A Bitch Called Hope

by Lily Gardner

  When Aurora stepped away Lennox said, “You’re better than him.”

  Aurora nodded. She patted the package of cigarettes but didn’t take one out.

  Dr. E had both her mother and Delia on a string. How many other privileged women? “Did he ever borrow money from you, Mother?”

  Aurora’s lip trembled to keep from crying outright. “I’m finished talking about this,” she said and ran from the balcony into the condo. Lennox heard a door slam and walked down the hall. She stopped outside her mother’s bedroom door. Asked Aurora if there was anything she could get her. Aurora didn’t answer, so Lennox told her good-bye.

  She rode the elevator alone all the way to the lobby. Outside, the sidewalks were crowded with suits talking on cell phones and shoppers headed to the next store. Lennox walked past the art galleries, wine bars and shops across Jamison Square on her way to her car. The water feature that fed the square’s tidal pools was shut off, and the limestone bricks were wet with rain. All the trees in the square were bare, the place deserted.

  Lennox slumped on a wet park bench on the edge of the square. She wasn’t a crier. How could she be in her business? Just now, though, she felt like weeping in the worst way. Damn that guy for playing her mother. Aurora and Lennox, what a pair they were, both of them stupid about men. Both of them victims of good intentions, bad luck, bad timing and, admit it, bad judgment. Maybe once in a while you hit gold, look at her dad, but even a fool knows better than to count on luck. So how do you play the odds when it comes to men?

  Two crows landed near her and flicked water from their glossy backs. It started to rain again. Lennox unfurled her umbrella. What had felt so rosy and right three short days ago with Dan now felt secretive and wrong.

  Lennox was fucking up again. She knew it.

  Chapter 29

  Lennox sat at her desk feeling over-caffeinated, the last of the Voodoo donuts a doughy lump in her stomach. Talking to a subject’s employers, ex-employers, wives and ex-wives was all part of the job. Only these people were Dan’s ex-employers, Dan’s ex-girlfriend. And Lennox was still stinging from Dan lifting his old man’s credit card. If she were a normal woman she wouldn’t be digging through a guy’s trash. She would take the guy at face value. She’d sell shoes or enroll people for food stamps. She’d probably have a family.

  Who was she kidding? She was a cop right down to the bone. So march, asshole. Pick up the phone and dial.

  Start with the easy ones. Two investors in Dan’s business who had filed lawsuits against him. She called the first guy, Robert Fleishman, and identified herself. He hung up. Ditto with Frank Maas. So much for the easy ones.

  March. Lennox took a deep breath and dialed Dan’s ex-girlfriend, Jillian Oster. Lennox told Jillian the purpose of her call. Counted four beats before Jillian answered, “What do you want to know?”

  Jillian sounded tall. Tall with legs up to here. Lennox resisted the urge to ask her if she was blonde. Instead, she explained that she was investigating Bill Pike’s murder. “Dan is a bit of a stranger here,” Lennox said. “I’m hoping to get some insight into his character from people who know him as he is now.”

  “Are you asking me could Dan kill somebody? No. He practically faints at the sight of blood.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Jillian that not all murders involve blood, but she’d already moved on to Dan’s total capacity for lying, stealing and cheating. “I’ll never go out with a salesman again. I don’t care what he calls himself: broker, investment advisor, trader. Whatever. Give me a nice CPA any day.”

  Lennox could hear ice clinking in a glass on the other end of the line. Was Jillian making herself a drink?

  They were getting married, Jillian said. They had the date, June 13, she had the two-karat oval diamond with side diamonds and the Vera Wang wedding dress. “I’m still paying on the dress,” she said. Lennox felt her heart clench. There it was again. How Will you marry me was never a question asked of Lennox.

  “What happened?” Lennox said.

  “I couldn’t believe it. ‘I love you, I love you,’ he’s telling me. Meantime he’s lifting the blank checks from the back of my credit card statements and cashing them.” Her voice ratcheted up a couple notches, then she paused and Lennox heard the clatter of more ice cubes. “By the time I figured out what was going on I was sixty-two thousand in the red.”

