“Oh, no, you did great, Teddy. My only criticism would be this setup with Parker. He was about to write you a check and you stopped him. What makes you think he’s going to show?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re a trusting son of a bitch, you know that?” Then he laughed and finished his beer.
I dropped him off in front of the Ely Building. It was almost one o’clock and I hadn’t eaten lunch. I doubted Gary Paul had, either, but for some reason I wanted to be alone. I thanked him again, we said good-bye at the steps, and I watched him walk down to Gay Street and disappear around the corner toward Jackson. Gary had that High Noon saunter affected by a lot of cops, like a toned-down version of the Mick Jagger strut, which I always thought had something to do with the gun slapping on the upper thigh—not Mick’s, the cops’.
I ate a quick lunch at the Crescent Moon, a little bistro-type place half a block from the Ely Building. It was run by a couple of ladies I suspected were lesbians. My clues were the lack of makeup, the butch haircuts, and the brusque way in which I was always treated. They had terrific iced tea, though, and I drank about a gallon of it. Beer in the afternoon makes me extremely sleepy, and this didn’t help the fog or shadow over my soul or the thorn in my brain, or whatever it was. When I got back to the office, the mail had come, and I carried it upstairs. I had closed the windows and shut down the fans before I left, and the place reeked of fumes. I rolled my big chair over by the window and went through the mail as I leaned on the sill, breathing through my mouth like a fish. I was trying to take my mind off the brain sliver, but reading the mail wasn’t a mindless-enough exercise, so I tossed the pile on the desk and decided to water the plants. The ferns especially were looking a little droopy. I was thinking about a scientific study I had read about years ago, about how plants might actually feel pain, when the sliver in my brain slowly drew out and light burst through the fog. I picked up the phone and called Parker Hudson.
“Know anybody named Michael Carroll?”
“Never heard of him,” he said.
“Well, he’s heard of you.”
“Who is he?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out.”
“Don’t tell me we finally have a suspect.”
“I think maybe we do.”
“I told you it wasn’t a false memory,” he said. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you made me go through with that hypnosis, Teddy. I’m an old man and new things don’t come easy for me, but you pushed and I’m glad you did, not only because now justice will be served but because I feel as if I’ve got a whole new lease on life. I am a bona fide believer, Ruzak.”
“Everybody should be about something.”
“In fact, I have an appointment with Dr. Fredericks next Tuesday.”
“Next Tuesday? Why?”
“To do it again! That session was one of the most exciting, vivid experiences of my life. And let me tell you, Teddy, you don’t get to be my age without having your fair share of exciting, vivid experiences. It felt more real than the real event, if that makes any sense.”
“Sure.”
“I highly recommend it. Tuesday, I’m going to ask to be taken back to 1974.”
“Good year?”
“One of my best.”
“Gee, that’s terrific, Mr. Hudson.”
“I figure I have fifteen, maybe twenty years left—plenty of time to relive practically my entire life, particularly since I’m skipping over the bad parts. By doing that, I’m actually living an extra forty years, by my calculations. Virtually speaking.”
“Wow.”
He must have noticed the lack of enthusiasm in my voice. “Are you feeling all right? You don’t sound like yourself.”
“No. No, thanks for asking, Mr. Hudson, but I’m myself. I’m myself.”
He laughed. “That’s good to hear. I would sorely regret your passing.”
This struck me as creepily prophetic. “So would I,” I said. “I’ll call you back in a couple of days.”
I hung up to the sound of him chuckling. My hand was shaking. Must be the tea, I thought.
I made three more calls: one to the Department of Motor Vehicles, one to the Knox County Tax Assessor’s Office, and one to Harvey Listrom, detective with the Knox County sheriff’s office.
Then I went home and took a nap. I was pretty tired.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
FELICIA CALLED IN AROUND TEN THE NEXT MORNING.
“You’re not coming in,” I said.
“How badly do you need me to come in?”
“Are you sick? You don’t sound sick.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow; I promise.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
She started to cry. This took me aback. I had never heard her cry before.
“Sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes it helps to talk.”
“What are you, Ruzak, my mother?”
“Just trying to be your friend. I’ve pretty much demonstrated I suck at being your boss.”
“What does that mean?”
“Even Freddy would have fired you by now.”
“Do what you want, Ruzak. I didn’t come to you, remember. You asked me to take the job.”
I’m not sure how that applied to her questionable work ethic, but I let it go. It was probably Bob. In fact, I was sure it was Bob. In general, firemen are obnoxious, chauvinistic jerks, or at least that was my impression, based on nothing really, since I had never actually known any firemen. Stereotypes and prejudices flourish in the experiential vacuum of my own head. Although Felicia was probably not the easiest person to get along with—like a lot of strong-willed people—she was a seawall against which weaker wills crashed and collapsed. So maybe it was Bob and maybe it was Felicia; one thing I was certain of, it was the relationship that was the problem.
“I know who HRT is,” I told her, to change the subject.
“Who is it?”
“Not at all the kind of person I expected.”
“So the case is over?”
“Um. Don’t know.”
“How could you not know, Ruzak?”
