Dead Lift

by Rachel Brady

  Of course, I thought. Once a cop, always a cop.

  “This officer knew Platt from the neighborhood. Last Saturday, he pulled up alongside him while Platt was out for a walk. They got to chatting. At one point Platt said he’d like to get a policeman’s opinion about something. About that time, a complaint came in so the officer cut the conversation short. He told Platt to follow-up with a call to the department.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “He never called.”

  “Right. So I asked this guy, ‘Did Platt say anything to suggest what was troubling him?’ And the guy says, ‘He thought somebody was being swindled out of a lot of money.’”

  “Whoa,” I said. “That could be huge.”

  “I think so too,” he said. “Maybe blackmail.”

  “Or fraud.” I felt Jeannie’s eyes on me and looked up. She poured the spaghetti into a colander waiting in the sink. “If Diana killed Platt,” I said, “The scandal he uncovered probably involved her or her husband.”

  “He might have told someone else what was going on. You follow up with his neighbors,” he said. “I’ll try his family.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I have a path to Chris King too.”

  “Good. What is it?”

  I told him about Diana’s bizarre recruitment. “She thinks I want a nose job and says her husband’s the man to do it. I could wiggle into a conversation about Platt while having a rhinoplasty consultation with King.”

  Richard was quiet.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m wondering how long it’ll take to get an appointment. Might be faster to approach him personally.”

  I considered that. It did seem unlikely King’s office would squeeze in a sudden consultation for an elective procedure.

  “But I don’t have a credible reason to approach him personally.”

  Jeannie brought the colander to the table and used her bare hand to move a pile of spaghetti onto each of our plates.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Go for the appointment.”

  Talking about Chris King reminded me of our earlier conversation regarding life insurance policies on business partners. I scribbled “insurance” at the bottom of my grocery list, which had been shoved to the farthest edge of the kitchen table.

  “I’ll let you know what his neighbors say.”

  We said goodbye and I pulled the phone away from my ear as Richard suddenly spoke again. It was too late. My finger was already on the End button and I’d disconnected.

  Jeannie came over, sauce pan in hand, and spooned Old World flavors over our pasta. She craned her neck to read my reminder note. “Insurance?”

  I stood, brought the shredded Parmesan from the fridge. “I want to find out about life insurance for business partners.”

  My phone rang and this time she passed it to me. Richard again.

  “Listen, Emily,” he said, uncertainly. “I should have told you we were working for Brighton and Young.”

  The mention of it fired me up again, but I appreciated his effort toward making amends. Despite our irresolute professional relationship, I didn’t want to lose him as a friend.

  “You should have taken your wife’s advice.” I heard more rebuke in my tone than intended. “But I understand why you didn’t.”

  “I’m taking her advice now.”

  “You don’t deserve her.”

  “No argument. So are we okay?”

  “Don’t do it again.”

  We started to hang up. This time I made the last minute addition. “That wasn’t all about you. My anger toward Mick Young, I mean.”

  “I know.” He hesitated. “It might help to talk to somebody.”

  Across the table, Jeannie began eating without me. She was one of my “somebodies.” Jeannie stayed up late with me and paid exorbitant long distance bills so I could self-analyze and cry. She even sent text messages to check on me, her long-distance substitute for wasting time at the office together like we used to before I’d moved to Texas for Annette.

  She caught me watching her chew. “What?”

  “Like a professional counselor,” Richard was saying. “If you don’t let some of this go—”

  “I hear you, but I need to get there in my own time.” The truth was, I’d been seeing a therapist since March.

  “Understood,” he said. “We’re here for you.”

  “Thanks for the call.”

  We hung up and Jeannie opened her mouth to say something, but I held up a hand to hold her off. “Sorry,” I said. “I have to call Annette first.”

  When separated from my baby, even for hours, I functioned in a state of mid-level anxiety I knew wasn’t healthy. It stemmed from an ever-present fear of losing her again and peaked with certain emotional triggers.

