

"Very good, ma'am."

"Thank you, Elmer." She added in a whisper, "I'm sorry about last night."

"Me, too."

With acute hypersensitive awareness to every sound and every face around her, Juliet went up to the administrative suite. Nodded to Nancy and Henry and Chauncey and the other workers and opened the door with the glass window with her maiden name on it. She put her purse down on her desk and began to review notes from a fundraiser planned for next spring.

Chauncey popped his head in the door, rapping briskly first a couple of times.

"Can I take you to lunch? You need to get out."

"No, thank you, Chauncey. I have a luncheon date with Elliott."

Chauncey's hopeful smile disintegrated rather rapidly into cold frozen stare.

"Elliott? Elliott Sanderson?"

"That's right. We had a brief chat at the charity ball and decided to make some time to catch up."

"Are you seeing Elliott now?"

"I wouldn't call one luncheon 'seeing' him. Why?"

"Jealous, I guess." He smiled quickly, as if he knew he was taking a shot in the dark and expected to be rewarded for it.

"Chauncey, it's quite likely that the police will issue a warrant for my arrest any day now. If you know anything about Kurt's murder, I hope you'll say something."

He stiffened. "That's quite a remark, Juliet. How would I know about his murder? And why would you think I would hide anything about it?"

"I know you told my father that you saw Kurt out with another woman."

Chauncey colored. "I suggested it might be a client, and your father later assured me it was."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to hurt you."

"Did you ever see him with a red-haired woman?"

"I saw that in the paper. I know nothing about that."

Juliet sighed. "In any case, my date with Elliott may be the last time I'll have luncheon in pleasant surroundings. I intend to go with a light heart and enjoy myself."

"Yes, I think you should. I'd like to take you to lunch sometime, Juliet."

"Well, now, that will be up to the police, won't it?"

He remarked in sudden rush of words, "I love you."

"Chauncey...."

"I've loved you for years. Kurt wasn't good enough for you. I could have made you happy. I can make you happy now, if you'll only...."

"Chauncey! Stop. Just stop."

He waited for more, but there was none, and slowly lowered his glance to the floor in front of her desk, and quietly pulled away without saying a word. He closed her door softly and walked away. Juliet watched him until she could not see him when he went around the corner. She felt she could see now why Elmer suspected him of murdering Kurt.

***

Elmer circled the streets downtown and pulled up a couple of blocks away from Sully's restaurant. He did not want to park too close in case anyone could identify Juliet's car and would think she was going in there and follow him. As it was, the cops were probably tailing him. Besides, a Lincoln Cosmopolitan was slightly out of place here.

He went to the far end of the counter where no one else was sitting, and when the waitress breezily welcomed him with a smile, snapping her gum as she talked, he ordered eggs. To his surprise, Sully slowly moved toward him, wiping counter with a dishrag until he finally came up to Elmer. Even more surprisingly, he spoke.

"The info came from high up. Straight from the boss, my contact says."

Elmer murmured, "Sorry if I sounded like I was doubting you, Sully. I think the both of us were sold a bill of goods. One last question. How high up is Dave, really? Does he have the ear of the boss?"

Sully looked at him with furrowed brows, glanced around and leaned over the counter as if he were reaching for something underneath. It was only to get closer to Elmer.

"Dave is the boss. You telling me you didn't know?"

It hit Elmer like a punch in the chest. The sounds of the room dropped to a low buzz.

The ham and eggs that looked so good, Elmer wasn't in the mood for anymore. He began to automatically cut up the ham and slide it around in the bright sunlight of the sunny-side up egg's runny yoke. Absently, he tucked it into his mouth and chewed the tender meat with the pepper on it so warm and spicy. But he swallowed with difficulty.  Dave was the boss.

He felt slightly sick.

What if Sully were wrong? What if Sully were selling him a bill of goods?

What if Dave was really that big a creep?

If Dave was the boss, then he had known all along about Enid going to Ohio. Would that mean he knew she also came back? One thing for sure, it meant Dave didn't need anybody's permission to tell him where Linda was. His best friend was using him, stringing him along to do this museum heist

Maybe Dave would never tell him where she was.

Elmer shivered, his eyes darted quickly around the room. He sipped his water, and the glass shook in his hand.

Maybe Dave was heading him up to take the rap and go back to prison.

Elmer left his money by the plate on the counter, and another generous tip for Sully.

He felt someone breathing on his ear, and he looked up and saw Rattinger.

"The Van Allen heiress and the ex-con. Sort of like Beauty and the Beast, ain't it? Rattinger, Hartford Times."

"You're a poet, Rattinger."

"Yeah, a suspicious poet. So, tell me, Mr. Vartanian, what's it take to buy you?"

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?" Rattinger chuckled, "I mean it's very convenient, in an otherwise impossible to believe way, that just when Juliet McLeod needs an alibi, you show up at the museum, after hours, to apply for a job."

Elmer wiped his mouth with his napkin again for something to do.

"Are you saying you don't believe her or you don't believe me? Because I'll tell you, Rattinger, I don't like when people don't believe me."

"Did it ever occur to you that if she gets thrown into jail over this, she no longer needs you? There goes your meal ticket."

Elmer said nothing but looked thoughtfully at the dandruff on Rattinger's shoulder.

Rattinger continued, "You're only of use to them while she's free. Then what? I don't care what they promised you, Mr. Vartanian, whether she's exonerated, or whether she's sent to prison, it'll be the same for you. You're back on the street, and whatever they've paid you so far won't last long. In fact, you almost lost your meal ticket last night. Funny how a warrant was issued for her arrest, and then cancelled. Funny, isn't that, Mr. Vartanian? Where did you take her last night? She wasn't home when the cops came for her."

"She was really going to be arrested?"

Rattinger slipped his hand into his suit coat and pulled out the corner of a $100 bill for Elmer to see, before slipping it back into his coat.

"That's just for starters. You could make out well if you give my paper an exclusive, Mr. Vartanian. Now, where was she last night?"

Elmer looked around furtively. "Not here. Meet me tonight. I don't want to get in any trouble."

"Where?"

"At the end of Airport Road, where they're building that new highway. I'll meet you there. I'll find you. About 11 o'clock. I'll answer a few questions, but I'm not giving you the whole story until I see how this pans out. Right now, I've got something good and I don't want to blow it."

"Answer me something now. Is she going anywhere today?"

"Yeah, lunchtime."

Rattinger perched eagerly on the edge of the stool, his face uncomfortably close to Elmer's, nodding for more.

"Where?"

"To get her hair done."

"For what? For prison?"

Elmer thought a moment and shrugged.

"Yeah, maybe."

Rattinger laughed, scooped Elmer's money up for him and stuffed it in Elmer's breast pocket. Then he paid for Elmer's breakfast.

***

Elmer went to three more diners and asked them if Enid Block worked there. She didn't, and nobody had ever heard of her. He was especially wary about being followed since Rattinger had tailed him to Sully's and knew who he was. He did not want Rattinger knowing anything about his involvement with Dave, and his search for Linda.

When it was time, Elmer picked up Juliet at the museum. He drove her to G. Fox, an elegant department store eleven stories high, a bastion three generations going of Hartford commerce and class.

His heart sank when he saw Rattinger had followed them here. Rattinger smoked near the elevators. At first, Juliet had made to avoid him and go up the stairs to the second-floor restaurant instead, but Elmer took her arm and steered her toward the elevator and toward Rattinger. Rattinger smiled eagerly, thinking Elmer was proving to be cooperative. Just as they reached the elevator, the doors opened, and when Rattinger called out,

"Mrs. McLeod, would you care to...."

Elmer pushed her into the elevator, entered himself, turned to face the doors, ignored the elevator operator by closing the doors himself, and deftly pushed Rattinger in the chest, shutting him out.

Juliet raised her eyebrows and smiled in admiration.

"Sorry, son," Elmer said to the elevator operator, "That man is a pervert. You should alert store security. I can't even repeat the things he just said to my wife."

The doors opened again. Detective Connolly and his assistant got on; the elevator doors closed again.

"Third floor."

All the men took their hats off in the elevator, all stood facing the front of the car as if they were robots carrying on their private conference, but never forgetting the peculiar etiquette of the elevator.

"I'm sorry, sir," the elevator man spoke to Elmer, "What floor did you want?"

"Third, please."

"If you want to lodge a complaint against that man...."

"Maybe after I've done my business here." Elmer turned to Detective Connolly, "I was just telling him there's a pervert on the first floor."

"I saw him." Connolly replied, "Something should be done about guys like that."

They continued to the third floor, got off, and waited until the elevator operator disappeared behind the closed doors before speaking.

"I've set it up with the manager," Connolly said, "my men are to stay in the background. Have you got the photograph?"

"Yes, it's here in my purse."

"Fine. Wait until after you order your food. The manager knows we're observing someone. He doesn't know who, and none of the wait staff know anything."

Juliet said, "If anyone recognizes me from the newspapers, they're going to think it's me you are observing."

"Hopefully, that's what Elliott will think, too, if he suspects anything. Just be calm and act naturally. Once he touches the picture and you put it back in your purse, your job is done. Just have a pleasant meal with him."

"Don't you want me to prod him about his sister?"

"No. You're not wearing a wire and it wouldn't do us any good. You don't want to scare him off. You're just here to get fingerprints."

