by Nancy Bush
Gathering up the two pages of potential interviewees, I sensed a nub of anxiety tightening in the pit of my stomach. For all his inattention, Dwayne wasn’t going to wait forever. He would expect some hard answers. But Violet was anathema. And no one wanted to talk to a friend of Violet’s—friend being a stretch of the truth of our relationship—but I suspected Dwayne wasn’t going to see it that way.
“Come on out here, Jane,” Dwayne called, apparently sensing I’d returned to the living room as his eyes were once again glued to his binoculars.
He was back on the lounge, though I suspected there might be some moisture soaking into the seat of his jeans. The outdoor furniture and dock were still wet from the hail blast.
Squeezing back outside, I felt a frigid huff of wind whip beneath my black suede vest, press my shirt to my skin and generally bring me to goose bumps. Dwayne’s cowboy hat, never far from his side, was now scrunched on his head. His long, light blue denim-clad left leg, and casted right one, stretched toward the small, slatted-wood table we’d knocked over on our scramble to get back inside. I righted the table and put it beside his chair. Apart from his shirt, there was no protection against the elements, but it didn’t look like he cared much.
My eyes followed the line of his legs and I felt a twist of sexual interest. I gritted my teeth. And him being a semi-invalid. What did that say about me?
“Take a look here,” he said, handing me the binoculars. “Straight over there is Rebel Yell….” He pointed at a white two-story house across the bay and a little to our left. I looked through the lenses. “Parents, two teenage girls, lots of drama.”
“You’ve named another one?”
“Named ’em all. It’s next to Tab A and Slot B, just to the west side.”
I gazed at Tab A and Slot B, where all fall the man and woman had been cavorting into every sexual position known to humankind, and tried to keep my mind off Dwayne. He and I had done a bit of that mating dance not so long ago, nothing too serious, and then Violet had entered our world. Sometimes, late at night, when my mind whirls on a repetitive track, I remember those moments with uncomfortable inner jolts that seem to hit my heart and parts down south as well. “We’ve watched them before,” I said neutrally.
“Mm,” he agreed. “Tab A’ll be home in a couple hours. Lately they’ve been turning on their outdoor fire pit and then heading just inside the slider door and getting to work. Lovemaking by the fire. Guess it’s what you do when you don’t have an indoor fireplace.”
“Can’t wait for that.”
“Next to Rebel Yell is Plastic Pet Cemetery, where old lawn ornaments go to die.”
“The Pilarmos. With the dog.”
Dwayne nodded. “Thing howls and looks like a wolf.”
I centered my binoculars on the Pilarmos’ tired, dark blue bungalow. Kinda looked like my cottage, only worse, if that was possible. Probably worth a small fortune. I could make out gnomes and plastic pink flamingos and faux cement birdbaths decorating a large portion of the backyard. A grayish wolf-dog cruised around the corner and disappeared from view.
“Then there’s Do Not Enter.”
I moved my glasses to aim toward a shell of a house where the beams and a skin of plywood constituted the walls. The roof was covered with plywood, and half the composition shingles had been nailed on. “Why is it Do Not Enter?”
“It’s where the high school kids party. They try to keep their flashlights dimmed, but every Friday night, some Saturdays, there’s something going on. And that last house before the road curves toward North Shore is Social Security. He’s deaf and she’s bedridden and neither of ’em is too worried about Do Not Enter.”
Hearing he’d named more houses worried me anew. I had to remind myself that this, too, would pass. It was a harmless pursuit on Dwayne’s part. Something to entertain him while he recovered. If it smacked a little too much of Jimmy Stewart’s character in Rear Window, well, it wasn’t like he was going to ask me to solve a murder over there.
I handed him back the binoculars, murmured something about getting back to my job, then squeezed inside the cabana and headed to my laptop. My job—the job I was getting paid for—was to prove Violet Purcell’s innocence. Besides the fact that no one will talk to me, the bigger problem is I kinda think Violet might be guilty. She’s sensed this and has yelled, “Things aren’t always what they seem, Jane!” more times than I like to recall. And actually, I think that’s a crock anyway. Most of the time things are exactly what they seem. We just can’t accept them as they are. We want to make them better, or different, or meaningful.
