Death at Dawn

by Arthur Day

Lowell stuck his head into the room. “Maybe tomorrow would be better,” he said, and I agreed.

  Worth’s head snapped back up as if he was a marionette and had been waiting for his aide to say something. “We finish this here and now.” He coughed, a liquid sound from his lungs. “Who knows,” he gasped. “Who knows if I will even be alive tomorrow?” He looked at me with an intensity that I had not seen before. I sat quietly while Taneesha placed another drink on my little table. I thanked her and asked if I could talk with her before I left. She smiled and nodded before walking back into the bowels of the huge house.

  Lowell brought Worth a glass of water. He took a sip and started. “As with all families the two sides of mine grew up differently. Both sides of the family had a money gene, if you will. Samuel Pease took the money Jacob left him and increased it. My mother married my father because, I think, he was a successful businessman who fell in love with her when she was his secretary. Way back then I think someone came into her life, swept her off her feet, took her money and promptly lost it. She never talked about it, but I am sure she was tired of being poor and Dad offered a way out. Aside from money, though, I always thought that Pam’s father was a pedophile and, though I can’t prove it, I think that he screwed my retarded daughter who less than a year later committed suicide. It turned out she was pregnant. That, however, is neither here nor there. I do digress, but I thought you should know a little of the family background if Pam never told you. She may not have known. She played her cards close to her chest, so she may not have done so”.

  “She was helping me into my clothes one morning and seemed in a good mood. She had a nice voice and was humming softly to herself as she slipped my pants onto my legs and then brought me up from the bed to pull them up. “You like your place up in Compton?” I started as I stood using my walker and she helped me get my shirt buttoned.

  “Sure do. It’s beautiful up there.” She came around to my front and finished the buttons.

  “Ever think of selling it?” I asked.

  “No. Never occurred to me. Why do you ask?”

  “The taxes are ridiculous.”

  “Agreed but so far I’ve paid those crooks their blood money.” Pam walked behind me with a body belt around my middle in case I fainted or lost my balance.

  “Would you consider selling it to me? I would meet the asking price set by your real estate agent, maybe even a bit more.” I turned my head to look back at her. Pam had lost her smile; her face was set into sterner lines.

  “Why on earth would I do that? I love Compton and I can pay for it. I have no need for more money.”

  This was not going well. She helped me settle into my chair and I looked up at her. “You have no kids. You are divorced. Who would you leave it to?”

  “How about the land conservation trust people?”

  “You would leave them that property?” I was horrified. I had so many memories of that place I could not conceive of strangers walking over it and putting up little signs and using the house as a museum.”

  She shrugged and that really pissed me off. “Why not? As you’ve noted there is no one I would leave it to except maybe my ex-husband.”

  I was livid. I could not understand why she wanted to keep her property under the circumstances. I would have paid her a fortune and all she could do was shrug? It was maddening but even in the midst of my anger I realized that nothing would be gained by arguing with her. That would only harden her position. I forced myself to stay calm. “Give it some thought Pam. There is no need to decide now. We can talk some more later.”

  Pam walked behind me, pushed me forward slightly, and adjusted the pillow on my back. “Talk about anything you want to cousin,” she said, “but I am not selling that house to you or anyone else.” She flounced out of the room, all temper and righteous indignation.

  I tried a couple of times after that to bring up the subject. She refused to talk about it. Finally, I had enough and lost control. I called her a greedy bitch and she called me a nasty old fart who should do the world a favor by dying immediately if not sooner and she was not going to spend anymore of her time listening to me ranting about Lake Compton and she would be leaving as soon as the service supplied a new aide.

  Worth had finished. “There you have it,” he told me.

  There I had it. Lowell tuned Worth’s chair and wheeled his charge back into the bedroom. I retraced my steps and got to the front door where I found Taneesha waiting for me. She looked a little depressed and I was not surprised because Andrew Worth during the few minutes I had been with him had shown himself to be a handful and was probably an out-and-out bastard when company was not present. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me,” I said.”

  Taneesha nodded but otherwise was as still as a piece of furniture. “Were you here when Pam Pease was here?”

  She nodded again and then seemed to relax a little. “She was a nice lady. Always treated everyone around her as if they were important to her and she cared for them. Everyone was upset when we read about her in the paper. I guess it’s true what they say that only the good die young.” She shook her head as if to acknowledge the basic uncertainty of life.

  “Did you know why she quit?”

  “Even in a house this size you can’t keep something like that a secret. Everyone knew what Mr. Worth wanted almost as soon as he asked her and knew her reply as well but most of us like the job and want to keep it so it never went any further than that. ‘least if it did I didn’t hear of it and that would be a good thing for that person if somebody had a flappy jaw. This house is like Vegas. What takes place here stays here.”

  Looking at the expression on her face, I had no reason to doubt what she said. “Anyway, it was just two honkies arguing over money, right?” I put it out there between us to see what would happen. I didn’t expect much of a response if any.