"Yes. All right. I just thought of something, what if his sister called him and tipped him off that I'm suspicious."

"I'm counting on it. You don't think he'd show up for any other reason, do you? Be careful, Mrs. McLeod."

Elmer wanted to say something to her, but she looked into his eyes with only a brief but unmistakable understanding that he knew he didn't need to say anything.

Detective Connolly seemed to suspect there was more between them, and Juliet perceived he filed that thought away.

"Nervous?" Connolly asked her.

"Don't be silly. Of course, I am."

"Just relax. Once he touches the photo that's the end of it for you. You can just relax and eat your lunch and talk about the good old days."

"And what about you?" Connolly asked Elmer.

"I escort Mrs. McLeod to a chair, and then leave. Then come back in an hour and wait for Mrs. McLeod."

"Good. Then we'll walk down to the second floor using the stairs. Where will you go in the meantime?"

"I think I'll go bowling."

"Remind me to tell you how funny you are."

Again, they behaved as if they were performing. Elmer stiffly walked Juliet to the table that had been reserved. Elliott was already seated there. He stood as she approached and kissed her cheek. He came around and held her chair for her and she sat down. She thanked him and then she glanced up at Elmer and told him she wouldn't be needing him for an hour, to return then.

"Very good, ma'am." Elmer walked back through the maze of tables with ladies in hats nodding to each other and bending over plates of date nut bread sandwiches. The G. Fox tearoom was an elegant cavern called The Connecticut Room, which the community-spirited owner of G. Fox & Company, Mrs. Barbara Fox Auerbach, granddaughter of the store's founder, had decorated its walls with large murals of scenes from Connecticut's past. The milk, eggs, and produce for this tearoom, as well as for the other luncheonette and employee cafeteria, were supplied from Mrs. Auerbach's farm in nearby Bloomfield. Her personal imprint was everywhere, and everywhere it was a bold mixture of self-sufficiency and class.

Elmer did not glance back at them as he left the restaurant. He walked down Main Street and tried to find Enid in a few other cafes he had not tried yet.

***

Juliet pulled her lips back into what she hoped was a convincing and pleasant smile. She took out a Herbert Tareyton cigarette and he lit it for her. Then he took one of his own cigarettes and lit it, and they each blew streams of smoke to the left of each other's heads.

The waiter presented himself in a manner that silently expressed his pleasure at seeing them, and his eagerness to serve. For a moment, Juliet was alarmed that he might be tipped off, but then realized it was just the caliber of service at G. Fox that made everyone from Mrs. Auerbach to an elevator operator gracious beyond the usual New England reserve.

"For you?" Elliott inquired between puffs on his cigarette, and she was glad he did not say her name. Juliet was an uncommon name except when one's photo was pasted across the local papers every day for a week. Then it became as common as dirt.

"Brandy stinger."

Both Elliott and the waiter nodded, and Elliott added, "I'll have a whiskey sour."

The waiter left menus and bowed himself away.

"Thank you for having lunch with me today, Elliott. This is a great test for me to see if I can start to live a normal life again."

"The benefit seemed to be a success. You're certainly to be congratulated for that."

He said it to her while he nudged his bread plate a little to left. So even now, there were to be no words of condolence about the loss of her husband. No words of encouragement for the future. Juliet's heart began to race again as if following her gut instinct that this was the man who killed her husband, which was, indeed, in a strange and bizarre way, bringing her back to life.

Despite her racing heart, she felt a curious unemotional objectivity about what she was going to do. Or perhaps it was only an intellectual curiosity about her husband, the man she loved more than anyone else in the world only two weeks ago.

Their drinks came, and they ordered their meals. Elliott began to sip his drink quickly and somewhat nervously, but Juliet did not touch hers. She thought only that she would have to show him the photo before the food came, because she would usually remove her gloves to eat.

Juliet lightly balanced her cigarette in the crystal ashtray to her right and blew another stream of smoke politely over his shoulder. She dug into her purse and took out the 8 by 10 framed and meticulously cleaned photograph behind glass of the gang at a college outing, where she and Elliott and Chauncey and the number of other young people in their set were positioned around the badminton net on someone's expansive back lawn during a party. It was nine years ago, before the war. Before any of their marriages or entanglements, before the world, and they, had changed so much.

She took the photograph out and faced it towards him, and with both hands passed it over the table to him.

"I've been staying at my father's," she said. "I found this and I had to show it to you. I don't know whether it's comical or terribly poignant."

He did not reach for the picture. In one hand he had a cigarette, in the other hand he held his drink. He craned his neck to look at the photograph with politeness, but without evident interest. Juliet, and the undercover policemen, watched in an agony of anticipation that Elliott did not grab the picture.

"I...can't seem to remember the name of the girl on the far left," Juliet said fishing in desperation, "Do you know her?"

Elliott quickly shook his head.

Detective Connolly, from his vantage point behind the small window panel at the service door swore under his breath. An undercover police agent sitting at the next table looked furtively over the top of his menu and bit his lip.

Elliott took another sip of his drink, and looked away, bringing his cigarette to his lips.

Juliet dropped the photograph, like a bombardier releasing his payload.

It landed flat, with a loud, sharp clatter onto Elliott's china plate. Elliott jerked and spilled his drink, and several people in the restaurant looked over quickly to see if a waiter had dropped a tray of dishes.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Juliet said. "I lost my grip on it."

Elliott mopped his lap with his napkin, snuffed out his cigarette.

"That's all right," he said, somewhat irritably, and picked up the photograph, with both hands.

It was all Juliet could do to keep from beaming with triumph. The undercover police officer at the next table smiled behind his menu.

Detective Connolly muttered, "Not subtle, but effective."

Elliott, holding the picture in both his hands, looked at it again purely out of courtesy, but claimed he did not recognize the woman on the far left.

"We were very young then," he said at last, a little sadly. "We thought we would be friends forever."

"We are, Elliott. Aren't we?"

"If neither of us can remember that girl's name, that's not saying much for friendship."

The girl on the end was Betty Ann's cousin, visiting from New York. She knew he would probably not have remembered her, but still felt slightly disappointed that he did not.

He handed her back the photo, and she very carefully took it, placing her gloved hand on the underneath side without touching any of the frame or any of the glass that he had touched and slipped it back into her purse.

Now she needed that drink.

***

Elmer returned to the restaurant a little earlier than he was supposed to have returned. His job now was to simply sit in the car and wait, but he grew impatient and anxious. He went inside.

He had no intentions of entering the dining room, so as not interfere with any of the undercover agents' plans. His face, thanks to the local papers had become pretty well known through his old mug shot, and he did not want anyone looking and pointing and whispering. He stood just outside. When someone come out and lingered as they did so, Elmer casually glanced into the dining room. He could not see where Juliet and Elliott were sitting.

But at the table nearest him, an elderly couple was being served filet of sole, whipped potatoes and peas...by Enid Block.

Enid!

He felt his heart drop to his shoes, with a sensation of dizziness that overcame him. The adrenalin rush was a mixture of joy bordering on panic attack. She was here!

A waiter came out to hand a man his hat that he had forgotten at his table.

"Excuse me," Elmer gripped the young waiter's bicep and would not let him leave. "My cousin, Enid, is waitressing here, just over there and I don't want to disturb her at her work. Could you ask her if she could come out and talk to me for a second?"

The waiter nodded but said nothing. He'd been startled and would have agreed to anything to make this guy let go of him.

In a few moments, Enid Block stepped out to the entrance, looking around. Her expression of shock when she saw him hit Elmer harder than anything and made him feel more than anything like a dead man come to life.

"Enid, I've been looking all over for you. I got out a month ago. Please, can I talk to you about Linda? Not now, I know you're working. Could you please, please, please talk to me?"

"Oh, Elmer," Enid's dark eyes filled with tears, "Of course. There's so much I wanted to tell you."

"Can we meet somewhere? I hope you don't mind, I know I've been out of Linda's life for so long. It was so long ago."

"No, I understand. Your daughter. It's your right, even though the state made me her guardian. I never forgot that Elmer, and I never let her forget she had a father. I always told her that someday her daddy would come back for her."

Elmer impulsively hugged her and fought back tears.

"You come to my apartment, Elmer. You come tomorrow. I'm not working tomorrow. Okay?"

"Yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you so much, Enid."

She wrote the down her address on her order pad, ripped off the slip and pushed it into Elmer's trembling hands.

"Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much."

She patted his arm. "It's all right now, Elmer. It's all right."

***

Elmer's voice shook, to his surprise and embarrassment, as he told Juliet on the ride home. She rested her gloved hand on his shoulder, after rethinking her first impulse to place it on his knee.

"Oh, Elmer that's wonderful. I can't believe you found her there. Imagine if we had scheduled this meeting to be in a different restaurant."

He sighed, "Don't even say that."

They both chuckled from the sheer joy of it and from the nervousness that lay in the realization of what a thin sliver of luck plays in the lives of people.

"I'd like to come, too, Elmer. But, I won't if you don't think it's a good idea."

He had not expected this, or the unaccustomed sensation of warmth knowing that she shared his happiness.

"Yes. I'd like you to come."

"Especially since it looks like I won't be arrested today."

"It's okay, you can say reprieve. I don't mind."

They were to go to Enid's apartment the following afternoon at three o'clock.

