Dead Folks' blues d-1

by Steven Womack

  “And they will find out, won’t they?” she whispered, so low I could barely hear her.

  “Yes.”

  “This is one of the largest university hospital medical center complexes in this part of the country, and the way gossip travels, you’d think it was a neighborhood bridge group.”

  “Funny how that works, isn’t it?”

  “Not so funny. Not when you think about it,” she sighed. She looked off toward the other two sleeping doctors. “I used to love being a doctor until I came down here and met him. Now, I think he may have ruined it all for me.”

  “Let me get you some more coffee,” I offered.

  She smiled at me, pushed her cup forward on the table. “Thanks. Black, one sugar.”

  I fixed myself a cup as well and brought them back to the table. We both needed help staying awake.

  “I went to medical school down in Memphis, at UT. I wanted to be a chest cutter-thoracic surgeon, you know. The residency here was my perfect chance.

  “Then I met Fletcher. Good old Dr. Fletcher, who decided that his incredibly gifted hands could best be used pawing anything that would stand still for him. When I met him he was very nice to me. Supportive, attentive, friendly. Not at all like he usually was with students. Surgery’s like anything else, you know. It’s not perfect. Mistakes happen, but you correct the mistakes and learn from them.”

  She paused and sipped the coffee. “I’m rambling, I know. I’m too tired to think straight.”

  “It’s okay. Do the best you can,” I said.

  “Conrad Fletcher asked me out on a date about six weeks after we met. At the time, I didn’t even know he was married. I went to dinner with him, but that’s all. I’ve spent my whole adult life preparing to be a doctor. I’m human; I have the same needs as everyone else. What I don’t have is time for relationships. Someday maybe, but not now.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine.”

  “So when it became clear that Fletch the Lech wanted more, I put a stop to it quickly. There was no choice; it had to be that way.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “As you can guess, the situation changed. Suddenly, the minor mistakes were huge screwups. He got cold, angry, resentful that I’d rejected him. Every day, it seemed, he’d find some new reason to criticize me.”

  Jane Collingswood, even in her fatigue and discomfort at relating what could not have been a pleasant story, sat with an air of propriety and dignity. It made me like her even more, which made me even more suspicious. Just the cynic in me, I guess.

  “Eventually, we had a big blowup right in front of a group of fourth-year students. He called me incompetent, threatened to bust me out of the program. Wanted to know if I’d taken my medical training at Auschwitz.”

  “He said that to you?”

  “In front of patients, nurses, and students. And yelled it, not said it. That’s when Albert got into it. Albert’s very sweet, very protective of me. He said no one had to take that kind of abuse and he wasn’t going to watch Fletcher hand it out. He said he’d file a complaint with the dean of the medical school, go all the way to the university president if he had to.”

  “What did Fletcher say?”

  “He said that if Albert didn’t watch himself, he’d wind up a salesman for a pharmaceutical firm just like me.”

  I rubbed the sides of my forehead with my hands. Jeez, Conrad had a real style with people. “When was this?”

  She paused, her lips tightening almost unconsciously. When I sensed her hesitation, I looked up. Her tired eyes were strained, even darker than before. “The day before he was killed.”

  “So the day before Conrad was killed, you and Albert Zitin had a public blowup with him. And in this blowup, everybody wound up threatening everybody. I’m surprised the police haven’t already questioned you.”

  She picked up her coffee cup and drained the last inch. “They have, Mr. Harry,” she said, placing the cup in front of her. “They have. Only no one really knows why it all happened. You’re the first one I’ve told.”

  I looked at her closely. “Are you in love with Albert Zitin?”

  She smiled, looked down almost shyly. “Albert’s very sweet, and he cares deeply for me. In my own way, I care very much for him. But am I in love with him?” She stood up, pushing the chair behind her. “I don’t know.”

  23

  The problem with this whole mess was that every time I felt I was getting closer to Conrad Fletcher’s murderer, I ran into somebody else who got taken off the list. Pretty soon, I was going to get right next to a murderer who didn’t exist. And like dividing by zero, that’s impossible.

