Madeline Mann

by Julia Buckley

  I finished my food and paid the tab; then I returned to the Wire.

  A message from Wick was waiting for me. The wake was tomorrow, in the Dour Brothers Funeral Home in Webley. The funeral was on Thursday, at St. Catherine's in Webley. Logan's family had attended that church all his life. For the first time, I felt the sting of tears.

  I thought of those cards they hand out at funerals, with the dates of a person's life and death. Like wedding invitations, white and formal. When we were in high school, it was the prom bids and the eventual graduation announcements. Life's great events, recorded in italics on stiff white paper.

  Logan had been a handsome kid, a promising kid, a mixed-up kid. His parents’ divorce was, I believe, something from which he never recovered. It had turned him selfish, made him focus upon himself because he was no longer the light of his parents’ marriage, an identity he had assumed long before.

  I made this assumption because once, just once, I had seen Logan cry.

  We were at a party one Saturday night, way back when. It was at the house of a sophomore named Charlie Milner; at the time, we considered him a friend, but now I couldn't tell you what had become of him. Logan had developed a reputation as a ladies’ man, and I think in a weird way he felt a certain pressure to live up to it. He had gone out to his car with a girl named Lauren, and several people in the room had yelled, “There goes Logan!” in a jocular way.

  Twenty minutes later, Lauren had come back in, looking angry. I pulled her aside. “Where's Logan?” I asked.

  She brushed off my hand, near tears. “He's in his precious car,” she told me. “He's cute, but he's too weird. I'm out of here.”

  I made my way out to Logan's car, where he sat in silence, drinking a beer.

  I knocked on the window, then opened the passenger door and climbed inside. I sat next to him quietly for a few moments, then asked, “What's up?”

  “Lauren's too needy,” he'd told me listlessly. “I don't even like her that much, and she's ready to buy a goddamn wedding gown,” he joked without smiling.

  “Maybe she—,” I started to say, and then I realized that the hissing sound coming from Logan was his attempt to stop a flow of tears. He failed. He cried, hard, for about five minutes. I found a tissue in my pocket and handed it to him. I wondered, being a non-hugger, if I should break my rule and pull him into an awkward embrace. I didn't.

  Finally Logan stopped. “That's what I like about you, Madeline. You can be quiet and just let someone have feelings, and you don't go all sappy and touchy and try to turn it into a make-out session.”

  “What's wrong?” I asked.

  He tapped the steering wheel with his knuckles. “My parents are getting divorced. They've been separated all this year—I told you that, right? Now my dad is moving away. He's moving away, like I'm just someone he's prepared to visit once in a while. And Linus too.”

  I had no idea what to say. I knew that much of my confidence as a young person stemmed from the fact that I had a happy, stable home—even at sixteen I knew that. I would have been a hypocrite to suggest anything at all.

  “I'm sorry,” I offered.

  Logan nodded, tapping away at the steering wheel.

  “You'll always have me,” I told him.

  Apparently my instincts were good when it came to Logan. He looked at me as though I'd said exactly the right thing, and he agreed to come back in to the party with me, where we were all about to watch Saturday Night Live.

  I thought of that now; I hadn't remembered it in years, but the more I thought of that night, the more details came back to me. I knew, even then, that Logan may have wished that we were romantically involved. I probably enjoyed my status as “the friend he wished could be more than a friend,” even exaggerating it a bit in my own head. From that night on, though, I also saw myself as something of a surrogate mother to Logan: his protector from people who didn't understand him, people who let him down, the real father and mother who didn't acknowledge his pain in the midst of their own. Something of that feeling stayed with me still.

  “You'll always have me,” I'd told him, but it had been a lie. I'd drifted away from him because he no longer seemed to suit my life, and that had been selfish of me. Eight years later he'd made me a tape, something that would perpetuate my role in his eyes as confessor and protector. Perhaps Logan was right. Those protective instincts, long dormant, were still there, and this time they were taking the form of a desire for revenge.

  I wiped away my tears.

