Murder in the Hearse Degree

by Tim Cockey

  “Peg,” he said to me as she stirred through her purse. “We’re from Lansing.”

  Peg delivered a pencil. She snapped her purse closed and waited for further instructions.

  “PVA910,” I said. “Could you write that down?” He did and he handed me the card.

  “Thank you.” I held up the arm with the bloody T-shirt. “And thank you.”

  An ambulance arrived, burping and whining. Two police cars pulled up. The EMS workers waded through the glass and began working on Tom right there on the table. They stabilized his head and neck with a thick collar and a gargantuan emery board then brought in a gurney and transferred him to it.

  “This man needs attention!” my hero called out, indicating me. People were looking at him oddly—or not at all—primarily I suppose because of his great exposed belly and chest. One of the EMS workers came over.

  “Man took some glass in his wrist. We’ve got some bleeding.”

  A second ambulance arrived in another minute and I was escorted over to it and told to lie down in the back. Just before I got into the ambulance I handed one of the policemen the business card. Before I did I glanced at it. Walter Minnick. Authorized Ford and Chevy dealer. Lansing, Michigan. Korean War veteran. It said so right on the card.

  “What’s this?” the policeman asked.

  “PVA910. Maryland tags,” I said.

  “The car?”

  “The car,” I said. “Dark blue. Midsize. I missed the make.”

  I was loaded into the ambulance and the doors were closed. I heard two sharp raps on the doors and I looked up to see Walter Minnick through the rear windows. He was giving me the thumbs-up. I responded by half.

  The fellow who stitched me up held several patents. It seemed to be something of a hobby. He ran his needle and thread over my wrist like Grandma working on the family quilt and told me about several of his inventions.

  “Picture a tent, okay? You’re camping. You’ve got all that gear you’ve got to tote along. So the ground is rocky and bumpy, okay? Now let’s say you forgot to bring along your sleep mattress, okay? Well how about this? The actual floor of your tent is a sleep mattress. Okay? You’ve got a foot pump with you and you just inflate the entire floor of the tent. Okay? You get it?”

  “What if you forget the foot pump?”

  “You’ve got the option to blow it up the old-fashioned way.”

  He had another one.

  “The soap bag. You know when you’ve used up most of your soap in the shower and it gets where it’s all thin and hard?”

  “Soap chip.”

  “Right. Okay? So there’s this little baggie, right? It’s porous. It’s got a Velcro strip to seal it. And what you do, you stick your soap chips in the baggie, right? There’s still soap in them. And it’s like—”

  “The soap bag,” I said.

  “Exactly! You get it.”

  He also had an idea for a hairbrush that had a safety razor in the handle and a small alarm clock embedded in the back of the brush.

  I asked, “Perfect for travel?”

  “Yeah! It’s great, isn’t it?”

  Thomas Edison was putting in eight stitches to close the gash on the back of my wrist.

  “You’re lucky,” he said as he finished up. “If this was the other side of your wrist you’d be in the morgue now.”

  “That’s a pleasant thought.”

  “Yeah, man. You’re lucky.”

  Tom Cushman hadn’t been so lucky. He was still in surgery. The unofficial assessment of his injuries was that he was Battered to Hell and Back.

  A policeman was waiting for me after I emerged from the emergency room. He was the officer I had handed Walter Minnick’s business card to. He asked me a few questions about the car that had plowed over Tom Cushman. I repeated what I’d seen. A dark blue sedan racing out of nowhere.

  “That was heads-up thinking,” the officer said. “Getting the tag number.”

  “I have my heads-up moments.”

  I also have my play-dumb moments, and I trotted some of them out as the policeman asked me a few more questions. I really wasn’t in the mood to explain precisely how it was that I knew Tom Cushman or to give the officer the sort of information that might make him want to expand his questioning of me. I suppose it was wrong of me, holding back like that, but I wrestled my conscience to the mat without too much trouble. What I wanted was a Garbo moment. I just wanted to be alone.

