Well Bred and Dead

by Catherine O'Connell

  “I went into Ethan’s bedroom and found him in the same condition that your people are now studying, I imagine.”

  “I didn’t go nowhere near there until I heard her scream.” Mr. Keifer was obviously trying to distance himself from any involvement with me. I suppressed the urge to ask him for my five dollars back.

  “Uh-huh. D’jouse touch anything while you was in there?”

  I contemplated my every move inside Ethan’s apartment. “Well, let’s see, the doorknob, his desk, some papers. And I happened to take a glance at his appointment book.”

  Detective Malloy looked appalled. “So in other words, while you was in the room with da deceased, you was going tru’ his personal things?”

  “Just his appointment book. Is there something wrong with that?”

  “Of course there is. You don’t touch dead people’s stuff. You could have contaminated the scene. Don’t youse ever watch police shows on television?”

  I assured him I did not. After rolling his eyes in a manner suggesting I was one of the more vacuous people he had ever met, he went on to ask, “Do you know what Mr. Campbell did for a living?”

  “He was a writer.”

  “Like for newspapers?”

  “No, like, for books. He wrote biographies about socialites. He had two in print and was working on his third.”

  His eyebrows arched over his dull green eyes. “Anybody I ever heard of?”

  “Are you familiar with Berthe Palmer or Gloria Guinness?” His perplexed look told me this was uncharted terrain. I went on to explain. Berthe was the wife of Potter Palmer who built the Palmer House Hotel. She was a grand patron of the arts, one of the earliest devotees of the French Impressionists. Berthe is responsible for that tremendous collection of Monets we have in the Art Institute. As for Gloria, she was the quintessential social climber. Her parents were Mexican peasants—her mother was a seamstress. But that didn’t stop her from marrying her way up. Her last husband was the international banker, Loel Guinness.”

  “Do you think what he wrote about dem could have pissed ’em off?”

  “Lord, no. They’re long dead. To include Daisy Fellowes, the subject of his latest book. Singer sewing machine heiress,” I added before he could ask. I neglected to mention Daisy’s sexual proclivities, though I suspect he would have found them of great interest.

  “Why d’ya suppose he wrote about dem?”

  “Ethan was intrigued by rich and famous women.”

  The detective contemplated. “So was he light in da loafers?”

  “You mean, homosexual? I believe so.” Though Ethan and I never actually discussed it, it went without saying that if he had any sexual inclinations, they were toward men.

  “Did he have any lovers?”

  “Not that I knew of.”

  He jotted on the pad. “How about enemies? Anybody who had a beef with him?”

  I thought carefully. Ethan’s tongue could be acerbic and had irritated more than a few people on occasion. But true enemies? The closest I could come was Connie Chan who wrote the society page for The Tribune. She had panned the Gloria Guinness book in her popular column, calling it simple, shallow, and rife with name dropping and inaccuracies. Since then Ethan always referred to her as “that slanty-eyed bitch,” blaming her for lost book sales. Just last week at a reception for Philip Roth, he had referred to her writing as sophomoric within earshot of the author himself. Connie had been livid. Still, I couldn’t fathom petite Connie Chan driving across town to blow Ethan’s brains out. Connie wasn’t exactly the sort to win popularity contests. If this was her response to insults, the streets would have been littered with her victims. I ruled her out.

  “No enemies to speak of,” I replied.

  “What about family?”

  I had heard Ethan’s family story so many times I could recite it aloud. It read like a Greek tragedy: He was born to wealth, his mother somehow related to the Eastman fortune. An only child, he was sickly and had to be schooled at home, so he had few childhood friends. By the time he was ten, his father had squandered most of the family finances and committed suicide. When he was eighteen, his beloved mother died in a car crash honeymooning with her third husband in San Sebastian. His new stepfather had survived the crash and inherited what remained of the estate, leaving Ethan penniless. As he told it, it wasn’t the loss of the genteel life that hurt the most, but more so the overwhelming loneliness of not being tied to anyone. I could relate to him on both counts, the father’s squandered inheritance and being an orphaned only child—though Mother’s death of breast cancer didn’t occur until after I was a grown woman. But still, Ethan and I shared the unenviable status of having no one obligated to invite us for holidays.

