Speak Ill of the Living

by Mark Arsenault

  Today’s newspaper scavenger hunt had yielded sports, lifestyle and the main news section. The metro and classified were missing. He daydreamed through the paper, distracted by the memory of the man in the ski mask. Who was he? And why had he come after Eddie Bourque with such ferocity? Was it a case of mistaken identity?

  Who the hell did he think I am?

  Halfway through Eddie’s second cup of coffee, he noticed the General staring at the front door. A second later came a lyrical knock, to the rhythm of “Shave and a Haircut—Two Bits!”

  Eddie pattered in bare feet to the window, in time to see a yellow taxi drive off. He went to the door and opened it.

  The woman on the top step was maybe forty-five, slim and attractive, but a little gray in the face, as if she had lived a hard life. She had high and prominent cheekbones, and dark green eyes outlined in black pencil and highlighted with aqua-green smears on the upper lids. Gray streaks ran through her wheat-colored hair, which was long and straight, hanging halfway to her waist. She wore new blue jeans, a wide black belt, cream-colored high-heeled shoes, and an orange tiger-striped blouse. A pink duffle bag was at her feet.

  “Hi there!” she squealed in a cartoon voice an octave higher than Eddie might have expected from her tired, serious face. “I’m Bobbi.” She looked Eddie up and down. “Oooh! Look at them knees—bony as a pony! Does that run in the family? Dear gawd, I hope not.” She laughed.

  Eddie looked down at his knees, and then squinted at the woman. “Huh? Wha?”

  The woman stuck her hands on her hips and gave him an exaggerated look of disbelief.

  “Eddie, it’s me—Bobbi, your sister-in-law,” she said. She held up her left hand and wiggled the digits. There was a gold wedding band on her ring finger. “I’m your brother Henry’s wife—we got hitched last spring.” She feigned a nasally, upper-class accent, “It was the most superb ceremony. The warden let me bring shrimp cocktail, at least on my side of the glass.” She laughed again.

  “Henry mentioned he was recently married,” Eddie said, more to himself than to her.

  “Of course he did, hon.” She tilted her head and batted her long black eyelashes. “I’m probably all he ever talks about.”

  “Uhhh…”

  She laughed. “Kidding you, Eddie—all your big brother talks about is chess. And, of course, he wants to know where I’ve gone recently that I can describe for him. He says you’re real good at that, too.”

  Eddie nodded, taking it in, trying to understand what she was doing here. “Yes. Sure.”

  She stood on tiptoes and peeked over his shoulder into the house. “Isn’t this about the time you should invite me in? We are family, after all.”

  Chapter 9

  The woman who said her name was Bobbi Anderson Nichols Bourque didn’t drink coffee. But if coffee was all Eddie had—he checked the cabinets, it was all that he had—she would like it mixed fifty-fifty with milk, and eight sugars. To Eddie, the concoction was a sin against nature, but he counted out the sweetener and fixed it the way she wanted.

  Bobbi didn’t need the caffeine. Seated at Eddie’s kitchen table, she launched into a breathless story about a man she saw on the bus from New York. “He had on that kinda hat, you know the kind, with the floppy brim and the fish hooks coming outta the sides,” she said, creating the hat in pantomime above her head.

  “Uh, a fishing hat?”

  She squealed, “Yeah, yeah! Let me get to that part!”

  Eddie, feeling self-conscious, put on khaki slacks as she shouted the story from the kitchen. The point of the story, near as Eddie could figure over the next fifteen minutes, seemed to be that the man had worn a fishing hat on the bus.

  The General watched the diversion from the morning routine from under the coffee table.

  Eddie was patient during the man in the hat story, and he gleaned some useful information from her digressions. He learned that Bobbi was a divorcee living three miles from Henry Bourque’s federal prison in upstate New York. She answered the phones at an advertising agency by day, and tended bar at night. She had met Henry through the mail, somehow, became his pen pal, and then quickly his wife.

  When her story was finally over, Eddie interjected, “Did you come all the way to Lowell just to see me?”

