Cold Blue Midnight Read online

  He was going up the basement stairs.

  Opening the door.

  Closing the door.

  He hadn't paid any attention to her whatsoever.

  Hadn't even slowed down.

  Just gone straight up the stairs.

  With his axe.

  She started crying. It was crazy, she knew. She should be trying to whoop and yelp her good fortune but probably because she'd been scared so hard for so long she had to cry it out of her system.

  But it was a good cry.

  A positive cry.

  The kind of cry that

  The basement door at the top of the stairs opened.

  Then nothing.

  She couldn't hear anybody.

  She could just look up the shadowy steps and see that the door was open a little bit.

  Who was up there?

  Why wasn't he coming down?

  A trouser leg appeared. Then another one.

  It was Peter.

  He started walking down the stairs, carrying his axe.

  At this point that's all she could see the shoes, the trouser legs from the knees down, the axe.

  The bloody bloody axe.

  Then Peter came the rest of the way down the stairs and stood looking at her.

  ***

  She had promised herself one and no more well, maybe two, but certainly not anymore than that. Well, an absolute stratospheric max of three…

  So far, in twenty-five minutes, Jill Coffey had eaten four of her semi-homemade cookies and was contemplating a fifth when somebody knocked on the downstairs door.

  Reporters.

  These days, that was always her first thought whenever a knock sounded or the phone rang.

  Reporters.

  But then came the code three-pause-two-pause-one.

  Mitch was here.

  She felt as exuberant as a little girl going down the stairs, trying to imagine his surprise as she opened the door and he smelled the tangy odor of the semi-homemade cookies.

  'Wow,' Mitch said. 'What smells so good?'

  She let him in, glimpsing the chill dusk, the coral-color sky, the quarter-moon above the snow-covered rooftops, the chink-chink-chink of tire chains on a big city sand truck just now passing by.

  She led him upstairs by the hand.

  Halfway up, he said, 'Would you explain something to me?'

  'What?'

  'What exactly is a ''semi"-homemade cookie?'

  She explained.

  'God, they smell great.'

  'Wait till you taste one. I added some chocolate chips. And there's also fresh coffee.'

  'Is this a glimpse of married life with my future bride?'

  'If I say yes, will that mean that we get married soon?'

  He laughed. 'Very soon.'

  She set a place for him at the table and made him sit down and take off his hat, which he sometimes forgot to do, and then she brought over the cookies and the coffee.

  'These are fantastic,' he said after a sizeable bite.

  She smiled. 'Well, I don't know if I'd go that far.'

  'They are. Truly. If I didn't know the difference, I'd say these weren't "semi"-homemade at all.' He laughed. 'Now, do I get the part in this commercial or don't I?'

  'I've had four.'

  'Really? Four?'

  'Actually, five.'

  'Five? You ate five cookies? I didn't know there was such a self-indulgent side to my future bride.'

  'Fortunately, not with alcohol or drugs or sticking up convenience stores. Only with semi-homemade cookies.'

  He watched her with overwhelming affection. 'God, I love you, Jill.'

  'Ditto,' she said, and leaned over and kissed the cookie crumbs from his mouth.

  In all, he ate three cookies, which he was quick to point out was several less well, he tried to get away with the word 'several' but she scolded him and changed the word to 'two' than she'd had.

  And then she said, knowing this was going to puncture the pretty pink party balloon they'd made for themselves: 'What if she decides not to help us?'

  'Cini, you mean?'

  'Right.'

  'She will. I'm sure of it.'

  Jill sighed. Up and down, that's how her moods ran. Up and down. She was in a downswing now. 'Maybe I should talk to her.'

  He shook his head. 'Your lawyer Deborah would go ballistic if you did. No, I'll talk to her.' He checked his watch. 'In fact, I was thinking of running over there about now. Remind her that I'm still around. See if there's any way I can help her see what she's afraid of, is what I'm really saying. There's something holding her back and maybe I can get her to tell me.'

