by Joel Travis
“Oh, hell yes. I saw it on television.”
“Would they read my poems to me? After I was discharged from the Army, I spent a few years trying to make a name for myself as a serious poet.”
“They have to read whatever you say. They’re like reading slaves.”
“Will you read a poem to me?” he asked, confusing me with a volunteer.
“I could read one, I guess. What kind of poems are they?”
“I specialized in antiwar poetry.”
I was surprised to hear that, in light of his military service.
“You said you were in the Army. Now you tell me you wrote antiwar poetry. What happened, did you witness a lot of unnecessary carnage?”
“No,” he said. “I served my country as a cook at FortBliss. But poetry lovers are idealistic and generally despise war. I anticipated steady sales if I stuck to an antiwar theme. Unfortunately, no one would publish me.”
Enright reached under the recliner and pulled out a scrapbook. “Flip through the pages until you come to Pappy’s Song.”
I flipped through the scrapbook. Then I read his poem aloud:
#
PAPPY’S SONG
The first man I knew was my Pappy,
He made up songs to keep me happy;
President Truman sent him to fight,
And I sang his songs to pass the night;
I sang those songs with all my heart,
Till a Jap’s grenade blew Pappy apart;
Now I don’t sing those songs no more,
At least we won the fucking war.
#
“Wow,” I said, “that’s powerful shit.”
“Really? What makes it so powerful?”
“Probably the F-word in the last line. Sounds like you really mean what you say when you use a word like that.”
“That’s my trademark,” he said. “You’ll find it in the last line of all my poems.”
“Are you telling me that all your poems are this powerful?”
“Yes.”
That blew me away. A complete collection of powerful, unpublished poetry. Enright was sitting on a gold mine! I was sure I could get his antiwar poems published in France. I was about to tell him that when I noticed he had closed his eyes. I left him resting comfortably and went downstairs to see if Cynthia had returned from the grocery store.
Chapter 14
We sat opposite each other on the living room couches.
“You think Uncle Melvin is dead, don’t you?” Cynthia said.
I nodded.
“Maybe he was kidnapped,” she said. “He might still be alive.”
“Then where’s the ransom note? And how come his wallet was buried in my backyard? And why were ten photos of your uncle taped to the bathroom wall of my apartment? Cynthia, someone is obviously trying to frame me for your uncle’s murder. That means he’s dead.”
“But maybe—”
“Dead, dead, dead! How many times do I have to say it?”
She lowered her head. “I know you’re right. It’s just hard to accept. Uncle Melvin was like a father to me.”
I could understand how she felt. At the same time, a person is only entitled to so many fathers per lifetime. She’d already gone through a biological father she never knew, and a second father who’d adopted her and loved her as his own until his face got smashed in by a shovel. Now here she was trying to morph her missing uncle into yet another father.
“It always seems worse than it is,” I said.
A tear fell from her cheek onto the marble table. “It still hurts.”
“Pain is part of life, Cynthia. Your uncle is dead, but think of it this way. Never again will he have to endure the kind of gut-wrenching pain you’re feeling right now.”
Cynthia sniffled. “You’re saying Uncle Melvin is in a better place.”
“I don’t know where the hell he is. Probably a ditch or the bottom of the Trinity River. Wherever he is, he’s not feeling any pain.”
Andrea passed through the room carrying a football en route to the backyard. Cynthia excused herself to drag her supposedly sick daughter back upstairs to bed. I pulled the pen and notepad from my shirt pocket so I’d be ready to take notes when our interview resumed.
I use a double-entry system for taking notes. Here’s how it works. First I take down anything important the witness says. Then I read what I’ve written, not only to see if I can read my own writing, but also to burn the words into my photographic memory. That way I always have a reliable backup copy. If I leave my notes on the bus or something, I can rewrite my lost notes from memory, word for word, when I get home.
While it’s a sensible system for me, I can’t recommend it to folks who only have a regular memory. This is one time when you really do need photo mem. Unfortunately, less than one percent of the earth’s population has what it takes. I learned that statistic in college when I was one of the subjects in a study on the inner workings of the photographic mind.
A friend had informed me about the study. Always the eager student, I volunteered to let a professor study my marvelous memory for an entire semester. I hoped my contribution might benefit science in some small way, while I racked up credit hours in a big way. It seemed to me that I had turned academia on its head! This time, instead of me having to study their difficult subjects, I was the difficult subject and they would have to study me.
On the first day, the professor put us through a series of visual memory tests. On the second day, he pulled me aside and said he was sorry, but he couldn’t use me as a subject.
I heard the phone ringing in the kitchen, so I answered it. “It’s for you,” I said, handing Cynthia the phone when she returned. On my way back to the couch, Andrea intercepted me.
“Where’s Mom? I want her to tell me a bedtime story.”
Deciding it was an excellent opportunity to bond with the child and impress Cynthia by showing an interest in her daughter, I followed Andrea upstairs and tucked her into bed. Then I told her a story I had read recently in the newspaper about a guy who lived alone in a trailer.