  She gave a devilish grin and lifted one eyebrow. “Now you are a treat, Edward, but I’m here for my own benefit—and my husband’s, of course.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your brother asked me a long time ago to look up your byline every day.”

  “He did?”

  “When I saw your story on that medical examiner who lynched himself, I knew I had to come.”

  “Dr. Crane?”

  “That’s the one.” She shifted at the table and leaned closer. Her makeup was meticulous, like it had been applied by Michelangelo. “I read on the Internet that you found him swinging in the breeze.” She caught herself. “That’s an expression, I don’t mean to sound cruel, though I am furious at that so-called doctor.”

  Eddie looked into his coffee mug. “It wasn’t breezy where I found him.”

  She put her hand on his. Her nails were painted pink. “It’s terrible, I’m sure. Suicide always is.” She patted his hand. “It was suicide, wasn’t it?”

  Eddie shrugged, distracted by the memory. “That’s what it looked like to me, though I got a cop friend who suspects otherwise.”

  She put her hand to her lips. “Oh…why would the police suspect that?”

  Eddie bristled. Had he said too much? He barely knew this woman. She didn’t feel like his sister-in-law any more than Henry Bourque had felt like a brother. “I dunno,” he said, trying to shift the subject. “What about Crane’s death made you come here?”

  Bobbi tensed her shoulders and tapped her fists on the table. “He killed himself over his mistakes in that kidnapping case, the one with that man from the bank,” she said.

  “Roger Lime.”

  “Yes! Did you realize this doctor was also the state’s lead witness against your brother?” Her voice cracked.

  “I did, but—”

  “And it was Crane’s testimony that got Henry convicted!”

  “—that was more than thirty years ago.”

  She leaned back and looked into space, eyes glassy and roaming. For a moment, Eddie thought she might cry, but she collected herself and explained softly, “I didn’t expect to get married a third time, and certainly not to a convict with a life sentence.” She smiled. “Stupid me, huh?”

  Eddie smiled back, gently.

  She looked him in the eye. “I’ve known in my heart since I set eyes on Henry Bourque that he is an innocent man.”

  Eddie’s stomach tightened. He had briefly entertained the same fantasy.

  “You saw him in prison—he told me all about it,” she said. “Did you see it too? The innocence? The golden heart under that shaved skull and that big ol’ scar?”

  Eddie stammered. “I can’t…well… ” He slumped. “Henry and I had a weird conversation.”

  She laughed. “That boy’s mind does tend to skip around,” she said, brightly. “I thought he was crazy before I figured out he was just an ordinary genius.”

  Her laugh was catchy. Eddie chuckled. It seemed that he wasn’t the only one unnerved by conversation with Henry. At least Bobbi had gotten used to it.

  “He’s very proud of you,” she said.

  “Huh? How? Proud of what?”

  “Your career as a newsman. When you worked in Vermont, Henry subscribed to your paper by mail. And when you came back to Lowell to work for—what was it? The Daily Empire?—he wrote your old newspaper to find out where you went.”

  Eddie was stunned. He put his hands to his head. “I had no idea.”

  “It’s tough for him now because you’re a freelancer and your work appears all over. Since I’ve known your brother, I’ve been searching the Internet every day for your stories, so
I can print them out and mail them to him. I happened to see your story on the kidnapping case in my hometown newspaper. Henry was very interested in that piece.”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said, distracted again and re-analyzing his conversation with Henry over the Roger Lime case. Another thought struck Eddie and he blurted, “Wait! You’ve never said why you came all the way out here.”

  She pressed her lips together and studied him for a moment. “Your brother,” she said in a stern voice, “is a mule head.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Bobbi wrinkled her nose. “Mister Mule, I call him—he’s so obstinate. He drives me crazy. I’ve told him that this information coming out about Dr. Crane could overturn his conviction and get him out of that jail, so we can have a normal life.”

  “And he disagrees?”

  “He doesn’t think it will do any good. He says, ‘What can we do about it?’ Well, I’ve been studying the law. I told him we need a lawyer, a real shark, with a briefcase full of sharp teeth. And we need an investigator to collect some ammunition for the court brief.” She threw up her hands. “But Henry won’t hear of it.”

