Murder in the Collective Read online

  “Thank god,” I sighed, but Penny went on:

  “I wish we hadn’t told Zee she could hide here.” Penny’s eyes rolled up in the direction of the attic. “I don’t know why she had to involve us.”

  “She’s a woman, she’s in trouble of some kind, she’s one of our collective, she’s a woman,” I repeated, trying to disguise my sense of betrayal; Zee had said she trusted us and now Penny was withdrawing her support.

  “I know, I know, I’m not asking her to leave. But all the same, I don’t want to be any more involved than I am now. I guess I’m saying I’d prefer not to deal with her while she’s in hiding, while she’s feeling the need to hide, because I don’t know what it means. I’ll leave it to you.”

  “And Ray.”

  Penny looked suddenly vulnerable. “If you want my opinion, Ray doesn’t want to be involved in this any more than I do.”

  “I don’t care about your opinion,” I snapped. “I’m not sorry we’re protecting Zee, I’m not sorry that I happen to be concerned about a murder in our very own darkroom. And as for Ray, he’s even more of an asshole than I thought he was, abandoning his lover at a time of crisis.”

  “They’re not lovers anymore. And he’s not an asshole,” Penny said heatedly.

  “What do you mean they’re not lovers anymore? How do you know?”

  “He told me.” Penny turned to the sink and began rewashing some radishes.

  “Since when are you and Ray Hernandez such confidential friends?” I said, advancing on her.

  “Oh, leave me alone, Pam,” she said. “And why don’t you drop your grudge against him while you’re at it? It’s about time.”

  I was too furious to speak and instead slammed out the front door. She could fucking well finish dinner by herself, eat it herself too. Turncoat. Sucking up to Ray now, was she. Goddamn bitch, leaving Zee in the lurch, doesn’t even care who murdered Jeremy, doesn’t want to be involved, never wants to get involved, a sucker for a male sob-story.

  I ran around the block once and then up to the park. By the time I returned I had calmed down considerably.

  Penny had just finished sautéing the vegetables and was sitting down to eat in the kitchen. She looked rather forlorn, with her chopsticks, paper towel and glass of water. Her spiky hair looked droopy and a couple of tears were still on her cheek.

  “Sorry Sis,” I said, coming over to hug her.

  She held me tightly. “Me too.”

  But we didn’t talk about it. And that was a mistake.

  18

  AFTER DINNER I TOOK another shower and put on clean jeans, fresh socks and a tee-shirt that said “U.S. Out of Central America.” I re-braided my hair in a dissatisfied way, turning from side to side in front of the mirror. I couldn’t get the image of Zee’s face as she talked about the prostitutes and factory workers out of my mind. I felt large, white, overbearing. I wanted to hack off all my hair, start again, do something. I pulled my braid completely away from my face. Exposed, open—but not bad, not bad at all. I peered and preened until Jude banged on the bathroom door.

  “Hot date tonight, Pam?”

  Well, maybe.

  The softball game was between two women’s teams, each sponsored by a women’s business. Hadley’s team, as she’d told me, was the Heats; the opposing team was nicknamed Lesbian Lightning. It was a Friday night game at a small North End playing field, and the few rickety bleachers were packed with ardent women fans, shouting encouragement and giving advice before the game started.

  Hadley was instantly recognizable by her height; she stood in the midst of her team, giving them a last-minute pep talk, pushing her gray-blond hair back over her ears with rhythmic intensity and smiling her one-sided smile. Her turquoise eyes glittered even from this distance.

  The Heats suddenly split to all corners of the field, taking up their positions. Several of them looked familiar to me, and I recognized Margaret on third and Anna playing catcher. If they saw me in the crowd they gave no sign, but Hadley waved and smiled. Then she took her place on the pitcher’s mound.

  It came as no shock to me somehow that Hadley would be good, but I was surprised at the skill of both teams. The Lightnings weren’t slouches when it came to knocking back Hadley’s varied pitches. They got a woman on first right away; the next player did just as well. Hadley struck the third batter out, but the fourth had a bruiser of a swing and belted a low one out into right field. No outs on that one; bases were loaded.

