The Fortieth Birthday Body Read online

  “Of course. In your position I’d do the same thing. And I am the logical person to talk to first: I know the community better than you do and, probably, as well as anyone else in Hancock.”

  Kathleen was relieved that Martha didn’t appear to mind being considered as an alternative suspect. Again her thoughts were read.

  “I don’t worry about the police thinking of Dan or myself as a suspect, you know. In the first place, Dan was only one in a long line of conquests that Dawn made in Hancock. And there was no reason for him to kill her to hide their affair. I told you the other day that he told me about it at the time it ended. I wasn’t going to get upset at this late date. Of course, it’s different for the Henshaws: Jed never told Susan about his affair, did he?”

  “You know?” Kathleen was in danger of finding her entire meal in her lap.

  “Yes.” Martha smiled ruefully. “Dan was so upset when Dawn dropped him that he had her tailed. Do you believe it? Just like a jealous husband. And the detective he hired found out about Jed right away. Dan told me, but I never mentioned it to Susan. She’s not strong like I am. I don’t think she could live with the idea that her husband was unfaithful. Some women have such old-fashioned, possessive ideas about marriage.”

  “And you?” Kathleen was hesitant to ask.

  “I say if he wants to have fun out of the house, let him. Then he leaves me alone.” Martha speared the last piece of meat floating in her soup, put it in her mouth and then looked across the table at Kathleen. “You’re shocked? Well, people have different arrangements in their lives and this is one that Dan and I worked out long ago. Why do you think he brings me those wonderful gifts from his trips? Because he takes his secretaries with him, that’s why. I benefit more than he does, is the way I see it. What the secretaries get out of it is beyond me. Dan is no great shakes in bed, I can tell you that. And he’s never going to leave me and marry them either. Dan is very contemptuous of men who have midlife crises and leave their wives. And,” she added before Kathleen had time to think it, “why should he leave me? I give him all the freedom he wants and the home he thinks he deserves. He doesn’t have to have a midlife crises. Any questions?”

  Kathleen laid her chopsticks across her wooden tray, reached over, and poured herself another cup of tea. “Does he always have his lovers tailed after the affair is over?”

  “No.” Martha paused, then reached for the teapot. “Is this thing empty?”

  “If it is, I’m sure the waitress will bring us another one,” Kathleen murmured, knowing Martha was stalling for time, and letting her.

  “No, it looks like some is left,” Martha discovered, pouring the tea into her own cup, “but I’ll get her to bring us more the next time she passes.

  “To answer your question: No, Dawn was different. Maybe she was Dan’s midlife crises even if we didn’t call it that. Dan thought he was really in love with that woman,” she added, the first hint of bitterness in her voice. “She was different for a lot of reasons. In the first place most of the women that Dan attracts are bimbos—real tacky and real dumb. I’ve always assumed that’s the way he likes them. But Dawn isn’t—wasn’t—like that. Dawn was a classy lady: bright, sexy, independent. And he fell for her. The other reason Dawn was different was that she got tired of Dan before he got tired of her. If he ever would have gotten tired of her. She broke up the affair. I don’t think it broke his heart, but he thought it did. I know it damaged his ego, hence the detective.”

  “And when he found out that it was Jed she was sleeping with?”

  “I don’t think he did anything. At least nothing that he told me about. I don’t think Jed knows that we know, but I may be wrong. You could ask him. I assume that it is Jed you have your information from?”

  Kathleen chose to ignore the question. “Why do you think Dawn was attracted to Dan?” she asked, knowing that it was an impertinent question.

  “I don’t know why Dawn was attracted to any of the men she slept with.”

  “Who … ?”

  “Oh, I don’t know the names of anyone else. There were rumors from time to time when she was in town. Some of them must have been true.” Martha shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe she was a nymphomaniac. Maybe Hancock bored her and she had to have something to keep her busy while she was here. Who knows? I’ve never understood how she got hooked up with Richard Elliot, for that matter.”