According to the article, one night there was a terrible storm which knocked out the electricity in the trailer park. Luckily, this guy had two kerosene lamps. He lit the lamps, which provided more than enough light for his little trailer. He looked out his window to see how his neighbors were coping in the aftermath of the storm. All the other trailers had managed to at least light a candle, except for one trailer at the end of the road which remained in darkness. Thinking that he didn’t really need both lamps for himself, he put on his coat, grabbed one of the lamps, and began the long walk to the trailer in need. The family who lived there was happy to see him, because until he arrived they couldn’t see anything. They gave him milk and cookies and he told ghost stories to the ten children until it was time for them to go to bed. When he got back home, he was horrified by what he saw. The kerosene lamp he’d left unattended in his trailer had toppled over and burned the place to the ground.
“What did he do?” Andrea asked.
“He cried. Everything he owned was destroyed and he had no insurance.”
I heard someone clearing a throat behind me. I turned around to see Cynthia standing in the doorway, a scowl distorting her beautiful face.
“What’s the moral of that story, Brit?” she asked. “Never do a good deed for anyone because it could backfire on you?”
“It’s a true story. I read it in the newspaper.”
“I see. Why don’t you tell her the rest of the story?”
“That’s all there is.”
“No, I remember reading about how all his neighbors joined in and built him a new house. An even better house than he had before.”
“He only had a trailer.”
“Whatever.”
“Unless all his neighbors were carpenters, I don’t see how they could—”
“Brit, why don’t you go back downstairs. I’ll be down in a minute.”
I could tel
l Cynthia wasn’t pleased with the bedtime story I’d told. Nor was I pleased with her contribution. I don’t think it’s right to tell lies to children. Especially an unbelievable whopper about unskilled neighbors building a house from scratch for some trailer-trash loner. She might as well have said that Santa sent some elves from his workshop to build the house. At least they’d have the skills to do the job.
While I waited for Cynthia in the living room, I took a moment to reflect on the progress of my investigation. Although I had spoken with two key witnesses, I had learned virtually nothing pertaining to the Codger’s mysterious disappearance. I hadn’t even managed to complete a single interview. Of course, it’s not easy to complete the interviews when the witnesses are either running from the room in tears or spewing spittle in the throes of a spastic attack.
I had known from the outset that it would be a challenging case. After all, Hedgeway had been missing for a year. The trail was cold. Much of the evidence would have been erased by the passage of time. Solving the case at this point would be like trying to work a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing, and no box cover with the killer’s picture to go by.
It would be a dangerous investigation, too. The killer would try to thwart me at every turn. Or he might skip over the thwarting and just kill me. A lesser man might have been tempted to quit the case.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a lesser man. I can’t speak for everyone in the world, but speaking for myself, I think it would be interesting to slip into a lesser man’s skin and walk a few miles in his shoes. Once I’d slipped back into my own skin and shoes, I’ll bet I’d appreciate myself a whole lot more. I’d also appreciate the predicament of the lesser man. No longer would I look down on him just to give myself a cheap confidence boost. “God bless the lesser man,” I’d say. “He’s doing his best.”
But sometimes doing your best doesn’t cut the mustard, so I was hardly thrilled that the rest of my team was comprised of a lesser man and two lesser women. The reality was that I would have to cut the mustard myself, or die trying.
#
“I just can’t believe that anyone would want to kill my uncle,” Cynthia said.
“You have to remember that there are a lot of sickos out there. People who commit unthinkable acts for no logical reason. For example, Dahmer, the serial killer, ate his victims after he killed them. Not only was he a bloodthirsty killer, he was a hungry cannibal. I’m not saying that someone ate your uncle, though it would explain why his body hasn’t turned up.”
“Surely we can come up with something better than that.”
“I’m sure we can. As the investigation wears on, we’ll have more facts to work with and more plausible theories will fit the facts. In the meantime, the cannibal theory gives us something to chew on.”
She smiled at my little joke. At that moment I felt that we were soulmates, destined to become lovers, then husband and wife. I imagined we’d live happily for many years, until one night, lying in her arms, my heart would stop beating. And knowing that my heart would no longer beat in perfect time with hers, Cynthia would die moments later, unwilling to live on without her soulmate. We’d be buried next to each other, decomposing together as slimy worms slithered through our skeletons. But we wouldn’t care about the worms, for our souls would have long since departed the cramped confines of our cold coffins. Her soul ascending to Heaven, and my soul … well, anyway, no one could say we didn’t have some good years together while they lasted.
Returning my thoughts to the case, I asked Cynthia if her uncle had any enemies. She shook her head.
“What about that crazy gardener who killed your father? He might have held a grudge against your family. Do you know if he’s still alive?”
“He died in prison.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“He needed a new liver, but nobody would give him one. He was very low on the liver list. Dead last, I believe.”
Too bad. That crazy gardener would have made a convenient scapegoat if I couldn’t find the real killer. I moved on to another line of questioning.
