A Bitch Called Hope

by Lily Gardner

  In his big cop voice, Sloane told the man to sit down, but the old dude wasn’t having it.

  “I’m Delia’s doctor,” the thin man said. “She’s been through a terrible shock.”

  Tommy re-entered the living room. Sloane jerked his head in the doctor’s direction. Their conversation was too quiet for Lennox to pick up.

  Tommy turned to the guests, his gaze panning the room. He cleared his throat. “I think we have everything for now, folks,” he said. “So thank you for your cooperation. You can go home, but it may be that we’ll need to contact you again.”

  Sloane began shepherding the guests from the living room. Tommy came over to Aurora, just as she and Lennox had stood up to leave. He introduced himself.

  “If you would stay a little while longer, ma’am. I want to go over your statement with you,” he said.

  “Am I in trouble?” Aurora said in a frightened voice.

  “No, ma’am. You could bring your daughter with you if that would you make you feel more comfortable.” He glanced over at Lennox, his eyelid fluttered in a ghost of a wink.

  They followed Tommy through the dining room into the kitchen and sat opposite him at a small table in the breakfast nook.

  Tommy paged back in his notebook to a sketch of the master bedroom. He pointed to the sketch and asked Aurora where she’d been standing at the moment she first discovered Bill’s body. He asked her if she had touched the body. She had not. What time was it when she found him? She didn’t know. Tommy glanced at her hands clenched together on the table, a designer watch encircling her wrist.

  “I didn’t think to look at the time.” Aurora’s voice came out in a squeak.

  “You’d had a shock.” Tommy soothed. “We see that all the time. Don’t we, Lennox?”

  Aurora swung around to Lennox. “You know him?”

  “She saved my life,” Tommy said. He had no idea what a colossally bad idea it was swap stories with Aurora. He probably thought Aurora would love hearing about Lennox’s heroics. How they would all bond over this memory. And once they’d bonded, he’d be that much closer to getting Lennox in bed. He didn’t know her mother.

  “You’re the man my daughter pulled to safety?” Aurora said. There was an edge to her voice that you could shave your legs with. Tommy hadn’t noticed; he was that sure of his ability to charm the socks off any female.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “She was very brave,” Aurora said.

  “A hero,” he said.

  “You should’ve stopped the police board from firing her. You should’ve raised holy hell, threatened to quit yourself.”

  He was so not expecting this little old lady to challenge him. He stood and yanked up his shirt. “I was in the hospital!” he said. An eight-inch purple scar keloided from below his rib cage to just above where his slacks hung from his skinny hips. “The hospital had me sedated until I didn’t know if I was coming or going. By the time I got out, it was all over and Lennox had moved on.”

  There was probably enough truth there to sell it, just like his story about his wife and how she happened to find out about them after Lennox had been fired. But Lennox wasn’t going for it. And from the way Aurora had her jaw set, she wasn’t going for it either.

  Chapter 4

  It was nine a.m., two days after Bill Pike’s death. The crows outside Lennox’s office window were shrieking at each other. Lennox sipped her first cup of coffee of the day, looked at the morning Oregonian and saw Bill’s name in the headline. The paper was calling it murder.

  Lennox had half expected it. Something felt off beyond the girl with the packet of money. The murder made front page of the Metro section the same day his funeral notice ran in the back of the paper.

  Lennox clipped both the headline story and the obit and called her poker buddy, Sarge. Sarge ran the police evidence room. He could tell you how many open cases a cop had on his desk and whose arrests made it to conviction. And he could recite a bad guy’s rap sheet the way a sportscaster rattles off baseball statistics.

  “Can’t talk to you now,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll call you back.”

  Lennox had to wait until he took his coffee break. She could hear traffic noise, the splash of a car driving through a puddle.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “I’m standing under a tree in South Park,” Sarge said.

  She imagined rain beading on his bald head. “You’ll catch a cold,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He lowered his voice. “You know what will happen to me if it leaks out I’ve been talking to you.”

