Murder in the Hearse Degree (29 page)

A rueful grin came to Pete’s face.

“Damn fool woman fought back. One of them had her purse and she was playing tug-of-war with him. Another one knocked her down and they kicked her a couple times. The girl was one big bruise when she got home. But you know what? They didn’t get her purse. She put a death grip on the damn thing and Charlie Atlas couldn’t have pried it loose. The muggers finally left. Susan went on to McCormick’s and fetched the sweater then went back to the bus. The kids didn’t really get it. They thought the muggers had wanted the sweater. They thought that Susan had gotten beaten up because she refused to hand it over. She was a real hero.”

Pete fell silent. He peered out over the black water. After a minute he said, “No, I don’t miss the damn bums and pushers. I say bulldoze the whole damn place.”

A bull moose stormed into my office the next day. I had been busying myself putting papers into neat stacks. I like neat stacks and I find that if I leave them unattended for too long, they get un-neat all on their own. Either that or Billie sneaks into my office and musses them. By the time the bull moose showed up I had actually finished with my paperwork and was on the phone with Pete, who was camped out on the couch back at my place. I was reading to him from one of my trade journals, about a fellow mortician in the town of Blue Nose, Canada—that’s in the Saskatchewan province—and the frenzy of activity he has each spring burying the folks who have been held in cold storage through the long bitter winter when the ground is simply too frozen for digging graves. The article was titled “Spring Planting.” Pete was finding it somewhat less amusing than I was.

“Hang on,” I said, glancing out the window. “I’ve got company.” I hit the speaker-phone button and dropped the receiver back onto the cradle. The bull moose stormed in.

“Where the
hell
do you get off interfering with my personal life?”

You’ll know the bull moose by his more familiar name. Mike Gellman. Mike looked to me as if he hadn’t gotten a terribly good night’s sleep. Sometimes all that’s required is that you flip the mattress, though I don’t believe in Mike’s case his bleary eyes and disgruntled demeanor were stemming from that sort of comfort issue. He planted his hands on my desk and bellowed at me like . . . well, in fact, like a bull moose.

“I want you off my back, Sewell! You have no fucking idea what you’re screwing around with!”

I was tempted to reply that I had a very precise idea what
he
was . . . but why wave a red flag?

“Would you like a nice cup of tea, Mike?” I asked.

He grumbled, “Are you listening to me?”

“I’m sure as hell
hearing
you. And so is half the block, I’d imagine. Why don’t you put it in reverse, Mike. Take a seat. Count to ten.”

I have a novelty pen and pencil set on my desk. One of my sales reps gave it to me a few years back. The pen and pencil are shaped like two femur bones and they sit inside a little tin casket. Mike swept his hand across my desk. He sent the little metal casket flying across the room. It sailed right out the open window.

“Nice shot,” I remarked.

Mike dropped into a chair. “I want this stopped. Do you understand me?”

Of course I understood him. He was speaking in simple clear sentences. No big words.

“I capiche.”

“I don’t want any of your bullshit, Sewell. This is the wrong time for you to be snooping around in my private affairs.”

“I have to say, Mike, you turn a phrase with uncanny precision.”

“This is no joke, Sewell.”

I steepled my fingers. “I agree with you, Mike. It’s not a joke. If
I
may be precise here. A young woman you employed is dead under suspicious circumstances, whether your buddies in the local police force want to think so or not, and not a week later you’re frolicking in a hot tub with a woman who is not only not your wife but who had some rather peculiar dealings with your nanny fairly soon before her death. You’re right, Mike. Not a laugh riot by a long shot.”

“My private life is none of your business. And where the hell do you get off snooping around on my property in the middle of the night?”

It seemed to me that of the two indiscretions—trespassing and adultery—the better question was where did Gellman get off asking me where
I
got off. But it was too convoluted a question to ask.

The sun was angling in the window in a narrow beam that landed directly on Mike Gellman’s lap. He crossed his legs and the sunlight settled on his knee.

“Look. I’m not an angel, okay? I’m human. I make mistakes. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Not to push a point, Mike, but I don’t need to hear it. And, I gather, neither does Libby.”