  Sixty-two thousand. Now they were talking grand theft. And if he could steal that much from his girlfriend, what about the Pike cookie jar? Mother of God, Lennox was half in love with a major felon. And when he got caught with his hand in the proverbial—what would he do then? Was he a murderer as well?

  “Are you still there?” Jillian said.

  “It’s just so much money.”

  “Tell me,” Jillian said. Everything changed when his dad pulled out of Dan’s investment fund. It wasn’t like the stock market, Jillian explained. Dan invested the fund in mortgage companies, finance companies, places that paid the highest interest rates. Dan tells his dad you signed a contract. Dad says to hell with the contract. Dan scrapes together the money to cash out Dad only now he’s seriously undercapitalized.

  “It got so I didn’t dare ask Dan how his day went,” Jillian said. “Every day was part of the ongoing train wreck. He started drinking more. I started picking up the dinner tab.”

  It had gone on like that for close to six months. Dan told her to hold off on the wedding invitations. Then the credit card statements came.

  “How long did it take before you realized?”

  “Six weeks? It’s like he’d cheated on me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lennox said. So, so fucking sorry she could weep.

  He had promised to pay Jillian back. Give me a week, just one more week. It was only when she hired a lawyer that he made good.

  How?

  “He’d run out of options, so he went back to visit his folks.” Jillian laughed, not in a funny way.

  “I got the impression Dan came home regularly,” Lennox said.

  “Uh-huh. You ever know a sales guy to be completely honest?”

  Jillian had heard from Dan twice more after he left for Portland. Once to tell her his father’d died and that he had inherited. He’d pay her in full plus interest. The second time he called her he told her he was overnighting her money and thanked her for being patient. Thank you for being patient? Isn’t that how you would speak to any creditor?

  “If you know anybody looking for a size-four wedding dress,” she said.

  Lennox asked Jillian to fax the statements to her, then hung up the phone. Outside her window three crows perched on the telephone line. She sat staring at them, feeling like an idiot—thinking Dan was a sweet guy. Thinking they maybe had something. Dan was a felon, or would have been if his fiancée had pressed charges. Ultimately, it was Bill’s money that had kept both Pike sons out of prison. Assuming Jillian was telling the truth. There was always the chance she was an embittered ex-girlfriend out to destroy Dan’s good reputation.

  Gut feeling? Jillian was telling it the way it was.

  What happened to the god-like boy she had adored all those years back? What happened to the family she’d grown up knowing? Bill, Delia, the boys, every one of them corrupt. Peel back enough layers of good manners and beautiful clothes, more than half the people you know have ugly secrets. Stay in this profession long enough and you’ll end up having a pretty sorry view of humanity. Maybe Aurora was right. This was no job for a nice girl.

  It was ten after eight when Lennox ordered take-out. Just as she hung up the phone another call came in.

  The woman on the line sounded terrified. Lennox could hear her gulping breath. It was Alice Stapely. Someone had run her boyfriend down. Gabe was in the ICU. Alice couldn’t reach his mother.

  Lennox got the name of the hospital and told her she was on the way.

  Chapter 30

  It was 8:40 when Lennox reached the ICU waiting room. The hospital had pulled out all the stops to make the
room soothing. The light was soft and the walls were hung with watercolors of Mount Hood and Cannon Beach. Three families were scattered amongst the groupings of teal upholstered chairs. Alice sat separate from them curled in a corner chair. Army camo jacket, pink tutu, black tights, red nose, raccoon eyes.

  “They’re not sure he’s going to make it,” Alice said. “And they won’t let me see him. ‘Only family,’ they said.” Both she and Lennox looked over to the desk situated by the door leading into the ICU.

  “Have you reached his mom yet?” Lennox asked.

  Alice shook her head and crushed a tissue against her mouth.

  The police had already come and taken a statement from Alice. Told her they’d be getting back to her. Alice pulled the policeman’s card out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Lennox. Fish was running the investigation. First Tommy, now Fish. Lennox was having serious misgivings about her luck.

