Dumpster Dying

by Lesley A. Diehl

  He was due back at the bar this afternoon, and she supposed she’d have to listen to his fish stories the entire night. Clara had put both Emily and Donald on duty because of the annual hospital golf tournament. She expected a busy night. Maybe she wouldn’t have time to listen to Donald yammer on about fishing.

  When she got to the hot tub, there was a notice posted saying it was closed for repair for three days.

  “Damn, just when I need it most,” she said to herself. She flipped her towel over her shoulder and walked the block back to her place. There was a message on her machine from Hap.

  “We’ve got a court date a week from this coming Thursday. We need to meet and go over our case. How about you and me meet for lunch tomorrow? Pick me up at noon. Call me.”

  With all the excitement over the shooting at the club and her practice at the range, she’d almost forgotten about her case. She’d gathered together all the necessary paperwork—cancelled checks, credit card receipts, mortgage and car payment information—demonstrating that she and Fred had shared, not only their bed, but their finances for the past ten years. Now she and Hap had to decide what witnesses could testify to her devotion and fidelity to him during that period. They were life partners, Hap had said, like husband and wife, but with no license.

  No marriage certificate was one thing, understandable in terms of tax and dependency issues. Lots of older people did that, but why hadn’t Fred made out a will favoring her? Why let the old one stand? Emily didn’t understand that either and every time she thought about it, she felt the anger at Fred rise up from her toes and travel throughout her body. If he weren’t already dead, she thought, I’d like to kill him.

  She knew all the questions nagging at her were ones the judge would want addressed also. Could she answer them to her own satisfaction and the judge’s?

  She dialed Hap’s number. “I’ll pick you up around noon tomorrow. We can get a booth in the back of the Burnt Biscuit and have some privacy there.”

  She put down the phone and considered the time she had left to her this afternoon. Vicki had volunteered to take her to the club when she returned from her bridge game later, but Emily had two hours to kill before she was due at work. Knowing Vicki’s fondness for hot fudge sundaes, she wrote her a note saying she had errands to run and she would meet her at the ice cream parlor several minutes before three. Meantime, Emily slipped into work clothes and met the bus outside the gate. She had some research to do at the town library.

  With one elbow propped on the table holding up her chin, and refrigerated air blowing across her shoulders, Emily turned pages with her free hand. She had skimmed three of the yearbooks from the time Clara was in high school and now turned her attention to senior year when Clara had gone abroad for study. Here it is, the picture taken of the students who participated. Neville Landry stood in the back row behind the eight students. Well, he certainly could be Darren’s father. No doubt about that. Same long, lean body type. But it was difficult to tell about eye and hair color. Maybe grey like Darren’s. But Landry was not the man hidden in the picture frame in Clara’s bedroom.

  She scanned the faces of the students: five girls, including Clara and only three boys. Given Landry’s youth and good looks along with the excitement of exotic gay Paree, Emily imagined the girls would find studying abroad socially as well as intellectually interesting. And the boys? Well, like all males, these youths might have found the idea of French girls tempting, as was the chance to be with their female classmates unsupervised by parents.

  Emily read the names below the picture. The end of the line read, “Absent, Morton Davey.” That must have been Marcus’ brother. She flipped to the index in the back, looking for a page where he might have been photographed in a club or perhaps his senior picture. Nothing. The guy certainly wasn’t a joiner, or if he was, he was camera shy.

  She found several pages listed for Marcus Davey and turned to them. Youth Rodeo. Marcus sat a pinto pony, hat pulled down over his eyes. He looked exactly like any other teen in the club. He was younger than his brother, so Emily turned to the junior class photos and found Marcus. Same shifty eyes she remembered from mixology class, only a lot younger. The nose, however. The nose reminded her of the hidden picture. Maybe Clara had the hots for Marcus back then. That couldn’t be. Clara hated Marcus. Or at least she said she did.

