To the Last Drop

by Sandra Balzo

  I didn’t. ‘Have you called the office?’

  ‘Yes, but the after-hours recording is on. And when I drove past on the way home the building was dark so I just assumed William would be here.’

  ‘Maybe he did go out for a drink but I doubt Ted is with him. I … well, there’s no easy way to say this: I overheard Ted tell William to pack up his office and leave.’ Another paraphrase.

  Silence on the other end. Then, ‘Mom? What’s wrong?’ in the background.

  ‘Lynne?’ I said into the phone, tugging her in the other direction.

  Another offstage whisper and then, ‘I’m here, Maggy – just a little worried.’

  I checked the clock on the microwave, feeling guilty for having added to that worry. ‘It’s just barely ten-fifteen. Ted hasn’t called Eric to come over to the house so maybe I’m wrong and they did work things out.’ I dictated Ted’s number into the phone.

  ‘Thanks. I’m sure you’re right.’ She didn’t sound sure. ‘Should I tell Ted to call Eric?’

  I glanced at my son’s back at the sink. ‘Nah, don’t bother.’

  SIX

  Hanging up the phone, I probably should have been concerned about William. And even Ted.

  But no, I was wondering what in the world was wrong with me. A grown woman sabotaging her son’s phone and plotting to keep a father and son – and baby half-sister – apart.

  Reprehensible.

  But … shouldn’t Ted remember to come and get Eric or at least call him without Lynne Swope reminding him?

  And if Eric didn’t pick up, shouldn’t his father be smart enough to call me? I glanced at the phone still in my hand and slid my fingernail close to the ringer control.

  ‘Mom?’

  ‘Yes, dear?’ I returned the phone to my purse. After all, Eric had turned his own ringer back on so the belt and suspenders of turning mine off would be merely belt. Or was it suspenders?

  ‘Is everything all right? Think I should call Ginny? Or maybe Dad?’ He reached for his phone.

  ‘No!’

  Eric pulled his hand back and frowned at me.

  ‘Mrs Swope is calling him right now. You don’t want to make him miss the call.’

  ‘Dad has call waiting.’

  So did I, though every time it signaled a second call coming in I went into a panic trying to figure out how to get to it. And back again. ‘Just give him a couple minutes, though, to talk with Mrs Swope. Your dad was so angry earlier I’m not sure you want to get in the middle of it. Maybe let him cool down.’

  Eric seemed to see the sense in that. ‘I guess so. I wish he’d call, though – it’s been a long day.’

  My son had probably had classes this morning, then jumped into the car for a five-plus hour drive. He had every reason to feel tired. And I to be ashamed. ‘You want to text your dad? I can always drive you over—’

  A ring and vibration sprrrung from the phone on the counter. Eric picked it up. ‘It’s him,’ he said as he pushed to answer it. ‘Hi, Dad. Did Mrs Swope get hold of you?’

  Not able to hear Ted’s half of the conversation, I edged closer.

  Eric hit ‘speaker.’ What a good son.

  ‘I told her that the last I saw of Doctor Swope he was heading to the office to clean out his crap.’ Ted still sounded angry and, unlike me, wasn’t candy-coating it for Eric’s benefit. Nor would he have, I feared, for Lynne.

  ‘Where are you now?’ I asked, and Eric threw me an irritated look.

  ‘Maggy?’ Ted’s voice asked. ‘I guess I should have known you’d be listening.’

  Well, yeah. ‘So what’s going on? What did William’s ex-partner say? And what’s with the woman with the picket sign?’ Figured I might as well get my money’s worth.

  ‘Picket sign?’ Eric repeated.

  I held up a finger, indicating I’d fill him in.

  ‘I don’t have time to go into it all with you now, Maggy,’ Ted said. ‘Even if it were your business.’

  That seemed a little unfair, given he’d stormed into my coffeehouse and made a scene. Happily, though, Ted was still talking: ‘As for your first question, I’m on the way to the Slatterys to pick up the baby.’

  The Slatterys being Rachel’s parents and, of course, Mia’s grandparents. ‘Didn’t they move out to some big place in Mequon?’ Mequon was about fifteen miles north of Milwaukee, while Brookhills was about the same distance west. It might not be my business but I did have an agenda. ‘What about Eric? He can stay overnight here if that would help.’

