Dead Boyfriends

by David Housewright

  The way I looked, I didn’t think I had much chance getting past the maid, Caroline. Besides, I didn’t want to speak with Cilia. So I ignored the front door and made my way around the sprawling house to the backyard patio. I heard the rumbling sound of the diving board and saw Silk slicing into the water as I turned the corner. I watched her pull herself from the pool as I approached. She was wearing a pale gray swim-suit with some pale blue splattered here and there. The sun touched droplets on her face and shoulders and the top of her breasts, turning them to silver. Silk smiled as she took a big white beach towel from the back of a chair and brushed away the droplets.

  “Mr. McKenzie,” she said as if it were the answer to a question.

  “Ms. St. Ana,” I said.

  She seemed amused by my appearance—bruised, unshaven face; flat, disheveled hair; dirty jeans and shirt; damp, shapeless sports jacket.

  “You look like you fell into something,” she said.

  “I suppose you could say that.”

  I sat in an iron chair next to the glass table without asking permission, stretching my legs out in front of me. I hid a yawn behind my hand.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been up all evening.”

  “Must have been an interesting night.”

  “It had its moments.”

  “Are you here to see Aunt Cil?” she asked.

  “No. I’m here to see you.”

  “Me?”

  Suddenly, Silk seemed bashful. She took a tentative step backward and brought the huge white towel in front of her, concealing her body.

  I set a heel on the seat of a chair and launched it forward. It slid across the tile and came to a rest next to Silk.

  “Take a seat,” I said.

  Silk did what I told her, an obedient child listening to the voice of authority, holding the towel in front of her as if it were a life preserver.

  “What do you want?” she said. Her voice made me believe she was willing to do whatever I requested. Where was her confidence? I wondered. Where was her audacity?

  I said, “The clock is striking midnight, Cinderella. It’s pumpkin time.”

  Priscilla came through her French doors in a hurry.

  “McKenzie,” she ‘called. “McKenzie, stop. McKenzie . . .” She reached the table. “What are you doing here?”

  Cilia was also wearing a swimsuit, dark blue with gold trim. It was dry, so I figured I was either delaying her swim or interrupting a bit of sunbathing. Without the camouflage of her tailored clothes, I could detect a heaviness in Cilia’s hips and thighs, a bulge at the belly, and a softness in her upper arms and shoulders. It was the body of a forty-plus woman, although I knew a great many twenty-year-olds who wished they looked as fit.

  “You look awful,” Cilia said.

  “People keep telling me that, so I guess it must be true.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Merodie Davies will be released from jail today,” I said.

  “That’s wonderful,” said Silk.

  “You came here to tell me that? I’m grateful, of course.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “Is—Is the Anoka County Attorney going to arrest someone else?”

  “The case is closed and will soon be buried along with Eli Jefferson.”

  Cilia sighed as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders and settled into a chair across the glass table from me.

  “I’m surprised Mr. Muehlenhaus hadn’t told you already,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Stop it, Cilia. I’m not in the mood.”

  “What do you want? Why did you come?”

  “You had me, Cilia,” I said. “You really had me with the story about your father and brother and Brian Becker. Tell me, was any of it true?”

  Cilia gave me a slight smile and an even less perceptible shrug. I might as well have asked a professional gambler if he had the cards after he bluffed me out of a pot. I didn’t pay to see her cards, so she wasn’t going to show them.

  “True or not, it worked,” I said. “You talked me into believing that you killed Eli Jefferson. You didn’t, though, did you?”

  I turned my gaze on Silk. She began to squirm.

  “I want you to leave now, Mr. McKenzie,” Cilia said. “Right now.”

  “In a minute.”

  “Leave now, or I’ll call the police.”

  “Here.” I slipped my cell from my pocket and pushed it across the table at her. “Use my phone.”

  “McKenzie.”

  I kept staring at Silk.

