Almost Dead

by Lisa Jackson

  Most of what I had pertaining to this case was from Dwayne’s own hard copy on the Wedding Bandits, a group of robbers who’d been systematically ripping off the families of brides and grooms, stealing both personal belongings and wedding gifts while the ceremonies were taking place. Dwayne had meticulously chronicled the bandits’ activities, from their basic modus operandi to the homes they’d targeted. It appeared the Wedding Bandits had hit Roland Hatchmere’s home the day of his daughter’s wedding, but whether that was before, during, or after his death was undetermined. At least for Dwayne and me. Dwayne had been sidelined by his accident and his client, a onetime father-of-a-bride Wedding Bandit victim, had let the police take over rather than have the case turned over to me. Which was just fine. I was glad I didn’t have a second client breathing down my neck. Violet Purcell was enough.

  Dwayne picked cautiously through the salad with his fork. Apparently he didn’t believe we were raisin-free. “You got that e-mail I sent you about Hatchmere’s business partner?”

  “I put in a call to Dr. Wu. He’s out of the country for a few weeks, working with a medical relief team.”

  “Who’s in charge of the clinics while he’s gone?”

  “No one person, apparently. They’re owned by a consortium,” I reminded him, though Dwayne was the one who’d secured that information in the first place. “I’ve been waiting for Wu to return.”

  Dr. Daniel Wu was the head plastic surgeon of a group of four clinics previously owned by Roland Hatchmere, who had once been a very well known plastic surgeon himself until his personal cocaine use got in the way. With his license revoked Roland turned his talents to business, capitalizing on his still valuable reputation and garnering patients to his clinics in droves. Dr. Wu had become his business partner, though Roland held on to the lion’s share of the business until it was sold earlier this year to the consortium.

  “Wu’s the one to talk to,” Dwayne agreed.

  “It just means I’m stalled,” I said.

  “Things’ll break.”

  Like that advice was going to help me. I wanted to shout, “When? How? Would you stop looking through those damn binoculars?” Instead I just finished my meal. Dwayne was nice enough to thank me and even pay for the food. I tried to demur, but he smiled faintly and ignored me, so I pocketed the bills. I’m pretty sure I should be embarrassed by my cheapness, but I can’t stop considering it an attribute. Thriftiness is a good thing, right?

  I watched him pick up the Review and start reading.

  Feeling frustrated, I complained, “Wu’s not the only issue. I’m having trouble getting the Hatchmere clan to talk to me. I’ve left messages. I even dropped by Roland’s house once, but I got the door slammed in my face.”

  “Who slammed it on you?”

  “The daughter. Gigi Hatchmere. Or, wait…Popparockskill…”

  “It’s still Hatchmere. Ceremony never came off when Roland didn’t show.” He shook the paper and opened to another page as he headed back outside.

  “Have you got any bright ideas on what I should do next?” I called, but Dwayne was outside and either he couldn’t hear me or he didn’t care.

  Annoyed, I pulled up my file on Violet and wirelessly sent its meager contents to the printer as I slid another look Dwayne’s way.

  He’d put down the paper and was standing in the strange darkness created by the storm, staring up at the sky. I followed his gaze and saw a crack between clouds where sunlight spilled through, looking like a sheer, glowing curtain of white and yellow, the kind of odd illumination that, as Dwayne moved in front of it, surrounded him with a brilliant aura.

  “Saint Dwayne,” I muttered.

  “What?” he hollered.

  Oh yeah, sure. Now he hears me? “Nothing.”

  I headed to the printer, which is currently set up in Dwayne’s spare bedroom, and looked at the pages. It was disheartening how little progress I’d made. Nobody, but nobody, wanted to talk to anyone associated with Violet. I’d placed a few calls and gotten a few polite no’s and a few more “you’ve got to be kiddings.” One guy, some Hatchmere family friend known as Big Jim, just laughed like a hyena and hung up on me.

