Blackbird, Farewell

by Robert Greer

  “No need. He's in Barcelona on sabbatical until the first of the year, and I've got the keys.”

  Damion forced a smile, recalling the three days that he and Niki had spent at the cabin the previous Thanksgiving. Their time there had been perfect save for the fact that at the last minute Connie and Shandell had begged off joining them. “I'll get some wine,” Damion said with a reluctant smile.

  “You're thinking my kind of thoughts.” Pleased that she'd forced a brief smile out of Damion, Niki said, “I'll have to run by my place and get some things.” Looking up, she watched a very solemn-looking Aretha Bird approach the table.

  “Yeah, so will I.” Damion scooted down the bench to make room for Aretha.

  “We got through it,” said Aretha, tearing up. “Did my baby proud. I'm headin’ out of here pretty quick. You two are welcome to come by the house if you want. Flora Jean's comin’ by.”

  “Thanks, but we're going up to Nederland for the night,” said Niki. “Unless you need us to spend the night with you.”

  “No, no. Go on up to Nederland. Should be nice and peaceful up there in the pines. Flora Jean's gonna stay with me this evenin’. And just for the record, Damion, she's a little disappointed in you for not tellin’ her about that face-off I understand you had last night over at the light-rail station in Five Points.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, don't you be holdin’ out on her or me no more. You got me?” The way Aretha said, You got me? reminded Damion of the hundreds of times she'd said the same thing to Shandell and him when one or both of them were failing to toe the line as teenagers.

  “I've got you.”

  “Good,” Aretha said, forcing back tears.

  Hugging Aretha tightly, Damion said, “I know it's hard, Mrs. B.”

  “And I'm afraid it's gonna be hard the rest of my life, baby.” Wiping away tears, Aretha eyed Niki. “Don't let this boy get away, Ms. Universe,” she said, calling the statuesque, dark-haired Venezuelan by the nickname she'd given her at their first meeting four years earlier. “Trust me, won't never be nothin’ out there better.”

  “I'm hanging on for dear life, Mrs. B.”

  “Okay. So now that we've settled that, I'm thinkin’ I need to clear up a little somethin’ else. We may have booted that Sergeant Townsend outta here real quick-like today, but he'll have reason to come back—no question.”

  “Why?” asked Damion, looking puzzled.

  “’Cause sooner or later he's gonna find out that Leon was the beneficiary of a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy Shandell had on hisself.”

  From the way Aretha uttered the words sooner or later, as if doomsday were somehow imminent, Damion had the feeling she'd left something unsaid. “I'm taking it there's more, Mrs. B.”

  “’Fraid there is. Turns out I'm the secondary beneficiary, and Coach Horse is the third.” Aretha shook her head. “Makes a good motive for murder, don't it?”

  “It could. But since you and Coach Horse didn't kill Leon, it doesn't matter.”

  “I know that, but since the cops and the law can sometimes twist things around to their likin’, I figured I should tell you.”

  “It's good you did because I know someone who's pretty good at massaging the judicial system too. Think it's time I gave her a call.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes,” said Damion, thinking about how long a telephone call it was going to take to bring his mother, Julie, up to speed.

  Looking up to see Jo Jo Lawson strolling across the room toward them, Aretha said, “Appreciate it. Just don't bother your momma too much on my account. Where you been, Jo Jo?” Aretha asked as Jo Jo took a seat and slapped hands with Damion.

  “Out walkin’. Tryin’ to clear my head.”

  “Did you get enough to eat?” asked Aretha.

  “’Fraid I never got around to it.”

  “Come on with me and I'll get the caterers to make you up some-thin’ to take home.” Waving for Damion and Niki to leave, Aretha said, “You and Niki go on, get on outta here.”

  “Are you sure, Mrs. B?”

  “Yeah. Now, the two of you scoot. And call me after you talk to your mama.”

  “Will do,” said Damion, watching Aretha and Jo Jo head toward the kitchen.

  “Think she'll be all right?” Niki asked.

  “In the short run, yes, but she's going to need our support.”

  “I'm here to help.”