“Like most things, there’s an ambivalence there, a delicate shading….”
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Not yet. I’m pretty sure, but not completely. I’ve got this working theory though, finally, which is more than I had twenty-four hours ago.”
“Maybe you’re just drawing the whole thing out to bill Parker more hours.”
“That would go back to my moral character,” I told her. “Don’t impugn my moral character.”
“‘Impugn’?”
“What’s wrong with impugn ?”
“You have the vocabulary of a college professor without the intellectual and educational underpinning.”
“Well,” I said, “you just used the word underpinning. ”
“I’m hanging up now, Ruzak.”
I hung up after apologizing for impugning her underpinning. It occurred to me I was too softhearted for this line of work. If somebody challenged me to name the chief characteristics of a successful private eye, being softhearted would not be at the top of my list. It certainly wasn’t anywhere on the state of Tennessee’s list. Additional cottony softness was located due north of my plushy heart, in the region between my ears. What if I was wrong? Sure, things as they had been presented to me didn’t add up, but was that because I wasn’t good with math? You read about genius and epiphanic moments, like the apple falling on Newton’s head. I had the sort of head that would cry, Damn that apple! and then I’d go home to complain to my wife about my terrible luck, which only goes to show that geniuses are just like the rest of us, only more so.
In addition to being a very casual dresser and a very poor decorator, Michael Carroll was also very punctual: He arrived at four o’clock on the dot. He was wearing the same Bermuda shorts but had changed into a Tennessee Volunteers orange-and-white T-shirt. I offered to
make a fresh pot of coffee, but he seemed in a hurry or upset by something, or maybe both. He sat on the edge of the visitor’s chair, working his fingers through his damp-looking hair, and I decided I’d had it wrong the day before; his hair hadn’t been wet, just gelled to saturation.
“I’ve got the check,” he said. “Where’s Parker Hudson?”
“Oh,” I said. “Today’s his foursome.”
He blinked those gorgeous baby blues at me and said, “He’s not coming?”
I shook my head no. If I had expected him to act relieved, I would have been disappointed. He slid the check onto the desk blotter and sat back. He had folded it in half and maybe was waiting for me to unfold it. I didn’t unfold it. I didn’t touch it. I watched his eyes as I asked, “Who is Lydia Marks?”
“Lydia who?”
He didn’t blink; he didn’t hesitate; he didn’t fidget. He gave no indication he was lying, but I had no training in the area of lie detection—as I had none in any area of private detection. But it wasn’t like I’d let that stop me.
“How do you know Gary Paul?”
“What’s that mean? What are you talking about, Ruzak? Look, you’ve got what you wanted. There’s your check, and now I’m gonna—”
He started to stand up. I told him to sit down. He stood anyway. I said, “That wasn’t your car in the driveway. And that wasn’t your driveway, either, because that wasn’t your house.” He sat down. He scrunched low in the chair because he was a young guy and that’s what young guys do: They scrunch in their chairs or tip them back on their rear legs.
“The black Ford Expedition in your driveway yesterday, the one with the baby bird feather stuck to it, is registered to Deputy Gary Paul of the Knox County sheriff’s department. And the house with your lava lamp on the coffee table is deeded to a man named Kenneth Marks, who happens to be the surviving spouse of Lydia Marks, who was murdered around the time that car hit those baby geese.”
Mike Carroll wet his lips. Since that was a classic gesture of guilt or, at the very least, unease, I figured I had taken the right tack.
“So?” he asked.
“So, it’s one thing to borrow a buddy’s car and smush some waterfowl. It’s something altogether different to smush a human being’s head and dump her body in the mountains as fodder for the indigenous wildlife.”
“Look, Ruzak. Look . . .” He gave a little laugh that tended toward a giggle. “I don’t know anything about any murder, okay?”
“Then maybe you can help me out, Mike. Maybe you can help me and that way I can help you.”
He wet his lips again and I fought an almost overwhelming urge to scream at him, And stop wetting your lips like that, pretty boy!
“Okay,” he said.
“Yes or no, were you the one who hit the geese?”
He shook his head no.
“Gary hit them?” I asked.
“I have no idea who hit them,” he said. “Look, okay, here it is. Gary and me go back aways. He…I… see, when I was a kid, I got into some trouble and Gary, he helped me out, okay? I don’t know, he thought maybe there was some hope for me or something, but he arrested me when I was a junior in high school, marijuana possession, and I did my time, but not as much as I would have if Gary hadn’t gone to bat for me. So I owed him one. A couple days ago, he calls me out of the blue and tells me he wants me to admit to this goose-killing bullshit because this pal of his— you—had this client who was all over his ass over this stupid thing and he wanted me to ‘confess’ to it to get him off your back. But you had to buy into it, too.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say why, okay? He just offered me a thousand bucks, and what the hell was I going to say to a thousand bucks?”
“I guess you said yes.”
“You’re damn right I said yes.”
“Awful lot of money just to boost my spirits,” I said. “Especially on a deputy’s salary.”
“Man, I didn’t ask him where the money came from.”
“But why the meeting at a rental owned by Kenneth Marks?”