  Hadley was putting a lot of concentration into her pitch; she lifted her shoulders, took a couple of steps back and forth, measuring the batter with narrowed eyes. Then she pitched a straight low one right over the plate. Strike. The batter looked more determined. The next pitch came a little higher, a little faster. The batter swung, missed. Strike. Hadley bent down, straightened up, stared concentratedly at the ball, and let fly.

  Crack. The ball arched up in a perfect half circle, a sure catch, but the batter and every woman on base got ready to peel out, just in case. A moment of suspended animation—and the outfielder missed it. Shouts, screams. The first batter made home, the second was rounding third and down the stretch for a slide when Anna caught the ball and tagged her out in a dusty flourish. Then, before any of the spectators could blink, the ball sped over to Margaret on third where she quickly caught a Lightning player sneaking on to base. Three out!

  The bleachers were palpitating with excitement and so was I. And this was just the first inning. I heard someone remark on the way the Heats had improved since Hadley started pitching; someone else was talking about the inspired combination of Margaret and Anna on third and home, wiping out all those runs.

  I saw that I would have to reconsider my suspicions of Margaret and Anna in the light of their softball skills. Could two great ballplayers be murderers, or even saboteurs? Well, it was always possible. They both had a tight-lipped concentration and a connection between themselves that verged on the obsessive. What if they really had believed themselves threatened by the merger, forced to combine with a straight collective against their will? Were they capable of such a strong grudge against Elena that they’d want to off her, believe that they were offing her? Or maybe they’d known it was Jeremy all the time, maybe they were just getting back at Best Printing because B. Violet had been wrecked. Maybe they hated men so much that….

  The Heats came up to bat. Hadley was nothing special—a little too loose-limbed maybe for the necessary speed. She hit a good one, but was later tagged out between second and third. The Lightning’s pitcher wasn’t much more than adequate, but the team had quick outfielders and worked well together.

  Once again, Margaret and Anna were the Heats’ stars. Anna especially was fast and daring. She was on first before the ball had barely zipped past the pitcher; she stole her way to second, then tore past third to home in the time it would take an ordinary woman to bump into the short stop. Margaret was almost as speedy, and she had a strong swing as well. She hit the home run of the game and nobody acted as if this were unusual.

  And if occasionally I thought of Zee in the sweltering attic while I sat outside in the warm summer evening, surrounded by women laughing and shouting and jumping up and down with excitement over the quintessential American game—it was less with guilt than with some renewed sense of hope. After this whole thing had been resolved, Zee and I would become friends. I’d find some way to help her, work with her, support her cause. It didn’t matter about Ray; thank god that stupid jealousy was finally over.

  The Heats won, 13 to 7.

  “Goddamn,” I said to Hadley as she pulled off her glove afterwards and rubbed her sweaty face with a towel. “You were great, you were just wonderful. How’d you get so good?”

  Hadley swung an arm around Margaret who was passing by. “Dunno. How’d we get so good, M.B.?”

  “This is the best we’ve ever played, I think,” said Margaret, smiling at me happily. “We were really hot tonight.”

  Anna came up, caught sight of
me and withdrew a little, but couldn’t keep it up. She was jigging in delight. “I’m so up. I’m not one bit tired. I gotta keep moving, keep going.”

  “Let’s go dancing,” Margaret suggested and with unforced courtesy turned to me. “Want to come, Pam? To Sappho’s or someplace?”

  Anna picked up from Margaret that something had changed in my relationship to Hadley, that maybe I wasn’t so straight as I looked. “Yeah,” she said, hardly missing a beat. “Let’s go dancing. Come on, you two.”

  Hadley paused a moment, looked at me and smiled. “Are you interested?”

  I said I could probably be talked into it.

  We went by Hadley’s first so she could get some fresh clothes and then stopped at Margaret and Anna’s so the three of them could shower. Margaret and Anna lived in a house with two other women and their two kids. I had some beer and played a game of checkers with one of the children and talked about the softball game with whichever one of the three didn’t happen to be in the bathroom. I still felt a little awkward with Margaret and Anna, but not much. They were really trying now to be friendly and to include me. At first it seemed for Hadley’s sake, but more and more it seemed for mine.

