The Candidate Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

“That’s it. Says he talked with you the day before yesterday.”

  “Just on the phone,” Fenway said.

  “Something happen?”

  Fenway nodded. “The professor. The one who—uh, those pictures Barry Klein had, you remember them?”

  Dez’s mouth turned into an angry line. “I remember.”

  “The professor drowned in the Squalicum Waterway a couple of days after Dr. Klein showed me those pictures.”

  Dez’s eyebrows shot up. “Drowned?”

  “That’s what the article said. But now I guess they think it was foul play.”

  “But you live here now. Why are they talking to you?”

  “Because,” Fenway said, “I think they found all those videos on the dark web, the same as Barry Klein’s private investigator found, and I was in Seattle a couple of days before.”

  “Oh—when you went up to get your mother’s painting.”

  “Right.”

  “So, what, he thinks you killed him?”

  “I’m not sure what he thinks.” Fenway paused. “No—that’s not quite true. I think he looks at my car being at the Sea-Tac airport, he looks at me visiting Seattle, and he looks at the dead professor, and he says to himself how he doesn’t like coincidences.”

  Dez nodded. “I get it. I don’t like coincidences either.”

  “Maybe he’s down here trying to confirm my alibi for those days.”

  “You still could have hired someone.”

  “Yeah, but he could figure all the financial stuff out online, or with a forensic accountant. He wouldn’t need to come down.”

  Dez tapped her foot. “It is a pretty big coincidence.”

  “I agree.”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  “Honestly, Dez, I think someone who Professor Delacroix raped either killed him, or a boyfriend or father or someone did.”

  Dez cocked her head to the side. “Father?”

  “I know.” Fenway nodded. “He found out about a day and a half before the professor died. Don’t think I haven’t considered the possibility.”

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “I think he could have. I mean—he wouldn’t do it himself, he’d get one of his security specialists to fly up there in his private plane and do it. He wouldn’t get his hands dirty.”

  “Think it’s likely it was him?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t asked him. And I don’t want to.”

  “You said boyfriend too.”

  “I did.”

  Dez looked knowingly at Fenway.

  “McVie was with me most of the time,” Fenway said, “plus, he wouldn’t have had money to hire anyone, plus, he’s not my boyfriend.”

  “No,” Dez said, “but you know how he feels about you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dez looked at Fenway with a smirk. “You do know.”

  Fenway felt herself blush.

  “All right,” Dez said. “You want me to give Bellingham the brush off?”

  “No.” Fenway sighed. “Tell him I’ll talk to him. I’ll give him a whole forty-five minutes.” Fenway felt her stomach tighten up again. “But he has to take me to dinner. Somewhere good.”

  DETECTIVE DESHAWN RIDLEY sat across from Fenway at a high-top table at Dos Milagros taquería. A couple of the other patrons glanced at her, as she still had the fancy dress on. She was by far the most dressed-up person in the restaurant. One little girl with a big mop of curly black hair and huge dark eyes kept staring at her. Her mother kept telling her in Spanish to turn around, it was impolite to stare, but the little girl couldn’t look away.

  Fenway had ordered two chicken tacos, and then, because the detective was paying, a lengua taco as well.

  He was playing with the paper straw for his Coke. Fenway had wanted a Pacifico, but, because she knew she’d be grilled by the detective, ordered horchata instead.

  “Did I hear right? You ordered a lengua taco?”

  “Yep,” Fenway said.

  “You don’t strike me as the type to be that adventurous with your food.”

  “Maybe not,” Fenway said. “Maybe I ordered it because I’ve always been fascinated to try it and finally ordered it since someone else was paying.”

  “That’s kind of rude,” Ridley said.

  Fenway shrugged.

  Ridley wasn’t at all what Fenway had expected. With his deep, sonorous voice, Ridley should have been about six-foot-ten and built like a linebacker. Fenway had pictured a huge hulk of a man, skin the color of obsidian, barely fitting into sport coats, his muscles bulging with every step. Instead, he was small and wiry, and his skin was almost as light as Fenway’s. His temples had flecks of salt and pepper, but he didn’t look old enough to be going gray yet. Fenway was dying to ask how old he was, but knew how impolite it would be.

