“I ain’t forgotten.”
“Damn it, Imelda, those people, they make me uncomfortable.”
“What people? You mean Allie and Maria?” she innocently replied.
“Yeah, them two,” I said. “Haven’t you noticed anything odd about them? I mean, real odd.”
“You mean, they’re lawyers? So what? Ask me, all lawyers are stone-cold weird.”
“Let me give you a little hint. When you were a kid, didn’t your mother ever have one of those awkward chats with you? That birds-and-bees thing? Haven’t you noticed those two have their stingers on backwards?”
“Oh.” She stopped, adjusted her glasses on her nose, and gave me a discerning look. “You mean, ’cause they’re lesbians?”
“Damned right. That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Hmmph,” she said, shaking her head like this was really ridiculous. “I got no problem with that.”
“You don’t?”
“Hell, the Army always had plenty of lesbians.”
“And you got no problem with that?”
“Any reason I should? They do their jobs, let well enough be.”
I was getting exasperated. “Don’t try telling me Allie and Maria don’t give you the heebie-jeebies. Christ, the big one makes paint flake off the walls. The other one glooms up a room faster than anybody I ever met.”
She stopped in midstride. “You know your problem?”
“I didn’t think I had a problem.”
“Oh, you got a problem, all right. You’re a White man.”
I very calmly said, “Imelda, it’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Hell it don’t. You ain’t never been on the spiky end of prejudice.”
“Let me quote the illustrious Colin Powell. ‘Skin color is a physical quality; homosexuality is a behavioral quality.’ He’s a Black man, if I remember correctly. He’s not comfortable with gays.”
“Ain’t no rule says only White people can be irrational. Maybe it’s a man thing,” Imelda retorted.
“You can’t have it both ways,” I shot right back. “First you claim it’s only White males. Now it’s a man thing.”
Her eyes got narrow and squinty, and she cocked her head to the side. Philosophical debates aren’t a real good idea with Imelda. Debates in general aren’t a good idea with Imelda. Not if you like walking on two unbroken legs.
She said, “Let me ask you something.”
“What?”
“You ever seen me with a man?”
“Huh?”
“A man. One of them things with a poker and two balls between its legs.”
“I know what the hell men are. Of course I’ve seen you with men,” I stiffly replied.
“No, you ever seen me with one?”
“I, uh… no. So what?”
“You ever get to thinking about that? Never wonder that ol’ Imelda’s forty-nine years old and don’t have no man around?”
“What are you telling me?” I choked out. I mean, I thought I suspected, but it couldn’t be. Not Imelda Pepperfield. Not my trusted right hand… my able assistant… my girl Thursday… or Friday, or whatever.
“You can’t ask, and I don’t have to tell. That’s the rule, ain’t it?” she smugly replied.
“Oh my God,” I groaned, suddenly confronting the inevitable truth. Okay, I’d never seen her with a man, but I’d never attached any seamy misgivings to it. I always thought she was such a dedicated professional that she was like, well, married to the Army. Or she was such a headstrong, resolute woman that she couldn’t find a man who wasn’t intimidated by her.
Without another word on the subject, she abruptly started walking again. I hurried to catch up. “Hey, wait.”
She looked coldly over her shoulder. “I got nothing more to say,” she frigidly announced.
“No, I, uh, hold on, damn it.”
She stopped and turned toward me. “What?”
“I need to ask you something,” I haltingly said, unable to come to terms with what she’d just told me.
She fluttered her lips and rolled her eyes, and, knowing her like I did, I recognized the look. I’d better get over this fast or she’d pop me in the nose.
“Do you think Whitehall did it?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe’s equivocal.”
“Maybe,” she mysteriously reiterated.
“Why maybe?”
“Maybe, because Whitehall, he seems like a smart boy. And boys that smart don’t screw up so bad they seem completely guilty. A boy that smart would figure some way to inject some doubt.”
I hadn’t considered it that way before, but like most things Imelda says, it made stunningly good sense. Here’s a guy who graduated at the top of his class at West Point. And he had ample opportunity the morning of the murder to contrive something. Maybe he couldn’t have erased every doubt, but he could’ve muddied the waters and blurred the lines. He hadn’t, though. He’d lain on his sleeping mat beside a corpse until Moran discovered him. Then he’d made a sloppy, halfhearted attempt to get Moran and Jackson to tell a few tiny falsehoods. But the truth was he’d left every arrow pointing directly at himself. You might conclude he was overcome by the pressure, but that didn’t fit, either. He was a champion boxer. He had the composure to get out of tight corners when fists were flying.
“Think he was framed?”
“How should I know?” Imelda asked, clearly peeved about my little gay prejudice thing.
I gripped her arm. Looking into her eyes, I said, “Stop this. I need your help.”
She stared down at my hand, and I politely disengaged it before Imelda kneed me in the groin, or bit me, or just bored a hole through my forehead with her sulfurous eyes. If I haven’t mentioned it before, Imelda can be mean as hell when you get her dander up. Sometimes you don’t even need to get her dander up. Sometimes she bites your ass off just for sport.
She drew her chest up and asked, “What’s this, now? You don’t got no problem askin’ help from a lesbian?”
“Damn it, Imelda, even if you are gay, you’re not really gay.”
“Huh?”
“Like Rock Hudson,” I said, grinning stupidly.
She shook her head as though that was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. Then she got a resigned look on her face, like it didn’t matter if I was a complete dolt, maybe she could manage to fit a small-mercy favor into her very busy schedule.
“What help you need?”
I rapidly explained everything, from Katherine’s unexpected request for my services, all the way through the bugs in my room. She patiently clucked and gurgled in the appropriate places, but didn’t seem the least bit fazed or disturbed. Imelda was like that, though – as unflappable as a lead pancake.
“So what do you need from me?” she asked once I’d finally concluded.
“I need you to get all our rooms and the office swept every day. And I need to know who Keith Merritt is. What was he doing here?”
“Some reason you can’t just ask Miss Carlson?”
“I have. She lied.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Come on, Imelda. You see my problem, right? Katherine’s up to something. That bit – Well, she’s always up to something. And Merritt was probably in the middle of it. People don’t get tossed in front of moving cars just for kicks.”
“You got a problem with her, too? With Miss Carlson?”
“I’ve always had a problem with her. You don’t know her like I do. Trust me on this. You never met anybody more manipulative, treacherous, and deceptive. Don’t fall for her act.”
“I like her,” Imelda said, confirming that she was already dancing around inside the spider’s web. “I won’t do nothing to hurt her.”
“Who said anything about hurting her? Trust me on this, she’s up to something.”
“Okay,” she said, then scooted away, like there was nothing more to be discussed.
“Thank you,” I called after her.
She left me standing alone on the hot sidewalk, feeling somehow like we’d just crossed a Rubicon, or whatever you call it when two formerly close people take a gigantic step back from each other.
Imelda Pepperfield, gay? I was going to have great trouble adjusting to this. After eight years together, too. I suddenly knew how Ernie Walters felt when he found out about Whitehall.