Wallflower

'Have you met Bev, Lieutenant?'

Janek nodded. 'I interviewed her a couple of times.'

'How did she strike you?'

'Unhappy, plain, asexual-pretty much the way you just described.'

'Well, you may find this hard to believe,' Millie said, 'but she was quite handsome as a girl. Still, I bet it's been twenty years since she's had a date. See, the more time she spent with Mama, the fatter and plainer she got. Then, when she dyed her hair red, it came out blah rather than glossy like Mama's. When they'd stand together near the end of Mama's life, they looked more like sisters than even Bev and me. Mama had had her face lifted several times, and Bev had really let herself go. Beautiful Vicky and drab Bev-the Archer girls. God!' Millie believed that even though Bev worshiped their mother, she at times also hated her for imposing the awful contract. But every time Bev tried to break away, Victoria would pull her back.

'Can you imagine?' Millie asked. 'Can you imagine how wasteful and stupid it is to allow your mother to rule your life?'

It was a rhetorical question, Janek realized; he made no effort to respond to it.

'I think that was Bev's tragedy,' Millie said, 'that she had a chance to live for herself, and in the end she wasted it.'

Their father, Jack Archer, had been a distant figure. He and Victoria had married young and split up early, just after Millie was born. Jack, an engineer, had moved to Chicago, remanied, and started a second family. The girls had had very little contact with him, though Victoria had received substantial child support. Both girls were bright and had no trouble getting into Ashley-Bumett.

Meantime, Victoria launched her career as a singer. Her success was instantaneous.

'Mama had an excellent voice. She was an accomplished singer. But there's plenty of good singers around. What Mama had that was extra was her incredible style. She could take a standard, a song everyone knew, and dramatize it, make it passionate. She knew how to reach people, put a song across. The glamorous nightclub singer-that was her public face. But there was so much more to her than what she showed her fans. Behind all the beauty and glamour there was one very hard-boiled lady. She was a great injustice collector, you know.

Cross her and she'd never forgive. She had a kind of personal code, the gist of which went something like: If someone wrongs you, don't ever forget it. Nurse your anger and your hurt until it turns to bitterness and hate. But (and this was probably her most important tenet) never, never let your hatred show.'

Millie sat back on the couch, her arms hanging limply. She had expended great energy describing her sister and mother; now she seemed exhausted.

Janek decided it was time to focus the interview. 'Could Bev have inherited your mother's code?'

'Possibly.' Millie smiled. 'Oh, hell! I've told you this much. Why not the rest? Sure, she inherited it. Mama taught it to her. It became her code, too, for God's sakes.'

In the last few years of her life Victoria started going mad. At least Millie thought she did. Beverly did not agree. For all her sister's background in psychology, her training and experience as a therapist, she refused to see what was obvious to all Victoria's friends-namely, that the singer was being eaten up by her hate.

'Eight years ago, when Mama died suddenly of a stroke, she was only fifty-five years old. But in the last five years of her life she carried on sometimes like a lunatic. At the lounge she'd be fine, her glamorous self. But in the afternoons before work she'd lie out on the chaise in her living room at the Alhambra Hotel, ranting and raving at the world. Out of nowhere she'd bring up someone's name, an old ]over maybe or someone else she thought had done her wrong. Then she'd start in.

Curses, pronouncements, spiteful value judgments. 'He's a pfick.'

'She's a shit.' That kind of vulgar talk. And when she said something like that, it was usually about someone who really hadn't done anything particularly wrong. A man might have forgotten to send flowers, or one of her girlfriends might have forgotten to return a call. Trivial offenses to which she had these ludicrous reactions.

It was truly awful to listen to. Meantime, there was Bev flying in from New York practically every weekend, rushing over to Mama's, listening to all her garbage, taking it all in, nodding her agreement.

