by Lily Gardner
“And Ham told us someone in that family had to have killed the guy,” Fulin said.
“Stop right there. You’re all law enforcement. You know Dan hasn’t been accused of a thing.”
“You and Ham suspect him of murder,” Fulin said.
“Number one.” Lennox jutted her thumb in the air. “The state doesn’t suspect him of any crime. Dan’s just a guy whose dad was murdered, period.” She wagged her index finger back and forth. “Number two: I like him, I admit, but I’m not seeing him romantically until after the trial.” She tucked her index finger back under her thumb and raised her middle finger. “Number three. So back off.”
Ham went red to the tips of his ears. She was lying, and he knew it. He wouldn’t make eye contact. He was disappointed in her. She hated it when he was disappointed in her.
Sarge changed gears and turned conciliatory. “Good enough. You say you’re not seeing him, you’re not. Which is a good thing on account of if he did kill his father—” He left that thought hanging midair.
“I’m not seeing him, goddamn it.”
“Shuffle the cards,” Jerry said.
The sound of the shuffle with all its feeling of adrenaline and rightness was enough to keep her in the room.
Katy, the cocktailer, delivered Lennox’s Blitzen, asked the table if anyone wanted another drink. They all put their hand up, even Sarge, who Lennox had never in her life seen drink more than one beer.
Someone played “Run Around Sue” on the jukebox in the bar.
Jerry cleared his throat. “Back in the late nineties I dated a shoplifter,” he said. “She was a nice girl in a lot of ways, except, you know, her moral compass.”
“Don’t make me say it again, Jerry,” Lennox said.
Fulin tossed in his chip for the ante. Everyone followed. Ham dealt two down. Lennox drummed her fingers on the tabletop and waited for everyone to pick up their cards before she looked.
A lovely pair of jacks. She threw in her chip and raised. She kept on raising when she got her third jack, daring any of them to fold. Let it be said they played humbly and no one said a word about her drumming her fingers.
She’d admitted she’d been an idiot to fall for Tommy. And she’d been an idiot before Tommy, but she was trying not to make the same mistake twice, goddamn it. And look at these guys. Married or hooked-up, every one of them and thinking they were somehow morally superior. Who was to say they weren’t just plain lucky? One thing for sure: it was a lot easier for them. Plenty of women were cool with getting involved with a cop. Lady cops: that was a different deal, the whole image too intimidating, too butch for most guys.
“Raise five,” Fulin said. He leaned forward. He was bluffing.
“I’ll meet five and raise five,” Lennox said.
Say what you want about her choice in men; you couldn’t deny her card playing chops. She met the next two raises. Sarge dropped out, then Fulin. The third raise Ham and Jerry folded which left her Fish. Lennox hit him with the maximum bet. He caved. The look on his face meant more to her than all those lovely chips. Towers of them: red, blue and white. She placed them like sentries on either side of her. Those towers would pay off her credit card bill for the month.
Jerry shook his old dog head back and forth like he had something in his ear. “I ought to know better than to piss off a woman,” he said.
Fulin dealt the next hand. Lennox waited, like always, for the peek.
The queen of spades and eight of diamonds.
Talk about being kicked to the curb. The combination queen-eight was so diabolical it had its own name: a bitch called hope. Just enough promise to make you want to hang on. The way she hung on to Tommy thinking some day he would leave his wife. That ray of hope broke her heart and wrecked her career. When you drew the queen bitch, you were a damn fool not to go with the odds.
Jerry dealt the third card up. Lennox drew the jack of spades.
“Lennox,” Jerry said.
“What?”
“In or out?”
Dan was low man on the suspect list. He had money problems. So did his brother. All the suspects gained from Bill’s death. Dan had only been in town a day, but a day was plenty of time to plan and execute a murder.
How do you tell the difference between plain hope and just plain stupidity?
Lennox lifted the jack and slid it face down over her hold card.
“Fold,” she said.