Later that evening, Detective Connolly called the Van Allen mansion. A long-distance phone call from the Hartford Police to Barbara Sanderson in Florida convinced Barbara to return to Connecticut for questioning regarding the Kurt McLeod murder. Her brother, due to some fingerprints that were found on a crucial piece of evidence in the apartment, was now a suspect.

Rattinger of The Hartford Times waited that night for Elmer by the construction of what would one day be called Interstate Route 91. Elmer never showed. He had gone to bed with a smile on his face.

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# Chapter Eleven

That day, Rattinger posted vitriolic insinuations in his column about why an arrest warrant for the McLeod woman was suddenly and mysteriously rescinded.

Chauncey avoided Juliet at work all day.

Elmer spent the afternoon shopping along Main Street for something to bring to Enid and to Linda. He found himself in front of G. Fox and decided since it had brought him such good luck he would buy a present here.

He took the elevator up to the toy department on the eleventh floor.

"Sir," the elevator man said, "I remember you from yesterday. Did you ever lodge a complaint against that pervert?"

"I talked to the police."

"Okay." He nodded and resumed his soldierly stance when more passengers entered his elevator, and all became decorously silent.

Elmer walked slowly around the toy department, recalling his talks with Robert in the prison yard about his plans to be the best father he could to his daughter.

He was at a loss as to know what was right for a nine-year-old girl. He asked a sales lady. She took him on a tour of dolls, and games, and books.

"It's for my little girl," he said, as if he was boasting she had been just born.

Enid said she told Linda she had a Daddy who would come back to her. Maybe Linda would accept him and be glad to see him.

"Froggie the Gremlin" squeeze toy from TV's Andy's Gang.

A "Flash Gordon" ray gun.

Lots of toys based on TV shows. Elmer did not know these shows, did not have any clue as to what his daughter would enjoy.

It would be all right if she were a little shy at first. That would be normal.

He settled on roller skates. All kids probably liked roller skates, and that was right for a nine-year-old. He had the skates, shiny iron beauties that clamped onto the shoe, tucked into a G. Fox box and gift-wrapped.

He needed not to push the relationship. Self-control. Self-control this time, that was key.

Elmer found a florist next and bought Enid a dozen red roses.

***

Juliet got out of work early, and the sensation of leaving work early reminded her of that sweet spring-like afternoon that terrible day when she found Kurt and the woman. How many days ago, lifetimes ago was that?

Elmer's hands shook on the steering wheel as they drove to Enid's apartment, a one-room flat in the south end of town, just a few streets over from where Mrs. Kincaid lived. Enid had used to live in the northern part of town. It surprised him that she would not want to live closer to the neighborhood where she grew up with her family and friends.

They walked up the three flights and stood a moment before her door before knocking to catch their breath from the exercise, and to steady their nerves, hoping that their hearts would slow down enough to keep them from dying of the suspense.

Elmer took a deep breath and smoothed out his coat nervously. Juliet impulsively tugged at the knot in his tie to straighten it, though was perfectly straight. She brushed imaginary lint off his shoulders, and he grinned at her.

He knocked. Enid opened the door, a warm flood of emotion coming over her sympathetic dark eyes. She nodded to Juliet and shook her hand.

Elmer introduced her. "This is Juliet Van Allen."

Enid raised her eyebrows, for she had been following the accounts in the newspaper. It was like having a cross between royalty and number one on the FBI wanted list in her living room.

"These are for you," he handed her the roses.

Enid took them, embarrassed and pleased.

"Jeez, Elmer, even Sid only bought me roses once, when he married me."

Sid, that was her husband's name. He remembered now.

She went into the kitchen with the flowers and made coffee. She did not ask him about the gift-wrapped box he carried.

There was a kitchenette, the living room and the bathroom. The couch would evidently pull out into a bed. It was a furnished room. Enid clearly had few possessions that she took away from her marriage, except there was a scrapbook out on the coffee table. Elmer's heart constricted. Enid and Linda must have to share the one bed because there was no money.

He swore to himself to get as good a job as he possibly could. Linda would have to stay with Enid for a little while until he was on his feet. He would make good.

Elmer asked Juliet for the time. He was not sure what time school let out, but he thought it would be about now.

Enid came back with two cups of coffee in her hands and then she went back and retrieved the milk and sugar. She sat down expectantly, as nervous as they.

"I'm real glad you're out, Elmer," she said. "You were given a raw deal. No mistake about that. I wanted to write you for a long time. I didn't know till I read about this...this stuff in the newspaper. I'm so glad you wanted to talk to me. I was afraid maybe you wouldn't. And I wouldn't no ways blamed you."

"Why wouldn't I? Enid, you saved us all. When Nancy was sick and then when we lost her...and you taking the baby--you're the only mother she knows. I owe you a lot. I will never forget it. I want to be part of Linda's life again, but I'm not pushing you aside. I know I can't just hop in right away. She doesn't even remember me."

"I don't follow you, Elmer. What you mean?"

"I want her to know me, and I want to be her father, as best I can. When does she come home from school?"

Enid's face fell. Elmer worried, afraid that she was changing her mind.

"Enid, shouldn't she be getting home from school now?"

"Oh, my God." Enid put her face in her hands, and when she looked up her eyes were flooded with tears. Anguish and horror contorted her face.

She began to sob. "Oh, God. Oh, my God."

Elmer's breathing became fast, and sudden anger fought with brittle nerves. He had not come this far to be defeated now.

"Enid...." He started firmly, "Enid, I have a right to see her. I have a right..."

"Elmer, for God's sake. For God's sake, Elmer, Linda's...dead." She stole a glance at the gift-wrapped box, realizing in horror it must be for Linda.

Elmer could not look at her anymore. He threw his glance away to the other side of the room to collect himself, because the room was swirling. He noticed the closet. A curtain partially pulled aside revealed Enid's clothes hanging neatly. There were no child's clothes. There were no child's toys around the room, no current school portraits on the wall. No schoolbooks. This was the apartment of a woman who lived alone.

Enid moaned, "It was the fire. Oh, God, Elmer. It was in the circus fire. Back in the circus fire."

Now Juliet muttered, "Oh, my God."

Elmer shot his glance at Juliet. Not only the same look of horror on her face, but the same acknowledgment. Juliet clearly knew what Enid was talking about.

He swallowed, and asked, "Juliet?"

She turned her stricken face to him.

"It was in July. 1944. The Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus in the north end of town," Juliet began, slowly, darting glances at Enid. "The big top caught fire. Thousands of people were trapped, hundreds were injured, some of them quite badly...over a hundred and fifty deaths...most of them children. I can't remember the exact number, but most of them were children."

"You didn't hear about it?" Enid's voice dropped to a hoarse whisper.

Elmer's blood boiled in his panic. "We didn't exactly have newsboys running up and down the halls of the prison! But...but, yeah, I, I guess I remember hearing about a bad fire in Hartford. I just didn't pay attention. It didn't have anything to do with me." His voice shook over the irony of his last words.

"But Dave," Enid said, "Dave was supposed to tell you."

Elmer looked up at her.

"Dave?"

"Dave said he told you."

"Dave never told me. Why didn't you tell me? Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

Enid sobbed, and Juliet was torn between the two of them, wondering whom to comfort. She went to Enid and knelt by her chair and put her hand on Enid's. Enid pulled up her sleeves and revealed ugly patches of white, marring of her wrinkled skin, etched out of segments of skin that had been grafted there after she was burned in the fire.

"I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital for about six weeks."

"I'm sorry." Elmer tried to control himself. "Enid, tell me. Can you tell me anything?"

Juliet handed Enid her lace handkerchief. Enid mopped her face. A small lady's lace handkerchief was small recompense for tired, weary eyes that would not stop producing tears even years later.

"It was July 7th of 'forty-four. Linda was four years old. And I took her to the circus. Thought it was a big treat for her. My husband, he was working. It wasn't easy with him. He wanted kids of our own. He was good, though, Elmer. He was never mean to her. But he just couldn't see her as part of his family. You know? When we found out that I couldn't have kids, I thought maybe he would accept her, but he still couldn't. He was that kind of man. The kid had to be his own his own flesh and blood. He just felt he shouldn't have anything to do with someone else's kid.

"I took her to the circus, and it was real, real hot that day, terrifically hot. We were sitting in the bleachers. We had a bottle of Coke to share. And we're watching everything, and it was fun. She really liked it, Elmer. And the fire broke out, I don't know where, but all of a sudden, it was everywhere. The whole roof, the whole big top, was just raining down fire on us, like it was melting on top of us, and people started to panic, and scream and run. There weren't enough places to get out. The exits were being blocked by people. The band kept playing that song, you know that song they play Fourth of July? "The Stars and Stripes Forever." At the time I thought they were crazy. Why play such a happy song when people are dying? 'Course later on, much later on after the hospital and everything, I found out that that's the song that they play in the circus when there's trouble. It's like a warning, a signal to all the circus people to come and help because there's danger. We didn't know at the time. They just played it, like in a nightmare.

"You know, last summer a girlfriend from work, she lives in Wethersfield, she invited me to go to a Fourth of July parade. I thought, well, I don't know too many people out here anymore so, sure I'll go. I need to do something. A high school band marched by and played that song. The minute I heard it, I went into a panic. I had to get out of there. I just started running down the street like a crazy person, crying my eyes out. My girlfriend thought I was nuts.