  Gathering up the two pages of potential interviewees, I sensed a nub of anxiety tightening in the pit of my stomach. For all his inattention, Dwayne wasn’t going to wait forever. He would expect some hard answers. But Violet was anathema. And no one wanted to talk to a friend of Violet’s—friend being a stretch of the truth of our relationship—but I suspected Dwayne wasn’t going to see it that way.

  “Come on out here, Jane,” Dwayne called, apparently sensing I’d returned to the living room as his eyes were once again glued to his binoculars.

  He was back on the chaise longue, though I suspected there might be some moisture soaking into the seat of his jeans. The outdoor furniture and dock were still wet from the hail blast.

  Squeezing back outside, I felt a frigid huff of wind whip beneath my black suede vest, press my shirt to my skin and generally bring me to goose bumps. Dwayne’s cowboy hat, never far from his side, was now scrunched on his head. His long, light blue denim-clad left leg, and encasted right one, stretched toward the small, slatted- wood table we’d knocked over on our scramble to get back inside. I righted the table and put it beside his chair. Apart from his shirt, there was no protection against the elements, but it didn’t look like he cared much.

  My eyes followed the line of his legs and I felt a twist of sexual interest. I gritted my teeth. And him being a semi-invalid. What did that say about me?

  “Take a look here,” he said, handing me the binoculars. “Straight over there is Rebel Yell….” He pointedat a white two-story house across the bay and a little to our left. I looked through the lenses. “Parents, two teenage girls, lots of drama.”

  “You’ve named another one?”

  “Named ’em all. It’s next to Tab A and Slot B, just to the west side.”

  I gazed at Tab A and Slot B, where all fall the man and woman had been cavorting into every sexual position known to humankind, and tried to keep my mind off Dwayne. He and I had done a bit of that mating dance not so long ago, nothing too serious, and then Violet had entered our world. Sometimes, late at night, when my mind whirled on a repetitive track, I remembered those moments with uncomfortable inner jolts that seemed to hit my heart and parts down south as well. “We’ve watched them before,” I said neutrally.

  “Mm,” he agreed. “Tab A’ll be home in a couple hours. Lately they’ve been turning on their outdoor fire pit and then heading just inside the slider door and getting to work. Lovemaking by the fire. Guess it’s what you do when you don’t have an indoor fireplace.”

  “Can’t wait for that.”

  “Next to Rebel Yell is Plastic Pet Cemetery, where old lawn ornaments go to die.”

  “The Pilarmos. With the dog.”

  Dwayne nodded. “Thing howls and looks like a wolf.”

  I centered my binoculars on the Pilarmos’ tired, dark blue bungalow. Kinda looked like my cottage, only worse, if that was possible. Probably worth a small fortune. I could make out gnomes and plastic pink flamingos and faux cement birdbaths decorating a large portion of the backyard. A grayish wolf-dog cruised around the corner and disappeared from view.

  “Then there’s Do Not Enter.”

  I moved my glasses to aim toward a shell of a house where the beams and a skin of plywood constituted the walls. The roof was covered with plywood, and half the composition shingles had been nailed on. “Why is it Do Not Enter?”

  “It’s where the high school kids party. They try to keep their flashlights dimmed, but every Friday night, some Saturdays, there’s something going on. And that last house before the road curves toward North Shore is Social Security. He’s deaf and she’s bedridden and neither of ’em is too worried about Do Not Enter.”

  Hearing he’d named more houses worried me anew. I had to remind myself that this, too, would pass. It was a harmless pursuit on Dwayne
’s part. Something to entertain him while he recovered. If it smacked a little too much of Jimmy Stewart’s character in Rear Window, well, it wasn’t like he was going to ask me to solve a murder over there.

  I handed him back the binoculars, murmured something about getting back to my job, then squeezed back inside the cabana and headed to my laptop. My job—the job I was getting paid for—was to prove Violet Purcell’s innocence. Besides the fact that no one will talk to me, the bigger problem is I kinda think Violet might be guilty. She’s sensed this and has yelled, “Things aren’t always what they seem, Jane!” more times than I like to recall. And actually, I think that’s a crock anyway. Most of the time things are exactly what they seem. We just can’t accept them as they are. We want to make them better, or different, or meaningful.

