Picture Perfect Corpse

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  Here, not so much.

  I turned to leave.

  “Coward. You can’t even face me.” She called to my back.

  I stood glued to the spot, unable to move toward the stairway or turn back toward her. A variety of conversations played out in my head, but none of them were satisfactory. None of them ended with the revitalization of our friendship. When Mert was done with someone, she was done, period. No room for equivocation.

  Mert did not know that I’d begged Robbie Holmes and Detweiler not to go through with this plan. The idea to entrap Bill had been Johnny’s idea from the start.

  I was blameless.

  But Mert wasn’t willing to listen to me now.

  She was right about one thing: I was a coward. No way was I going to offer myself up as a sacrifice to her anger.

  Instead, I found the strength to walk away.

  fifty-one

  Slunk. That’s what I did.

  I slunk out of the hospital, moved Gracie out of the driver’s seat, and climbed into my car.

  The drive back to Webster Groves seemed to take all afternoon, what with the traffic and my mood. Usually Anya works her thumbs over her phone text-messaging at inhuman speeds, but today, she merely stared out the window at the passing scenery, which admittedly is pretty bleak. Highway 64-40 (as the locals call it) splits as you head toward the river. To the uninitiated, it looks like there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’re in the correct lane. To old hands, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. Either way will bring you into downtown St. Louis, if you survive the heart attack you have when you think you’re in the wrong lane.

  After crossing the Mississippi, Highway 40 rises skyward, on a narrow band of lumpy asphalt. A concrete rail guards your car from plunging into the spaghetti bowl of exits and ramps below. Most of the street lights on this exit don’t work, so you drive in the pitch blackness, bumping along through potholes. Clasping the wheel so hard my knuckles turned white, I focused on getting past this concrete mess. As my BMW neared the gigantic Anheuser Busch sign with its flapping eagle, my grip eased. Of its own accord, my car turned toward Ted Drewes Frozen Custard on Chippewa, even though we’d taken the long way there.

  After parking at the side of the green and yellow building, we took a spot in the line that’s an ongoing part of the Ted Drewes adventure. Gracie’s nose quivered in anticipation. Anya and I discussed what we’d order. I wasn’t keeping a close eye on Gracie.

  “Eeek!”

  Anya and I spun around in time to watch Gracie gently pluck an ice cream cone from the tiny hands of a little girl with pigtails. The child’s mouth fell open as she blinked in astonishment at the dog. Her empty fingers had been parallel to my dog’s mouth, and Gracie has never been one to resist ice cream. Especially when it’s on her level. She must have thought the cone an offering from the gods.

  The child’s parents stood there dumbfounded.

  Pink streamers of frozen custard ran down Gracie’s dewlaps while she happily crunched the cone. The little girl looked from her empty hand to Gracie’s maw and back again, as though trying to decide whether to cry.

  “I am so, so sorry! I should have watched my dog more carefully. May I buy your daughter another?” I pulled my dog close to my side and bent over to scold Gracie. “Bad dog! Bad, bad dog!”

  Gracie didn’t care. After rolling a doleful eye at me, she sank down onto the sidewalk, resting on her belly and grunted. She smelled like strawberries and cream.

  The girl’s parents were wild-eyed, trying to decide exactly how much damage was done. The mom reached for her daughter and pulled her close. The dad puffed out his chest and frowned at me. He raised a warning finger to fuss at me but before he could—

  Uuuu-rp!

  Gracie belched. A sonic boom of a burp that went on and on. When she finished, she sighed and rested her head on her paws.

  Anya burst into laughter. The child’s parents looked at each other, looked at Anya and started to giggle. Seeing her parents so tickled, the little girl joined in. So did customers standing around us, watching the scene. Soon everyone had a smile at Gracie’s expense.

  Or rather at my expense, since I bought a replacement frozen custard cone.

  fifty-two

  Sunday, Day 6—after the shooting

  Our Sunday tradition: Pancake breakfast! Anya and I dug into our stacks, devouring a little bit of flapjack with our syrup. The cats and Gracie enjoyed their Sunday treat, a small spoonful of wet food on top of their kibble.

