Dead Folks' blues d-1

by Steven Womack

  The peephole went bright again; then there was a fumbling with the doorknob. The door cracked a fraction, held by one of those flimsy security chains that could be popped by a loud belch. I pulled out my license and badge.

  “Ms. Gwynn, I’m Detective Harry Denton. I’d like to ask you a few questions, please, if I may.”

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I thought. Spellman’s going to chew my butt ragged if he hears about this.

  The half-hidden face behind the door studied the license, the badge, my picture. “You got a search warrant?” she asked.

  Search warrant? What the hell has she got in there?

  “No, ma’am,” I said, giving her the most insipid smile I could muster. “There’s no need for a search warrant. I just want to ask a few questions, and it won’t take very long.”

  Her hair was coal-black, straight, cut short and sprayed. She was a little shorter than I remembered, but then I’d only seen her from a distance. In fact, I wasn’t even certain she was the woman in the hallway. She stared at me through the crack, then pushed the door closed. I heard the clicking of the chain being unlatched, then the doorknob turning. She opened the door, stood there for a moment, and I knew it was her.

  LeAnn looked at me strangely, as if she were trying to place me as well, which was something I didn’t want her to do. Whatever misconceptions she was operating under, I wanted her to continue under them for a while longer. Time to distract her.

  “Ms. Gwynn, I know it’s a little late to be making a visit, but when you’re investigating a murder, especially a murder of someone so prominent, you can’t delay on anything. May I come in?”

  “Sure,” she said, tense and brittle. She turned and held the door open for me. I walked in and looked around, then stepped aside as she closed the door and led me toward the couch.

  The place was a mismatched hodgepodge of rental furniture, bargains that she’d moved from one place to another over the years, odds and ends she’d picked up from friends, family, whoever had bought new and needed to hand me down the old.

  LeAnn Gwynn was a surprise as well. Like I said, I’d never seen her up close. But if Conrad Fletcher was having a sleazy, disgusting, lurid affair with a hot, passionate, lusty nymphomaniac nurse-which was the scenario I’d always assumed-then LeAnn Gwynn would have been the last person I’d have cast in the role. In fact, she wouldn’t have even made the callbacks.

  To begin with, she was attractive, but in a plainspoken, solid way. No randiness, no overwhelming sexual energy radiated from this woman. No surgically enhanced body parts. And she certainly didn’t have the kind of monied, sophisticated tastes that one assumed would appeal to Conrad Fletcher. In fact, unless this apartment was some kind of front she was using to mislead everybody, LeAnn Gwynn didn’t have much in the way of taste at all.

  She wore jeans and an untucked man’s white shirt that hung down to midthigh, sort of early Patty Duke show. I wondered if the shirt belonged to Conrad, but decided to hold off on that one. She walked over to the radio-one of those late Fifties or early Sixties hi-fi floor models-and turned down the puke rock, thank God. Then she sat in the easy chair across from me, the one with lace doilies barely covering worn fabric.

  “So, what can I do for you, Lieutenant, Sergeant-?”

  “No, please, I’m just a detective. Detective Denton.”

  She smiled uncomfortably through eyeglasses that were probably ten years old, the kind with the heavy plastic frames that today were unfashionable, if not downright geeky.

  “Okay, Detective Denton, what can I do for you?”

  I pulled out the pad and clicked my ballpoint, then held the two in position in front of me. “I’m investigating the death of Dr. Conrad Fletcher. I understand you knew the doctor.” A two-beat pause. “How well did you know Dr. Fletcher?”

  She crossed her legs in front of me, a worn sandal tipping forward and dangling off the end of her foot. I could feel her fear, could tell that her calm was all surface and barely that. Finally, she sighed, as if she was relieved to get on with it.

  “C’mon, Mr. Denton, if you didn’t know the answer to that already, you wouldn’t be here.”

  Some color returned to her face. I saw now that her complexion was almost olive, her eyes nearly as black as her hair. When her face relaxed, she was lovely in a sort of different way, but there were the beginnings of crow’s feet around her eyes and even the faintest trace of wrinkle around her mouth. She was older than she looked.

