I thought for a moment. “Why don’t you fix me that drink now? Then I’d like to hear about it.”
She fumbled around under the kitchen cabinet for a minute or so, and came up with a perfectly iced down, exquisite Scotch and soda.
“You remembered,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She was suddenly embarrassed. “Do you not drink Scotch anymore? I can get you something-”
“This is fine,” I said.
“Would you like to go into the den?”
“Sure, as long as you think the old biddies aren’t spying on your house.”
She laughed quietly as she stood up and pushed her chair back under the kitchen table. “It’s past their bedtimes.”
We walked out of the kitchen and down a long carpeted hall. Off to the right, the living room was dark and unoccupied. I could see enough to tell, however, that it was filled with expensive antiques, the kind you can only afford to keep when you’re doing exceptionally well and don’t have children.
“How come you and Connie never had kids?”
She stepped down into the sunken den and turned a knob on the wall. The lights came up. The room was much more relaxed without homicide detectives hanging around. A comfortable couch sat in the middle, with a projection screen TV against the opposite wall. The room was lined with books, an expensive stereo, and shelves of records and CDs.
She sat on the couch and set her drink down on an end table. “Connie didn’t want them,” she said. “Frankly, I never felt the urge either. So I never made an issue of it.”
“What happened between you two?” I asked, settling into the couch a space or so over from her. Instinctively, I knew I wanted to sit next to her, but not too next to her.
“We were married twelve years,” she said after a moment. “A lot can happen in that time. The stresses of professions, especially medicine. Connie worked eighty, a hundred hours a week. We got to where we went days at a time without seeing each other. That puts a strain on a marriage. It’s a brutal system, but you can’t do anything about it. Marriages are a casualty.”
“I can imagine.”
I sipped the drink. She’d made it strong, the Scotch as old as their marriage. It burned down my throat for about three seconds and then exploded into pure pleasure. Good thing I don’t drink much; I’m too prone to enjoy myself at it.
“Then there were the other women.”
“Other women?” I asked, shocked.
Her stare said: oh, you naive and innocent young boy. “Infidelity is another occupational hazard in the medical profession. Think about it. Men and women, intelligent, educated, thrown together in a high-pressure, tense, dramatic environment where lives are lost and saved every day. It’s pure romance. I’m no fool; I knew Conrad was handsome, charming when he wanted to be. And I know nurses, especially the young ones. The ones who go wild over being on an open heart team. Real living on the edge stuff.”
“Rachel,” I asked, cautious, tentative. “Were these just momentary indiscretions, or did Conrad have a steady girlfriend?”
She stared into her vodka and tonic. Her knuckles were white; condensation from the side of the glass leaked through her fingers and ran down her hands like tears.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I know there was more than one. But I don’t know how many, and I don’t know how serious.”
I wanted to comfort her. Her marriage to Conrad may not have been successful, but it was obvious she still cared for him in some way. And it was equally obvious that with her husband’s death, there was a great deal of pain in Rachel Fletcher’s life that would never be resolved.
“Rachel, I’m so sorry,” I said. I scooted over next to her on the couch, set my drink down on the table in front of us, and put my arm across the back of the couch. She stared at me blankly for perhaps thirty seconds, our eyes meeting over the two feet or so separating us. Then she put her glass back down and came into my arms again.
I held her there, her head nestled in the crook of my shoulder for a long time. We were very still, very quiet, with only the ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room to remind us that time was still passing.
“I’d forgotten how good you feel,” she whispered. She brought her arms around me and pulled herself even closer. My arms were around her shoulders, my hands buried in blond hair. Okay, so maybe there was something besides comforting going on here. But it was late at night; it had been a long time for both of us. Who can blame two people for grabbing what comfort they can in the world?
She pulled herself away from me for a beat, then raised her head with a look in her eyes I hadn’t seen since we were in college together, involved with each other, young and inexperienced and passionate and still untouched by the worst surrounding us.
I wanted to kiss her, wanted that more than anything else in the world. But I knew if I kissed her once, I was in over my head.
“This’s not a good idea,” I said. Words never had to work harder to get out of my mouth.
“Why?”
I pulled myself away from her while I still could. “Not now, Rachel. Not with all this going on. Maybe after it’s over, after things settle down.”
“Harry, I’d forgotten what a noble old fool you were.”
I grinned at her. “Noble old fool is right.”
I finished my drink, and we talked a little while longer. Finally, I was exhausted. It was nearly one in the morning, and it had been a very long day.
“Yeah, I need to get up early, too,” she said. “If I’m going to get in my usual three miles before all this craziness starts, I’d better do it early.”
“Oh, you run?” I asked.
“Well, not professionally, you understand. But yeah, I took up running back when I was a med school widow. Oh, God, I can’t believe I said that.”
“Med school widow?”
“That’s what med students’ wives call themselves. We used to joke about it, call Code Blue when our husbands came home. The shock would nearly kill us.”
“Shock would nearly kill you, huh?” I smiled, glad she was able to joke. That was, I thought, a good sign.
“Go on, my brave white knight, who’s suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to protect the one he used to love.” She put her arm around my waist and steered me down the hall.
