One of them was a brand-new notice of a malpractice lawsuit filed against her. The parents of a young patient alleged that she had punctured his gum while fitting him for braces, and that she had overlooked the resulting infection until it required major surgery. I felt bad for her; it seemed like a reasonable consequence of so much poking and prodding at kids’ mouths, but it had to be upsetting, especially coming at the same time as her husband’s death.
By the time I finished that, I had to head down to the Drunken Hessian, where I found Rick already in a booth with a pair of Dogfish Head Amber Ale bottles. “I hope one of these is for me,” I said. “You’re looking pretty glum.”
“Feeling that way, too,” he said. “I hate murder investigations. I know last week I was grumbling about broken windows, but crime always hits me harder when there’s a dead body involved.”
He looked up at me and glared, and I held my hands up in front of me. “Hey, I’m not killing people. My dog just has a nose for finding bodies.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that Jessica Fletcher had the same kind of excuse.” Then he laughed. “You’re not a crazed serial killer, are you? Because that would just be too much.”
“Nope, I’m just an amateur sleuth.” I picked up my bottle of beer and took a long drink. It was cold and refreshing.
“Speaking of which, come up with anything else I should look into?” he asked.
As usual, the server came over in the middle of our conversation. He was wearing the same pink shorts he had the last time we were in, but today’s Hawaiian shirt was dark blue and featured dog breeds in a rotating pattern. I wanted it.
We ordered our cheeseburgers and when he was gone, I said, “I had an idea outside Hi Neighbor. What about Todd’s wife? You said you were going to speak with her.”
“Interesting situation,” he said, between sips of beer. “At first she told me she was at home all evening, but then the security log showed she had showed up at River Bend at eight-thirty.”
“After the meeting was over.”
He nodded. “I asked her why she didn’t tell the truth at first, and she said she was embarrassed because she and Todd argued, and she felt terrible that her last words to him were angry ones.”
“Did she say what they were arguing about?”
“Just marriage stuff, she says.”
“Nothing about her malpractice lawsuit?”
He put down his beer and wiped his hands on a napkin. “What did you find out?”
“She has a half-million-dollar suit against her.” I explained about the kid with the gum infection. “But she probably has malpractice insurance to cover most of that.”
He shook his head. “While I was waiting to speak with her I saw a sign in the lobby. A legal notice that she had chosen not to carry malpractice insurance, with a referral to the relevant statute.”
“A judgment against her could destroy her practice,” I said. “Did she say if Todd had life insurance?”
“Your mind works in very devious ways,” he said. “I like that about you. I did ask her that, just as a matter of course. And yes, he had a million-dollar policy provided by his employer. With a double indemnity clause if he was killed at work.”
“And he was killed at River Bend, his place of employment. I wonder if the double indemnity clause kicks in.”
“Either way, it’s enough to get her out of the hole with this lawsuit, and still have money left over.”
The server delivered our burgers, and I sliced mine in half, doused it with ketchup, and took a big bite. “And there’s no record of what time Dr. Jackson left River Bend, is there? She has motive and opportunity.”
“That she does.
“As a dentist, she’s accustomed to working with sharp instruments.”
“Not necessarily a five-inch knife.”
I nodded. “And that’s not the kind of thing you’d carry in your purse.”
“You never know what women have in there. Tamsen has everything from tissues and cough drops to one of those things that you use to break your car window if you get trapped inside. It has a wicked blade on it to cut the seatbelt, too, though the actual blade is shielded and can’t be used as a weapon.”
We talked about some of the other suspects in the case, including the bad-tempered Oscar Panaccio, and I told Rick about Panaccio’s confrontation with the faculty senate president. As we finished, we wound our way back to Dr. Wendilyn Jackson. “For now, my money is on the widow,” Rick said. “Especially now that I know about this malpractice case.”
“And the double indemnity clause gives her a good reason to kill him at River Bend.”
§ § § §
It rained again that night, and when I took Rochester out the next morning the grass was soaked, and on every block I noticed muddy ruts in the grass caused by the stand-up lawn mowers that the landscape service used.
It was just after sunrise, the air crisp with the tang of fall but still holding a bit of summer’s warmth. We walked on the sunny side of the street as we headed up to the three lakes. I couldn’t resist going back to where we’d discovered Todd Chatzky’s body. By then the crime scene tape was gone and the walkway was open from one end to the other.
In the daylight, I noticed a drying puddle of machine oil that I’d missed the night before, where the sidewalk had a ramp down to street level. Tire tracks led forward a few feet along the sidewalk, until the oil under the tires wore out. Yet another example of the irresponsible way the landscapers ran amok around the community.