  I laid down the pen and notepad. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” I said, “you want to tell me about it?”

  “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but most of it isn’t true.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what is true,” I suggested, my voice lowering to its warm and comforting why-don’t-we-be-friends? level.

  She leaned back, almost as if to relax. “Yes, of course, I’d been seeing Conrad. And I’m sure all those obnoxious gigglers at the hospital were just delighted to dish the dirt. But it really was different with us.”

  “Different? How?”

  “I met Conrad Fletcher about a year ago. I did a rotation in I.C.U. We met there. He was, as I’m sure everyone’s told you, demanding, insensitive, tactless, not an easy man to like. Unfortunately, I always seem to wind up with those men. My first husband, for instance.”

  “And?”

  She sighed again, a noise that emerged somewhere between this side of sadness and the other side of despair. Funny, I’d shown up here convinced I was going to be dealing with a sleazoid vamp; what I had, instead, was someone who came off as a real nice person who’d been just another victim.

  “I’ve got a boy and girl, Mr. Denton, and an ex-husband who hasn’t made a child support payment since the first month after the divorce came through. I don’t even know where he is. The kids live with my mother in Alabama. My son’s got muscular dystrophy. I went back into nursing because I had to, but I couldn’t work the hours I do and still raise my kids right. Every spare nickel goes for their schooling and his medical expenses. Which explains why I live …” She motioned with her hands. “Here.”

  I was starting to feel like a damned fine imitation of a slimeball myself.

  “I get up to see the kids about every other weekend. I don’t smoke, drink rarely, don’t do drugs, and don’t indiscriminately date married men.”

  I leaned forward, put my elbows on my knees, trying to relax her as much as possible with my slim mastery of body language. “So how did you meet Conrad?”

  “We met in I.C.U. He was doing his usual-the ranting and raving, ordering everyone about, making a jerk of himself. He also managed to offend every woman on staff. There was a doctor’s lounge on the same floor as I.C.U. One evening, we had a question about one of Conrad’s post-surgical patients, and somebody mentioned he was still on the floor. None of the other nurses were willing to go with him alone into the doctor’s lounge. It was not so much that they were afraid; it was more like they didn’t want to get dirty.”

  “Yeah, I understand,” I said. And I did.

  “I volunteered. I figured I was the last person he’d try to hit on. Anyway, I went into the doctor’s lounge. It was late at night, close to midnight, near shift rotation. We were all wondering why he was still on the floor, why he didn’t go home.”

  She stood up nervously and walked around the back of the chair. I followed her with my eyes, seeing something in her and in my mental portrait of Conrad that I’d never seen before.

  “He had his back to the door, sitting in a conference room chair, his elbows propped on the armrests. I walked in, cleared my throat, trying to get his attention. He never moved. He just sat there, staring out the window over the campus. It was very dark. The campus is dimly lit at night. He was just staring.”

  She gazed off herself for a moment, remembering what she’d seen that night. “I walked around in front of him,” she continued, “and stood there looking down at him. His eyes were locked in front of him, as if h
e were in a trance. And he was crying, tears just running down his face.”

  Conrad Fletcher, I thought, crying!

  “But he was real quiet,” she went on. “No sobbing, no sniffling. Not a sound. Just tears. Anyway, I knelt down in front of him and asked him if he was okay. I thought maybe he was having a stroke. He looked at me for a long time without answering. Then he reached out and took my hand. I flinched. I mean, I thought for a second that he was just up to his old tricks or something. But he was just looking for some kind of human contact, I think. He was very gentle, very sweet. He never said a word at first, just held my hand. Then he said ‘I’m sorry.’ And he shook his head and kind of brought himself to. I asked him about his patient, and he gave me some instructions and that was the end of it. For then …”

  “What happened after that?”

  “I rotated off nights. I didn’t see him for several days. Then I went back on late, and one night I saw him in the hall. We were alone. He walked up to me, started talking. I thought again maybe he was hitting on me, but to tell you the truth, I’m just not the kind of woman who gets hit on very often.”

  Only because most men have no taste, I thought.

