“Twenty-nine.”
“A baby,” she said, almost angrily. “Julian Greer was already dead by the time I was twenty-nine, and I was looking for a new job. I was looking for a new husband, too, because the first one had pushed me down the stairs one too many times.” She gestured at me with the lit end of her cigarette to make her point. “Record that, why don’t you?”
This was going to be a fun ten minutes, I could tell. “I want to ask you about Julian,” I said.
“Such a nice man. Handsome, too.” Sylvia took another drag on her cigarette and shook her head. “I worked for him for four years. I saw everything—everything. You’re lucky, because you’re talking to the only person who knew what was really going on. Even those police who came to me after Mr. Greer died didn’t know their asses from a hole in the wall, and they didn’t bother to ask. Because who cares what the secretary knows, right? Well, let me tell you, we know everything. So listen up, Miss Twenty-Nine.”
“My name is Shea,” I said.
“Are you going to listen, or are you going to talk?”
I sighed. “Listen. I’m going to listen.”
“Good. The first thing you need to know is that nothing was Mr. Greer’s fault. It was all because of that woman he married.”
I blinked. “Mariana Greer?”
“She was the worst thing that ever happened to him. Everyone knew it. Sure, she had money, and I suppose she was beautiful, but she didn’t have class. He used to come to work exhausted because they’d had a fight and he didn’t get any sleep. I’d put calls through from her, and she would be in tears, yelling at him about something. At work. It was a damned disgrace.”
I watched her. Beneath her gruff exterior, Sylvia was lit up and righteous. This was her cause, the thing she’d waited decades to talk about. I decided to play into it.
“What was the wife’s problem?” I said.
It was exactly the right question. Sylvia glanced at me and took another drag of her cigarette, drawing out the drama. When she spoke, she relished the words. “Oh, she had problems, all right. When Mrs. Greer’s mother died, she didn’t leave her fortune to her daughter. She left it to Mr. Greer, her daughter’s husband. What does that tell you?”
To me it sounded sad, but I kept my face blank with confusion. Sylvia scoffed at me and tapped her temple with her fingertip.
“Mariana Greer was crazy?” I asked.
“Why else would her own mother leave her inheritance to her husband instead of her? She wasn’t competent. Mr. Greer had a file of papers the mother had left to him. I didn’t see all of it, but some of the papers had to do with his wife being sent away somewhere when she was eighteen.” Sylvia made air quotes with her fingers at the words “sent away somewhere,” her cigarette waggling in the air. “He didn’t know about that before the wedding—I can guarantee it. It was only after they were married and her mother died that he learned his wife had been a mental patient. A damned mental patient—can you imagine? I felt sorry for that man.”
I itched to go home to my laptop, or to call Michael. I’d never seen evidence that Mariana Greer had been mentally ill. “What happened to those papers?” I asked.
“Mr. Greer got rid of them sometime before he died. Burned them probably. The shame.”
“What about the daughter? Did you ever meet her?”
“No. But we all know what happened with her, don’t we?” Sylvia said smugly. “And we all know why.”
“You think she committed those murders.”
Sylvia stubbed out her cigarette in the plastic ashtray on the table. “With bad blood like hers, who else do you think did it? Santa Claus?”
I couldn’t say why she made me angry exactly. Certainly, I was no defender of Beth, and Beth didn’t need or want my help. For all I knew, Sylvia Simpson was absolutely right.
Still, I said, “You went through his papers, didn’t you? Julian Greer’s private file from his mother-in-law. He never showed that to you. You snooped.”
Sylvia didn’t even blink. “And you should thank me for it, because now you know the truth.” Her voice was calm, but her cheeks were flushed and the chair made a loud noise as she pushed it back. “I know I’m an old battle-axe, but I was a good secretary to Mr. Greer. They say his own daughter shot him in cold blood. She’s just as crazy as her mother was. She should have gotten the death penalty as far as I’m concerned. Now I’m going back to work.”
“Which mental hospital was it?” I called to her retreating back as I stood. “I’d like to go through the records.”
Sylvia was done with me, but she couldn’t resist one parting shot. “Do you think her rich family would send her to one of the public ones?” she said scornfully over her shoulder. “Of course they didn’t. It was a private place. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was on Linwood Street. I don’t know why she matters, but good luck.”
Fifteen minutes later, I was back behind the reception desk at work, feeling strangely exhausted. Sylvia’s grievances, held for decade after decade, were heavy. I couldn’t imagine carrying that weight all the time.
Still, when no one was looking, I took a second to pull out my phone and text Michael: I’m going to need some help pulling property records for Linwood Street. Specifically from the 1950s.
This was my only bit of luck: Linwood Street was one of the now-gentrified streets downtown, and it wasn’t very long. It definitely didn’t have a hospital building on it. My recall of it was that it was mostly stately homes. One of those homes might, in the fifties, have been the discreet kind of place where a rich family could send their teenage daughter to have a mental breakdown.
I don’t know why she matters, Sylvia had said.
I didn’t, either. I wasn’t sure why I was doing this. It was some kind of instinct. Beth’s father had been murdered by the Lady Killer; Beth’s mother was possibly mentally ill. All of this was part of the woman who fascinated me, the woman who—I could admit it—scared me, not least because some cold part of me actually liked her. What that said about me, I didn’t even want to think about.
* * *
—
I split the property records on Linwood Street with Michael—he took half and I took half. I spent most of that evening sorting through online records while lying in bed with my laptop, Winston by my side. By one in the morning, I hadn’t found what I wanted and my eyes could barely focus, but I wasn’t ready to sleep.
I clicked open the digital file I had of the 1981 TV movie made about the Lady Killer case. It was called Deadly Woman, and I watched Jaclyn Smith, as Beth, face off against a soap actor who looked at least forty-five and was supposed to be playing Detective Black.
“I’m telling the truth,” Jaclyn said. Her hair had been dyed red for the role, and her eye makeup was frosty, her lashes clumped and dark.
“We’ll see about that, Beth,” the soap actor said as dramatic music soared behind his lines.
Jaclyn leaned forward, the camera going into dewy soft focus on her beautiful face, the music swelling higher. “You’ve got to believe me!” she cried. She was wearing a cream blouse with ruffles at the neck and the cuffs; red blush had been dabbed on her cheekbones. Her voice went up a notch as she shouted: “You’ve just got to!”
“Listen, Beth,” said the soap actor. “I’d like to believe you, but nothing you say adds up. You wrote those notes. You know you did. You’re lying so much you don’t even know what’s the truth anymore. But I do. And the truth is, you shot those men!”