Until Death

by Alicia Rasley

  “So?”

  Paydirt. “Well, if I’m party to his lawsuit, I have a right to know what’s going on.”

  “I told you. I don’t know anything about the lawsuit.”

  “Okay, I’ll hire you. You can see if I’m in trouble. I’ll just take Don’s appointment.” It wasn’t hard to generate a bubble of hysterical giggles, and I glanced over to see the effect on Mike Warren. He had closed his eyes as if in pain. “It’s not like Don’s going to need it now.”

  “You can’t have his appointment. It was for the other day, for God’s sake. And anyway, I’ve got all sorts of conflicts of interest involved here. Look, if you’re named a party to the lawsuit, call me then, and I’ll refer you to someone. But until then, stop worrying.”

  “Oh, okay, Al,” I said, very meekly, a woman chastised. “If you say so. Maybe I’m overreacting. All the stress, you know?”

  “I know.” Al’s voice softened. “You take it easy. Let me know if you need anything.”

  But I didn’t. I already had what I’d come for. “See,” I said triumphantly as I clicked off the phone, “Don had an appointment. For the other day.”

  “And did you find out what it was for?”

  “No, but Al does Don’s personal business. It was for a divorce or the will, or both.”

  “You’re drawing a conclusion on the basis of facts not in evidence,” Mike said, in a superior tone that reminded me of Al’s, and of every man who was a little bit uncertain.

  “I’m making an assumption on the basis of common sense. Why would he make the appointment if he meant to commit suicide?”

  “He could have made the appointment a month ago. Anyway, he made another appointment with me, too. That doesn’t imply a contract to stay alive long enough to keep it.”

  “You can argue, but I’ve proved my case. Don figured he’d made a mistake with Wanda.” I said, “He sent me something. It was weird. His wedding ring—I mean, our ring.”

  “He sent you his ring?”

  I nodded. “Like I said. Weird. But maybe he was telling me that he was sorry about the divorce. He also decided to change his will. He made the appointment with Al. He made the appointment with you. He was all set to move on to the next step. Whatever that was.”

  “And so his death was just an unfortunately timed accident.”

  “Right,” I said firmly.

  Gently, he dislodged the cat from his lap and rose. “So let’s go to that building. The accident scene.”

  I was goggling at him again. I forced my jaw to snap shut. “To the new building? Where he—where he died? That’s sort of morbid, don’t you think?”

  “We’re both looking for an answer. Not the same answer-- but we have the same question.”

  “How he could have fallen.”

  “We can’t answer that until we see the building.”

  Whatever bravado I had vanished. Just to get away from him, I banged out of the screened porch and went down to the lawn. I set up the sprinkler and turned it on. But even over the hiss I could hear his cool insistent voice. “You’ll get some closure, if you need it.”

  Closure. More therapist talk. It sounded good: If I faced it, I would have closure.

  But it wouldn’t work that way. I’d just have a more precise scenario for my nightmares.

  Mike Warren knew when to be silent. He didn’t argue with me, didn’t demand I let him set up the sprinkler (because of course it takes a Y chromosome to water a lawn). He didn’t say a word until I came back to the porch and sat down.

  What I needed now was for everyone to let Don rest in peace. Including Dr. Warren and Mr. Peterson and United Guaranty Life. But that wasn’t going to happen. “So, your professional opinion is I should see that building,” I said.

  “Not my professional opinion. But it’ll give you some idea how it might have happened. Maybe you’ll see something there that will help prove your case that it was an accident.”

  “Like what?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t you read mystery novels? Maybe there was a screen he had to fall through. If he’d planned on jumping, he would have removed the screen, right?”

  “It was a new building. There wouldn’t be a screen,” I pointed out. “I don’t know if they’ve even got windows in.” Ghastly as the vision was, it cheered me up a little. The police thought it was an accident, so they didn’t bother to look for evidence at the scene to prove it. Except for the news reports, I’d learned little about that night. Here was my chance to find out more. Still, I hesitated. “You’ll come too?”