  “He started talking to me, telling me about his marriage. Asking me about myself. Once he dropped his act, let go of all the yelling and screaming and power stuff, he could be quite vulnerable and very charming. He wasn’t a happy man. I actually felt sorry for him. That’s funny, isn’t it? Me feeling sorry for somebody. He asked me out for coffee when the shift ended. Coffee, mind you, not drinks. We went in separate cars, met at an all-night restaurant. He was very proper. Never got out of line. We talked a couple of hours. I asked him back here for a nightcap. He spent the night.”

  She turned away from me, clearly embarrassed. This part, I could see, was tough for her. She paced back and forth for a few steps, then turned back to me.

  “I don’t know why I did it. I’d never done anything like that before. And heaven knows, my judgment in men has never been brilliant. But no man had ever talked with me like that before. Lots of men have talked to me. He’s the only one I can ever recall talking with me. People didn’t see that in him, because he would never let them see it, but he could be very sweet. What made it easier for him with me is that I caught him alone that first night, in the doctor’s lounge, in a weak moment. It’s no secret that doctors are egomaniacs and very much into power issues. Conrad was no exception. But for some reason, he let go of that around me.”

  To say that I’d never expected this was like saying Saddam Hussein never thought anybody’d kick his butt out of Kuwait. Either LeAnn Gwynn was one hell of a liar, or I’d finally found somebody who had some fondness for the late, great Doc Fletcher. Could it be that he was human?

  “So were you getting serious?” I asked.

  She raised her head and focused on some invisible point beyond me. “I honestly can’t say I know. Toward the end, we saw each other frequently. But I never asked him about his wife. Never mentioned anything permanent. I don’t even know if I was in love with him, or he with me. We talked, spent time together. And yes, Mr. Denton, we had one dynamite time together in bed.”

  I couldn’t help but grin a bit. I’d asked for honesty from her; by God, I’d gotten it.

  “Why do you think he kept coming around?”

  “That’s easy. I don’t know what I gave him. Whatever it was, though, he wasn’t getting it at home.”

  “Where were you the night he was killed?”

  LeAnn Gwynn’s eyes widened as she looked at me. I saw fear in her.

  “Who are you?”

  “Ms. Gwynn, I told you, I’m-”

  “No,” she said. “I remember you now. Damn it, I remember you now! You were in the hall that night. I thought I’d seen you before!”

  “LeAnn, I-”

  “Who are you?” she yelled. “You said you were the police!”

  “No, I said I was a detective.”

  My chest went into overdrive. Control of the situation was slipping away fast.

  “You’re not with the police?”

  “I’ve been hired by the family to-”

  “She hired you! I don’t believe that lying bitch. She hired you to come after me, to pin Conrad’s murder on me.” Tears welled up in her eyes. Whatever tenderness she felt for Conrad was buried by her anger at me. Her fear was gone as well; now she was just plain mad. “You get out of here,” she ordered, stalking to the door. “And you tell her that if she thinks she can dump this on me, she’s in for a hell of a fight!”

  LeAnn twisted the knob and yanked the door open before I had a chance to stop her. Not that I would have; I’d pressed my luck enough for one evening.

  “Ms. Gwynn, I’m just trying to sort out what happened to Fletcher.”

  She grabbed my arm, spun me around, and planted a hand in my back. Then she shoved.

  I turned around out in the hallway. There was a look on LeAnn ‘s face I hadn’t seen before, a determined set to her jaw.

  “You tell Rachel Fletcher I didn’t kill her husband,” she said. “I had to spank him a few times when he got naughty, but I didn’t kill him.”

  Then she slammed the door in my face.

  17

  Interstate 65 heading back into town was as crowded as. Friday afternoon rush hour. Where in hell does all this traffic come from? I remember when this whole city shut down at ten. Then again, I remember when nobody had color television.

  So somebody loved Conrad Fletcher. LeAnn Gwynn claimed she didn’t know whether she was in love with him or not, but I knew love when I saw it. Something told me I’d just met the only person on earth who was going to miss Connie.