  Jill glanced around the apartment. 'Boy, it was so nice watching you eating those cookies.'

  'There's nothing like semi-homemades.'

  'For a couple of minutes there, I absolutely forgot everything except you and me.'

  He took her hand, held it tenderly. 'I know. I was feeling the same way.'

  'I'm getting scared again.'

  'She'll help us, Jill. I know she will. Maybe not tonightbut soon. I can feel it. I really can.'

  She got up and walked over to the window and he joined her. They looked out at the city beneath its white winter wrappings. The snow was the beautiful soft blue of the sky with the golden highlights of the moonglow. Snow masked so much of the city's ugliness and harshness.

  'You just start planning our wedding,' he said, sliding his arm around her shoulder. 'That's all you need to worry about.'

  'Are you really going over to see her?'

  'Soon as I get done with a stop for the socialite case. One of her tennis-playing lovers just got back into the city and I need to ask him some questions. Then I'm going over to see Cini.'

  'Then you're coming back here?'

  'I sure am. And I can't wait till it's time.'

  He kissed her several times, and she clung to him with a little more desperation than she wanted to show, and then he left.

  She watched him in the winter night, so small and vulnerable-looking against the white snowbanks, and then he was in his car, headlights lancing the darkness, and gone.

  ***

  Peter stood looking at Marcy for a moment but he didn't really see her. She could tell that. His mind was so preoccupied with something else that she didn't register on his consciousness at all. She was just part of the furniture.

  He turned away from the bed and walked to the far end of the basement, to the room where he'd killed his friend Adam.

  The blood-splashed axe still dangled from his left hand.

  God, what was he going to do now?

  She heard him making some noises in the room but she couldn't tell what he was up to.

  A long silence.

  Then she heard him walking again, his shoes squishing with the blood that had soaked them.

  He came walking out with Adam's head tucked into his arm, as if he were carrying something home from the supermarket.

  Adam's blue eyes were forever fixed in utter horror and his handsome face was splotched with blood.

  Peter carried the axe in the other hand.

  He walked past her very slowly, not even glancing in her direction, and reached the stairs and started climbing them.

  Squish squish squish went his bloody shoes all the way up.

  Squish squish squish.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, he opened and closed the door very quietly.

  A few minutes later, she heard his car engine start up, hesitant at first in the near-zero temperature.

  Then he backed out of the driveway and was gone.

  CHAPTER 62

  The tennis player's name was Randy Dupree and he would have been a much happier young man if he'd been born thirty years earlier, before tennis went all democratic and started letting in blacks and kids who'd learned on public courts and girls who would not grow up to be princesses.

  He said, very spiffy in his dark blue Calvin Klein V-neck sweater and his pressed wheat-colored
jeans, 'I can make this fast.'

  'All right, make it fast.'

  'Would you like a drink?'

  'No, thanks.'

  'Will you think I'm nervous if I fix myself one?'

  'Not at all. I'll just think you want a drink.'

  'Good. Because, as I said, I'm going to make this fast.'

  Mitch wanted to dislike him but he couldn't quite. Sure, Randy looked like a spoiled twenty-five-year-old rich boy. And sure, he lived in this beautifully-appointed Lake Shore drive condo. And true there was an ever-so-slight look of derision in his eyes whenever he chose to focus on Mitch… but still… he wasn't a jerk.

  He made himself a martini at the dry barthe martini surprising Mitch, who'd never thought of jock-types also being martini-typesand then he sat down in the living room and said, 'Nice view, huh?'

  Nice and expensive, Mitch thought. But he was impressed despite himself. There was an almost other-worldly aspect to Chicago from this height and vantage point, a different planet, especially with the snow covering everything. No homeless. No drug dealers. No abused wives. No little kids grubbing up the money their parents couldn't afford to give them.

  'Do you think I killed her?' Randy said.

  Mitch turned around and faced him. 'Yes, I do.'

  'I see. Did your friend Unzak tell you about my alibi?'