Rochester wanted to sniff over there but I had to pull him back because of the standing water in the grass between the sidewalk and the hedge that ran alongside. I didn’t want his feet to get too wet, and who knew what kind of bacteria was growing there.
I wanted to get to Friar Lake early because that morning, we had guests arriving for a lunch sponsored by the Bucks County Association of Realtors. So of course I was frustrated getting out of River Bend, because the streets were like a slalom course. Before I could leave Sarajevo Court, I had to go around an appliance delivery, a roofer, and a mom in a minivan dropping her son off for a playdate. And each was parked on the opposite side of the street, so I had to zig and zag.
Rounding the corner I nearly ran smack into the back of a landscape vehicle, with long flatbed full of mowers behind it. River Bend had been built on reclaimed swampland, sandwiched between a nature preserve and an established suburban neighborhood, so land was at a premium, and our streets were very narrow – which didn’t stop anyone from parking wherever they pleased.
When I first moved into the townhouse, security was quick to paper the windows of parking violators with yellow warning notices. They zoomed in on anyone who parked a few inches onto the grass or left a vehicle overnight in guest parking. Now, Friar Lake seemed as lawless as any third-world country, between the unregulated traffic, the shaggy landscaping—and the dead body Rochester and I had found.
I had to pass a humming vehicle advertising Mobile Monica’s Place for Pampered Pets, a window installer, and a moving van before I made it out to the two well-defined lanes of River Bend Drive. Even that was jammed up with a tanker truck hosing down the sidewalk, a tree-trimmer in a bucket truck, and a PECO vehicle with electricians adjusting the incoming wires and a flagman who kept me waiting while a stream of incoming traffic passed.
The oaks, maples and willows along the River Road were still in brilliant shades of red and gold. The shorter sumacs were darker brown; I remembered an old childhood saying that the sumac was the first to turn color in the fall.
I saw Joey’s truck parked back near his office and was relieved to see he was back. I let Rochester off the leash and we head back there. “How’s your dad doing?” I asked as I walked in.
“He’s going to rehab this afternoon, though he’s resisting. Stubborn old coot thinks he can get better sitting around in his recliner at home. But that’s not going to happen.”
I thought of the Amy Winehouse song, about not w
anting to go to rehab—though the kind of rehab she’d been singing about was different from what Joe Senior needed.
“They work you pretty hard in this rehab place, so the visiting hours are limited to late afternoon and evening. That means I’ll be able to come back to work full-time tomorrow. How’d you do with the bathroom survey?”
“I’m almost finished, but my own work is piling up. I have a lot of requisitions to finish and I need to beat the bushes for more groups to rent this place out.”
“I can finish the bathroom survey tomorrow. I’ve got my own paperwork to do here, but I want to be there to help them move my dad to the rehab facility and get him settled.”
“How’s Mark doing in all this?”
“He’s holding the fort. Doing most of the Brody care – the food and the walks and the belly rubs. And my mom loves him, so she’s been talking to him every day. She tells him things she doesn’t want to tell me, like about the way her right hip hurts when she walks. She’s going to need a hip replacement as soon as my dad gets better.”
“Getting old isn’t for sissies,” I said.
On our way back to the office, Rochester made sure to walk through as much wet grass as he could find, which meant I had to dry his paws again before letting him loose in my office.
After clearing out some emails, I made sure that the caterer had access to the kitchen, and Joey, Rigoberto and Juan set up the tables and chairs in the chapel. The exterior of the property looked great, and sun streamed in through the newly-cleaned stained glass windows.
I stood there and surveyed my modest kingdom for a moment. For the first time in a while, I felt positive and relaxed about my job.
Then Rochester barked, and lay down on his side in the same position as we’d found Todd Chatzky’s body, and I realized there was still a lot of work to be done.
16: All We Can Do
I missed most of the real estate speaker that morning because I was on the phone with my neighbor Epiphania about an upcoming program for the La Leche League. “What’s the composition of your staff there?” she asked. “Male or female?”
“Does that matter? There are only four of us here full-time, all male.”
“Just want to make sure no one is going to freak out if a bunch of our members pull out their boobs and start nursing during the program.”
Personally, I was very boob-positive, and I figured Joey wouldn’t mind. And Rigoberto and Juan didn’t need to be in the building during the meeting. “I’ll make a note for our caterer,” I said. “Would you prefer all female servers?”
“That would be great, if you can manage it.”
We went over a dozen more details. Epiphania was clearly a type-A personality. “Can I ask you what you did before you became a full-time mom?”
