Until Death

by Alicia Rasley

  Mike’s voice came harsh. “Get back. There might be rats this close to the river.”

  I let him drag me away from the wall. “Look. The cap. And then the pen.”

  “It’s nothing. A worker must have thrown it out in the trash.”

  Automatically brushing the front of my jacket, I followed him back to the car. But I kept the pen and its cap in my other hand. “No. It’s ours—Ross-Munssen Development. See? There’s the logo. R-M. Seems strange that it would be here, on the ground, near where Don fell.”

  As Mike opened the door for me, he said, “The pen was probably in his pocket and came out when he fell.”

  “No, if it had been in his pocket, it would have been still capped.”

  “So it wasn’t open. The top just came off when he fell.”

  I held up the cap and screwed it back on. “The cap screws on.”

  “Maybe he was writing a suicide note and changed his mind.”

  There was that word again. “There was no note. And there was no suicide.” After glaring at him, I got into the car, and after putting on my seatbelt, I raised the pen and studied it closely. “And this isn’t even his pen.”

  “What do you mean?” His voice took on that sensible tone he probably used when a patient complained that Pontius Pilate was trying to crucify him, “You just said it was his.”

  “I said it was ours. The company’s. We gave them as gifts to clients and employees. We knew that would be unique. Hardly anyone uses fountain pens these days, so they are considered classy. But I ordered a special one for Don. It had a #1 on the clip. This one doesn’t have that. And—” I unscrewed the cap and looked at the end of the pen. “And his had a broken nib.”

  “So he tossed the broken one.”

  “He loved the old one. He said the broken nib was like an unsheathed sword.”

  Mike ostentatiously didn’t make any observation about pens and swords and phallic symbols. He just glanced over and observed, “Maybe he lost the unsheathed one, and grabbed another from the storage closet.”

  “They’re not kept in a storage cabinet. And—look. There’s some ink dried here. Blue. He always used black ink. And—” I thought back to that enigmatic card he’d mailed to me. “His last message to me. It was written with his old pen. Broken nib. Black ink. A few hours before he died.” I swallowed hard. “This isn’t that pen.”

  Mike started the car and backed away from the building. When we were pointed towards the road, he said, “It’s just a pen. Could have been there for years.”

  “It would be dirty if it had been there for years. And anyway, I told you, these are special pens. We gave them away. To clients. To the employee-of-the-month. To business reporters.”

  “So he gave that one to someone from the construction company, who threw it out in the trash.”

  I gave him a narrow look. “Each pen cost $14. I don’t think he would give one to some construction worker. And I don’t think anyone would throw it in the trash. Besides, it wasn’t in the trash. It was on the ground. Next to the dumpster. Right next to where Don—where he fell.”

  “Even so, what difference does it make? So there’s this pen. It’s not his pen.”

  “So it’s someone else’s pen. And it was open. When it fell.”

  “Which tells us what?”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, and visualized the scene: Don up on the sixth floor, checking on the work the contractors had done. And then a hand, holding the pen. Not Don’s hand. “Someone was with him.”

  “Who? Who would come out here in the middle of the night?”

  I wasn’t listening to him. I was thinking back to that mysterious message and our last conversation. Don’t worry. If anything happens to me. Nothing is going to happen. Don’t worry.

  I said slowly, “Those last couple days. He was worried about something. He was worried something was going to happen to him.”

  “Something did.”

  “Or someone did.”

  “Who? Did what?”

  I finally let myself think the thought had been creeping up. But I couldn’t put this into words. “Up there. With him. When he fell.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “He was trying to tell me that. But I didn’t understand it. He was afraid of something. Someone.”

  “Someone? You mean—” Mike Warren was saying something incredulous, but I couldn’t hear him. All I could hear was the accusing voice in my head: You idiot! You smeared the fingerprints when you picked it up!

  Mike was still talking, in a restrained, reasonable tone, about Occam’s razor and the simplest solution that fit all the facts. “No one helped him fall. He chose that himself. You just don’t want to believe it.”

  “I took Philosophy 101 too.” I put the pen and the cap gently into a protected pocket in my purse. “But I bet, if old Occam were here now, his razor would tell him this might not be so simple.”

  “It’s just that the pen reminded you of the old days when everything made sense. And I understand. It doesn’t seem to make sense that he’d take his own life. But suicide never makes sense. But—”

  I snapped, “Maybe if you stopped trying to diagnose me, you’d open your mind and see that this makes more sense than suicide.”

  Mike shook his head. “I’ve got an open mind. But you can’t accuse some construction worker of killing Don for a fountain pen.”

  That word. Killing. I forced myself to ignore it and focus on what else he said. “You’re not listening to me. It couldn’t have been someone from the project. He was worried something bad was going to happen to him. That’s what he was trying to tell me. That might even have been what he was trying to tell you. But you didn’t hear it.”

  He ignored this last point, pulling up beside the guard shack. We handed the hardhats over, and Mike said, “Were you working here the night that guy died?”

  The guard looked startled, as well he might, by this disrespect for the late boss of bosses. But he said defensively, like he might get blamed for the death, “Nah. My company got hired after that.”