  'Is that how you're going to make this fast? By telling me about that former girlfriend of yours, the one who'll swear you were with her all night?'

  The lights were on in the dining room. The living room was in shadow.

  Randy Dupree said, 'No, I was going to make this fast another way.'

  'And what way is that?'

  'By telling you that I killed her.'

  Mitch hoped his small gasp wasn't audible. 'I see.'

  'You sound shocked.'

  'I guess I am.'

  'Because I just said it right out.'

  'Uh-huh. And because you didn't even give me a chance to read you your rights. It's not as simple as it is on TV, you know.'

  'I don't give a shit about my rights. Or a lawyer. Right now I don't give a shit about anything.'

  He started sobbing.

  He let the martini glass fall, nearly full, to the floor and he put his face in his hands like a little boy and began weeping.

  'I didn't mean to kill her. I was justangry. She'd been so goddammed unfaithful.'

  And then he was sobbing again.

  Mitch thought of his own wife. And how he'd feltthe terrible agony of someone whose mate is unfaithfuland he said a silent prayer of thanks for Jill.

  He went over to Randy and put a paternal hand on his shoulder. 'I'm sorry, Randy. I'm sorry.'

  Then he went to the phone.

  Now, finally, he'd be able to spend a decent amount of time helping Jill.

  He called the station and asked for Sievers and when Sievers came on he told him what Randy had just told him.

  Sievers said he'd be right over.

  Right over.

  ***

  Rick had some trouble at the gates.

  He said, 'I'd like to see Mrs Tappley.'

  'May I ask what about?' asked the maid.

  'Is Robert there?'

  'I'm afraid not. This is his night off. May I have your name, please?'

  He hesitated. 'Rick Corday.'

  It was full night now, and the snow glistened in the moonlight, and sitting here shouting into a speaker concealed in the stone face of the fence made him self-conscious.

  'Tell her I want to speak to her about her son.'

  This time, it was the maid who hesitated. 'Her son? You mean Peter?'

  'I mean Peter.'

  The maid grew suddenly hostile. 'I think you'd better drive on before I call the police.'

  'Look, you bitch, go and tell Mrs Tappley that I'm out here. Let her decide if I get in or not.'

  She was thinking it over, that he could tell. But there was still the chance that she'd bypass Mrs Tappley completely and phone straight to the police.

  Then what would he do?

  'I'll tell you something. Mrs Tappley's going to be damned mad at you if you don't tell her I'm here, I can promise you that.'

  His mother hired the kind of people she could easily bully. So now that he'd raised the specter of displeasing Mrs Tappley, the maid was more likely to help him out.

  'I'll be right back,' she said.

  Inside the car, the heater kept things warm. Too warm. That's why he kept the window rolled down. The cold night air felt good and clean. He remembered building a snowman not far from these gates. The snowman had a top hat and a merry red woolen scarf and a cane such as a vaudevillian would use. Doris hung a sign on him, WELCOME EVERYONE, a sign her mother soon ripped away. Did Doris want the riffraff of the entire Chicago area crowding around their gates?

  'Yes?' The voice, even after all these years, had lost none of its imperious edge.

  'Mrs Tappley, listen closely and maybe you'll recognize my voice.'

  She listened. She said to the maid, 'Please leave now, immediately, Go upstairs and dust the library.'

  After the door closed, Evelyn Daye Tappley said, 'When I find out who you are, I'm going to see to it that you spend the rest of your life behind bars.'

  'Don't you really believe it's me, Mother?'

  Obviously, the woman wanted to break off the connection but she was too snake-charmed to act so hastily.

  'It's really me, Mother. Back from the dead.'

  'This isn't funny at all.'

  'In 1956 you took me to a resort in Wisconsin and I found a turtle on the shore and brought him home and named him Daniel Boone because of the TV show at that time.'

  'You could've found that out.'

  'How?'

  'I' She paused. Some of the imperiousness had gone from her voice. Evelyn Daye Tappley, believe it or not, had begun to sound downright vulnerable and sad. 'My son had a favorite model airplane in his room.'

