Caught Dead in Philadelphia

by Gillian Roberts

  “Mr.—Officer—Detective—sir—”

  “Mackenzie. C.K. Mackenzie.”

  I am suspicious of people who hide inside little bundles of letters, but I didn’t think I should mention it at this time. Anyway, this wasn’t a person. This was an inquisitor.

  “Why didn’t you call the police for forty minutes?”

  “I told you. Or somebody.”

  He nodded, a Buddha with gray-brown curls, eyes half-closed. “And?” he prompted.

  “When I knew she was—”

  “Yes?”

  “I panicked. I started to call the police, but then I was afraid that whoever—so I ran. To find help.”

  Retelling it, feeling the panic rise again, made me stand up and walk around. But my place isn’t large enough for serious pacing. I stopped by the front window. Outside its colonial panes, in the dusk and rain, three figures waited. For what? I turned back to Mackenzie and caught him in midyawn.

  “’Scuse me,” he said. “You were searching for a phone?”

  “It took a long time. Everybody was still at work. Then I found Mrs. Steinman. I was leaving her door, too, because nobody answered. But she’s on a walker, so it took her a while. Then I had to explain without scaring her, and she’s hard of hearing, so it was slow. And even then, she didn’t want to let me in.”

  “But you did eventually phone from the Steinman house.”

  “Danzig. It’s the Danzigs’ house. Mrs. Steinman is Elaine Danzig’s mother. Lives with them ever since she broke her hip. That was about seven months ago.”

  His eyes were closing all the way.

  “Sorry. Well. I guess I’ve said it all. That’s where I called, and I waited there for the police to arrive. Then we came here, and that’s it.”

  He didn’t say anything, just slowly heaved himself out of the chair and meandered around. “Yay-uss,” he began, “but not quite all of it.” He reached the kitchen area. “Why did you then try to clean things away in here?” He stared at me from behind the counter-divider.

  My cheeks heated up. In ninth grade, somebody told me I would lose my blush when I lost my virginity. Somebody lied.

  “Miss Peppah,” he insisted. “Why?” I shrugged.

  He walked over to me. “We’re talkin’ about the scene of a crime.”

  “It was a reflex,” I whispered.

  All he did was lift an eyebrow, but I felt as if he’d tightened the screws on the rack. “It’s my mother, you see. There was cat food and sugar and coffee, and there were police all over the place, and a photographer, a camera, for God’s sake….”

  Even I was having trouble believing I’d been such a complete fool as to whip out a broom while a battalion of men were painstakingly collecting evidence. “Listen,” I said, with forced casualness, “I didn’t want it seen, you know?”

  “Evidence of a struggle?” he murmured. “What made you wait so long, though? I mean before you left the house, you could have—”

  “No struggle! It was just the camera, that police photographer.” My cheeks were scalding. I took a deep breath and plunged into humiliating honesty. “I regressed. Listen, when I was a kid, my mother convinced me that if I ever wore torn underwear and I was in an accident, the surgeons wouldn’t bother saving me, and the rest of the family would die of shame. This afternoon, well, it seemed very important to tidy up.”

  “Gotcha,” he said, and he actually grinned, showing a lot of very white teeth. He walked away a pace or two. “You smoke?” he asked abruptly.

  “Well, actually, I haven’t yet today, but sure, I’d love one.” I could always stop another, less stressful day.

  But the only thing he pulled out was a ratty brown notebook. “Ashtray’s full,” he said. “All one brand.”

  “Liza smoked,” I said.

  He nodded. “Anything missing from the house?”

  “Nothing I can see. Except my cat. I told the others—I can’t find him. I think he got out when whoever…” I pushed the image away.

  “Give it some time. Cats come back,” he said. “Nothing else, though?”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t checked everywhere yet. The others told me not to touch anything.”

  “Proceed to touch. Doesn’t look like a robbery, anyway. The obvious stuff is still here—TV, stereo. All neat and tidy. Tell your mother I said so.”