  “Mr. Worth is a very generous man,” Taneesha began. “I’ve been with him twenty years this winter. He pays me and everyone else that works in this house twice what they could earn elsewhere. He even set up a 401K program for those that have been here for six months, do their job and get a good report from me. I have a generous budget for food and everyone eats well. Sound ideal? Perhaps, in a way, it is so when he starts yelling and cussing he gets whatever he wants unless Lowell says it’s bad for him. I may not always agree with him. I don’t think he handled Mrs. McCaal right and told him so but he’d made up his mind and so I shut my mouth and carried on. Do we understand each other?”

  “We do,” I told her. I was coming to appreciate the iron in Worth’s housekeeper. “Whatever you tell me is strictly between us. I will not use it against Mr. Worth but only to find out who killed Mrs. McCaal. I take it that was the name she used?”

  “Yes. That was the name she put on her W4. Pam Pease McCaal. When I interviewed her for the position before passing her onto Mr. Worth, she admitted that you and she were divorced but that it was not a bitter one and that you and she had just grown apart and were looking for different things in life.” Taneesha took a step forward and stared up into my eyes. “She was a good woman, a strong person, and if it weren’t for the fact that Mr. Worth will never win an award for diplomacy she would still be here.”

  “What about his kids?”

  “HUH. Doug was here last year for about an hour, spoke with his dad and then left. This was after Pam had quit. Lowell thinks they talked about Pam, but he did not know exactly what they discussed. Mr. Worth told him to get lost and lock the door behind him so all he could hear was some mumbling.”

  “Was it usual to lock out his aide?”

  Taneesha smiled grimly. “Believe me, Mr. McCaal, if something didn’t please him he would bellow at the top of his lungs. Then he got sick, but I doubt he really cared who heard his conversations with the few visitors to the house. Mostly they were lawyers or doctors and he paid the lawyers I’m sure, a small fort
une to put up with his temper.”

  Interesting. So Worth had a private conversation with Doug and the conversation was one of the few that he wanted kept between him and his son. “Do you have an address for young master Worth?” I asked.

  “I have one where he said he was living a while back. Last known address I guess it’s called.” Taneesha walked over to an intricately carved dark wood chest in the hallway, pulled out a pad and a pencil from her suit pocket and wrote it down for me.

  “Thank you, Taneesha.”

  “I don’t know if Doug can help but whatever it takes find the human garbage that did this.” Taneesha turned and disappeared up the hallway.

  DOUG WORTH

  Shookies Bar and Grill was a dive. Its only saving grace was that it had not collapsed in on itself and killed a bunch of drunks. The grill part of the name was an awful joke. There was a grill there but unless you liked quarter pounders on stale buns there was no food available and Robbie the short order cook, often got drunk himself and failed to show up at all. The inside was one large room dark and stained by generations of smoke and grease. The bar occupied the entire right side with some small round tables on the left.

  The building had started out as the Nottingham House, a carriage house for gentle folk traveling between Rockmarsh and Massachusetts. The downstairs once had a bar and a restaurant that served plain but well-cooked meals. There were rooms upstairs where people could spend the night for a reasonable price. When the road changed from dirt to asphalt it also changed its course and became State Highway 11 because J-ville, as it was often called, had grown up about a quarter mile from the then old carriage house leaving it at the end of a dirt road on the outskirts of town. This spelled its doom and it would slowly decay through several different owners all of whom apparently hoped that J-ville would prosper and grow up around the house. At worst, the land would fetch a pretty penny.

  Aden Shookie had bought the place and decided that he could make money by turning it into a low-end bar for folks who didn’t have a lot of money or didn’t want anyone poking into their business. He fixed the leaking roof and, once or twice a year, just before inspection, he steam-cleaned the tiny room that was the kitchen with a grill, and icebox and a sink with an old sign reminding Robbie to wash his hands.

  Doug sat at the bar nursing an Adams ale and feeling very sorry for himself. He was alone there except for Julie, the barkeep who looked as if she had seen better days many years before and who talked in monosyllables when she talked at all. He had tried to engage her once. He had talked about himself, his most interesting subject, for a solid half hour laying out my life with many embellishments dealing with how unlucky he was with women and how he was sure he would meet the right one someday, but that day never seemed to come. He related the story of how he had met a nice lady and she had liked him as well. They had gone to dinner and then had a few drinks and the following morning he had woken up with a huge hangover. The lady and his wallet were missing. Julie had been at the other end of the bar by the time he’d finished. She’d looked at him, rubbed a dirty cloth around an even dirtier glass and said “So?”

  Doug had just enough self-honesty left to admit to the man staring back at him from the old mirror behind the bar that he was nothing like the image of himself in his mind. The man in the mirror looked fifty years old with salt and pepper whiskers and sagging jowls. His eyes were dull behind pouches of discolored flesh. The man in the mirror had to be in his sixties. Doug groaned and finished his beer. What was he doing here anyway? He’d promised himself that he would get into better shape, lose weight, cut back on the drinking. All the usual bullshit with which he got through the days. When was he going to end this harsh reality in which he was so comfortable? The man in the glass had no answer but the man sitting at the bar knew better. He had the answer, but it was humiliating and even painful physically and emotionally.

