An Occasional Hell Page 16

  Probably not.

  Okay, then: the other important date. July 21, the robbery of the Fort Erie museum. A week prior to this robbery, the Catanzaro family vacations in Niagara Falls, across the river from the museum. A week prior to this, Alex withdraws $4500 from his retirement fund. The money had been used either for a very expensive weekend vacation, or.… Could it be that Alex had considered hiring DeWalt to rob the museum? DeWalt rechecked his calendar. No: announcement of the archeological descovery was not made until after Alex had apparently decided not to get in touch with DeWalt.

  But Alex had hired somebody to rob the museum. DeWalt would stand by this suspicion unless and until Elizabeth could account for the entire $4500. Maybe Alex had tried to hire Rodney Gillen and/or the Kinetics, but they had refused. So he sent them a memo in the form of a Molotov cocktail: No is an unacceptable response, boys. Perhaps you should reconsider. And they, being young and impressionable, did reconsider. They, or Rodney, not only perpetrated the robbery on Alex’s behalf, but they, or Rodney, went the extra measure and later introduced Alex at point blank range to the very weapon he had so coveted.

  A neat and comprehensive explanation. DeWalt hoped it was not too neat. It all hinged upon information he needed from Abbott and Elizabeth. In the meantime he needed a sip of water, his mouth was dry, it tasted of smoke. He bent to pick up his breakfast plate and that was when he noticed her standing a few feet back from the threshold, watching him, hand to her throat and holding closed a very unflattering blue terrycloth robe, left arm locked across her waist.

  She did not look good. That is, she looked ill. But even puffy-eyed and with hair uncombed, her small body concealed in the shapeless robe, feet bare, she stirred pleasant feelings in him.

  “Good morning,” he said, and tried a smile.

  “Is it?” She walked over and took the plate from his hand, then carried it to the sink. “I’ll get the coffee started in a minute. Do you want anything else?”

  “How about if I make breakfast for you this morning?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Don’t wash that plate, I’ll do it.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m used to cleaning up after a man.”

  “Nobody has to clean up after me,” he said.

  “I bet you like to think so, don’t you?”

  So, she was one of those people who could pass out from too much drink and the next morning remember everything that had transpired. He did not know if she was truly angry or if the anger was a cloak for embarrassment. He did not know what he would say in either case or how he might explain himself, but he stood to go to her because the first thing to do was to hold her. He had moved only two steps from his chair when the telephone rang.

  “That’s for me,” he said. He turned his back to her and picked up the phone.

  “The good news,” Abbott told him, “is that yes, a musket was among the items stolen from the museum. A Pennsylvania long rifle in original flintlock condition. Made by one Joseph Honaker, Wythe County, Virginia, circa 1807. Valued at approximately $35,000.”

  “Bingo,” said DeWalt. “But … could such an item be made functional after 180 years in an interred condition?”

  “She’s standing there beside you, right?”

  “More or less.”

  “When do you plan to tell her that her husband’s a thief?”

  “Could I refer you back to my previous question, please?”

  “The item under discussion was not in an interred condition.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It wasn’t one of the items that got dug up. It was donated by a private collector, on loan, actually, to round out the exhibit. But it was in mint condition, and could easily have been fired. Although to do so, and I quote the owner here, would be ‘a crime of the utmost stupidity.’”

  “Which implies the participation of an individual not particularly knowledgeable in these matters.”

  “You sound like a politician under indictment, you know that?”

  “What else was taken?”

  “Some buttons, brass insignia, powder bag, a handful of musket balls—in total, the contents of one glass display case.”

  “What kind of security did they have?”

  “Insufficient. One guard, who, when it suited his fancy, was also an unofficial tour guide. He wasn’t even in the exhibit room at the time of the robbery. He was outside with some visitors, showing off his ramparts.”

  “This occurred during the daylight hours?”

  “Between four-thirty and five in the afternoon, yep.”

  “Cameras and alarms?”

  “Activated only at night.”

  “Can I assume that the security guard does not recall the presence of any suspicious-looking visitors at or about that time?”

  “The ex-security guard. He’s now a meter reader for the gas company. And no, he didn’t see or hear a thing. Except for a certain pair of young women from Buffalo to whom he was extolling the superior design of his parapet.”

  “And that leaves us where?” asked DeWalt.

  “We now know in all probability where the murder weapon originated. That’s more than we knew yesterday. All we have to do now is to recover that weapon and match it to the ball we dug from the victim’s brainpan. We also have reason to suspect that the robbery was perpetrated at the suggestion of, or under the direction of, the deceased. Did you talk to her yet?”

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that, give me an hour or so. How about the rock and roll connection?”

  “The Kinetics arrived at the Theta Chi house at approximately 8 PM on the night of the robbery. All members present and accounted for. They started playing a half-hour later. Packed up and went home sometime after one.”

  “Could they have left the museum at, say, 4:35, and still arrive back here at eight?”

  “Sure, if they were traveling by jet.”

  DeWalt heard his neat little premise collapse like a punctured balloon.

  “Talk to your client, Ernie.”

  “I intend to. But I don’t expect any revelations.”