  She turned to Clara’s senior picture. The woman had aged very little in the thirty plus years since it had been taken. The face that looked back at her from the photo revealed the same sense of self-confidence Clara exhibited now. The lines time had written on her forehead and around her mouth gave her face more character than the youthful Clara, but the eyes were the same—mischievous, almost dancing their way out of the yearbook.

  She flipped back a few pages and stared at the picture of Detective Stanford Lewis. His hairline had receded a bit and a deep furrow had grown on his forehead, but, as with Clara, these signs of aging simply added distinction and interest to his face. She drew her finger across the lips. Full, but not too large.

  “See something that interests you?” The voice came from behind her. Emily’s head snapped up, and she shifted her body around so she could see who was speaking. Not that she needed to see the face. It was the same as the one before her. Besides, she recognized the voice. She slammed the book shut.

  “Detective Lewis. What are you doing sneaking around the library?”

  “Not sneaking. I’m doing what it says.” He pointed to the sign asking patrons to turn off cell phones and observe quiet in the building.

  Emily looked at her watch. “Oh, my. Look at the time. I’ve got to meet Vicki.”

  “I’ll return these to the shelves if you like,” said Lewis. He reached for the yearbooks, but Emily beat him to it.

  “Never mind. I know where they go.” She grabbed all four of the books, fled into the stack nearest her, tossed them on the shelves without searching for the proper place, and ran out of the library.

  Once out in the bright sunshine and humid air, Emily paused to catch her breath. That man had a way of turning up at inconvenient times. I hope he didn’t see me touching his photo like some lovesick teenager. And why were you touching it, asked a tiny voice from inside her skull. She shook her blonde head to free herself from the voice, looked again at her watch, and realized she had another hour before she was to meet Vicki. She stood under the acacia tree in front of the library looking up and down the street, trying to think of what she now could do. A hand touched her arm and she jumped.

  “Your sweater,” said Detective Lewis. “You left it on the chair.”

  “Thanks.” She grabbed it and threw it across her shoulders.

  “I’m glad I caught you. You were late meeting someone?”

  She looked up into his brown eyes. Heat permeated her body, and she wondered if it was a hot flash or simply due to the temperature change from the library’s coolness. Or was it because of him? He was so close.

  She glanced around in desperation. She knew she should look as if she were on her way. “Ah, well, I must have misread my watch.”

  “Good, then. We can have coffee.” Hand on her back, he guided her to his police cruiser, opened the door for her, and, in a daze, Emily got into the passenger seat.

  Neither of them saw the man pointing a camera in their direction nor heard the sound of a shutter opening and closing across the parking lot.

  CHAPTER 19

  Naomi stepped out of the bar’s doors, walked a short distance to the palm growing at the edge of the driving range, and flipped open her cell. She tried to call her parents everyday, knowing they would be concerned about her. The bar trade was heavy today, giving her no time to talk with them. One in the afternoon, and this was her first break since late morning.

  “Hi. It’s me. I knew you’d be worried when I didn’t call earlier.” As she listened to her mother at the other end of the connection, she strolled around the palm savoring the shade and the gentle breeze blowing out of
the west. Clouds drifted by throwing shadows across the driving range.

  “What?” Naomi shouted into the phone. “Sorry, Mom, but that’s an unpleasant surprise. Let me talk to Dad.”

  Her father’s usually soothing voice failed to assuage her worries about her husband this time.

  “He told me he’d gone into a support group for abusive spouses and now understood his problems. And he promised he wouldn’t hit you again. The group leader suggested he find you and apologize for what he did. Barry sounded so miserable and so sorry for what he did. I think he’s a different man. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have told him where you went. Don’t worry, baby. He sounded in control of himself, even said he’d stopped drinking.”

  “When did you tell him my location?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. Maybe a couple of days ago?” Her father’s voice began to take on a more tentative note. “Has he been to see you? Did he behave himself, because if he didn’t, I’ll come out there myself and . . .”

