The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

“You know architecture?” Bruno asked.

“Why is it,” Davis asked, “that people think a girl sitting around a deserted bar all day is less likely to be well-read?”

“It’s completely restored,” Jeffers said, with what would have passed for pride among the very dim. “The staircases, the banisters, the window dressings, the whole bit. I paid a flouncy faggot to track down as much of the pricey crap as he could dig up. Two benches in the front hall. The dining table and twelve chairs. You know, black and square — all that German minimal stuff he did. Nathalie was crazy about it. She said it calmed her down — no. What was the word? Whittled her down. The whole place was whittled down. The living room had one couch and a mirror balanced in the corner. The bedroom had just two huge black bureaus with square drawers. My study had one of Wesson’s only rugs, a big black thing with one gray stripe, and a chandelier from his personal collection, all spidery on the ceiling. And a desk that looked like a fucking altar. It was enormous. It cost everything. But I bought it to show her I cared.”

“The study,” Davis said, “where you last saw her?”

“We were fighting,” Callahan Jeffers said.

“What else is new?” Bruno Said.

“She got home late,” Jeffers said. “I don’t know how it started. Bruno and I went to the fights. She’d never do that with me. We got home around ten but she still wasn’t home. An hour later she walks in with Timothy Speed.”

“The designer,” Davis said.

“The fag,” Callahan Jeffers said. He put one fist down, ven gently, on the bar, like a man showing his gun. “The fag I paid a fortune to spend my fortune on furniture to whittle down my wife. I threw him out.”

“Mr. Jeffers’d had a drink or two,” Bruno said with a very small shrug.

“She yelled at me, I yelled at her, she pushed me around a little...” Callahan stopped talking. “I know what you’re going to say. I shouldn’t hit women.”

“You shouldn’t hit women,” Davis said.

“I know that,” Jeffers said. “But it was fighting. It was a fight. We were always getting worse. She thought I was catting around, which I was a little. But she drove me there! As soon as I married her she went a little crazy.”

“She couldn’t take it, with the swells,” Bruno said. “A circus performer, Mr. Jeffers. She was climbing the walls because she climbed walls for a living. You can’t dress that up.”

“She dressed up fine,” Jeffers said, “but nothing made her happy. I couldn’t take it forever, you know? You want to make someone happy, but if the first fucking fifteen thousand tries don’t do it, you get tired of an unhappy person and her yelling.”

“So she locked herself in the Study,” Bruno said. “It locks from the inside. She wouldn’t come out.”

“What did you do?” Davis asked.

Callahan Jeffers looked at her like a horse I saw once. Some kids were making fun of it. The horse’s eyes said, Someday I will not be pulling this flatbed hayride. I will come to your room when you are sleeping and I will stomp on you, you damn kids. The rich man lifted both fists and pounded in slow, heavy beats. Everybody’s drinks bounced. “Come out!” he yelled. “Come out! Come out! Come out! Come out!”

He stopped and sat down. The jukebox finished a song — “And here I am, facing tomorrow, alone in my sorrow, down in the depths of the ninetieth floor” — and stopped, out of money, like much of this town. The guy and his girl shared one quick glance and skedaddled. When the door swung open and shut it was much darker outside. For a moment I couldn’t remember anything I’d done before Callahan Jeffers entered the Slow Night and started yelling. The rich man, once an eligible bachelor and probably one again, drew a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face. I took a sip, mostly melted ice.

“It’s true,” Bruno muttered. “That’s what he did.”

“She didn’t come out,” Jeffers said. “We waited all night, Bruno and I.”

“Bruno and You,” Davis said. “Where did you wait?”

“Outside,” Jeffers said. “Just outside that locked door. There’s a little space with two chairs that hurt to sit in. We sat in them.”

“Could you hear anything?”

“She made a crying phone call,” Jeffers said. “It was Timothy Speed. He told me. I practically had to beat it out of him. he said she called and went through the whole blow by blow, and cried. She said I was going to kill her. That’s what he told the police. He Said She Said. Why they would believe that of me—”

“You, a known drunk who beats people up,” Davis said.

“I didn’t kill her!” Jeffers said. “She cried to the fag and she hung up. She hung up and ordered a drink.”

“What?” Davis asked.

“She said she wanted a drink,” Jeffers said. “A Delmonico. She always liked the fancy things. When I met her she was asking for a Singapore Sling.”

“Gin again,” Davis said. “Gin, cherry brandy, bitters, lime, ginger beer. There are some who say you can’t trust a gin woman. How did you make her a Delmonico if you didn’t know what it was?”