Fortunes of the Dead

by Lynn Hightower

  “Yes, that’s it exactly. You’ll help me build a case for Emma, and against them, if it goes to court. I’m not sure it will. I honestly think our best bet is to work with them. Emma says hell no, but Child Protective Services has enormous power in this kind of case. They can take Blaine into protective custody just on the word of the doctor alone, and I think the only reason they haven’t is because of how old she is.”

  “And how old is that?”

  “She’s fifteen.” He drummed his fingers. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

  I looked at him. “Trite but true. What point are you making that I’m missing?”

  “About Emma. I want you to take a sort of devil’s advocate role here. If you look into her side of it, and find nothing, then I can be sure the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office will have nothing too.”

  “Are you asking me to investigate your ex-wife for her role in the death of your son?”

  “In a roundabout sort of way.”

  “Would you have asked me this if she was still in the room?”

  “No. I had planned to call you, to talk about this end of the …”

  His voice trailed away because I was standing now.

  “Mr. Roubideaux, I’m turning you down.”

  “You just said you were interested.”

  “I was, until you asked me to look into the possibility your ex-wife is guilty. And because you made sure she was out of the room when you asked me.”

  “So? I don’t think she is guilty of anything but being a pretty wonderful mother, I just want it proved. Give me something I can take to court.”

  “Am I working for you or her?”

  “Both of us. Except that I’m paying your bills.”

  “What you mean by that, Mr. Roubideaux, is that I’m to tell her I’m working for both of you, but in actuality I’ll be working for you. That is a deceit.”

  “That’s not a nice way to put it.”

  “There isn’t a nice way to put it. I won’t play both sides against the middle. And I think you’re a shit. Good-bye, counselor.”

  “Good-bye.” His voice was faint and the expression on his face reflected a mild shock and a deep offense.

  I didn’t much care.

  I shut the outside door pretty hard, making the bells clatter. Emma Marsden was sitting on the hood of a battered BMW Z3 Roadster that was parked on the curb right out front. The car was a silver convertible with a black cloth roof. The driver’s side had taken a hell of a blow just past the door, but it was still a BMW, and a Roadster, and a beautiful thing. The parking meter had expired, but Emma Marsden didn’t have a ticket on her windshield, and it was after five now, when parking was free. She sat cross-legged, and she was smoking a slender black cigar. She couldn’t have looked less like a grieving mother.

  “Smoke?” she asked.

  I was tempted to take one, but I shook my head. It made me like her more, though. I liked women who smoked cigars. I was smoking them some myself these days, so it made me feel validated, even though I’d come to the practice so many years after it was fashionable that it was probably unfashionable again.

  “Forgive the drama back there. I don’t know why it hit me like that, so hard all of a sudden, and I don’t make a habit of crying in front of strangers.”

  “You’ve got reason. It must have been a nightmare, down in that basement.”

  She looked up at me. “It makes you want to go down there, doesn’t it? To take a look?”

  I rocked back and forth on my heels. Clients often unloaded their anger by being combative. It was usually best to deflect. “This sort of thing can’t be legal.”

  “I’ll think you’ll find that it can be. I’m sure Clayton explained.” She flicked ash onto the pavement. “Do you need anything else from me? Information or details or some kind of release form where people can talk to you about my son’s medical history?”

  “No, actually. I’m not taking the case.”

  She frowned, and rubbed a bit of bird crap off the paint job. I made a mental note not to shake her hand. She looked up at me, speculative, not particularly friendly.

  “Too tough for you? Or too depressing?”

  “Neither.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because I don’t like clients who lie to me, and I don’t get in the middle of feuding divorced people, and because I don’t like being made party to a deceit.”

  “Wow. What the hell does all that have to do with me and Clay?”

  “Pretty much everything.”

  “Uh … what did he say to you, anyway?”

  “Privileged.”

  “Why? You said he’s not your client.”

  She had me. I looked away. The sun was waning, and sunlight striped the pavement, sending shards of blinding light into the eyes of drivers. And the temptation was more than I could resist. I didn’t like the guy, and I was dying to tell her.

  “He asked me to investigate you. To his credit, he said it was in the role of devil’s advocate, so that he’d know the worst if things wound up in court. But he wanted me to tell you I was working for you, when I was really investigating you, and he justified it because he implied that it would be for your own good. Then he reminded me that he would be paying my bill.”

  She took the cigar out of her mouth and stared at me. “Would you mind very much staying right here for just five minutes?”

  “I’m cold.”

  She handed me the keys to the car. “Get in and warm yourself up. Heater works like a little oven. I won’t keep you waiting.”

  But she did keep me waiting.

  She was right, the heater worked great, and so did the CD player. I listened to some kind of mambo dance music and tried hard not to like knowing that when people walked by they thought I owned the car. Even with a dent in the side, a BMW Roadster was impressive, at least to a poor person like me. I even smoked one of the cigars I found in the glove box. It was mild and sweet and expensive, and I didn’t inhale, but I watched the people walking by on the sidewalk (there weren’t many of them), and I turned heads. I looked interesting. I even felt interesting.

