“You ought to buy one of those little refrigerators and a microwave,” she said on her way out the door. “That way, you wouldn’t have to go out for lunch. Save yourself some money.” Then she was gone, out to lunch. First, a complete makeover for her, then one for the office, and now a company break room. One of the reasons I’ll never be rich is the financial concept of spending money to make or save money is something I’ve never been able to wrap my imagination around.
She hadn’t been gone ten minutes when there was a knock on the door and an old lady stepped into the room. And I mean, as old ladies go, she was quintessential, from the shapeless flower-print dress to the blue-gray hair and the large purse clutched in both hands and pressed against her chest.
“Are you Theodore Ruzak?” she asked.
“That’s me,” I said. I went around the desk and led her to one of the visitor’s chairs. She had those thick knee-high stockings old ladies wear and she smelled faintly of lavender talcum and cheap hair spray.
“Thank you,” she said. “My name is Eunice Shriver.”
I wrote down her name with my mechanical pencil on a fresh sheet of my yellow legal pad. When I finished, I stared at the name for a second.
“No, I am not that Eunice Shriver. No relation at all, though I’ve been asked all my life.”
“Sure.”
“My maiden name is Sparks, and in 1943, I married a young sailor on a three-week furlough. His name was Nathaniel Shriver—of the Kentucky Shrivers, no relation to the Yankee Shrivers.”
“You bet,” I said.
“I made quite certain of that.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“His family owned several thoroughbred racehorses, though none ever raced in the Derby.”
“Is that so? I’m not much into the ponies myself.”
“The vice of vices!” she exclaimed. “It nearly destroyed my marriage, and it certainly destroyed my husband.”
“He gambled?”
“Of course he gambled; he was from Kentucky and his family owned horses. When I say it destroyed him, I mean it literally: He died in a stable accident when a horse kicked him in the chest. Killed him instantly. I was thirty-four years of age, with four children, and he was gone. Not that he was a wonderful provider to begin with, God rest his soul.”
“Insurance?”
“A little, but that’s hardly any of your business, Mr. Ruzak.”
“That’s right. My business has to do with detective work.”
“As I should well know! I saw the article in the paper yesterday and that is why I am here now talking to you, though you seem almost too interested in my private affairs.”
“I’ll back off.”
“I never married again after the horse killed him, if you must know. I’d had my fill. Are you married, Mr. Ruzak?”
“Oh, no.”
“Why not?”
“I guess I haven’t found the right person.”
“What hogwash! There is no such thing.”
“Maybe you’re right—you’ve lived a lot longer than I have and been around the track a few more times, if you’ll forgive the pun, so I can’t really argue with you except to say you gotta let the young be idealistic, because it’s so darn hard when you get old.”
“What’s hard?”
“Idealism.”
“You don’t say!”
“Is there something I can help you with, Mrs. Shriver?” I had trouble understanding why she was sitting in my office giving me a hard time, as if I were the one who had arrived unannounced and without an appointment.
“I am here regarding the matter of those poor little goslings.”
“Terrible thing, wasn’t it?”
“You’re to be commended, Mr. Ruzak. Most people could care less about the fate of six baby geese, particularly since the adults are such unpleasant and noisome creatures.”
“Oh, I really couldn’t agree with you there, Mrs. Shriver. I think a lot of people actually do care about it, or the Sentinel wouldn’t have run the story in the first place. But now we’re back to idealism.”
“That’s very insightful,” she said. “Like several things quoted in the newspaper. You strike me as particularly sober and levelheaded for one so overweight, bless your heart. I mean to say, it’s rare to find someone of your bulk so given to philosophizing.”
“Really, you don’t think so? Again I’ll have to bow to your experience, Mrs. Shriver, and the truth is, I can’t think of a single fat philosopher. But my weight really is offset by my height; I’m nearly six six.”
“Really! Did you play football in college?”
“I didn’t go to college.”
“I find that extraordinarily difficult to believe.”
“Most people don’t.”
“And modest, too. I must say I find even more to admire in person, Mr. Ruzak. I believe I’ve made the right decision by coming here today.”
“Gee, I hope so,” I said. I looked at my watch, and she caught me looking at it and frowned.
“You won’t think I’m wasting your time when I’ve spoken my piece, Mr. Ruzak.”
“You’re not wasting my time, Mrs. Shriver. Really, I’m what you might call a people person, and this is pure bread and butter to me.”
She leaned forward and whispered, “I know who killed those goslings.”
“I figured maybe you did.”
“I was there. I saw it all. It was grotesque, terrifying, an absolute and utter tragedy, the likes of which I pray I never witness again. And I probably won’t, because guess how old I am.”
“You want me to guess your age?”
“Go ahead.”
“Seventy-five.”
“I’ll be eighty-six years old next month.”
“I’m not good with ages or names.”
“And I still drive my own car.”
“That’s terrific. Now, you say you saw the car that hit these geese? What kind of car was it?” I was poised to write “black Ford Expedition” on my yellow legal pad.
“Why, it was my car.”
“Your car?”