  “Cilia, you said you put the envelope containing Merodie’s check on the coffee table in the living room,” I said. “But I saw the crime scene photos, read the reports—there was no coffee table in the living room. You said that there was nothing amiss in the house. But the living room was practically awash in blood, Jefferson’s blood, by the time you said you arrived. You couldn’t possibly have missed it—if you had actually been there. You weren’t. It was Silk who delivered the check.”

  “No,” Cilia said.

  “You lied when you told me you hadn’t seen your mother for eons, didn’t you, Silk?”

  She nodded her head.

  “You were there the day Eli Jefferson was killed,” I said. “Your little black-cherry sports car, the one that makes you look so good when you’re driving—it was seen parked in Merodie’s driveway.”

  “No,” Cilia shouted again.

  “How about it, Silk?” I asked.

  “Eli wanted sex and I refused to give it to him,” she said. Her voice was just above a whisper, and I had to lean forward to hear her.

  “Silk, don’t say anything,” Cilia said.

  “It’s okay, Aunt Cil. I was going to come forward anyway if my mother had been charged with Eli’s murder.”

  “But she’s not being charged. She’s free.”

  “Is that true?” Silk asked me.

  “Free as a bird by three this afternoon.”

  “Thank God,” Silk whispered.

  “Silk, don’t say anything more,” Cilia said.

  “The case is going to be dropped,” I said. “Eli’s death will be ruled an accident—so you’re off the hook, too.”

  “Thank God,” Silk whispered again.

  Cilia was on her feet. She moved next to her niece and clutched her shoulder.

  “You’re not to say another word until we hire a lawyer,” she said. “Do you understand me, young lady?”

  Silk took her aunt’s hand between hers. She brought it to her lips and kissed it lightly. “You can’t protect me forever,” she said.

  “The hell I can’t. See if I can’t.” Cilia turned on me. “Get out,” she shouted.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “You can’t speak to me that way.”

  I pointed at my cell phone, still on the glass table. “Call Muehlenhaus,” I said. “I bet he tells you I can speak however I damn well please.”

  That quieted her right down.

  “Silk—” I said.

  “Who’s Mr. Muehlenhaus?” she asked.

  “Your fairy godmother. Silk, tell me what happened.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Yes, to me it is.”

  Silk sighed heavily and gripped her towel with both hands.

  “I met Eli in July when I delivered Mother’s check,” she said. “He came on to me. I let him.”

  “Silk.” The cry came from deep inside Cilia’s throat.

  “Eli made me feel. . . he made me feel things I hadn’t felt before with a man. Not like the other men I knew, the boys I knew. He—I suppose he seduced me. I can’t explain it any better than that. I don’t have the vocabulary. He asked me to meet him at his sister’s house. I did. He offered me alcohol. I took it. He asked me to go to bed with him. I said yes”

  “Silk, oh, Silk,” Cilia cried again.

  “Nothing happened, Aunt Cil. Eli’s sister came home before . . . before anything happened. I didn’t.
. . I didn’t. . .” Silk hung her head. “It wasn’t until later that I realized just how fortunate I had been.”

  Cilia wrapped her arms around Silk’s shoulders and hugged her from behind. There were tears in Cilia’s eyes.

  Suddenly, I felt like an intruder, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave without hearing the entire story.

  “What happened next?” I asked.

  Silk answered even as Cilia held on to her. “Eli called a few times asking for a rematch—that’s the word he used, rematch. I turned him down. Over and over again.”

  “You should have told me,” Cilia said.

  “I was too embarrassed,” Silk said. “Anyway, when I went to deliver Mother’s check, he was there. It’s hard for me to tell you exactly what happened next. It’s all kind of blurry. He was drunk. At least he seemed drunk. He kept pawing at me. He kept telling me to take off my shirt. I called for my mother, but she didn’t answer. When I pushed him away”—Silk held up her hands—“my hands were bloody. He was bleeding very badly. I don’t know why. I couldn’t see a wound. I called for my mother again, only she never came. I tried to escape. Eli stopped me. I grabbed a softball bat—it was leaning against the wall and I just grabbed it. I didn’t even think about it, I just. . . I told Eli to leave me alone. He came at me anyway. He said he knew just what I needed. I swung the bat. I hit him. I hit him in the back of the head. He said, ‘Strike one.’ I hit him again. Harder. He fell. I dropped the bat and ran out of there just as fast as I could.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Silk’s hands were folded on the towel in her lap. She was looking down at them as if she had never seen them before. They were dotted with tears.

