Dearly Departed

by David Housewright

  “What? You leavin’? I thought you had questions to ask.”

  Self-control. You need self-control in my business. I reminded myself of that as I moved to the large map hanging on the wall, a map of the seven counties that make up the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area. About two dozen pins were stuck in it. Red flags were attached to the pins.

  “What do these represent?” I asked.

  “Targets of opportunity,” Emerton explained. “Quick lesson: A female mosquito—the female mosquito is the only one that bites, did you know that?—a female mosquito bites you and sucks your blood so it can lay eggs containin’ about three hundred baby mosquitoes. Follow? The eggs then turn into larvae. Now, larvae live in water. A tablespoon at the bottom of a beer can is enough, but the more the better. Are you still with me? Okay, a larva is transformed into what we call a pupa. A pupa is like a cocoon. It’s in a pupa that the mosquito becomes a mosquito. What we do is, we gas the suckers while they’re still in the larval and pupal stages. Those flags, those are low-lyin’ swamp areas where we’re takin’ ’em out.”

  “What is this blue flag?” I asked, pointing to a pin surrounded by red.

  “Oh, that’s what this guy works for … Where does that jerkoff work?” he asked himself, searching his desktop, finding a business card. “The Mosquito and Fly Research Unit at the Medical and Veterinary Entomology Research Laboratory of the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He’s a wimp. He thinks he can get rid of mosquitoes with genetic engineerin’. Good luck. Man, there are one hundred trillion of the little buggers out there. I say gas ’em all.”

  “Gas them all?” I repeated. “One hundred trillion?”

  “Hell, yeah. Why not? That’s what insecticide means, okay? Kill insects.”

  “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” I told him, and he laughed.

  “That’s funny,” he said. “I gotta remember that, that’s funny. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do….”

  “Sidesplitting,” I agreed.

  I went back to the chair. Emerton sat on the corner of his desk.

  “Why are you convinced Alison was sleeping with Raymond Fleck?” I asked.

  “A guy knows these things, okay? You can tell. Besides, it’s not like it was the first time.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “Hell, no. She was screwin’ some guy at the health place, some doctor I think.”

  “Huh?” My internal computer sifted through Anne Scalasi’s entire file in about two seconds flat, and all I could come up with was, “Huh?”

  “Not long after we were married, neither.”

  “Are you—?”

  “Sure? You were goin’ to ask me if I’m sure? I told you, a guy knows these things. They say the husband’s the last to know. Forget that. The husband is the first unless he’s a dumb shit. Anyway, she didn’t deny it, okay? I told her I knew she was whorin’ around, and I was going to divorce her pronto. That was like the magic word with Alison: divorce. Her family, man, divorce was like worse than death. They’d rather you died than get a divorce, okay? So, she starts wailin’ and pleadin’ with me, sayin’ she was sorry, and the next thing she ups and quits the health place and gets a job at the dog place.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police this?” I asked him.

  “What for? Man, they already thought I did her, okay? I’m gonna be the jealous husband? I’m gonna give ’em a motive?”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “You’re not from the cops. You’re from the insurance … Shit!” Emerton jumped off his desk, walked around it, and fell into his chair like he had been pushed there. He covered his face with his hands. “I’m never going to see my money now, am I? God, I can’t believe I said that.”

  I believed it. I’ve seen stupid before. Especially in killers. It’s like the act of murder freezes their brain cells. The mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, who once was a Pinkerton, called it “blood simple.” On the other hand, despite the degrees hanging on his walls, maybe Emerton was just plain simple.

  “Who do you suspect?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “The doctor Alison was …” I couldn’t get the word out.

  “Fuckin’?” Emerton finished.

  “Involved with,” I substituted.

  “I don’t know. I’m just guessin’ it was some doctor. Coulda been a janitor for all I know. Hell’s bells, man, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was with him right now on some beach in Bermuda, laughin’ her ass off at how badly she fucked up my life.”

  “Wait a minute. First you say she’s dead. Now you say she’s alive.”