  The officer let me go after not too very long and I made my way into the waiting area hallway. Shannon was sitting quietly in one of the molded plastic chairs. She was holding something in her lap, and as I approached I realized it was Tom’s tennis shoe. It looked like a little shuttlecraft resting on her lap.

  Shannon looked up at me with a decidedly unpleasant expression on her face.

  “Well?”

  The possibilities of her question were innumerable, but my energies were too depleted to do anything but give her the only warranted response. Who was the injured party here, after all?

  “Well what?”

  “He might die.”

  “And he might live,” I said wearily.

  “But he might die.”

  Apparently she was going to insist on this possibility’s dominance.

  “I guess we’ll have to see,” I said.

  “It’s your fault,” she snapped.

  I eased myself down into a chair opposite her. We spoke across the wide hallway.

  “My fault? How do you see that?”

  “Tom was so damned impressed with himself tonight,” Shannon said. “He totally changed the way he was playing Constantin. He said you told him the other night at McGarvey’s that everything he was doing was wrong.”

  “It was.”

  “Well, he was horrible tonight. He stank.”

  I leaned my head back until it rested on the wall. It’s amazing how almost getting run down by a car and losing a lot of blood will take it out of you.

  “Shannon, no offense, but he stank before. His Constantin was a wimp. Admit it.”

  The actress didn’t make any defense. “Well, tonight his Constantin was macho and it was ridiculous. It didn’t make any sense. All my scenes with him were idiotic.”

  I sighed heavily. “I’m sorry.”

  “Then he saw you on the corner and he got all excited and he went running off across the street like . . .” She searched for a good metaphor but came up empty. “Like an idiot.”

  My head was pounding. My wrist was pounding. And Shannon was irritating me. I closed my eyes. I had no idea what time it was but I knew it must be past closing time for the George Washington Inn and the Wine Cellar. My rendezvous with Faith had evaporated. And Munger was probably ready to throttle me. My guess was that he would have gotten a ride home with Lee. Oh, to be a fly on that steering wheel. Who knows, though? Maybe things had worked out with Pete and Lee and Pete was thrilled that I had disappeared. In which case it would be Susan Munger who would want to throttle me, if word somehow ever got to her. I made a mental note that in my next life I’d have to see about not meddling in other people’s infidelities.

  I opened my eyes. I was still there. So was the magnificent Shannon. “Do you want anything from the cafeteria?” I asked her. “I’m going to get some coffee.”

  “I don’t drink coffee,” she said with a petulant sniff.

  I gave her a wink as I pushed myself out of the chair. “You’re welcome.”

  There was no cafeteria, just a row of machines dispensing burned coffee, lifeless sandwiches and cardboard pies. I found the actress who was playing Constantin’s mother seated at a table with a cup of coffee. She had a hard, weary look to her. Her hair was banged around the way Judy Garland’s used to be.

  “Mind if I have a seat?”

  “By all means. Any word?”

  “None that I’ve heard.” I dropped int
o the chair opposite her. “Hi. My name is Hitch.”

  “Jean Rose. Looks like you got yourself a little banged up.”

  I held up my bandaged wrist. “Doctor says my clavichord-playing days are behind me.”

  “You’re a friend of Tom’s, aren’t you? I saw you two leaving the theater together the other night. Tom mentioned you. You’re the undertaker.”

  I gave her my weary smile. “Got any dead people I should know about?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I lost a lot of blood. I think it took the common sense out of me. I’m feeling a little light-headed.” I rubbed my face with my good hand. “Hey, you want to get married and move to Guam?”

  “You’re cute.”

  “I liked you in the play, by the way. You’re the best thing in it.”

  Jean set her chin in her hand. “I’m afraid that’s not saying much.”

  “Still, you were good.”

  “Well, thank you.” The woman gave a little punch to a stray bit of her hair. “Tom told me about that little girl. It’s so sad.”

  “You mean Sophie?”

  “It’s a horrible thing.”

  I leaned forward on the table. “Tom told me that Sophie had been showing up at the theater every night.”

  “That’s right. Glued to her seat. Front row center.”