  About ten o’clock we turned up at that den of iniquity, Sappho’s—my first women’s bar. Actually, it wasn’t such a big deal after all. Dark and loud and full. I’d thought it would feel like an initiation into something subterranean and alluringly perverse, but it was pretty much like any other mixed bar, except that it wasn’t mixed.

  “You look a little disappointed.” Hadley smiled while pulling me out to the dance floor, leaving Margaret and Anna with a pitcher of beer and various acquaintances in a booth at the back.

  “Just that I don’t play pool.”

  “Don’t play pool, don’t play softball, how do you meet anyone?” she laughed, as we joined the others on the floor under the red and blue lights.

  The disco beat had turned into a slow Supremes.

  The big speech I’d intermittently been working up in my head—how I wasn’t a lesbian, but I was sort of interested, but I didn’t know, but I sort of wanted to find out, but I couldn’t be sure, but I really liked her, but maybe just as a friend—vanished at the touch of her hands at my back, at the feel of her hips against mine. She was tall enough so that her breasts fit neatly into the hollow of my neck. She smelled of some piney soap.

  “Oh, I, ah, meet them at meetings, murders, things like that.”

  Hadley laughed. She bent her head so that her breath touched my ear, but she didn’t say anything. My knees were going a bit weak. If Penny could see her twin now. What was happening to me? For a moment my mind spun with theories, fears, desires, then, like a washing machine at the end of its cycle, it rumbled to a comfortable stop. At the bottom of every theory was Hadley’s voice, touch, smell.

  “Oo-oo-oo, baby, baby…”

  It was the last slow one for a while. We danced hard and fast, smiling and making jokes, then went back and joined Margaret and Anna.

  The sympathy and warmth on Anna’s face as she looked from me to Hadley was almost funny. While I felt it wasn’t fair of her only to like me as a prospective lesbian, not as myself, I also found myself opening up to her and Margaret, feeling community, a desire to share my discovery, see that it was real.

  “You make quite a couple,” she said, as Hadley turned to talk with some friends. “You’re both good dancers, it’s fun to watch you together.”

  Margaret slid over, nodding in a friendly way. “Have you found out any more about Jeremy?”

  I returned abruptly to the present. “We’ll leave it to the cops. What about B. Violet?”

  “We were there this morning,” Anna said. “Still cleaning up. It’s almost a lost cause. I wish Fran would turn up so we could discuss what to do about the mess.”

  “You haven’t heard anything? Have you talked to Elena?”

  Margaret and Anna shook their fair heads, looked at each other. “You’ll probably think I’m off the wall,” Anna said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if Elena or Elena and Fran had something to do with the wrecking. Maybe even the murder.”

  Hadley turned around. “Let’s not start that again. Come on, get out there and dance. Anna, you said you wanted to dance and you’ve been sitting guzzling beer for an hour.”

  “Nag, nag, nag,” Anna said. “I just found out how tired I am, that’s all. It’s nice to sit.”

  “It’s the beer making you tired,” Hadley said. I noticed she’d hardly touched her glass.

  “Nah,” said Anna stubbornly. “I’m exhausted. I think I just want to go. Margaret?”

  “Me too.”

  “Want to stay a little longer, Pam?” Hadley asked.

  “Just a little. I know it’s Saturday tomorrow but I’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

  “Try another slow one,” Anna suggested with a wink, getting up.

  Hadley waved her off. When they were gone she asked me seriously, “Did they embarrass you?”

  “No. Well, maybe a little. I guess because it’s true.”

  “Shall we follow Anna’s advice then? It’s a slow one.”

  After the slow one there was another slow one and then another and by the fourth slow one I was practically a puddle on the floor.

  Then the series broke up in a blaze of disco and Hadley said, “Ready to go now?”

  “I want to come home with you,” I said unsteadily but bravely.

  “That’s what I want too.”