  We methodically checked through the cupboards and drawers on the first floor. All I can say is that having your drawers examined is as embarrassing as it sounds, and deserves advance warning. I felt especially mortified when my jelly-jar drinking glasses were exposed to his silent scrutiny.

  Of course, nothing was missing. Even thieves have standards.

  Then we faced the staircase. I knew the other men had checked the house, but I couldn’t lose the feeling that something still lurked behind a drape, inside a closet. I followed Mackenzie up the steps reluctantly.

  At the bedroom door, Mackenzie lifted one eyebrow again.

  I shook my head. “I left it that way, unmade,” I said. I would have again explained, unnecessarily, about Liza’s arrival, except I couldn’t bear thinking her name, let alone saying it. “What would anybody want to steal up here?” I asked. “I don’t have furs.”

  “Tape recorders? Jewelry?”

  I pawed through the leather box on my dresser. Would even a drug-crazed lunatic covet Jimmy Petrus’s junior varsity basketball charm? Or my National Honor Society pin? I was heavy on sentiment, low on cash value.

  “There’s nothing on the third floor worth taking,” I said, “unless somebody’s desperate for lesson plans.” But I was glad he insisted on inspecting it, and I followed him up and stood back as he surveyed my messy desk in one of the two small rooms at the top. He picked up an ancient blurry stencil and read:

  “‘Sad is my spirit and sore it grieves me

  To tell to any the trouble and shame

  That Grendel hath brought me with bitter hate….’”

  “Beowulf,” he said, putting the sheet down. His back was toward me, but I nodded. “Used to love that poem. Probably directed me toward police work, although his methodology was somewhat primitive, ripping people’s arms off and such. But effective. Stopped a crime wave.” He pronounced the word “crahm” and gave it a certain charm.

  He looked up at the wall. “How’s that part go now? Ah, yes:

  “‘But always the mead hall, the morning after

  The splendid building, was blood bespattered:

  Daylight dawned on the drippings of swords….’”

  “Great stuff,” he added, turning to me. He grinned and I tried, a second too late, to look nonchalant about his literacy.

  “Surprised because I’m Southern, or because I’m a cop?” he asked, always yawning through his words. “Which stereotype got ya?”

  I clamped my mouth shut.

  He grinned. “Ah have known some great English teachers,” he said softly, ushering me out of the room.

  The last room is my storehouse. It has a folded rollaway cot and cartons full of clothing I’m sure will come back into style. It also had something making noise inside the closet.

  I strangled my scream.

  Mackenzie stood beside the closet door and whipped it open.

  One nervous cat scampered out.

  “Macavity! I’ve been so worried!” I scooped him into my arms. “He’s old,” I explained, stroking his salt-and-pepper fur. “Must be really upset, poor thing. I’ll bet he was closed in by the police who were inspecting the room. Accidentally,” I added for Mackenzie’s sake.

  “Macavity?” the detective said, poking around the cartons. “So you’ve seen Cats, too.”

  “No. I, well, yes, but I named him before that.” I didn’t know why I felt compelled to continue, but I did. “From the poems.” I wasn’t going to let an arrogant cop who remembered Beowulf question my credentials.

  “Ah,” he said sympathetically. “And then came the hit show, and now ever’body knows about T. S. Eliot�
�s mystery cat, and your pet’s name doesn’t prove you’re better read than anybody else.” He shook his head. “Might as well put the animal to sleep, don’t you think?”

  I watched the smart-ass cop turn out the light to the storeroom, and I followed him down the stairs. At the bottom, he looked around. “So it wasn’t robbery,” he said. “Never thought it was. She was wearing a nifty diamond ring, if you recall.”

  I didn’t care. I suddenly felt ready to collapse. Even my ears drooped.

  “No sign of struggle, if your floor-cleaning story is true. Just the hit on that fireplace stone. Pretty forceful one, I’d say. The lab reports will tell us if the hair and blood are hers.” I shuddered. He ignored me and continued his soliloquy. “So. What do we have?” he asked himself.