But…I must remember, innocent until proven guilty. It’s difficult with Violet. She’s late forties, appears and acts over a decade younger, possesses more good looks than good sense, and has a family who took the “health” out of “mental health” in a big way. I would like to forget that she made a play for Dwayne, but I can’t. It’s only been a few weeks since I met Violet—basically a little over a month—but it feels like the proverbial eternity. First I thought she was a breath of fresh air. Then I decided she was a femme fatale. Now I’m thinking she might be a murderer.
I mean, couldn’t she have killed ex-husband number three? Couldn’t she? Why does Dwayne find that so impossible?
I shook my head and stared up at the fir beams that line Dwayne’s cabana’s ceiling and thought back. Upon first meeting I’d been intrigued with Violet’s tell-it-like-it-is, take-no-prisoners attitude. But she was a Purcell and I had learned, by then, that they were a secretive, squirrelly bunch, so I wasn’t sure what to think of her. It had been refreshing to be faced with a family member who initially exhibited none of their odd family traits. Key word here being initially. Violet’s definitely got her own issues.
Luckily, since Dwayne’s accident, things seem to have cooled off a bit between him and Violet, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. And okay, they haven’t progressed to much more than friends, but I know she hauled off and kissed him once. I got to witness that. Dwayne is my mentor, boss, partner and friend. I cannot have him mean anything more to me and stay sane. I know this, but I have to keep reminding myself anyway because there’s a part of me that just can’t quite leave the whole possible romance thing alone. I would like to be disgusted with myself for being so nauseatingly hopeless. I mean, why can’t I just get over it? It’s interfering with my job and my life and I don’t even think I really like Dwayne.
That memory of Violet pulling him into a kiss crossed the screen of my mind again and I had to clench my teeth.
I waited for the moment to pass.
“Are you growling?”
I jumped. Dwayne’s voice was loud. Glancing back, I saw he’d stuck his head inside the slider door.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I like to.”
We looked at each other. I would rather suck on dirty socks than admit my feelings for Dwayne.
He let it go. “Violet’s on her way over, right?”
“Yep. She wants us to talk to the police. Find out if they’re going to indict her.”
“Larrabee would have already if he could prove she was guilty,” Dwayne said.
Detective Vince Larrabee was a homicide detective with the Portland police and a longtime acquaintance, sometime friend, of Dwayne’s. I’d heard his name once or twice before Violet’s case, but now it was part of our daily dialogue, though I had yet to meet the man.
“Violet wants that information directly from the big dog. I’m a mere lackey.”
Dwayne snorted and returned to the dock. He sank into the hail-and rain-soaked chair again without comment.
It had been a lot sunnier the day Violet walked out on Dwayne’s dock and announced that she might have killed her ex-husband. I’d been so giddily happy that she and Dwayne seemed kaput that I’d let myself be talked into helping her.
She’d showed up in true Violet fashion: looking beautiful, and…well, lusty. Her hair is blond and shoulder-length, her eyes t
hat crazy electric blue color most of the Purcells seem to share. My own hair is a little longer than shoulder length, light brown, straight and wouldn’t let itself be styled if I bought a truckload of Vidal Sassoon products. I don’t possess Violet’s curves, but my eyes are hazel and sane-looking. I’m thirty and Dwayne’s about thirty-five. I figure that evens the score.
But that day Violet hadn’t been thinking about Dwayne, not in any romantic capacity. She’d needed help.
She plopped down in one of the dock chairs and announced numbly, “My ex-husband’s dead.” I’d questioned which ex-husband, since she had a few, and learned it was Roland Hatchmere, ex number three, the only one who lived in the Portland area.