  “Is that why you came here?” Eddie said, still not following her reasoning.

  “I got a few days off work and I came to Lowell to do some investigating of my own,” she said. “And I thought you could point me to a place to start.” She trailed off, then added: “But, most importantly, I thought you could help me convince your brother that it’s worth a try. Maybe he’ll listen to you, and together we can talk him into fighting for his freedom.”

  Eddie thought about what she was asking. What could he do? He didn’t have a clue where she might start an investigation of a thirty-year-old double homicide. And he couldn’t imagine why Henry would listen to the little brother he just met.

  But if she was right? What if Henry was innocent?

  He sighed.

  She’s on a fool’s errand.

  “I dunno, Bobbi—”

  “Stop right there,” she said. “I’m going to stop you before you say no, and we’ll continue this conversation later, with no hard feelings. Okay?”

  Eddie nodded. “Fair enough.”

  Bobbi grinned, then glanced to the pink duffle on the floor. “So,” she said, “which room is mine?”

  Eddie nearly gagged on his java. His eyes darted around the three-room cottage. “Ummm…”

  She exploded into laughter. “Gullible,” she howled. “So gullible, just like your brother—it’s a precious quality in you Bourque boys.” She laughed until Eddie was laughing, too, and then she said, “Maybe you can recommend me a good hotel?”

  “I’ll drive you downtown,” he offered.

  Seeing the Chevette’s steering wheel on the kitchen counter, Eddie frowned, and then corrected himself, “I mean, I’ll call you a cab.”

  ***

  She waved at Eddie from the taxi.

  Eddie waved back from the window.

  Two weeks ago, he wasn’t sure if Henry Bourque knew that Eddie had been born. And now? A sister-in-law from out-of-town just barged in unannounced, threw a sack of problems over Eddie’s shoulders and bummed ten bucks off him for the cab.

  Christ, she acted just like family.

  He was still shocked that Henry had been watching him for years through his work. He couldn’t help thinking of the possibility Bobbi had presented.

  Eddie got his chess set from the closet and unfolded the black and white board on the coffee table. It was a cheap set; two bucks at a flea market. The wooden pieces—half black, half unpainted—were scratched and chipped. Some had bite marks from a previous owner’s puppy, or maybe from a toddler. Eddie liked that the pieces were oversized; they barely fit in their squares.

  Henry preferred the white pieces, because the white side moved first. Eddie spun the board so the white pieces were in front of him.

  How would Henry open a game?

  Aggressive? Like his in-your-face personality.

  Or conservative? To lull Eddie into a trap.

  Eddie leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin on his fists, and studied the board.

  Henry would be unconventional; Eddie had no doubt.

  He grabbed a knight and jumped it over the picket line of pawns.

  Eddie spun the board and looked over the black pieces. He imagined Henry sitting across from him, grinning, daring Eddie to match his opening move.

  The phone rang.

  Eddie lingered a moment at the board, and then answered the call. Springer from the Associated Press was on the line. “You working today?” he asked.

  “I got transportation issues.”

  “That piece-of-shit Chevette in the shop?”

  “In the funeral parlor.”

  “Oh, so then you really need the work.”

  Eddie laughed. He felt too distracted to report and write a news story, but Springer was right; Eddie needed the job. “Gimme something easy,” he said.

  “Roger Lime is back in pictures. The kidnappers have released another photo, apparently taken in the past couple days. The cops are offering the same deal as before—they share, we publish. You got the sources—your story was great last time.”

  “Where and when?”

  “At the cop shop in one hour. Can you make it by then?”

  The police station was a little better than a mile walk from Eddie’s house. The sky had turned overcast and rain looked inevitable. He sighed. “Yeah, I’ll make it.”

  Chapter 10

  Roger Lime was back in another four-by-six snapshot. Oddly, Lime was pictured holding the current edition of The Second Voice—the edition that had carried the first photo of Lime. The kidnapped Roger Lime was holding up a published photo of his kidnapped self. Eddie wondered about the next edition of the paper. If the pictures kept coming, how long before Lew Cuhna’s front page looked like two mirrors reflecting into each other?

