Mr. and Mrs. Wrong

by Fay Robinson

  “I hope I’m never too old for that. But you’re right, next time we find a softer place to do it. I’ve got splinters in my ass.”

  They took a bath together and washed each other’s hair. It reminded her of when they first married; lately it seemed as though he never got enough of her, and they made love again, leisurely this time.

  “Are you starting to show?” he asked as they dressed, watching her struggle with her zipper. His obvious delight at the idea made her want to punch him.

  “It’s only a little water weight. Don’t get excited.” If he had his way, she’d already be wearing those awful maternity clothes and walking around resembling a blimp. That was coming soon enough, and she wasn’t looking forward to it. At least, thank goodness, the morning sickness had gone away. She didn’t need to deal with that on top of being fat.

  He put on cotton briefs and a clean pair of jeans, then stepped to the mirror to comb his wet hair. Lucky gave up on her own jeans and slipped on a T-shirt and a pair of loose-fitting shorts with an elastic waist.

  “We should decide on some names,” he suggested.

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit early for that?”

  “Won’t hurt to at least think about it. Besides, it’ll be fun.”

  She grumbled under her breath. “Okay. A family name. If it’s a boy maybe Samuel or Matthew. How about we name him after you and call him Junior?”

  He frowned at her in the mirror. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, what was your father’s name?”

  Horror seemed to cross his face, but it vanished so quickly she decided she’d imagined it. “Raymond. But I hate that name. We’re not naming a baby that.”

  “Okay, forget Raymond.” She wasn’t crazy about it, either. “What do you like?”

  “What about Andrew? Benjamin? Clay?”

  “Andrew is nice, but I’m not too keen on kids calling him Andy. Benjamin will probably end up being Bennie. Clay…I’m not sure how I feel about that one.”

  “Bennie. Beanie. Forget it. Sounds too much like the dog. No offense, girl,” he said, bending over to scratch her under the chin.

  “What if it’s a girl? Any names you like?”

  “Grace. I want one of her names to be Grace, after my mother.”

  “What was her middle name?”

  “Ellen.”

  “Grace Ellen Cahill.” She repeated it several times. “I like Grace, but not the Ellen part. Cal’s last girlfriend was named Ellen. The image that name brings to mind is downright scary.”

  “Is she the woman who burned up the engine in her car because she didn’t know she had to put oil in it?”

  “That’s her. Leigh named her ‘Miss IQ.’”

  “Leave it to Leigh…”

  “Leigh liked ‘Miss IQ’ better than ‘Miss Halloween Hairdo,’ but she couldn’t tolerate ‘Miss Silicone Implant.’”

  “What’s her nickname for me? ‘That Bastard from Pennsylvania’?”

  “Close. Until lately it was ‘The Yankee with the Fast Feet.’ Now it’s ‘That Yankee You’re Living With.’”

  He chuckled. “Joke’s on her, then. I was born in Mississippi.”

  “Mississippi?” Lucky’s shock turned to hilarity, and she laughed so hard she had to sit down on the side of the bathtub. “Oh, that’s priceless. She’ll die when she finds out. Where in Mississippi?”

  “Biloxi. We lived there until I was three.”

  “Is that when your family moved to Pennsylvania?”

  “No, we lived in a lot of different places first— Texas, South Carolina, Ohio, Michigan. My dad was a salesman for a chemical company and they relocated him several times.”

  “No wonder you don’t seem to have a definable accent. Tell me about your mom. Did she work?”

  “Sometimes. But only to keep busy. She liked to be there when I got out of school.”

  “She sounds like a good mom.”

  “The best. They didn’t come any better.”

  “You know, this is the most you’ve ever volunteered about yourself. I was beginning to worry I’d married into the Addams family.”

  “I’m secretly Vlad the Impaler. I’ll show you later how I impale my victims.”

  “I think you’ve done enough impaling for one day, Vlad.”