  “He said she had a crush on him.”

  “I suppose she could’ve. Tom’s a good-looking man.”

  “Any idea how Shannon took to that? She doesn’t strike me as the magnanimous type.”

  “Shannon’s a little bitch.”

  “So that’s it. I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

  Jean laughed. “I played Nina once. Back in the horse-and-buggy days. Now I’m Arcada. It’s a shame Chekov didn’t put an old crone in this one, I could be riding The Seagull right up to the bitter end. Our director dug through the archives and pulled out the reviews for my Nina. May I tell you that I was spectacular?”

  “I’m convinced.”

  “May I tell you how gracious Shannon was?”

  “I can guess.”

  “Snotty. Nasty. Take your pick.”

  I blew on my coffee. “What did Shannon think about Sophie’s fawning over her boyfriend?”

  “Not much, I would think.”

  “Do you think there might have been something going on between Tom and Sophie?”

  Jean Rose pursed her lips. She looked like she was ready to blow a bubble. “I wouldn’t know for certain, of course. But I doubt it. The girl didn’t strike me as Tom’s type.” She laughed. “Nowhere near mean enough.”

  I bought her a second cup of coffee and she told me several theater stories. They were caustic and largely irreverent and they gave the woman the chance to show off her big smoky laugh.

  “We’re all children,” she said. “That’s what it really boils down to.”

  As we were talking, Shannon appeared from around the corner. She was still holding Tom’s shoe. She stopped at the concession machines.

  “No more show,” Shannon said. “Tonight was it.”

  “I think we knew that,” Jean said.

  “Well, now it’s official,” Shannon said. She glared at me. “Tom’s dead.”

  She dropped his shoe into the trash can.

  Jean Rose gave me a ride back to town from the hospital. I wondered if Munger might have left a note on my windshield, but he hadn’t. The windshield was bare. I thanked Jean for the ride and she drove off. I got into my car and sat stock-still for at least five full minutes, then I cranked her up and drove out of town. On the Naval Academy Bridge I checked my rearview mirror, and seeing no cars I pulled over as far as I could to the side of the roadway and got out. I stepped over to the guardrail. The sky was black. The water was black. There was no distinguishing where the one let off and the other began. I tried to conjure some significance in that, but I couldn’t. I guess there was none. I looked around and saw a soft-drink can on the side of the road. I picked it up and leaned out over the side of the bridge and dropped it. I counted, one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five. . . . The can took a turn under the bridge and out of my sight.

  Six. . .seven. . .eight. . .nine. . .

  I never saw it land. Never heard it. It simply vanished.

  I got back into my car and continued on down the bridge. A half mile up the road I took a right and drove along a wooded road until I reached the driveway of Libby and Mike’s house. I parked on the road and got out of my car and started down the driveway. There were no lights on in the house. A red sports car was parked by the front door. Another car was in the carport.

  I could hear voices. They seemed to be coming from the trees. I continued down to the end of the driveway and high-stepped over the bushes there. My night vision was coming on and I detected a glow coming from the back of the house. I made my way along the side of the house, and slipping carefully from tree to tree (as Hollywood has taught us), I reached the backyard. Some twenty feet above me was the deck. The glow was coming from there. So were the voices.

  I made my way cautiously along the perimeter of the lawn out to the far edge of the property, where the grass met the woods. Though partially obscured by tree branches, I had a better view of the deck from here. I could make out two people sitting in the hot tub. The blue-green glow was coming from a light—or lights—that were in the tub itself. The glow danced and wobbled, throwing off liquid shadows across the deck and onto the high branches above the deck.