  I’d left my car at Margaret and Anna’s but decided to leave it until the next morning. In her truck Hadley and I raced up Capitol Hill. It was only when we were on her street, near Elena’s, that she spoke. I was so caught up in my fantasies and fears that at first I didn’t get it.

  She repeated herself. “That is Fran’s car. She’s back. And Elena’s light’s on.”

  From her tone I sensed that detective work had suddenly gotten the upper hand of romance. Well, I was interested in what Fran had been up to as well.

  “It’s after twelve,” I said. “But who knows how long Fran’s planning on sticking around. This may be our only chance.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” she said briskly.

  Love would have to wait a little.

  19

  AT FIRST I DIDN’T think Elena was going to open the door, even when she peeped through the tiny hole and saw it was Hadley and me.

  “It’s okay, Hadley,” she said through the scorched wood. “Everything’s okay now. Fran’s here and everything’s okay.”

  “I want to see her,” said Hadley.

  “Well, she’s asleep. She’s asleep and she’s exhausted.”

  “I don’t believe you, Elena. Come on, open up.”

  She opened up. Fran was sitting resignedly on the sofa, drinking a cup of coffee.

  “Hi, Had,” she said and nodded to me, “Pam.”

  She looked tired but relatively tranquil. Her black, white-streaked hair was smooth and her strong forehead gleamed like coated paper. Her eyes were a little bloodshot, but not much. She didn’t turn away from Hadley’s scrutiny. “Here you see me,” she shrugged. “Back in the land of the living.”

  “Not everyone is, anymore,” I put in. “Jeremy, for instance.”

  Hadley said, “Would you mind telling us where you’ve been all this time and what you know about what’s been going on?”

  The gentleness and intimacy of her tone took me aback; what a way to question our star witness. Elena, who’d been fidgeting over to one side, broke in.

  “Can’t it wait, Hadley? Fran has been through a lot. We’ve spent the last two hours just getting things straight between us. Why do we have to talk about Jeremy and the rest of it now?”

  I thought Elena looked worse than Fran, like she was the one who’d been out on a binge. Fran just appeared tired, but Elena was strung out like a nervous cat. Her hair was still greasy and a muscle moved in her slender cheek. There was a slightly rank smell to her, as of too many sup
pressed feelings. Emotions, like the garbage, should be taken out and dumped once in a while.

  I would have given in, gone home, but Hadley was implacable, in spite of her gentleness.

  “You can go to bed anytime, Elena. It’s Fran’s story I’m interested in.”

  Elena didn’t budge, but shot Hadley a look of despair and dislike that astonished me. I’d thought they were friends; what was all this about?

  But Fran was speaking, in deep, measured tones, as if her speech were rehearsed. “I know I’ve put you through a lot, all of you. I can’t really say what started it. I remember just feeling angry, at you, Pam, and at Elena, in the Bar & Grill. I get into these things, these drinking things, with the excuse that I’m allowing myself to feel, allowing myself to get in contact with how I really am, bad and strong and not afraid. And I want to lash out.” Fran’s deep voice had gotten flat now, almost expressionless. “There’s a fatalism to it, as if something builds up and then just has to work its way out. I feel it, I don’t understand it. And lately, you know, of course, it’s been getting out of control. It’s scared me to face giving it up though. It’s been the only way I’ve known of getting rid of myself for a while. That’s the hardest thing, knowing that without drinking I’d have to be myself all the time.”

  Elena made an agonized gesture towards her, but Fran brushed it away. “One thing I did today was call AA. The woman I talked to, she really helped me. I’ve been there, she said, and I knew she had. So I guess I’m going there tomorrow, maybe every day for a while, see if I can stop…I am going to stop, I’m going to.” She looked around at us wryly, as if she were standing on the other side of a river and looking back. “I’m not asking for congratulations, you know. It’s a hard thing to admit you’re an alcoholic, like publicly saying you’re a failure, you have no control. I wouldn’t do it if I weren’t so scared.” She laughed briefly and smiled at Hadley. “We both have drunks for fathers, Had. How come you didn’t turn into one too?”