"I wasn't right for a long time after that fire. I had nightmares. Even today, I don't like being closed up in small places. I walk up the stairs to go work in the tearoom at G. Fox. The elevator makes me a wreck. I'm kind of afraid Billy the elevator operator must think I hate him."

She shyly rolled down the sleeves of her arms to cover her damaged skin.

"I had skin grafts." She said, "Still don't look so good. They tell me my back is worse. See, when the fire started, I was looking up there at the Flying Wallendas on their high wire. People started screaming, running. After a while, the fire took over the whole roof, and it was raining down on us like...like hot oil.

"People were starting to run down from the bleachers, and I took Linda's hand, and we were going down the steps. They pushed us and we fell. I just lost her, and I got trampled and stepped on. One of my ribs got broken. I couldn't breathe, and people fell on top of me. That's what saved me. Being covered by people who died on top of me. But after a while I got dragged out of there by a couple of girls. They were in the circus. They had a horse riding acrobatic act, and still had their costumes on. All the clowns and circus people were trying to help save people, some of them running with buckets of water. These girls, they each had one of my arms and they pulled the skin right off my arms.

"They pulled me out of there and I kept screaming, 'My little girl! My little girl!' And I guess I just fainted, because I don't remember much after that. I got put into the back of a truck. There weren't enough ambulances, so they used moving vans and store delivery trucks, and anybody who could help came down. And I got taken over to the Municipal Hospital. They were overcrowded, and I was laying in the hallway drifting in and out, in such pain. Such pain like you wouldn't believe.

"And the treatments. The operations. I think maybe it was a whole week that went by before I was in my right mind again, and my husband came to see me. And he told me that Linda died. He had to identify her body at the Armory. And...and our dentist had to identify her too. For a lot of the people who died, they could only...be identified because of dental records."

Elmer closed his eyes. Juliet wanted to go over to him and kneel by his chair and put her arms around him, but she did not. She stayed with Enid, who now gripped her arm and spoke as if she needed someone to hear her.

"We didn't have a lot of money, Elmer, but we gave her a decent funeral. I couldn't go, but my husband took care of it. Dave sent flowers. He came to see me in the hospital, and I kept crying and told Dave, 'How am I gonna tell Elmer?' And he said don't worry. 'I'll do it,' he said.

"I told Dave I was going to write you a letter, anyway. He said he was going to visit you in prison. He said, 'I'm his best friend, he'll want to hear it from me.' He said that I shouldn't write you, that it wouldn't help. He would tell you man to man.

"I was so grateful to him. And then afterwards, well, it wasn't something I could let go. I still wanted to write to you, tell you how bad I felt but Dave said I shouldn't. He said that you didn't take the news well when he told you. He said you blamed me for not taking care of Linda, that you didn't want to talk about it anymore and that I shouldn't write you.

"I just felt terrible after that. I couldn't let go of it. My husband, he had enough. He had a chance to move with his job to Ohio and he said that was best, take me out of Hartford, get this off my mind to make me stop re-living it. I guess maybe he was right. So, I went with him.

"It was no good. Our marriage kind of fell apart after that and we split up and I came back here. I couldn't go back to the north end though. Too many memories. And I've never been to that neighborhood again, Barber Street, Kensington, where they had the big top in that empty lot. Gone a few times to Northwood Cemetery to put flowers on Linda's grave. We got insurance money for her, or some kind of payment from the circus. So, we could afford to put the headstone, and I put the rest in a special bank account, Elmer and it's for you. I didn't touch any of it. It's for you to give yourself a new start.

"I came to work at G. Fox because when I was in the hospital, they didn't have enough sheets for all the victims, and the store, G. Fox gave us new clean sheets. They said that Mrs. A., I mean, Mrs. Auerbach, the store, donated them. That's why I wanted to work here, because of that. Everybody really pulled together that day, Elmer. We had a terrible disaster, but Harford really pulled together. The old town was just great. Maybe that's why I wanted to come back. There were people here that understood how I felt. Nobody in Ohio knew.

"I'm really sorry Dave didn't tell you, Elmer. I'm glad I had a chance to tell you how I felt about her. I loved that little girl. I'm really, really sorry to have lost her and I feel really bad about it. Until I die, I'm gonna feel guilty about it." Enid lowered her face practically to her lap and cried.

Elmer opened his eyes, that he had shut tightly as she spoke, and took a deep, shaky breath, brushed his large, callused right hand across his dark hair, a similar wooden acceptance of finality as when he had been sentenced in court. He stood up, and he went to the other side of Enid's chair and knelt down just as Juliet had been doing. He put his arms around Enid and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek.

"Enid, I want you to keep the money."

"Oh, no. Elmer...."

"You keep it because you were a good mother to Linda. And the only mother she ever knew. It wasn't your fault, what happened. There wasn't anything you could do. If there's anything I can ever do for you, I just want you to tell me, because we're family, you and me. We have Linda in common, and we always will have."

Enid teared up again and kissed Elmer, and sobbed on his shoulder with relief and sorrow, and the unaccustomed feeling of at last being comforted and forgiven.

***

Elmer and Juliet left. They walked without words, down the three flights of stairs, listening to the echo of their footsteps. Juliet flashed back to her frantic race out her apartment building the night she discovered Kurt and the other woman, the tapping sound of her heels reverberating in the vacant stairwell. Now, their steps were slow, funereal, until they reached the spring sunshine again. They heard noises of children coming home from school.

He pulled up short and pushed the gift-wrapped box into the hands of a girl trying to get past him to go into the building.

"You can have this," he said, "It's roller skates."

They had parked the car in the alley. Elmer was about to open the passenger door for Juliet.

He immediately began to sob, hopelessly, violently as Enid had moments ago. He had held it until now but dropped to his knees in the dirt and the gravel with his crying. Juliet wordlessly knelt down beside him, took him in her arms and held him, rubbing his back, and saying nothing until he was finished.

She pulled his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped his eyes. She helped him to stand and opened the passenger door for him. She drove this time.

They drove around without speaking for a few minutes and then Juliet offered,

"I was working in a war plant in East Hartford at the time. Pratt & Whitney. It was odd, having this terrible tragedy in town, when tragedy was coming to us from telegrams from the war. There were soldiers from Hartford overseas in the fighting who had been notified that their kids died in the circus back home. So strange, so unbearably sad. A friend of mine, a girl I worked with, Nance Holt was her name--we were going to take in a movie after work, but the word had spread about the fire, and we ended up donating blood instead at the hospital. We both felt guilty because we didn't know anybody involved in the tragedy.

"What will you do now, Elmer?"

"Going to kill that son of a bitch."

"It wasn't Dave's fault she died."

"He used me."

"Yes. But for what?"

Elmer glanced over at her, his eyes red and his faced tear streaked.

"His plan to rob the museum will go into action any time now. He was going to tell me when it was all over where to get my kid. You know what's weird? He came to the prison to tell me my brother George had been killed. He came to tell me not to go home, because my parents wouldn't want me. He was honest about those things. Why didn't he tell me this?"

"Maybe he always intended to pin this robbery on you."

"Not if I turn him in first. Not if I kill him."

"You've got nothing right now. We've got to play along with them. Got to let him make his move and get caught in the act. It's going to be the hardest thing you've ever had to do, Elmer. The next time you see Dave, you've got to act as if you don't know anything."

"I never knew anything. I never had a clue."

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# Chapter Twelve

Barbara Sanderson flew back on an Eastern Airlines DC 6 from Florida to the new Bradley Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, just north of Hartford. Her family attorney and two plainclothes detectives from the Hartford Police met her.

In the interrogation room, her concern and her love for her brother impelled her to confess being Kurt McLeod's lover. She told the police everything she knew. She knew that her brother had killed Kurt McLeod.

Detective Connolly sat back in his chair in the interrogation room. His heart began to beat faster. He tried not to show it, but he had seldom in his twenty-five years on the force been given a full confession so completely and with so little exertion required. It was a rare thing when conscience made tactics unnecessary. He felt badly for her, and that was not something he usually felt.

On the other side of the two-way mirror, Juliet Van Allen had been allowed to watch as Barbara tearfully described that afternoon of Kurt McLeod's murder.

"I came to his apartment, and...."

"How many times?" Detective Connolly asked.

"Several, we never met anywhere else."

"Where did you first meet Kurt McLeod? How did you come to know him?"

She answered, "It was at the exhibition of his work, the opening, two months ago. We got to chatting and he was so charming. He invited me to see his studio, to see more of his work. So, I did. I went one day, and we immediately fell in love."

"And you always came to the apartment? You never met anywhere else?"

"Kurt said it was safer. He was always home alone during the day, except for the maid. He told me to come up the service stairs, not to let anyone see me. It sounds very sordid, I know, but we were in love, truly. He said he wanted to marry me. He said Juliet had no passion, that she was a spoiled daddy's girl, that she was nothing but a glorified secretary to the morons who ran the museum and didn't have any guts, any real appreciation for real art. We were making plans to be together as soon as he had made enough big contacts at the benefit ball, he could be financially independent of Juliet. Her money was the only thing that tied him to her, he said."

"You also are blessed with an inherited income, Miss Sanderson." He said wryly, "Do you think he was sincere?"

"I believed him, but in hindsight, looking back, I suppose...he wasn't. Why else would a man that talented, that wonderful ever even look at me?" Barbara began to cry.