“He was killed yesterday,” she went on. “On his daughter’s wedding day. Roland was still at the house, and these robbers showed up thinking he was gone, I guess, and he wasn’t, and they killed him.”
“Wedding robbers?” I asked, looking at Dwayne, since he’d already been investigating the Wedding Bandits.
“What happened?” Dwayne asked her.
“I don’t know! The police came to see me today,” Violet said, her eyes huge. “God, I don’t believe this. They seem to think I did it.” We asked her why that was and after hemming and hawing, she finally admitted, “Because he was killed with a heavy metal platter that has my fingerprints on it.”
“Did you kill him?” Dwayne asked her.
“I don’t think so,” she responded in a small voice.
And that’s when Dwayne checked out completely, picked up his binoculars and returned to his perusal of his buddies across the bay. If I’d known then he was going to make a serious job out of it, I might have been more concerned, but instead after he told Violet I was the lead investigator, I started thinking about how much money I could make and I agreed to take the case.
Since then my job had been mostly about keeping Violet calm and focused. She lived in a certain amount of fear the authorities were going to swoop down and haul her criminal ass to justice. I soothed with words about needing real evidence and motive and whatever else I could draw from the criminology classes I’d taken and my own vast repertoire of bullshit that I like to dress up as fact.
I’d managed to piece together the events of the wedding day from Violet’s disjointed recitation. Apparently Roland’s daughter Gigi had been slated to marry Emmett Popparockskill at the Cahill Winery in Dundee, Oregon, which is about an hour’s drive from Roland’s house in Portland’s West Hills District.
The wedding was scheduled to be outdoors with the requisite flowers, arches, ring bearer and flower girl—two additions I always cheer for since they pretty much rip focus away from the bride by screwing up somehow. I swear to God they are the best part of any wedding, beyond the champagne, alcohol and food.
Violet was not invited to the ceremony as she and Gigi were not on the best of terms, but she’d stopped by Roland’s house to drop off a gift for the bride and groom—the metal platter. While there, she and Roland got into some kind of fight, which culminated with Violet whacking him alongside the head with the platter and leaving in a huff.
Roland never showed for pictures and a search went out. He was found dead on the solarium floor from a blow to the head. Murder weapon, the tray.
Violet insists she didn’t kill him. “He was perfectly fine when I left him! He was moving. Breathing. Swearing at me! I didn’t kill him. Those robbers must have. After I left, they came in and murdered him. I didn’t kill him!”
I’ve gotta say, she’s quite convincing. I would probably believe her, but…well, Roland Hatchmere died from head trauma. And Violet hit him in the head with the tray. And the police only found one set of fingerprints on the tray: Violet’s.
Now I heard the loud purr of a sports car and figured the woman in question had arrived. She gave a perfunctory knock on Dwayne’s door, then pushed in, calling loudly, “I’m letting myself in!”
“Dwayne’s on the dock,” I greeted her.
She burst inside loaded with packages from several major department stores. A cloud of perfume wafted into the room, trailing in her wake. Catching my look, she held the bags higher. “I just couldn’t stop. Am I spending all my funds to fill a need? I’d bet on it, hon. I have too much money and not enough friends. Look, I bought you something.”
I tried hard not to react as Violet dug inside one of the bags. Scary, scary thought. I don’t want to owe Violet anything. Working for her is one thing, but friendship. Clothes buying…?
To my consternation she pulled out a dress. “Purple,” I said faintly. I didn’t want to be ungrateful but the thought of Violet buying me clothes…I just know it’s not going to work somehow.
“It’s my signature color,” she said unnecessarily. “It’s more amethyst, don’t you think? It’s like voile, really sheer in that sort of netty way? I just love it. I could just see you in it. Here, try it on.” She held it out to me.
I instantly turned back to my screen. “In a minute, I need to finish this.”
“Oh, come on, Jane.”
I finally really looked at Violet. I’d been spending so much time on the dress and dealing with my internal horror that I hadn’t given much thought to Violet herself. Now I saw clearly that this was important to her. Even worse. There was no polite way out.