  He shooed the dog out of his way. They took their conversation to the kitchen, where Jack poked through the refrigerator for a snack while she picked up the clothes she’d discarded by the door.

  Her jeans pocket had loose change in it. She dug it out and opened her purse. Terrell’s handkerchief was right there, visible in the clear plastic sandwich bag she’d stuck it in, so she quickly stuffed the bag in a zippered pocket. Her secret admirer might decide to hide a gift in here, and he wouldn’t understand why she was still keeping her memento.

  Not that she understood herself. Twice she’d actually put it in the trash can, then gone back and retrieved it. She’d even washed it at the self-service laundry, then run an iron over the wrinkles.

  “If it’s a girl,” Jack called out, “what about naming her Ruth after your mother?”

  “Too Biblical, and it doesn’t go well with Grace. But you’re right about deciding on something pretty quick. I don’t feel right calling the little booger ‘It.’”

  “Booger. There you go. Booger Cahill. Works for either a girl or a boy.”

  That made her smile. He could be so silly sometimes.

  His clothes lay tossed over the back of the couch. “By the way,” she said, “you forgot to leave me the receipt for your shirts this morning like you said you would. I got halfway to the cleaners and then remembered I didn’t have it.”

  “Get it now while you’re thinking about it. I think it’s in my wallet.” She heard him close the refrigerator door. “Do we have chips?”

  “Look in the bread box.”

  She emptied his pockets onto the lamp table and put his pants and dress shirt in a bag for the cleaners. The socks and underwear went into the laundry basket in the hall closet. Coming back to the living room, she opened his wallet and searched. He had a million pieces of paper stuck in it.

  “Don’t feed Beanie any,” she warned without turning around, knowing that for every chip he put in his mouth, Beanie also got one.

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. I can hear her chomping. Remember what the vet said about her weight.”

  “Ah, hell, what does he know?”

  She continued her search for the cleaning receipt. A name and number scribbled across the outside of a folded slip of paper caught her attention. “Hey, what was the name of your old boss? Wes Campbell, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Have you talked to him lately? I see you have his number here.”

  He came up behind her. “A couple of weeks ago. He, ah, called and offered me a job. How about that?”

  She faced him. “A job? What kind of job?”

  “His job.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would he call and offer you his job?”

  “He’s retiring at the end of the year. He said he’d put in a recommendation for me if I wanted it.”

  The air suddenly felt too thick to breathe. “Do you?”

  “Nah. I only listened to him to be polite.”

  But she could see through the thin paper. Had he written those notes to be polite, too? “So you’ve already turned it down?”

  He faltered slightly. “Not yet, but I will.”

  “Is it a good job?”

  “I suppose.” He shrugged as if he didn’t care, but she felt he was restraining himself. “The benefits are fair.”

  She decided to see for herself. Unfolding the paper, she scanned the figures. The salary was twice what he was making here and came with reasonable premiums for family medical coverage. The health insurance included a dental plan, something they didn’t have now.

  “More than fair,” she said. “Why haven’t you mentioned this?”

 
; “I thought about it, but c’mon, Lucky, what good would it have done? You’d never have agreed to move to Pittsburgh.”

  “I like where we are, and I want to be near my family. Is that so wrong?”

  “No, and I never said it was wrong, only that it’s how I knew you already felt. So when I found out about the baby, I put the idea of moving out of my mind, because it was never going to happen.”

  “But you want the job, don’t you?”

  “I did…maybe for a few seconds, but I haven’t even thought about it since Wes called. Honest.”

  “I ruined it for you.”

  “Hey, listen to me. You didn’t ruin anything.” He took her gently by the upper arms and looked deeply into her eyes. “I’m here because it’s where I want to be. Yes, I’d love to have that job. If circumstances were different, I’d ask you to think about a move. But I know this is your home, and I’m not going to take you away from the people you love. Besides, nothing can match being with you and Booger.”

  “You’ve given up so much.”