  “I know you are.” Damion kissed Niki on the cheek. “Ready to head out of here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I'll drop you at home and pick you back up in an hour.”

  “Why so long?”

  “Got an errand to run.”

  “Mind letting me in on it?”

  “You'll see once we get to the cabin.” Damion draped an arm over Niki's shoulders and headed for the exit.

  “Is it that big of a secret?”

  “No. In fact, it involves something you've seen before.”

  “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” Niki asked, smiling broadly as she quoted the classic line from the 1950s American TV classic What's My Line? It was a line she used on Damion whenever she felt the need to poke fun at American tastes and habits.

  Smiling back, Damion said, “Believe it or not, my leggy Venezuelan sexpot, the damn thing is a perfect breadbox size.”

  The forty-six-mile trip from Denver through Boulder Canyon, gateway to Nederland and Colorado's majestic northern Rockies, was punctuated by Damion and Niki's unusual silence. It was a trip Damion had first taken a dozen years earlier when CJ Floyd, cruising along with the top down on his ’57 Bel Air convertible, had taken him on his first fly-fishing excursion.

  As they started up the canyon and he turned on the Jeep's radio, Niki hoped Damion was primed to shed a layer of sadness. Ten miles up the canyon, Damion nosed his Jeep into a stretch of highway that cut a swath through a nearly sunless, half-mile-long fern and aspen glade. Tapping him playfully on the shoulder and watching the Jeep's shadow follow one of the canyon walls, Niki asked, “Have you ever really seen a breadbox, Señor?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” said Damion, knowing the question was meant to comfort him. “At Mario's once. At least, I think it was a breadbox. Hard to tell. Mario had the thing stuffed full of antique clay pot miniatures.”

  Just over a year earlier, Damion had helped Mario and CJ organize and catalog the inventory that made up the virtual antique store that Mario, with CJ's help when he wasn't busy writing bail bonds, operated out of Mario's basement.

  Niki said, “I still don't think you have. Otherwise you'd know that most breadboxes are quite a bit taller than that VCR you brought along.”

  “And I'd know they can't play tapes of last year's NCAA tournament games,” said Damion, who had gathered a half-dozen CSU game tapes he had at home, packed them into a cardboard box along with a VCR and the hundred-year-old Colt Peacemaker that CJ had given him as a college graduation present, and slipped everything into the back of the Jeep. “I should've looked at the game tapes before I ran all half-cocked up to CSU the other day.”

  “No need to beat yourself up. You had no idea there might have been point-shaving going on.”

  “No, but I knew Theo Wilhite had been spouting off about that championship game being rigged for months. I should've suspected something. If I had, it might have saved Shandell.”

  Sensing that any steps that Damion might take toward conquering his sorrow could only be impeded by further debate, Niki said, “I brought something along for you to have a look at too.” She reached into the leather purse between her feet. “I dropped by the Hermitage Bookshop while you were digging up your breadbox.” Smiling, she extracted a well-used paperback copy of A Morning at the Office and placed it on the console between them. “It's the only copy they had. It's long out of print and difficult to find. Set me back a whole twenty bucks.”

  Damion eyed the stylized image of a typewriter on the book's
front cover and below it the author's name, Edgar Mittelhölzer. Surprising Niki and ignoring the fact that he still had limited use of his left arm, he picked the book up and opened it to a middle page with his right hand.

  “Get your hand back on the wheel, Damion Madrid!”

  “Sorry. Just found myself wondering how heavy a book that could lead us to a killer might be.”

  “No heavier than a breadbox,” Niki said, hoping the breadbox reference might assuage Damion's sorrow. Instead of a laugh or a smile, the look on Damion's face turned pensive. Tightening his grip on the wheel and heading into a new set of curves, he simply said, “Yeah.”