  “I believed you when you said you would have given yourself up to protect your mother,” I told her.

  Silk nodded.

  “So now what?” Cilia wanted to know. “So now you’re going to ruin her life? For what? For Jefferson? For that piece of filth? Silk has an incredible life in front of her. She’s going to the Olympics. Are you going to take that away from her? Silk was acting in self-defense. She was only protecting herself. Are you going to ruin her life over that? Answer me! What are you going to do?”

  Nothing, my inner voice replied. I didn’t believe that Silk was responsible for Jefferson’s death. The best a prosecutor could argue was that conking him on the head was a contributing factor. Clearly not murder, and probably self-defense. No, Silk didn’t kill Jefferson. It was the booze that done him in. That’s what a good defense attorney would argue, and Cilia would hire the best that money could buy. So why bother? Why ruin Silk’s life? The law might be satisfied, but would justice be served? G. K. said it earlier. Justice belongs to God alone. Besides, Merodie would hate me forever, and I just didn’t want that.

  I stood up and retrieved my cell phone from the table.

  “I’m going home to get some sleep,” I said.

  I began to walk away.

  “Have a good life, Silk,” I called over my shoulder.

  “Wait a minute,” Cilia said. She jogged to my side. She wasn’t pretty now—not for any age.

  “Do you think you’re going to come back later and ask for money?” she wanted to know. “Do you think you’re going to blackmail me over this?”

  She grabbed my arm with both hands and pulled it until I spun toward her. She had a strong grip, and she didn’t let go.

  “I know your kind,” she said. “I’ve dealt with your kind all my life. Men like you. Selfish and cruel and greedy beyond belief. All you care about is what you can get for yourself—what you can take from me for yourself! Just like my father. And my brother. And all the rest. Well, you’re not taking anything from me, do you hear? Not a dime. Nothing. If you come back here, I’ll kill you.”

  I regarded Cilia closely. There was much to admire. There was much more that made me want to bash her brains in. The story she had told about her father, her brother, and Brian Becker—it was true. Looking into her hate-filled eyes, I knew it was true. I could forgive her all the rest. Trying to protect her niece, going to Muehlenhaus, certainly, I could forgive her for that. But cold-blooded murder? The men who died around her might have been bastards, but one of the first things I was taught as a cop was you can’t choose the vie, and I was still too much of a cop to let it slide. Yet what could I do about it? If I took it to the cops, I’d have to give them all the rest, too, and I couldn’t do that. Not to Silk. Not to Merodie. Besides, where was the evidence? It was my word against hers, and my word consisted solely of repeating an admittedly outrageous story she told me that might or might not be true. Except it was true.

  I gripped Cilia’s elbow in a way that made her cry out in pain and release my arm. She stepped backward, rubbing her elbow. There was no pain in her eyes, though. Only anger and hatred.

  “You’re a dangerous woman, Cilia,” I said. “Someone ought to do something about you.”

  They call Minneapolis City Hall the “Pink Palace” because of its Camelot-style Gothic architecture and the color of its granite facade. Room 108 in the Pink Palace was reserved for the Minneapolis Police Department’s homicide unit. No outsider was allowed entry without an escort, so I had called ahead to warn Lieutenant Clayton Rask that I was coming and to request that he fetch Lieutenant John Weiner from Anoka for a brief meeting. I was quickly ushered to Rask’s desk. It was made of rich mahogany. Basic gray metal government desks served all the other officers in the department. Rank does have its privileges, I decided.

  Neither officer rose to his feet or offered me a hand in greeting.

  Rask said, “Look at you. What rock did you crawl out from under?”

  I was hoping he was referring solely to my appearance.

