Once out of the school lot, I turned south on Prescott and headed downtown. I hadn’t planned beyond my noon appointment with the city engineer about the farmhouse move. But there I was, driving one-handed with the other hand in my purse, feeling around till I closed on the baggie with the evidence in it.
I ended the engineering meeting early, recklessly promising we’d get the house moved in six hours on a Sunday. Fortunately, the engineer didn’t take notes, so I had deniability. Then I crossed the square to the new police building. I went through the metal detector and strode to the information desk, where a uniformed security guard sat reading the afternoon edition.
“Homicide desk,” I said firmly. Desk? I let it echo in my brain. Or division? Or department?
But the guard didn’t blink at my syntax. “Twelfth floor.”
More doubt in the elevator. Maybe I watch too much TV, but I felt wrong taking an elevator up to the homicide department. If I’d walked up battered steps to a green-linoleum stationhouse and got assigned to Ice T, I’d have felt more confident.
The cop at the chrome reception desk looked young enough to be Tommy’s camp counselor. At least the homicide division was filled with grownups; in fact, these guys looked old, in their eyes if not their faces. Detective Martelli offered me a cup of coffee in a tone that suggested he’d just as soon I refused. So I launched into the question I’d rehearsed.
“I was just wondering about that accident. Don Ross.”
“Why do you want to know?”
If I annoyed him—and I would; he looked like he was about to brutalize the fly buzzing around—and he frisked me, he’d get my ID, so I might as well confess. “He was my son’s father. I wanted to know what to tell my son if he asks how his father died.”
“What’s to tell? He tripped. Happens all the time. Only this time there was a seventy-foot drop.”
I shivered. “It’s just sort of strange, don’t you think?”
“Lady, nothing seems strange to me anymore.” He started digging his thumbnail into his styrofoam cup, gouging out a half-moon, then moving over a quarter inch to gouge out another one. The squeak set my teeth on edge. “Got a call last night, a guy by the river bank screaming he was stabbed in the throat. Turns out he was fishing and swallowed his hook. How’d he do it?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “The six empty cans of Bud on the bank maybe had something to do with it.”
“You’re saying Don was drunk and that’s how it happened?”
“What difference does it make? It was night. There wasn’t any window. He fell. And that’s all your kid needs to know.”
“I mean, what if there was someone else involved?”
Martelli gave me a sideways look. “I don’t mean to be rude, is it any of your business if he’s stepping out on the new wife?”
“Not involved that way.” It was harder to say it to this cop than to Dr. Warren. Maybe Mike’s face was more sympathetic than I thought. Then again, Godzilla’s face was more sympathetic than Martelli’s. “Could someone else be involved in his falling?”
His answer came quick enough that I knew they’d considered this and dismissed it. “No sign of force. No sign of robbery.”
“Did you dust for fingerprints?”
A heavy sigh. “Yeah. Top of the wall. Standard procedure. Guess what? There were lots. The workers had just attached the tracks for the new window and hadn’t come back to clean it yet. But they didn’t push your ex out over that wall. No one did.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, who left this, then?”
With bitter triumph, I produced the baggie. He just stared at it, and I said impatiently, “It’s a promotional pen. Only employees and clients of our old company have them. I found it by the dumpster in that construction lot. The cap, and then the pen a few feet away. Someone must have dropped them out the building.”
“Why would they do that?”
“They could have been leaning out to see if Don was moving, and it fell out of their pocket.”
“Wouldn’t the whole pen fall out? Together.”
This question stopped me. “I suppose. But it didn’t. And that’s probably a clue too. Maybe the killer was writing something--”
“Well. Mrs. Ross. Thanks for coming in.” With sudden decisiveness, he lumbered to his feet. “And if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to work.”
I knew it was useless. Worse than useless: It was humiliating. But I couldn’t let it go. “Look, just have the pen checked for prints. Check that floor before Wanda—before someone orders the place cleaned. It’s not much trouble to do that.”