  Leotis Hawkins's Corvette handled the hairpin curves of Boulder Canyon with far greater ease than Damion's Jeep—so effortlessly, in fact, that it was all he could do to keep from running up the Jeep's rear. To keep from being seen on the trip from Denver to Boulder, he'd squeezed between a moving van and a half-empty car transport. There were no such oversized vehicles to hide behind on the trip up the canyon, so he'd been forced to use the curves of the road for cover. The hint of a headache surfaced each time the canyon opened up to let in a canopy of sunlight, reminding him that he had a concussion. Eyeing the monogrammed towel that covered the box of ammo on the seat next to him, a towel he'd pilfered from a Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles, he smiled and began to hum. Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he interrupted his humming and slipped a compact disc into the car's CD player. Seconds later Smokey Robinson's melodic falsetto voice oozed the initial words to the 1960s Motown classic “What's So Good About Goodbye.” Tapping one foot, Hawkins sang along with Smokey. Halfway through the song, he reached over and pushed the stereo's mute button. With his thumb cocked and index finger aimed six-gun style at the back of Damion's SUV, he crooned the now silent Smokey Robinson's words: “All it does is make you cry.”

  Chapter 19

  The smell of freshly baked donuts and French-roast coffee filled the LaMar's Donuts shop that had long anchored a small strip mall at the busy intersection of Kalamath Street and Sixth Avenue. Wordell Epps had picked the sparsely furnished donut shop for his meeting with Connie Eastland after they'd talked by cell phone following the Shandell Bird repast because, sweet-tooth fanatic that he was, he had a genuine weakness for the Kansas City–based chain's glazed donuts.

  The droopy-eyed woman who'd brought Connie and Epps their coffee and donut orders had quickly disappeared into the back of the shop to check on her freshly baked inventory, leaving her only two patrons staring stand-off style across a Formica-topped, 1950s-era malt-shop table at one another.

  Biting into the second of the three glazed donuts he'd ordered, Epps smiled, set the pastry aside, and licked his three middle fingers. “Now, these are donuts.”

  “Are we here on business or to tape a commercial?” Connie asked, sipping lukewarm coffee.

  “Both, I'm afraid, my dear Ms. Eastland.” Epps took another bite and rubbed his belly. “To market, to market, to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, jiggety jig.” The smile on his face disappeared as he wiped a thin line of sugar from one corner of his mouth. “I know who you are, Ms. Eastland—know how hard you planned—know where you so desperately wanted to go. But your ticket to ride got himself killed. Who knows? Maybe even by you. And now, my dear, you're on your own. As we both know, in the fractured world we live in, no tickie, no laundry.” Epps burst into laughter.

  “You're a brain-dead pothead freak, Epps!”

  “You know, you might be right. But I'm still alive and kicking. That's more than we can say for your late boyfriend, or sadly for my friend Paulie Grimes. And what's inside my freaky head keeps telling me that either you or that prissy professor you were following around like a puppy dog at your dead sugar daddy's graveside ceremony have inside info on what I understand from the news are now three murders. I was in the crowd at the church and at the cemetery, Ms. East-land. I saw you act. Isn't it fantastic how crowds can run interference for you when you don't want to be seen?”

  “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Strange. Dr. Phillips gave me pretty much the same song and dance when I talked to her yesterday. But I suspect the two of you have probably already commiserated about that visit. Could be that's the reason you're here, in fact. You're running the traps for Dr. Egghead.”

  “We haven't commiserated about anything, jerk. I only agreed to meet you because you threatened me.”

  “Now, how could that be? I simply informed you in a very brief phone call, on what can only be described as one of the saddest days in Colorado sports history, that you could talk to me about the book I understand Dr. Phillips is writing, or you could talk to the cops. How on earth could that be perceived as a threat?”

  “I'm not aware that Dr. Phillips is writing a book.”

  The muscles around Epps's eyes tightened as he squinted in anger and chomped off another piece of donut. “Stonewall all you want, Ms. Eastland, but know this. I investigate things for a living, and trust me, I've worked my way to the bottom of things a lot more convoluted than the mess we have here.”

  “Then I'd suggest you start your dirt-digging with someone other than me.”

  Deciding to shift gears, Epps stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Do you know anything about Shandell either using or selling performance-enhancing drugs?”

  “No.”