“Yes.” She opened her purse and pulled out a white hankie and dabbed her eyes with it. “That’s the worst of it. Now that’s done. I had no idea how I would say it, but there, I’ve said it. The baby killer sits before you, Mr. Ruzak, in all her shame and sorrow.”
“Oh, that’s rough. I’m really sorry about the shame and sorrow, but…you hit those geese?”
“I just said so; must I repeat it?”
“What kind of car do you drive, Mrs. Shriver?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Is it a black SUV?” It was hard for me to picture it.
“I don’t even know what an SUV is. I drive a white Buick Monte Carlo.”
“That’s funny,” I said. “Because my witness says it was a big black sport-utility vehicle.”
“Well, your witness is mistaken.”
“He seemed pretty sure of it.”
“Then he is a liar.”
“Why would he lie about that?”
“I have no idea why he would lie about that. Perhaps you should ask him, since you are the detective.”
“Okay.” I tapped the eraser end of my mechanical pencil on the pad. “Tell me what happened.”
“Well,” she said, scooching forward in her chair, bag clutched in her mottled grip and resting on her wide knees. “I was on my way to the market and running late, as usual, and I simply didn’t see them until it was too late. Smack! Smack, smack, smack! Oh, it was horrible! Terrible!”
“Why didn’t you stop?”
“I did stop! I am not a monster, Mr. Ruzak, no matter what that newspaper article implies.”
“My witness says the driver didn’t stop.”
“Again, your witness must be lying.”
“But if you’d stopped, he wouldn’t be my client, there wouldn’t be a newspaper story, and you wouldn’t be sitting here.” I laid my pencil
on the desktop and said gently, “Mrs. Shriver, you didn’t hit those geese.”
“I beg your pardon, but I most certainly did!”
I thought about it. You have to pick your battles in life, and what was the point of arguing with the old lady? She wanted to confess; it made her feel better, for reasons I really didn’t want to get into, so I dropped the whole thing, took a statement from her, which she signed with a dramatic flourish, and eased her out the door, promising I’d fax her confession over to the police ASAP. I warned her to be careful driving home, saying there were other animals and even pedestrians out there, though she’d probably already filled her quota. She got offended when I offered to help her down the stairs, and she huffed down to the street alone. I went to the window and watched her climb inside a sky blue Lincoln Town Car and pull with painful slowness into traffic.
I went back to my desk, tore the page off the legal pad, wadded it up, and threw it in the garbage.
About twenty minutes later, there was another knock on the door. Most businesses’ doors you don’t knock on first; what was it about PIs? I yelled that the door was open.
A Knox County sheriff’s deputy walked into the room.
“Teddy Ruzak?”
“Hi, yes, that’s me. How’re you doing?”
We shook hands. He introduced himself as Gary Paul and pointed to the framed clipping now hanging on the wall directly behind Felicia’s desk.
“Saw the article yesterday and thought I’d drop by.”
“You’re not the only one. I just took a confession.”
His eyebrows went up. “Really?”
“From a professional. Not a professional goose killer. A professional confessor. Or maybe that would be confesstrix.”
He laughed. “We get those types all the time.”
“Have a seat.” I waved him toward the chair Eunice Shriver, no relation to the Yankee Shrivers, had just vacated. “You want anything? The coffee’s pretty old, but I could make a fresh pot.” My heart was high up in my chest and I was slightly out of breath, a common reaction around cops, even back when I was at the Academy. That probably should have been a sign to me I wasn’t cut out for police work. I was also thinking Felicia had a good point about the refrigerator. You want to make your clientele feel at home, and there wasn’t so much as a bottled water in the place. I wondered how much those minifridges cost. Deputy Paul sat in one of the visitor’s chairs and I plopped down in my big leather number behind my oversized desk and tried to look professional despite my threadbare oxford shirt that you could see my moles through and my too-short blue jeans. Deputy Paul’s uniform was immaculate. He was probably around my age but about twenty pounds lighter and three or four inches shorter, with very small dark eyes and slightly oversized lips. His skin had this reddish tint to it, pocked and deeply scarred, most likely from severe acne in his adolescence. He was losing his hair but hid the fact by clipping it very short, like that guy on the Today show.
“What a creep,” he said, referring to the gosling killer.
“Yeah. Either very cruel or very thoughtless.”
“Either way, a creep.”
“It’s one of those things that can make you question the basic goodness of human beings. But again, all the calls this morning have had one thing in common, and that’s a sense of outrage. Some people might say all that means is that people are basically silly and sentimental, but it gives me hope.”
“Hope for what?”
“Oh, you know, for humanity. That everything’s going to come out all right in the end. I’m basically an optimist; that’s why I took the case in the first place, despite the fact there were no leads and no witnesses, besides my client.” I didn’t add the chief reason I’d taken the case—that I didn’t have one and Felicia was draining the bank account for designer dresses.
“Well, that’s kind of why I dropped by,” Deputy Paul said. “I wanted to let you know not everybody on the force thinks it’s funny what happened—couldn’t believe it when I read that they laughed your client out the door—and also I wanted to help.”
“Oh man, that’s terrific, Deputy.”
“Call me Gary.”