The cop wasn’t looking at me anymore. “Look, lady, I can tell you’re upset. Or you wouldn’t ask me to investigate your ex’s accidental death, which would mean I had to stop trying to figure out whether it was a real gang or just some wannabes who did that drive by shooting where the three-year-old was killed yesterday.” He picked up a manila folder and slapped it on the desk. Pebbles of styrofoam blew across the surface and fell over the side. “We’re not like you suburbanites. We don’t have to go looking for trouble. It comes looking for us.”
Maybe it was being described as a suburbanite looking for trouble, or the card he grabbed from the open drawer and pressed into my hand, that stunned me into incoherence.
“Here. It’s a shrink. You don’t think you need one. But maybe you dreamed that your ex was dead. And now he is. So you feel guilty, like you killed him yourself, and you lash out. It’s called projection. The shrink will tell you the same thing. Only he’ll tell you it’s okay.”
In my shock I almost forgot to read the card. But then I did, and I understood why this talk of projection sounded so familiar. It was Mike Warren’s card, just like the one I had in my Rolodex.
“This guy’s the one we’re sent to when we accidentally almost shoot our partner and are scared it wasn’t really an accident.” He glanced around to make sure his colleagues weren’t privy to this, and lowered his voice. “He’s okay. His dad was a police officer, and he knows about accidents and death and all that. He’ll help you understand what’s going on in your own head. You’ll feel better when he’s done.”
“But what about—?” I held out the baggie.
He waved it away. “I’ll tell you what. You go see Dr. Warren and talk to him a few sessions, and if when you’re done you still want me to check that for prints, I’ll do that. Okay?”
Slowly, I withdrew the crucial piece of evidence. I could insist. But Mike Warren had predicted it. The pen would disappear into an evidence container, maybe the one under the desk with the used coffee cups, and I’d be told that they’d checked it out, but the prints were smudged. I stuffed the baggie into my purse. I had to protect it from the police.
As I boarded the elevator, I wondered if they hadn’t wanted to investigate too closely because they didn’t want to end up making a suicide determination. So they’d missed any sign that it was murder. And I was the one who had the pen and the card, and the pawned items. And it meant I was the only one with reason enough, and knowledge enough, to investigate.
Trouble was, I’d always assumed, if a murder came up, I’d refer it to the authorities. Alas, the authorities referred me to a shrink, so I was on my own in this investigation.
But on my own, I was only one person, and that person had a life and a job. I had to pretend for Tommy that life was proceeding relatively normally. He had enough to worry about, what with driver’s ed and the usual teenaged woes.
So the investigation that should get top priority instead had to be squeezed in between work and home. First I finished my CYA memo to Will, recommending for the record that before he spend any money moving the old farmhouse, he consult with his lawyers about the lawsuit. Nothing was going to stop Will at this point, but a year from now, if he had to move his museum back because Mr. Murdoch regained the land, I w
anted to have this memo handy.
Only then did I call up the secret file I was keeping, identified cryptically as Misc. Expenses. At the top I’d made three columns—MEANS, MOTIVE, OPPORTUNITY—as a reminder of what I had to determine. At this point, only the MOTIVE had much listed underneath. But quickly, I typed, Aerobics—strong legs under MEANS. And Dinner together under OPPORTUNITY. I needed more, however, much more.
My auditing professor used to tell us that defining the question was sixty-three percent of the answer, so I started a new page and typed every question I could think of. And then I highlighted the last. Who is Wanda Ross? And I realized I couldn’t answer.
What, after all, did I know about Wanda? Other than her status as a fortune-hungry, husband-stealing hussy? Not much. She’d been a step-aerobics instructor at Don’s health club. She was twenty-six or so. Had a son about six or seven, a cute little blonde kid. I could make a guess about her background—let’s just say it didn’t include matriculation at Wellesley—but I had to conclude I knew next to nothing about the woman who set fire to my life.