  “You think it was an unlikely marriage?” Kathleen asked.

  “Definitely. But Dawn kept her opinions to herself. She didn’t confide much about her personal life to any of the women I know. Or any of the men either. As far as her relationship with Dan was concerned, there were very romantic lunches and long sexy afternoons. But I get the idea that intellectual conversation wasn’t one of the features of the day. Maybe she was different with Jed—or someone else.”

  “And you think all she wanted from the men she had affairs with was sex?”

  “What else? She and Elliot had all the money they needed, or at least they appeared to. She had her professional life, and it always seemed very fulfilling. She and Elliot didn’t have kids, but I never got the impression that they thought that was much of a loss: They never made any sort of fuss over anyone’s children and I know that Elliot considered children to be big scene stealers. And there’s a man who doesn’t tolerate the scene being stolen from him. He expects a lot of attention—somewhat like a child, if the truth be known. Maybe Dawn didn’t have children because she was married to one. Who knows?”

  “You didn’t hate her?”

  “How many people are stupid enough to admit that they hate someone who was just murdered—murderer unknown?” came the logical reply. “I wonder if they have any red bean ice cream? The caterer was telling me that it’s wonderful and we’re having some of Dan’s colleagues over in two weeks. I may as well check it out.”

  The waitress came, another full teapot in her hands. She assured them that they would enjoy the unusual flavor ice cream and, promising to return with some, shimmered off in her flowing garment.

  “I’d love to have been brought up in a country with a more dramatic national costume,” Martha commented.

  Kathleen, who had always thought that Martha’s preppie style suited her admirably, was surprised and showed it.

  “Oh, I have my own fantasies, too,” Martha began and then stopped for the dessert to be placed before them. The waitress poured out two more cups of tea before she left and conversation could be resumed. “I’ve always been interested in other cultures. It wasn’t Dawn Elliot’s field exclusively, you know. Although I was interested in archaeology, not anthropology. And I was respected, even if I never got beyond the student stage. I had been accepted to do graduate work in England before Dan asked me to marry him.” She tasted the ice cream, made a face, and put down the spoon. “I think I’ll stick to crème brûlée for my party,” she commented and then looked Kathleen full in the face. “That’s not exactly true. I was accepted to do graduate work the day before I found out that I was pregnant with Dan’s baby. He asked me to marry him all right. But if it hadn’t been for my own stupidity, I never would have accepted him. And maybe,” she paused, “maybe if I hadn’t been pregnant, he never would have asked.”

  IV

  “Kathleen, Kathleen Gordon! Wait! You’re just the person I want to see!” The voice came from behind and Kathleen, who had been about to unlock her car door, stopped and turned to see who it was.

  “Maureen! Good to see you. Did you say you’d been looking for me? Anything I can do for you?”

  “Yes. But I don’t want to talk about it out here in the street. For one thing, we’ll freeze to death, and, besides, it’s private. Listen, there’s a bakery just down the road with tables and chairs in one corner. Why don’t we go have some coffee and a pastry and we can talk?”

  Kathleen, without even a glance at the restaurant she had just left, agreed to the suggestion. That Maureen might have something to say about Dawn’s murder was wort
h ruining her waistline for. And, if that wasn’t what she wanted to talk about, Kathleen would change the subject and see that she did.

  They were getting settled in the area of the bakery that had been decorated to resemble a café in France, as much as a ten-by-fifteen-foot space with a gray linoleum floor and no windows could be said to, before Maureen alluded to her reasons for wanting a meeting. “Like my new mink coat? It’s my payment from Colin for sleeping with that bitch.”

  “Dawn Elliot?” Kathleen asked, wondering if any woman in Hancock owned anything that hadn’t been a payoff for understanding the peccadilloes of her husband.

  “I won’t say that bitch’s name. I just call her the bitch. We’ll both know whom I’m talking about.”