  “Who hired you?”

  The guard gestured with his head north. “Netmore. We do most of their security. This is gonna be their building, so we got assigned to protect it.”

  “There must have been security here before, when they were building. That pricey crane, the bulldozers—”

  He shrugged. “Sure. But a couple days before the guy died, remember, it was all shut down by the lawyers. The contractor didn’t think he’d get paid, so he walked off the job, took his crew, all the equipment. And cancelled the security.”

  I said, “So there wasn’t any security that night.”

  The guard shook his head and gestured us out. “Careful now about the ruts as you drive out. Don’t want to mess up that paint job.”

  Mike pulled away, and when we were out on the paved road, he pulled over and put the top down. “That doesn’t prove anything, that there was no security that night,” he said as he got back in and started up again.

  The car accelerated as we approached the bridge, and the wind blew some of the memory of death out of my brain. Then I was able to think more clearly. “It means that someone could have come to the building, with Don, or after him, without anyone knowing.” I considered this for a while. “It had to be someone who owned one of those pens. Which means, someone he knew.”

  By then, we were at the highest point of the bridge, and in the distance I saw the highest point in town, the promontory of the cemetery. I glanced up the hill and thought of the funeral, and all those people who knew Don. And I shivered, despite the heat of the afternoon.

  “Slow down. I mean it, Meggie. Just because you found a pen, you can’t go around accusing people of murder.”

  Murder. That was e
ven harsher a word than “killing.” And in his skeptical voice, it sounded so implausible. I’d known suicides, but no murder victims. “I entertained your notion of suicide. You can entertain the thought of murder.”

  “Very entertaining. So shoot. Who would want to murder Don?”

  “He was a businessman. It probably had to do with money. I can’t think of anyone who would murder him in a fit of passion.”

  “You come to mind.”

  I shot a glance at him. Maybe he was joking. “I have an alibi. I was at the theater—closing night. Wielding the prompt book. So there.”

  “So who else then? If not you?”

  What would Columbo be asking right now? “Let’s see. Who stood to gain the most from Don’s death? Not me. Not Tracy—” The answer was blindingly apparent. One person stood to lose if Don lived, and gain if Don died, and had access to the fountain pen. Someone who probably won Employee of the Month every night when she worked for Don. Coincidentally, that was someone who lacked, what should I call it? A sensitive conscience. “Wanda.”

  “Of course. Wanda, the focus of evil in the modern world.”

  “She’s not particularly evil. But one thing I’ve learned about her. She’s smart. Street smart. The prenup said she’d get just a hundred thousand with a divorce. As the widow, she gets five million maybe. She’d kill for half of that. You can see it in her mean little eyes.”

  “She’d get to keep it all, without committing murder, if she just stayed married to him.”

  “But he was thinking of divorcing her.”

  “You don’t have any solid proof of that. And no, I’m not going to tell you he talked about divorce that last session.”

  “Right. Patient confidentiality,” I said scathingly.

  “Right. That. And also, because he didn’t. Sorry to disappoint you, but he didn’t mention the word divorce.”

  That stopped me for a moment. “But—” Suddenly, I remembered the items Don had left for me. I scrabbled at my purse and withdrew the box. “Hang on a minute.” I pulled out the sheet of paper with the rows of tiny print. It still looked like a bill, and I couldn’t imagine why Don would reduce a bill to this size and stick it in the box. But that was what he did. So it had to mean something, didn’t it? I squinted at the fine print, then gave in and pulled my reading glasses out of my purse.

  “I don’t usually need these,” I said. “But the print is so small—” Once I could see, I scanned it quickly, then went back and read it more slowly. It was, as I suspected from the logo, a cell phone bill, and along the top I saw the name of the phone owner. Wanda Ross. “It’s Wanda’s cellphone bill. And Don wanted me to see this. Why would he—?”

  Then I saw the list of calls made from the phone. A quick scan told me that half were to the number I recognized as Don’s. I thought I saw a couple of calls to Brad. She was such a suck up. She probably wanted him to introduce her to the mayor.

  Most of the other numbers I didn’t recognize. In fact, most of the other numbers were one number. Before I could give myself time to think, I punched in that number. After a couple of rings, a man’s voice said, “Yeah?”

  Quickly, I said, as if annoyed, “You’re not my mother!” Then, just as quickly, I added. “Sorry. Wrong number,” and hung up.

  I turned to Mike. He was resolutely eyes-forward, watching the road. He said, “So what does that prove?”

  “That she’s having an affair,” I said. “Didn’t Don tell you that? Oh, right, patient con—”

  “No. He didn’t tell me that.” Then, after a second, he added, “What’s the date on the bill?”

  I had to get out the reading glasses again, and peered at the date. “It was mailed Monday. So he would have gotten it Tuesday or Wednesday. And—and he put it in that box, and left it for me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “It’s blindingly obvious. Don saved this bill because it was evidence. Besotted as he was, he could look at all these calls to this guy in one month and read between the lines.”

  “She could have a perfectly good reason to call another man.”