  One of the people in the tub stood up. It was Mike Gellman, dressed just as he had been on the day he was born. He grabbed a towel and crossed the deck, passing into the shadows. I heard the sound of the sliding glass door open. Soon after, the other person rose up from the tub. It was a woman. Her back was to me. Can’t say I recognized the back. It wasn’t Libby’s, I could tell that much. Steam from the tub rose up with her. She stepped out of the tub and across the deck into the house. Swiftly, I made my ever-so-stealthy path back to the driveway where, not sure what to do next, I stood behind the shrubs like an uncertain lawn ornament. I waited less than ten minutes. The front door opened and Mike and the woman emerged. Mike was positioned so that I couldn’t get a clear view of the woman as she slid into the driver’s seat. Mike bent down. Unless Mike and the woman were biting down on the same piece of taffy I’m going to assume they were kissing. Mike pulled back from the car. The headlights went on—along with the engine—and the car pulled away.

  I had to wait until Mike got back inside the house and had closed the door, then I moved as quickly as I could up to my car and took off down the road. I picked up the taillights of the red sports car before we had hit the main road. I kept my distance. The car went right. Twenty seconds later, so did I.

  I was able to remain fairly far back. The red sports car was easy to keep in sight. We headed west and then slightly south. I tapped the cassette tape hanging out of the machine. The tape disappeared, and a second later, Rosie Flores appeared. Julia’s tape. I remembered it like it was yesterday. Which, in fact, it had been.

  Forty minutes later the red sports car took a left turn into a driveway. I was a block behind. I watched as the car’s headlights swept briefly over a small stone fountain. Maybe one day I’d have to get a closer look. But to my eyes, the chubby cherub was still screwing the two swans.

  And Mike Gellman was screwing Ginny Larue.

  And presumably, vice versa.

  CHAPTER

  16

  My alarm clock licked my face every hour on the hour, starting at one of the ungodly ones. I resisted the rousing call until finally I feared my dashing good looks would be slobbered entirely from my skull. Can’t have that. On feet of lead I made my way to the shower, then afterward lowered my head into a bucket of caffeine. I pride myself on being in pretty good shape (I do a push-up on Tuesdays, on Thursdays I jog down the steps to the sidewalk, and on an
average of once a month I pull my old Dunlop racquet from the closet and plunk on its strings banjo-style while jogging in place), but I suppose the gymnastic of diving out of the path of an oncoming car isn’t the sort of thing for which even a hale and hearty carcass like mine stands at the ready. I sat at my kitchen table with that old hit-by-a-freight-train feeling and contemplated the dull life of the undertaker. Not for the first time in my life I reflected warmly on the idea of curling up inside a soft, quiet casket and pulling the lid closed.

  I pulled on a pair of jeans and a Terrapins sweatshirt. I skipped shaving and took my mug of coffee down to the front step, where I sat and watched Alcatraz distributing While You Were Out notes up and down the block.

  I tried to focus on the events of the previous evening, but unfortunately my brain was working like a loosely screwed-in bulb. On a frayed wire. Dangling in the wind. I could flicker, but that was about it. The image of Ginny Larue rising naked from the steaming water of Mike Gellman’s hot tub . . . that image flickered a fair number of times. In slow motion. In stop action. Zoom in, zoom out. The dancing blue light from within the tub. The steam swirling about Ginny Larue’s hips. What it all told me beyond the fact that Mike Gellman was indeed a dog, I couldn’t say, but as far as images go, it wasn’t a bad one. Far better than the image of Tom Cushman lying motionless atop a faux-antique wrought-iron ice cream parlor table bathed in a chopping red light. With each flicker of this particular image—the girl standing next to the table in a horrified scream—a queasy feeling came over me, along with a stab of guilt and an unsettling spasm of anger. As I sat there, a trio of Jehovah’s Witnesses came down the street and calmly discussed Armageddon with me until I finally cried uncle. I was told that God would welcome me into His Kingdom and that all who had not joined in the righteous battle would be destroyed.

  “But what about my dog?” I asked. “Who will feed him?”

  No one seemed willing to answer that one for me, at least not in the five seconds I gave them before pulling open my screen door and heading back inside. The dog in question bounded past the Witnesses and stumbled excitedly back up the stairs. I plodded behind him. I scooped some mush into his bowl, poured myself another mug of coffee and was asleep before it was quite half done. I woke up in my easy chair nearly an hour later with a neck that refused to swivel to the left.