  I glanced at my son and he nodded.

  ‘That would be great,’ Ted said, sounding relieved. ‘I’ll swing by and get him in the morning but it’s really starting to come down out here and I’d rather drive straight home once I pick up Mia in case it turns to sleet.’

  Fate settled, Eric pulled a carton of mint chocolate-chip ice cream out of the freezer and claimed a soup spoon from the silverware drawer.

  I smiled and said into the phone, ‘You have office hours tomorrow morning, right? How about I drop Eric off before I go in to work?’

  ‘If you don’t mind, that would be perfect. I won’t be in until nine, though Diane will be there by eight-thirty.’

  ‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘Sarah’s opening so Eric can sleep in and I’ll bring him by at nine.’

  ‘Wish Mia would let me sleep in. I’ll be up late on the computer. Doing research.’

  Right. That was what all guys did on their computers late into the night.

  But it was Eric who asked the question: ‘Research into what?’

  A sigh at Ted’s end. ‘Doctor Swope. And how to dissolve a partnership.’

  ‘I assume Doctor Swope has gone,’ I said to Eric as we drove to Ted’s office the next morning. ‘I hope he locked the door behind him.’ Though one could argue that a disgruntled former partner could do more damage to the office than somebody who wandered in off the street. And up ten stories.

  While the rain had stopped overnight, the sky was still overcast and my son’s mood seemed equally as bright, probably due to the carton of ice cream he’d consumed before going to sleep.

  Getting only a burp in reply, I gave up on the conversation and turned left off Brookhill Road onto Silver Maple. Waiting for a lanky man headed toward the front of the building to pass by, I nosed an immediate left into the entrance of Thorsen Dental’s parking lot, then made a U-turn so I could let Eric out on the street next to the office and head back in the direction of Uncommon Grounds.

  As we pulled up to the curb, the Escape’s right front tire splashed into a puddle, earning me a glare from a figure on the sidewalk. It took me a second to realize it was the same woman who’d come into Uncommon Grounds. Rita Pahlke, according to Ted.

  Granted, the sign in her hand and the blue knit cap now on her head against the damp morning chill should have been a dead giveaway.

  I held up a hand to the woman in apology but she just shook her sign and disappeared through a gap in the six-foot-high hedge on the side of the office building.

  Eric squinted after her. ‘Is she the one you told Dad about?’

  ‘Yup, but where did she go?’ I was craning my neck. ‘Your dad needs to trim those bushes. They’re getting way out of hand.’

  Ted owned the building and he and I had done the planting ourselves with the same type of arbor vitae we’d used to screen the building’s parking lot from Silver Maple Drive. It seemed a very long time ago.

  ‘Who is that lady, anyway?’ our son asked. ‘You said you’d tell me about her after you got off the phone with Dad last night.’

  ‘I don’t know all that much more. She came into Uncommon Grounds thinking it was your dad’s office.’

  ‘Why would she think that?’

  ‘Googled “Thorsen” and came up with both of us? You’re better at this stuff than I am, but—’

  An eardrum-piercing screech interrupted me as Pahlke came bolting out of the bushes, tugging up her jeans as she went.

  Eric per
ked up. ‘Cool! Bet she went back there to pee and a snake got her. Or a rat.’

  ‘Ugh.’ I wrinkled my nose. ‘Your father hates rodents. That’s why we planted the hedge a few feet away from the foundation. He was convinced animals would nest in it and find their way into the building otherwise.’ I leaned down to look across Eric and out the passenger-side window. ‘She really is in a panic. Maybe we should see if we can help.’

  ‘Cool,’ Eric said again, yanking on the door handle to hop out.

  I turned off the engine and joined him and the frightened woman on the sidewalk. ‘I’m Maggy from the coffee shop – remember me? Are you hurt?’

  ‘No.’ The woman’s lips were white and trembling. ‘Dead. I touched …’ Her hand was shaky as she pointed beyond the shrubbery.

  ‘Well, if it’s dead it can’t hurt you, right?’ I said, ever the voice of reason.

  But she just shook her head, her eyes huge.

  Shrugging, I started toward the gap in the hedge. Eric had said snake or rat but I was thinking the ‘dead’ thing might be a bird that had flown into the mirrored side of the office building.