  I quickly counted it up. “Twenty times in a month?”

  “Maybe she’s having the kitchen redone. Or he’s her auto mechanic. I probably call my mechanic a dozen times a month.” He glanced over me with half a grin. “The perils of owning a Jag.”

  “She’s got an Escalade,” I said scornfully. “He might be performing some mechanics, but I don’t think it’s got to do with an auto.”

  “What was that other page?”

  I glanced down at the box. “It’s a survey. I think it’s of this land. I don’t know why he reduced it so much and put it in here for me to find.”

  “Maybe he wanted you to come out here and see the building and understand why he’d done it.”

  “I don’t think so. I think he wanted—” For a second, I couldn’t imagine what he wanted. He didn’t know he was going to die, so it couldn’t be his way of explaining his death. “I think he wanted to tell me that he was in some kind of danger.” When Mike shot me a skeptical glance, I added defensively, “Maybe he put it in there because he thought someone might try to kill him at the project.”

  Mike pulled the car over on the edge of the golf course. “If you weren’t so involved, you’d see this is all interesting but adds up to nothing.”

  “The police can decide that. I’ll take the pen with me. And the bill.”

  “You’ll get nowhere. Trust me. My father was a detective with the Chicago force. I know how cops’ minds work, and they’re not going to think that little piece of plastic—”

  “It’s brass.”

  “—Is evidence of murder. They’ll think you’re nuts.”

  “Oh, the clinical jargon. Nuts. They teach you that in med school? Did they also teach you about sociopaths? You know, people who do whatever they have to do to get what they want?”

  In a blink, a change of tactics. Mike was nothing if not flexible. His tone turned soothing. “Just consider that this could be another projection. You feel guilty because subconsciously you might have thought about his death as an attractive alternative to divorce.”

  “I didn’t. Ever!”

  “So—” He ignored me. That way he didn’t have to admit I could read my mind better than he could. “So you project the murder on her, and you don’t consider yourself as the murderer—”

  “Considering I’m not the murderer—”

  “—even subconsciously. You can feel anger instead of guilt. And there’s the benefit this could cause some trouble for the new wife. Not to mention get the insurance company off your back.”

  “That’s—that’s—” I couldn’t fall back on sarcasm anymore. I had to speak the truth. “That’s a filthy thing to say. All of it. I didn’t want Don dead. And I’ve left that little home wrecker alone all this time. Why would I turn on her now?”

  “Maybe because he can’t protect her. Maybe because you didn’t get to kill him yourself.”

  “No. It’s all a lie.” I found the door handle under my hand, yanked it, and shoved myself out of the car. My house was just on the other side of the golf course, and I headed that way, not looking back to see if he was following me. I was sick of men. Don, Will, Mike Warren, all of them as sure as they could be of their own intractable rightness, and all of them so often wrong.

  Okay, maybe I’d gone too far, suggesting murder. But he’d gone way too far too, assuming that the only reason I could conceive of such a thing would be my own psychological instability. People were murdered all the time, and yes, even in the best of families. And no one had a motive like Wanda. I was just surprised I hadn’t thought of it before.

  I was bathed in what my mother called “dew” by the time I trudged up the long grade to my house. In front of it was a dark blue Jagua
r. As soon as he saw me, Mike peeled out of there, his tires squealing and shooting gravel. I caught a glimpse of his hard-set face through the window, and then he was gone.

  The hell with him. The hell with all men. I didn’t need them. They were only good for earning money, fertilizing eggs, and getting things off the top shelf. And as long as there was equal pay, artificial insemination, and stepladders, women were better off without them.

  Chapter Eleven

  TOMMY HAD BEEN waiting for this day since he was twelve—the start of driver’s ed. The very brink of adulthood in modern America.

  Life goes on.

  “It’s at the school. At eleven.” Tommy deftly caught the toast as it leaped from the toaster. “Can you drop me off?”

  “Honey, I’m going to be in the back seat. Helping out.”

  He peered at me and decided I was joking. “I’ll be done about three.”

  Not for the first time, I felt the tug of freedom against the iron bolt of protectiveness. It was like the first day of kindergarten, when I’d been so proud not to ride the bus like those overprotective mothers. I drove to the office, happily liberated from the daycare dilemma. And as soon as I got there, I called the school and made the secretary check that Tommy had arrived safely. Now I had to let him go once more.

  So once he’d washed the breakfast dishes and made his bed (might as well put all that energy to work), I drove him to the school, where the football coach stood by a Ford with a terrified girl student. He looked like a storm trooper in his wraparound shades. He looked like he was in it only for the extra money. He looked like he’d yell at Tommy for braking too much. He looked like he could scare Tommy into obeying all the traffic laws.

  Tommy called, “Bye, Mom!” and vaulted out of our van, all uncoiling adolescent energy. For just a moment, I felt sorry for the coach. Then I drove off. I knew if I stayed to watch Tommy try to back the car out of the parking space, he’d mess up. Kids always mess up when their mothers are about. It’s a subconscious reminder they’re still babies and need our protection. I’ll bet the astronauts ask their moms to stay home and please just watch the launch on TV.