Nobody Lives Forever

by Edna Buchanan

  Well, she thought, small world. I’ll get to meet McGee in person. What a treat. He was probably not home. She remembered he worked at a library. But she decided to try his apartment anyway. Rick and Jim will love this. Number six was the last one on the first floor, a breezy southwest corner at the back of the building.

  She knocked. Then knocked again. About to step away, she thought she heard a sound, or sensed a movement behind the opaque jalousies. “Mr. McGee, Terrance McGee?” she called. “It’s Detective Dustin, Miami homicide. Remember me?”

  The knob turned and the door swung wide open. He was barefoot, in rumpled shorts and a T-shirt that said COORS on the front. “You got my message!” he said, obviously pleased. “I didn’t think you’d come in person.”

  He wore glasses with thick lenses, a two-day stubble of beard and a big grin. “Sit down,” he said eagerly, greeting her like an old friend. “I don’t have visitors often.” He showed her to the dining room, to a seat at a round oak table. The apartment was cleaner and better furnished than most bachelor pads she had seen. The thick carpet was beige, plush and soft.

  “I wanted you to be the first to know,” he said, “and I wasn’t sure if you got the message. There are some things I want to show you,” he said, bustling into what appeared to be the bedroom.

  Dusty drank in the cool air. The apartment was comfortable. She hoped he would not ply her with his paranoid suspicions about his alleged poisonings when she wanted to ask questions about his late landlady. He emerged, as she had feared, with a fist full of newspaper clippings, letters, and what looked like legal documents and copies.

  “It sure is warm out there,” she said, sighing and pushing her thick hair back off her brow.

  “Would you like something to drink?” he said quickly.

  “I’d love it, if it’s not too much trouble.” She arranged her notepad and pen on the table in front of her.

  “A beer? Or a Coke?”

  “A Coke would be great.”

  He padded into the green-and-yellow kitchen behind her. She heard the whoosh of a flip-top can and the bubbly contents being poured into a glass. He emerged from the kitchen and set the half-full glass on the table in front of her, placing the can beside it.

  He pulled up the chair to her right and sat down, smiling expectantly. “I’m surprised you’re here,” she said. “You’re off today?”

  “I had to take some sick time, to get this whole thing straightened out,” he began. “You see, when your partners said the laboratory analysis showed no cyanide or any other poison in my sugar bowl, I knew the answer had to be one of two things—that somebody at the police department was in on it, or that it was an inside job.”

  Dusty sipped the Coke. It was warm. She put the glass down. “Actually, that’s not the reason I’m here, Mr. McGee.”

  “Call me Terrance,” he said. “You did on the telephone. I like that.” His eyes looked huge, magnified by the thick lenses. His smile was thin and pale. He offered a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros, then lit one himself when she declined. His hands trembled slightly; she wondered if he was on medication.

  Why is this the kind of Marlboro man I always meet, she thought ironically. Where is the stud in the tight pants, the one with the eye patch?

  “I thought you’d be relieved that I solved my problems myself, without any help,” Terrance was saying. He inhaled the cigarette smoke hungrily, flicking his pale lips with his tongue. “I guess I’ll go back to work now that I’m no longer in jeopardy.”

  “I’m here about your landlady, Jonina Vandermay. I guess you’re aware of what happened.”

  He nodded, somewhat casually, she thought, considering the subject matter. “Of course,” he said, in matter-of-fact fashion.

  “How long have you lived here, Terrance?” He was preoccupied, busily shuffling through his papers. Proof, in his mind, she assumed sadly, of the plots against him.

  “The lease, where’s the lease?” he frowned. He pushed his chair back, a struggle because of the thick rug. “Let me get it for you.”

  “Well, it’s not really necess—” He had already disappeared into the bedroom.

  She sighed, put down her pen and sipped her warm Coke. She stood up and carried her glass into the sunny kitchen. “Is it all right if I get some ice?” she called.