  Lennox swore on her mother’s head that she would not so much as hint about anything she learned.

  He told her the autopsy report had come in the night before. Cause of death: insulin poisoning.

  “That’s a new one,” Lennox said. “How could that happen?”

  A car alarm went off down the street. Sarge said, “They don’t know how it was administered yet, but I’ll tell you what, there was a doctor on the scene called it a heart attack. They’re taking a good hard look at him.”

  “Sounds like the murder was premeditated.”

  “Does,” Sarge agreed.

  Lennox asked about the girl with the wad of cash in her backpack. Her name was Alice Stapely. She’d been released but the ten thousand dollars remained in custody.

  Lennox whistled.

  According to Ms. Stapely, she’d had a relationship with Bill when she was fourteen. Lennox would never have guessed Bill for a pervert. He’d always acted fatherly towards Lennox.

  “Stapley says the deceased gave her the money,” Sarge said. “Told her he wanted to help her.”

  “But they don’t think she killed him?” Lennox said.

  “They don’t see how she could have pulled it off. She says she was with the victim in his office before the party, but once the party started she was never alone with him. She passed the lie detector test.”

  “Any other leads?” Lennox said.

  Sarge hesitated. “Rumor has it you and Tommy are an item again.”

  “I’m just an ambulance chaser,” she told Sarge. “Trying to scare up more business.”

  “Because you can do better than that guy.”

  She thanked Sarge and let him get out of the rain. Looking out her office window at the chickadees as they picked through the empty husks beneath the feeder, she reached for the phone again and called her mother. Who was only too happy to have a date for Bill’s funeral.

  Of course, it wasn’t just a funeral, but a Catholic funeral, and not just a Catholic funeral, but three priests and a cathedral and over an hour and a half long. There was enough incense to bring an ox to its knees. The Pikes were apparently an even bigger deal than she’d remembered.

  After all the Catholic falderal, Lennox and her mother drove back up the hill for a reception at the Pikes’ house. The Christmas tree, the snow globes on the mantel and the evergreen swags had been removed since the party. Huge vases of white lilies and roses replaced the poinsettias. The smell was as overpowering as the incense had been at the church.

  Lennox situated her mother on one of the sofas and watched people drift from the front entry through the living room to the buffet set up on the dining room table. People in black. People, if not looking heartbroken, at least solemn. Most likely one of them was the murderer. The question was—which one? Here Lennox sat, ready and able, without an idea how to get from the sofa to the investigation short of passing around her business cards.

  Enter a girl dressed in a short black cocktail dress. Lennox pegged the girl at five-seven, size four. She looked fresh out of high school.

  Aurora jammed an elbow in Lennox’s ribs. “There’s Scott’s girlfriend, Priscilla,” she hissed in a not very low whisper. “Delia caught her with Bill.”

  “Tell me,” Lennox said.

  “That night. They were behind a door or in the hallway, I don’t have the details. Anyway, Delia caught them groping
or kissing.” Aurora shot an evil look Priscilla’s way. “I’ve never liked that girl. She’s a gold bricker.”

  “You mean a gold digger?”

  “Whatever,” Aurora said. “There’s Delia.” She put her wine glass on the table and brushed crumbs from her lap.

  Delia Pike. She stood next to the same doctor that argued with the cops. She was still dressed in the severe black suit she’d worn at the funeral. Here was the weird thing, though, the thing that surprised the hell out of Lennox, and given her career she was a hard one to surprise. When Delia lifted her arms to hug a well-wisher, the thinnest sliver of lace peeked below her hemline. Delia Pike was wearing a hot pink slip.

  Lennox hadn’t wrapped her mind around the hot pink when Dan and Scott entered the room. Lennox noted that Dan had stopped growing at just over six foot, his nose like Tommy’s only his was straight. His stomach was flat, his eyes black.

  His eyes landed on her and she sat a little straighter, turned her face in such a way he got her best angle.

  Aurora said, “The family’s here. Let’s say hello.” Her mother’s face was a shade too eager.