Detective Connolly gave her a moment. Her family attorney whispered a few words to her, and they continued.

Connolly continued, "What happened on the afternoon, early evening that Kurt McLeod was murdered?"

"I was dressing to leave, and I heard someone come into the apartment. I was afraid that it might be Juliet coming home from work. But it turned out to be my brother, Elliott. Kurt reacted angrily and wondered how Elliott had gotten the key to his apartment.

"Elliott told us that our affair was over, that we weren't going to see each other anymore. He called Kurt a filthy, low-class, womanizing opportunist, and punched him once in the face and Kurt fell backwards. But then Kurt got up and began to fight Elliott. He was stronger than Elliott, began to just pound on him and beat him.

"Kurt just kept beating him, and Elliott fell backwards. He hit his head against a bowling bag that had been on the floor. Elliott fumbled in the bag with one hand as he was lying on the floor and took one of the balls out as Kurt was on top of him, punching him. Elliott hit Kurt in the face with it, hard. He hit him right in the side of the head, and Kurt he fell off him, dazed.

"I thought Elliott would get up and leave," Barbara said, "I thought Elliott would just leave and...and run away when he had the chance. He didn't. He just stood over Kurt and looked at him with a look of...of shock on his face. After a moment, I realized that Kurt wasn't breathing. And Elliott swayed, and staggered, and his lip was bleeding and he looked at me and he said, 'Get out of here.' And...and I did. I don't think he meant to kill Kurt. It was in self- defense that he hit him. I don't think Kurt meant to beat on Elliott so hard, either. Something came over him, something terrifying. He was so angry and fierce, and I never saw him like that. But Elliott was only protecting himself."

Sitting next to Juliet behind the two-way mirror, Elliott watched his sister. A uniformed officer then brought him into the interrogation room next so that brother and sister could face each other. Barbara began to cry when she saw him.

Detective Connolly asked Elliott to tell his version, again, which was the same as Barbara's story.

Elliott took the one bowling ball, and on the way home, threw it like a shot put into the Connecticut River.

The only thing he left in the apartment was his fingerprints on the bowling ball bag and on the doorknob.

Juliet, still behind the two-way mirror said to no one, "Kurt probably smiled at being called a womanizing opportunist. He would have liked that. It was the 'low-class' that made him go berserk."

"How did you come to find out about the affair between Miss Sanderson and Mr. McLeod?" Connolly continued.

"A friend told me he had seen her visit the McLeod's apartment house several times. I'd rather not say who. He has nothing to do with this, and I'd like to keep at least one person's name out of this mess."

The brother and sister sat across from each other, separated by a table and the family attorney and the police interrogator. The gulf between them was breached by the desperate look of empathy in their eyes that each held for the other.

With tears in her eyes, Juliet watched them. When she decided she could watch no more, she was allowed to wait in the commissioner's office for her chauffeur to pick her up. She also knew that the friend who told Elliott about his sister must have been Chauncey. She wondered if he had also given Elliott a key to her apartment.

Downstairs, Rattinger and the other members of the Hartford Courant and The Hartford Times and the out-of-town papers waited for her, because they had not yet been told about new suspects in the investigation. Soon they would be told the new suspect was the murderer. In a few hours, Juliet and Elmer would no longer be a story.

***

As Juliet waited, Elmer sat on a stool at Sully's restaurant sipping a cup of coffee. He and Sully exchanged an occasional glance, but no words, and Elmer realized immediately that Sully's distance was due to his ability to know when something was about to happen. One of Dave's colleagues sat down next to Elmer and mentioned in a low voice that Dave was waiting for them in the car.

Elmer finished his coffee, left his fifteen cents and walked outside. He knew he had to restrain his anger, his thoughts and every emotion he felt. Dave must not know that anything was different.

He slid into the back seat next to Dave, and Dave hardily clapped his hand on Elmer's knee. Elmer jerked slightly, and his heart raced, and his stomach turned and he wanted to kill Dave more than ever.

He said evenly, "What's up, Dave?"

"Tonight."

Elmer shot him a look.

"Where do you want me?"

"That's what I wanted to hear, Elmer. Johnny on the spot. Wait at the Memorial Arch in Bushnell Park. One o'clock. We take you to the Wadsworth. We do the roof and the airshaft to the office, like you mapped out. While we're doing our thing, another associate of mine will check alarms that need to be tripped. If possible, we just go out the back door."

"Do I leave once I get you in?"

"No. We'll need another pair hands, Elmer. I promise it'll be worth your while."

"And then you'll tell me where I can find Linda, right?"

"Once we get out of there, we drop you off back at the park. They tell me then, and I tell you."

Elmer looked sharply out the window, turning his head quickly away as though he'd heard a noise. Elmer only wanted to look away to keep himself from saying anything or breathing too hard or giving anything away.

The noisy garbage truck passed almost at the same time, so it looked as though Elmer reacted to the noise.

"You getting nervous, Elmer?"

"I always get stage fright before a show."

Dave chuckled. "You are a showman. The best."

"Okay, Dave. I guess when this is over we won't see each other for a while. I just want to say thanks now, for everything."

Dave slapped his leg again,

"That's okay, buddy. You and me, we go way back. We're like brothers."

Elmer got out of the car and watched as Dave drove away. He realized that he was drenched in perspiration. He hoped he had given nothing away.

***

Elmer walked the gauntlet of reporters at the police station. Most of them recognized him from his mug shot by now, and fired random questions about what was he doing, and how confident did he feel that he and the McLeod widow would be exonerated. A voice in the back, Rattinger's voice, asked him how it felt to be a murderer. Elmer just kept walking.

I'll tell you tomorrow, he thought.

He asked the desk sergeant for Mrs. McLeod, and a uniformed officer brought him into the commissioner's office. When he walked in, she stood up, ready and anxious to leave this place. He stopped her. He turned to the uniformed officer,

"I need to speak to Detective Connolly. Immediately. Can you please tell him?"

Detective Connolly came into the office, closed the door, crossed his arms across his chest and stood leaning on one hip, looking at Elmer and silently gesturing for him to get on with it.

"The Wadsworth Atheneum is going to be broken into tonight by Dave Drake and several of his boys. I'm going to help them break into a museum so they can steal a gold exhibit."

Detective Connolly closed his eyes for one weary, exasperated moment, and then looked from Juliet to Elmer several times.

"Considering the amount of times one or both of you have lied to me throughout the course of this case or conveniently withheld information, which even now, believe me, I have not forgotten...and even though we have a confession to this murder, I want you to tell me why I should believe you."

"You'll believe it when the museum reports a robbery tomorrow morning."

"No, I mean why should I believe that you are not in on it and haven't been from the very beginning?"

"I have been in on it from the very beginning. Not in the way you mean. When I got out of prison, Dave contacted me and gave me five hundred dollars to find a way to get into the museum. He said if I did that, he would tell me where my daughter was. When I was in prison, my daughter was being taken care of by my wife's cousin. My wife is dead. He told me that his gang had taken my wife's cousin and my daughter and brought them somewhere. And that they weren't going to tell me where they were unless I helped. So, I agreed, but only partly.

"I always intended to set them up so that they would get caught, but in a way that they wouldn't know that I was the one that set them up. I wanted to get away clean with the money that they gave me, and with my daughter, and with no connection to them that could ever drag me back to prison.

"I just found out yesterday...that my daughter died in the circus fire."

Detective Connolly dropped his arms, and his hard, cynical expression softened.

"Worst day I can ever remember." Connolly said softly. "I'm sorry, Mr. Vartanian."

Elmer lifted his head, unaccustomed to being treated respectfully, that he was almost suspicious of the detective. He felt he might start to cry again, if he dwelled on that too much.

"It's not something I would use to commit a crime, Detective Connolly. I'm on the square about this."

"A man should be."

"I've changed my mind about wanting to get away clean, without them knowing I tipped you off. I want you to have a bunch of officers waiting, hiding in the museum and catching them in the act. I want to be there to accuse them. When it comes up in court, I want to testify. I want these bastards to know was me who ratted on them. Even if they come and get me for it later, I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that I got a little of my own back. They might be able to use me to commit a crime, but they're not going to use the memory of my daughter."

Both Detective Connolly and Elmer refused Juliet's request to be present when the arrest was to take place. He did allow her to drive him outside Bushnell Park, so that he could walk in alone, if she promised to drive right back home again to her father's mansion.

"You do not want to bring the car and leave it there or to have her involved in this crime in any way." Connolly warned.

Elmer nodded. A police cruiser would bring him back to the chauffeur's rooms above the garage at the Van Allen mansion when it was over.

Juliet promised.

***

She broke her promise.

Juliet surmised what Detective Connolly did not suspect: That Elmer wanted to do more than turn Dave in. He well and truly wanted to kill him. Juliet thought she could prevent that. Perhaps just by her being there. She did not think that words of encouragement this time or remonstrating him on what kind of life his daughter would have wanted him to live, would make Elmer change his mind. His daughter was dead. He did not fear prison. He did not fear death. Perhaps life, on the outside of prison walls, scared him more than anything right now.

The only thing Elmer possibly cared about in all the world right now was her safety, she was sure he did.

That was why at one-thirty in the morning, she parked her car on the side of the museum and used her key to enter.