  “Sure,” he called back, apparently still foraging through papers in the bedroom, “but you better let me get it for—” He was too late. With her left hand she had already opened the freezer compartment of the refrigerator and was staring into the gelid eyes of Jonina Vandermay. Her eyelashes were frosted. So was her hair. Pink-tinged icicles hung from her nostrils.

  The glass in Dusty’s right hand crashed to the floor, the liquid inside splashed her shoes. Shards of glass and little bubbles clung to her stockings.

  Dusty tore her eyes from those of the landlady. “Oh, Terrance,” she said softly, shaking her head as if to deny what she was seeing. She shut the freezer door gently, as if closing a coffin.

  He stood in the kitchen doorway, looking a bit embarrassed and almost shy. “I left word for you,” he explained, “that I handled it myself. It had to be her,” he said triumphantly. “I finally caught her at it.”

  A sudden chill crossed Dusty’s shoulders.

  “Don’t say anything, Terrance. You don’t have to talk to me.”

  “She left footprints, that was how I caught her,” he said persistently.

  “Footprints?” Dusty was gauging the distance between where she stood and the dining room table, wondering if she could make it if he became violent. Her purse sat on the carpet next to the chair she had occupied. Her gun and her handcuffs were inside.

  “In the carpet,” he said proudly. “I got this new carpet. It’s so thick that you leave footprints. See?” He lifted his right foot to demonstrate. Sure enough, a perfect imprint was left in the soft pile, as clear as a footprint in wet sand. “I found hers. Her high heels. Only somebody with a key like she had would be able to come in and out and switch the sugar in the bowl without anybody noticing, before I could get it to the police. She was the one poisoning me all along.”

  His face glowed as though he was Perry Mason, center stage, explaining the identity of the real culprit to an enthralled audience.

  Dusty could not help herself. “Why?” she whispered.

  “She wanted my apartment,” he said, as though the answer were elementary. “After I fixed it all up at my own expense, she wanted it, and she was too cheap to start eviction proceedings. If I died, she could rent it out for a lot more money and still get to keep my security deposit. She might even have tried to force my estate to pay the rent for the remainder of my lease. There was a widow who lived across the way, in the other building—”

  “Mrs. Braverman. I know,” Dusty said softly.

  “You see!” he said. “I knew you would understand. Your partners wouldn’t believe I had a problem.”

  “They will now,” she promised.

  He was not violent, nor did he resist accompanying her to the station. In fact, he seemed quite eager to see Rick and Jim. “She owned a number of apartment houses,” Terrance said earnestly. “Who knows how many tenants she poisoned? I even found a hair in my kitchen, light color, like hers, with a dark root. That’s why”—he gestured toward the refrigerator—“I kept the proof.”

  The eyes behind the glasses shifted to Dusty’s hair, as though he suddenly realized that hers too was light.

  She knew what he was thinking and held up her hand. “I swear, Terrance, I’m blonde all over, believe it.” They laughed. She even charmed him into wearing the handcuffs.

  “I think they ought to check out what her husband died of, too,” Terranee said. “That woman was dangerous.”

  “Some are,” Dusty agreed.

  Twenty-Seven

  The street was lined with one-story, light-color tile-roofed South Florida homes. Small front lawns and short dri
veways, a tight little residential neighborhood, aloof from the glittery hotels, shopping center, high rises and tourist traffic of nearby Collins Avenue. The houses sat cooling in the evening hush, at the end of another day of sizzling ninety-five degree heat. Nothing moved. Closed windows, central air conditioners and blaring TVs insulated those home owners in residence from the sights and sounds of the street.

  Lights glowed in about half the houses. The odds of finding a witness in one of them did not seem favorable to Jim. He fought a desperate urge to pull off his shoes, knowing that if he did it would be impossible to work them back onto his swollen feet. They parked the unmarked at the corner. Rick checked his watch. “The time is right.” He took a big breath and looked up and down the empty street. “Which side do you want?”

  “This one,” Jim said, and sighed. The fewer steps the better, he thought, settling for small favors.