  “Hi, baby,” I said, after Betsy put her on the phone. “You having fun?”

  “I rode a horse today. His name was Leo.” Her voice sounded so tiny on the phone. Delicate, like innocence.

  “Leo sounds wonderful. Are you having fun with your grandma and grandpa?”

  “Grandpa can move his teeth around in his mouth.”

  I laughed.

  “He makes them look funny.”

  “Give him plenty of hugs while you’re there. Grandma too.”

  “She has a lot of fingernail polish and she shares.”

  “I share too.” It still felt like a contest. The Fletchers in one corner, me in the other. “I’ll get a new color for you when you come home. What do you think? Pink or red?”

  She thought a moment. “Sparkly magenta.”

  “Sparkly magenta it is.”

  “Can I go outside now?”

  “Sure, sweetheart. Have fun. I love you.”

  “Love you too. Bye, Emily.” She hung up.

  My name pierced like a barb. I wondered if I’d ever be Mom.

  Chapter Ten

  That evening, I curled up on Claire’s sofa, unable to tune out the wind and rain, and shamelessly waded through her private papers. It wasn’t my work ethic that had me skipping dinner, losing track of time, but rather my growing obsession with a woman who seemed equal parts sweet and sour. A human yin-yan. For three days, I’d flip-flopped between believing and doubting her.

  Jeannie was at Tone Zone working out with Natalie, an arrangement I hoped would supremely frustrate them both. She’d dropped me off at Claire’s and would be back soon enough, but waiting alone in a huge house during a monsoon was grossly unsettling. The lights had already flickered twice, but at least I’d found something.

  Two term life insurance policies, each for a million bucks, had been misfiled between Claire’s parents’ living wills. I wasn’t surprised that Daniel had listed Claire as his sole beneficiary, but I found it curious that Claire hadn’t listed him at all. Her sons would equally share the million dollar payout if their mother died. The policy said their names were Joshua and Logan. Their birthdates put them at fourteen and twelve.

  A separate folder, marked Medical, which I’d skipped earlier because I’d expected it to contain boring things like dentist’s bills, turned out to have three years’ worth of invoices from a therapist. The most recent was dated only two weeks ago.

  I paged through financial records. The 401k assets and mutual fund portfolios were all in Daniel’s name. I flipped through account statements and did some mental addition. The couple had almost $900,000 tucked away, and my mind swam with questions about what a divorce would mean for Claire and her boys financially.

  I returned the paperwork to its folders and headed upstairs for the guest room, where Jeannie had left the box she’d found stashed in the master closet. The upstairs hallway was dark now, all natural light having been snuffed by the storm. I turned at the top of the stairs and passed the boys’ rooms, flinching a little at the thought of Logan’s enormous snake behind Door Number One.

  The box was where Jeannie had left it. Inside, I found letters, cards, e-mails…all manner of random correspo
ndence, spanning decades, written by various people. Soon I better understood, at least in part, why Claire was in counseling.

  Dear Claire, one postcard dated 1999 said, I was not aware that we shared so many anger issues. I am not ignoring you nor your issues with me, but I’m not up to this right now, and so much of what you wrote about is very old. The hiking here is excellent and we’ve even seen some moose. Not quite as big as the one shown on the reverse. Try to enjoy what’s left of summer. Mom

  A different note, written on a sheet of loose leaf, concluded with: We said we’d do this as long as we both wanted to. I try to want it. But I don’t anymore. It’s time for me to move on. You know I’ll always be here for the boys, right? Tell them I’ll always be here for them.—Ruben

  That one had been scribbled eight years ago in tiny little block-looking letters that had been hastily pressed into the page.

  Dear Mom, the next one said, written in crayon on green construction paper, I hat you. your Mean and I wish I had Tanners famule.