  “You want to talk about Dawn?” Kathleen tried to keep the hope out of her voice. Here she had planned a day of talking with women whose husbands had slept with Dawn Elliot, and the one woman she hadn’t been able to contact on the phone last night had just dropped out of the sky and into her lap.

  “I don’t want to; I have to. I feel, in fact, like all I’ve done in the past four days is talk about her. Oh, yes, we would like to order,” she told the woman who had left her spot behind the counter to act as their waitress. “Coffee, and two napoleons and a small plate of your petit fours. And what do you want?” she asked Kathleen.

  “Coffee and a napoleon,” Kathleen said, wondering if they were going to be joined by someone else. She looked around for another chair.

  “No one else is coming,” Maureen said, seeing the look. “When I get upset, I eat.”

  “Well, it sure hasn’t hurt your figure any,” Kathleen said admiringly.

  “Oh, I can eat anything and I don’t gain weight,” was the nonchalant response. “Here comes our snack. It looks good, doesn’t it?”

  It did, but Kathleen wondered if Maureen was truly upset over the discovery of her husband’s affair with Dawn. Between her enjoyment of the new fur and the way she was plunging into those pastries, she sure was hiding it well. Was she sitting across from another woman who had an “arrangement” with her husband?

  Then, her mouth full of the creamy filling from her second napoleon, Maureen burst into tears. “I cannot believe that he’s done this to me,” she wailed, oblivious to her surroundings. “I thought he loved me and all these years he’s been lying to me.”

  Kathleen wondered if Dawn had been the only woman in Colin’s life, but Maureen didn’t give her time for questions.

  “He keeps telling me that he loves me, that he’s always loved me, that that bitch was some sort of abnormal episode in his life, that she bewitched him and he couldn’t resist. Now you tell me what woman wants to hear that her husband found some other woman irresistible? None!”

  Kathleen thought briefly of Jerry and agreed.

  “He insists that she was the only other woman in his life, but how can I believe him? He could be deceiving me this very minute with some other woman, couldn’t he? Couldn’t he?” She repeated her question when Kathleen, who had thought it was rhetorical, didn’t reply.

  “I don’t think …” Kathleen began.

  “But this time I’ll know. I hired a detective to follow him! He’s never going to get away with anything else for as long as I live. I’m not going to be made a fool of again.”

  Kathleen, a little shocked at the vehemence of Maureen’s feelings, forgot her mission of information-getting and made a suggestion. “Maybe you should separate for a while? Just till the hurt goes away.”

  “Are you out of your mind? You may not have any kids but I have three girls with expensive habits. Just their music, gymnastic, and skating lessons cost hundreds of dollars a month. And Colin and I have spent a fortune on private school tuition so that they can go to very expensive Ivy League colleges. I can’t risk a divorce now, and separations always lead to divorces. I can give you lists of the couples we’ve known over the years who’ve had what they called ‘trial separations’ and are now divorced.” She paused long enough to finish the last pastry and to ask the waitress for more. “He’s not going to escape his responsibilities, I can tell you that. And I’m not stupid enough to go into a divorce court and gamble that I’ll come out of it with the same life-style I have now. The woman’s movement hasn’t done divorced women a lot of good; I’ve watched what’s happened to some of my friends and I know. A lot of women have to give up their homes and go to work! I’m not going to do that! I’m not going to be the one to pay for his mistake!”

  “If you’re not interested in evidence for a divorce proceeding, why are you having him followed?” Kathleen asked, sipping the last of her coffee.

  “I’m interested in him knowing that I know what he’s doing. I told him that I was having him followed! He won’t dare have any fun with that detective around.”

  “When we ran into each other in the grocery the other day you said that Colin had confessed to having an affair with Dawn right after her death,” Kathleen began, trying to return to the subject that interested her most.

  “Yes. I thought at the time that he was crazy for telling me, but of course he had to.” She bit into a petit four.

  “Why?”

  “Because he had to tell the police, of course. And he knew that they would ask me about it. Can you believe it? That’s one of the worst things he’s done to me: He had an affair with a woman who is murdered by God knows whom. Now we’re both suspects in a murder case. I could kill him, I really could.”