  “While we’re waiting for our food, Miss Stevenson,” he said, “I’d like you to tell me again what your relationship with Professor Solomon Delacroix was.”

  “I’m sure you’ve seen the video by now, Detective,” Fenway said. “He was my professor. He did that to me. Then I worked my ass off in his class, got an A, and then I transferred from literature to nursing. After I took the final in his class, I literally never saw him again.”

  “Never? Not even crossing campus, across the dining hall or student union, bumping into him in town on a Saturday night?”

  “Not once.”

  The detective nodded.

  “So, Detective, you’ve talked to me twice in the last three days.”

  “True.”

  “I must have somehow emerged as a person of interest. But I’ve explained what I was doing in Seattle, you know I was on a flight back home before he died, and you know I was in Estancia the entire time in question.”

  “True.”

  “Did you just want to take me to dinner? Because there are less creepy ways—”

  “No, Miss Stevenson,” Ridley said, holding up his hand. “Are you familiar with a man named Akeel Montgomery?”

  Fenway cocked her head to the side. “Sure. I dated him about two years ago. The summer I was doing my graduate work.”

  “You visited Mr. Montgomery, if I’m not mistaken, at 112 NE 38th Street, in Seattle? Three days before the professor was found?”

  Fenway shifted uncomfortably on her stool. “True.”

  “What was the reason for your visit?”

  Fenway screwed up her mouth, weighing her options. Then she decided to come clean. “I was hung up on a guy here in Estancia. And I wanted to get Mom’s painting out of the storage unit in Seattle, and Akeel lives pretty close to the storage unit. And he and I used to date, and I still thought he was hot, and I thought if I spent some time with him, I could get the other guy out of my head.”

  Ridley nodded. “I see. There was no other reason you stayed with him?”

  The woman behind the counter called “Joanne” and Fenway popped off her stool to get their orders before she had to answer.

  She took her time getting the food, and getting her bearings. The line of questioning about Akeel obviously showed Ridley thought something sinister went on.

  She asked for extra sour cream in Spanish. The exchange with the cook took a minute as Fenway thought about how to respond.

  They had discussed her father—or at least, her father’s employees—on the phone call the other day. But nothing about her father had come up so far in this particular conversation. Fenway moved onto the salsa bar, pulling a metal tray onto the counter and putting the tacos on it—Ridley had ordered three carne asada—and then she slowly and methodically scooped all three types of salsa into containers. Was Ridley waiting to pull out his suspicions of her father when Fenway was already on her heels about Akeel?

  Fenway knew what Ridley was implying: Fenway had traded sex with Akeel in exchange for him killing the professor. But she wasn’t going to let Ridley leave it in the air; he was going to have to accuse her directly. He’d have to accuse her o
f being a whore, in front of customers, in front of the servers, in front of a drink she could pour on his head. Fenway was going to play innocent—and play nice.

  The sex-for-murder angle might have been what Fenway would think if she were the detective in a similar situation, but that didn’t make it any less appalling.

  She brought the tray with the tacos back to the high-top table and set it down, taking the two taco baskets and putting them in front of both of them.

  She sat down on the stool across from Detective Ridley, and smiled a warm, personable smile. “Seriously the best tacos in Estancia,” Fenway said. “Way better than anything in Bellingham.”

  “I like Rio Bravo,” Detective Ridley said, then took a large bite of one of his tacos.

  “The one in downtown? Doesn’t even hold a candle to this place.” Fenway picked up the lengua taco in her left hand and with her right poured a generous amount of salsa verde over the top. She briefly flashed back to a few weeks before, when she had been in line at Dos Milagros, and two teenaged girls were in front of her. Fenway was trying to psych herself up to order the lengua taco, but the teenagers pointed it out on the menu and were making their icky faces at it. “Eww, gross,” one of them said. “I don’t want to taste anything that can taste me back.” Fenway had ordered the chicken.