  I stood at the stove turning leftover batter into thin crepes to be refrigerated when my phone rang. I hadn’t glanced at it since yesterday, leaving the gizmo to vibrate in the bottom of my purse, but now I answered the ring.

  “Your neighbor is taking Mom to a movie. I need to get out for a while. Take me somewhere only the locals go, please?” My sister sounded incredibly cheerful.

  We agreed she’d swing by in an hour. That left me with a lot to do, and Anya still needed to shower and get dressed.

  A part of me wanted to stay home and spend time on the Internet where Cherise Landon and her friends might have left breadcrumbs. Anything that might shed light on their past. I did, however, wrestle with the ethics of trying to befriend any of them through Facebook. Should I try to befriend them under my own name and see where I got? Or should I lie?

  John Henry Schnabel’s warning had worked as a deterrent. I certainly didn’t want to make Detweiler’s situation any worse. Would my actions on Facebook come back to haunt me? After struggling into a pair of elastic waist jeans and pulling over my head a peasant top that a customer had brought me from Mexico, I put on eyeliner, mascara, and blush.

  So Leighton was taking my mother to the movies? I hoped he was merely being nice, and that this wasn’t a sign of real interest on his part. He was a wonderful guy, a man that any woman would be proud to marry, so perhaps I should warn him away from Mom. If she didn’t get the sort of attention she wanted from him, she would turn on him like a rabid dog turns on its owner and take off his arm.

  Not your problem. He’s a big boy.

  With animals in the house, there are always extra chores. Gracie wanted to go outside. Lately she’d taken to excessive—at least in my opinion—sniffing around. Her bathroom visits took forever. The cat litter box needed changing. I put on rubber gloves to protect myself against toxoplasmosis. According to most experts on the Internet, if I changed the litter boxes daily and wore gloves, I ran very little risk of becoming a host to the organism. And I wasn’t taking any chances.

  I ran a dust rag over the furniture, finishing not a moment too soon as my sister pulled her rental car into the drive.

  “What are you planning to do about your own car? It’s back in Arizona, isn’t it? How will you get it here?” I asked as she strolled up my walk.

  “I have a plan.” Her lopsided grin reminded me of when we were kids. I was the serious one. Catherine was the moody one. Amanda was the jokester.

  Waving her hands in front of her face, she pantomimed clearing cobwebs. “I see a road trip in our future. What’d you say, sis?”

  “I am so out of here.”

  “Bad times at Ridgemont High?”

  “You don’t know the half of it. I picked the wrong nine months to quit drinking. If I wasn’t pregnant, I’d be drowning my sorrows.”

  As I took a seat on my over-sized ottoman, she plopped down on my sofa, grabbing Seymour and hauling the gray cat onto her lap while Martin ran and hid. “Here’s a bit of good news. You’re no longer page one news. That attorney—John Henry Snob?—held a press conference this morning. Tomorrow is Brenda Detweiler’s memorial service. John Henry asked the judge for permission for Chad Detweiler to attend. And got it.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Smart dude. He used the occasion to put Chad’s story out there. See, Brenda’s dad keeps positioning
your boyfriend as ‘Chad the cad.’ That’s not helpful to his case. So, Snob-whatever is fighting back.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You should be there, too. At the memorial service, I mean.”

  “Why?”

  “Besides showing support for Chad Detweiler, it sends a clear message that you have nothing to hide. That you are human and mourn her passing. Which you do, I would guess. You always were such a softie. Furthermore, once people get a gander at that divot she plowed in the side of your head, they’ll remember that Brenda nearly killed two people. Right now, the entire focus is on her as a murder victim. At least, that’s what my old boss would have said in response to your question.”

  Amanda worked as executive secretary for the best criminal attorney in Tucson until he retired last year. After her old boss left, Amanda was assigned to a junior partner in the firm, a guy she didn’t think much of. Neither did anyone else. Consequently, the firm had closed that office.