  “Mackenzie? I want to leave now, please? I have to get away from here.”

  He watched me for a moment. “Your fastidious mama, is she nearby?”

  “Florida. I have a sister in Gladwyne, though.”

  “Fine. But first tell me about Liza Nichols.” He was better at poetry than compassion.

  “I worked with her. I don’t know her.”

  “But she came callin’ at 8:00 A.M. on a rainy Monday?”

  “It surprised me, too. But it seemed accidental—she was near here; it was miserable out, so she came. Anyway, I didn’t have time to probe reasons. I had to get to school.”

  “Why didn’t she?”

  “She was an actress trying to put together a stake so she could move to New York. So she moved back in with her mother, did modeling, and taught drama an hour or two a day.”

  “New York? But you told that first policeman she was engaged to Hayden Cole.”

  “Now she is. She only met him in February. She changed plans, but she was finishing out her contract at school and still doing a little modeling.”

  “She was engaged to Cole after two months?”

  “Whirlwind courtship. They were supposed to be married three weeks from now. Right before the May primary. Listen, Mackenzie, I’m wiped out. Let me pack and call my sister, okay?”

  “Soon,” he said. “She from old money, like the Coles?”

  I shook my head. “No money.” I shuffled over to the staircase and leaned against the newel post. “I feel awful.”

  He looked at me sternly.

  Now I felt guilty, too. How could I complain about my weariness, about how dreadful I felt when Liza…I clamped down again to stop the thick, dizzy terror that her memory provoked. I could discuss her dispassionately, but I couldn’t think about her.

  “Background,” he said.

  “I don’t know what happened to her father. But her mother worked as a baby-sitter, a sort of nanny, since Liza was little. That’s all I know. I was in Liza’s house only once, when I dropped her off after school. Neither she nor her mother blurted out their life stories during that visit. Can I call my sister now?”

  “Strange match,” he said. “You know the Coles?”

  I know defeat. I sat down on the bottom step, yawned without covering my mouth, and shook my head.

  “Know about them, then?”

  I shrugged.

  “Can you be a little more informative, Miss Peppah?” His drawl increased with his annoyance. “I’m not from these parts, y’know.”

  “I surmised. That’s not your basic Philadelphia accent.”

  “Good. All of you sound like you have sinus problems.”

  “We do.”

  “So I’d ’preciate background. Anything. Raymond, my partner, is a native Philadelphian, but he claims to know nothing about what he calls ‘those people.’”

  I took a deep breath and tried to remember everything Liza had ever told me. The newspapers were more discreet about the Coles, playing down their baronial splendors. “I don’t know about ‘those people,’ either. They were snatching up prime U.S. real estate while my ancestors were still convinced the earth was flat. His mother’s old New England shipping money. And his father’s family goes back before the Civil War, maybe the Revolution. Coles had land grants. Coles built our banks and schools. Coles helped finance the Main Line, the real main line of the railroad. And then they settled on the right side of the tracks and counted their money. I guess when there was enough, they decided to start running the state. Now, is that enough?”

  “You were at their house for the engagement party. Where is it? Ray’s lookin’ it up, but—”

  “I hope not in the phone book, where it will not be. It’s in Ardmore, up a winding road on top of a hill. Has some cutesy name, not a number out front. You can’t miss it. It sprawls all over a hilltop. Has the columns of tall trees for the carriages to pass through. An entry hall twice the size of this house. Lovely, as long as you have a dozen servants to tidy up. They do. That’s all I know. They hate publicity, anything flashy, and money that’s inadequate or of the wrong vintage. And you could have gotten everything I said out of Who’s Who.”

  “Then tell me what I can’t get from a book.”

  I was learning about Southern men. Their sharp edges lay buried under those sweet blurred consonants. Until they cut you.

  “Come on, Miss Pepper. You’ve had a shock, but you’re strong. Tell me what Cole is like.”

  “I met him only that once, at the party. He was very genial. Very cordial.”

  “And? You have some impression of him?”

