B Is for Burglar

she was an alcoholic. He'd told me she went off on three-day toots. He'd told me she attacked him with a pair of scissors and had possibly murdered her sister in revenge for an affair he was having with her. Now here she sat, sobbing her tiny heart out, claiming that he was the perpetrator of this weird pathological stuff. Which of them was I to believe? She composed herself, giving her nose the old silent squeeze. She looked at me, the whites of her eyes now tinted with pink.
    "Didn't he tell you something like that?" she asked.
    "I think he was just concerned about Elaine," I said, trying to hedge until I could decide what to do. "We really didn't discuss anything personal so don't worry about that. How did you find out he'd been up here?"
    "Something came up in conversation," she said. "I don't even remember what. That's how he handles these things. He gives me these clues. He leaves the evidence around and waits for me to discover it. And if I don't stumble across it accidentally, he points me right to it and then sits back and pretends to be contrite and amazed."
    I was just about to say, "Like his affair with Elaine," but it suddenly occurred to me that it might not even be true, or if true, that she might not actually know about it. "Like what, for example?" I said.
    "He had an affair with Elaine. He was fucking around with my only sister. God, I can't believe he did that to me. I didn't doubt she'd do it. She was always jealous. She'd take anything she could. But him. I felt like such a fool. He was off balling her the minute Max died and I was such a dunce I didn't figure it out for years! It took me years."
    She did one of those bubbling laughs, filled more with hysteria than mirth. "Poor Aubrey. He must have been at his wit's end trying to get me to pick up on that. He finally cooked up this absurd tale about the IRS auditing his taxes. I told him the accountant could take care of it, but he said Harvey wanted us to go through the canceled checks and credit-card receipts. So like a dodo I did it and there it was."
    "Why don't you leave?" I asked. "I don't understand why you stay in a relationship like that." I always say the same thing. Every time I hear a tale like this. Drunkenness, beatings, infidelity, and verbal abuse. I just don't get it. Why do people put up with it? I had said it to Aubrey so I figured I might as well say it to her too. The marriage was a mess and regardless of where the truth lay, these two people were miserable. Was misery the point?
    "Oh, I don't know. Part of it's the money, I guess." she said.
    "Screw the money. This is a community-property state."
    "That's what I mean," she said. "He'll walk away with half of everything I have and it just seems so unfair."
    I looked at her blankly. "The money's yours?"
    "Well of course it's mine, " she said, and then her expression changed. "He told you it was his, didn't he?"
    I shrugged uncomfortably. "More or less. He told me he put together real-estate syndicates."
    She was startled for an instant and then she laughed.
    She started to cough, patting her chest. She stubbed out her cigarette, pecking it in the bottom of the ashtray. Smoke was streaming out of her nostrils as though her brain had caught fire. She was shaking her head, smile fading. "Sorry, but that's a new one on me. I should have guessed. What else did he say?"
    I held a hand up in protest. "Hey," I said. "Enough. I don't want to play this game. I don't know what your problems are and I don't care..."
    "You're right, you're right. God, we must seem like lunatics to you. I'm sorry you got sucked in. It's not your concern. It's mine. How much do I owe you for your time?" She was rooting through her handbag for her checkbook and her famous rosewood pen-and-pencil set.
    I could feel my temper on the rise again.
    "I don't want any money from you. Don't be absurd. Why don't you give me some straight answers for a change?"
    She blinked at me, the china blue eyes glazing over like ice on a pond. "About what?"
    "Elaine's neighbor claims you were up here at Christmas and the two of you had a big fight. You told me you hadn't seen her for years. Now which is it?"
    She stalled, reaching for another cigarette so she'd have time to frame a reply.
    I headed her off. "Come on, Beverly. Just tell me the truth. Were you up here or not?"
    She took out a packet of matches and removed a match, scratching it repeatedly across the packet without effect. She tossed that one, a dud apparently, into