  I called my father, passed on the funeral info, and told him to give it to Mom when she arrived home. “Sure thing, honey,” he said distractedly. He was listening to country music and building a table. My dad was an amazing carpenter, and sometimes he took a day off from his accounting firm to play with a new project. In any case, his mind was only half on me, so I rang off.

  I called Fritz, who was home “sick” from his day job at Barnes and Noble. “Madman,” he said cheerfully. “What's up?”

  He sobered quickly enough when I told him about the wake and funeral. He took the information and promised to pass it on to the band, and even to Gerhard, who had met Logan a couple of times when the musicians practiced at the apartment.

  “Listen, why don't you guys come over for pizza tonight?” I asked him. “You can tell me what you'll be singing at the festival. I hear you won't be wearing costumes after all.”

  “Oh God,” Fritz moaned. “Lay off about the costumes. Now Mom won't forgive me unless I get booked on Letterman or something. Maybe I should get married.”

  “It would help if you met a girl first,” I advised. “Anyway. Does free food sound good?”

  “As always. I'll tell the working man when he gets home from the white-collar world. A trip out will do him good. As long as he's not going out with his new friend.”

  “If he has plans with her, tell him to bring her over. I've never met her,” I said pointedly.

  “Yeah, okay, cool. We'll see you, Madman.” Fritz got bored easily, and my telephone skills had apparently waned.

  I hung up and continued working on my Wire stories. My boss, Bill Thorpe, came in an hour later and asked what I'd have ready on Logan by Wednesday.

  “By Wednesday?” I hedged, blinking at the tall form planted in front of me. Bill looked a lot like the late Jim Hutton (my mom had an old videotape of Ellery Queen), with a little more meat on him and glasses on his nose. I'd indulged in a crush on Bill when I'd first started working at the Wire, but he was devoted to his wife, Rose, and regardless was oblivious to flirtation, because he hadn't a romantic bone in his body. Rose had once told me that he'd proposed marriage so unromantically that she'd begun to cry.

  “I won't have much, actually,” I said. “But I swear I'm onto something. Lyle Sylvane admitted that it was he in the car that was following Logan. He admitted they were warning Logan about something. He was smiling about it! Then the mayor rushed in and practically dragged Lyle away from me, and he hasn't spoken to me since. You'd think a guy as savvy as Don Paul would get an assistant who wasn't a lummox,” I said.

  Bill pursed his lips, thinking. “Maybe Sylvane has reasons he can't be fired,” he said.

  “There's something, Bill. Mr. Lanford, Logan's dad, told me on the phone today that Logan ‘had something’ on the mayor. He doesn't know much more about it. Didn't want to know. He knows that Logan himself wasn't squeaky clean.”

  Bill raised his eyebrows.

  “But there's more,” I said. “Quinn Paley, the guy out in Saugatuck? I think he has a marijuana farm. Maybe Logan was involved with that. Maybe Logan knew too much, or a drug deal went sour.”

  “Drugs?” Bill said, intrigued, like this was a tasty item on a menu. “Maddy, you're a treasure. How much time do you need?” Bill asked. He really wanted to do more investigative journalism and eventually wanted to expand the Wire into a daily. “And do you need help? Do you need me to cover any angles?” he asked, rather hopefully, I thought.

  “Yo
u know what? I could use a week, and I could use your help too. This is big, and I'm not going to be dumb enough to tackle it on my own. First of all, I've got my mom and Pamela Fey keeping their eyes open at the mayor's office. But I know that Don Paul won't speak to me again. Maybe you could keep your thumb on him.”

  “Right,” said Bill.

  “And maybe you and I can devise a list of people we need to eliminate as suspects. I can't pin all my hopes on the mayor. His corruption may well end up being a separate investigation.”

  I could see Bill warming to the idea of two investigations.

  “Anyway, I have an appointment at the PD, but after that, I thought I'd go back to Saugatuck,” I said, consulting my watch and realizing I'd have to cancel the plans I'd just made with Fritz or drive up there very late.

  Bill nodded. “Might be a good idea. Paley needs another look. Be careful,” he warned. “Maybe take Jack with you again.”