Chapter 27
Ham arrived on Lennox’s porch at eight the next morning carrying a hot pink bakery box. Voodoo Donuts: the craziest, best pastries in the city.
“I brought provisions,” he said.
It was going to take more than a box of donuts, even Voodoo Donuts, to make Lennox forget the ambush last night. She said, “Thanks for the stink-eye.”
“I’m sorry,” he said in a voice that wasn’t.
“Well, come in,” she said. “We need to get to work.”
He followed her into the dining room where she had propped a whiteboard on a chair at the head of her dining room table. Ham helped himself to coffee and studied the murder suspects starting with Dan and ending with the doctor, their names lined up in one column, another column for means, another for motive.
“What happened to the Davis woman and the carpenter?” he said.
“They checked out. We’re down to the family,” she said. “All five of them have a motive and any of them could’ve pulled it off. But the way I figure, Scott, Priscilla and Doctor E had the most access to the Pikes’ medicine. I can’t picture Father Mac sneaking around Bill and Delia’s bedroom. As for Dan, he’d only been back home twenty-four hours. Not living in town, he might not have been aware that his mother used an insulin inhaler.”
“Did you ask him?”
“He says he didn’t.”
“I did find something on Scott,” Ham said. His favorite donut, the triple-chocolate voodoo doll, lay on its little white plate, uneaten. “You know how I told you Bill cut off Scott’s allowance six months ago? Scott’s taken a few pissant teaching gigs, not enough to make ends meet. It’s Father Mac who’s been kicking in a couple K every month to subsidize young Mr. Pike.”
“Why?”
“That’s your job.” He handed her a printout of Father Mac’s withdrawals and Scott’s checking account deposits.
“Have you found out when Bill and the priest signed the cross-purchase partnership?”
Ham paged back in his notebook. “Three years ago.”
“Anything else?”
Ham shook his head. Said he’d keep digging.
Lennox told Ham what she’d found about Scott. How ten years ago a twenty-six-year-old woman filed an assault complaint against him. Then withdrew the complaint. Then there was a drug possession charge that was dropped seven years ago. Family money was the only thing that had kept Scott out of jail.
“That said, I don’t think he has either the cunning or the nerve. This murder was ingenious. Which brings us to the good doctor. How far along are you with him?”
Ham dug through his briefcase and handed her a report. His practice was steady enough and, though it was true he and his business partner had gone their separate ways in the last year, the doc had been able to pay the partner off. Sure, Engstrom had some debt, but he also had a healthy income.
“He doesn’t need Delia’s money,” Ham said.
“Come on,” Lennox said. “You know rich people. They never have enough money. Remember the Hefflinger case?”
“Yeah, but that was different,” Ham said. “Hefflinger had a barn full of horses.” Horses, according to Ham, were the fastest way to go broke after gambling and drug addiction.
“Maybe with the doc it was love,” she said.
Ham shrugged. Admitted it was possible. She told him about the four patients who’d overdosed while in Dr. E’s care.
“What does he say about it?”
“He doesn’t. He still refuses to talk to me,” Lennox said. “It sucks not having a ba
dge.” She opened the box from Voodoo. Ham had gotten her favorites, the peanut butter Oreo-crusted chocolate and the bacon-topped maple bar. She chose the maple bar and brushed the bacon bits from her fingers.
Ham looked up from his notebook. “What about Dan Pike? He’s seen his name on your whiteboard?”
She met his look. “I believe I mentioned last night that I’m not seeing him until after the trial.”
“Do you have anything on him?”
“He was a broker at Harkness-Deerborne Investments in Chicago for four years. The lady in HR wouldn’t say squat. You know how they are,” she said. “So I asked would they hire him again and she said no. Emphatically no. No criminal history, but there’s the two lawsuits he barely averted. I’m going to try to call his ex-girlfriend this afternoon.”
“You wanted me to run down the credit card receipt ending in 2331?” he said. “It belonged to Bill Pike.”
“Dan must have lifted the card and paid off a debt to Chase Bank with it. We’re talking forty-six-hundred bucks, Ham.”