  As Alice told her story to Lennox, spent tissues puddled beneath her chair. Gabe had picked her up from class like he always did. They stopped at the corner pub for a bite before he went on to Dark Horse Comics. He was working on a layout with the print guys. Alice and Gabe had been arguing, same subject they’d been fighting about since he quit both his jobs. Alice came right out and said she was positive Gabe had seen something the night of the Pike murder.

  “He goes off about the patron. The patron.” Alice blew her nose. “I told him, ‘Don’t lie to me.’ He gets pissed and walks out. I’m thinking I’ve so had it with this guy. I pay the check and I’m waiting for the change. Boom! A crash outside, tires squealing. I run out the door of the pub and there’s a car flying down the street. I look over and see Gabe. He’s in the middle of the street. Even in the dark I can tell he’s bleeding like crazy.” Tears ran down her cheeks.

  “What time was it?”

  “What time was it? How the hell should I know? It was dark. Okay?” Alice put her hands up to shield her face. “What is wrong with people they can hit him and not even stop?” Snot mixed with tears roped down her face. “Hit him and leave him like that.”

  Lennox kept handing her tissues, sat as close as she could. “I know,” she said in a low coo of a voice. “I know.” At some point she started patting Alice on the back, saying, “He’ll make it, he’ll make it.” A chorus of he’ll make its until at last Alice calmed, her breath coming back in long shudders.

  Alice had to use the restroom. Lennox took the time to gather up the sea of spent tissues and stuff them in the trash. When Alice got back, she had washed her face. It was still red and blotchy, but she looked as composed as a person could be under the circumstances.

  Lennox said, “Alice, did you see the car?”

  “Do we have to talk about this right now?”

  “No, we don’t have to talk about it,” Lennox said. She held Alice’s hand, which was wrapped around a damp tissue. “I want to help and this is how I do it. Ask questions. Just one little piece of information and all of a sudden I can see a clear path back to things that didn’t make sense before.”

  “You think someone deliberately ran him over?”

  Lennox repeated the old saying: there are no coincidences in a murder investigation. She should’ve kept her big mouth shut. She said the word “murder” and Alice started crying again.

  “It’s the way you said: blackmailers end up dead.” She pulled her hand out of Lennox’s and pressed the tissue against her mouth. Mewling sounds escaped.

  It wasn’t like Lennox got any satisfaction about being right. If only she could’ve convinced Gabe to go to the police, she would have made a difference. Instead she offered tissues to Alice while Gabe lay in the next room fighting for his life.

  “I’m going in to see him,” Lennox said. “If they ask you, I’m his sister.”

  Lennox went to the desk. The guardian of the ICU was a plump senior lady with white curly hair. Lennox showed the nice lady her identification, told the lady she was Gabe’s married sister, Lennox Cooper. The guardian looked pointedly at Lennox’s naked ring finger. Lennox gave her plenty of eye contact. She was passed through.

  Down a glossy white hallway, so highly waxed you could fix your makeup in the reflection, Lennox came to a circular nurses station. The ICU had tiny glass-faced rooms forming an outer circle facing the nurses station. If someone were to ask her what the place smelled like, she’d say, “Like nothing.” It was even more hushed than the waiting room. The only things she could hear were the electronic pulses from the units. Lennox asked about Gabe Makem.

  A male nurse in his early forties nodded. His name was Dave according to the badge on his blue scrubs. Dave was a solid man with short dark hair and acne scars. He typed something into the computer. “Well, he’s on a ventilator. He has three broken ribs. One of them shifted and punctured the right lung. He has a shattered femur. His spleen ruptured. That said, he’s made it so far. He’s young, that helps.”

  “Whoever hit him must have been going fast,” Lennox said.

  “The damage to his leg, I’d say the car hit him and drove over his body.”

  “Is he going to make it?” Lennox said.

  “You’d have to talk to the doctor about that. Gabe is in room 612. Only five minutes; he needs to rest.”