  “At the very least he commissioned the job. You found proof of that yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it proof. Not yet.”

  “It’s beginning to smell like proof though, isn’t it? And as soon as you ask her to account for the money from the retirement fund, and I’ll bet you a dollar to a doughnut she doesn’t know a damn thing about it—”

  “What’s the chance of you getting access to the local bank records? Checking for deposits made in that approximate sum at that approximate time?”

  “Approximately slim to none without a subpoena.”

  DeWalt could hear coffee gurgling through the coffee maker. Its aroma made his stomach feel hollow. He glanced over his shoulder at Elizabeth. She stood with both hands on the edge of the counter, leaning into it, staring blankly at the dripping coffee. But listening intently to every word he said; how could she not?

  “Anyway,” said DeWalt. “About an hour, okay? Will you still be there?”

  “Just don’t call with any more requests for information, all right? I don’t like the impression that some people are getting around here. That I’m working for you.”

  “You’re not working for me,” said DeWalt. “I’m working for you.” He realized then how this would sound to Elizabeth. “We’re all working for the same thing, Larry.”

  “That’s the plan anyway. But how about the next time, when you call, you give me the good news.”

  “The problem is, officer, we differ on the definition of good.”

  A few moments later he hung up the phone and turned to face her. “That was Trooper Abbott on the phone just now.”

  “And?” She stared at the coffee.

  He pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and lowered himself into it. “Come sit down with me, all right?”

  She faced him. “You think I can’t take it standing up?”

  “Y
ou just don’t look comfortable there is all. You look tired.”

  “So what did the trooper have to say about me?”

  “About you? Nothing. I thought maybe I had found a connection between Rodney Gillen and the murder weapon, but it didn’t pan out the way I had hoped.”

  “Nothing ever does,” she said. She crossed her arms and held herself tightly.

  He waited, letting it build in her, letting her get herself ready.

  The tendons in her neck tightened. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” she asked then. “Did you think I was so drunk I wouldn’t remember any of it? That’s what you were hoping, wasn’t it?”

  “It wasn’t meant to hurt you. Just the opposite, in fact.”

  “You couldn’t bring yourself to make love to me … and I’m not supposed to be hurt by that?”

  Quickly he thought of a half-dozen things to say, a half-dozen ready lies, off-roads, detours, switchbacks to lead her away from understanding. He dismissed them each in turn.

  She said, “You weren’t doing me any favors, you know. I might not be twenty-three years old but I’m not so desperate for attention that I have to go around asking men for favors.”

  “You’re a beautiful woman,” he said. “Age has nothing to do with it.”

  She softened just a bit. “Is it … are you gay, Ernie?”

  He smiled. “Not since the carefree days of youth. And even then, not the way you mean.”

  Her eyes glistened. She was shivering. “Then why?” She was afraid of his answer but needed it. She steeled herself for it, told herself she was ready even though she knew she was not. “What happened last night was nice, it was very nice. But it wasn’t what I needed, Ernie. I think you know that.”

  He looked down at his hand, fingers spread, foreign, unfamiliar. “Desire,” he told her, “has never been so cruel to me,” it sounded cold, phony, insincere, over practiced, “as it was last night.”

  “Cruel? Why cruel? Because you couldn’t feel any desire for me?”

  “Because I felt so much. And still do.”

  Even though he wasn’t looking at her, could not bring himself yet to meet her gaze, he felt her expression change. Anger and embarrassment melted into confusion. She sniffed back her tears. He heard the thickness in her throat as she swallowed. He felt the constriction.

  It was this part of being human that he hated: one source of thoughts and feelings trying to convey its inarticulate truth to another source, which in turn must sieve this truth through the filter of its own thoughts and feelings, thereby warping, truncating, flensing the original. Two people live the same story under the exact same conditions and yet they end up with two different memories of it, two different understandings and two different stories to recount.

  Yes, this is what it means to be human, DeWalt. To have a heart in conflict with itself and with every other heart. This is the original sin, to be made into a man or a woman, to be born into this occasional Hell, distanced, separated, evicted from heaven by your consciousness of self.

  “I do want to talk about it with you,” he told her. “I want to explain. But not now.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Now’s not the time.”

  Now she too smiled. “I’ll understand,” she said. “I can be a very understanding woman.”

  “You’ll have to be.” He looked down again. “Not now though.”

  The silence was not so heavy this time, not so dark. After a few moments she went to the cupboard, took out two cups, poured two cups of coffee. She set one close to his hand. “Are you sure I can’t get you some breakfast?” she asked. “Or an early lunch?”

  “I’m sure. But I would like to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right.”

  She sat across from him.

  “Your trip to Niagara Falls last July. What was the purpose of that?”

  “Just a little getaway, I guess. A break in the routine.”

  “You, Alex, and the kids?”

  “Yes. In fact, I guess the kids were the main reason we went. Alex thought it was high time they saw Niagara Falls.”

  “Had you been planning the trip for a long time?”

  She shook her head. “Alex suggested it one night, and we left the next weekend.”

  “When did you leave? On a Saturday morning?”