  Eddie recognized the rock wall in the background of the picture—same as in the last Lime photo. He recognized the five-sided table that Henry claimed he had built from scraps of poplar. Eddie squinted at the table leg and felt his face flush; he counted seven marks on the leg, like little frowns, maybe from a curved hatchet blade.

  He made some notes for his story. Lime was wearing black sweat pants, a peach-colored dress shirt, un-tucked, and a black baseball cap.

  He appeared no worse physically since the last photo, but something seemed different. Eddie leaned closer, studying every crease in Lime’s face, then leaned back and stared at the photo from a distance.

  The creases in his face.

  That was what was different—his face had different creases last time.

  His expression is wrong.

  In the last photo, Lime’s face showed anger, even arrogance, like he was running out of patience with an incompetent employee, and was about to fire him.

  Not this photo—Lime’s eyebrows were high on his forehead, his eyes huge and round, his cheeks drooped, and his mouth bent into a stiff frown.

  He was terrified. Or at least he looked it. It all went into Eddie’s notebook.

  Eddie loitered for a moment after he had finished with the photo. Did he dare stop to visit Detective Orr? Would she still be upset that he had read Dr. Crane’s suicide note?

  Eddie thought of General VonKatz. The cat was never shy in telling Eddie exactly what he wanted—Wake up! Food! More food!—and he was never any worse off for speaking up. This time Eddie would ask Lucy for exactly what he needed for the story—the ransom note. What was the worse she could do? Throw him out of that tiny office? Eddie would step out before she could crawl over the desk.

  He spun and marched off, walking straight into Lew Cuhna. The shorter man’s nose smashed into Eddie’s sternum.

  “Ow,” Eddie said, rubbing the spot on his chest.

  Cuhna cupped his hand over his schnoz and cried, “Son of a bitch!”

  “Shoot—sorry, Lew.” Edd
ie stepped forward to try to help… somehow.

  Cuhna waved him away. “It’s fine, fine.” He took a green pencil from behind his ear. “Not your fault, you didn’t mean it.”

  Eddie watched him scribble a-s-s-h-o-l-e on his pad.

  “Um, are you sure you’re okay?”

  Cuhna crossed out what he had written. He drew a giant exclamation point. “Lot on my mind, Bourque, okay? Got another paper to put out by myself again this week.”

  “News never stops,” Eddie said, but Cuhna wasn’t listening.

  Cuhna drew a rainbow on his pad, or maybe a frown. “Don’t need this, can’t take another week of this,” he said. He crossed out the frown, and then looked up hard at Eddie. “You’re a good man, Bourque. A newsman. I trust a good newsman.”

  Were those tears in Cuhna’s little green eyes? From hitting his nose, maybe? Cuhna just gazed up at Eddie, apparently waiting for some kind of answer.

  Eddie nodded, unsure. “Okay, Lew.”

  Cuhna wrote O-K on his pad in heavy letters, and then headed off to do his job.

  Eddie stared at the back of Cuhna’s head for a moment, wondering what was going on inside it.

  ***

  “No way, Eddie. Not a chance in hell.”

  “Lucy, come on—you haven’t even heard what I’m asking for yet.”

  Standing behind her desk, Detective Orr closed her eyes a moment and held up her hands like she was stopping traffic. “I don’t need to know. Take this down in your notebook,” she said, pausing a beat. “There is no way in hell that I could give up what you’re about to ask for—no chance, no how, not in this lifetime, or the next one, and things are looking doubtful for the lifetime after that.”

  At least she’s thinking about it.

  The desk in Detective Orr’s tiny office was strewn with manila folders and computer printouts. Eddie couldn’t help himself; he glanced to the pile, just for a second—he couldn’t read anything because the damn type was too light.

  Don’t they replace the toner around here?

  Orr frowned, reached for a stack of printouts and flipped them over. “I got a lot of work to do,” she said.