  “Sure. I’ll drive you. I don’t schedule appointments on Wednesdays. What about you?”

  “I have a meeting later, but I’m free until then. I’ll have to change first.”

  “Me too.” He looked down at his t-shirt and the track shorts. “I have a change of clothes in the car.”

  I offered him my bathroom as a changing room—now that felt strange, a man in my room, his discarded clothes on the tile floor—but he shook his head. “No need.” He headed for the car, and I wondered how he was going to strip and change without the neighbors noticing. Then I pulled my attention back where it belonged and went into the house to change out of my shorts.

  By the time I got into his car (the sort of Jag Tommy promised he’d buy me with his first check from the NBA), Mike was dressed in khakis and a white polo shirt, and his dark hair was neatly combed.

  I could tell he’d been married. Without being told, he’d put up the convertible top so not to mess up my business hairdo. He put the car in gear and backed down my driveway, then steered through my eccentric neighborhood—consisting of a dozen winterized pre-WWII fishermen’s shacks, a couple of major mansions from the twenties, and a few houses like my own, neo-rustic hippie cottages, all post-and-beam and natural wood and woodpecker holes.

  As we turned right towards the south road, I told him that Don’s contractor always stationed a guard by the front of a construction site. “You know how teenagers like to party in empty buildings. And whenever there’s a labor dispute, somehow the expensive equipment gets graffiti’d, or someone lets the air out of the tires of the paver.”

  “So how are we going to get past the security? I suppose you could lie, like you did with the attorney. You seem to do that well.”

  I didn’t know whether to feel complimented or insulted. “I minored in theater in college.”

  “And became an accountant?”

  “I planned to manage a Broadway theater. But I ended up here. So I do a little community theater, and they keep casting me because I can balance their books.” I considered what act would get us past the front gate. “Hmm. I can do the realtor thing.” I opened my purse and scrounged through it. Triumphantly, I came up with a business card. “See?”

  He pulled to a stop at the intersection and took the card. “Megan O’Brian, Realtor. You’re like James Bond, I guess. A pocketful of fake business cards.”

  “It’s not fake. It helped, when we were buying and selling buildings, to have a licensed agent along, so I took the test and got some cards made up.”

  “You look like a real estate mogul, at least.”

  I did look the part. I’d dressed for my afternoon meeting with the engineers in a feminine power suit—lavender to lull them, and sharp lines for intimidation. “Do you know where you’re going? Over the bridge and to the left.”

  I didn’t want to talk anymore about Don, or the divorce. I mean, sometimes I even bore myself with that stuff. So I asked about the car and about his daughters as we drove past the college. Real estate agent talk. I was getting into my role. One of the benefits, if you could call it that, of a real estate license was the invitation to the local real estate association’s luncheons. I’d spent enough time with those fast-thinking, helmet-coifed lady realtor
s to fake it.

  I fell silent, though, as we turned onto the dirt road. We passed a sign set on a wooden pole, listing all the entities involved in the project—D. Ross Ent. as developer, as general contractor, as project manager, then the bank, and the construction company. There wasn’t much room left, but the sign maker had squeezed “Bowie Knife Productions” in at the bottom. Development projects like this were like films, with extensive credit lists, at least as long as things were going well. Underneath the sign was a portable solar cell unit, meant, I supposed, to power the floodlight for the sign. More evidence, I guess, of Don’s new “green” focus. It all seemed a little pathetic now, when there were no signs of life, just the trees rustling in the breeze.

  Now I could see Don and Will’s project glittering through the trees. It was the only building this side of the ditch, but there was a family resemblance to the Netmore buildings to the north. It was a steel-framed tower, maybe twelve stories high, the bottom half already clad in silver-blue glass. It was alone in the center of the graded dirt, for now at least. But I saw the stakes marking off future lots, and knew that it was only a matter of time before the chic diner and the coffee bar would sprout.