  “It’s probably wrong, or unfair. I was overwhelmed by the scale of the place. Maybe that’s why his kindness offended me. I felt he was granting me an audience, that I wasn’t real to him. I was one of his fiancée’s friends, part of a package that would be dropped after the wedding. Or the election.”

  “Did he do anything in particular to make you feel that way?”

  I shook my head. “He did only the right things. Maybe that’s what was wrong. And I have to say, I don’t think somebody who makes you feel that way—ordinary, unimportant—is much of a political candidate. I think at heart he’s sorry this is a democracy.”

  Mackenzie raked his fingers through his hair. It bounced back to its original crinkles and twists. “Do you know what was bothering Liza Nichols?”

  “No. Didn’t I already tell you that? I don’t even know if anything really was. She was an actress. She loved to work over an audience for the sport of it.”

  “You didn’t like her much, did you?”

  “Please. I’m so tired. I don’t know that answer.”

  “That’s all, then.” He gestured toward the street. “The media’s still out there, cultivatin’ pneumonia. I’ll get you through. I’ll even drive you to that parking lot of yours. Raymond should be back at the car by now. Go get your toothbrush.”

  I started up the stairs.

  “Call these Trinity houses, don’t they?” he said, and I nodded. “Yeah, Raymond told me. Three little floors—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Although that doesn’t make much sense. Raymond says these used to be servants’ quarters. His folks lived near here. Then the city did some urban removal—”

  “Renewal.”

  “Not for Raymond’s family. Houses were painted and prettied and priced out. And in came people like you.”

  “Just what does that mean? You don’t know what I’m like.”

  He grinned and shrugged. “Observations at the scene of the crahm. Want to hear?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He stood up and walked around as he spoke, like a lawyer presenting his case to the jury. “This house is a perch, not a nest. A good address—not a real flighty single’s place—not a desperate place, you know? But still portable. Open to changes of heart and chance.” He grinned up at me. The little pilot light in my cheeks ignited.

  “Exhibit one, the suede chair. The single, irresistible long-term investment. Exhibit two, jelly jars for solitary juice drinking versus cut crystal for guests. The reupholstered sofa. Back to Granny’s attic someday, without a twinge. But, over it, decent graphics that can be packed in a flash. Exhibit three, t
he practical, but not overdone bedroom. No head board. Just handsome linens and a frame—again, movable, adjustable. And not that settled-in spinster kind who lives in the bedroom. Desk is somewhere else, and I didn’ see evidence that you’d had Sunday night dinner up there in bed, either. Exhibit four—you’ve got a coffee bean grinder in the cupboard, and beans in the freezer, but you were drinkin’ and spillin’ instant this mornin’. Beans are contingency fare. Like the good wine in the pantry versus the jug wine in the fridge. So…tenant is happy enough, but worried about gettin’ too happy all on her own, so she’s ready, but not particularly willing, to cut and run. Because she’s also hoping some adventure is going to happen upon her, make things change. Fairly mixed-up type. Fairly typical. Am I right? Don’t answer. I know I am.”

  There was enough truth, and arrogance, in what he’d said to make me furious.

  “Yay-uss,” he said. “Concern for appearance, to be sure, although you don’t like thinkin’ you care about savin’ face. But good address, good chair, good crystal, good wine. And lots else is makin’ do. Now go pack,” he said paternally. “I’ll bet the suitcase is a good one. That can move with you. Wherever. Oh, yay-uss. Write down your sister’s address. And you’ll be at school tomorrow, won’t you?”

  “Mackenzie,” I said slowly, “why do you need to know my future locales? I was hoping this meeting, however sweet, would be our last.”

  “Come on now, Amanda Pepper. Don’t take it personally. On an off day, when you aren’t scanning Beowulf, don’t you ever sneak in a whodunit? Don’t you know standard cop prose? The old ‘don’t leave town without notifying me’ number?” He turned and looked out the dark window facing the narrow street.

  I marched up to my not-exactly-permanent bedroom, suddenly empathizing with people who called cops “pigs.”

  Three