Ham nodded, looking solemn. “Maybe his mother authorized it.”
“You can bet I’ll ask her.”
“What do you want me to do?” he said.
“Run his complete credit history, employment history and tax records. Go back as far as you can. Find out the story about the lawsuits.”
Ham’s expression cleared. He tore the legs off his donut and popped them in his mouth. Next he pulled off the donut’s arms one at a time and ate them. His mouth was so full he could barely keep his lips closed around the food. He finally swallowed without choking and dabbed at the corners of his mouth daintily with a paper napkin. The voodoo head still smiling from his plate.
“I never liked that Tommy of yours,” he said. “Tommy like he was still a baby. That flirty fucking thing he did, the dude flirted with little kids, with addicts, with hookers, he even flirted with me.” He shook his head.
She knew all this. The sheer fact Ham was saying it was the surprise.
“More coffee?” she finally said.
He nodded.
“What I never got,” he said, “was why you didn’t realize he was never, ever going to come through for you.”
“Jeez Ham, I guess we’re having a heart-to-heart here.”
“Yeah. I figured we needed to clear the air,” he said. “We both know the board shouldn’t have fired you. Nobody blames a cop who saves another cop.” He raised his finger. “What clouded the issue was everybody knew you were sleeping with the guy.”
What he didn’t say was no cop would ever want to partner with Lennox again. She blew it. And her partner died trying to protect her. A wave of grief and shame swept over her. “I know I was wrong. I loved him.”
Ham patted her hand. And reached into the bakery box.
“Now I’ve got Dan who’s doing a dandy impression of a thief,” she said.
“Maybe his mother authorized it.” Ham repeating himself.
“I’ve had a crush on this man since I was five,” she said.
“Just wait,” Ham said. “Finish the investigation. If he’s worth a damn, he’ll understand.”
Something like a sob escaped from her throat. It startled the hell out of both of them.
“Okay,” she said. “That’s enough heart-to-heart.”
He handed her the voodoo head. “I’ll finish with Father Mac,” Ham said. “Then what?”
“Dan,” she said. “Then the doc. Is there any way we can get at his patient list?”
“I don’t see how.”
“After we’re done here, I’ll talk to Aurora again. Doctor E is part of their social set. She’s got to know more than she’s told me. Then there’s Priscilla. What are we going to do about her?”
“She’s a signer on Scott’s credit cards,” Ham said. “She takes theater classes at the community college. No job.”
“I’m thinking Priscilla hears about the will from Scott. Even with Father Mac it’s not enough money to live well. She’s not the kind of girl who’d take to living on ramen,” Lennox said.
“What else?” Ham said.
“We’re down to five,” she said. “Something’s got to give.”
Chapter 28
Aurora answered the door barefoot, dressed in black yoga pants and a spandex top, her face freshly scrubbed and shiny with moisturizer. She headed back towards the bathroom, told Lennox over the new-agey temple bells playing on her stereo, to help herself to coffee.
Lennox poured herself a cup and stood before the glass wall overlooking the city. Aurora’s particular view was of the Willamette River, the Steel Bridge and the turquoise glass towers of the Convention Center. On a good day, which is to say a clear day, you could see Mount St. Helens and the Cascade Mountains. Today it was raining. It had been raining since October. The light was watery and weak but there was so much of it, living in the sky as her mother did.
Aurora was just like Delia: a privileged woman, a woman with a view, who believed that crime was the province of the lower classes and the people who fought crime were right there alongside the criminals at the bottom of the pyramid. On the valley floor. Aurora had cried when Lennox enrolled in the police academy. Is that what Lennox wanted— to be downwardly mobile?
Below Lennox a man in a brown shirt and trousers pushed a handcart stacked high with boxes towards the outdoor gear shop. Aurora returned to the living room at a brisk trot, a speck of toothpaste in the corner of her mouth. “Couldn’t this wait, darling? I really don’t have time now.”
Lennox said, “How well do you know Doctor Engstrom?”