  Lennox crept into Gabe’s room. He was sleeping, hooked up to a bunch of machines. Tubes led from his arm, from his nostrils. His hand rested on top of the sheet, the fingers curled. He looked very pale and small and young. If he was a blackmailer, what were the odds that this hit-and-run was random? Zero to zip.

  The ventilator was a clear plastic cylinder, an accordion pump rising and falling with a mechanical hiss. A machine monitoring his various vitals beeped rhythmically. There was a scent here, like a low current of trauma. Gabe slept there, broken in a lot of pieces, helpless as a lamb. He was just a gormless kid. She kissed her fingers, brushed them against his cheek and wished him well.

  “Ma’am?” Dave, the nurse, entered Gabe’s room along with an older woman. He gave Lennox the eyeball. “You need to leave now,” he said.

  The older woman shook her head. “Never saw her before.” She was tall and skinny and covered in freckles. Her red hair had lightened from Gabe’s color to a faded ginger.

  “Mom?” Lennox said.

  Gabe’s mother looked way too worried to crack a smile. “Nice try, kid,” she said in a husky voice.

  Gabe’s mother walked over to the bed while the nurse escorted Lennox out of the ICU. He talked to the threshold guardian who in turn looked the way a person does who’s been lied to.

  “Ma’am,” said the threshold guardian. God, Lennox hated being called ma’am. “You need to leave now or we’ll call security.”

  Security. Would whoever ran him down come back to finish the job? Lennox and Alice passed through the glass doors to the hallway. The guardian pointed a finger to the elevator.

  “Tell me how he is,” Alice said to Lennox. “Was he awake?”

  “He was sleeping peacefully,” Lennox said. Isn’t that what people always said? No reason to tell her how many machines he was hooked up to.

  “Don’t go back to your apartment,” Lennox said. “I don’t think you’re safe there.”

  “But what about my clothes?”

  “I’ll pack a bag for you,” Lennox said. “Can you stay with your parents or something?”

  “What about Gabe?” Alice’s eyes were wild.

  “I’ll call Officer Bartel right away,” Lennox said.

  “You’re going to tell him about the blackmail?” she said in a loud voice, then looked even more frightened and clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “Alice, do you think that nice old lady back there in the waiting room can keep the bad guys out of the ICU?”

  Alice agreed to stay with her girlfriend, but said she wasn’t going anywhere until Gabe was better. She gave Lennox her keys and a list of everything she wanted.

  By the time Lennox got back to the hospital with Alice’s things it was after midnig
ht. She gave Alice another one of her business cards and wrote on the back her super private cell phone number. Made her promise to be careful and to call her any time, day or night.

  Chapter 31

  It was twenty minutes after midnight when Lennox got home. The only people taking a call this hour of the night were baby doctors and cops. She pulled the business card Fish had given Alice from the pocket of her jacket. He’d written his cell number on the back of the card. She turned on her desk lamp and dialed Fish’s number and waited as it rang six times. About the time she’d figured he wasn’t going to take her call he picked up.

  “What?” he said.

  “You’re sleeping when you got a big case?”

  “What big case?” Sounding suspicious as hell.

  “Your hit-and-run,” she said. “I’ve got information about your victim.”

  Fish was willing to listen, but she got nowhere with him. How could Gabe be blackmailing the Pike murderer when they had the murderer locked up? Then who ran the kid down? The harder Lennox tried to explain the more he blocked her. Finally she gave up on him, told him he was the dumbest cop in the world. That if either Gabe or Alice was attacked it was on Fish’s flat head.

  What could she do here? Call the cop station? And tell them what? She had no proof that Gabe was run down because he was a blackmailer or even that he was a blackmailer. Tommy. Bite the bullet and call him.

  Give the devil credit: he picked up. “I thought you never wanted to see me again,” he said.

  “This is business. That hit-and-run victim today?” She could hear the breathlessness in her voice.

  “What hit-and-run?”

  “A guy got run over in southeast Portland tonight. Around seven thirty. His name is Gabe Makem. The reason I’m calling you: he was a caterer you interviewed the night of the Pike murder. He saw something and was blackmailing the murderer.”