Sometimes Bev would stop by to see me afterwards. 'Isn't Mama wonderful!' she'd say. 'Aren't we lucky to have such a talented and brilliant ma!' God! The sick way she worshiped that woman, the weird way they fed off each other's madness.' Millie peered straight into Janek's eyes. 'I guess by now you know that's what I think: that Bev got as crazy as Mama in the end…

The time had come, Janek thought, to put some tough questions to Millie.

'Did your sister ever have a run-in with a teacher at Ashley-Bumett?'

Millie smiled. 'Sure. An old spinster English teacher. She was my teacher, too.'

'Bertha Parce?' Aaron asked.

Millie nodded. 'I'm amazed you know her name.'

'What about two men named MacDonald-did she ever have any trouble with them?' 'Jimmy and Stu MacDonald? You call them men! they were just boys when I knew them. I think they moved east. That's what I heard anvwav.' 'What happened?' 'God oniv kno%,t-s. lt'*'hate%@er it was. Bev v%-as sensitive about it. Whenever their names came up, she'd start to act real antsy, then try and change the subject.'

'Cynthia Morse?'

'Her roommate at Bennington. Yeah, they had a big falling-out. But I don't understand- Lieutenant.' Millie smiled curiously. 'How do you know about all of these people?'

'Let's hold off on that for now. I want to ask you about some others.' Millie nodded. 'Do the names Laura and Anthony Scotto fing a bell?' 'I don't think so. No.'

Janek glanced at Aaron. 'What about Wexler-Carla and Robert Wexler?'

Millie shook her head. Then she stopped shaking it. 'Wait a minute!

There was a Bobby Wexler.'

Aaron smiled slightly. 'Who was he?'

'A musician. Mama's accompanist one summer. There were so many of those guys. She went through them pretty fast. But I remember Bobby. It was the summer Mama sang at Cavendish. He was practically a kid. Actually I think he and Mama were involved. She usually screwed her piano players. That's probably why she tired of them so fast. '

'Do you think you'd recognize this Bobby Wexler if you saw him again?'

'I might,' Millie said.

Aaron showed her a photograph of the Wexler fwnily taken several months before they were slaughtered. Millie studied it. 'Yeah, that's him,' she said. 'It's been years, but the smile's the same, the old lecherous smile.' She looked up at Janek. 'Yeah, it's him, I'm sure. Now are you going to tell me what this is all about?'

'While you're at it, show her the picture of the Scottos,' Janek gently instructed Aaron.

Aaron showed Millie the picture. they both watched as she studied it. 'I may have seen the woman,' Millie said. 'What's her first name again?' :,Laura.' 'And she was married to this guy?' Aaron nodded. 'Do you know her maiden name?'

Aaron checked his notebook. 'Laura Gabelli.'

Millie nodded. 'I may have seen her. Around Tufts University, I think. Bev transferred there from Bennington. Did you know about that?' they didn't know. Millie filled them in. It was after the big falling-out with Cynthia Morse. Bev took a year off, came back to Cleveland, took a job as an aide at a psychiatric hospital, then for the next two years attended Tufts, where she majored in psychology. After that she moved back to Cleveland to et her doctorate at Western Reserve.

'Do you know of any falling-out she might have had with this Laura Gabelli?' Aaron asked.

'No. But it wouldn't surprise me. Just like Mama, Bev had fallings-out with damn near everyone.' Millie paused. 'Look, guys-all these questions about the two of them, then all these old names of people Bev didn't like. You're scaring me a little bit. I think the time's come for you to explain.'

She looked to Janek, then to Aaron, and then back to Janek again. There was something so open and vulnerable about her that Janek was hesitant to fill her in. But he knew he had to. He owed her that, and he could see that she was the kind of person who'd rather know the truth, no matter how harsh, then be lied to or kept in the dark.

'Bertha Parce, the MacDonalds, Cynthia Morse an her two daughters, the Wexler family, and the Scotto family all had one thing in commofi,' he said. 'they all were murdered within the past fourteen months by a woman