  Mike Warren slowed to a stop in the rutted road and looked around at the devastated landscape. I knew what he was thinking. This had been a farm once, with fields of corn and barbed wire fences. Now it was all dust and dirt and discarded construction material.

  I assured him, “It’ll look great when it’s done. We did several of these projects, and they all ended up beautiful.”

  “Tell that to all the farmers you have to evict.”

  “Evict? Ha. Farmers used to beg us to buy their land. We’d pay them half a million dollars for a fifty-acre farm that they worked like dogs for twenty-five thousand a year. Then they’d retire to a Florida condo so they wouldn’t even have to mow the lawn. They loved us.”

  “Really?” This didn’t sit well with Mike. He probably still believed in the romance of the family farm, but he had only to talk to a few family farmers and he’d be disabused.

  “What can they do? Their kids don’t want to farm. So they could sell it as farmland for two thousand an acre—if it’s a good year for farmland—or sell it to us for five times that.”

  “So this development was nothing new?”

  I shrugged. There was the lawsuit, but I didn’t want to talk about that. “After the purchase, probably there was a quick sale to Will Bowie, contingent I’m sure on Don being named as developer. I think this was meant to be a green building. Not the color. I mean environmentally astute. Our old partner’s the mayor’s ecology advisor, so maybe he got Don involved. I bet there was some tax abatement involved.”

  He put the car back in gear and drove slowly forward, avoiding the worst of the ruts left by the heavy equipment. Ahead was a single guard shack, and as we pulled up, a security guard with a clipboard emerged, blinking as if we’d awakened him. We were probably the only people who came out here today. There is nothing as derelict as a deserted construction zone.

  I snapped into realtor mode, pulled a card from my pocket, and leaned over Mike to thrust it out the car window at the guard. “This is Dr. Warren. He’s looking to invest in a new building, and Primeline asked me to show this one.”

  In a fit of independence after the divorce, I’d renewed my real estate license in my maiden name. The guard peering at the card would not connect me to Primeline’s late owner. Still, he looked up at me suspiciously. “I never heard the place is for sale.”

  “Well, it’s more a matter of taking on new partners . . . now that the general partner has gone.” I said that with the delicacy realtors use to explain why a premium home may be had for a bargain price, without actually referring to the owner’s need to raise funds for his legal defense. “Call my office if you like,” I added carelessly. He’d just get the answering service.

  The security guard started back into the shack, and Mike went into his own role. I have to admit he played the rich doctor well, with his expensive well-worn khakis and impatient air that hinted at lives he could be saving if only he weren’t being delayed here. “I don’t have time for that. Show me what you’re going to show me, and let’s get out of here before rush hour starts.”

  Typically, the security guard responded to the voice of male authority. “Okay, you can look around. But don’t take too long.”

  “Tell me,” I said in a brisk, bottom-line-focused realtor tone, “when is the work going to be complete?”

  “Don’t know.” He’d relaxed now. He probably thought he’d get a bonus if he helped get a new buyer. “They got about half of it clad, then had to stop. But everything’s up in the air since—you know. Couple weeks ago.”

  “Oh, yes. The accident. Very tragic.” I wasn’t that good an actor. I didn’t say any more.

  Mike, however, remembered his role. “So what? The police shut everything down after the death?”

  “Nah. Some lawsuit.” He shook his head. “Damned lawyers.” Then the security guard must have recalled some order not to gossip, for he turned abruptly and reached into the shack for a couple of yellow hard hats. “Construction zone. I’ll be watching. You can’t go in the building or near the equipment.”

  Mike Warren put up the window and drove us off. I sat in the passenger seat and juggled the two hardhats, staring ahead at the half-built building. It was a strange sight. From halfway down, it looked finished, with the silver steel and glass glittering in the sun. But above the fifth floor, the building seemed like a skeleton, just the steel frame and concrete floors and studs jutting up into the sky.