  I drove out 21st to Hillsboro Village, then parked in front of the shop that sells relics from the Sixties, with tie-dyed clothing draped throughout the window. I crossed over to the Pancake Pantry.

  The PP was another restaurant that had been around forever, while fancier places came and went weekly. I got a booth down near the kitchen, ordered a woodchopper’s breakfast, more coffee, and settled back with the newspaper.

  The news of Mr. Kennedy’s death was page one on the local section, with a picture of the death car on Seventh Avenue and a reproduction of his Atlanta Falcons team picture off to the side. He had a wife and two boys. Seemed like a perfectly normal middle-class husband and father. Except that he worked for a guy who was the illegal gambling kingpin of the whole west side of town.

  On the jump page, thankfully near the bottom, was a notation that I’d been questioned, but the young reporter fortunately didn’t do his homework well enough to catch the connection between Bubba, me, and Conrad Fletcher’s death. This younger generation! I don’t know what to think about them.

  I ate like a condemned man, if that’s not too grim a simile under the circumstances. I deliberately tried not to think about the murder, hoping that like an artist looking for inspiration, something would burble up out of my subconscious.

  Only it didn’t work that way. I sat there through a pot of coffee and a stack of pancakes that would have intimidated a St. Bernard and came up with nothing. I paid my check and walked out of the restaurant in a fog. It was close to mid-afternoon now, hot as blazes, post-lunch traffic nearing gridlock. I decided to get back to work and, as long as I was in this part of town, drive out and check on Rachel. I hadn’t seen her since the funeral.

  The Ford was hard to start in the heat, probably some kind of vapor lock or something, and I had to sit there grinding the motor for about a minute before it finally caught. I heard a small pop in the back and looked in my rearview mirror just in time to see a puff of blue-black smoke spurting out behind me. That’s all I need, to have this piece of junk die on me. I wished I still had my good car, only by now Lonnie would have repossessed it.

  The stick shift made a grinding noise and shook under my hand as the gears meshed and I pulled out into traffic. It was stop and go, start and stall, all the way out past I- 440 where the traffic thinned out enough to be manageable. I turned onto Golf Club Lane and followed the shaded tree-lined street up to Rachel’s house. The long driveway was empty. I drove up anyway and pulled in behind the house. Conrad’s Jaguar was in the garage, but there was no sign of Rachel’s car.

  I walked around to the back door. There was no sign of movement inside. I figured if I tried the door, I’d set off an alarm. I started to get back in the car and roll off, but I suddenly noticed how quiet the place was, how well-ordered.

  What I wondered more than anything else was how so much misery could exist in a place this beautiful. I leaned against the hood of the car and craned my neck upward. The house and the grounds were like a sanctuary. But they were also filled with tension and even violence.

  I stood there for a couple of minutes, half thinking/half fretting over everything. Then I heard the sound of an approaching car. I walked around the corner of the house just in time to see Rachel turn into the driveway.

  She pulled in just to the left of the Ford, behind the garaged Jag, and st
epped out. Her blond hair was pulled back, a wet sweatband holding it off her forehead. Her skin was still flushed.

  “Must have been some run,” I said as she got out.

  She came around the back of the car, still panting. “There’s a track a couple of miles away. Some days I jog. Others I go down there and run the clock. How are you, Harry?” she said, throwing her arms around my neck and pecking me on the cheek.

  “Fine, Rachel, how are you?”

  “Hot. I haven’t had much chance to talk to you lately.”

  “You were a little preoccupied at the funeral home,” I said, as she dropped her arms from my neck and led me over to the back door. She pulled a ring of keys from her fanny pack. A Chicago Ace lock in a brass plate controlled the burglar alarm; she pulled out the tubular key, worked it into the cylinder, and twisted it to the right. A tiny red light set in the plate went dark. Then she unlocked the deadbolt, stuck another key in the doorknob cylinder, and opened the door.