  “Ah, but, sweetheart, look at what I’ve gained.”

  THE PRELIMINARY REPORT on the Bagwell case came in four days later. Jack called Deaton Swain into his office to go over the findings and assess where they were on the train death.

  “His BAC was point-one-two,” Swain read, referring to the victim’s blood-alcohol content.

  Point-zero-eight was considered legally intoxicated, but as Jack knew, that didn’t mean the guy couldn’t function with a level above that. Give three shots to a frequent drinker, and you might not be able to see a perceptible difference. Give three shots to a nondrinker, and it could put him under the table.

  “The bartender served him five or six drinks,” Swain continued, referring to his case notes and witness statements. “He didn’t recall anything out of the ordinary. Bagwell kept to himself as always. He watched a little TV. He didn’t bother anyone and no one bothered him.”

  “So he was a regular customer?”

  “Two or three nights a week. He’d overindulged at least a couple of times in the past six months and had to bum a ride home because he was too drunk to drive. The bartender knew that, so he didn’t think anything about it when he closed up at two-forty-five and Bagwell’s car was still in the parking lot.”

  “He didn’t notice the flat tire?”

  “No.”

  “What about the injuries to the body?”

  “They say here ‘Injuries appear consistent with reported cause of death.’”

  “Anything come out of your interviews with his family or friends that would lead you to believe he might have purposely lain down on the tracks?”

  “Nothing. His logging crew said he’d been depressed since his wife died a few years ago. His drinking got a little worse after that, but I don’t find that unusual. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “He had a nice house. A profitable business. A new grandchild. Doesn’t sound like a suicide to me.”

  “Anybody have reason not to want him around?”

  “Not that I could find. He got into a yelling match a few weeks back with the dad of one of the kids he coached in baseball, but they patched things up. I think we’re looking at an accident. The guy has too much to drink, finds his car has a flat tire and picks the wrong path to walk home. He passes out. We’ve had two or three deaths like it over the years on that same stretch of track.”

  “Anything turn up yet on the break-in reported at his house after his death?”

  “Nothing so far, but I’ve alerted area pawnshops to call if anybody tries to sell the electronics and silver. Had to be one cold son of a bitch to steal from a dead man.”

  “Burglary’s a crime of opportunity. A smart thief takes any advantage he can and hits the easiest target—families on vacation, people who live alone. He checks the obituaries like the want ads, because there’s no better victim than a dead one.”

  Jack asked him the estimated date and time of the break-in. “The daughter discovered it around two Saturday afternoon when she drove up from Mobile, which is about seven hours south of here.”

  “Then in this case, we’re probably looking at a friend of the family, an employee of the victim or a neighbor.”

  “How so?”

  “Bagwell died early Friday morning. Prior to that, he hadn’t reported a burglary, had he?”

  “There’s no record of a report.”

  “Did you see any evidence of theft on Friday morning when I sent you over there after the accident?”

  “No, the house was locked up tight and nobody came to the door. I also checked the shop and office out back and didn’t see anybody.”

  “We didn’t release his name to the media until Saturday afternoon, after somebody broke in. That suggests a couple of possibilities.”

  “I see what you’re getting at. The burglary was either a coincidence or somebody found out by word of mouth that he’d died, knew the daughter lived out of town and decided to clean him out before she arrived.”

  “I’d bet on number two.”

  “So would I.”

  Jack tapped his pen on the desk, thinking. Certain things about this death had bothered him from the start. The first was why the victim had chosen to walk on the dark track. The road was well lit, the shoulder flat. Even the bottom of the grade, on the grassy strip between the track and the highway, would have been easier going for him than the railroad.

  How he’d climbed the bank remained a puzzle, too. Doing it in daylight, sober, was hard enough. How had he done it at two in the morning with that much whiskey in him?

  As much as Jack wished it could, no forensics report would ever answer those questions.