  Emerton stared at me for a good ten seconds, his jaw muscles working but nothing coming out of his mouth. Then, “She’s dead, man. Don’t go sayin’ she ain’t. You ain’t usin’ that to deny my claim. She’s dead.”

  “If you think she’s alive …”

  “I didn’t say I think … I didn’t say … What I’m sayin’ is, wherever she is—in hell, man; she’s probably in hell—I’m sayin’ she’s laughing at the joke she played on me.”

  “The joke she played on you?”

  I wondered if it was too late for the Phi Betas to take their key back.

  Stephen Emerton annoyed me. He annoyed me even before I met him. And I sure didn’t like the way he spoke about his wife, discussing her like she was a major appliance that had broken down a week or so after the warranty expired. Except I wanted his story—I wanted it complete and unabridged—so I tried to ignore the blood pounding in my head and listened, encouraging him when he became bored with the topic. I pumped Emerton for more information about the doctor—if it was a doctor—he claimed was “getting into Alison’s pants,” but he turned into a dry well. I gave it up after about an hour and made my way back through the now deserted offices to the front door.

  I reached my car and removed Alison’s photo from the envelope. Her eyes spoke to me as they always had. Now, though, along with the despair there was something else, something I hadn’t seen before. It was like her eyes were pleading with me. But for what? Justice? Revenge? Or maybe it was just the gathering twilight that was casting soft shadows across the glossy surface. I returned the photograph to the envelope and started my car.

  Emerton’s revelation that he suspected Alison was cheating on him with the phantom doctor and later with Raymond made him an even more likely suspect than before; Teeters would put him through the grinder again and so would the insurance company—and so would the media once they all heard. I looked forward to telling them. Only I didn’t want to annoy the sheriff with yet another phone call. It could wait until the morning.

  eight

  I greeted Cynthia Grey with a bouquet of assorted flowers. I didn’t know what kind; the florist had put them together for me. But they looked good and they smelled good and besides, it’s the thought that counts.

  Cynthia hugged me and kissed me and thanked me for the flowers and asked, “What are these for?” as she arranged them in a vase.

  “Consider it an apology.”

  “An apology? For what?”

  “I’ve spent most of the day listening to tales of the abuse of women. I’ve heard from a woman whose college professor expected her to trade sexual favors for a degree. I’ve spoken with a rapist who can’t understand why people mistrust him. And another man is upset because his wife’s murder is causing him great inconvenience.”

  “Taylor, Taylor,” Cynthia said with a sigh. “That’s nothing. I could tell you stories that would bring bitter tears to your eyes.”

  “Yeah, well, it all left me believing that as a whole, men are a pretty shabby lot.”

  After filling a vase with water, Cynthia used it as a centerpiece for her dining-room table. “This is very sweet,” she told me. “But you don’t have to apologize for the way other men treat women.”

  “I’m not. I’m apologizing for myself, for the way I treated you. Remember when you told me you were
taking that sexual harassment case, the case against the women’s clothing manufacturer with the slutty advertising?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember, I said it was silly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I was wrong. I’m glad you crushed the bastards.”

  Cynthia smiled brightly. “My goodness.”

  We watched each other, awkward in our silence. It was not one of those talk-about-sexual-harassment-and-then-go-into-a-clinch moments, so I slapped the tabletop and bellowed, “Woman, where’s my dinner?!”

  Cynthia made a dish of braised chicken and sweet peppers. Or rather she reheated it in the microwave. A personal chef had created it, a woman Cynthia hired to come to her home once a month and whip up about a dozen different menus for two and put them in the freezer. She’s a helluva cook. The personal chef, I mean. And the price, about three hundred bucks and expenses, isn’t so much when you compare it to a decent restaurant. But the idea of someone coming to your home and making your meals left a sour taste in my mouth. I told Cynthia so, and she very calmly explained that, unlike me, she was too busy to cook for herself much less for both of us. Besides, she didn’t know how to cook.

