Caught Dead in Philadelphia

by Gillian Roberts

  Mackenzie nodded, and she swished off. “Pepper?” he said, clearing his throat. “I, er, spent the morning going over Cole’s schedule for last Monday again.” He became engrossed in a cloud formation above us.

  I couldn’t catch his eye.

  “Hey there, big fellow,” I finally said. “Was that by any chance an apology? Are you suggesting that you’re not a full-time, supercilious, smug, self-satisfied—”

  “I’m sayin’ I’m sorry. What are you sayin’?”

  “That I accept your apology.” I was sufficiently touched to decide to tell him about Eddie without fanfare. “Listen, this morning, I—”

  “Shh,” he said, gesturing toward the grave. “They’re starting.”

  The circle made room for me, although I didn’t want it. I stared at Liza’s dark coffin, heard the minister’s ritualized words. This time, it didn’t matter what he said. The coffin, the raw oblong cut in the earth, were eloquent in their silence.

  And then, at some point, it was over and Mackenzie, with the gentlest of touches, guided me back to his car.

  I couldn’t speak. There seemed nothing worth saying, nothing comparable to the lesson just learned.

  Mackenzie drove until he found a diner near the edge of the city.

  “Coffee?” he asked, and I shrugged, then nodded.

  When the steamy mugs arrived, when the clatter of dishes and murmur of voices pushed me back into the living, I finally found my voice again. “It got to me,” I said.

  He nodded, and I knew then that it got to him, too, over and over again.

  “How can you stand it?” I demanded, half-angry, as if he created the messes he lived with. “How can you face a lifetime of it?”

  “I don’t know that I will. I started out a sociology major at Rice. Taking criminology courses now.” He shrugged and fiddled with his coffee spoon, made patterns on the paper placemat with its tip. “Maybe I’ll go into something less concrete than this, theorize about the causes of crime, work in a lab and analyze things. I’m not sure. Or law. I think about that, too. It’s the other end of the continuum. This seemed a good starting point, though….” He didn’t seem altogether comfortable with his vague future, and he wound up staring out the thick window beside him. “Spring’s gone all to hell again,” he said. “Looks like a bad black-and-white photo. No contrasts. No bright whites, just grainy gray.”

  I looked out the foggy window along with him. “Landscape painters must save money around here,” I said, hoping to pull us both back onto more familiar ground, even if it was as antagonists again. “They only have to buy black and white paint. Can you imagine the history of art if, say, Renoir had been born a Philadelphian?”

  “Or van Gogh,” Mackenzie said, the ghost of a twinkle back in his eye. “Painting this place. The gray-silver diner on its gray-white concrete blocks. Under a pale gray sky, above blacktop. He’d have cut off his hands, not his ear. But that brings us back to violence, doesn’t it? Isn’t there something else?”

  “Yes. Yes, there is.” It was violence-related, or violence-born, I guess, but that needn’t be said. Mackenzie had long since redeemed himself, and I wasn’t going to bludgeon him with my revelation, just present it as a gift. “Big news, Mackenzie,” I said. “I know who Winnie the Pooh is.”

  “I’m right proud of you. But so do I. And I know about Christopher Robin and Tigger as well.”

  “No—Liza’s bear. Her Winnie. The charm, remember? That guy last night, Eddie Bayer, the actor. Edward Bear is Winnie the Pooh’s real name. Not only that, but Eddie Bayer was the person outside my house Tuesday night, but I scared him, he scared me, and you scared us both.” I sat back and waited for the round of applause and the expression of gratitude.

  Instead, Mackenzie plonked down his coffee cup. “You knew this, but you didn’t bother to tell me?”

  “I didn’t know about the name until I was getting dressed today. Then I put two and two together.”

  He didn’t really have to applaud, but I certainly deserved a nod of approbation.

  “And you didn’t say anything till now?”

  “When could I? Stacy was in the car, and—”

  “That lumpy little girl’s some kind of spy? Or do you think she’s our killer?”

  “It didn’t feel right. Not then. Also, I was supposed to talk to Eddie at the cemetery. I didn’t want you to interfere. I was positive—I still am—that he knows something.”