***

Detective Connolly waited silently on the top of the stairs at the second-floor landing overlooking the Morgan Great Hall, the only sound he made was the slight faint flat whistle of exhaling breath through his nose. His assistant waited down the hall over at the other stairwell, near the administrative offices. Several uniformed police officers positioned themselves around the gold exhibit a distance away behind pillars and objects of art and sculptures and display cases in the smaller side galleries off the Morgan Great Hall.

Henry the night watchman sat at his customary stool at the front desk in the lobby, anxious about what was going on around him. He normally would get up several times a night to check doors and windows and walk among the exhibits. Tonight, he sat very still. He did not want to interfere with these policemen. He did not want to be there when anything that was supposed to happen would happen.

***

The museum's directors had cooperated with the police. Chauncey was on his way to serve as a representative of the board when and if the break-in occurred. He was to remain in his parked car on Main Street until given a sign that it was safe for him to enter.

Chauncey squinted beyond a sentinel streetlight, aghast to see Juliet's car parked as he drove down the north side of the Atheneum. Parked halfway in the shadows, but he still recognized her car, since it was nearly identical to his. That's why he'd bought his. He wanted to compete with her upstart husband.

She should not be here. Perhaps that Elmer fellow took her car. Maybe that's all it was. He hoped that's all it was, that it was Elmer who had arrived in her car for this scheme, and not Juliet.

***

Elmer crawled through the airshaft, playing follow the leader with Dave and three of his associates. Perhaps it was the tension of the moment, of knowing he was about to change his life again and possibly kill, that he found the shaft unusually claustrophobic. The asbestos-coated walls were closing in on him.

Fine time to lose nerve, he thought. He pushed on, realizing for the first time that if he had continued this line of work he would always be nothing more than a man on his knees, literally and figuratively.

A fourth associate of Dave's sat in the car parked across the street at a distance not too far away from Chauncey. He saw Chauncey pull up behind him, and saw Chauncey sit in his car and make no further move. He continued to watch Chauncey, who was oblivious to him.

Juliet entered by the back door, disengaging the alarm and gave the night watchman a fright when she appeared around the corner and came to his desk. He gasped and swore.

Henry did not know what to tell her or was even sure if she knew what was about to happen. He was not certain she was not part of the robbery. Perhaps the police wanted to catch her as well. He had never quite felt comfortable about her since the news of the murder of her husband. Miss Van Allen had always been very good to him. But, a murderer was a murderer, and this convict fellow who was her alibi, he wasn't much of an alibi.

Henry smiled a little sickly and said good evening. He sat on the knife edge of agony wondering whether to warn her what was about to happen and to stay away for her own safety or if the police would be angry at him, because she was the one who was supposed to be caught. He decided it was none of his affair. He looked quickly back down to his logbook and began to trace over some of his penmanship, making it neater.

Juliet nodded to him brusquely, equally wishing to avoid contact, and glided by his counter. She sensed his anxiety, puzzled at his avoidance of her. Perhaps the police did not have things well in hand. Perhaps Henry was under gunpoint. She went to the ladies' room to pull herself together, and possibly vomit as well.

Fine time to lose nerve, she thought.

***

Elmer inched forward and removed the grating from the ceiling panel, which lay directly above Juliet's office. His fingers slipped and he dropped the grate back into its grooves where it made a slight tinny clatter.

They all remained very still. Elmer worked his fingers into the grate again and lifted it silently and pushed it aside. He crawled forward slightly over the open hole. Then reversing himself, he dropped his legs through the hole and like an acrobat, gripping the edge, he lowered himself, almost silently to the floor of Juliet's office. He glanced around, seeing no one, but assuming and hoping the police were out there beyond in the outer offices. The office was quiet, dimly lit from a light in the hall just as when he had first come here, the night he first met Juliet.

He pulled the chair over and put it underneath the opening in the ceiling panel so that Dave and his men could step first on a chair, and then down to the floor. He opened Juliet's office door with her name on it and stepped into the outer office. He did not know precisely where the police would be. He glanced for places for himself to hide if shooting began.

When Dave's men were all down, Elmer opened the outer office door and stepped into the hall, glancing both ways. He saw no one. He had a sudden feeling that perhaps he was alone here, that perhaps the police had not come. Something had gone wrong; they had not believed him.

Elmer took another deep breath. He hoped they would not meet with Henry on his rounds. They would shoot Henry. Just like in that museum heist job in New Haven, the one that sent him to prison. Elmer said a quick prayer that it wouldn't happen again.

They walked down the hall and out into the gallery, their footsteps tentative, quietly as they could walk on the tiled floor, on the marble steps. Elmer glanced at the enormous Trumbull paintings of the Revolution, and the one depicting Louis XIV along the wall like a parade of history. His eye lingered longest on The Death of General Joseph Warren, for no reason except perhaps the present seemed so undecided and fate so imminent in that painting. There was no sureness, no certainty of hindsight. Just the moment.

Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of Connecticut, was himself a Revolutionary War soldier who sketched plans of the British works in Boston and was appointed aide to General George Washington. When Trumbull went to London to study painting in 1780, he was imprisoned in retaliation when news reached England that British agent Major John Andre was hanged as a spy. Trumbull would not have considered his paintings depictions of historical scenes, but bold interpretations of current events.

Elmer did not know Trumbull's history, but he sensed the man who painted them was painting the tumult of his times. There was nothing escapist here.

Then they came to one of the smaller galleries across the Great Hall, where the gold exhibit was eerily illuminated by its own refulgence in the dim lighting. Elmer pointed at it, then made an attempt to step away. Dave grabbed his arm and pulled him forward,

"You're coming with us," he whispered.

"My job's done. I got you here."

"You're coming with us, Elmer." He showed his gun.

Elmer replied, "The night watchman is going to be making his rounds. Let your boys do the job. You and me stay back and keep watch. I'll stay with you if you want, but there's no reason for all of us to be standing around in one place."

Dave weighed what he said and gestured for his men to go to the exhibit and start collecting pieces in the satchels they had brought with them.

Dave and Elmer hung back, about thirty feet away at the opening of the Morgan Great Hall and stood watch, craning their necks along the front corridor and sweeping their eyes towards the galleries above in the open mezzanine. Rooms filled with all the expressions of man's emotions and hopes and failures in dreams, expressed in the artwork around them. Winslow Homer's The Rocky Coast.

James Abbot Whistler's Coast of Brittany.

Easton Johnson's The Party Dress.

Raphael Styer's Sixth Avenue that reflected WPA art of the early 1930s.

Yves Tanguay's The Five Strangers that reflected the modernist movement.

Sculptures by Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, and Daniel Chester French.

A bust of Daniel Wadsworth, who made it all possible, the founder of the museum, the son of a wealthy family who made his wealth the tool by which artists could be seen and appreciated.

Elmer craned his neck one way, looking carefully all around, when he saw Juliet.

She stood by the opening to the gallery, with her hat, her matching purse, her low heels resting on the inlaid letters of Morgan's name on the floor, much like the first time he had met her and they left her office together that other late night, in the museum where and when they shouldn't be.

Elmer glanced at Dave, caught his eye, and with a slight gesture with his hand, waved him to remain where he was. Elmer indicated with a headlong glance toward the dark end of the gallery opening that someone was in the shadows. Dave took a breath, stepped back into a recess in the wall, and nodded.

Elmer stepped lightly toward the gallery opening, hugging the wall, avoiding pinpoint beams of light. Juliet's eyes adjusted to the dimness, and she stepped back when she became aware of an approaching figure.

She felt the force of a strong hand push her hard in the shoulder, and she gasped. Before she could draw back farther, the hand spun her around, and with a quick, jerking movement, snaked under her left arm, up across her chest, and pushed against her collarbone, holding her against him. His other hand gripped her mouth.

"You're an idiot!" his hoarse whisper blew warm breath across her ear and fanned her cheek. Juliet surmised it was Elmer, not because she recognized his voice; she didn't entirely. It was higher pitched to the point almost of a screech, but just from the man's height she knew it was Elmer.

Juliet recovered quickly from the surprise. A new awareness of his strength obliterated what should have been sensible fear of the other men with guns in the gallery. She seemed to lose her focus on sounds, and the light was dim in the corner where he propelled her forward, the way a man steers a woman in a certain direction in a ballroom dance. Without the elegance, it was just short of a full-body shove, but the front of him remained glued to the back of her.

This is what she focused on, this and his left arm against her left breast, and his neck craned over her shoulder, the side of his face pressed against hers. The only distraction was his large hand over her mouth. She wished he would take it away. She did not mind being held by him; that was a new experience she acknowledged to herself she had been curious for, and perhaps even desired, but she did not want to be his prisoner.

Elmer heard Dave's footsteps behind before she did.

"You're in for it now, aren't you?" Elmer sharply whispered. "You just couldn't leave it."

Dave peered around the entrance to the gallery, gun drawn. He tilted his head and squinted into the darkened corner. Elmer reversed direction and pulled Juliet out with him. Dave looked at Juliet in surprise. Elmer gripped her tighter, and pushed Juliet suddenly, causing her to stumble.

"This is what's called standing by your man," Elmer said dryly to Dave. "I have a little emotional entanglement, Dave. I'm sorry. I didn't tell you everything."

Dave asked, "Oh, don't tell me she knows!"

"She doesn't know anything. At least, she didn't until now. She just followed me here. I told her I had something to do. You take a woman to bed, she gets a little possessive sometimes."