  The thought of being shoved in front of the Pikes by her mother was more awkward than Lennox could bear. “You go ahead,” she said.

  Aurora’s expression turned irritable. She left to join Delia just as Dan walked over to her. He didn’t see Aurora turn and give Lennox the thumbs up.

  “Remember me?” he said to Lennox.

  From the sofa, Lennox found herself with a discomfiting view of his crotch.

  “Of course,” she said. “How are you?” Stupid, stupid! How was he? His father had just died.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “How long has it been?”

  “Twenty-four years,” she said.

  “How about a brandy?” he said. ”We can get caught up.”

  He stepped back a pace to allow her to stand up. The top of her head came up to his collarbone. He smelled of soap. A hank of dark brown hair fell over his eyebrow. She tamped down the urge to reach up and smooth it back and followed him down a long hallway past all the framed photographs of his family. The boys before they were school age, another of Dan on his bike, maybe ten years old.

  Dan opened the door on a study. Lots of dark upholstery and brass lamps. A rainy half-light came from the windows. A leather sofa was pushed against the far wall. Two wingback chairs faced an oversized desk. Lennox decided on a chair.

  “Last time I saw you was what?” he said. “You were ten?”

  Fourteen, but who was counting? She said, “I’m sorry about Bill. I always liked him.”

  “Thanks.” He put some muscle into that thanks as if she’d offered him something valuable. He turned and brought the glasses of brandy over to the desk, moving his chair a few degrees so that it faced her.

  “I can’t believe it’s you,” he said. “You’re gorgeous.” He swallowed. “I mean, not that you were ugly before.”

  “You used to call me Cankle,” she said. Translation: Fat Ankles.

  “What a bastard I was. Will you forgive me?” Did his eyes stray to her ankles? No, they stayed on her face.

  She felt herself grinning. She clicked glasses with Dan, allowed herself to relax. He closed his eyes and took a good pull from his brandy. All the boy had melted from his face leaving good strong cheekbones. When he opened his eyes he caught her staring at him.

  She smiled and looked down quickly.

  “Mom said you were a cop?” he said.

  She told him about her investigative business. He talked about finance. And Chicago. Lennox was a big fan of the Cubs. His arm moved a little closer to hers. That soap he used was lime scented. Nothing was firm yet, he said, but it looked like maybe he’d stay in Portland.

  There was a knock on the door. It opened wide enough for the same doctor to poke his head through. “Your mother wants you,” he said to Dan.

  A muscle jumped in Dan’s jaw. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he said.

  “Now,” the doctor said. Taking that same imperious tone he had used with Sloane, like he was running the show.

  Chapter 5

  Lennox pulled the Bronco, fresh from the body shop, into the taxi zone in front of the Heathman Hotel. She handed her keys to the valet, who looked as if she’d just laid a dog turd in his gloved hand.

  The tearoom at the Heathman was decorated for Christmas exactly as it had been when Aurora first reserved a table the year Lennox was in sixth grade. Every year the twenty-foot Christmas tree was decorated with the same beach-ball-sized purple and gold ornaments, the tables set with same arrangements of holly, red roses and paperwhites. She and her mother always ordered the cucumber sandwiches, the pâté with Roquefort and pistachios, the scones, the sherry, the Earl Grey tea. The room always smelled of pine and bayberry and bergamot. Gary, the ageless piano player, played Christmas music on the baby grand at the far end of the room. And every year since that first one, Lennox dressed in her best clothes, wore her highest heels: an inch high when she was eleven, four inches now that she was grown up.

  She had always loved it since she was a kid, but this year felt a little off, everything all the same and all of it a little stale.

  December’s puny light barely penetrated the tall windows above Lennox and Aurora’s table. The host seated a sleek blond woman and her two offspring at the table next to theirs. The children ranked high in adorableness.

  It was depressing to be reminded of the choices that had brought Lennox to this particular juncture in her life, the children she didn’t have, not to mention the father of the children she also didn’t have. And at Christmas: the hollyest, jolliest time of the year.