  But…I must remember, innocent until proven guilty. It’s difficult with Violet. She’s late forties, appears and acts over a decade younger, possesses more good looks than good sense, and has a family who took the “health” out of “mental health” in a big way. I would like to forget that she made a play for Dwayne, but I can’t. It’s only been a few weeks since I met Violet—basically a little over a month—but it feels like the proverbial eternity. First I thought she was a breath of fresh air. Then I decided she was a femme fatale. Now I’m thinking she might be a murderer.

  I mean, couldn’t she have killed ex-husband number three? Couldn’t she have? Why does Dwayne find that so impossible?

  I shook my head and stared up at the fir beams that line the cabana’s ceiling and thought back. Upon first meeting I’d been intrigued with Violet’s tell-it-like-it-is, take-no-prisoners attitude. But she was a Purcell and I had learned by then that they were a secretive, squirrelly bunch, so I wasn’t sure what to think of her. It had been refreshing to be faced with a family member who initially exhibited none of their odd family traits. Key word here being initially. Violet’s definitely got her own issues.

  Luckily, since Dwayne’s accident, things seem to have cooled off a bit between him and Violet, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. And okay, they haven’t progressed to much more than friends, but I know she hauled off and kissed him once. I got to witness that. Dwayne is my mentor, boss, partner and friend. I cannot have him mean anything more to me and stay sane. I know this, but I have to keep reminding myself anyway because there’s a part of me that just can’t quite leave the whole possible romance thing alone. I would like to be disgusted with myself for being so nauseatingly hopeless. I mean, why can’t I just get over it? It’s interfering with my job and my life and I don’t even think I really like Dwayne.

  That memory of Violet pulling him into a kiss crossed the screen of my mind again and I had to clench my teeth.

  I waited for the moment to pass.

  “Are you growling?”

  I jumped. Dwayne’s voice was loud. Glancing back, I saw he’d stuck his head inside the slider door.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I like to.”

  We looked at each other. I would rather suck on dirty socks than admit my feelings for Dwayne.

  He let it go. “Violet’s on her way over, right?”

  “Yep. She wants us to talk to the police. Find out if they’re going to indict her.”

  “Larrabee would have already if he could prove she was guilty,” Dwayne said.

  Detective Vince Larrabee was a homicide detective with the Portland Police and a longtime acquaintance, sometime friend, of Dwayne’s. I’d heard his name once or twice before Violet’s case, but now it was part of our daily dialogue, though I had yet to meet the man.

  “Violet wants that information directly from the big dog. I’m a mere lackey.”

  Dwayne snorted and returned to the dock. He sank into the hail- and rain-soaked chair again without comment.

  It had been a lot sunnier the day Violet walked out on Dwayne’s dock and announced that she might have killed her ex-husband. I’d been so giddily happy that she and Dwayne seemed kaput that I’d let myself be talked into helping her.

  She’d showed up in true Violet fashion: looking beautiful, and…well, lusty. Her hair is blond and shoulder- length, her eyes that crazy electric blue color most of the Purcells seem to share. My own hair is a little longer than shoulder length, light brown, straight and wouldn’t let itself be styled if I bought a truckload of Vidal Sassoon products. I don’t possess Violet’s curves, but my eyes are hazel and sane-looking. I’m thirty and Dwayne’s about thirty-five. I figure that evens the score.

  But that day Violet hadn’t been thinking about Dwayne, not in any romantic capacity. She’d needed help.

  She plopped down in one of the dock chairs and announced numbly, “My ex-husband’s dead.” I’d questioned which ex-husband, since she’d had a few, and learned it was Roland Hatchmere, ex number three, the only one who lived in the Portland area.

  “He was killed yesterday,” she went on. “On his daughter’s wedding day. Roland was still at the house, and these robbers showed up thinking he was gone, I guess, and he wasn’t, and they killed him.”

  “Wedding robbers?” I asked, looking at Dwayne, since he’d already been investigating the Wedding Bandits.

  “What happened?” Dwayne asked her.