"How did she follow you here? You came with us."

"Maybe you followed me to the park, didn't you, baby?" He gave her a disciplinary shake.

"Let her talk for herself."

"Dave, she's not part of this."

"I said let her talk for herself. Come on, honey. What's your story?"

Elmer relaxed his hand, slowly dropping his fingers from her mouth. Juliet kissed his fingers hungrily as he pulled them down her face. She did not know what Elmer thought of that, but Dave raised an eyebrow and seemed impressed.

"I was afraid now that it was all over...that Elmer might leave me." Juliet said, "I just wanted to be sure he wasn't running out."

"So much for the grieving widow. Fall hard for my pal, did you, honey?" Dave smirked.

"Yes, actually. You wouldn't understand."

"Well unfortunately, what's Elmer's problem is now my problem. I'm afraid we have to take you with us now, honey."

"No!" Elmer said.

Juliet beseeched him, "Don't leave me, Elmer! I'll go with you. Let me go with you."

"Sometime you're going to have to tell me all about this magnetic hold you have on women, buddy. Right now, face facts." Dave said, "She's a liability. We have to take her with us, and unless she has some acrobatic skills you found out about in your more intimate moments, we can't drag her out the way we came in. She'll take us out the side door, or the front. Either way, we've got to take out the night guard."

"No! I don't want anybody hurt."

"What you don't want is to go to prison again. What you do want is to see your daughter again. She goes with us."

Dave aimed his revolver at Juliet and gave her a "come here" flick of his finger. Juliet placed her hands on Elmer's arms, still tightly around her, and pulled them away. Elmer released her slowly, her slim hips sliding out of his strong hands as she took a step towards Dave.

"That's right, honey." Dave snaked his arm around her waist. "You come with me for now. We're leaving in a minute. Now, what's the guard's name?"

"Henry. I don't want to hurt him. I can show you another way out."

"I know all the ways out. You can't tell me anything, sweetheart."

"He must have already seen you enter, didn't he?" Elmer asked.

"Yes, Elmer."

"Then let her distract him, while we go out another way." Elmer told Dave, "He already knows she's here. She can ask him to escort her to her car because it's dark out."

"And leave your girlfriend unattended? Elmer, you know it has to be this way."

"I won't run. I want to go with Elmer."

Elmer could perceive movement on the darkened marble staircase to the right, but did not want to look, so that Dave would not look and see what Elmer hoped were the police.

Dave ordered, "Call him. Call Henry."

Elmer said, "Don't!"

"Call Henry!" Dave slapped her face hard. Elmer stepped toward him. Dave pointed his gun at Elmer.

"Steady, friend."

"Almost ready, Dave," a voice called softly from the small side gallery that contained the gold exhibit.

"All right, Elmer," Dave said, "let's just get out of here safely. Then we'll all have our little family argument on the road."

"Dave, you're going to dump her body on some dark Connecticut highway."

"I thought maybe the new one they're building through Hartford. The road to nowhere. Kind of artistic touch, huh?"

"Then you'll kill me."

"No, Elmer...."

"The robbery, and murder of the night watchman, and her murder will all have to be pinned on somebody, and it'll be me."

"Elmer, you're not thinking straight...."

"Dave, if you're going to shoot me, do it now. I know my daughter's dead. She died in the circus fire. You've been lying to me to set me up."

Dave said nothing.

"I'll kill you with my bare hands."

Elmer stepped closer toward Dave, but Dave pulled Juliet to him, and pointed his gun at Elmer.

"Elmer, steady. I had to. These guys had me."

"You're the boss, Dave. You've been giving the orders. The only reason I haven't blown your worthless head off by now is because I just wanted you to know that you didn't get away with anything. This place is full of cops and your boys are going to taken away in about five minutes. Only you're not going to jail. They'll be burying you like they buried my daughter. And I'll have the satisfaction in knowing I kept one less creep from walking around Hartford."

Juliet wriggled away from Dave, and kneed him the groin, pushing his gun hand above his head. Elmer dove on top of them both as a shot fired off. It entered the wall above The Death of General Warren. They rolled together on the floor, and Elmer pushed Juliet away. Dave dropped the gun and struggled to pick it up again. Elmer punched him in the face. He punched him again, and again, and Juliet came to her feet, losing a shoe.

"Elmer!"

She tried to pull him off Dave.

"Elmer!"

Dave's men stepped out of the far side gallery with guns drawn.

"Elmer!"

"Police!" Detective Connolly's booming shout echoed in the Great Hall. Several uniformed police officers ran down the marble staircase at the entrance to the hall, and others emerged from the mezzanine above, from the other end of the hall, from seemingly every direction.

Elmer's left fist was forced behind him, held tightly in Juliet's two hands.

"Elmer, stop. Stop now. You can stop now."

Elmer panted, gulping as if suddenly reminding himself to breathe. He stood shakily, sweating, and allowed her to pull him toward the wall, out of the way, while the police handcuffed Dave.

All his men were subdued quickly, and a parade began out of the museum, the police leading the men in handcuffs.

Detective Connolly, himself appearing out of breath, eyed Juliet and Elmer warily, as she plucked Elmer's handkerchief from his jacket breast pocket and mopped his face with it.

"Where were you?" Elmer huffed.

"Sorry we took so long. We had to get in position. You weren't supposed to be at that end of the hall, were you? And you," he pointed to Juliet, "weren't even supposed to be here. You're damned lucky to be alive, both of you."

"Detective, I just..." Juliet began.

"Tell me at the station when we file the report."

Elmer took his handkerchief from Juliet and shoved it back into his pocket.

"You've got a terrific welt on your face from where he hit you," he said.

"It's all right."

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"It's all right, Elmer."

"I'm afraid you've given Connolly the wrong idea about us with that jilted girlfriend act. I know you were thinking on your feet, but he may think differently."

"So?"

Elmer replied, "So, we've barely gotten suspicion off our backs only a few hours ago. Let's not give anybody the idea that you're my gangster's moll, for crying out loud. Back off."

"I see. Yes, you're probably right."

They began to walk out of the Morgan Great Hall, and out into the main lobby, where Henry was just emerging from under the reception desk after hearing the gunshot.

Juliet was quiet now, gingerly touching the side of her face. He had just rejected her and she knew it.

"That was quite an act you put on." He joked to make amends, "I didn't know you had stage experience."

"We put on A Doll's House my senior year in school. I had a minor part."

"Ah, Henrik Ibsen."

"Don't tell me you read that in prison?"

"Robert was Nora and I was Torvald."

When they stepped out the front doors, Juliet was still laughing.

***

The lone associate waiting in the car had driven off by this time, made nervous by Chauncey. Chauncey had not noticed him and did not get the license plate. He sat impatiently drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. After a few moments, squad cars with their lights flashing pulled up in front of the museum and Chauncey's heart began to race. He did not realize that he was not seeing the beginning of the event, but rather the end of it.

In another few moments, officers were leading handcuffed men out to the cars. Chauncey got out of his car and ran up the museum steps. Detective Connolly conversed with his young partner. Elmer and Juliet were walking down the marble stairs together, arm in arm. They both looked terrible, but they were arm in arm. Chauncey noticed.

***

"There's Chauncey," Juliet said, "I want to confront him about the job application he tore up, and how...."

"Juliet!"

"Chauncey, there's something I want to know. Why did you...."

"...wait out here when all the fun was happening inside," Elmer finished her sentence. He gave her a look of warning, and she searched his face for longer than she needed to. She knew his meaning. Neither Chauncey nor the police were ever to know that Elmer had replaced the original application Chauncey had destroyed. Juliet continued to look into Elmer's face, as if she wanted to remember him, with a premonition that this would be the last time they would be this close.

"After we're through with the police," Chauncey said, "would you like to go out for a drink? I imagine you could use one. I'll bring you home. Your driver can take your car back."

"Thank you, Chauncey. I'll ride with Elmer. By the way, Elliott Sanderson told me it was you who told him that Barbara and Kurt were having an affair. Did you also give him a key to my apartment?"

Chauncey looked shocked, and guilty, but he lifted his head with a degree of pride that was perhaps hereditary.

Juliet continued, "You don't have to answer me if you don't want to, Chauncey, but I imagine the police may get around to asking you later."

"Elliott was worried about his sister. I was only helping him."

"By passing out keys to my apartment? How dare you. Why didn't you just buy him a gun and put it in his hand as well?"

"I swear, I didn't think it would come to violence. As a matter of fact, it wasn't until the newspaper came out with it that I found out Elliott had murdered Kurt. I...I...I thought you did it." Chauncey whispered the confession and looking at her without the pride of the moment ago, but pleadingly.

"You thought I murdered my husband?"

"Not you exactly but...but him." He pointed to Elmer. "I felt sure you had somehow suspected Kurt of this...affair, and since your only alibi was him...it just sounded so made up. A common criminal, an ex-convict conveniently arrives to vouch for you? I thought you'd hired him to kill Kurt, and then kept him around. I wanted to protect you. You have no idea what I did to protect you."

"You only wanted the murderer to be Elmer. An ex-con who didn't matter. You knew it was Elliott. You must have felt that."

Chauncey glanced at Elmer but said nothing.