  But Eric had gotten ahead of me and stopped short just past the shrub line. ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘What is it?’ I dodged my head around my son and saw a green compressed air cylinder by the bushes. An oxygen tank, like the ones used in Ted’s office – maybe thirty inches long and four inches in diameter. Had somebody broken in? Or had William Swope trashed the place? ‘How in the world did that get—’

  ‘No, Mom! Look.’

  I followed my son’s finger. A figure lay crumpled face down on the gravel depression next to the building. A man’s body clad in a red golf shirt, the edge of a sugar packet peeking out of the back pocket of his no-longer-neatly-pressed khakis.

  SEVEN

  ‘It’s Doctor Swope.’ I pushed past Eric as I pulled out my cell phone.

  ‘Is he dead, like she said?’

  I handed the phone to my son. ‘I don’t know. Dial nine-one-one.’

  As I went to kneel next to Swope, Eric called out a warning. ‘Careful, Mom – glass.’

  Seeing what he had, I shifted to avoid the shards and knelt.

  William Swope’s face was over-rotated toward me and away from the building. His eyes were open but clouded over, the pupils huge.

  I felt for a pulse and found none, which was what I’d expected. There was a bloody dent the size of a silver dollar to his forehead and the unnatural angle of his head seemed to indicate his neck had been broken.

  I rocked back to touch one of the arms thrown up over his head. Cold and stiffening, the backs of William’s forearms and lower biceps were turning dusky.

  ‘Oh my God – it is him.’

  I turned to see Diane Laudon, hand to her mouth. Behind the office manager was the tall man we’d seen a few minutes earlier.

  The phone in Eric’s hand squawked, ‘Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?’

  ‘What should I tell them?’ he whispered.

  I took the phone. ‘We’re at 501 E. Brookhill Road. There’s a body – male – in the bushes on the Silver Maple side of the building.’

  ‘Can you tell if he’s de—’

  I’d learned from Pavlik to be precise and objective, giving only the facts as I knew them. ‘I can’t find a pulse and there are signs of blood pooling and rigor mortis. Dilated pupils.’ A raindrop fell on the back of Swope’s shirt, leaving a crimson circle. Then another. ‘It’s starting to rain again. You might want to tell them to hurry.’

  ‘We had an earlier report, so responders are already en route,’ the dispatcher said.

  I glanced toward Diane, who nodded in answer to my unspoken question.

  ‘Do you know who it is?’ the dispatcher was asking.

  ‘William Swope,’ I said. ‘He’s an oral surgeon in the building.’

  ‘And your name?’ the dispatcher asked. He seemed impressed that I knew the procedure. When I gave him my name, he seemed less impressed.

  ‘We called it in from upstairs,’ Diane confirmed as I clicked off the phone.

  ‘So you saw it happen?’ Eric’s eyes were wide.

  ‘Happen?’ The man with Diane repeated. ‘What did happen?’

  I was confused. ‘Are you a patient?’

  ‘No, I’m Clay Tartare. A friend of William’s.’ Tartare stuck out his hand to shake mine. ‘Stopped by to see him this morning but when Ms Laudon called back there was no answer.’

  Ahh, the ex-partner who’d fueled Ted’s rage last night. Had the man been so desperate to get hold of Swope that he’d flown here? ‘Was William in the office this morning, Diane?’

  ‘Yes, well, I assumed so.’ Diane dragged her eyes away from the body on the ground. ‘Doctor Swope’s car was in the parking lot when I pulled in and the office door was unlocked so I assumed there must have been a change in plans from what Doctor Thorsen told me last night.’

  So Ted had told Diane that William would be leaving, if not necessarily why.

  ‘It was only when I went back to fetch Doctor Swope for Doctor Tartare,’ Diane continued, ‘that I heard screaming and saw the window pane was broken. I looked out and, and …’ She let it trail off.

  Clay Tartare put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘Poor woman had quite a shock. I came running and called nine-one-one.’

  The rain and wind was picking up and I beckoned them closer to the building, careful to avoid the area around the body. Not that it helped much, anyway, since there was no roof overhang to protect us.

  ‘Could you see it was Doctor Swope on the ground?’ Eric asked, oblivious to the raindrops. ‘Though I guess it kind of had to be him, right?’