  “No immediate family,” I replied.

  “None at all? No brothers, sisters, cousins?”

  “Not that I am aware of.”

  “Was he depressed about being all alone like dat?”

  “Ethan was not depressed. And he was not alone. He had many, many friends.”

  Detective Malloy directed his next string of questions at Desmond Keifer and learned that Ethan had lived in the building for ten years, usually paid his monthly rent of four hundred fifty-five dollars on time, and was often a “major pain in the ass.”

  “What d’ya mean by pain in da ass?” the detective asked.

  “He was always complaining. About security. About sanitation—which I can’t understand seeing how I run a clean building here. About noise. He drove me nuts complaining about noise.”

  And then, as if providence was intervening on Ethan’s behalf, a reverberating jackhammer-like sound rattled the walls. It was coming from the apartment at the far end of the hall. Detective Malloy dispatched a policewoman to instruct the occupants to “turn down that racket.” Then he asked us to “stay put,” and went back into Ethan’s apartment.

  Mr. Keifer and I remained obediently stationed in the dim hall while a steady parade of civil servants streamed past us. A photographer and a medical examiner were followed by more police and two young paramedics pushing an empty gurney. One by one they disappeared into the apartment leaving us standing there. Finally, someone thought to bring a couple of chairs from Ethan’s kitchenette, so at least we had something to sit on during our detention. The minutes ticked past at an excruciating pace as one hour turned to two. I was growing increasingly perturbed. Not a very patient person to begin with, the little patience I do have was sorely tried by the occasional burst of flatulence coming from Mr. Keifer’s direction—the aftermath of which was competition for the mythological harpies. It was so painful I nearly forgot why I was sitting there. But then the reason presented itself coldly when the two paramedics reappeared in the doorway. This time a sheet-covered body rested on top of their gurney.

  I stood up and gasped aloud. And then, in a manner quite unlike my usual self, I grabbed hold of Ethan’s lifeless arm and held onto it tightly. It felt like cold putty in my hand. “Ma’am, ma’am, you can’t do that” a voice was saying while someone else’s fingers were trying to pry mine off my dead friend. I finally let go and watched in surrender as Ethan made his last trip down the dingy hallway.

  “Goodbye, Ethan,” I whispered under my breath as they loaded him into the elevator. “Goodbye, mon cher ami.”

  Detective Velez made his second appearance a minute later, this time to dismiss us.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you so long. You two can go now,” he said matter-of-factly, offering no explanation about the long wait.

  “About time,” grumbled the corpulent building manager. There was a loud squeak as he lumbered to his feet and the chair cried out in blessed relief. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder to the apartment behind him. “Hey, who cleans up this mess anyway?”

  “No one goes in there until the crime scene tape comes down,” the detective warned. “After that, I’m afraid it’s yours.”

  “Don’t the city send someone in?”

  “I’m afraid not.
”

  Mr. Keifer’s fat pout rolled from his sagging cheeks to his protruding lower lip. He clearly wasn’t up to the unpleasant task. “What about all his junk?”

  “I’ll oversee the disposition of his things. This is where I can be reached,” I heard myself volunteer, eager to be rid of Mr. Keifer for more reasons than the obvious one. I needed to speak to the detective by myself. Reaching into my wallet, I handed him one of my calling cards. He studied it for a minute, made an impressed clucking sound at my address, and deposited it into the pocket with all the keys. Then he turned wordlessly and headed down the hall with surprising speed, no doubt anxious to get back to his television, a frozen pizza, and a can of beer.

  Detective Velez noticed I had made no move to leave. “You’re free to go too, Mrs. Cook. We’ll call you if we have any more questions.”

  “Actually, I have some questions for you, Detective.”