"Well, since I really don't need a chauffeur, and Elmer is still going to need a job," Juliet continued, "I'm sure you'll vouch for him and get him that janitor's job, won't you, Chauncey? Because if you don't, a lot more is going to be said to a good many people about your part in all this. Goodnight."

When they had gotten a little distance away, Elmer whispered to her, "Did Elliott really tell you that it was Chauncey who tipped him off?"

"No. I just took a chance."

"You sure did. I really shouldn't take any museum job now, Juliet."

"Why not?"

"I just shouldn't. You know...I just shouldn't. We've been seen too much together. We don't want to give anybody the wrong idea about us."

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# Chapter Thirteen

Elmer placed a dozen white roses against the base of the headstone at Northwood Cemetery. Linda Ann Vartanian, 1940--1944.

Memorial Day, and all over the city, before celebrating with picnics, flags were placed on the graves of soldiers, most who had died in the last war. In another part of the cemetery, two police detectives paid their own personal tribute by laying flowers on the graves of the six-remaining unidentified dead bodies from the Hartford Circus Fire, and as would be their custom for the next several decades. The grave of one particular little girl, who remained unidentified except for the number given her in a makeshift morgue was called Little Miss 1565.

Elmer's eyes lingered on his daughter's name on the gravestone that Enid had bought, the place where Enid brought flowers on Linda's birthday.

Juliet had taken a few discreet steps back away from Elmer at his daughter's grave, to give him privacy. She thought she could faintly hear him whisper as he placed his hand upon the top of the headstone,

"Daddy's here."

Somewhere, in another town, a parade marched through a flag-festooned Main Street, and the high school band played The Stars and Stripes Forever.

***

Juliet drove them back to the Van Allen mansion, where Elmer collected his things into a cardboard box. Enid had helped him to find a one-room apartment in her building. Juliet walked up the stairs to his room above the garage and stood in the open doorway and watched him pack.

"I'm glad you accepted the job at the museum, Elmer, in spite of your misgivings."

"It was nice of the board to make that offer."

"What you did for the museum, how could they not have made some sort of gesture? It's only that janitor's job we lied about after all."

"It's good enough. It's all I can do anyway."

Juliet said, "You were a good chauffeur."

"You don't need one anymore."

"You're good friend, too. These past few weeks have been hell for both of us. I can't imagine what it would've been like if you weren't here to help me sort everything out."

Elmer answered, throwing her a sidelong glance, "You've still got a lot of sorting out to do."

"So do you."

"Yeah. Maybe one day I'll even thank you for stopping me from killing Dave. But not just yet."

"Maybe we'll still see each other sometime. I mean, you'll be working the graveyard shift, and I don't come in until the morning. But who knows, someday maybe I'll be working late again."

"I don't think Chauncey will allow it. He's really stuck on you."

She said nothing, but glanced around servant's quarters, wishing it had been nicer.

"You know," she said, "someday, you're going to have to tell me how you broke into the Wadsworth."

"Maybe I can charge ten cents for a tour."

It was no good, lingering. They both felt it.

***

She drove him to his new apartment and Enid was there to welcome him. Enid brought him a lemon meringue pie; she remembered from the old days it was his favorite. Elmer invited Juliet to stay and share it. Juliet declined and left them alone.

She drove back to her apartment on Asylum Avenue. The police tore off the "do not cross" tape, a simple gesture that granted her the right to resume her old life as best she could. If only that was as easy as removing tape.

She had liked the apartment when she and Kurt moved here. It was modern and spare, so different from the ornate home of her father's house.

Juliet knew she would only continue to feel violated if she stayed.

It still wasn't easy finding an apartment in these postwar years. So many ex-servicemen had returned to the city, they were building temporary housing on the old circus grounds where the fire had occurred. Some people said that lot would be haunted.

Juliet felt her apartment was haunted now.

She went down to the basement to get some boxes and brought them back up to her apartment, nodding to Tommy the elevator man, who nodded silently back, looking her in the eye as he did so, always with eloquent though unspoken sympathy.

Juliet put the jewelry her father had given her into the boxes, and the painting Kurt had done for her of what was supposed to be herself but looked like the naked back of somebody else. She wondered if it was.

She put her records in the box: John Coltrane, Johnny Hartman, Jo Stafford, and her old artist's paint box that she hadn't opened in years.

She clicked open the brass latches and lifted the wooden lid. The strong scent of linseed oil and turpentine wafted from the box. She ran her fingertips lightly across a row of tubes of oil paint, whose names across colored bands identified them as Titanium White, Raw Sienna, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red. She almost took the pallet knife in her hand, its smooth handle with an oily feel to it, and the brushes, but held off. She felt something like a sense of dread over what she had come to believe was her lack of talent. It would take more courage than she had right now to try to paint again. She closed the lid and clicked the brass latches shut.

But she took the paint box with her.

Like Henry the night watchman, Mr. Percy at the reception desk had a hard time looking her in the eye anymore. She was no longer considered a possible murderess, but she was still a victim and sometimes in being a victim one is ostracized just as much as if one had been guilty of something. Many of the survivors of the Hartford Circus Fire could have told her the same thing.

***

About two weeks later, Elmer was finishing his shift as a janitor at the Wadsworth Atheneum at seven o'clock in the morning. He went to the refrigerator in the employee lounge and took out a small gift-wrapped box. After he changed out of his coveralls and back into his jacket and tie, he took the box to the administrative offices. He put the small gift-wrapped box on Juliet's desk.

He had remembered that today was her thirtieth birthday.

Two hours later, Juliet came into her office, said good morning to Karen.

"Miss Van Allen, the director asked me to see if you want to accept the offer made on Mr. McLeod's paintings."

Juliet cradled her purse and stared at the floor a moment.

"With due respect to my late husband's artistic talent, I feel certain the collector from...where was it? Texas?"

"Uh-huh."

"I suspect he only wants to buy them because of the scandal, the publicity. Oh, well. Art needs publicity and Kurt wanted it badly. Yes, Karen. Tell Marcus I'll accept the offer to buy the paintings. Tell him I want the check made out to the Red Cross, in memory of Linda Ann Vartanian."

She turned the knob on the door with her maiden name painted on the glass, hung up her coat and sat down at her desk.

She noticed the box at first with dread, because of its size, thinking it might be some precious gift of jewelry, probably from Chauncey.

The prospect of turning thirty had not bothered her a few weeks ago, but now that it was here, she thought maybe it did. She sighed, checked her notes on her calendar datebook for the day, but this was only stalling for time.

Finally, she decided to face the inevitable, and pulled the ribbon and tore off the wrapping paper. It was a clear plastic florist's box. Inside was a gardenia corsage. There was no note.

Juliet instantly knew the giver. She pinned the corsage on her left breast, above her heart.

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# The End.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a review at any online merchant where this book is sold.

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Author's note: Whether the Wadsworth Atheneum had a Xerox Model A in 1949, and whether it was possible at that time to break into the museum through the ceiling in the administrative offices is only literary license and the product of the author's active imagination. However, the tragic Hartford Circus Fire referred to in this story was an actual event.

***

You're invited to continue with the next book in this series, Speak Out Before You Die...

Guests arrive to attend a wedding in a snowbound mansion on New Year's Eve. A discovered note warns of danger at midnight.

Juliet Van Allen's wealthy widowed father is about to marry a much younger woman at midnight on New Year's Eve, but when it appears that one of the guests might carry out a mysterious threat, Juliet calls in her friend, ex-con Elmer Vartanian, pretending to be a hired servant for the party, to help ferret out the clues and prevent a murder...but midnight is approaching and time is running out.

Speak Out Before You Die is the second book in the Double V Mysteries series set in New England in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

If you like the romance and charm of a classic film, this "cozy noir" will remind you of an era of drama both elegant and subtle, and grim family secrets are revealed over a game of charades in evening dress, while sipping a champagne cocktail.

Enter a world where the second half of the Twentieth Century begins with a toast, a chorus of "Auld Lang Syne," and a promise of revenge - now.

***

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# Copyright 2011, 2012, 2015 Jacqueline T. Lynch

All rights reserved by the author. Unauthorized copying is prohibited.

In memory of my mother and father.

***

Acknowledgements:

Cover by Casey Koester.

Thanks to John Hayes for proofreading one more time.

Author photo by Gretje Ferguson.

***

See the further adventures of Juliet Van Allen and Elmer Vartanian in these other volumes of the Double V Mysteries series:

Speak Out Before You Die

Dismount and Murder

Whitewash in the Berkshires

Murder at the Summer Theater (coming 2018)

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Other fiction:

Meet Me in Nuthatch

The Current Rate of Exchange

Beside the Still Waters

Myths of the Modern Man

Collected Shorts

Non-fiction books:

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star.

Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke,

Massachusetts

States of Mind: New England

The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts

Movies in Our Time: Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century

Classic Films and the American Conscience

Calamity Jane in the Movies

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# ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jacqueline T. Lynch's novels, short stories, and non-fiction books on New England history and film criticism are available from many online shops as eBooks, audiobook, and paperback. She is also a playwright whose plays have been produced around the United States and in Europe, and has published articles and short fiction in regional and national publications. She writes Another Old Movie Blog on classic films, and the syndicated newspaper column Silver Screen, Golden Years. For more on Jacqueline T. Lynch's novels, plays, and articles, and to sign up for news and updates on her books, please see: www.JacquelineTLynch.com.

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