Aurora affected a bored voice. “That’s why you’re here?” She turned and moved to the closet in the foyer, slipping shoes on her poor old lady feet, more clawed than human. She disappeared behind the coats and yanked out a yoga mat, telling Lennox, “Maybe we could do a late lunch?” Her voice was muffled in the closet.
“Aurora, you need to take this seriously. Delia is facing trial in two weeks without a credible defense. Kline keeps telling me to use you as a source. What could be easier? Obviously, he doesn’t know you.”
Aurora brushed past her. Lennox blocked her escape, her back braced against the door. Aurora wasn’t going anywhere until she got some answers.
“I’ll be locked out,” Aurora said. “Althea doesn’t permit lateness.”
Lennox was fed up to here with her mother, with Delia, Kline, these people who lived above it all. “I’m not going anywhere until you answer my questions. Don’t you realize what will happen to your best friend?”
“The waitress murdered Bill.”
Lennox told Aurora she was sick of this Upstairs, Downstairs bullshit. Someone close to Bill murdered him. Someone who knew about his medicine and where it was kept. The family.
“The Pike boys? Lennox, you grew up with those kids.”
Lennox didn’t remind her mother that a whole lot of growing up had happened from the last time Lennox had seen the family until now.
Aurora’s wall clock chimed the hour. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, now I’ve missed my class,” she said. Mumbling, she turned, stomped to a kitchen drawer and pulled out a pack of Parliament 100’s and a lighter. Without looking at Lennox she slid the glass door open out to her balcony. Suddenly the living room was filled with the sound of the city beneath them. A second later the acrid smell of cigarette smoke blew in.
Lennox joined her mother outside. A fine mist fell from the sky. From out here Lennox could barely make out the stereo’s Gregorian chant. Aurora blew streams of gray smoke into the gray air.
“I refuse to believe Delia’s boys had anything to do with Bill’s death,” Aurora said.
“So tell me about Doctor Engstrom: when did he become Delia’s special friend?”
“I didn’t know they had a relationship.” Aurora took a long pull off her cigarette and exhaled into the city smog. She said, “All these years, Delia sharing with me every little thing. I knew what she thought about her sons’ girlfrie
nds and when Bill had strayed, or at least when Delia thought he had. When she had that cancer scare. Not a word about Michael.”
“When did she first meet the doctor?” Lennox said.
Aurora’s lips turned into a crooked half-smile. “I introduced them. Delia was looking for a new general practioner.”
“He’s your doctor, too?”
Her mother sagged against the iron railing, looking very unhappy. Nothing like getting slapped across the face with the truth. Of course he was her doctor.
“Who else do you know sees Doctor Engstrom?”
Most of her and Delia’s crowd. A few of them taking amphetamines for weight control. Doctor Engstrom believed that body fat was a conduit for cancer and other debilitating diseases, not to mention how it strained the skeleton and joints. “You want to live into your nineties, keep yourself lean,” Aurora said.
“If you want to live into your nineties, don’t smoke,” Lennox said.
Lennox recognized that look on her mother’s face. She’d seen the look on her own face in the mirror plenty of times after Tommy dumped her. It was the look of a disappointed woman. Doctor E had been her doctor and more.
“Were you friends with Doctor Engstrom?” Lennox asked the question knowing full well all the shadings of the word “friends.” Was the doctor someone who accompanied her to the symphony? Was he someone she told her secrets to over a cup of coffee? Had he touched her mother’s shoulder, helped her on with her coat? The thought sickened Lennox. He was odious.
“I thought we had an understanding,” Aurora said.
She stood looking out at the smudged horizon, the knobs of her spine visible beneath the spandex top. “Delia knew how I felt about him but she never said one word about them getting close. Not one word about wanting to marry him. I thought I knew her. I thought I knew Michael.”
“I’m sorry.” Lennox stepped closer to her mother and took the cigarette from her and stubbed it out in the planter. She enclosed her mother in a snug embrace. For once Aurora allowed herself to be hugged.
