Requiem for a Realtor (14 page)

“I wondered how he managed to keep you.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's a bribe, don't you see? He talked you into thinking that the point of your life would be reached on his fiftieth birthday.”

“David, I am not mercenary.”

“That money is as much yours as it is his. Given his behavior, I think you would be unwise to wait.”

“What do you mean?”

“Phyllis, he could divorce you. Can't you see that was the whole point of a civil marriage? I wouldn't be surprised if he intends to drop you a year or so before he comes into that money.”

Phyllis protested, trying to come to Stanley's defense, but she could not dispel the thought that Stanley eventually meant to end their marriage.

“That would leave you out in the cold.”

He spelled it out for her. The inheritance would probably not figure in any divorce settlement. Phyllis might share in what they now had.

“That isn't much.”

“And he could marry another woman in the Church.”

“No!”

David nodded. He knew all about such things. He had read canon law and everything. The thought of Stanley before the altar with another woman was the turning point. She agreed with David that she would have to act before Stanley did. So they had gone to see Amos Cadbury. With crushing results. Now she had it from Amos Cadbury himself that a divorce would cut her off from that damnable inheritance. She could not have borne the disappointment without David's consolation. And that was when she suggested that they should go to bed together, not that she had put it that boldly. He had not responded with a sermon as she feared he would.

“Why did you never marry?”

He looked at her tenderly.

“I was waiting for the right woman.”

*   *   *

Susan was not shy to say what she thought of David's coming to the house after the funeral.

“What's he doing here?” Susan asked when they were alone. David was having a drink with George in the living room.

“He's my dentist.”

Susan tucked in her chin.

“Our dentist. And a good friend.”

But Susan's manner was not accusative. “I don't blame you.”

Phyllis was angered by the assumption that she had a man ready to take Stanley's place, which was clearly what Susan thought. After the wake and the funeral, she felt differently toward David than she had. And it occurred to her that she was now Stanley's uncontested heir.

“I should have asked Bob to come back here,” she said to Susan.

“Bob?”

“My brother.”

“I didn't know you had a brother.”

So she told Susan about her brother the journalist. “You must have seen his features in the
Tribune.
Bob Oliver. I suggested to him once that he do a feature on the agency.”

“What did he say?”

“He wasn't interested.”

“Is that all?”

“What do you mean?”

Susan studied her for a moment, as if looking for something in her manner. “He just forgot all about it?”

“I guess. It never came up again. He must not have thought it was such a great idea.”

“I'm sure he was right about that.”

*   *   *

Bob showed up at the house after the Sawyers had left, taking Phyllis in his arms. It had been years since the thought of having a brother seemed a plus to her. She told Bob of Susan's surprise that she had a brother.

“I must be forgettable.”

“Oh, she knew who you were when I described you.”

“Good for her.”

“Do you know her?”

“That would be telling.”

Men. She could have kicked him. But then he took her in his arms again, and she pressed against him.

16

The keys to his car were among the things found on the body of Stanley Collins, something Cy Horvath could not forget. Whoever had run over Stanley had another key to his car. But no ignition key had been found in Stanley's car. Of course, whoever had used the car as a murder weapon, if that was what happened, could have pitched the keys into any Dumpster in town or tossed them into the Fox River. It was the fact that the car had been found where, apparently, Stanley had left it, in the parking lot of the Rendezvous, that set Cy's mind in motion.

When he spoke with Shirley Escalante at the cemetery she had not found his question surprising. Yes, there was a set of Stanley's car keys at the office.

“I keep extra keys for both of them, house keys, car keys. I even have the key to George Sawyer's personal safe-deposit box.”

“Can we check to see if they are still there?”

They weren't. She had keys all over her desk, but the keys to Stanley's car were not among them.

“He must have taken them without telling me.”

Cy did not comment. He thanked her and went on to the Rendezvous.

“Who works nights, Joe?” he asked Perzel.

“There are three bartenders at night and a platoon of waitresses. That's the money time of day for the bar. Wanda is a big attraction.”

“The woman who showed up at the wake?”

Joe nodded, a silly smile on his face. Well, maybe Wanda looked good in the dim lights of the Rendezvous. Cy brought Marge along when he checked the place out.

“The Rendezvous?”

“You've heard of it?”

“Cy, everyone has heard of it.”

Except Lieutenant Horvath, apparently. Cy went to bed early unless something he was working on dictated otherwise. Marge was glad enough to have a few drinks in the dimly lit bistro, ordering a daiquiri and lighting up a cigarette while they waited for their drinks to come. Cy had ordered beer and Marge made a face when he did.

“What's a daiquiri?”

“Oh, Cy.”

He felt he was out with a stranger, not his wife. And then Wanda began to sing, leaning against the piano and seeming to make love to the microphone she held. Conversation died. All eyes were on her. She did look good in the lights of the bar, but she could have been ugly with a voice like that. The songs she sang made Marge's eyes misty, as if the singer were recalling the youth of everyone in the room. Cy had no ear for music, which may have been why he screened out what passed for popular music nowadays, but the lyrics of the ballads Wanda Janski sang figured in the biography of everyone listening to her. She drifted from one song into the next, stilling the applause that began, that could wait until she was done. For now, she was wholly absorbed in the plaintive lyrics she half whispered, half sang, into the smoky air of the Rendezvous. Marge reached out and took his hand.

“Remember?”

Cy remembered. “To Each His Own.” “Sentimental Journey.” “That's My Desire.” It was the repertoire of youth, of early love, of music when it had spoken to the heart instead of the loins. The “Chatanooga Choo Choo” altered the mood, followed by “Chicago, My Kind of Town,” but then Wanda sang “You Belong to Me” and Marge kept squeezing Cy's hand. He squeezed back. Joe Perzel had said that Stanley and Wanda had been an item, but every man in the room was in love with her, so what did it mean?