“Yeah, well. I’m getting paid pretty good for it,” I kidded.
“Cheap at the price. It’s hard to get good help these days.”
“Hey, can I see your living room?” I asked, following an impulse. She stopped, reached in, turned on a light. Rows of framed pictures on a baby grand, furniture so expensive and cultured I didn’t even recognize it, art on the walls that wasn’t bought at the hotel starving artists’ sale. About what I expected.
There were lots of pictures-family, friends-in a cabinet in the corner as well. I stopped, stepped into the room, scanned everything out of curiosity more than anything else.
“I used to jog a lot,” I said, continuing the small talk until I got to the door. “Maybe we’ll go trot a few sometime.”
“That sounds great,” she said. “Call me.”
She stood on tiptoe and pecked me on the lips. A buddy kiss, not the one I was stupid enough to turn down in the other room. But a nice one, anyway.
Rachel felt good. There was still something there between us. I’m a detective; I can tell these things.
As I pulled slowly down the driveway, headed at long last to my grungy little apartment on the other side of town, the thought occurred to me that with all the family pictures, the homey little displays of friends, nephews, nieces, parents, grandparents, pets, and old school pictures, one thing was missing.
I couldn’t remember seeing a single picture of Conrad.
13
It was eleven the next morning before I wandered into the office. There were definite advantages, I’d discovered, to self-employment, despite never knowing where your next paycheck was coming from.
; The swelling in my leg was diminishing. In fact, a decent night’s sleep had left it almost painless. I could make my ankle hurt if I twisted it a certain way, so I made a mental note not to do that. What little residual swelling was left on the back of my head was gone now, and I even managed to cover most of the bandage by combing my hair back over it. I was determined to spend the day as normally as possible.
I made a pot of coffee and settled back to sift through the mail. Nothing exciting, certainly nothing even potentially lucrative. No messages on the answering machine, either. I appreciated the chance to kick back, but I knew Rachel’s money wasn’t going to last forever. Pretty soon, I guessed, I’d be repo’ing cars with Lonnie again.
I drank coffee and stared out the window for the better part of an hour. I was feeling as flat as a two-day-old open can of beer. Outside, through the yellow film that had coagulated on the window from years of interior cigarette smoke and exterior pollution, the traffic drifted by in a never-ending spasmodic flow of belching smoke, color, and noise. The stream was more choked than usual, thanks to some fool in a long black Lincoln stopped in a loading zone down Seventh Avenue from Church. Inconsiderate jerk.
I watched the drama of honking horns and middle fingers while, in the back of my mind, I tried to figure my next move. Every place I’d looked, I’d been stymied. If Bubba Hayes didn’t smoke Connie Fletcher, then who did? And why?
I needed answers. I also needed lunch. I glanced down at my watch, realized it was 11:55, and that I was a twelve-minute walk away from my noon lunch with Walt Quinlan.
Some creative jaywalking and a little luck got me to Satsuma’s on Union Street just in time to join a line of lawyers waiting to get in. Walter was third in the group, and I stepped ahead of a group of high rollers in gray suits to join him.
“Hey, guy, sorry I’m late.”
“No problem, fella,” Walter said, in good spirits. “Today’s white bean soup and turkey supreme. Nothing can ruin that kind of day.”
“You seem unusually happy.”
Walt smiled deeply over the top of his silk paisley tie. “I decided that making partner’s not the world’s most important goal, that’s all.”
This from a lawyer? I thought.
“My God, don’t let these other suits hear you say that,” I said, looking around at the crowd. “They’ll have you committed.”
“Not to worry. The situation is well under control. If things work out as planned, I’m going to be set up. For good …”
“For good? What are you up to?”
The mischievous smile continued. The crowd moved forward four people. We were next in line for a table.
“Okay,” I said after a moment, “forget it.”
He folded his arms in front of him, the black sleeves of his Armani suit wrinkling loosely over his forearms.
“You’re cooking up some kind of deal, aren’t you?” I grinned at him.
The hostess pushed her way through the crowd and looked at us, a sweaty wisp of hair down across her forehead. “Smoking or nonsmoking?”
Walter, as he predicted, was soon slavering over the turkey supreme. I was raking up the white beans over corn-bread, washing it down with iced tea as sweet as pancake syrup.
“Ahh,” Walter sighed, wiping his mouth with a crumpled napkin. “Life in the fast lane.”
I leaned back, even sleepier and flatter than I had been up in the office. I’d hoped lunch would rekindle my pilot light. Instead, all I wanted to do was slide back into bed. I knew, with what little measure of self-discipline I still possessed, that this was impossible.
“Visiting hours start at two today,” I said. “You going?”
Walter looked at me, confused, as if for a moment he couldn’t connect. “Oh, yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll be there after work. When you going over?”
“I guess Rachel’ll be at the funeral home right at two. I’ll show up a little after that. I figure she’ll need moral support.”
Walter leaned back in his chair and ran his tongue over his front teeth. “And you’re just the guy to do that, aren’t you?”
I stared at him for a second. “Maybe. Being around Rachel again could become a habit. When the time’s right.”