He shifted in his chair. “What do you mean? Have you told her?”

“About Ginny Larue? As it happens, I haven’t. Not yet anyway. But Libby has been giving me the rundown on some of your past affairs.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have to tell
you
?”

“You mean Maggie Mason? Oh for Christ’s sake, that was years ago. Ancient history. I slept with the woman exactly twice. That’s hardly ‘an affair.’ It’s a pair of one-night stands. I ate so much goddamn humble pie over Maggie Mason it’s not even funny.”

“What about Cindy, Mike? You can’t call that one ancient history.”

“Cindy?” A frown creased his face. “Our nanny? What the hell does Cindy have to do with anything?”

“You were sleeping with her,” I said.

“Oh really.” Mike crossed his arms and sat back in the chair. “How interesting. Is this someone else you spied me with in my hot tub?”

“Libby told me.”

“Well let me tell you something. Libby doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. I never slept with Cindy. That’s absurd.”

“Libby says you did.”

“Did
she
see me?”

“She sussed it out.”

“She sussed it out wrong. I never slept with that girl. Though I wouldn’t put it past her to plant the idea in Libby’s head. That damn girl. If I ever got ahold of her . . .” He trailed off.

“What, Mike? If you got ahold of her, what? You’d throw her from a bridge?”

He leaned forward in his chair. “I’m telling you, Sewell, I didn’t touch Sophie. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Fine. Do you want to convince me? Libby says you were working late that night that Sophie went out. Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t. I sure as hell notice that the local police haven’t pressed you to explain yourself to them.”

“Do you want to know where I was? I’ll tell you.” He fell back in the chair. “But if you tell Libby I swear I’ll take your head off. I was with Ginny Larue, okay? We were at the Commodore Hotel. I can have that confirmed, but obviously I’d rather not if I can avoid it. I was nowhere near that girl. Bud Talbot has a statement from me concerning my whereabouts. I came clean with the authorities on that. They’re doing me the courtesy of keeping it confidential. It’s nothing Libby needs to know.”

“And when did ‘Bud’ get this statement from you?”

“When I came in to identify Sophie. Naturally with a death on his hands and not just a missing persons, he wanted to get as broad a picture of things as he could, starting with the night Sophie disappeared.”

“Was that also when you told Talbot that you thought Sophie must have killed herself?”

Mike frowned. “What are you talking about? Who said I said anything like that?”

“Officer Floyd recalls that it was you or Libby or both of you who told the police that Sophie was unstable. But it wasn’t Libby.”

“He’s mistaken.”

“But you knew she was pregnant. You didn’t have to wait for the coroner’s report. Which probably means that Talbot knew, too. You told him, right? You told him the girl was unsteady, she found out she was pregnant, she threw herself off the bridge.”

“Now I knew she was pregnant? Where are you coming up with this, Sewell?”

“Virginia Larue. She told me yesterday who set up the meeting between the Larues and Sophie. It was Owen Cutler. And you’re the logical link between him and Sophie. If Uncle Owen knew that Sophie was pregnant, something tells me you weren’t in the dark.”

Mike got out of the chair and stepped over to the window. He dropped into that famous JFK pose, hands on the windowsill, weight of the world on the back of his neck.

“This is all fucked up,” he muttered, which is probably pretty close to what Kennedy had to say at the time as well. Mike stood there a while staring at his knuckles, then turned to face me.

“How much of this have you told Libby?”

“She knows that Sophie went to see the Larues. She doesn’t know who set it up.”

“Look, you’ve got to do me a favor. You’ve got to drop all of this right now. I don’t want you telling Libby a thing. I don’t want you telling the police a thing.”

“How about the newspapers?”

“Jesus, Sewell, you have no idea what you’re getting into. No. Not the fucking newspapers. I’m about to be indicted in this goddamn arena mess. I can’t have this other stuff coming up. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m fighting for my life here. I’ll pay you, Sewell. I swear. I had nothing to do with Sophie’s death. I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Or Tom Cushman?”

“I had nothing to do with that, either.”