  A blast of cold air greeted us as we walked into her kitchen. “Oh, that feels good,” she said, pulling the pack off and tossing it onto the kitchen table. “I could use something cold to drink. How about you?”

  “Great,” I said, standing uncomfortably in the center of the kitchen. It was strange being alone with her.

  “What can I get you? Gatorade?”

  Truth was, I had a weakness for the stuff. “You got enough?”

  “Of course. I go through several gallons a week.”

  She poured the green liquid into two tall glasses filled with ice. My throat went numb as I poured it down like a shipwreck survivor.

  “Rachel, how’re you doing?” I asked. There was a pair of tall stools next to the kitchen island. I pulled one up and sat on it.

  She finished off her glass and poured another.

  “Harry,” she said firmly, “I’m doing great. The last few days have been rough. And I’ll have some more rough ones. But I’m determined to get on with my life.”

  “Good,” I said, meaning it. “Listen, I don’t mean to be too personal, but how did Connie leave … well, leave things? How’re you fixed up?”

  “You mean can I make the house payment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For the time being, I’m okay. Eventually, I’ll have to go back to work. But for now, I’m just going to take some time off. Recover, regroup.” She took another long swallow. “Get back into shape,” she added.

  “You look like you’re in great shape,” I said, wishing I hadn’t said it as the words tumbled out of my mouth.

  “Aren’t you sweet, Harry. I appreciate that, I really do.”

  We looked into each other’s face for a moment, one of those awkward moments where both people are thinking to themselves: okay, what do we do next?

  “I think I’d like to stay in touch with you when all this is over,” I said.

  “I’d like that,” she said slowly. “What do you mean, when all this is over?”

  I settled back in the chair. “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to see how you were and all, but I also wanted you to know that I’m certain I’m getting close to finding out who killed Connie. Just a gut feeling.”

  Her eyes went kind of dark for a second. “Harry, I don’t want you to do this. I don’t want to see you get hurt. You … well, you mean too much to me right now.”

  “We’ve been through this, Rach. I’m going to watch myself.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “you’ve done a splendid job so far. I’m not even going to ask who punched you in the schnoz.”

  I instinctively reached up and cupped my hand over my nose. “You can still tell, huh?”

  “I’m a nurse,” she said. “I can identify a swollen nose. Harry, I don’t know what you’re doing, and I’m not sure I want to know. But I want you to stop.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I won’t pay you any more after the money runs out. I can’t. I haven’t got it, and if I did, I wouldn’t spend it on that.”

  “I don’t care about the money.” Jesus, who’s putting these words in my mouth? “This is more important than that.”

  “Is it more important than your health? More important than us?”

  “Us?” I asked. “There’s an us?”

  She walked around the counter, right up to me as I sat there on the stool, and put a hand on my knees. “Of course, there’s an us. You know that, don’t you?”

  She ran her hands up my legs to my waist, then put her arms around me. She leaned over, sweat still glistening on her forehead, and moved her face in close.

  She went out of focus as her lips melted onto mine. She was hot, soft, wet all over. It had been a long time since I’d been kissed like that. It wasn’t what I came here for; at least I didn’t think it was what I came here for. But now that it was happening, I sure as hell wasn’t going to fight it.

  What little semblance of a thought pattern I could muster was fading fast. I wrapped my arms around her and opened my legs on the stool, pulling her as close to me as possible, the inside of my thighs rubbing the outside of her legs. She opened her mouth, pulling mine along with hers, and we were inside each other now, hotter, wetter. I stifled a moan. I don’t know why.

  “It’s burning up in here today,” she sighed, pulling away from me a few inches.

  “Yeah, summer’s not over yet.”

  She unwrapped her arms and took two steps away from me. “I need a shower,” she quipped. “Want to join me?”

  The room was dark when I woke up, the last pale shafts of sunlight straining to hold on against the oncoming night. At first, I couldn’t remember where I was. But when I felt Rachel next to me, it all came back.