  “I’d rather not believe this. The first new link, the first maybe something, and you’re too miffed to share it. You were supposed to meet him there today?”

  “I told you last night. I said he wanted to talk to me.”

  “The way you said it, I didn’t think—”

  “Mackenzie, you didn’t think at all last night. And what you did instead was enough to shut anybody up. In fact, you told me to stop playing Nancy Drew.”

  “All right!” He drained his cup, bit his bottom lip, and stood up. “Let’s find him.” He put change on the Formica table.

  “He doesn’t want to see us. Certainly not the police. He’s nervous about something.” I stood on tiptoe, almost, oddly annoyed that he still towered above me.

  “He’s nervous? So am I. Why wasn’t he there today?” Mackenzie’s entire tempo had changed. He moved briskly, paid the cashier, pushed through the revolving door, and even spoke double-time. I had difficulty following him.

  “He didn’t do it,” I said when I caught up. “Why should you think he did it?”

  “I don’t. I told you he was working Monday. But now that I know who he is, what his relationship is—”

  “Thanks to me,” I said, but he ignored me. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get a citizen’s citation out of this.

  “He probably does know something. Certainly more than anybody else so far. I’m tired of this case. Tired of interesting gossip that adds up to zero. Come on.”

  I sat quietly on my side of the car. C.K. Mackenzie and I probably had clashing biorhythm charts. Something was consistently and badly out of synch between us. If I offered ideas, I was playing girl detective. If I didn’t, I was withholding information. Ours was destined to be the shortest nonrelationship on record.

  He backed out of the space and then jammed on the brakes. “Where the hell am I going? Where does he live?” He pulled out his pathetic notebook and thumbed through it. “Okay. West Philly. Not too far.”

  “Let me explain myself,” he said after a while, his voice too conspicuously patient. “I don’t like being called a supercilious, smug, what have you. But I can’t close a case because somebody’s mama is overly enamored of her sonny boy. Or because somebody almost, not really, kidnaps you so nicely that it slips your mind for a day. So I don’t spend a whole lot of time on that kind of intellectual exercise.”

  “I don’t see what you’re—”

  “I’m still explainin’! Because, on the other hand, I am intensely interested in reality. Like how to decipher the name of a lover. Like somebody missin’ an appointment he took trouble to set up. Those are real things.”

  I shrugged and slumped as deeply as the safety belt would allow.

  “And another real thing is a murder.” He pronounced it “murdah,” so I knew his stress level was way up, and his practice at speaking like a native was meaningless. “Murdah is real. And this one was strictly amateur stuff—a first, desperate impulse, ah believe. So it could be anybody, but once they’ve taken that step, what’s to stop the next one? So that’s real, too. And dangerous. And not a game at all. You could get hurt real bad messin’ with it. Don’t you see the difference?”

  “Not too well, obviously.”

  He glanced over at me. “Oh, dammit, don’t look like that. Maybe I’m not bein’ fair. You’re new to all this. And, well, thanks. That was clever of you, the bear. I never would have caught on. Neither would Ray or anybody else on the case.”

  “I’m sorry I waited to tell you about Eddie,” I said softly. It was hard saying
any more. That primitive center of me still believed that saying things made them possible, and silence kept them from happening. But I forced myself ahead. “Do you think it’s going to make some kind of difference? To anybody?”

  “I sincerely hope not” was all he’d say. The man was not comforting, but he was honest.

  Ten

  “Liza liked variety in men, didn’t she?” Mackenzie said, chitchatting his way through the traffic and tension. “Bayer is, in case you hadn’t noticed, somewhat different from Cole. From lawyer-legislator to baker’s assistant, whatever that might be.”

  “That’s it!”

  “What? What’s what?”

  “Listen, Mackenzie, I have something to say. But I don’t know whether you’ll consider it reality or speculation, and I don’t feel like messing with you again. Could I be granted immunity to bumble around?”

  “You’re a mean woman, Peppah.”