  “Ring me out Julie,” he said and put a ten on the bar. Julie came slowly along the bar, took the ten as if she were doing him a huge favor and put my change in front of him. “Don’t strain yourself,” he told her. Julie just looked at him and sneered.

  So much for an evening of partying with happy and interesting people who would enjoy seeing him and would listen with fascination as he talked about his life and times. He walked slowly back to his car where he sat staring out at the peeling side of the bar. It was strange but the part of his life that he liked the most and was proud of was a part that he considered private and nobody’s business.

  Pam McCaal or Pam Pease as he liked to think of her, was certainly one of those women who crossed to the other side of the street when they saw him coming, the kind that were certain that the lives they led were better and more productive than his and were certain in their moral and intellectual superiority. She had a presence about her, a stillness of body so that she always looked as if she were floating along, an intensity of spirit that attracted people to her and a gentleness of personality that made her friends wherever she went. Pam could enter a room full of strangers and be close friends with most of them inside a half hour. Doug had always admired that quality in his older cousin and, when he had been younger, had tried to emulate her with much different results.

  Sitting in his car outside Shookies he had to smile at the memory. He had been so gauche. Pam laughed at him and patronized the young man who kept hanging around every summer trying to show that he too could handle anything that came up with grace and dignity. He started his car and drove slowly back towards the lake remembering only a couple of months before, April to be exact, when he had been about as down as a person can be.

  He had woken up in yet another motel room with the TV on where a young woman was cheerfully reading the morning depression session. The drapes were pulled and that was good because his head felt as though it was about to explode, and he quickly closed my eyes and sank back into the bed with a groan. He tried to remember where he was and how he had gotten there but his head hurt to the point where he could not make even that effort. Carefully he turned my head slowly until he could see the alarm clock on the little table beside his side of the bed. Six seventeen. Shit. He needed more sleep but first he needed Advil. He wondered dully if he even had a suitcase or overnight bag with him.

  “I see you’re awake baby.”

  He turned his head slowly towards the noise and found himself looking at a woman who had to have been his mother’s age if his mother were still alive. Peroxide blonde, skin on her face sagging off her jaw and around her mouth, pendulous breasts sagging down with their nipples pointed at the floor, stomach bulging outwards, legs showing fat and thick and she was definitely not a real blonde. Shit. He closed his eyes again and tried to remember what her name was and where He had picked her up. He could see her moving around and going into the bathroom where she peed noisily.

  “I took my money from your wallet, but the rest is still there,” she said.

  “Okay,” he replied and opened one eye. She was in the process of securing her bra. Finishing that she moved efficiently around the little space on her side of the bed pulling up black pants over a bright yellow shirt.

  “You don’t look like you feel too good dear. I left you some aspirin on the sink. No charge. You should ease up on the drinking you know? It makes it harder to perform if you know what I mean. She pulled a brush from a large purple bag on the little bench by the dresser and worked on her hair. “Anyhow dearie. Thanks for everything. Ta Ta.” She picked up her bag and was out the door before he could get both eyes open at the same time.

  The pain in his head was nothing compared to the pain in his spirit. He vividly remembered the disgust and self-loathing he had felt that morning as he struggled out of bed and staggered into the bathroom where he promptly vomited until he thought his insides would go down the toilet along with the food from the previous night. He had promised himself that this would never happen again and yet here he was in some
unknown motel on a day of the week he couldn’t remember having spent the night with some old tank whose name he couldn’t remember either. Morosely he had swallowed the aspirin and wandered back into the bedroom. His clothes were strewn from one end to the other. His wallet was on the dresser and everything seemed to be all there except for fifty bucks. An honest whore. He’d been lucky but would have to change all his credit cards just in case.

  There was a message on my phone from Pam: hi Doug haven’t heard from you in a while R U still alive? Perhaps it was the aspirin but He felt as if I might live after all. She had never messaged him. He didn’t even know that she had his cell number but then he realized there were many gaps large and small in my memory and it was totally his fault. He picked up his pants but felt too weak to pull them on, so he sat down on the bed instead and rested his head in his hands.

  That morning had been his low point when he sat on the motel bed and wondered seriously if he should go on living. No matter what he did he seemed to end up in the shits. The only ray of light was the message from Pam. He picked up my phone and looked at it again. It was time to see if she would still let me in her door.

  “Hi Doug. You look like death warmed over.”

  “Hi, Pam. Got your message and decided to take a chance and stop by instead of replying.”

  “Okay.” She sounded a little doubtful. “Maybe you should come in and sit down before you fall down.” She opened the door wide and Doug shuffled inside. This had been yet another bad decision to let her see him like this. He sat down in one of her chairs and stared morosely at his feet. He was a loser. That was his reality.

  “How about some coffee or toast maybe?” Pam asked.

  The thought of food made his stomach churn. “No thanks I…” He pushed myself desperately out of the chair and made it to the bathroom at the last second.

  When he came out, Pam was sitting on her couch glancing through a Cosmopolitan magazine. Doug felt as if he had just enough strength to make it back to the chair. “Sorry about that,” he muttered as he collapsed into it.