I’d always typed her as “the stereotypical other woman,” which now seemed rather less than illustrative. I needed to know more. If she’d killed Don—and it made perfect sense that she had—I had to discover more about her. Who is Wanda Ross?
I let my fingers do the walking, all the way to the local newspaper’s website. I was hoping for some criminal activity, but except for Don’s obituary, the links were all to the society page. Mentally, I added the sobriquet “social-climbing” to fortune-hunting and husband-stealing, and clicked on the first few links. They were all alike: Wanda with Don at the March of Dimes benefit, Wanda and Don at the Art Museum’s Etruscan gallery opening, Wanda taking over my previous social life, etc., etc. I spared a moment imagining her trying to converse about Etruscan art, and then yanked my mind back to the problem at hand.
The latest link was from just two days ago. Buried deep in a column about the doings of the Symphony Guild, that name leaped out at me. “Wanda Ross, widow of magnate Don Ross, will emerge for the first time since his death. She has bought an entire table at the gala and insisted on donating back eight seats for resale by the Guild.”
“Yeah,” I muttered meanly, “she couldn’t fill those classy seats with her biker-bar friends.”
Well, at least she wasn’t going to do that boring mourning thing. Here it was, a week or two a widow, and already off dancing.
Then I focused my mind. The gala. Friday night. I could go to that. I could observe her, eavesdrop on her, silently intimidate her. Make her nervous. I could do that. Before I lost my nerve, I dialed up Brad, who had inherited the coveted Munssen seat on the symphony board.
“Brad,” I said as breezily as I could manage. “I was wondering if there were still a couple tickets for the symphony gala this weekend. I’m afraid I can’t find the order form.”
“Meggie! Hey, that’s great. As a matter of fact, I’ve got a couple seats at my table that just opened up.”
“I’ll take them. Where can I send the check?”
Brad said gently, “There’s no need for you to pay.”
He must have heard about Don’s will and surmised what my balance sheet looked like now. “Brad, I–” I heard my voice go mushy with gratitude, and stopped. When I spoke again, it was smile-confident-upbeat time. “No, thanks.”
“What?” he replied, sounding half amused, half annoyed. “You think I can’t afford it?”
“You think I can’t afford it?” I shot back, on the theory that the best defense is a good offense. “I can. I’ll text you my credit card number, and you hold those seats, okay?”
“Okay. Uh, Meggie?” There was an awkward pause. “I think you ought to know. Wanda will be there. Don’s second wife, I mean.”
“Really?” I restrained myself from adding something about her short-lived mourning. “Just don’t put me at her table.”
“You’ll be at my table. I have to squire two society dragons, or I’d put you right next to me.”
“Thanks, hon.” A thought occurred to me. “Brad, how many seats to a table?”
“The usual. Ten. We’ve sold out fifty tables so far. The committee is happy about that.”
“Wow. Five hundred seats at $200 per. I can do that math.”
After we rang off, I did some even simpler math. Wanda had donated back eight seats. That meant she’d kept two. Hers and a date’s. Maybe that guy she kept calling on her cellphone. I thought of the men who stuck close to her at the funeral. They didn’t look to be music lovers, and their chests would strain a tux, but they’d sure cause some comment among Brad’s rich old ladies.
I had to get my own date. I could ask Barb—nah. I could just see Wanda with her Body Builder Monthly cover model, and me and my best girlfriend. Nope. It had to be a man, preferably one who would impress those gathered and humiliate Wanda.
My calendar program spoke. “Two pm. Meeting at river bottom with Will.” This was said in an Australian drawl, so it sounded as if Russell Crowe resided inside my computer.
Oh, yeah! There was my date! (Not Russell. Will.) He was the richest man in town, the most famous too. And he kept saying he wanted to go out with me. Wanda would eat her capped teeth in envy—not that this was my aim. He’d give me instant credibility. People might even gossip with me about that little upstart over there, already spending her dead husband’s money.