  'A blue Cessna. Just like the one my father owned.'

  'And in the basement he had a favorite game he played'

  'Bean bags. I never got tired of throwing bean bags through the clown's face.'

  A long pause. 'I don't want to be a foolish old woman. I could stand anything but being a foolish old womanbeing tricked into some pathetic, impossible belief.' Another pause. He could feel her reluctantly beginning to believe him. 'My son died in the electric chair.'

  'Arthur fixed things for me.'

  'Arthur?'

  'Arthur Halliwell. Your lawyer.'

  'Fixed things? I don't understand.'

  So he told her. Arthur had gone to a prominent physician, sworn him to silence, paid him a great deal of money, and then had the physician plot out the way that an execution could be fakedthat the prisoner would appear to die and be taken from the stretcher in a hearse and then put through all the legalities of being prepared for burial. Two different drugs had to be used to simulate death, Peter had to be coached at length, the executioner, the Coroner and the funeral home director all had to be bribed, and then the sham burial performed. Then Peter went to Europe for an extended stay.

  'You won't recognize me now, Mother.'

  'Y-you're really my son?'

  'I am, Mother.'

  She began to weep.

  'Please open the gates, Mother. Now.'

  The gates opened at once.

  He felt a kind of triumph driving up toward the mansion again, the snow so moon-kissed beautiful, the mullioned windows of the great house so gently illumined, as if by candlelight. While the estate had always been his prison, it had also been his retreat for many years. Not for him the concerns and cares that daily beleaguered the average citizen. Here he'd been able to devote himself to doing exactly what he wanted to do… as long as it met with Mother's approval. He felt almost sentimental about the place and even, in a strange melancholy way, about hereven though one of the reasons he'd forbidden Halliwell to tell her about her son, was so she could no longer shape
and dominate his life.

  He pulled up in front of the massive house, stopping the car and picking up his topcoat. He was still bloody, even more so since carrying Adam's head from the basement. But there was no time to clean up. There was only time to

  She stood silhouetted in the open doorway. In memory, she was always this huge and formidable woman, but in reality she was a small and fine-boned lady who had shrunk even more with old age.

  He saw the shocked look on her face as he walked across the threshold and into the house. But it, too, had shrunk from its remembered size. What had been vast and unimaginable as a Disney castle was now a luxurious but not overwhelming house of large dimensions and priceless furnishings.

  'You're not Peter.'

  He stopped so she could get a better look at him. 'They did a good job.'

  'They?'

  'The doctors in Europe. Plastic surgery.'

  'But your hairit's white! And your features'

  He laughed. 'I've had a difficult life, Mother. Not many men survive their own execution.'

  'But you can't be Peter. You can't be!'

  'But I am.'

  He had been carrying his overcoat rolled up. He sat it on the edge of a chair. He pulled up the cuff of his suitjacket and his shirt.

  He showed her the pear-shaped brown birthmark on the lower inside of his forearm.

  'Unlikely they could fake that.'

  But she still stared at him open-mouthed, disbelieving. How could this possibly be

  'I need a drink of brandy,' she said, almost to herself.

  Grabbing his topcoat, he followed her into the den. He'd forgotten how much he'd enjoyed this room. The authentic coat of arms on the wall above the fireplace. The Robert Louis Stevenson collected in leatherbound editions, all signed by the author a hundred or more years ago. The dry bar with its impressive array of cut-glass wine snifters.

  Evelyn had brandy and so did Peter.

  She sat behind her writing desk, sipping brandy, still staring at him.

  'You had no right to deceive me that way.'

  He sat in a deep leather armchair directly across from the desk. His topcoat was on his lap. He smiled. 'You sound just the same as you always did when you chastised me, Mother.'

  'I'm very serious. All these years I've mourned the loss of my second son'

  'And all these years I've been free of you, Mother.' He laughed. 'I wouldn't trade them.'