  Naomi wanted to scream at her father, but she also didn’t want to worry her parents. She’d been through her husband’s apologies, changed behavior (only temporary), and contrition before. It was part of his game to make her take him back and then begin the abuse once more. She touched the place on her face where the blow he’d landed there a few weeks ago was now almost healed. The physical pain was gone, but the shame remained etched in her mind, chiseled there by the man she’d thought she loved.

  “I’m fine. I haven’t seen him, but I’m sure he’ll turn up. I’ll keep you posted. Love ya.”

  She stared across the driving range into the woods beyond, certain now the feeling she was being watched was not simply paranoia. He was out there somewhere, and when he saw her at her most vulnerable, he’d attack. For now, surrounded by people, she was safe.

  She dashed back into the club house and closed the door behind her, leaning against it for a moment to pull herself together. Donald stood at the bar washing up glasses. The earlier rush of golfers parched after playing their round had abated, and only a few patrons sat at the bar watching CNN. Green stopped rinsing the glasses and looked at Naomi. She saw concern in his weathered face.

  “Sun get to you?” he asked. “Or something else?”

  You wouldn’t think of him as a perceptive guy, thought Naomi, but his eyes bored into her, reading her as if she wore her worries like a sandwich board. They moved away from the TV watchers. Donald said not another word, but swabbed the bar surface while Naomi talked. She knew Emily had misgivings about this guy, yet Naomi felt comfortable with him. She spit out the story of her marriage from her first date to her present certainty her husband had found her and would extract a high price for running from him.

  “It’s hopeless. Even if I hid out forever, he’d hunt me for that long. The man is obsessed with . . .”

  “That man is no man,” said Donald. His mouth worked as if he’d eaten a moldy piece of bread. “You need help.”

  “Don’t suggest I go to the authorities. He’s a cop and has contacts all over this state.”

  “I heard you and some others were out at the gun club the other day.”

  “Are you suggesting I pack?”

  Donald picked up the container holding bar toothpicks, pulled one out, and began to chew on it. Naomi watched in fascination as the cellophane end twirled around reminding her of a flower dancing in his mouth. It was an incongruous image given the craggy lines of his cheeks, the half days’ growth of beard, and the fanciful whirling color at the corner of such tightly drawn lips.

  He withdrew the toothpick and tossed it into the garbage. “It would be good if you had someone to watch your back.”

  “Are you volunteering?” she asked.

  “Maybe. Meantime, you might want to find out where Emily keeps her guns.”

  “She doesn’t have any.” Unless her mother had kept the Walther, but that seemed unlikely even though Emily seemed quite fond of it.

  “Doesn’t she know she’s living in the last settled frontier of the United States?”

  “I thought that was the Wild West,” Naomi said.

  “Naw. The west was civilized compared to what went on around here. We’ve only recently taken to walking upright.”

  Donald’s lips made some kind of motion, maybe a smile. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said and walked down the bar toward the TV watchers. “How ‘bout another?” he asked them.

  No wonder Emily was in conflict over the man, thought Naomi. I’ve spilled my guts, and he’s offered something in return, but whether it was advice or a hired gun, she didn’t know.

  Naomi was still wrestling with the enigma that was Donald Green when Emily walked in the door.

  “Three already?” asked Naomi.

  “I’m early. You’ll never guess what happened when I was in town. I ran into Detective Lewis, and we had coffee together.”

  Green’s head came up with a jerk and he turned his gaze on Emily. The look said he wasn’t happy to hear of the detective and Emily sharing caffeine. It said he would have preferred being the one buying the java for Emily. Maybe it was professional, the detective questioning her mother one more time about the murders, yet the excited expression on Emily’s face suggested something more personal going on. Donald surely had seen the look too. He was jealous whether he knew it or not. Both she and Emily could use some help with their problems, but were men with weapons the answer?

  The courtroom walls were paneled in dark wood—it looked like mahogany to Emily—and the windows on the left side of the room ran from floor to ceiling, yet they were narrow and let in little light. The AC system was circa 1950, not only old but inefficient and helped little by two vintage ceiling fans that shoved hot, moist air around, blowing most of it in the faces of the people gathered beneath them. There were no seats left in the small chamber, and Emily’s nose told her that many of those gathered had forgotten to bathe that morning, or perhaps anytime in the past week.