  The waiter took Lennox and Aurora’s order and, minutes later, like magic whisked a teapot and plates of sandwiches and scones onto the table. Gary played the first bars of “Let it Snow.”

  “You tell that friend of yours.” Aurora wagged a manicured finger at Lennox. ”Detective Pavlik. He’s married, you know, I saw his ring, you tell him to quit bothering Delia.”

  Lennox glanced back at the Christmas tree. The ornaments were definitely showing their age.

  “That caterer woman.” Aurora’s voice grew shrill. “She’s your murderer.”

  The mother at the table next to them, who had been laughing at some charming thing her daughter said, looked over at Aurora with alarm. “Murderer” had that effect on people.

  Lennox said, “They held her for questioning and released her.”

  Aurora stopped chewing and didn’t bother swallowing. “You released her? She could go after Delia now. My God! What is wrong with you people?”

  “You people?”

  “Your friend, Detective Pavlik, what kind of policeman is he? It’s obvious that Bill caught the woman stealing and she put poison in his drink.”

  Why had Aurora fixed on poison? Lennox studied her mother over the rim of her teacup. “You think Bill was poisoned?” she said, making it sound casual.

  “What else?” Aurora pulled her cashmere wrap closer around her shoulders. “He was lying by the foot of the bed. There was no blood.”

  “Strangled, bludgeoned, smothered, there are any number of ways to kill a person without spilling blood.”

  The sleek blond mother summoned the waiter, who escorted her adorable family to a distant table.

  Aurora didn’t seem to notice. But she’d been surprisingly observant about Bill. He was lying on his side, one leg underneath him, crumpled-looking was the way Aurora put it.

  Of course, Lennox couldn’t share the piece about the insulin. She said, “The poison theory is a good one. But there are problems with the caterer piece.”

  The butler did it. That’s what Aurora and Delia and their whole privileged class wanted to believe.

  “Poor Delia’s been through hell and your friend keeps coming back. He was at the funeral, you know. Delia said she saw him standing by the doors— him and that other one. In their cheap jackets watching all of us.”

  L
ennox hadn’t seen Tommy at church, but she could feel him staring at the back of her head. Willing her to turn around, so he could flash that razzle-dazzle grin at her.

  “Maybe he keeps coming back because Delia is his chief witness,” Lennox said. “She knows more about Bill and about everybody at the party than anyone else.”

  “I told her, ‘Sounds to me like police harassment.’”

  Lennox said, “That’s the thing, though, sometimes when you are upset, you misremember things.”

  “She is not misremembering things,” Aurora said. “And neither is Doctor E.”

  Lennox brushed the scone crumbs off the tablecloth with the side of her finger. “Doctor E—is he a friend of Delia’s or Bill’s?”

  Aurora waved a fork at her. “You listen to me, Missy. These people are not killers and they’re not people who are used to being treated this way. You call your friend, Detective Pavlik, and tell him.”

  Her friend Detective Pavlik would probably make captain by the time his two adorable kids were in high school. And Lennox would probably still be single, still sitting in her car running surveillance. She said, “He’s not my friend.”

  Aurora said, “But you were a cop. You know what’s going on.”

  Lennox put the half-eaten scone back on her plate. “You really want to hear this?”

  The way Aurora pointed a fork at her, Lennox was afraid the old girl was going to launch into another anecdote about her shocking hippie youth. But that was a lifetime ago. The last time anyone said anything gritty in her company was probably when one of her set drank one too many glasses of seventy-dollar wine and used the f-word.

  “Statistically, the spouse is implicated in a domestic homicide. Then your method of murder tends to run along gender lines,” Lennox said. “Take guns: usually it’s a man who will use a gun or they’ll use their hands, beating or strangulation. Like that. Women tend to employ knives or poison. If you’re right about the poison angle, do you know what the statistics are? Only one in five thousand poisoners is male. That’s probably what Tommy is thinking.”