  Her mother hadn’t been around to teach her; an alcoholic, she had run off when Cynthia was just six, leaving her daughter in the care of elderly—and brutal—grandparents who died within months of each other when she was twelve, leaving her a ward of the state. Cynthia drifted between foster homes, halfway houses, and the streets, unloved and unloving, with drugs and alcohol her only friends. After attempting to take her own life on her seventeenth birthday, Cynthia was mandated by a court-ordered detention into a local snake pit with some major-league crazies. It might have been the best thing that ever happened to her. The experience shocked her into a kind of sanity and ignited in her a passion for survival that still burns red hot. Upon her release, she embraced the straight life with both hands. She earned her GED, put herself through a three-and-three program—three years of undergraduate studies and three years of law school at the University of Minnesota—on strength of will alone and finishing tenth in her class. Along the way she taught herself how to view life critically, becoming what my father calls “a woman of substance” as well as a lawyer. Believe me, if Cynthia could hang ATTORNEY in neon above her town house, she would.

  As for the rough edges, she pays a woman to teach her manners, how to walk and talk and present herself in nearly any social situation. She pays a woman to select her clothes, making sure she’s always fashionable. She pays another woman to buy her furniture. And she pays a woman to cook gourmet meals. These women obviously care about their work, creating for Cynthia a look of quiet elegance, and only someone who knows her well could sense that it doesn’t quite fit. I know because I’ve spent a lot of time with Cynthia over the past eight months. I had met her while working a case. Re-met her I should say. She had defended the man who had killed my family with his car years earlier. At first that fact bothered me a lot. Then, not so much. Now when I’m not with her, I’m alone.

  After we ate, I helped Cynthia with the dishes—partly because I’m a warm, sensitive, caring man for the millennium and partly because she gives me that look when I don’t.

  Later, stretched out on Cynthia’s expensive Ethan Allen sofa, I sipped the red wine the sales clerk at the liquor warehouse recommended to her while Cynthia drank Catawba juice. She hasn’t had an alcoholic beverage in—what?—nearly eight years now. We were listening to a Nicholas Payton CD. The CD belonged to me. Mostly Cynthia listens to heavy-metal junk played by bands I’ve never heard of—a direct contradiction to the image she so carefully cultivates. I once offered my opinion of her taste in music. But only once. She responded with language that would make the most obnoxious rap artist blush. You can take the woman out of the street, but you can’t take the street out of the woman.

  The phone rang, and Cynthia got up to answer it. My eyes followed her as she removed the cellular phone from its cradle, extending the antenna with one quick motion. I listened to her side of the conversation, watching her as she paced the dining and living rooms, absentmindedly caressing the furniture with her hands, reminding herself who it all belonged to.

  “Hi.… No, I’m not busy. How are you? … Sure.… Oh, you’d think we could, wouldn’t you? My office is only three blocks away.… I have an office manager who would shoot me if I did that.… Yeah, I sometimes wonder who’s working for whom, too.… Your schedule has to be worse. At least I don’t get calls in the middle of the night.… True, but it’s never a matter of life or death.… I wonder about it all the time, don’t you? … Yes, I can do that. I’d be happy to…. Yes, he’s here. He’s sitting on the couch, drinking wine and listening to his beloved jazz.…” Cynthia held the phone away from her mouth and told me, “Anne Scalasi says you’re a sonuvabitch.”

  “Now what did I do?”

  “He wants to know what he did,” Cynthia said into the phone. After a brief pause she exclaimed, “Don’t tell him that! He’ll be harder to live with than ever.”

  “What?” I asked.

  Cynthia handed me the telephone.

  “Hi, Annie,” I said.

  “You’re a lucky sonuvabitch, Taylor,” she clarified.

  “How so?”

  “Your tip to Ed Teeters, it paid off.”

  “No way!”

  “He put a team on Irene Brown. She left her house an hour after sunset and drove to a Dumpster behind a fast-food joint. They have a videotape of her throwing a box into the Dumpster. Guess what the box contained?”

  “No way!”

  “A pair of LA Gear Air System running shoes, size ten.”

  I started to laugh at the improbability of it all.

  “We’re working on this sucker for seven months, and you break it in one day,” Anne said.