  “I don’t know! The police came to see me today,” Violet said, her eyes huge. “God, I don’t believe this. They seem to think I did it.” We asked her why that was and after hemming and hawing, she finally admitted, “Because he was killed with a heavy metal platter that has my fingerprints on it.”

  “Did you kill him?” Dwayne asked her.

  “I don’t think so,” she responded in a small voice.

  And that’s when Dwayne checked out completely, picked up his binoculars and returned to his perusal of his buddies across the bay. If I’d known then he was going to make a serious job out of it, I might have been more concerned, but instead after he told Violet I was the lead investigator, I started thinking about how much money I could make and I agreed to take the case.

  Since then my job had been mostly about keeping Violet calm and focused. She lived in a certain amount of fear the authorities were going to swoop down and haul her criminal ass to justice. I soothed her with words about needing real evidence and motive and whatever else I could draw from the criminology classes I’d taken and my own vast repertoire of bullshit that I like to dress up as fact.

  I’d managed to piece together the events of the wedding day from Violet’s disjointed recitation. Apparently Roland’s daughter Gigi had been slated to marry Emmett Popparockskill at the Cahill Winery in Dundee, Oregon, which is about an hour’s drive from Roland’s house in Portland’s West Hills District.

  The wedding was scheduled to be outdoors with the requisite flowers, arches, ring bearer and flower girl—two additions I always cheer for since they pretty much rip focus away from the bride by screwing up somehow. I swear to God they are the best part of any wedding, beyond the champagne, alcohol and food.

  Violet was not invited to the ceremony as she and Gigi were not on the best of terms, but she’d stopped by Roland’s house to drop off a gift for the bride and groom—the metal platter. While there, she and Roland got into some kind of fight, which culminated with Violet whacking him alongside the head with the platter and leaving in a huff.

  Roland never showed for pictures and a search went out. He was found dead on the solarium floor from a blow to the head. Murder weapon, the tray.

  Violet insists she didn’t kill him. “He was perfectly fine when I left him! He was moving. Breathing. Swearing at me! I didn’t kill him. Those robbers must have. After I left, they came in and killed him. I didn’t kill him!”

  I’ve gotta say, she’s quite convincing. I would probably believe her, but…well, Roland Hatchmere died from head trauma. And Violet hit him in the head with the tray. And the police found only one set of fingerprints on the tray: Violet’s.

  Now I heard the loud purr of a sports car and figured the woman
in question had arrived. She gave a perfunctory knock on Dwayne’s door, then pushed in, calling loudly, “I’m letting myself in!”

  “Dwayne’s on the dock,” I greeted her.

  She burst inside loaded with packages from several major department stores. A cloud of perfume wafted into the room, trailing in her wake. Catching my look, she held the bags higher. “I just couldn’t stop. Am I spending all my funds to fill a need? I’d bet on it, hon. I have too much money and not enough friends. Look, I bought you something.”

  I tried hard not to react as Violet dug inside one of the bags. Scary, scary thought. I don’t want to owe Violet anything. Working for her is one thing, but friendship? Clothes buying…?

  To my consternation she pulled out a dress. “Purple,” I said faintly. I didn’t want to be ungrateful but the thought of Violet buying me clothes…I just know it’s not going to work somehow.

  “It’s my signature color,” she said unnecessarily. “It’s more amethyst, don’t you think? It’s like voile, really sheer in that sort of netty way? I just love it. I could just see you in it. Here, try it on.” She held it out to me.

  I instantly turned back to my screen. “In a minute, I need to finish this.”

  “Oh, come on, Jane.”

  I finally really looked at Violet. I’d been spending so much time on the dress and dealing with my internal horror that I hadn’t given much thought to Violet herself. Now I saw clearly that this was important to her. Even worse. There was no polite way out.

  “Sure,” I said, taking the proffered garment and heading toward Dwayne’s bathroom.

  I stripped off my clothes and pulled it over my head. The dress, actually gown, hung to my ankles and hugged like a second skin. I’d been wearing jeans and boots and had left dark socks on. Taking them off, I gave myself a studied look, turning to capture a view of the side and back.