  Then, an e-mail: God I want you. All day long I see your skin, remember your taste. Your lingering perfume gets me hard and I’m crazy when I can’t have you. Can you make it up here this weekend? (She’s gone until Monday.) Daniel

  For reasons I didn’t understand, or maybe ones I understood a little too well, it seemed to me that Claire held on tightly to heartbreak. I read everything in her little cedar box—a rejection from UC Berkeley, two divorce decrees, a prayer card from her grandfather’s funeral. Each item was years, if not decades, old. So when I unfolded a note dated only a month ago, my heart raced.

  Beside me, my phone rang inside my purse and I ignored it.

  I know it’s hard for you to trust, baby, but listen to me. There is no one else. Only you. This has been the summer of my life and I want to move this forward. But we don’t need my house to do that. When I finish the sculpture, you’ll come over anytime you want. I’ll give you a key. It’s not another woman. It’s unfinished art. My job. I love you, Claire. No man deserves you but I’ll never stop trying. Kevin

  I tapped the paper in my hand, thinking everything over, but too many disjointed ideas flooded me. I pulled a notebook and pen from my bag and scribbled.

  53-year-old mother of two

  Headed for divorce #3

  Loaded, at least for now

  Independent boys, maybe troubled

  Rift with mom

  Fears ex will take kids

  Habitual adulterer

  Lonely

  Wants better

  I stared at my list and felt like I’d moved the case forward, though I wasn’t sure how. My phone rang again. I reached into my bag and groped for the button to silence it. Whatever was gelling in my head had to set before I could switch gears.

  Over and over I read the list, until finally I saw it. Lonely. Wants better. Not facts, only hunches. My intuition was finally kicking in.

  I thought back to my time in the jail with her. She’d seemed to fear Ruben more than a conviction. It didn’t make sense that a woman would spend years in therapy unsaddling old hurts and then do something stupid, like murder a guy, and risk losing her kids right before breaking free from the latest in a series of damaging relationships.

  I neatly stacked the notes and letters back into the box and headed toward the master bedroom, wondering, not for the first time, who had it in for both Claire and Dr. Platt. As I crossed the upstairs hall, a door thumped closed downstairs. Then there were beeps. Someone was keying in the alarm code.

  I didn’t know if it’d be better to wait out of sight until whoever it was left, or to go downstairs and…what? Introduce myself? Whoever was downstairs knew the alarm code, so at least I wasn’t dealing with a thief or worse. I descended. At the last step, I remembered the box and set it quietly on the floor.

  Rounding the corner at the foyer entrance, I discovered a rain-soaked man standing in Claire’s kitchen, wiping water from his drenched hair and fishing for something underneath his dripping poncho. When he saw me, he freed his hand and straightened, almost brightened.

  “Well, hi.” He smiled good-naturedly, plainly less troubled by my presence than I was by his.

  I stayed in the foyer, one hand on the banister, unsure what to say. Truly, the man was utterly soaked. Through the window behind him, I noticed the storm had worsened, a change I’d missed while absorbed in Claire’s private letters.

  I tried not to sound nervous. “Who are you?”

  He shook his wet head in the way of a drenched dog, only more adorably, and ran his fingers through sharply cut blond hair. Then he pulled the poncho over his head and hung it on the doorknob. A pool of water collected at his feet. For an instant, something about him seemed familiar.

  “Kevin Burke,” he said. “Want a beer?”

  I was relieved when he stepped out of view and I heard the refrigerator open. I needed a minute to collect myself, erase whatever evidence of shock might be on my face. I edged as far as the kitchen entrance and stopped. He produced two bottles of Heineken and set them on the granite countertop, then opened the pantry door, stepped on a lever to open the garbage can lid, and spit out gum.

  It occurred to me that Claire could be living with this guy. “Do you live here? Am I in your house?”

  “It’s Claire’s house,” he said simply.

  “Yes, I know it’s her house but I thought maybe…” I shook my head. There was no tactful ending.

  He grinned. “I still don’t know who you are.”

  I cleared my throat. Told to the wrong person, a lie could be dangerous. “Emily Locke. A new acquaintance of Claire’s.”