  “Know anything about him shaving points during games or about him using a bookie named Garrett Asalon to bet on games for him?” Epps leaned back in his seat, pleased that he'd tossed Asalon's name onto the table. “Like I said, Ms. Eastland, I've done some digging.”

  “No.”

  “I think you're lying.”

  Trying her best to remain calm in spite of the fact that her knees were shaking, Connie took a long sip of coffee, smiled, and stood. “Good-bye, Mr. Epps. I hope you drop dead.” Giving him the finger, she turned and walked briskly toward the door.

  “Run, little chicken. Run, run, run,” Epps called after her as their server reappeared from the back. Puzzled by Connie's hasty exit and Epps's loud voice, the woman asked, “Is there a problem, Señor?”

  “Oh, no. No problem. As it turns out, the lady prefers Krispy Kremes.” Epps broke into a snicker that quickly escalated to a booming laugh.

  Alicia Phillips's second-floor office in the Wilford Hall annex building on the CSU campus was the only room in the stately hundred-year-old brick building showing any sign of activity. The full-professor types, who occupied the other six large offices in the tree-shaded landmark a block west of College Avenue, had been gone for hours.

  To be assigned space in Wilford Hall, a professor had to be at the top of his or her discipline. The anthropologist across the hall, one door down from Phillips, a leading expert on genetic-induced differences in bone-density scans of the world's various ethnic groups, had received a MacArthur Genius Grant two years earlier. The office next to her housed a young geography professor who was executive director of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a think tank funded by ecology-minded oil interests, and two doors down was the office of the archaeologist who'd developed the gold standard for post-sand-sediment aging.

  Phillips liked to joke that she'd never fully understood why an obscure sports psychologist like her was housed among the university's academic elite. In truth, she did understand why. She too was an academic gem, and like her Wilford Hall colleagues, she was inventive, entrepreneurial, well respected, and blessed with an international reputation in her discipline. During a career that had spanned two decades, she'd been awarded millions of dollars in research funding from the National Institute of Mental Health as well as funds from private foundations to support her investigation of the psychological parameters that affected the attitude, perceptions, and behaviors of athletes involved in modern-day college sports. Her current research included studies designed to calibrate the influence of absent fathers on the performance of elite male and female athletes, with the secondary goal of
defining the psychological factors that foster teamwork among athletes.

  At that moment, however, as she stood a few feet from Connie Eastland in the lengthening six o'clock shadows of her office, Alicia Phillips wasn't interested in coming up with answers for research objectives, trying to fit in with the eclectic mix of professors who shared her building, or even something as routine as reading through the stack of term papers that sat on a nearby table. What she and Connie, who was busy feeding papers into a shredder, were interested in was erasing a paper trail that could link them to a murder.

  “The damn thing's jammed again,” Connie called out in frustration, struggling to extract a half-inch-thick wedge of paper from the shredder.

  “Well, unjam it.”

  Connie flashed Phillips a look that said, Screw you, bitch. It was a look that Phillips had seen a half-dozen times in the hour since Connie had arrived from Denver in a state of near hysteria. Smiling calmly, Phillips said, “I know you'd love to smother me if you could right now. But you can't. It's bad form to kill one's mentor.”

  “Save the psychobabble for another time, Alicia. In case you've forgotten, unlike the rest of your charges, I never played sports. Mentors don't mean a damn thing to me.”

  “Oh, I'm aware of that—except of course for the bedroom kind.”

  Gritting her teeth, Connie yanked the papers from the mouth of the shredder, clearing the jam. “You're a witch. A vile, uncaring, egotistical witch. I should've steered clear of you from day one.”

  “But you didn't, sweetie. You like the smell of money too much. You reap what you sow in this world, your highness. From now on, you should try to remember that.”

  “Insightful words, and from the ultimate manipulative money grubber. Come now, Alicia.”

  “Well, if I am, I'd suggest that from now on you follow my example to a T. That is, if you don't want that cop who's working Shandell's murder case breathing fire after you.”

  “That man has a name,” Connie said, noting how adept Alicia was at either forgetting or ignoring the names of people she deemed unimportant. “Have you forgotten it?”