  Hap sat at the table beside her, wearing his usual white suit. Emily detected no naphtha odor from the garment today, and she wondered if Hap had sent it to be dry cleaned especially for her hearing. In accordance with Hap’s recommendation, Emily wore a shirtwaist dress, one of the few she owned. The pattern in the material was of violets and pansies and, with her short stature, she always thought it made her look like she was playing dress-up.

  She was scared. The outcome of contesting Fred’s will would alter how she lived. If things did not go in her favor, she might loose her lovely park model home. It was small and not presumptuous, but it was her home for six months out of the year. The rest of the time she and Fred rented an apartment in upstate New York. That too was at stake. If she wasn’t to have any of his estate, she’d have to move out of the apartment into something smaller. She sighed and glanced at Hap, in whom she’d placed her future. An old man who hadn’t practiced law for years. The judge entered the room, interrupting Emily’s train of negative ruminations. Everyone stood.

  To most people entering Judge Howard Miller’s courtroom, it would appear his brand of justice was grounded in a sense of informality. Emily watched him stride to his bench, nodding and smiling at people he knew. She heard him speak with quiet certainty, and there was no mistaking his grasp of the law, but she felt as if she was asking her father to loan her the car rather than contesting a will in a court of law. He made her feel smaller than she already was, younger, more childish and uncertain about the choices she and Fred had made in their shared life together.

  He smiled at all the litigants. Emily, he called “the bereaved” which she thought was a rather sensitive way of referring to her status, yet it failed to reassure her. Although he gave Fred’s ex-wife and her fancy West Palm Beach lawyer as warm a smile, Emily thought she caught a flicker of displeasure on the judge’s face when Thomas Brookfield introduced himself to the court and offered a petition to dismiss the proceedings.

  “Well, the way I see it,” Judge Miller spoke in a s
mooth unruffled, fatherly voice, “we’re all here, so why don’t we get on with it?” That was good, wasn’t it?

  She leaned over and told Hap what she was thinking. He patted her hand and whispered to her not to be misled. Judge Miller was a by-the-book judge, and he thought of himself as a servant of the Lord as much as he did an officer of the law. He did his work, said Hap, by making everyone comfy enough to incriminate themselves.

  Hap had gathered an impressive array of witnesses to testify to Emily’s loyalty to Fred and the faithfulness of her love and devotion to him. As her friends told of her relationship with Fred, Emily scrutinized the judge’s face for clues as to how convincing their case was to him.

  Her best friend Vicki was telling the judge about Emily and Fred’s relationship. “I mean, we never dreamed that the two of them weren’t married. Well, maybe they were a little more lovey-dovey than most of us older couples, but I thought that was because they hadn’t been married as long.”

  “Let me see if I get all this. Were they inappropriate in their behavior around others?” asked Judge Miller. The look on his face said he wasn’t being critical, merely trying to understand the “bereaved”, get a sense of her as a person.

  “Oh, no. Not at all.”

  “What did they do that was so . . . ,” he looked down at a paper on which he was scribbling notes, “as you said, ‘lovey-dovey.’

  “They kissed and held hands.”

  “But no one else did this?”

  “Ah, no,” said Vicki. Emily could see perspiration beaded on her friend’s upper lip.

  “So their behavior was different from that of others in your small community. Out of step. A little flirty, sexy perhaps?”

  Emily heard Hap groan and watched Vicki’s eyes begin to jump around in their sockets. Across the aisle from her, Thomas Brookfield’s chair creaked as he leaned forward in it. Emily knew she shouldn’t look at him, but she did anyway. His eyes were fixed on Vicki, and they reminded her of the yellow orbs of a hunting coyote. Mrs. Ex-Fred looked like his mate, waiting for the hunter to bring home the rabbit to the cubs.