  The jagged scar on his cheek darkened, and he looked at me like he would a pesky fly. However, I was not about to be intimidated by a public servant who earned his living off my tax dollars. Lord knows, I paid enough of them, and I had every intention of getting my money’s worth. Besides, the painful hours spent sitting in the hall had not been a total waste. They had given me plenty of time to come to my own conclusion regarding Ethan’s death, and it had to do with one of the first thoughts to cross my mind after finding him.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs. Cook?” he acquiesced.

  “I want to know if you are treating this death as a suicide or a homicide.”

  “Any suspicious death is treated as a potential homicide until the coroner makes a ruling,” he said, sounding like he was quoting directly from the police manual. Then his voice softened and turned sympathetic as he added, “But murderers generally don’t leave the weapon behind.”

  “Did you find a suicide note?” I asked.

  “No, but contrary to popular belief, suicides rarely leave them.”

  This was news to me. I would have guessed that people miserable enough to time their release from this world would have no qualms about sharing the reason for it with those left behind. But Ethan wasn’t miserable and he didn’t take his own life.

  “Detective, Ethan did not kill himself. I’m certain of it. He was extremely vain, so vain that I can guarantee one thing unequivocally.” I paused for emphasis before delivering my coup. “There is no way in creation that he would have ever permitted himself to be found wearing only his undershorts.”

  At that moment, Detective Malloy chose to interrupt us. He crooked his head at his superior in a manner that indicated something significant had happened.

  “George,” he said. “Got something here you might find interesting.”

  “We’ll take all your comments into consideration, Mrs. Cook. Now thank you for your cooperation,” said Detective Velez, dismissing me with a finality that even a taxpayer such as myself could not challenge.

  By the time I stepped out of Ethan’s building, the sun was low in the sky, like an enormous gold coin being deposited into the high-rise buildings to the west. To my great relief, my car was still intact. However, a bright orange parking ticket was stuck to the middle of the windshield. I plucked it off and read in disbelief that the fine for parking in front of a fire hydrant was one hundred dollars. A police car with two officers inside was double parked in front of the building. I marched over and thrust the ticket through the open window on the passenger’s side.

  “Excuse me, but would you happen to know anything about this?” I demanded of a ruddy-faced man chewing gum with aerobic intensity. His jaws stopped momentarily as he glanced down at the financial outrage and back at me.

  “Yeah, lady. That’s called a parking ticket. We put them on cars that are parked where they aren’t supposed to be.”

  “Yes, well, I wonder if you might cancel it for me.”

  His expression suggested I had just asked him to shoot someone on my behalf.

  “Lady, in case you didn’t know, it’s illegal to park your car in front of fire hydrants. Even if it’s a Jaguar.”

  “You don’t understand. It was an emergency. My friend was found dead in this building. This was the only available space.” He stared at me blandly. Then a glimmer of compassion came into his eyes as he realized my connection to the lifeless body that had just been wheeled out. But I was to learn who one knows doesn’t carry much weight when it comes to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

  “I’m sorry about your friend, lady, but we can’t cancel parking tickets once they are written. All you can do is go to court and tell your story. Mark here to protest,” he said and he pointed to a box on the orange ticket. “But if you want my opinion, I’d just pay the fine. You’re driving an expensive car. You can afford it. It ain’t worth wasting the day in court.”

  I was incensed that simply because I owned a luxury car he thought a hundred dollars did not mean a great deal to me. It meant far more than he could know. But I was too physically and emotionally drained to take on another challenge. I walked away without a fight and got into my car, throwing the ticket onto the passenger’s seat in righteous anger. Then a bout of sorrow swept me. I thought of Ethan’s scrawny white body and wondered where it was now. Most likely laying on a cold slab of concrete in some morgue. And then another, equally troubling, thought occurred to me. When the coroner finished with Ethan’s body, who would take responsibility for its final disposition?

  I remembered what it cost to bury Henry and felt the noose of financial strangulation tighten itself ever firmer around my neck.

  3

  Finding Solace

  The black cloud that had formed between the sky and myself followed me into the paneled lobby of my building. Jeffrey was on duty, looking incongruous in his staid hunter green uniform. His young muscular body was far better suited for a pair of shorts on the beach, playing volleyball with the wind teasing his wavy blond hair onto his face.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Cook,” he greeted me in his perpetually cheery voice. “That’s a beautiful suit you’re wearing.”