  “I don’t think this is the time to talk about killing anyone. As you said, we’re in the middle of a murder investigation.”

  “There was no reason for me to kill the bitch. She’s the one that broke up with Colin. She’s the one who ended their affair.”

  “Really? Did Colin tell you that?”

  “Of course. Oh, I’ve gotten all the details from him. I’ve insisted on hearing every little gruesome, sick moment of their affair, including how it ended.”

  Kathleen, who was dying to hear all about it, didn’t know what to say. Luckily, it seemed no prompting was needed.

  “What I can’t figure out,” Maureen continued, finishing her pastry and reaching for another, “is why that bitch picked Colin. There must be more interesting men in Hancock. I can name some myself.” She seemed intrigued by that thought and didn’t say anything for a few moments. “But anyway, why did she pick him?”

  “When did it happen?” Kathleen asked.

  “In the spring six years ago. It only lasted for a few months and then she left town. Colin thinks that she wouldn’t have broken up except for what he calls ‘the demands of her work’—my ass! The woman was a nympho! The police officer who interviewed me said as much! She would have needed someone else soon anyway.”

  “How did it begin?” Kathleen asked, hoping to hear a coherent story but not expecting one.

  “They met in the city. You know—well, you don’t know, but everyone else in Hancock does—Colin was working at City Lights at the time. You know, the magazine. Well, it was just beginning back then, and Colin was editor and publisher. It’s hard work starting something new and the entire staff was working twenty-six hours a day or something similar. They were planning a cover article on American Indians in the city and Colin asked Dawn to do some consulting …”

  “Did she have a reputation around Hancock that many years ago?”

  “Sure. She had a reputation for as long as I’ve known her.”

  “Then didn’t you worry about Dawn and Colin getting together?”

  “No. Colin is, well, Colin. I never thought another woman would find him all that interesting. I did think about her reputation at the time and I thought that she might get together with Derek Stiles. He was Colin’s assistant at the time and any woman would have fallen for him: good-looking, talented, incredibly sexy. But the bitch had the bad taste to fall for Colin. I cannot believe her.

  “Anyway,” she continued her story after finishing the last pastry and putting down her fork, s
eemingly replete. “They fell in love over the proofs of an article on Indians in the construction unions. At least that’s how Colin puts it. What he really means is that they were screwing on the floor of his office—because the magazine was too new and too poor to afford couches then—every time they got a chance. And that was the year that my mother had her stroke and so I was flying out to Indianapolis, where she lived before we put her in the home, every few weeks. And when I was there, they were together. Colin had it all worked out: The magazine had a small suite at the Waldorf that they used to try to impress potential advertisers when they came to town and Colin sometimes spent the night there when he was busy. He usually stayed there when I was gone because it was easier than commuting. So I would call him there at night to tell him that my flight had arrived all right and about my mother, and all the time Dawn—I mean that bitch—was lying in bed next to him!”

  “Surely not all the time. What about Richard Elliot?”

  “What about him? He never counted for much. Besides, he was probably giving an immortal, unforgettable performance of Hamlet in some distinguished little theater in the suburbs of Buffalo. Can you believe that man?”

  “No,” Kathleen said, not sure what man she was referring to, but thinking it applied equally to them both.

  “Neither can I.” She looked longingly at the case of pastry.

  “You’re not going to have another?”

  “I’d love to, but I think I’d throw up. Damn!” She slammed her hand on the table. “I wish I hadn’t quit smoking! I suppose it’s a little early to start drinking?” she asked wistfully.

  “I think alcohol on top of all that sugar would guarantee you throwing up,” Kathleen said. “Maureen, when we ran into each other the other day at the store, you said something about other women in town being glad Dawn was dead. Do you know that she slept with other men? For sure, not just innuendo.”

  “I’m sure. In the first place, that bitch told Colin that she had an affair with Harv Bower …”