Retirement Plan

by Martha Miller

  “Aw, you don’t look so bad,” Henry said. “Just buy some clothes that fit.”

  “Thanks, Henry. But you’re an old man. Your standards are lower.”

  He stood and walked toward her, then pulled a good-sized piece of eggshell out of her hair. Staring at it, he said, “Lower than whose?”

  “Mine, for one.”

  Henry shook the eggshell off his fingers and asked, “What about the constipation?”

  “This time I’ll take an enema.”

  He held up both palms. “Too much information.”

  *

  That night on the way home Morgan stopped at a consignment shop for big women, where she wandered around looking at party dresses and stretchy pants suits. Her mother was too young to wear this stuff. The place smelled like dust, mothballs, and flower-scented sachet.

  “May I help you with something?”

  Morgan spun around to face a slender middle-aged man with a full head of dark hair and severe eyebrows penciled on so he looked perpetually surprised. His eyes were metallic blue and seemed friendly enough. She said, “I’m not sure. This stuff won’t do.”

  “Who are you shopping for?”

  “Me.”

  The guy laughed and said, “Oh, honey. You don’t need anything this big. What size are you?”

  Morgan shrugged.

  “Are you looking for a party dress?”

  “No. A wool blazer, black or dark gray.”

  “I thought you might want something more masculine.” He extended his slender hand. “My name is Sandy.”

  “Morgan Holiday.”

  “Come on in back. I have some smaller sizes there.”

  She followed Sandy and saw boxes of clothes stacked everywhere. He went to an overflowing rack of jackets and started looking through them.

  “You look like a sixteen or eighteen. That sound about right?”

  Morgan shrugged.

  “We’ll try a twenty, just in case.” He pulled two gray jackets and a black one off the rack. “Try on all three sizes in the bathroom over there.”

  The size twenty was a little loose, but it fit better than the others. It was a little old-fashioned, but so were most of her clothes. She told him she’d take it.

  “I have a navy blue in the same size. Sure would look good with jeans.”

  “Wrap up both of them.”

  Back out front he put the blazers in a bag while she wrote a check.

  “Have I seen you before?” Sandy said. “You look familiar.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You ever go to Tallulah’s?”

  She shook her head, no, before it registered that he thought she was a lesbian. Did she look gay? All those years ago, before Chelsea Payne had shut the door in her face, her final shot had been, “I’m not a lesbian. You may be, but I’m not.” Morgan’s life had been fine until she met Chelsea. Even during the affair she lay awake at night wondering at the plausibility of the whole thing. She still felt like herself, so how could she be doing these things?

  On the way home questions swirled in her head. What was a lesbian? Hot, sweaty sex? Evidently not for Chelsea. Was it a word that you had to say for yourself? Maybe it was an appearance. Did Sandy recognize something in her that she couldn’t see? As she drove by Tallulah’s, she wondered if she was like any of the women in there.

  Chapter Seven

  Every morning Morgan stared at two large files on her desk. Progress on the sniper killings had been slow. She and Henry had talked to a lot of people, but the interviews yielded very little. The state crime-scene investigators had found the bullet that killed Ingram imbedded in his refrigerator. It had traveled through his head, the siding, insulation, and drywall and come to rest in the freezer door.

  While Morgan was reasonably sure the rifle that killed Jon Woods was the same as the weapon that fired the refrigerator bullet, she had no solid evidence. Homicide and CSI had searched the river park thoroughly, but they hadn’t found the spent bullet or casing. The killer’s MO was the same though: the late-night attack, the single sniper-like shot, and the assault weapon.

  Then, of course, both victims had a seedy reputation. Jon Woods was a convicted sex offender. With his driver’s license, it hadn’t taken them long to find out the rest. He’d popped up in the system right away. His last known address was in the south suburbs of Chicago. But a check by the state police revealed that he hadn’t lived there for two years. The other victim, Zach Ingram, according to his ex-wife, had been another kind of scumbag. He ran a couple of retirement homes and evidently scammed the residents out of whatever money and property they had. His ex couldn’t turn him in because he’d threatened to stop paying for her health insurance. So both victims had been victimizers.