  They had an overload of work, so he told Swain to pull off the death until they got more information from DFS, but to keep working on the burglary. He needed to turn his attention to the most pressing of his pending cases. If anything came up in the more detailed reports, they could follow up.

  “Leave this with me and I’ll sign off on it. Call the daughter and let her know they’ll be transporting the body to the funeral home later today.”

  “I’ll call right away.” Swain jotted down the number before handing over the file.

  “Let’s do what we can to clear up some of these other burglaries. Ask Rogers for a hand. She’s finished with court.”

  “Thanks, I could use the help.”

  “Anything turn up on that assist the feds asked for?”

  Swain shook his head. “Nothing so far, and I don’t hold out much hope.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I’ve worked these cases before, and we hardly ever get a break. The information is always vague. This time it came from a wildlife-enforcement officer working undercover who bought some old pots off a guy through an Internet auction. The guy told him he bought them from another guy who ‘might have’ dug ’em up on federal lands in our county. We don’t have a specific location, and I haven’t been able to trace the digger.”

  “Okay,” Jack told him. “Keep on it, but the burglaries need to take priority.”

  “Roger, that.”

  Dismissed, Swain walked to the door, but he hesitated and turned back “Something else?” Jack asked him.

  “My mother and Lucky’s are in the garden club together. They, you know, gossip, and, uh…”

  Jack didn’t encourage familiarity with his officers, and usually they respected his wishes. But Swain clearly had something personal to say.

  “Spit it out, Deaton. I’m growing old here.”

  “I heard about the baby and about you and Lucky being back together, and wanted to say that I’m glad. I’ve known her since…hell…forever. You got a good one when you got her.”

  “She thinks a lot of you, too.”

  “Tell her congratulations for me, will you?”

  “I will.”

  “Oh, and congratulations to you, too, Captain.”

  “Thanks.”

  When
he left, Jack shook his head with a chuckle, then went back to work on his own cases, but Bagwell’s death kept intruding on his ability to concentrate. Something about it wasn’t right. His gut warned him.

  He reread everything in the file, then studied the different sets of photos, not sure what he was looking for. When he found it in one of the black-and-whites Lucky had taken, he picked up the phone and dialed DFS. He asked them to run one last test before releasing the body.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE BAGWELL VISITATION was Thursday night at the Riverlawn Funeral Home, a colonial-style building next door to the city’s largest cemetery. Lucky felt she should go, and Jack said he’d accompany her. Going in, they met Shannon.

  “Is Bill keeping the girls?” Lucky asked her sister.

  “Yes, but I promised I’d be back before seven-thirty so he can finish grading papers. Plus, he has a hard time putting them to bed alone when they get rowdy, which lately is all the time.”

  “Those angels?”

  “Yes, those angels. You two wait. You’ll find out what it’s like. Enjoy the peace while you can.”

  Carolyn Bagwell, now Carolyn Carter, headed a line of family members greeting visitors. She wasn’t a thin woman, but the strain of her father’s death made her seem gaunt. Her pale face had a sunken look. Dark circles marred the skin under her eyes.

  A man Lucky guessed was her husband sat in a chair behind her, with an infant in a carrier in the chair next to him. A boy, five or so, bounced restlessly on the other side.

  Shannon hugged her and said how sorry she was. “Do you remember my sister Lucky? She was a few grades below us.”

  “Yes, of course. The little daredevil. One of your former partners in crime is investigating Dad’s accident.” Her owlish eyes widened behind her glasses as she remembered something else. “You were the one who found Daddy, weren’t you? Or did I misunderstand that?”

  Lucky confirmed that yes, she’d been the one.

  “You probably also know her husband, Jack Cahill, from the police department,” Shannon said.

  “Yes, Captain. It’s good to meet you in person.” She shook his hand. “I didn’t realize when we spoke on the phone that you were Shannon’s brother-in-law.” She turned back to Lucky. “Your husband’s been wonderful through this horrible time. So supportive.”