  Rick started across the street to begin canvassing at the stucco bungalow on the corner, then stopped. Someone was coming their way, an older woman with a small dog on a leash.

  As they moved toward her, she hesitated, then bent to scoop the little dog into her arms. The light from a street lamp reflected off the lenses in her spectacles. Clutching the dog, she turned and scampered quickly in the direction from which she had come.

  “Ma’am!” Rick hurried after her.

  She glanced over her shoulder, gave them a quick once-over and broke into a trot.

  Rick dug out his badge case as he sprinted after her, his long-legged stride easily covering the distance and leaving Jim hobbling along behind. “Police officers, ma’am. We’d like a word with you.”

  She cut her eyes at them again and reluctantly slowed her pace but kept moving. Rick caught her, danced a step ahead and flashed his winning, boyish smile. “Can we talk to you for a moment please, ma’am? Can’t blame you for being concerned. It’s okay, we’re police officers.”

  He exuded a wholesome, good-natured warmth, his strength in dealing with strangers, especially women. She responded with a small, guarded smile. Once certain there was no threat, the little dog began to yap furiously.

  “Pookie,” she chided. “Be a good boy, make nice.” She placed the dog on the sidewalk, keeping him taut on a short leash.

  “What a good little watchdog,” Rick crooned while Pookie snuffled suspiciously at his shoes.

  “He’s a Lhasa apso.” The owner beamed proudly, clutching her wrapper coyly around her, over what appeared to be a cotton nightgown.

  The man does have a way with women, you have to hand him that, Jim thought, puffing up behind.

  “Are you Bal Harbour policemen?”

  “No ma’am, City of Miami detectives. We’re interested in what happened last night at the shopping center.”

  She smiled, nodding with obvious relief and blinking behind her glasses. “I was afraid you were enforcing the new law.”

  When both men looked blank, she scrutinized them suspiciously, as though debating whether or not they were really police officers.

  “The pooper-scooper ordinance. You have to carry scoops and little bags, to pick up the, uh, you know, doggie doo-doo.”

  “Doggie doo-doo?” Jim repeated, a look of wonder on his face. “You have police officers who actually enforce that?”

  “Oh yes,” she nodded. “It’s a one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar fine for the first offense. If you get caught a second time, it’s a five-hundred-dollar fine and a possible jail sentence. I always bring the scoop and carry Pookie’s doo-doo home during the day,” she assured them, her posture defensive, “but at night, in the dark, it’s difficult, and Pookie usually does his … business in the morning anyway, after he has his breakfast.”

  The detectives nodded solemnly, in unison. “Sounds reasonable to me,” Jim said.

  “Makes sense,” Rick said. “You were out here last night when it happened?”

  “When what happened?” Her eyes were inquisitive behind her bifocal lenses.

  “The shooting and the fire at the shopping center.”

  “Oh yes, we were out here, as usual. We always take our walk before the ten o’clock news. We never used to see strangers on the street here at night,” she said, her expression apprehensive. “This neighborhood is changing.”

  She and Pookie continued their stroll as the detectives walked alongside.

  Pookie paused to do something indelicate at the base of an umbrella tree. His owner looked concerned.

  The men ignored it. “Did you see anything suspicious?” Rick asked.

  “Well, I heard the excitement, the sirens and the fire engines. We walked up there for a look, to see what had happened.”

  “We?”

  “Pookie and me. His real name is Prince Pook Song.”

  “Did you see any strangers or any strange cars in the neighborhood?”

  “Just the one, walking away from the shopping center fast, all out of breath, parked right over here, I think,” she said, stopping to squint at the curbside and then at Pookie, who was licking the sidewalk. She tugged at his leash.

  “Did you get a good look at this stranger?”

  “Well, we talked for a moment.”

  “What did the man look like?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head, “it was a woman, a blond woman.”

  “A woman?” The detectives exchanged disappointed glances.

  “What did she look like?” Jim asked, his voice weary.