  “I take it that means I may proceed. I’m sure Liza was with Eddie Sunday night after the show. But I couldn’t understand why she left so early. Except that bakeries tool up at dawn. That explains what she was doing wandering toward town at daybreak.”

  Mackenzie smiled. “See? I’m not shoutin’ or stompin’ on you.”

  “You’re not congratulating me, either.”

  “Congratulations,” he said, after a pause.

  We passed the blitz-blocks, the section of the City of Brotherly Love that had undergone urban renewal by police bombing. The new houses, looking a little embarrassed, were solid and resolutely middle-class. Also, I thought, a little more fortresslike than their unhappy predecessors.

  We moved on and came to an area that looked as if it, too, had been bombed but never rehabilitated. Two houses in the row had boarded-up windows, and almost all of them had black spray-paint graffiti that made them look trapped in enormous nets. I have a hard time with people who call this form of vandalism art.

  “I’m deputizin’ you,” Mackenzie said, surprising me. I tried to look nonchalant about his change of heart, to avoid dragging Nancy Drew’s name into our conversation again.

  Mackenzie parked across the street from Eddie’s address. “Find out what he wants to say. Simple enough?”

  I stared at the house. Its green porch railing was missing half its spokes. The steps were swaybacked and the patch of lawn in front was bald, except for discarded trash.

  “This is the address he gave me,” Mackenzie said. “I’ll wait ten minutes. Then I’m comin’ in to talk to him.”

  My deal had been to talk to Eddie at the cemetery, not behind walls in a rackety house. But I didn’t want to blow my new and shaky partnership with Mackenzie, or to reveal my true core of cowardice. I walked up the wooden steps, carefully testing for solid portions before putting down weight.

  I wasn’t sure if the bell worked. In any case, nobody answered it. I knocked and waited, then knocked again. No answer. I did an extravagant pantomime asking whether I should wait, and Mackenzie gave me a thumbs-up sign from the car.

  I sat down on the top step. To the left and right of me, porches echoed, and I tried to envision a warm summer night, with the whole block socializing in front of their houses. I think we lost a lot when we chucked porches. A patio or deck is not the same thing at all.

  Two small children, one dark, one fair, both dirty, ran toward my steps. “You have to share!” the boy, the smaller of the two, screamed. “Mommy said!”

  The woman tagging behind them was not a testimonial to the joys of motherhood. I would think of her when next I heard the ticks of my biological time clock. She looked both young and old, exhausted in both cases. Her light brown hair was pulled back into a nondescript knot, and her mouth, unmade, scowled. “Don’t you make trouble,” she said as she approached. “I warned you, Doreen.” Her eyes were directed to the pavement, not the child she addressed.

  “Doreen’s chewing it all! It’s not fair!”

  “I’ll give you fair,” the woman muttered; then she stopped, like a weary horse at its destination. She finally noticed me. “You looking for me?”

  “Well, actually, I was looking for Eddie Bayer. He lives here, doesn’t he?”

  “Not so you’d notice. Why? What’s it to you?” She backed up a pace and stared at me, her hands on her hips. “Go away,” she said. I guess I flunked inspection.

  “But I—”

  “Look, lady, I don’t know what story he told you. He’s got one for everybody. But you aren’t going to find him here. He’s gone.”

  “You’re…?”

  “Catherine Bayer.”

  “His…his wife?”

  “Sort of.” She shrugged. “He never mentions me, does he? Or them.” She jerked her head in the direction of the children, who faced each other in a standoff. “So go away, lady. I don’t want to know about you. I don’t want my kids to know about you. I don’t need your troubles. I got enough already.” She started up the steps, walking like a much heavier woman, pausing next to where I stood. “I didn’t think you were his type. They’re usually delicate. Like I was.”

  “It isn’t like that,” I said. “I’m…with the police.”

  Mrs. Bayer visibly stiffened and clutched her bag of groceries closer. “The police? I told him I called them, but I didn’t. Not really. I was angry; I wanted to—” Her pale skin turned yellow. “Wait. He’s in trouble. Sweet Jesus, what is it now? I knew it. The way he was, I knew it.”

  “He isn’t. I just want to talk to him.”