  Mike slowed the car and parked a few dozen yards from the building. He opened his door. “Come on. Let’s see what we can see.”

  Reluctantly, I followed, picking my way in my high heels across the hard-packed brown dirt of the lot, until I was close enough to put my hand on the sun-warm glass of the building. Slowly, we walked around the southwest corner, toward the river. And then, wordlessly, Mike pointed up. I counted up to the sixth floor, the first one without the elegant silver cladding. And there it was: looped across the top of the concrete half-wall, a strip of yellow police tape.

  Chapter Ten

  SHADING MY EYES from the sun, I stood there at the corner of the building, staring up at the empty space above. There was no way to pretend this was anything but what it was: the barren concrete space where my husband had spent his last moments.

  “No window in yet. Just the wall,” Mike said. He walked over to the side of the building and, before I could say anything, reached up his hand to touch one of the ground-floor windows. “The wall comes up to about three feet,” he reported. “How tall was Don?”

  “About five-ten,” I said faintly.

  He sliced the air in front of his ribs. “The window opening would start about here then.” Gently, he said, “He couldn’t have just fallen over.”

  “Maybe he was sitting there and fell backwards,” I offered. But I couldn’t picture Don hauling himself up on the wall of an unfinished building, six floors up. “Or maybe he was leaning out, and . . . People do stupid things. Things that look stupid in retrospect often seem natural at the moment. So maybe he wanted to see something, and climbed up and—”

  “What time was it?”

  “Ten thirty,” I said. “But it’s June. It stays light late this time of year.”

  “Not till ten thirty. He couldn’t have seen anything. And he wasn’t a stupid man. He’s not going to climb up on a wall seventy feet up and fall. Unless he wanted to.”

  I refused to answer and walked away, towards the river. Directly ahead of me was a battleship-gray dumpster, and beyond that a hastily poured concrete loading dock against the building’s steel access door. Above there was a slice of hot blue sky and that empty window space. I didn’t know I was counting, but I must have been; my mind s
aid six as my gaze rose to the wall with the yellow tape.

  Behind me, Mike said quietly, “You don’t have to do this.”

  “It won’t feel real to me until I see.” I moved closer to the concrete of the loading dock. What a terrible place to die, here beside the dented, smelly dumpster.

  Mike grabbed my arm, but I yanked free. Then I saw what he had seen—the chalk outline on the slab, just in front of the dumpster. My first, terrible, trite thought was I figured they only did that on TV. Then, He used to sleep like that, his arm curved above his head.

  I walked over there, stepping up the eight inches to the loading dock, skirting the outline as I would a grave. “I don’t see any blood.”

  “The bleeding would be mostly internal, and stop after death.”

  I’d forgotten he was a doctor. I thought of him as a shrink, but in the ER he’d see plenty of violent deaths. “Besides, they would have hosed down the concrete, right?”

  He didn’t answer. I didn’t want him to. I wanted him to let me go on being tough. If I faltered now, back here in this dusty lot . . . But I didn’t. Closure. That’s what I was after. He’s gone for good, he won’t ever be back, he won’t ever be mine again. It was the litany I’d used so many times this last year, but this was the first time I knew it was true.

  I backed away from the dock, against the wall. I smelled the dust, felt the slick glass under my fingers. Then I looked up, my gaze skimming over the windows and stopping at that unfinished floor. Then I looked down, fast, and felt what he would have felt. Terror. Disbelief. Pain. Did he fall straight? Did he hit the loading dock, or bounce off the dumpster? I couldn’t help myself. I walked over and put my hand on the hot rusty metal. No blood. No skin. No hair. And there, in the shade of the dumpster, I saw it.

  Something flashed—a thin slice of bright. I slid my hand between the dumpster and the building, and grabbed it. “It’s the cap of a fountain pen.” I squeezed past the dumpster, feeling for the rest of the pen, but came up with only pebbles and dirt. Then my hand closed on something smooth and cylindrical. The rest of the pen.