  It seemed so long ago since I put the suit on that it didn’t even feel new anymore. I was too disheartened to even acknowledge the compliment. My entire being was overwhelmed with the sense of something going missing. “Jeffrey, my car is out front. Could someone take it to the garage?”

  I know it’s difficult to believe that anyone could live in a multimillion dollar apartment and not have parking, but such was the case with many of the vintage buildings on the Gold Coast, and mine was no exception. My building was erected during the twenties when the wealthy expected to have drivers. As a result my car was housed around the corner which was often an inconvenience. But I so adored my penthouse, with its three-hundred-sixty-degree views and spacious elegant rooms, that I wouldn’t have considered living anywhere else. The inconvenience was acceptable.

  “I’ll see to it immediately, Mrs. Cook.” It was then that he must have noticed the misery in my face, because he added, “Is everything all right, Mrs. Cook?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not, Jeffrey. Mr. Campbell has died.”

  He looked shocked. Ethan was a regular visitor to my home, so all the doormen knew him. “I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Cook. What happened?”

  “That is the question, Jeffrey.”

  He accompanied me through the lobby to the single elevator that serviced the building. The gilded door stood open, and he reached inside and pushed twenty for the penthouse. I managed a weak smile while the door closed upon his comely face. The door reopened onto my private foyer, the hardwood floor gleaming from a fresh coat of wax, the crystals of my Venetian chandelier glimmering overhead. Wondering how much longer before I would have to discontinue the service that kept my home so polished, I unlocked the antique knob to the interior foyer and entered the apartment.

  I went directly to my bedroom and changed into a pair of slacks and a sweater, hanging my new suit, thankfully no worse for the wear after my ordeal
. Then I took the back hall to my library to check my answering machine. The few messages were unimportant and none related to Ethan. Then again, Ethan’s death was still so fresh no one would know about it yet. I contemplated calling Sunny and some of the others who considered themselves his closest friends, those who would be insulted if they weren’t among the first to hear the news, but just couldn’t summon up the energy. The day had been long and draining and I didn’t feel like talking. The personal touch would have to wait until the morrow.

  I shut off the volume to the machine, turned to my bar, and poured myself a stiff Scotch over ice. As a general rule wine is my drink, much better for the skin, but the occasion called for more drastic measures. The first sip went down with an amber glow. I drank more and waited for the alcohol to take its numbing effect. But instead of anesthetizing my sadness, it seemed to be magnifying it. With each swallow, my grief grew stronger until it merged with anger and betrayal as well. Regardless of what caused Ethan’s death, his own hand or someone else’s, I railed against him for leaving me with no warning.

  The phone rang and I let the machine take it as I carried my drink into the living room and sat down on one of the empire sofas in front of the window. The antique-filled room usually generated a sense of warmth and calm in me, but at the moment it felt cold and alien. My gaze drifted to the lake. In the setting sun, the buildings of Lake Shore Drive cast long shadows onto the water like fingers reaching for the unobtainable.

  Suddenly, the tears I had so stoically stanched all day began to flow. They came with a fury, and I sobbed my heart out, exhausting two embroidered handkerchiefs before turning to a far more practical box of tissues. My best friend in the entire world was gone, the very person I called when I felt as miserable as this. Ethan was always available to meet me for a drink or a cup of coffee and listen patiently to my sorrows. Now I was left to suffer them on my own. It felt like trying to play the piano with one hand.

  The tears finally tapered off. I remained on the sofa and listened as my grandfather clock sounded eight desolate chimes. An oppressive loneliness came over me, and my thoughts drifted to Sean. He worked a short shift on Wednesdays. I picked up the phone and hung up without dialing. Ethan strongly disapproved of my young lover, saying not only was he far beneath my standards but that he was using me. I thought Ethan was really jealous. Whatever the case, I decided it would be disrespectful of Ethan’s memory to call Sean now. Instead, I went back into the library and poured myself another Scotch.