  The little boy belted his sister. “You chewed it all!” he bellowed.

  “Listen, lady,” Catherine Bayer said, “I haven’t seen him in days.”

  “He gave us this address.”

  “I don’t know why. He’s been gone awhile.”

  I gestured across the street. Mackenzie waved laconically.

  “My partner. Detective Mackenzie,” I said quietly.

  She looked back at the car, then at me. “Get up here!” she shouted at her children. “Eddie’s near Haverford and City Line. Some Jewish bakery. He’s been there since he lost his last job. Lives on top of the place. I don’t know the address, but it’s easy to find when you have to, and I should know.”

  “She swallowed it!” the boy screamed. “It’s all gone!”

  Catherine Bayer walked heavily to her daughter and smacked her midstride. Then, saying nothing, she unlocked her front door and went in. I assumed this was farewell.

  “City Line, near Haverford,” I told Mackenzie.

  We left the dismal street. “What was that? His mailing address?”

  “Maybe he expects to move back in soon.” I filled Mackenzie in as we plowed slowly through the Friday backwash of traffic. The transit strike had passed from being a threat into a reality. We crept along, circling a construction site decorated with signs heralding urban progress. There was not, however, a workman in sight.

  Finally, between a window of yellowing brassieres and one bright with record albums, we spotted a bakery.

  “All right,” Mackenzie said, once more parking across the street. “Let’s try again.”

  “The store looks closed,” I said. “There’s a sign.”

  Mackenzie rolled down his window and we both deciphered the hand-lettered cardboard sign. “Closed for the holidays. Happy Passover,” we finally made out. Mackenzie sighed. “That, alas, is not the information we require.”

  “Okay, I’ll be right back.” I walked across the busy street at the first break in traffic and studied the row of buildings. The entrance to the apartment above the store was inside a short alleyway. The street-level door was unlocked. I climbed a long, dark flight of stairs and knocked at his door.

  “Eddie? It’s Amanda Pepper.” I pressed his bell, but I couldn’t hear any ringing inside. I pressed it again. Both his addresses had broken doorbells.

  I tried the knob, and the door opened. “Eddie?” I called, poking my head halfway inside. “Eddie, it’s Mandy Pepper. Can I come in?”

  Ther
e was still no answer. But I could see a sliver of the room. A tilted dresser, one leg cracked, had every drawer open, contents spilled halfway out. Nearby I saw the edge of a mattress with a madras throw pulled off and a sheet crumpled on top of it. There were papers and photographs on the bare floor.

  I hadn’t expected a decorator’s dream, but I’m not so sexist that I think every bachelor’s apartment looks like Dante’s fifth circle of hell. I closed the door and bounded down the stairs and across the street.

  “Mackenzie, could you come up?”

  “Something wrong?”

  He opened the door before I could answer and followed me across the street and up the stairs.

  “The door’s unlocked,” I said, whispering now.

  The entire room was in the same chaotic state as the sliver I’d seen.

  “Dammit,” C.K. said. “Dammit all to hell.”

  He walked around the living room quietly and quickly, not touching anything. There was very little to have made such a mess. But the mattress was off the bed-couch, a rocking chair was upended, and the chest of drawers had been ransacked.

  To one side, a narrow corridor led to a room empty of everything except a thick parka on the floor and a pair of skis propped against the wall.

  Farther down the hall, a greenish light poured out from the kitchen.

  “Sweet Mother of God,” Mackenzie said. I was too close behind him to stop, to turn and run away, and I saw it. I tried to look at the room instead, at the translucent lime curtain at the window, the brick wall on the horizon beyond it, the tiny white kitchen table.

  “He’s dead,” Mackenzie said, turning away. “Don’t look.” But I already had. He was slumped over the table, near an overturned cup. A brown coffee stain led to Eddie’s head.

  There was something wrong with the side of Eddie’s face on the table. It was discolored, almost shiny and taut. His hair was wrong, too, matted and flat near the nape of his neck. Then I realized that the brown stain on his neck and shirt wasn’t coffee. He had been burned. I swayed in place, paralyzed.