  With Henry’s retirement imminent, the shootings had taken second place, in Morgan’s nightmares, to the new-partner question. She didn’t know who they planned to promote. She’d heard at one point that they might go outside the department to hire, but that wasn’t likely. Two people were in line for the promotion internally, and neither would be easy to work with. Robert Redick, an ex-marine, was wound a little too tight and had made it known he didn’t want to work with a woman. The other candidate was Donna Turnbull, who’d been on the force eight years and worked her way up. She had a perfect score on the detective test, but from what Morgan knew of her, she didn’t have any common sense or street smarts. She probably belonged in the forensics lab where intelligence and attention to detail were more important than the ability to read people and predict their behavior.

  Both the assault-weapon cases were still open, and the first Friday in February, Morgan got a call about some similar shootings the previous summer, across the state line in Indiana. Morgan had a meeting set up with two detectives from Indianapolis.

  After a particularly bad Sunday visit with her mother, she’d come home and made a cake for Henry—baking was a pleasant distraction. She sat up late while the pan cooled in her freezer, a trick she’d learned from her mother that sped things along, and watched an old episode of CSI. As a rule, she didn’t like police shows. The things that went on in them were ridiculous. While-you-wait DNA testing, middle-of-the-night search warrants obtained in five minutes, shooting, and fighting, and car chases—none of that was real. Most officers, no matter what their rank, worked from day one until retirement and never drew their weapon, let alone went all Dirty Harry and shot up Main Street. Any time they used a weapon, they had to account for every round and undergo an investigation. It irritated her that viewers seemed to believe everything on those shows.

  The stress of the afternoon chess game had exhausted her. As she got up to go start the icing made from butter and confectioner’s sugar, behind her she heard Gil Grisom say, “Follow the evidence. It’s as simple as that. People lie, but the evidence doesn’t.”

  Morgan stirred the sugar into the soft butter, and when the bowl of icing was ready she pulled the rectangular pan from the freezer. The cake was still warm in the center so she decided to leave it in the pan and take it to work that way. She dumped the icing on the top and spread it around. Then, with a can of orange decorating icing made especially for amateur cake lettering (okay, probably little kids), she finished things off.

  She’d gone back into the living room, with a mouth full of orange icing, to turn off the TV when the phone rang. CSI was ending, so it must have been midnight. She answered to her brother, David. He always forgot the two-hour time difference in California.

  “I’m returning your call,” he said.

  Morgan sighed. Why the hell had she called him? His response was always the same. She said, “I had a really bad day with Mom.”

  Silence. Then, “I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t keep doing this.”

  “Do you still go out there every week?” he asked. “I’ve told you, she doesn’t know the difference.”

  He was right. Most of the time her mother thought David visited more often than she did. “Wha
t am I supposed to do?” Her voice took on an edge. “Leave her out there to die alone?”

  “Let go of it, Morgan.”

  “She isn’t an ‘it,’ she’s our mother.”

  Two thousand miles of dead phone line yawned between them. She thought she’d lost the connection when he said, “Our mother died a long time ago. Her body is alive, but she isn’t.”

  “I believe on some level she knows I’m there.”

  “Morgan…”

  Because she wouldn’t let him hear her cry, she hung up. But after the call she didn’t fall asleep for a long time.

  She’d been looking forward to Henry’s retirement party the next morning. But the business of the unsolved cases and the new partner bothered her. Maybe a new set of eyes on the case would help. She had to be missing something. If the killer was human, he was likely to have made a mistake—probably several mistakes.