“Up until a few days before he disappeared, your uncle lived in an apartment. He didn’t have enough money to pay his rent, so you bought him out of his lease. Then you brought him back here, where he stayed until he vanished into thin air. Correct?”
“How did you know all that?”
I could have answered that my partners had spoken to Melvin’s apartment manager. But giving my partners the credit wouldn’t have placed me in the favorable light I prefer to bask in.
“I did a bit of detective work on my way over,” I said.
“I’m impressed.”
I knew you would be.
“What does my uncle’s apartment have to do with the case?”
“He moved out of the apartment because he couldn’t pay his rent. Yet several days earlier he’d won a hundred thousand dollars from me, which he made no attempt to collect. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
“Of course.”
“Did he ever mention winning a bet with me?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about your bet until the police told me about it.”
“That nonsense about me killing your uncle instead of paying him?”
“Could you have paid him a hundred grand?”
“Hell no.”
“Then you can understand why I didn’t consider it to be nonsense. Why did you bet so much money on a stupid football game?”
“It was a sure thing.”
“You lost.”
“Only because a freshman quarterback with a pulled groin who can’t pass worth a shit threw a ricochet touchdown pass off a linebacker’s helmet.”
“Well, I don’t understand people who bet everything they’ve got—or in your case, everything they haven’t got—on some stupid football game.”
“I wasn’t the only one,” I said. “Apparently your uncle couldn’t have paid me if he’d lost. What happened to all his money? The whole time I knew him he was loaded.”
“I suppose his business went bad.”
“What business?”
“Investments of some sort. That’s why he moved into the apartment. He said he wanted to use it as an office. I suggested that he use one of the rooms in this house, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He told me he wanted the business to be separate from the family. That made me wonder if what he really wanted was a place of his own, where he wouldn’t feel obligated to look after John Enright and entertain Andrea all the time.”
“When he told you he didn’t have enough money to pay his rent, did you ask him why? What did he say about being broke all of a sudden?”
“Nothing. I assumed his investment business had failed. I didn’t want to rub it in by asking a lot of questions. Do you think my uncle’s business has something to do with his disappearance?”
“Hard to say, since we don’t know what his business was.”
“Investments. That’s all I know. I asked John Enright and Sergio about it, but they didn’t know any more than I did.”
“Who’s Sergio?” I asked.
“My husband, remember?”
I wrote down his name on my notepad. “Yes, I do remember now. You’ve been separated from him for about a year and a half, and he lives in this area. I’ll need to speak to him.”
“I can set that up for you,” she said.
“Okay, so your uncle’s business failed and he moved back into this house. A few days later he went missing. Tell me about that day.”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you much. Sergio and I had been separated for several months and I had taken a part-time job at a real estate firm so I wouldn’t have to be so dependent on him. The day my uncle disappeared, I was working late at the office. By the time I got home, he had already left for his meeting.”
“What meeting?”
“Didn’t John tell you about the meeting?”
“He had a spastic attack in the mi
ddle of the interview.”
“Oh no!” she said. “Is the poor thing all right?”
“Yeah, the poor thing was resting in his recliner when I left him. We agreed to finish the interview when he regained his strength.”
“I worry about John,” she said. “Sometimes I think it would be better for him if he moved someplace where there were nurses to monitor his attacks.”
“Well, don’t tell him that,” I said. “That’s what caused the attack. He’s worried that you’ll put him out, now that his friend Melvin isn’t living here.”
She sighed. “I don’t want to put him out, but Sergio does.”
“Why?”
“Sergio doesn’t see any advantage to having him here.”
“Do you see any advantage?”
“Well, no. But Uncle Melvin would want him to stay, so he stays. It’s my house, not Sergio’s, though he does pay the bills.”
While we were on the subject of finances, I asked about Hedgeway’s will. Cynthia said she would inherit everything, meaning nothing. She confided that Melvin had taken out a life insurance policy, and she was the sole beneficiary, but the insurance agent told her there would be no payout for another seven years unless her uncle’s corpse was discovered in the meantime. I figured if she had devised a plot to kill her uncle for the insurance money she would have known about the payout provisions and dumped his body where it could be easily found.
Cynthia asked if I had any suspects in the case.
“Plenty. That’s where the killer made a mistake by trying to frame me. Only someone who knew I owed your uncle a hundred grand would have attempted to frame me. Therefore, the suspects are the people who knew about the bet.
“My ex-wife, Sheila, knew about it, because I had to explain why we had to flee the country. And everyone who attended my deathbed confession knew. That includes my brother, Marty, and his wife, Susan. Also Marty’s friends—Ace Monroe, who you met Saturday, and Detective Forest Gardner. It was through Forest that the police learned of the wager.
“Reverend Means was in the room to comfort the family and make funeral arrangements. And one other person was there, though no one can explain why. Julio Hernandez, brother of Cesar Hernandez. Cesar was my boss in the betting racket. I received a hateful note from Cesar while I was in the hospital recovering from the car crash, so I know Julio told him about the bet.”