  “Actually, I did it in half a day,” I told her and laughed some more.

  “You’re a lucky sonuvabitch,” Anne repeated.

  “Hey, I’m a trained professional. Luck had nothing to do with it. As the great pioneering criminologist Edmond Locard once said—”

  “Give me a break. I lend you one lousy book on forensic detection, and all of a sudden you’re quoting dead Frenchmen.”

  “I thought he was Belgian.”

  “Trust me. Anyway, Irene Brown had been waiting seven months for someone to catch her. Winnie the Pooh could have done it.”

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Do I detect envy? Jealousy, perhaps, of my unparalleled skills?”

  “Screw you, Taylor.”

  “God, I’m loving this, Annie.”

  “It’s not over yet. Teeters said that Irene Brown confessed that she followed Alison home the evening she disappeared. Brown said she was going to give Alison a piece of her mind.”

  “Does she have any to spare?”

  “She said Alison met her at the front door with a small gun in her hand. She said Alison told her to leave, and that’s what she did. Brown insists Alison was alive when she left.”

  “Well, she would, wouldn’t she?” I told Anne.

  “Brown claims that she didn’t tell the police because she was afraid they would accuse her of killing Alison.”

  “Did she admit to making the harassing telephone calls?”

  “Yes, and the flowers and dead cat, too. She also claims that Raymond Fleck had nothing to do with any of it.”

  “I wonder.”

  “Yeah, I do, too. Is she still protecting Raymond?”

  “The running shoes. They were men’s shoes,” I reminded Anne.

  “Teeters said that Brown insists they were hers, that they fit her better than women’s shoes.”

  “Why did she keep them all this time?”

  “She said she had no reason not to. She said she never imagined that she left a print.”

  “Unbelievable. What does Teeters say?”

  “Teeters is ecstatic. He’s so happy, he’s actually speaking in complete sentences. He figures this will get
the media off his back.”

  “Now the big one: What does the Dakota County attorney say?”

  “I’m getting this all secondhand, you have to remember. The way I hear it, Dakota County is impounding Brown’s car and having forensics conduct a search. If they find any blood, any hair samples, any physical evidence at all that puts Alison in the car or in any area where the suspect had access, the CA will go for a murder indictment even if he can’t establish corpus delicti. If not, I don’t know. Without Alison’s body, without corroborative physical evidence, he’ll have a helluva time proving that a homicide was even committed. The defense could argue that Alison decided to become a blackjack dealer in Vegas—”

  Or take a trip to Bermuda, my inner voice whispered so softly that I barely heard it.

  “—and you know juries; they like to see a dead body in a murder case.”

  “Still, if he pushes it, Brown might cop a plea, go for manslaughter,” I suggested.

  “Depends on her attorney.”

  “Or Fleck might open up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me know?”

  Anne sighed deeply. “How ’bout I buy you lunch tomorrow. W. A. Frost.”

  “Annie, my gosh.”

  “Yeah, well, you did a nice job.”

  “Thanks, Annie. But like you said, she spent the past seven months teetering on the edge, waiting for someone to shove her over.”

  “Probably, but you’re the one who nudged her, not us. Make it eleven-thirty?”

  “See you then.”

  I turned off the phone, collapsed the antenna, and set it on the coffee table. Cynthia was watching me from a wing chair, smiling.

  “All right, I’m waiting,” she said.

  “Waiting?”

  “For the self-congratulations.”

  “Cynthia, you wound me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I locked my fingers behind my head and leaned back. She continued to watch me, continued to smile.

  “The other day you asked why men enjoy sports,” I reminded her. “It’s for the same reason I enjoyed being a cop, the same reason I like being a private investigator now. Yeah, there’s plenty of greed and fraud and ignorance and stupidity and corruption, and sometimes you wonder why you’re wasting your time. But if you stay with it, occasionally you’ll be rewarded with moments of pure joy, like when Kirby Puckett hit a home run to win the sixth game of the 1991 World Series or when Black Jack Morris pitched a ten-inning shutout to win game seven—”