*   *   *

Wanda disappeared when she finished her set, and the noise level rose. Cy left Marge with her daiquiri and teary eyes and went to have a talk with Basil the bartender.

“Hey, I'm busy, okay?”

Cy showed him his identification. “It's about Stanley Collins.”

“Geez.”

But Basil left the bar to his acolytes and led Cy down a narrow hallway to a room where the help took its breaks.

“Can we make it quick?”

“We could talk tomorrow morning.”

“Mornings I sleep.”

“You knew Stanley Collins?”

Basil was fat in a way that made thin seem an offense. His face was damp with perspiration, but he was the kind of man who would have sweated at the North Pole. A heart attack waiting to happen. Cy thought of Stanley lying on the slab at the morgue as Pippin went about her work.

Basil had known Stanley. He was a regular.

“Look, the one you should talk to is Wanda.”

“She disappeared.”

“Her dressing room's next door.”

Cy stood. “I'll get back to you.”

Basil was scurrying down the hallway to the bar when Cy rapped on the door of Wanda's dressing room. No answer, so he knocked harder, and tried the knob. It turned and the door opened.

Wanda sat at a dressing table, a drink before her, studying her face in the mirror. She looked at Cy in the mirror.

“Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Horvath.”

“You were at the wake.”

“So were you. Can we talk?”

“I go on again in ten minutes.”

“You're good.”

She turned. Once she would have been beautiful. In a way, she still was. But what had once been curves had turned into flesh. Her hair was startling in its amplitude.

“I like blondes no matter what color their hair is.”

“This is my natural color. At least it was.”

“Tell me about Stanley.”

She laughed. “Just like that.”

“At first it seemed just a hit-and-run. Only the car that ran him down was his own. It was found in the parking lot here. Mysterious.”

“It could have been anyone.”

“He had that many enemies?”

“I don't think he had any.”

“How well did you know him?”

“Well enough that he asked me to marry him.”

“He was already married.”

“That was over.”

“Everything is over now.”

She began to cry. Not dramatically, not making a thing of it, just crying. “I never really counted on it. I'm a big girl now, beyond dreaming wild dreams. All my dreams are tied up with the lyrics of old songs. You have to be a certain age to appreciate them.”

Cy nodded. “My wife got all teared up.”

“I know. People do. They affect me the same way. There were generations of people who let songs think for them, and it wasn't all that bad. Did you ever listen to a
rapper?
”

“Not on purpose.”

“It started with rock. Everything but feeling. Jazz gets to some people, but most of them are like wine snobs. My kind of music speaks the truth to most people. At least it did.”

“Stanley,” he reminded her.

“I don't know. I thought they were kidding when they told me. He had been here that night.”

“Hence his car in the parking lot. What was he doing on the street, waiting to get run over?”

“He was probably drunk. He liked to get drunk. Nice drunk, mellow, out of himself.”

“Did you know he had left?”

“You've been out there. How much do you suppose I see of the people I sing to? I don't even try. I sing to myself as much as anything.”

“It wasn't an accident, Wanda.”

“If you say so.”

“He must have had enemies.”

“Well, he had a partner.”

“George Sawyer?”

“Talk to him.”

“Everyone tells me to talk to somebody else.”

“Lieutenant, if I could help you, I would. When Stanley died, the last candle on my cake went out. As I said, I wasn't surprised. But even so, it might have happened. We might have married…”

Her voice trailed away. It might have been a line from a lyric.

*   *   *

Marge had another daiquiri and Cy ordered another beer. He could have got a six-pack for what he was paying for it.

“We ought to do this more often, Cy.”

“I can't afford it.”

“Next time I'll order beer, too.”

“Don't. It costs more than your mouthwash.”

A little stir as the light picked up Wanda, back at the piano, smiling into the lights, and then she began again. There are stations in major cities around the nation that specialize in golden oldies, which was how Wanda's repertoire would have been categorized. Cy doubted that the hits of the present day would elicit this kind of reaction in any imaginable future. She sang “Lazy River,” “Ain't Misbehavin',” “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues,” melding them as before, lest the mood be spoiled by applause. A few lively numbers and then her finale, which Cy would learn was her signature song, a theft from Frankie, “My Way.”

“What was she like?” Marge asked in the car.

“About a C cup.”

“Cy.”

“There's a lot to her.”

“You like big women.”

“Only when they squeeze my hand.”

She put her head on his shoulder and hummed all the way home.

17

Those who thought they knew Marie Murkin might have imagined quite a different reaction to that with which she met the visitor at the rectory that afternoon. But it was the visitor who was uncomfortable, not Marie.

“You don't remember me,” the woman said.

“Help me.”

“My mother was Marian Janski.”

“The organist!”

“I'm Wanda.”

Marie took her right into the front parlor, anxious to put together the reference to the parish organist of long ago and this highly made-up woman who looked, in the phrase, as if she had been around the block.

“Did you move away?” Marie asked.

“Out of the parish? Yes.” But her tone suggested a more decisive removal. Marie had objected to Phyllis Collins's excessive makeup but had no trouble with Wanda's. Not after she decided she was an artist.

“Your whole family was musical, Wanda.”

“There was only my brother Gerry and myself.”

“And your mother. What an organist!” Marie brought her hands together and threw back her head. Then she looked at Wanda. “Not that the Franciscans appreciated her.”

“Mom loved playing that organ. But then arthritis put a stop to it.”

Marie shook her head. “Why is that the good suffer so?” The remark brought tears to Wanda's eyes.

“She was a good woman.”