  The lengua taco looked like a regular taco; the meat was buried underneath the cheese and lettuce and cilantro. She closed her eyes and took a bite. It was pretty good. Tasted like beef.

  She looked up. Detective Ridley was staring at her. She nodded and smiled, keeping her mouth closed and chewing. “Pretty good, right?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s better than Rio Bravo, though.”

  “Oh, come on,” Fenway said, “you know it’s better than Rio Bravo.” She swallowed, thinking of the tongue tasting her all the way down her esophagus and almost laughing out loud at the mental picture. If she could handle insect larvae in rotting pig meat, she could eat a lengua taco.

  She looked back up at Detective Ridley. His whole face was expressionless—except his questioning eyes.

  Oh, he’s doing his thing where he’s waiting for me to volunteer information. On the phone, she had been silent until the pauses were uncomfortable. But Fenway was at her favorite restaurant, in a social situation, with someone who wanted to get something out of her and was playing games to do it. So instead of volunteering information, she made small talk.

  “Did you know this place has only been here about five years? You probably saw in your records—I only moved down here from Seattle at the end of April. Last week, in fact, was my official six-month anniversary on the job.” She paused, and when Detective Ridley didn’t say anything, Fenway plowed on. “So I came here literally the second day I was in town. And I fell in love with this place. Dos Milagros—‘two miracles’? I’ve gotten to know the owners, Carlos and María, they’re super nice. The two miracles are their kids—the doctors told them they couldn’t have babies, and boom! About a year later, María was pregnant with twins. A boy and a girl.” Fenway leaned forward, and Detective Ridley looked increasingly irritated that his preferred interrogation method wasn’t working. “Now, I’ve got to tell you, Detective Ridley, I suspect there was some, uh, help from a third party, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” said Ridley, “which is why—”

  “But I’ve never asked them about it.” She took a look over behind the counter. “I wouldn’t talk about this at their restaurant, but they’re not here tonight. I’m not surprised. It’s a Sunday—they like to be with their family. Although the kids are teenagers now. When their kids were ten, Carlos and María took a loan out and got this restaurant. It was a Greek restaurant before this. One of those restaurant locations that change hands a bunch of times, where nothing seems to stay in business very long.”

  Ridley attempted to interrupt, but she plowed on.

  “I grew up in Estancia, you know. When I first lived here—before I was about eight years old—I seem to remember this place being a pizza parlor. But it was the bad pizza place—the good pizza place was down the street. They moved out after the owner retired, and I guess maybe ten years—”

  “Miss Stevenson,” Detective Ridley finally said, “I’d like to get back to the matter at hand.”

  Fenway cocked her head to the side. “I’m sorry. Did you ask me something?”

  “I asked if you knew Akeel Montgomery.”

  “And I told you yes. You asked why I was visiting him, and I gave you a long answer that translated more or less into a booty call.”

  “And what did you talk about while you were with him?”

  Fenway laughed. “I was literally at his apartment for about half an hour. I had brought a suitcase and I was ready to stay for a few days. But I got a call about the mayor’s death almost as soon as I got there, and had to go back to the airport.” She paused. “I’m sure I told you all this.” Of course she had—but perhaps he wanted to see Fenway’s face when she said it.

  “A lot can happen in a half an hour,” Detective Ridley said.

  Fenway nodded. “Not as much as I wanted to happen, but sure.”

  “What did the two of you talk about?” he repeated.

  Fenway chuckled. “Mostly how hot we were for each other.”

  “What else?”

  “When the phone rang, Akeel asked if I had a boyfriend back home.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him I didn’t.”

  “Was that the truth?”

  “It was.”

  Detective Ridley paused the conversation yet again, and Fenway almost burst out laughing. The uncomfortable silence Ridley depended on to get his suspects to crack didn’t work on her, and certainly didn’t work at a restaurant, where Fenway had three tacos and a tall glass of horchata with which to busy her mouth.