  “No, it was—” She stopped. Her eyes narrowed. “That son of a bitch. He said he had a couple hours of work to do in his office before we could go. So we didn’t leave until after lunch.”

  “So when you got there—”

  She interrupted. “He didn’t want to miss a morning with her, that’s what it was. That son of a bitch. That lying, duplicitous son of a bitch.”

  DeWalt said nothing. She deserved her anger. Anger is always superior to grief. Anger will often succumb to grief, or disintegrate into grief, but as long as it lasts anger should be coveted and protected. All those pinhead psychologists who claim that anger must be eschewed are in fact calling for the stagnation of human evolution. It is not love that makes the world go ’round, but anger.

  He allowed her a minute to examine her anger, to find a place for it. Then he said, “So you arrived at Niagara Falls, what, around dinner time? And what did you do that night?”

  “Checked into the hotel. Had dinner. Went out and looked at the Falls at night. That’s about it.”

  “And was Alex with you and the kids all this time?”

  She thought about it. “As far as I can remember, yes.”

  “And the next day?”

  “Breakfast at the hotel. And then we did all the touristy stuff. Cave of the Winds, the observation deck, the trolley ride, Maid of the Mist … everything, we did it all. It took four or five hours, I guess, altogether.”

  “Then lunch.”

  “Lunch, right. And then we took the ferry across the river to a museum Alex wanted to see.”

  “Fort Erie,” said DeWalt.

  She nodded. “It wasn’t very interesting for the rest of us, but Alex was enthralled. The kids, in fact, were bored. In fact, as I recall, the kids and I spent most of our time outside. Skipping stones across the river, things like that. Waiting for Alex to come back out.”

  “How long was he inside?”

  “I don’t know, forty-five minutes maybe?”

  “When you were inside with Alex, did you notice him speaking with anybody there? Or showing a particular interest in any one thing?”

  “He was interested in everything. Remember, this was the War of 1812. The subject of his book. But no, I didn’t see him talking to anybody. Who would he talk to? He took a lot of notes, of course, but he always did that. Took notes, made illustrations, things like that.”

  “And when he finished?”

  “We got in the car and drove home. We stopped just south of Erie, I believe, at a fast food place. What’s this all about, Ernie?”

  “Less than a week after you visited the museum, it was robbed. One of the things stolen was a musket.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “The newspaper clipping is among Alex’s papers.”

  “No, I mean … you can’t possibly believe that he had anything to do with it.”

  “What did he do with the money he withdrew from the retirement fund?” DeWalt asked.

  He could tell by the look on her face that he had surprised her, Abbott was correct. From his shirt pocket he withdrew his calendar of events, unfolded it and flattened it on the tabletop.

  “On April 7th he withdrew $2500,” he said. “That was four days after the discovery of artifacts at Fort Erie. Then on July 10th, eleven days before the robbery of those artifacts and other items on display, he withdrew another $4500.”

  She took two slow breaths. “How do you know all this?”

  “The withdrawal slips are in Alex’s tax papers for this year. Do you know of any similar withdrawals he might have made last year? Or the year before?”

  “He did the taxes himself. I have no idea.”
>
  DeWalt felt certain of what he would find when he examined those other papers. Alex had probably been making small withdrawals ever since his affair with Jeri Gillen began. How else to finance the affair without making Elizabeth suspicious? He had probably been a very generous man. His generosity was what had made him so attractive to Jeri and Rodney Gillen.

  “What was the exact date of the robbery?” she asked.

  “July 21st.”

  “What time?”

  “Late afternoon. Between four-thirty and five.”

  She went quickly to the wall calendar beneath the telephone and flipped down the pages to July. In the block for the 21st was written, in her handwriting, All-Stars, 6:00.

  She jabbed her finger against the calendar. “Here, you see? That was the day of the Little League All-Star game. Chris played left field. The game started at six, so we had dinner early, at about five. Then there was the game, then a weiner roast after. We were there all evening, Chris and Nikki and me and Alex. There’s got to be at least a hundred people who can verify that.”

  “All right,” said DeWalt. “Calm down.” She could believe that her husband was an adulterer but not a thief. She could accept that he had been attracted to a lovely younger woman but to even suggest that he had ever done anything unwise or illegal was more than Elizabeth Catanzaro could tolerate.

  DeWalt knew what would happen to her feelings for him, incipient and unevolved as they were, when, if, he proved her wrong. Still, there were things he needed to know.

  “Anything on there for May 28th?” he asked.

  She did not turn the pages. “That was our anniversary,” she said.

  “And you, what, went out for dinner?”

  “And then a play at the community theater … The Gin Game. It was the first time we’d actually celebrated an anniversary in, I don’t know, five or six years. It was … a lovely night.” Now she looked at him. “Why, what happened that night? Was there a robbery in Texas or Florida or somewhere else you’d like to blame on him?”

  “I’m working for you, Elizabeth, remember? I want what you want.”

  “It doesn’t sound that way to me.”

  She was angry now and it made no sense to argue. He told her, “There was a disturbance near the college that night. It involved Rodney Gillen and his band. But never mind, I’m sure it’s unrelated.”