“But you know who Tom Cushman is. You know that he was the person who went with Sophie to see Crawford Larue.”

“I never met the guy. I couldn’t tell you what he looks like.”

“But Virginia Larue knew what he looked like. And where to find him.”

“Fine. So what?”

“So she could tug on your sleeve and tell you, ‘There he is. Go get him.’ ”

Mike was exasperated. “Yes. Fine. I killed him. And I killed Sophie. For Christ’s sake, anybody else? Have you got any bodies lying around this place you can’t account for? I killed them, too. I killed everybody. I’m a maniac. Someone should kill
me
.”

He stepped away from the window and dropped back into the chair. He tried but failed to wipe his features off his face. “How the hell did everything get so fucked up? I can’t believe what’s happening.”

“What I want to know is what the hell you and Owen Cutler were doing sending Sophie off to Crawford Larue. Unless my information is way off, I happen to know that it wasn’t either of you who got her pregnant.”

“Don’t go there, Sewell. Seriously. Why can’t I get through to you?”

I shrugged. “Titanium plate in my head. Deflects everything. I’m also B-vitamin deficient and I don’t eat enough seafood. Rotten retention. It’s not your fault, Mike. I know you’re trying.”

Mike grimaced. “No, Sewell,
you’re
trying.”

“I’ll tell you what, Mike. I’ll make you a deal. I haven’t told Libby about the little hot-tub scene I witnessed the other night. I’m sure she’d be intrigued to hear all about it. You put the Sophie-Larue picture together for me and I’ll keep that scene to myself. How’s that?”

“And I’m supposed to trust you?”

“Trust this. If you don’t tell me I’ll pick up the phone and call her right now. You can sit there and listen to me tell her all about it. My powers of description might dazzle you.”

Mike glared at me. “You’re going to be disappointed.”

“Go ahead, Mike. Disappoint me.”

He shifted in the chair. “Here’s the thing. I was actually being a nice guy. That’s what it really comes down to. It was a fluke of timing. I was having lunch at a place called Griffin’s. It was a Saturday. Libby was off with the kids on some sort of play date. I was heading up to where I’d parked my car, and I ran right into Sophie. She was sitting on a bench on the sidewalk. She was crying. She tried to pretend that she wasn’t, but the moment she opened her mouth to speak, she exploded into tears. She was a real wreck. I sat down and she blurted it out. The whole pregnancy thing. She said she had found out that she was pregnant a couple days before and had just come from seeing the guy who was responsible. Basically, the guy was giving her the cut-and-run. I tried to get from her who he was, but she clamped shut. She wasn’t going to tell me. She wasn’t even blaming him. Not really. She was putting it all on herself. I’m telling you, she was a real mess. I did what I could to calm her down. She said she was afraid we’d fire her. Eventually I got her to calm down. We went to a café and had some coffee. And that’s when I suggested she go see Larue.”

“Stop. You knew that Larue was looking to adopt?”

“I did. Owen had mentioned it to me. Larue doesn’t want a lot of publicity about this. He wants to handle it privately. I thought maybe this could work out for everyone so I put Sophie in contact with Owen.”

“And what about Libby? Why was she kept in the dark about all this?”

The sunlight had tracked down to Mike’s thigh. He brushed at something on his leg. Lint perhaps. It looked as if he were trying to brush the sunlight away.

“That was Sophie’s call. She swore she didn’t know she was pregnant when we hired her. We’d only had her about a month. She begged me not to tell Libby. Of course it was inevitable that it would come out, but she just wanted to hold off. The truth is I had a hell of a lot on my mind already at that point. I was just as happy not to add any more troubles to my plate.”

“You lent Sophie your wedding ring, didn’t you?”

“That was stupid. But yes. I did. Larue wanted to see the father as well as the mother. He’s an old horse breeder. He wanted to check out the ‘stock.’ Sophie was working up some cockamamie story and she thought the ring would help. Frankly, I didn’t care, just so long as my name didn’t come up. I wasn’t going to send her up there saying that she worked for me. Maybe you can understand I didn’t want my name being bounced around Crawford Larue’s house.”