  I rolled over in the huge bed. She was on her side, facing away from me. I settled back into the pillow, drifting, languorous, sleepy. The sheets were tangled around us, her back bare, her blond hair splayed out on the pillow. Her torso rose and fell slightly with each deep sleep breath.

  Okay, okay, so I woke up feeling guilty. I’m not going to lie about this; we went at it for hours, like two passionate young college kids having their first real adult affair. Which is what we once were. I haven’t had an afternoon like that in years, and I savored every moment of it.

  Only problem was it was wrong, and I knew it. It was too soon for her, too soon for me. And there was something about doing it right in Conrad’s bed when his corpse hadn’t yet settled into the grave that made the hair on the back of my head stand up.

  Having gone running, Rachel was a workout ahead of me for the day. I could tell from the stillness of her body and the deepness of her breath that she was nowhere near waking up. I eased out of bed and stood looking down at her. I’d loved this woman once. Could I love her again? A lot of time had gone by, a lot of living. I’d loved her as a young man. Did I have it in me to love her as a man standing on the precipice of middle age?

  She was still beautiful, full of life and energy and passion. When we were first lovers, in college, she’d taught me things I never knew. I’d never been with anyone like her. All she had to do was walk into a room and it would light up. Funny, I think about those days and all I can come up with to describe them are cliches. But that’s the way it was then: a wonderful, innocent time that lives in my memory now like my mother’s oatmeal and brown sugar on snowy days, or my father’s standing over the turkey with carving knife in hand on Thanksgiving Day.

  What I needed was another glass of Gatorade. All this passion had left me with a raging thirst.

  I slipped into my underwear and trousers as quietly as possible. I’d spent the afternoon relearning Rachel’s body, but for some reason I wasn’t comfortable strolling around naked in her house. I silently left the bedroom, leaving the door cracked open, and padded barefoot down the hardwood floors of the hail and down the steps to the first floor.

  In the kitchen, I rinsed out the glass I had used earlier and refilled it. I stood at the kitchen door, staring out over the deepening
shadows that filled the backyard. It was so quiet, so idyllic. I wondered for a second if I’d wind up living here someday.

  I took my glass and walked into the living room. The huge window that overlooked the wide expanse of front lawn down to Golf Club Lane could have been a Frederick Church painting, with the glowing blues and reds of a luminist sunset. I stood there watching for a long time in the silence, feeling more peaceful than I’d felt in a long time.

  Then it came back to me: my first impressions of this room. For that matter, of this house. This was a house owned by a surgeon, a professor, an accomplished, privileged, educated man.

  And yet, there was no sign of him anywhere.

  Out of curiosity more than anything else, I began walking from room to room, being careful not to make any noise. I didn’t want to awaken Rachel.

  There were no pictures of Connie in the living room, nor any in the den. No framed diplomas, certificates, testimonials, the trinkets that men and women proud of their achievements show off for everybody else. Hell, three years ago I got a nomination for an award from the Middle Tennessee Press Association, a less than prestigious group if ever there was one. But that nomination letter-and I didn’t even win the award-sat framed above my desk until the day they canned me and threw me out the door.

  But nothing here. I went from room to room, thinking that somewhere in this house, Conrad must have had a study or an office. Maybe it was upstairs. Maybe I should ask Rachel, although I didn’t want to come off as nosy.

  I walked back into the kitchen, poured myself another glass, and sat down at the kitchen table. Rachel’s fanny pack was still on the table where she’d tossed it earlier. The zipper was halfway open, some of the contents hanging out. There was a bandanna, a ring of keys, a radio with wires leading to headphones, and, of all things, a beeper.

  A beeper, I thought, what in heaven’s name would Rachel be doing with a beeper!

  I looked closer. The overheads were off in the kitchen. The outside light was fading fast. It was difficult to see. I didn’t want to go messing around with her stuff, but there it was, the base of it visible just outside the bag: a small black plastic box a little smaller than a cigarette pack, with a belt clip on the flat side.