His eyes narrowed. “Be careful, buddy. You don’t have any idea what you’re getting into.”
“And you do?”
Walter smiled. “Fair enough. I don’t have any idea what you’re getting into either. But I’d be very careful if I were you.”
“If you were me, you wouldn’t be wearing that suit. How much’d that thing cost you, anyway?”
“If you got to ask …” he began.
“I know,” I interrupted. “Believe me, I know.”
I managed to kill a couple of hours in my office, mostly running around in mental circles. Then I collected the Ford out of the garage and headed out West End. It was just before three, middle of the afternoon, which downtown means the rush hour had already started. It took twenty minutes to make it back out to the triangle where Division splits from Broadway.
Funny, I thought, the funeral home where Conrad Fletcher lay stretched out was only a few blocks up from Bubba Hayes’s stop-and-drop. I kept thinking that of all the people I’d met, or heard about, who didn’t care for Conrad Fletcher, Bubba Hayes was the only one I could imagine killing him. And yet something told me-for the time being-that he wasn’t a murderer. Maybe it was the timbre in his voice; maybe it was that if I didn’t believe him, he’d beat the snot out of me again. Either way, I just had a feeling that while he might know more than he was telling, he hadn’t killed Connie Fletcher.
I brought the Ford to a shuddering, smoking stop in the back parking lot of the funeral home. The last time I’d been here was when a distant uncle of mine died a few years back. As a child, funerals terrified me. As a man, they still do.
I walked in the back door of the funeral home, past a desk where a pasty-faced woman sat behind a telephone desk console that could have been the main switchboard at IBM. Didn’t know funeral homes were such busy places.
This particular funeral home was more like an antebellum mansion than anything else, with a winding staircase in the central foyer that led upstairs to offices, and parlors off to each side of the great hall where the bereaved families gathered in front of the usually open coffins. Funerals, especially Southern funerals, are pageants, deep-fried dramas, ripping passionate catharsis. I’ve been to funerals where fat ladies tore their pearls off and fainted in puddles of sweat, foam spreading across their lips as they spoke in tongues. And food … God, the food. Some poor high school dropout clerk in a 7-Eleven gets blown away at two in the morning by a demented crackhead, and what does the family do? Scream in agony, tear hair out, yell for the death penalty, then chow down like a bunch of linebackers in spring training.
I hoped that wasn’t on the agenda for this one. There was a black signboard with little white letters in front of each parlor, MR. E. GIBSON was in the room off to the right. The front room, to my left, had a sign that read DR. C. FLETCHER.
I walked into the room silently, my footsteps muffled by the thick red carpet. Long blue drapes hung down in front of floor-to-ceiling windows fourteen feet high. Victorian parlor lamps with engraved purple and gray cherubs in the glass shades lit the room dimly. The room was jammed with flowers, and the air was thick and heavy with their perfume.
And I was the only one there. Except Conrad, of course, who was lying face up in an open bronze coffin on the other side of the room. He wasn’t much company, though.
I discreetly glanced at my watch. Visiting hours had started nearly an hour ago. Where was everybody? Even in death, it seemed, people didn’t want to spend too much time around the good doctor.
I backed out of the room and checked out the visitor’s register, opened to the first page on a white stand near the door. There were three names, one a doctor. That was all. Conrad wasn’t going to break any box office records at this pace.
Bac
k inside the parlor, I stepped across the room over to the coffin. Connie lay in the box, wearing a white shirt, striped tie, pressed blue suit. On his left lapel was an American Medical Association pin of some kind. At least I think that’s what it was; the snake wound around the shaft, anyhow.
I’ll say this much for him-he looked a hell of a lot better than he did the last time I saw him. He had some color back, his face had filled out some, probably from the funeral director’s padding, and the ghastly sunken purple under his eyes was gone.
Yeah, he looked a lot better. Not that it mattered.
I backed away from the coffin, thinking how weird it was that nobody else was there. It was still early; most people had to finish the work day. Yeah, that was it. Had to be.
The funeral home had conveniently set up a coffee room in the back of the building so the grieving and the bereaved could grab a cup of hot java and a smoke between hysterics. I went back and discovered why the front parlor was empty: everybody was in here on break.
Rachel sat at a Formica table behind a sweaty can of diet soda, dressed in a severe black dress with a white lace collar. She was staring down at her hands when I came in and didn’t notice me for a second. Mrs. Goddard, Rachel’s protective neighbor, sat to the left. She nudged Rachel when she spotted me.
“Harry,” Rachel sighed. She stood up and crossed in front of the table, her arms held out to me. “I’m so glad you came.”
I took her properly in my arms and gave her the usual shared comforting hugs one gives at a funeral home. After a few seconds, we disengaged and stood back from each other.
“How you holding on?” I asked.
“Okay. Mostly tired. The rough part’s going to be when the family arrives. My parents get in at six tonight. Connie’s are probably at the airport now.”
“That’s going to be tough, isn’t it?”
She smiled gamely, took my arm in hers, and led me out of the coffee room. “I’ll be okay,” she said, pulling me with her down toward the parlor. “I just need a little time.”
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