“Sure,” I said, taking the proffered garment and heading toward Dwayne’s bathroom.
I stripped off my clothes and pulled it over my head. The dress, actually a gown, hung to my ankles and hugged like a second skin. I’d been wearing jeans and boots and had left dark socks on. Taking them off, I gave myself a studied look, turning to capture a view of the side and back.
I looked…well…good.
I’m not a clothes shopper. It’s just so darn much trouble. I get irritated at salespeople and nothing ever seems to work the way I think it should. How could Violet pick out something like this just by deciding it would be right?
“Okay, I like it,” I admitted after I changed back into my clothes and I returned to the living room. “How much do I owe you?”
Violet’s gaze was out the sliding door to the back of Dwayne’s cowboy hat. Her face was wistful. “It’s a gift,” she said distractedly.
“No,” I argued without much strength. I’d been afraid to look at the price tag.
“Just wear it sometime when we’re out together,” she said, turning back to me and smiling.
Here’s the thing—I think she really likes me. Not in a weird way, just as a friend. Which makes me feel like a heel because I don’t want to like her.
She didn’t wait for more arguments but headed outside. I glanced toward the sky, but the clouds were holding back further precipitation. As she moved into Dwayne’s line of vision, she smiled at him even more warmly than she’d smiled at me.
My cell phone buzzed.
“Hello,” I answered, my gaze zeroed in on the two of them.
“This Jane Kelly?” a flat male voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Hey, it’s Sean Hatchmere. You called?”
Unbelievable. Dwayne was right; I’d just gotten my first break. Sean was Roland’s son. I’d left messages on his cell phone explaining who I was—just like I’d left messages on Gigi’s phone and Roland’s wife Melinda’s and many others’—but I’d assumed Sean wasn’t interested in me any more than any of the rest of them were. “I sure did.”
“You’re trying to help Violet, right? My sister said you were.”
He didn’t bring up Gigi slamming the door in my face, so maybe he didn’t know about her response. I said cautiously, “More like I’m trying to figure out what happened.”
“Isn’t that what the police are doing?”
There was noise in the background. Some kind of unidentifiable music? Techno-rock? I couldn’t tell. But it was loud and Sean’s flat voice was mere microdecibels above it, barely enough for me to make out what he was saying.
“Yes.” One thing I’ve learned in my brief fora
y into the P.I. business, answer as truthfully as you dare but don’t offer up any more information than necessary. Let whomever you’re talking with develop their own conclusions. Those conclusions might surprise you, more often than not.
“Yeah, well, if you wanna see me you can come down to the Crock pretty much any night.”
“The Crock?” I repeated, surprised.
“You know it?”
“Sure do. How about I stop by tonight? What time will you be there?”
“We start about midnight and go till two or three.”
I paused a beat before saying, “Okay.”
I hung up, my momentary excitement at finally breaking through the Hatchmere wall taking a nosedive. The idea of starting anything at midnight made me inwardly groan. I’d been a bartender for a number of years, but I’d lived a different lifestyle then, becoming by necessity a “night person” and sleeping during the day. I’d effectively switched fully to the daylight hours in the time since, so I knew I would struggle to stay awake tonight. Napping always sounds like a good alternative, but, except for that bartending era when my days and nights were completely flipped, I’ve never been able to master it.
But Sean Hatchmere had given me a gift.
As I squeezed my way to the dock, I was just in time to hear Violet say, “What is it with you and those binoculars?” in a peeved voice.
I smiled inwardly, seeing Dwayne’s obsession in a positive light for the first time. Especially when he answered, “Darlin’, you have no idea what you can learn. See that house over there? The one under construction? Do Not Enter’s got some serious teen parties happening every weekend.”
“Teenagers,” Violet responded derisively.
“Can’t decide whether to report ’em to our local law enforcement, or head over there myself and score whatever they’re sharin’ amongst their secretive little selves.” Dwayne grinned up at Violet from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat.