  I wasn't sure I liked that idea, since Jack would try to prevent me from doing almost everything I wanted to do, which included trespassing, spying, maybe even digging up samples. I handed Bill the slip of paper on which I'd written the times of the wake and funeral. “You can give this to Denise if she hasn't already included it in her article.”

  “You bet,” he agreed.

  “We're going to catch a murderer if it's the last thing we do,” I told Bill as I left.

  I thought for a moment of Jack. “It may well be the last thing you do,” I could hear him intoning melodramatically in my mind's ear. The imaginary Jack was more annoying than the real one.

  I got in the car and headed for the police station.

  thirteen

  I suffer from a severe sweet tooth that throbs at all times of day. I try to ignore its constant yearnings for fear that I'll end up looking like my Tante Gretel, who, though lovely, resembles a lotto ball. She enjoys a sweet with every meal.

  I was craving chocolate when I pulled into the lot of the Webley Police Department. I walked through the parking lot (filled with cars but no people) and climbed the steps into an unremarkable foyer, where I bought a bag of pretzels from a machine. I was extremely close to pressing the button for the Ho Hos, but the angel on my shoulder (which looked like Jack in a choir robe) warned me about high cholesterol and its link to heart disease.

  Munching a pretzel, I walked to a disappointing cubicle that was mainly a hole in a dingy wall. I'd never actually been inside the police station, and I guess I was expecting to see some of the excitement that I saw on TV cop shows—drug dealers struggling with arresting officers, colorful prostitutes engaged in humorous dialogue with beat cops they knew by name, evil murderers glaring balefully from behind cell bars.

  Instead I confronted a woman with hair the color of a tomato and an equally unnatural face, complete with drawn-on eyebrows and lip liner that didn't stay true to the actual proportions of her mouth. She sat in her cubicle, flipping idly through a fashion magazine and being as rude to me in person as she had been on the phone. She suggested apathetically that I sit in one of the orange plastic chairs that added such opulence to the environment. I did so, feeling bored and oppressed by the ugliness of the room. I stared at my nails, unpolished and short, and wondered how some women could abide long ones. For me, they always got in the way.

  The woman in the cubicle suddenly yelled, “Man!” while staring at her magazine. I wondered if she were admiring someone's physique or saying the equivalent of “Gee!” about something she'd read. After a minute, she tore herself away from her scintillating tabloid and stared at me. I stared back. “Man,” she repeated, annoyed. “You can go in now.”

  “Oh, Mann,” I said. She thought I was giving her a hard time. Customer service has deteriorated to this extent. I stood up and smoothed the legs of my pantsuit. It was cocoa colored and the closest thing to a power suit that I had. I walked to the door and was buzzed in by Tomato Hair, who was back in her magazine.

  I stood uncertainly in the doorway, looking down a hallway. The only sound I heard was the soft clicking of computer keys. No perps. No escapees, nor people being wrestled into handcuffs. I cleared my throat. Tomato Hair swiveled in her chair and yelled, “Kubik! Your appointment's here!” The phone rang. She picked it up but managed to say, “Room Twelve,” and hand me a visitor's pass before she answered the call in her special winning way.

  I went to Room Twelve, which was even more anticlimactic than the lobby. It was a bare, cold room, the walls scarred where posters had once hung. Bits of tape still lingered there, the only evidence that someone, at some point, gave a care. There was a long, ugly brown table in the center of the room, reminiscent of the kind donated to my church for bingo, and around the table were six metal folding chairs. Was this an interrogation room? It had no windows, so I left the door open to avoid claustrophobia. I leaned against one wall, somehow unwilling to sit.

  Sam Kubik didn't make a good first impression. It wasn't just the way he walked in without looking at me, tossing a file folder on the table as if I'd already wasted his time; it was more the feeling he projected, and perhaps the sour expression he wore on his face.

  He was not tall, perhaps about five feet eight. He didn't look like a TV cop, and yet he did. He had that slightly weathered, red-skinned look, perhaps from sun or too much booze, like the bad cop in a Raymond Chandler novel, but he also had a certain reserve about him, a disapproving hesitancy that suggested I had talked in the library and he had been sent to say, “Hush.”