  Tugging at my bottom lip, I considered her advice. “What if the press asks me questions? They came to the store. Robbie managed to get rid of them.”

  “What if they do? You can handle it. You don’t have anything to hide. Let’s brainstorm here. They’ll ask if you and Chad were carrying on behind Brenda’s back. How will you answer?”

  “We did nothing until after she threw him out. As a matter of fact, as a couple we decided he should halt the divorce proceedings long enough for her to go through rehab for the third time, no less, on his insurance.”

  My sister crowed with delight. “Good job. How about this: Is it true she was harassing you? Isn’t it possible Detweiler shot her to protect you and your baby?”

  “Yes, she harassed me. When I was in the hospital where she worked, she threatened me and shook me so hard I had bruises on my arms. But it wouldn’t make sense for Chad to try to protect me after she was wanted for shooting both me and Johnny Chambers, would it? After all, law enforcement officials on both sides of the river wanted to lock her up. She wouldn’t have been much of a threat behind bars.”

  “Excellent. Good job, Kiki.” She squinted as she conjured up another query. “What about this: Sure, it would have been logical for him to wait and let her be locked up. But maybe it was a crime of passion. Hadn’t she pushed him over the edge? And at the end, maybe they fought about the baby—and he lost it.”

  “She didn’t know about me being pregnant.”

  “Not your baby, silly. Brenda’s baby.”

  fifty-three

  “WHAT?” I almost fell on the floor. “Brenda’s baby? What are you talking about?”

  “Snobby spilled the beans at the press conference this morning. Brenda was almost four months pregnant. She had made an appointment at an abortion clinic for later this week.” Amanda grabbed my remote off the coffee table and turned on the television.

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My sister flipped from one channel to the next, looking for local news. At long last, I said, “And it’s Detweiler’s for sure? Chad Detweiler’s baby?”

  Amanda shrugged. “Who knows? Snobby wanted to get a jump on the Illinois D.A. by announcing it. Got his licks in there. Good job of it, too. Now everyone knows that Brenda Detweiler wasn’t the loving, innocent woman her father makes her out to be. She was pregnant, using drugs, and planned to get an abortion. Your attorney did a great job of giving her corpse a black eye.”

  Anya padded in, rubbing her hair dry with a towel. She squatted beside me, concern written large on her face, her T-shirt damp in spots where she hadn’t dried off properly. “You okay, Mom?”

  “Yes, sweetie.” I took her face in both my hands and stared into those steady blue eyes. How I loved her! I had been so careful when I learned I was pregnant with her. Not a sip of wine. Not even an aspirin. No artificial sweeteners.

  And Brenda had wanted to abort her child. That made me sad.

  My daughter was, is, and will always be the most precious part of my life. As I let go of her face, my right hand dropped protectively to my belly. I pledged the same love to my unborn child.

  What had gone wrong with Brenda Detweiler? How could she have done such a thing?

  “You sure nothing’s wrong, Mom? You were shouting.” Anya frowned.

  “Um, you tell her what’s up, Amanda. I can’t. I just can’t.” I went into my bathroom for a chance to collect myself. I pulled my phone from my pocket. The text-message light blinked over and over in rhythm. But I backed away from it as though it could bite me. I could just imagine why Detweiler was calling. He was trying to break the bad news to me before I heard it somewhere else.

  I turned on the shower full blast to muffle the noise. Tears came hot and hard. I pounded my fist against the sink and growled in anger. The sorrow lodged in a primitive part of me, and I gave it full rein.

  Why for once couldn’t I just be happily pregnant? What was it about my lot in life that the sky had to fall on my head when I should be radiant with joy?

  There were no answers, and I didn’t expect any.

  After a while, I washed my face and dried my eyes. No, I wasn’t cried out. Sometime soon, I planned to cry me a river, but not just now. Instead, I determined that come heck or high water, I would enjoy this day. I had a lot to be thankful for. My sister and I were on good terms. My daughter was happy and healthy. Sheila was coming home. My mother was out of my hair. I had a job. I was healthy. What more could I want in life?