  It was late; I ought to go home and grab some sack time. But my conversation with LeAnn Gwynn had been a profoundly disturbing one. I’d learned as a newspaper reporter that the worst way to chase down a story is begin with a preconceived notion of how the story ought to be. But I also knew that everybody, no matter how hot a reporter or investigator, does. It’s as natural as looking outside, seeing dark clouds, and grabbing your umbrella. You see clouds; you figure it’s going to rain.

  Only sometimes it doesn’t rain. Sometimes the sun breaks through and illuminates the landscape in ways you’ve never seen before. That’s how I felt now. The lay of the land was different.

  Not that I knew what to do about it. But all my assumptions were called into question.

  First, there was a side to Connie I hadn’t seen. No matter how he appeared to other people, at least one person saw him as gentle and vulnerable and-how did she put it?-charming.

  Second, and this was the most subtle yet disturbing revelation: I’d assumed Conrad Fletcher was running around at night, sleeping with any nurse who’d have him, laying bets with Bubba Hayes, partying down like a real lech. Now it turned out that what he may have been doing was sitting alone in dark hospital rooms with silent tears pouring down his face.

  Why?

  There was only one person who could answer that question. I hoped that she was still awake. I cut right, a little too closely to the long black limo behind me and to my right, and swerved to hit the entrance ramp to the Four-Forty Parkway. I heard the blast of a horn as I cut the guy off and realized he was veering to follow me.

  Great, I thought, as much as I’ve got on my mind, and I get into a traffic hassle with somebody. This is a bad town for that. In New York City, drivers honk at each other as a way of communicating. Down here, it’s an invitation to a gunfight. And I wasn’t in the mood.

  I laid down on the Ford, valves clattering away like Flamenco dancers under the hood, and pulled away. Around seventy, I checked the rearview mirror and saw that he’d dropped back. Guess the guy figured it wasn’t worth it. He was right.

  I greased onto the exit chute for Hillsboro Road, squealed tires through the horseshoe turn, and melted into the traffic. Up ahead of me, the exclusive Green Hills homes sat darkened, quiet, well-tended, well-guarded.

  I turne
d right onto Golf Club Lane and slowed. A couple of blocks up, I slowed even further to make the turn onto Rachel’s driveway. The house was mostly dark, except for a few lights in the upper right corner of the house that were still burning.

  I turned into the driveway and geared down to pull the slight hill. I was halfway up the driveway when I spotted it, slammed on the brakes quickly, and doused the headlights.

  There was another car in the driveway. One I hadn’t seen before: silver, looked foreign. Maybe a BMW, perhaps a Mercedes. Too dark to tell. I could just see the tail end of it poking out of the shadow cast across the backyard by the house. I couldn’t see much of it, or read the license plate, but I knew I hadn’t seen it there before.

  Rachel had company. I looked at my watch: 10:15. I sat there for a second, wondering if I should go on up and knock on the door. Probably just a neighbor. But what if it wasn’t?

  No matter what, I hadn’t called first. And it would be unspeakably intrusive, I thought, to drop in uninvited this time of night. That just isn’t done in polite society. Besides, it was probably either her parents or Conrad’s. They might not appreciate an unknown man dropping in on the widow unexpectedly. Might give them the wrong idea.

  After all, Conrad’s funeral was tomorrow. Out of respect, I ought to wait at least another twenty-four hours before moving in.

  What followed was a restless night, full of dreams that shot at me like movie clips, disjointed faces: Conrad lying under me again, the police, the bash on my head, lying on a hospital floor with the young blond nurse kneeling over me, only this time the nurse was Rachel, then she was LeAnn Gwynn, and then finally, Marsha Helms. I woke from the dream when I was lying on an autopsy table with Marsha standing over me.

  I came to in a cold sweat, the sheet twisted around me in knots, the chattering window unit straining to blow cold air on me in my attic apartment. I focused on the clock and discovered it was a little past seven. They were burying Conrad today, in less than seven hours, and I didn’t even have a handle on who he was. I untangled myself from the sheets and stumbled over to the air conditioner. On especially humid, close nights, the damn thing tends to freeze up. I turned it off and pulled off the plastic cover; it was frosted over in white.