  *

  Henry rolled his chair up to her desk and scooped out a second piece of cake as Morgan carried two black coffees from the break room. The day shift had gotten him a $250 gift certificate to Menard’s and put it inside a card that everybody signed. The card and the certificate were in Henry’s shirt pocket. A speck of white icing stayed stuck to the corner of his mouth as he said, “Have you ever considered that our sniper might be female?”

  Morgan studied him for a moment. The casts of the footprints at Woods’s killing were small—a woman’s size five. More than likely they belonged to a child. A public park made it impossible to eliminate all the footprints. Going on the fact that Woods had his pants around his ankles, she and Henry had talked to a few hookers. She’d been told that they didn’t work out that far. They stuck close to town in populated areas for protection. She’d focused on the footprints for several days and finally felt like Prince Charming looking for a hooker with feet small enough to fit the cast, but it was all for nothing.

  Finally she said, “Women don’t kill people with assault rifles. Women poison. Women overmedicate. I heard of one who tied her husband to the bed and set the house on fire. Women kill people close to them or people in their care. No, a man did this. An old man, according to one witness.”

  Henry pushed some crumbs around on his paper plate and said nothing.

  Morgan watched him for a moment, then said, “Okay, why do you think it might be a woman?”

  Henry shrugged. “No reason, really. Just a hunch.”

  “Based on what?”

  “Hunches are rarely based on solid evidence. I’ve been a homicide detective for thirty years. If it’s based on anything, it’s based on that.”

  Seemingly out of nowhere, Captain Ward was standing next to Henry pumping his hand and telling him how much he’d be missed. They both knew the old bastard was lying.

  Morgan said, “Have a piece of cake, Captain Ward. I baked it myself.”

  “Thank you, no.” The captain shook Henry’s hand again and slowly backed toward the door. “Detective Holiday, when you’re done with your, ah, break, I’d like to see you in my office.”

  From where Morgan sat, she could see the ex-marine, Robert Redick, waiting in the corridor. In her guts, the rich carrot cake did a messed-up somersault. So it would be the tight-assed ex-marine. Wonderful.

  Redick was fairly young, yet bald; what hair he had left was shaved. He had that marine posture, like he had a three-foot rod stuck up his ass. He was tall with square, muscular shoulders and a narrow waist. He’d never stop for doughnuts or poke fun at her lack of romantic life—hopefully he’d never know about it.

  Morgan groaned, stood up, and pitched her paper plate into the already overflowing trash can. Henry craned his neck, looked up, and met her eyes with an expression of pity. He understood that life as she knew it was over.

  *

  Sophie Long made up her mind that Ruby was coming home, but she didn’t tell Lois until after she visited the prison again. On a cold morning that she and Lois slept in, Sophie decided it was time. Breakfast became brunch, so Sophie made a fresh pot of coffee while Lois started bacon frying. The kitchen was so small it was difficult to keep from bumping into each other. Usually Lois sat and read the paper while Sophie cooked, but this morning Lois hummed as she laid the last strips of bacon in the skillet.

  “What’s got you in such a good mood?” Sophie asked.

  “It got down to thirteen degrees last night, and the kitchen’s warm. No draft. No rattling plastic that we can’t see through.”

  Sophie nodded. “The new windows.”

  “Look at the light in this room. The sun never came through the plastic shrink-wrap like this. I’ll need dark glasses to read the paper.”

  They’d installed triple-pane windows in every room—even the spare room—before Christmas. Now that they could afford the huge heating bills, they wouldn’t have them.

  Sophie stopped in the middle of the floor. As Lois turned, Sophie kissed her, applying a little more than the usual pressure.

  “Are you trying to get in my pants, Miss Long?”

  Sophie continued to the refrigerator to get the apple juice. So her back was to Lois when she said, “I’m glad you’re in a good mood. We need to talk about something.”

  “You’re not going to wreck it, are you?”

  “I hope not.”

  A few minutes later they were in their places at the table watching steam rise from their cups.

  That was when Sophie said, “We need to bring Ruby home with us when she is paroled.”