“I couldn’t appreciate it more, Gary. I’m kind of in a reactive mode, waiting for a tip or some kind of break, like the perp coming clean.” This felt great to me, talking shop with law enforcement. It was almost like being part of the fraternity. Maybe your dreams do come true, but never in the way you imagine they will.
“Strictly on my own time,” Gary said. “You know, informally. I’ve got resources you probably don’t.”
“That’s true. You know, I went through the Academy a few years back.”
“You were a cop?”
“No, I didn’t finish. Another opportunity came up.” This wasn’t precisely a lie, but it wasn’t precisely the truth, either. I never gave much thought to my moral character. Not many people do, I guess, because it’s something most people take for granted, assuming theirs is pretty good for the most part. I didn’t think most people sat down and considered whether their moral character was up to snuff. Maybe religious types do, like priests and certain fundamentalists. Although fundamentalists probably start with the assumption that everybody’s moral character falls more than a little short of the mark: If everybody is so damned good, why do we need God in the first place?
“So tell me what you got,” Deputy Paul said crisply. Down to business. He was probably on his lunch break, since he said he was going to help on his own time.
“Well, I’ve got a description of the vehicle from my client….”
“What’s his name?”
“Parker Hudson.” I hadn’t told the paper his name, but I didn’t think Parker would mind if I told a cop. Gary wasn’t taking notes. That meant either he had a good memory or I hadn’t told him anything yet worth writing down. “Big black SUV with Tennessee plates. But I think I’ve got a little more on that.” I told him what had happened on Gay Street with me jogging down the sidewalk with my Walgreens bag.
“What was that partial tag?” he asked.
“HRT.”
“And it was a Ford Expedition?”
“That’s right, fairly new, maybe a 2001 or an ’02, with tinted windows. That’s why I couldn’t make the driver.”
“Did you check with DMV?”
“Check with them how?”
“Motor Vehicles can run those letters through their database and match them up with registered vehicles throughout the state.”
“Gee, I didn’t know that.”
“I’ll have it run for you, if you want.”
“That’d be terrific. That’d be great. This is an incredible stroke of luck,” I told him. “I’ve been having this unbelievable run of luck lately, and to be honest, it makes me a little nervous. I forget who now, but somebody once said that luck is the residue of design, but I’ve always been a little deficient in the design department.”
He laughed. He had needed some dental work as a kid and didn’t get it. That and his pockmarked face got to me. Pity is the swiftest way to my heart. When I see a stray dog, I immediately look the other way, because if I didn’t, I’d have half the strays in the county living in my little apartment.
He told me he’d give me a call in a couple of days with the list from the Department of Motor Vehicles, we shook hands, and he left. I was starving; it was nearly one o’clock and I hadn’t eaten anything since Sunday night. I put up the sign Felicia had made on the new computer—GONE TO LUNCH. BACK IN ONE HOUR— and walked down to Market Square. I was feeling pretty ebullient. It was another warm, sunny day and the square was filled with the late-lunch crowd, and even though I didn’t have a license, I was about to solve my first case. For the first time since Mom died, I didn’t feel so crummy, and I had a salad for lunch with low-fat dressing and a glass of ice water.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
FELICIA WAS STILL AT LUNCH WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE ELY Building. On my walk back from Market Square, I got an ide
a to capitalize on my terror on Sunday. I was excited because, one, I actually had an idea and, two, it was a pretty good idea and, three, you should always find some way to exploit your fear, because otherwise it’s just a destructive waste of time.
I called Paul Killibrew at the Sentinel and told him I might have a lead in the case and asked if he was interested in running a follow-up article based on my encounter with HRT. He sounded interested and said he’d run it by his editor.
About twenty minutes later, Felicia showed up, and there was something I’d call fuzzy about her: one side of her red skirt higher than the other, her blond hair windblown-looking, though there was no breeze, a fresh coat of lipstick. The Hilton was two blocks west of the office and she had been gone over two hours. She hadn’t asked to take a long lunch, and I knew I had certain responsibilities as an employer, but would I be reprimanding her for the long lunch or the fact that she was fuzzy and the Hilton was only two blocks away?
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Why do you think something’s wrong?”
“You were smiling when I came in and now you’re not smiling.”
“I guess no smile lasts forever.”
“Bob took me to the Bistro—you know, where all the bankers and lawyers and other big shots go—and the service is always slow there. And to top it all off, the waitress brought us the wrong check.” Felicia, as a former waitress herself, could be righteously indignant when a fellow professional did substandard work.
“What’d you have?”
“The special.”
“What was the special?”
“This some kind of test?”
“No, just curious.”
“Why? Ruzak, did you skip lunch, too?”
“No, I ate at Market Square. A cop came to see me after you left.”
I told her about Deputy Gary Paul and my idea to get another article in the paper about the latest development in “The Gosling Affair,” as the Sentinel called my case.
“Only you don’t know that Mr. HRT was our killer,” Felicia said.
“Funny coincidence if he wasn’t. Anyway, you’ve got to go where the leads take you.”
“You know, one day after you’re world-famous, I’m going to publish a book of your sayings. Like ‘Go where the leads take you.’”
The Highly Effective Detective Page 6
