And the fact that she used jasmine bath oil had to be nothing more than a coincidence.
Had to be.
After sitting on the bench for an hour, Dewey got up and walked back to the motel. The afternoon was hot and his lower back ached again; he had been on his feet too much the last couple of days. The realization made him grunt. In the old days, when he’d been a war correspondent during the Korean War, he could keep up with gung ho young marines on a thirty-mile forced march and still radio a good story at the end of the day. Now it seemed that his back and feet hurt with increasing regularity when he just thought about walking someplace.
In his room, Dewey poured gin over fresh ice and swirled it around with his finger. Those were the days, he thought, remembering Korea as he reached behind himself to massage his back. Whatever happened to that book I was going to write? he wondered. That great best-seller about the young marines of the Korean War. Did it just fall by the wayside like so many other things? Like the two wives, the failed marriages, the grown daughter he barely knew, the career, once so bright, that had gone from newspapers in Chicago to St. Louis to Springfield and finally to Birmingham, losing a little prestige each time.
“Yeah,” he said aloud. “By the wayside.” He took a long drink of gin and stretched out on the bed, holding the glass on his chest. But to hell with all that, he told himself firmly. That was then and this was now. All he wanted on his mind at the moment was the woman named Elizabeth Lane, who had great arms and freckles and who only coincidentally used jasmine bath oil.
He took another long drink.
Only coincidentally.
The next morning, from far, far away, someone was knocking insistently on Dewey’s motel room door. He dragged out of bed, pulled on a ratty, old red bathrobe which he never left home without, and opened the door. It was Simply.
“Why are you waking me at dawn, Simply?” he growled. “Are we under nuclear attack?”
“Uh, it’s not dawn, Mr. Taylor. It’s ten past ten. I’ve come to report on my investigation yesterday.”
Dewey’s eyes were red and swollen, his head had a giant pulse inside it, his body felt as if an elevator had dropped on him, and he was sure he would never be able to get into a kneeling position again. Squinting at Simply, he said, “Investigation?”
“Uh, yeah. You know, Trane’s mistress, who might be involved in the murder.”
For a moment, under all the wreckage, he felt a flicker of hope that Simply might have found someone completely unknown to him; and then a flicker of fear that he might have found out that it was—
Shaking the thought from his mind, Dewey asked, “What do you have to report?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Uh, that’s right, sir. I talked to sixteen people. Just like you told me to: discreetly and confidentially. I talked to everybody from the mayor and the banker to the barber and the town drunk. Not a single one of them ever heard of George Trane having a mistress. And none of them believed it was true.”
“It must not be true, then,” Dewey said.
Simply frowned. “Why not?”
“Truth is nothing more than popular opinion,” Dewey explained. “If nobody believes something, then it isn’t true.” He guided Simply back out of the room. “I’ll be leaving in a little while, Simply. It’s been nice working with you.” He started to close the door.
“Uh, Mr. Taylor, have you given any more thought to my byline?”
“Still considering it, Simply. I’ll let you know.” He closed the door on the young stringer and started sluggishly for the bathroom. Then he stopped, reconsidered, and opened the door again. “Fred!” he called, using Simply’s given name for the first time. The stringer looked back from the motel parking lot. “Whip out two thousand words recapping the Strawn trial for the Sunday supplement. I’ll see you get an exclusive byline on it.” Without waiting for Simply to gush his thanks, Dewey slammed the door.
In the bathroom, his thrashed image glared back at him from the mirror. He thought of the previous night, the hours spent with Elizabeth, the food, the liquor, the unbridled passion. God, he thought, shaking his head, had that been him?
Dropping his robe, Dewey got under a stream of hot water in the shower and stood there for ten minutes. Eventually he reached out and got his toothbrush and used it. Then he lathered his face and shaved from memory, without a mirror. He was lucky; he only cut himself four times. But under the hot water he began to come alive again and the memory of the previous night came into sharper focus. The previous evening, he remembered vividly now, had been incredible — the food, the drink, the lovemaking — it had all been perfect.
He came out of the bathroom feeling great. From his garment bag he took fresh clothes and dressed. He combed his hair, gave his shoes a lick with the motel towel, packed the rest of his things, and checked out. He drove the two blocks to the library.
Elizabeth was in her workroom again. She looked up and smiled as he came in. “Good morning, Dewey.”
“Good morning.”
She stretched luxuriously. “Do you feel as wonderful as I do?”
“I feel pretty good,” he admitted.
“If you’re here to take me to lunch, it’s a little early, but I don’t mind if you don’t—”
“I’m not here to take you to lunch,” he interrupted. He rubbed his fingers around the glue pot on her worktable and they picked up dried particles of rubber cement. Scrapings from the victim’s fingernails… some slight rubber cement residue…
He touched a slight indented mar in one comer of the table. Other damage to the body…a small bruise on the right temple…
Moving over to her desk, he caught some of the fragrance of her still-fresh bath oil. A perfume scent on his shirt and coat… jasmine fragrance…
From the desk, he picked up her old-fashioned spindle with its ice pick point.
“Why did you kill him, Elizabeth?” he asked quietly.
Elizabeth Lane sighed a helpless little sigh and shook her head. “I don’t know. He was standing there, getting ready to leave, as he had so many countless times before. He had a little smirk on his face that he always seemed to have after he had… used me. It never bothered me much before, but for some reason on that particular night—” She shook her head again. “I just picked up the spindle and stabbed it into his chest. He started to fall, then he hit his head on the table and kind of staggered back and actually sat right in the book lift over there. I used it to move him upstairs. Then I rolled him onto a library cart and pushed him to the back door where I keep my car. I drove him out to his home and dropped him there.” She half shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do with him.”
“That was as good as any place, I guess,” Dewey said. He put the spindle back on the desk.
“I had no idea about that gardener and what happened with his wife ten years ago. It’s been very heavy on my mind.”
“Don’t let it be. Strawn is right where he belongs; you can believe that. But you shouldn’t stay in New Rome, you know. If I found out, someone else could also.”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of moving away,” she told him. “I’ve been offered a head librarian job in a little town in Florida, near the ocean. I’ve always wanted to live near the ocean.”
“Funny, so have I,” said Dewey. “There’s a book I always thought I’d write someday, living near the ocean.”
“Really?” An excitement came into her eyes. “I have some money, you know. A small inheritance from my parents. And the house they left me. And my own savings; I’ve saved plenty in the last fifteen years; nothing to spend, it on in New Rome. And of course he gave me gifts: expensive jewelry, mostly; I have a drawer full of it, because naturally I couldn’t wear it around town.”