  Lois stared at Sophie. “I beg your pardon?”

  “She can get out in three weeks. But she needs a place to live—a place her parole board will approve. This could be that place.”

  “We’ve tried before. It doesn’t work. Do you really want to go through all that pain again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lois raised her voice. “Have you seen her?”

  “I have.”

  “When? Why?”

  “At her invitation, I’ve visited her three times since last October. She’s changed this time, Lo. She really has.”

  Lois set her cup of coffee down and took a deep breath. “I don’t understand how you could think this would work. I said I was done with her and I meant it.”

  Sophie reached for Lois’s hand, but Lois pulled away. “All I ask is that you think about it.”

  Lois’s expression softened. “Look. Forty years ago, in South Vietnam, I brought that child into a world that didn’t want another hungry brown baby. The only thing I could do was bring her home and try to raise her myself, so I did. I lied to immigration. I learned to change diapers, and I walked the floor with her when she had a fever. I built my life around that kid. When I met you, I made sure you understood we were a package deal.”

  Sophie waited. She’d heard this speech before. Ruby had run away at the age of fifteen and come home six months later swollen with pregnancy. They had mourned their little girl all those months she’d been missing—the two of them thinking she might be dead. Then they found out she’d been living in a cockroach-infested apartment with her crack-dealing, twenty-year-old boyfriend.

  Enraged, Lois told Ruby the baby would be the son of a black bastard and an Asian whore. But when Matt was born, she loved him immediately and fiercely. The day they brought Ruby and Matt home from the hospital, Lois said the cocoa-colored baby with the almond-shaped eyes made their family into a mini-United Nations. He was three weeks old when Ruby left again. That was the first time Sophie heard the speech—but far from the last.

  Lois was winding down.

  Sophie met her eyes. Today, behind her dark-rimmed glasses, they were cornflower-blue.

  Finished with the usual lament, Lois said, “I just wonder how long and how much I have to pay for not letting that baby die with her mother.”

  Sophie covered her ears. “Get over it, Lois. I refuse to listen to this today. This is my home too. I raised that child and she is my daughter as much as yours. She will come home, and I will do what I can
to help her.”

  The wooden chair scraped on the floor as Lois stood and flung her paper napkin over her half-eaten breakfast. “Why are we talking about this if you’ve made up your mind?” Not waiting for an answer, she strode across the kitchen, opened the door to the mudroom, and grabbed her coat.

  “Wait,” Sophie called.

  Lois stopped and turned. Through the open door, cold air penetrated the warmth of the kitchen. Lois had her coat and was pulling it on. “I love you,” she said in a tone that didn’t sound loving. “And you know I’ll do what I can to make you happy—even this business with Ruby. But you haven’t considered some things. What about our new business? How does Ruby fit into any of that? Don’t you think the parole board would have a problem with her living with hired assassins?”

  Before Sophie could answer, Lois pulled the kitchen door shut and the back door slammed. They both knew she wasn’t going anywhere. She would cross the backyard and check on Daisy. She might play with the dog or walk her. When she was ready to come back inside her anger would have abated. Sophie had won the argument before it started. What Lois had said was true; if Sophie wanted something, she got it. But Lois had certainly brought up something to consider.

  How would they go on contract-killing with a newly paroled daughter living in their home? A daughter who would be under close scrutiny—visits from a parole officer.

  Sophie gathered the breakfast dishes. She’d make a plate of leftovers for the dog. That would please Lois.

  *

  Now I’m absolutely alone, Morgan thought. Without Henry, work would be a lonely place. Visits to her mother were already sordid and draining. As she got out of her car, she noticed the first evening star in the cold sky. Wind scattered snowflakes across the small parking lot that Big and Beautiful shared with a tax-consulting business next door. Piles of snow were like white waves of a white sea. She had to maneuver a drift before she could climb the three steps that led to the door. When she walked inside, she hit a wall of heat.