  He nodded, but didn’t answer.

  My instinct was to ask why he was there, but his extreme level of comfort and familiarity with the place put me on alert. If anything, I should probably have been justifying myself to him. But the circumstances were too delicate. I didn’t know which of Claire’s friends knew what about her recent tangle with the law.

  He offered me a beer, but I shook my head.

  “Coke then?”

  Soft drinks weren’t my thing, but I wanted to be cordial. “Sure. Thanks.”

  He opened the fridge, put the beer back, and came out with a ginger ale. It was the third time in as many months that a local had used the term “Coke” to mean any damn kind of soft drink. This was another peculiarity about Houston life that made me feel like Alice after she’d fallen down the rabbit hole.

  I didn’t like ginger ale, but opened it anyway.

  He leaned backward on the sink and took a swig. I propped myself in the archway leading toward the enormous downstairs hallway and forced a swallow. Too chicken to volunteer why I’d come, but uncomfortable with our silence, I took the age-old cop out. “How long do you give this rain?”

  He laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “What?”

  “You live in a cave? Tropical storm just hit between Beaumont and Lake Charles.”

  “A tropical storm?” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a chance to read the paper or watch the news.

  Kevin took another sip. “Elena.” The way he drew out the storm’s name made it sound sexy and intriguing, like an unforgettable woman he may have once spent the night with. “Southwest Freeway’s flooding. Better stay off the roads tonight.” He opened the freezer door. “I’m not staying myself. Just stopped by as a favor to Logan.”

  Before I registered what he meant, Kevin dropped something hard into the sink. It landed with a loud thwack as if he’d tossed in a rock.

  “Is that—”

  “These guys take a while to thaw. I’ll come back when the storm lets up.” He paused. “You ever feed a snake?”

  I shook my head.

  “Amazing the way their jaws stretch.” He looked out the window. “I didn’t see a car outside. You need a ride somewhere?”

  “My ride’s coming.”

  Kevin finished off the rest of his beer and wrangled back into his wet poncho. “Nice mee
ting you. Stay dry.”

  I nodded a goodbye and he pulled open the backdoor. The rain was diagonal and loud. Somewhere out of sight, wind chimes were being abused by the gusts, their notes uncharacteristically angry. Kevin closed the door behind him with powerful finality and when the house fell silent in his absence, my unsettled, spooky feeling returned. The lights browned out, and I knew Kevin was right. If I didn’t want to get stuck on impassable roads, it was time to go home. I went back upstairs toward my phone, picking up the cedar box on my way. Through the foyer window I watched Kevin’s Mustang pull out of the drive.

  I checked my phone. The calls I’d ignored had been from Vince and I dialed him right away without bothering to play his messages.

  “You okay?” I could hear the concern in his voice.

  “Sort of. I’m at the client’s house. Jeannie’s coming for me.”

  “Jeannie’s with me,” he said. “I thought y’all were at that gym so I went over with the truck when I heard about the flooding.”

  “It only started raining a few hours ago. How can there be flooding?”

  “This ain’t Ohio, woman. You’re at sea level now. Nowhere for water to go.”

  “So am I stuck here?”

  “At least for a while. Guy in front of us has water to his axles. We’ve been in the car twenty minutes and gone maybe a half-mile. Turn on the TV, you’ll see.”

  I wished I’d been at that snooty gym. Then at least I’d be with Vince and Jeannie instead of stranded in a strange house with a thawing rat.

  “I’m jealous,” I said.

  “Don’t be.” It was Jeannie now. “You’re warm and dry in a swanky house with Versace and Chanel. We’re in traffic.”

  “At least you have each other.”

  “I’ll tell you what I have. A limp. From that lunatic trainer you hired.”

  “You deserved each other. I’d have taken your place had I known I’d get stuck here.”

  “Make popcorn or something. Put in a DVD. I know what I’d be doing if I were stuck in that house.”

  “I’m not trying on her clothes.”