“How the hell should I know? He didn’t say and I didn’t ask. He said be at this place at this time and that’s what I did.”
“Where do you really live?”
“ ‘It’s none of your damn business where I live, Ruzak.”
“Probably nowhere near Farragut. He was being thorough— wanted to make sure everything fit—car, location. And it almost worked.”
“Why didn’t it?”
“You knew Parker’s last name,” I told him. “It kind of imbedded this splinter into my thinking, so I checked with DMV, which is something I guess I should have done a long time ago, but I’m too trusting and maybe a little lazy, to be perfectly honest.”
He stared at me. “Whatever. So what happens now?”
“You don’t tell Gary about this conversation.”
“What’s gonna stop me?”
I sighed. “How about a thousand bucks?”
“You got a thousand bucks?” he asked. I made a mental note to tell Felicia she was wrong: After I had poured thousands into this cramped, crappy space and thousands more in clothing for my rotundity, people still couldn’t believe I was solvent.
I wrote him a check for a thousand dollars and told him the bank was right down the street and that he could go straight there after leaving and cash it. Then I took his check and slipped it into my top desk drawer.
“Hey,” he said. “Give that back.”
“Why?”
“I shouldn’t have to pay it now. I didn’t hit those goddamned geese.”
“Well,” I said. “I doubt there’s going to be any other justice in that regard, so I’m keeping it.”
“Then you should give me thirteen hundred to offset my loss.”
“You already got a thousand from Gary,” I pointed out, though I was sure the money had actually come from Kenneth Marks.
“I made him give me three hundred more to cover that check.”
“Gee, you’re a tough negotiator,” I said. “You’ve got potential, and that heartens me. It reaffirms one of my core beliefs: that the book’s never closed on us until the casket lid is.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I’m not giving you three hundred dollars, since Gary already has.”
“I’ll stop payment on the check.”
“That seems a pretty low gesture. Don’t you care about nature?”
“You’re an asshole,” he said, getting up and staying up this time.
“And you might be an accessory to murder,” I said. “So far, I have only a working theory, but there’s room in it for you, Mike.”
He slammed the door on his way out and, even though I saw that coming, I jerked in my chair. I’ve always been sensitive to loud noises. As a kid, I hated the Fourth of July. I pulled the tape recorder from its hiding place under the desk and checked the sound quality. My voice sounded much louder than Mike’s, but you could still make out what he had said. I thought about following him to wherever he’d gone next, then thought better of it and decided to have a cup of fresh coffee, water the plants, and think instead. I doubted the plants were doing a damn thing to improve the air quality in the office, but they did seem to improve my thinking.
I had finished watering the plants and was shutting down Felicia’s computer when the door opened and Eunice Shriver walked in.
I followed her into my office and offered her a cup of coffee.
“Do you have any Earl Gray tea?”
“Celestial Seasons. I think it’s herbal.”
She wrinkled her nose at the thought of herbal tea and settled for a bottle of Evian. I sat behind my desk and wished that, like every movie detective in history, I had a bottle of scotch stashed in my bottom drawer.
“So what’d you do this time?” I asked.
“What, murder isn’t enough?”
“And conspiracy,” I said. “You and Vernon.”
“Are you mock
ing me, Theodore?”
“Mocking’s not in my nature. Occasionally, I tease, but that’s a whole different animal. Mrs. Shriver—sorry, Eunice—I know for a fact you didn’t run over those geese and I also know for a fact you didn’t kill Lydia Marks.”
“And what is your proof?”
“I don’t need to prove you didn’t do it.”
“Then who did?”
“I’m working on that. It’s a process of elimination. I’d show you my list, upon the top of which your name has been crossed out, but I’ve lost it.”
“Some detective,” she sniffed. “I actually am not here about either killing.”
“You’ve robbed a bank.”
“That bordered on mockery.”
“Sorry.”
“Teddy, I would like to hire you for a job.”
“A detective job?”
“Is that not your business?”
“Actually, I’m an investigative consultant.”
“But the sign on your door . . .”
“Well, that’s just a marketing tool. Like the way chiropractors call themselves doctors.”
“Chiropractors aren’t doctors?”
“You never see an M.D. after their name.”
“I love my chiropractor.”
“That’s terrific. I’ve noticed your posture. It’s very good for somebody of your years.”
“I’ll give you his name.”
“Mine’s a slouch,” I said. “Nothing to do with spinal pain.”
“I have money,” she said. “To pay you, of course.”
“That’s good,” I said. “But I don’t want your money, Eunice. I’m pretty sure I don’t want your case, either.”
“But you haven’t even heard what it is yet.”
“I’ll guess. Somebody’s trying to kill you.”
Her eyes widened. “How on earth did you know?”
“A lucky guess. See, a real detective wouldn’t admit to guessing, but a consultant guesses all the time. Who’s trying to kill you?”
“That’s what I want you to find out. I have a list of suspects.” She dug into her enormous purple purse and fished out four pages of typewritten single-spaced names, which she handed to me.
I whistled. “You’ve got quite a few enemies, Eunice.”
The Highly Effective Detective Page 16