  “Almost like a man, from a distance. She was wearing jeans, some sort of windbreaker, blue, I think, and tennis shoes. She had a baseball cap under one arm and she was carrying a pair of glasses, sunglasses, I believe.”

  She opened a wooden gate and stepped into a small, well-kept yard. Rick wet his lips and reached out for her hand. “Ma’am, my name is Sergeant Barrish, and this is Detective Ransom. We’d like to talk to you some more, if it’s all right with you. Do you mind if we come inside?”

  Her hand was still in his. He did not look like a man who had been on the job for eleven hours or spent most of the night humping a fellow detective. Prince Charming had just found Cinderella. “Of course not,” she said, gazing up at him. “I can fix us some iced tea. It’ll just take a minute. Come on, Pookie,” she said, and led them into the house.

  Twenty-Eight

  The suspicion struck like thunder during the drive home. Rick nearly swung into a U-turn toward Pigeon Plum, but decided against it. If what he suspected was true, seeing Dusty now would be the worst possible move. Crazy, he thought, crazy enough to be true. He might have already committed a major screwup. Furious at himself, he felt physically ill. He hoped Laurel would be asleep, but saw lights and heard the chatter of the police scanner as he opened the front door.

  “Well, look who’s here.” The tone was almost confrontational.

  “What the…” He did a double take. Laurel was parked in front of the TV. She had already turned her attention back to a wrestling match on one of the cable channels. She wore one of his T-shirts and was leaning forward, a can of beer in one hand, her forearms resting on the thighs of her blue jeans. The body language was tough, distinctly unfeminine. Her eyes glittered at the action on the screen. “Gotcha,” Rick said. “Now I know who’s been drinking my beer.” He bleakly regarded the tag-team match in progress. “I didn’t know you liked that stuff.”

  “What did you expect, soap operas at this hour?” Her voice was husky.

  She leaned back suddenly, placing her hands on the armrests of her chair, her face softening. She looked up, eyes full of sleep. “Rick,” she breathed, then glanced at the clock. “What time is it?” Her voice sounded mellow and befuddled.

  He stared at her, then shook his head. “Late, babe. You really ought to get some sleep.” He walked past her into the kitchen, realizing how little he really knew this woman who was sharing his life. He needed a drink.

  She followed, looking down at the shirt and self-consciously t
ucking it into her jeans. “Is anything wrong?”

  “I cut the night short because I have to get an early start tomorrow.”

  He took the bourbon from the kitchen cabinet, stared, puzzled, at the level in the bottle for a moment, then poured two fingers into a water glass and downed it grimly.

  “What’s wrong?” She looked big-eyed and scared, like a little girl.

  “A case,” he said. He shook his head and poured again.

  “Rob’s murder?”

  “Yeah, partly.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s all fucked up.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “Maybe. No. I don’t know.”

  She stepped close, hugged him around the waist, pressed her face against his chest and started to cry. “I’m scared,” she said.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean to lay this on you,” he said, brushing the blond hair from her forehead. “There’s nothing for you to be upset about.”

  “I can’t be alone at night anymore, Rick. You need to be here. Don’t leave me alone again.”

  “Goddammit! Don’t start in on that now. I need to think.”

  He pulled away, took his drink and marched out the back door into the warm night.

  “Rick?” She stood at the door behind him.

  “Get some sleep, will you? I need to be alone for awhile.” He sat in a chair on the little wooden dock for a long time, nursing his guilt along with his drink and gazing across the water at the city skyline. Moonlight bathed the Centrust tower and the Metrorail bridge, a neon rainbow that straddled downtown. He loved the sight—it never failed to soothe him—until now. “How could something that feels so good be wrong?” The words echoed in his mind. He must be wrong. He had to be crazy. But it all fit—it all tied in. What if he was right?

  He did not go inside until dawn began to lighten the sky. He was surprised that Laurel had not slept. She was busy, vigorously scrubbing something in the kitchen. He could smell bleach. She never looked up, and he went to bed—alone.