  When Emma Marsden came out of her ex-husband’s office, she slammed the door.

  She motioned for me to roll down the driver’s side window. “You ever been to the Atomic Café?”

  “It’s a personal favorite.”

  “Will you let me buy you an early dinner? I’d like to talk some more.”

  I considered turning her down. Clearly, it was good old Clayton who could afford my fee. But I didn’t like good old Clayton, and I thought Munchausen by proxy had about as much merit as the old repressed-memory craze, and I figured Emma Marsden was getting screwed over from more directions than one. That, plus my talent for poverty even in economic boom times, made me say yes.

  “It’s just around the corner. Why don’t we go in my car. You may as well drive, you’re in the seat.”

  I didn’t object.

  She ordered the ropa vieja, which is a sort of Cuban pot roast, and I had the jerk chicken, with a side of black beans and rice. We drank Red Stripe beer and munched on sweet potato chips while we waited for our food. The restaurant was just this side of deserted. A guy in khakis and a black sweater read Ace Magazine, ate Jamaican pot pie, and drank something with an umbrella in it. I admired the umbrella. I admired the man for ordering something so playful when he was alone. Then I realized the man was familiar, very familiar in fact—my ex-husband, Rick. Not that big a coincidence, as his office is practically next door. He looked up as a stunning blonde walked past the bar and right up to his table. She was breathless, tall and built, with enough flesh to get her through a cold winter. Her hair was short and thick, and she wore a pair of reading glasses shoved up atop her head. Her trousers were black silk and had likely cost the earth. She also wore a sweater, French blue and cashmere, and boots that made her even taller.

  A goddess.

  Rick stood up, smiled at her like he used to s
mile at me, except more worshipful, then bent her backward and gave her a full-on tongue kiss. Clearly he’d seen me. Little beast.

  Judith took the kiss in stride and sat down across from him, then, at a word from him, looked over her shoulder at me and waved. Her eyebrows were raised, and I knew she was on the verge of inviting us to join them, but I gave them both a sort of casual but dismissive wave.

  Business? Judith mouthed, and I nodded. She blew me a kiss and turned back to Rick, who was watching me a little, and Judith a lot.

  “Someone you know?” Emma asked me, turning to get a look.

  “Old friends.” I held the squat beer bottle in my hand and took another drink, trying not to fill up on the chips. I was completely unable to resist.

  “The first thing I want to tell you is that Clayton isn’t my ex-husband, because we were never actually married.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Then why—”

  “All that gag-gag ‘my dear ex-wife’ crap? Clayton started telling people we were married when Ned was getting so sick. He got tired of all the last-name confusion, and in spite of his many lectures on the idea that marriage ‘isn’t necessary to a relationship,’ the truth is, that’s just a load of crap. Although I think, at the time, he believed it, and so did I. It was only when things got dicey that he went traditional and felt better saying he and I were married. It smoothed things out, with the hospital and later when we went through the funeral arrangements and all that stuff.”

  “And you went along with it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged, and looked away. “I didn’t like it, instinctively. But not enough to take a stand in front of people. I had to think about it to realize how mad it made me.”

  Our food came. Hers looked good, and made me second-guess my own order. The roast looked tender, thick with gravy over a bowl of rice, but I cut into my chicken, took a small bite, and sighed inwardly. Definitely the right choice.

  “So why aren’t you still together? The grief thing?”

  “The grief thing? Oh, you mean how you go through the death of a child, and it screws up your marriage because you aren’t the same person you were before it happened?”

  I stared at her.

  “Survivor group counseling. No, that wasn’t it.”

  I ate chicken, listening to her reasons. She swore it wasn’t the death of their son that had driven them finally and completely apart. She called it a three-part breakup, very analytical.

  Part one was, indeed, the stress of losing their son.

  Part two had come the evening Clayton Roubideaux had been foolish enough to make his true feelings known—that in comparison to his love for his blood son, his feelings for her daughter, Blaine, were a poor second best.

  Part three was the way he told people, while Ned was sick and even after he died, that they were married. They weren’t. He was divorced, as were most men her age who were available for a committed relationship, and she could understand not wanting to get married again. But she could not understand saying you were when you weren’t. So all of his crap about “not needing the paper” etc. was just that, crap. He thought marriage was important, but just didn’t want to be married to her. And he had a need to legitimize his grief, his choice of mother for his son, and the time they spent together with the lie that they were, indeed, married. It was knowing how much he valued the vows, coupled with the knowledge that he did not think enough of her to commit to her and to their life together, that convinced her to end the relationship.

  “Clayton and I weren’t destined to make it. He didn’t love me enough, you know? If I hadn’t gotten pregnant with Ned, I don’t think we’d have moved in together. Or, I don’t know, maybe me getting pregnant made us get serious too soon. Although, sometimes I think this sloooow-drip courtship trend is an excuse for people to dawdle around in relationships. I don’t know. I just screw relationships up, don’t listen to me.”

  I laughed, trying not to sputter beer.