  She took another bite of her taco, then purposely talked with her mouth open. “Man,” she said, “I should have tried the lengua a long time ago. It’s delicious.” She held it up halfway between them. “You want a bite? I haven’t eaten from this side.”

  “No thanks,” Ridley said, his mouth turned down in a frown. Fenway took the taco back.

  She chewed, slowly and thoroughly, and swallowed. Looking at Ridley’s increasingly furrowed brow, she took another large bite.

  The door opened. Officer Young, still in his tuxedo, rushed in from the cold night outside. “Fenway!” he said, loudly. “What were you thinking?”

  Fenway’s mouth was full.

  “What’s going on?” Ridley said, on high alert.

  Officer Young pulled out his badge. “There’s been credible threats against this woman’s life,” he said. “I’ve been assigned to protect her.”

  “Really?” Detective Ridley said. “I didn’t see you anywhere near—”

  Fenway held up her hand as she swallowed with difficulty. “No, no, he’s right, Detective. Officer Young was giving his statement about the other candidate’s wife spitting on me. I should have waited for him. Or I should have at least told him I was going with another law enforcement officer.” Fenway wiped her hands on her napkin. “Where are my manners? Detective Deshawn Ridley from the Major Crimes Unit in Bellingham, Washington, this is Officer Todd Young of the Dominguez County Sheriff’s Department.”

  They nodded to each other but didn’t shake hands.

  Officer Young leaned toward Fenway’s ear. “You know they’re talking about letting her go?” he said softly.

  “Ivanovich’s wife?”

  Officer Young nodded.

  Fenway shrugged. “Are you surprised? Political fallout. For both me and Dr. Ivanovich. Accusations of election tampering, or something. It’d be bad for all parties involved.” She pushed the basket closer to Officer Young. “Have a taco.”

  “No, I shouldn’t.”

  “You’ve gotta eat, Officer.” Fenway took a drink of her horchata. “Especially since we had to leave the dinner before dinner.
”

  “You sure?”

  Detective Ridley looked nonplussed.

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  “Great, thanks. I’m starving.”

  Officer Young took a bite of the last chicken taco. “Man,” he said, around the mouthful he had taken, “I forgot how good Dos Milagros is.”

  “Best tacos in Estancia. Better than anything in Bellingham.” Fenway winked at Detective Ridley.

  Ridley gave Fenway a tight smile. “Listen, Miss Stevenson, I appreciate the time so far, but I think we should talk in an area with a bit more privacy.”

  “Detective,” Fenway said, “I’ve told you all I know. I was up in Seattle. I got a call. I flew home and left my car in the long-term lot at Sea-Tac. A couple days later, my father showed up with my car, saying he flew one of his people up there to get it for me and drive it back. That’s all I know. I have no more information for you. I never saw Professor Delacroix after my final, I never spoke to him in person or on the phone, I never emailed him or wrote him a letter. You can stand there doing your silent treatment thing all you want, but I’m not going to say anything to help your case because I don’t know anything else.”

  “Did your father tell you who he sent up to get your car?”

  Fenway shook her head. “Nope. Whoever it was, he was probably taller than me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I had to adjust the seat forward when I got in,” Fenway said. “And I had to tilt the rear-view mirror like it was a taller person sitting there.”

  The detective took out his notebook and started to write in it.

  “Or—” Fenway started.

  “What?”

  Fenway laughed. “This is probably because I’m in the middle of so many murder investigations now, but just because the seat was back and the mirror was adjusted doesn’t mean it was a tall guy driving. The seat might have been placed back because a short driver had instructions to make it comfortable for me, the skyscraperish girl you see before you, to get into the car.”

  “Or he could have done it to throw you off.”

  “I suppose,” Fenway said. “Listen, Detective, there have got to be other victims. I can’t have been the only one whose, uh, session he recorded.”