  Diane was shaking her head, but more in the ‘I can’t believe it’ way rather than the affirmative. ‘I suppose it did, but … it’s just so surreal. A body? Somebody I actually know? I couldn’t quite put it all together.’ She turned her head to me. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

  Sadly, I did. A number of times over.

  Naturally, Pavlik showed up without my having to call him. Diane and Tartare had gone into the building with the deputies but Eric and I were standing under an orange and red-striped golf umbrella. I didn’t play golf, but Ted did and had left behind the gaudier of his collection. Rachel probably hadn’t allowed them in the house.

  The sheriff’s hat was pulled down and his jacket collar turned up against the rain. He didn’t say, ‘Funny meeting you here,’ because, frankly, it wasn’t so funny anymore. To either of us. And it also probably didn’t improve Pavlik’s mood that the rain was damaging his scene.

  Still, I’d have liked a warmer greeting after not seeing each other for a week.

  ‘Good to see you, Eric,’ Pavlik said, shaking hands with my son. ‘When did you get home?’

  ‘Just last night,’ Eric said.

  ‘I was dropping him off at his dad’s office,’ I said, answering the question that hadn’t been asked, ‘when we … um, came across this.’ I gestured toward the crime-scene tape strung up ahead of the hedge and the makeshift tarpaulin tenting beyond it.

  ‘What were you doing in the bushes?’

  ‘We weren’t. There was a woman named Rita Pahlke here picketing and—’

  ‘She’s the one who went into the bushes,’ Eric chimed in. ‘I’m figuring she had to pee. Came back out still tugging her pants up, screaming about something being dead.’

  ‘Where is Ms Pahlke now?’ Pavlik glanced around, his gaze finally landing on the knot of Saturday morning gawkers gathered under a bus shelter on the corner. ‘Don’t tell me she’s with that group.’

  ‘No, I think one of your deputies took her into the building,’ Eric said, pointing toward the front entrance. ‘Along with Mrs Laudon and Mr Tartare.’

  ‘Doctor,’ I automatically corrected.

  ‘Another dentist in the practice?’ Pavlik asked.

  A dentist, but not with Thorsen Dental. Clay Tartare is William Swope’s former partner from Louisv
ille. According to what I gathered from Ted, William was dodging Tartare’s phone calls so he flew here to see William. When Diane went back to William’s office this morning—’

  Pavlik interrupted. ‘Diane?’

  ‘Diane Laudon, Ted’s office manager. She found the window broken in William’s office and Tartare called nine-one-one.’ Thankfully I hadn’t been the first one who’d stumbled over the body this time. Eric and I were, in fact, numbers four and five – after Diane, Tartare and Rita Pahlke, who nearly had quite literally.

  ‘Mom touched the body,’ my stool-pigeon son revealed nonetheless. He saw my expression. ‘What? Don’t you want to account for your fingerprints on the body?’

  ‘I was checking to see if he was still alive,’ I told Pavlik in my own defense. ‘And, besides, I think the picketer said she touched him, too.’ So there.

  But Pavlik just asked, ‘Any idea what Ms Pahlke is protesting about?’

  ‘Her sign said something about cavity searches,’ Eric said. ‘Kind of clever, it being a dental office and all.’

  ‘So her target was Thorsen Dental, not another business in the building?’ Pavlik slipped a notebook out of his pocket.

  ‘Definitely,’ I said. ‘She came into the coffeehouse yesterday looking for the office.’

  ‘But you didn’t know her?’ Pavlik was ready to make a note.

  I shook my head. ‘Nope and she didn’t introduce herself, just asked directions. When I mentioned it to Ted last night, though, he told me her name and that she’d stopped him on his way out of the building.’

  Pavlik looked up sharply. ‘Did Doctor Swope know this Pahlke woman?’

  ‘I’m not sure but Ted said something about neither of them – Pahlke or Tartare – looking for him, despite the fact he talked to both of them.’

  ‘And by “him” and “he” you mean Doctor Thorsen?’ Pavlik was being patient.

  It made me nervous, somehow. ‘Yes, so I just assumed their business must be with William. But you should ask Ted.’

  Pavlik slid the pad into his jacket pocket. ‘Doctor Thorsen is in his office?’ While between us, Pavlik might refer to my ex as ‘Ted,’ he was all business now.