  He finally met my eye. “Miss Man?” he asked. He sounded annoyed. I'd not even spoken yet.

  “Monn,” I corrected. I never insist on the German pronunciation, but it seemed fitting to do so now.

  “Miss Monn.” He exaggerated it sarcastically with a lift of his multicolored eyebrows. He gestured to a chair.

  “It's German,” I said patiently, sitting down.

  “Thank you for coming in, Miss Monn,” he began, sitting across from me. “We're obviously doing what we can to follow the leads in the death investigation of Logan Lanford. We're cooperating with the Saugatuck police. I believe you spoke to them, is that right?” he asked. I had the strangest feeling he was trying to catch me out with this basic information.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “Your name, as you may know, features prominently in that investigation.” He was staring at his folder as he spoke, and I wondered if those words were actually written in there.

  “I suppose it does,” I agreed again. I was quite the agreeable witness. “And I suppose either Detective Perez or her partner informed you that there was not much I could tell them. And perhaps they passed on the information about Quinn Paley, who was the last person to see him alive.”

  Kubik squinted and looked thoughtful, like he was trying to hearken back about a hundred years instead of the day or so it had been since he'd been in touch with them. “I suppose they did tell me,” he said. “But there's a problem with that. I don't believe you.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked. I knew that I was going to end up indignant, but for the moment I was amused.

  “Look at the facts as we see them, Miss Monn. You got this guy a job after he was fired. You were his best friend in high school. You went driving out to Saugatuck for apparently no reason on the day he died. You slipped a note through his mail slot. Inside was a note he had written to you. Do you see the common denominator here?” he asked, tipping back his chair.

  “Well, in that list of events, the common element is me,” I answered, looking at the back legs of his chair. I felt nervous that he was going to fall backward. “Of course, you're leaving out a lot of other pertinent facts, like who had motive to kill him and who else might have been in town. Since I know that I didn't kill Logan—or even see him—that list seems kind of unnecessary to me. But that's my perspective.” I smiled, trying to be friendly despite my opposing stance.

  Kubik didn't smile back. I wondered if he was actually trying to fit me into the role of murderer, perhaps because
he liked the idea of pinning it on an unlikely person. “It just doesn't fit,” he insisted. “Why were you there at his cabin to begin with?”

  “To talk to him,” I said. “As I told Detective Perez, I was there on behalf of his wife, who couldn't reach him. I was basically doing her a really big favor. My boyfriend was with me as well. He's an English and journalism instructor at Webley High School. I'm sure he'll corroborate my story, if you'd like to call him.”

  “I'm sure he will.” Kubik was being undeniably sarcastic. Being me, I was having trouble swallowing it.

  “You know, I can't help but feel that you dislike me, Detective Kubik, despite the fact that I've never met you before, and despite the fact that I've been civil and forthcoming and polite. Maybe it's something in the water here, or the paint or something, since your secretary was equally rude and unfriendly. I would think, as your ambassador to the people, you'd want her to take a little seminar in customer service. The way I was raised, you're polite to strangers, even if you suspect them of murder.” I was on a roll now. I could feel my blood pressure rising as I vented my spleen. “In any case, were there any specific questions you wanted to pose, or did you want to continue with your insinuations about my dishonesty?”

  Kubik hadn't liked this, but I'd taken him by surprise, and he'd let me finish. Now he closed his folder with deliberation. “I guess we're through, Miss Monn. It's been revealing.” Again, the insinuations. “I'll be in touch as the investigation progresses. Please be sure to call me if your story changes—I mean, if you remember any details you might have forgotten to mention.”

  I stood up. “Luckily, the truth is easy to remember. But thanks again for inviting me. It's interesting here in the interrogation room. I think I'll write a feature about it for the paper. People love to read firsthand accounts.”

  I sailed past him in a rush of righteous indignation, tossed my visitor's pass to Tomato Hair, and escaped into fresh air.

  fourteen