  “But it would have been stupid to stay with a man who didn’t love me enough to commit to me, even though I’d had a child with him, which, from my standpoint, means I made all the commitment and he gets off scot-free. Which is fine, because who wants a reluctant committer?”

  “No one.”

  “And what makes me actually hate him, is he told my daughter that he’d wished she had died instead of Ned. That alone—”

  “He actually said that to her?”

  “Not in those words, but believe me, he made it clear. I was there, I saw it.”

  I mixed sour cream and salsa in the black beans and rice. Messy and delicious. I took a bite, thinking, as I listened to her, that there were, as always, three sides to every story. Listening to him in his office, he had been an ideal husband and father. Of course, he hadn’t been a husband, which made his story suspect.

  “He’s not a bad guy,” Emma said. “At least, not horrible. I think you’ve seen him at his worst.”

  I took another bite of beans. So far, I was reining in my opinions, at least verbally. I was thinking mean thoughts, though, as usual.

  “I’d still like to hire you. To investigate the doctor, and if you want to investigate me, go ahead, I don’t care. But I don’t want you reporting in to Clayton. I want him out of the mix. I do want to know what those people think they have on me.”

  “What people?”

  “The doctor. The Child Protective Services people. The law. Because I think the accusation is just a blackmail thing.”

  “Extortion. If you mean that they are threatening you with legal action if you don’t back off in regard to what happened with your son and his remains.”

  “That’s exactly what I do mean. And if you think I am guilty—”

  “I don’t believe in it.”

  “In Munchausen by proxy?”

  “That’s right. I think it’s just another way of society controlling uppity women. Why, do you?”

  She held her fork, midair, head cocked to one side. “I think it’s probably rare, but yeah, I believe it. I wish I didn’t. But I do. But I guarantee you I’m not one of them.”

  “Did you ever consider the possibility your ex-husband, excuse me, ex-whatever, might be?”

  “I thought it was only women.”

  “I’m sure that’s what they’d like you to think.”

  She put a slice of Caribbean cornbread on her plate and broke off a piece with her fingers. She chewed, a small thread of coconut on her lips. “There’s no way Clayton hurt Ned. I promise you, he didn’t. I know him that well at least. He truly loved Ned more than anything in the world. He’d have laid down his life, happily and without hesitation, if it would have taken one hour of suffering from our little boy. I have no doubts about Clayton in that way. He loved Ned like he loved his life. He needs to have more children. But he’ll never be the same. He wouldn’t let me box up any of Ned’s things until he moved out. Then he boxed them up and took them with him.”

  “Was that okay with you?”

  “It’s not like he asked.” She wiped her lips and the coconut disappeared.

  “Do you think he seriously suspects you of having something to do with Ned’s death?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Really? Even after tonight?”

  “You’d have to know the guy, Lena.”

  It was funny the way she said my name. It reminded me of the way my sister used to say it. Other things about her were reminding me of Whitney. Her confidence. Her air of knowing what was what.

  “He’s just trying to cover every base and stay in control of something that scares him shitless. I can understand it. I can let it go. But I want you to work for me. What I need to know is how much you charge. And what you think this case will cost, in the long run.”

  “I charge fifty-five dollars an hour and pay my own expenses unless something really unusual comes up, or we start getting into travel and airline tickets. Then I’d disc
uss it with you first.”

  “Unusual like what?”

  “Usually the money starts flying out the window when you hire consultants—attorneys, doctors, forensic experts. And I guess if you needed me to fly to, say, Paris, France, or something, I might need you to help out with the airline ticket. Paris, Kentucky, is on me. As to how many hours, it’s hard to say. They add up pretty fast. I can always work to your budget—as in, stop when the money runs out. Limit my areas of inquiry.”

  “I have a proposition. How about I give you my car?”

  “The BMW?”

  “Yep. And in return, you spend a lot of time following up every possible area of inquiry, and if the case takes weeks or months, you work it. And you take care of all expenses no matter what comes up, including Paris, France.”

  “You mean the BMW?”

  “Yeah. I can sign it into your name tomorrow, if you want to meet me at the courthouse.”

  “Sounds like I’m being overpaid. Or is there a lien I have to pay off?”

  “I own it free and clear. There’s no way I can get a good resale value out of it with that big dent in the side. And I don’t have any kind of cash available. And I expect to get a lot of work out of you. It would be nice for me to know no matter how expensive it gets, I’m paid up, and I don’t need to get Clayton in the middle of it.”

  “What are you going to do for a car?”

  “I have a ’94 Jeep Wrangler I was saving for my daughter. It’s paid for. I can keep banging around in that. It’s what I was driving when I met Clayton. The Roadster used to be his, then he decided to get a new car and the dent took a lot out of the trade-in value so he just gave it to me. And you can sell whatever you’re driving now, and keep that money to cover your expenses.”

  I didn’t tell her that would net me about one thousand dollars, if I was lucky.

  She shrugged. “Think about it. Have another attorney look over this document.” She passed an envelope across the table. “There is a confidentiality thing in this agreement, wherein you agree not to divulge the gist of the conversation the two of you had. You and Clayton.”