  Don’t answer that!

  I resolved to think of my problems as if they were two gigantic icebergs. I named them Murder and Mayhem, referencing Brenda’s killing and Nathan’s death. Armed with an ice pick of resolve, or stubbornness, depending on how you looked at it, I would chip, chip, chip away at the glacier. I would go about my life, ignoring the blocks of ice, except for those occasional opportunities to pick up my chisel and whack away.

  “I can live with that,” I told the woman in the mirror. “I can stay focused. I can do a little each day toward it. But those problems belong to other people. They can’t consume me.”

  There wasn’t a single thing I could do about Brenda Detweiler’s pregnancy. I had to say a prayer for her and her baby and let it go.

  As sick as I felt thinking of them together, the logical side of my brain found it difficult to fault Detweiler for having gone to bed with his wife. Sure the knowledge that Brenda was pregnant left my ego hurting as though I’d been the recipient of a smart slap. But like it or not, Detweiler and Brenda had still been married at the time that this must have happened. In fact, they were still legally husband and wife when she died. And as we all knew, marriage brought with it certain privileges, rights, and habits. Habits hard to break.

  It was my dumb luck that he’d cashed in all his I.O.U.s only a month before he and I spent an evening alone together.

  A new thought: Maybe it wasn’t Chad Detweiler’s baby.

  A man so protective, so concerned about his child’s welfare was unlikely to have unprotected sex with a woman on drugs. More than most, Detweiler knew the problems of infants born to addicts.

  Grabbing my tube of concealer, I covered the dark circles under my eyes. No matter what Brenda had done, she’d paid the ultimate price. Worse yet, a baby had died with her. Had her pregnancy further fueled her rage at me?

  Was it possible that she’d been killed precisely because she was pregnant? Maybe her death had nothing to do with her using drugs. Or her wild behavior. Maybe someone out there didn’t want his name associated with Brenda Detweiler. Didn’t want his relationship with her to be exposed to public scrutiny. Once she’d taken shots at Johnny and me, she’d become big news. Until then, she was just another junkie, another example of a wasted life.

  As I brushed my teeth, I narrowed down the questions that needed answering:

  Who was Brenda’s baby’s father?

  Did the mystery man know she was pregnant?

  Did
he care?

  There was only one person who might be able to provide answers: Detweiler’s sister Patty.

  fifty-four

  The Eugene Field House & St. Louis Toy Museum ranks high on my list as one of our city’s least appreciated treasures.

  “Boy, the name Eugene Field sounds familiar,” said Amanda, as we parked in front of the museum. “But I’m drawing a blank.”

  “Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,” quoted Anya.

  “And Nod is a little head,” I added.

  “And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies that night is a wee one’s trundle-bed!” Amanda did a victory dance. “That’s it, isn’t it? He wrote the children’s poems! And this is where he lived?”

  “Where he grew up,” I said. “In 1850, Field’s parents leased one of twelve units in what was then known as Walsh’s Row, a series of row houses. This one remains. By the way, his father Roswell Field was Dred Scott’s attorney.”

  The Victorian setting of the museum charmed Amanda, as I knew it would. Whatever her faults, our mother raised us to revere history, and this place brought a bygone time to life. The dining room table was set as if expecting guests, the fireplaces reminded us how fortunate we were to have central heating, and when we climbed the stairs to the toy museum, I thought Amanda would expire on the spot from happiness. The collection brought back memories of our own playthings. Since the toys in the collection are rotated, each visit promises a new viewing experience. I couldn’t have planned this one better because there in the center of one of the displays sat Amanda’s all-time favorite doll, Chatty Cathy.

  After the visit, we drove to Laclede’s Landing, a district built on the footprint of the original city of St. Louis, a mere three blocks long. Rain started as we picked our way over the bumpy cobblestones, a reminder of how difficult travel must have been centuries ago. We ducked into Hannegan’s, where Amanda treated my daughter and me to lunch.

  When Anya excused herself to use the restroom, Amanda leaned close to whisper. “How are things between you and Detweiler?”