  “You have a homicide,” I said.

  “I have several homicides,” Rask said.

  “Mollie Pratt.”

  “Have you come to confess?” Weiner asked.

  I guess that was his idea of humor.

  “We both know who did it,” I said.

  He rose quickly from the chair next to Rask’s desk.

  “Don’t push it,” Weiner warned.

  “I don’t know who did it,” Rask said. “Tell me.”

  “Richard Scott Nye,” I said. “He lived next door to Mollie Pratt before he was busted for dealing meth—that’s how they met. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding him, either. Weiner here has him in custody at the Anoka County Correctional Facility. He and the county attorney are protecting him. He’s their chief witness in the meth busts they made yesterday. You might have heard about them. It was in all the papers.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Weiner said.

  “Then I apologize in advance for accusing you of shitting on your badge.”

  “I bet this is going to be an interesting story,” Rask said.

  I told it as concisely as I could, filling in the blanks with assumptions that I had made. Mollie knew Nye was dealing; she was one of his customers. Mollie told Nye that she had seen him at Merodie’s house the day Eli Jefferson was killed either as a favor or to blackmail him into giving her dope. Nye raped and killed her; that was why he had been so confident that no one could testify against him when I confronted him at his apartment. Ain ‘t nobody around no more to say otherwise.

  “Weiner knew about Nye,” I added. “That’s why he hustled me out of his office the other day when Nye’s name first came up.”

  Rask didn’t speak, but I had seen the expression on his face before. Lordy, but I was glad he wasn’t angry at me.

  “This is nonsense,” Weiner said.

  “It is a tad thin, McKenzie,” Rask said.

  “It should be easy enough to check out,” I said. “You have the DNA the killer left on Mollie’s body. Match it against Nye’s. You won’t even have to get a warrant. Nye was busted twice for sexual assault in the past. His DNA is on file.”

  “What do you think, Lieutenant?” Rask asked.

  “It’s your case,”
Weiner said.

  “So it is.”

  “Something else,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Rask asked.

  I was going to tell him about Priscilla St. Ana, I really was, but at the last moment my mind’s eye focused on Silk’s face—and Merodie’s. I couldn’t see past them.

  “Never mind,” I said.

  My sticky eyes jerked open and landed on the digital display of my bedside clock radio. It was 5:05 and the sun was shining brightly. For a moment I pondered how that could be, but there was a heavy pounding on my front door—that’s what had awakened me—and I gave it up. I was a third of the way down the stairs when I realized that I was wearing only blue boxers. I went back upstairs, took a robe from my closet, and wrapped it around me. The pounding continued.

  “I’m coming,” I shouted.

  A moment later I pulled open the door.

  Genevieve Bonalay smiled at me.

  “Good evening,” she said.

  Evening?

  “I figured I was pounding loud enough to wake the dead,” she added. “Apparently I succeeded.”

  “I didn’t get home until late this morning,” I said.

  “You clean up good, though,” she told me. “Nice outfit.”

  “Come in,” I said. I pulled the robe tighter around me and stepped back so G. K. could enter. She was carrying a bottle of Krug champagne. It had been opened. She waved it at the empty living room.

  “Love what you’ve done with the place,” she said.

  Oh yeah, she’s been drinking, my inner voice warned me.

  I led her to the kitchen.

  “Would you like some coffee?” I asked.

  “No, this is fine.” She held up the Krug. “Care to join me? The least I can do is buy you a drink since you’re not getting paid for this fiasco.”

  “Satisfaction is my reward.”

  I took two crystal champagne glasses from the cupboard. G. K. quickly filled them both. She held up her glass by the long, narrow stem.

  “What should we drink to? I know. To justice.”

  “To justice,” I said, and drained half the champagne.

  G. K. drank all of hers and refilled the glass.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in justice,” I said.

  “Oh, I do today. That’s why I’m celebrating. Today I’ve seen justice firsthand. Poetic, ironic—McKenzie, will you go to bed with me? Will you go to bed with me right now? I could use some TLC.”