There was only one obstacle between my plan and my objective.
I had to ask Will out.
I’d never asked a man out before. Yes, I know I’d been born during the great sexual revolution. But I’d always managed to avoid the more ego-endangering aspects of this. I hadn’t burned my bra in junior high—I worried that the slight padding therein might survive the conflagration—and I’d never asked a man out.
Not that I meant this as a date. But Will might, and either say no, so I’d feel rejected, or worse, say yes, and then I’d have to decide if this was the direction I wanted us to go.
Besides, I’d just be using him. Oh, but to introduce Will to Wanda—you think you stole a millionaire, bitch, well, look at the one who wants me—it might be worth a few guilty pangs. No. No, it wouldn’t. Not quite.
Well, maybe it would be worth it.
This inner debate went on as I took Will and the surveyor along the muddy riverbank and pointed out all the possible sites for the farmhouse cum museum. The surveyor abandoned me—went off on his own with the survey of the new floodplain lines—and there I was crunching through the old corn stubble with Will. I waited till I was in my car and then leaned out the window. Protected by the car door, I felt braver. “I have these tickets and—”
Okay, yeah, it was gratifying to see his face light up. It was like the big football star really wanted to go out with little old me the student council treasurer.
“Hey, great! When?”
“Tomorrow night.” I added hastily, “It’s short notice. But it’s the gala. You’re a sponsor, and I figured you’d be going–”
He took a step back. “Uh, yeah. But look, I’ve already got tickets for the gala.” He sounded uncomfortable about it.
“We could still sit together, though, if you want.” That took terribly heroic courage, to say that. Really. And naturally the gods took it as a cosmic joke and provided the punch line.
“Uh, not really. I’ve got a date.”
I knew this would happen. Massive humiliation. But he hadn’t rejected me, just the event. “No problem. I’ll see you there.”
And I jammed the car into gear, but Will yelled, “What about dinner? Remember, we were maybe going to go out after this.”
The prospect of having to converse over dinner, when I wanted to shrink into a spot on the upholstery, made me risk his assuming I was taking my revenge. “Can’t make it,” I said,
smiling brightly. “Sorry. Catch you next time.”
I drove off, vowing never to ask a man to do anything again. Not even the cable guy. Never.
That resolve lasted about as long as it took to contemplate going dateless to an encounter with Wanda. As soon as I got home, I called Vince. “Hey, I need a favor. I’ve got this symphony gala, and La Bimbo will be there, and you look good in a tux. The whole evening’s on me.”
Vince didn’t shatter what was left of my ego. “I’ll check with Hal. But I don’t think he’s got anything planned for me.”
“Hal looks good in a tux too. Maybe I can get another ticket? Wanda would be blown away if I had a hunk on each arm.”
My hopes of a double play were scotched by the news that Hal had a bowling tournament Friday. But Vince was available. “Good for business. You can introduce me to your rich friends, and I can flog the chamber’s arts-enhancement fund.”
The symphony fund-raisers would throw us out for poaching on their turf, I thought. But I only said, “Let’s walk this evening and work out all the details.”
“Like which tux I should wear. I’ve got four, you know.”
He spent the first half of our walk explaining how he ended up with four tuxes, and the last half consulting on my own garb for the big evening. “You’ve got good cleavage. Use it.”
It wasn’t the most effusive compliment, but I knew it was honest. That’s the great thing about a gay man’s praise. Vince wasn’t saying it to get me into bed, so he must actually mean it.
Friday night found me all dolled up, wearing the perfect dress, understated and appropriate, black shimmer over purple shine. It did offer some cleavage, which for the time being I covered up with a black lace shawl. “Now you remember my cell phone number?” I asked Tommy.
“Yeah, I’ll call if anyone breaks in and takes me hostage.”
Until Death Page 16
