As luck would have it, Wilma had been listening to her Chester Ellis record that morning. She didn’t want to bend down with her back to the man and seek out another side, so she stuck with the one she had. A risky move, playing Chester Ellis in a scene like this, but Wilma took it. She cranked the arm of the little Victrola, dropped the needle on the record, clicked off the latch, and let it play. Chester’s piano filled the room. The man didn’t flinch.
He was screwing up his courage to kill her. She knew it. She could taste it like a stink drifting off him. It was too dark to tell if he had a gun in those jacket pockets or a sap or was just wearing a pair of gloves to keep from doing it with his bare hands. But it was there: the murderous vibe tangling with the notes of the Chester Ellis record.
Wilma looped around a dusty chintz armchair, walking this time toward the man. He’d left the front door open. Wilma was slightly closer to it than he was. She eyed the kitchen behind the man. “You must want a drink. I have a new bottle of Vat 69 behind you there. I haven’t even cracked the seal.” She pointed at a cabinet directly behind the man. He turned to look. This felt like Wilma’s only chance. She raced out the front door.
He took off after her.
Her bare feet hit the gravel drive in front of her bungalow. Small rocks dug into her soft soles. With one hand, she gathered the lapels of her bathrobe and pulled them tight. Her other arm flopped as she ran. The towel on her head unraveled and fell at the end of the drive. Wilma turned right onto Newland Street and crossed maybe half the block before realizing that she had no idea where she was running to and nowhere to go.
The man turned right at the end of the drive, also. He picked up the towel and twisted it into a rope.
The wet night collapsed on the pair. Thick fog blurred the moon into a vague glow above them. A red interurban car rumbled past the nearby intersection of York and Figueroa.
Wilma assessed her options again. This night just wasn’t getting any better. She needed a car or a friend or a gun or something. She needed shoes because her feet were already torn up and bloody. She needed clothes. She needed help. She needed Jack but he’d gone and got himself shot down in Germany a year ago. That was where the trouble started. If he just hadn’t gone to war. If he just hadn’t died there. If he had just come back like he was supposed to and lent her a hand now and then. Goddamn it.
With no better ideas, she started screaming, “Jack,” again and again, ripping apart her vocal chords doing it. The screams bounced down the street and vibrated off stucco walls and got absorbed into nearby porches and potted plants. A small dog joined in, yapping as hard and loud as Wilma. This stopped the man. He and Wilma faced each other on the street, no more than twenty feet apart, Wilma screaming, “Help,” now instead of “Jack,” the man’s eyes darting from door to door, waiting for someone to intervene.
The neighbors stayed inside, letting it all wash underneath the sounds of the Gas Company Evening Concert or the new episode of Boston Blackie. No one came outside to check.
The man walked toward Wilma, twirling her towel. Water dripped from her hair onto her bathrobe. She gave the screams a rest and waited. When he got an arm’s length away, she feinted left. He lunged. She danced around him and sprinted another fifty yards down the street. The soles of her feet left small red drops with every step.
When her breath would allow it, she screamed again. One neighbor slammed his window shut. Another screamed, “Pipe down out there.” The dog kept yapping.
The man picked himself off the tar and turned back for Wilma. He made his dash. She made her fake. He fell and she sprinted. They paused for breath. He pounced again. She fled again. Maybe it all looked like something from a burlesque stage, Wilma the flaming-haired Gypsy Rose Lee, the man one of her rotating casts of comedians, only instead of witty repartee with each pause, Wilma screamed. Instead of an audience at the Old Opera, the neighborhood tuned out.
On one sprint, the man threw down the towel. Wilma tripped on it. She flung her hands out too late. Her nose hit the street, broken for sure. She squirmed up before he could drop on top of her. She ran with blood and snot racing down her chin and soaking into the wet collar of her white bathrobe. When she hit the drive this time, she decided to try her bungalow again. Maybe the lock would hold. Maybe the man would give up and leave. Maybe she could telephone somebody. Maybe Gertie.
Her feet ripped across the gravel driveway. She launched into the bungalow and swung to slam the door shut behind her. The man’s brogue wedged in the frame. Wilma pushed. The man pushed harder. He forced his way in and shut the door behind him. The screams stopped right about then.
Jack had read this story enough times to get through it without crying. Enough times to have it memorized and almost enough times to believe it. He folded it once again and stuffed it back in his jacket.
He climbed the concrete steps of 243 Newland Street and paused on the porch. A poinsettia plant in a glazed black pot bloomed its flaming red flowers. Two rockers sat next to the front door. One was painted yellow, the other blue. The sun had paled them both. The yellow rocker’s seat had been worn down to the original wood. Jack knelt to inspect the knitting bag between the rockers. He found a handful of cream-colored doilies. The name on the mailbox read “Van Meter.” He had to start somewhere, so he started here, by knocking on the door.
It took some shuffling and mumbling, but eventually a woman opened the door. She was too young to be called old, but too old to stick with that platinum dye job. Jack said, “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for either a Mr. or Mrs. Philip Van Meter. Would I be right in assuming you’re Mrs. Van Meter?”
The woman jutted her hip to the left and planted a hand on it. “What are you selling, honey?”
Jack pulled his father’s badge and license from his back hip pocket. He showed it to her. “Mrs. Van Meter, I’m an investigator.” He flipped his wallet closed and replaced it. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about an incident that occurred in your backyard about two years ago.”
“You’re either talking about the orange tree I planted there or the whore who took a face plant in my bathtub.”
A wave of heat raced through Jack’s veins. The nerve endings on his face tingled. He tucked it away under a polite tone of voice. “I’m speaking of Mrs. Chesley. Wilma.”
“Her name was Wilma all right, but you got the wrong last name. She was no Missus.”
“She was widowed. Maybe she used her maiden name with you. Greene.”
“Sounds right.” Mrs. Van Meter blew a wayward bang off her eyebrow. The bang fell right back where it had strayed to begin with. “Anyway, there’s not much to tell. She got drunk, fell in the tub. What’s to investigate?”
Jack pointed at the rockers. “Perhaps we could sit and chat for just a couple of minutes.”
Mrs. Van Meter nodded. She walked around Jack and took up residence in the yellow rocker. Jack settled into the blue one. Mrs. Van Meter said, “Tell me your story before I tell you mine. What are you after?”
“Mrs. Van Meter, I do freelance work for an insurance company. I’ve been asked to determine just how accidental Miss Greene’s death was.”
“What for?”
“They don’t tell me, exactly. My guess is someone took out a life insurance policy on her and now he wants to get paid.”
“Who