“I worked on Wall Street. I still do some freelance securities analysis, just to keep my hand in.”
We finally finished our conversation and I slipped into the back of the chapel in time for the question and answer period. One woman stood up and said, “I have a lot of buyers who want new construction but don’t want to be part of a homeowner’s association. Are there any new properties coming up without one?”
“Why don’t they want an HOA?” a man at a neighboring table asked. “HOAs maintain common area, keep up standards and mediate problems.”
“Yes, but they also impose regulations and cause a lot of red tape. One of my buyers is a home breeder of bichon frises, and she doesn’t want to be anywhere that a neighbor can complain about the number of dogs or the sound.”
“Then she needs to be in one of those old farmhouses,” the man said.
The woman looked frustrated. “My question still stands. Are there any new properties going up without HOAs?”
A discussion ensued, brokers and salespeople comparing notes. I could see the pluses and minuses of a homeowner’s association—but right now at River Bend those were mostly minuses.
After the group left, I picked up the leftover business cards from the registration table and the caterer cleaned up. As I helped Joey, Rigoberto and Juan put away the folding tables and chairs, I noticed that Joey’s eyes were heavy-lidded, and the corners of his mouth drooped. “What’s the matter, bud?” I asked. “Something happen to your father?”
He shook his head. “For a guy who made such a fuss about going there, he turned into a big pussycat when the therapists started.” He shook his head. “And after I warned them he was going to be a terror.”
Rigoberto and Juan left us to clock out, and Joey and I began walking toward his office. “Then what?”
“How do you do it, Steve? You’ve been through a lot of crap in your life, and yet you usually have such a good attitude.”
“So do you, Joey. You’re probably the most cheerful, positive guy I know.”
“But that’s because nothing bad has ever happened to me. There’s no reason to be unhappy when the world is sunny.”
“Your dad is going to get better. You’ve always said he’s a tough old bird.”
“Yeah, but he’s going to die eventually. And so is my mom. I know it’s part of life, but I hate thinking about it. And that makes it hard to keep a positive attitude.”
We reached his office and walked inside. “Come on, you must have had some problems in your past that you’ve overcome. What about coming out? That can’t have been easy for you.” I sat down across from him.
“Compared to other guys, like Mark, it was a breeze.” Joey sat back in his chair. “I started figuring out that I was interested in guys rather than girls when I was about fourteen or fifteen. I was a big jock, mostly baseball, and I started getting these weird feelings in the locker room, seeing other guys naked.”
He blew out a breath. “I decided I wanted to see if I was really gay, so I looked around and picked out this one kid, Eddie Safran, who everybody teased because he was kind of girly and wore goth eye makeup. He was in my math class, and I went up to him after class one day and told him that I wanted to be his friend, and that if anybody picked on him he should tell me, and I’d take care of it.”
“That was sweet of you.”
“I had an ulterior motive, of course. I invited Eddie over to my house one afternoon to help me with math homework and in the middle of a problem I leaned over and kissed him.”
He looked at me as if he was worried I was going to freak out, but I said, “I’m assuming a wild make out session ensued.”
“Yeah. I mean, I liked him, once I got to know him. He had a wicked sense of humor. We used to watch gay porn videos together and then practice on each other. So I never had much angst about being gay, though I didn’t tell anybody what I was doing with Eddie, and he didn’t either. We were just math buddies to everybody at school.”
“And Eddie was okay with that, I assume?”
“Oh yeah. His parents were immigrants and they were very narrow-minded. He was smart, and when we graduated he got into Duke, and I got into Penn State. That year was an Olympic summer, and I was watching the swimming and diving with my dad. I was really getting into seeing the guys in their Speedos, and when this Australian diver, Matthew Mitcham, won a gold medal they announced that he was the first openly gay Olympic champion.”
“I remember that. It was a big deal.”
Joey nodded. “So I said that was cool, that gay guys could be great athletes, too, and my dad agreed with me. And then I said, so that means I can be gay and still play baseball at Penn State.”
“Well, that’s one way to come out to your dad. What did he say?”
“He said that I could fuck zebras if I wanted, and I’d still be his son.”
I burst out laughing. “Not exactly the same thing.”
“Not unless you’re talking about referees,” Joey said. “So that was that. By the time I got to Penn State I was out, and I made the roster my freshman year, but I didn’t get to play much and I didn’t bother to try out as a sophomore because I had other stuff I was more interested in.”
“So you’ve really never had anything bad happen to you?”
He shook his head. “I mean, my grandparents all died, and an aunt I liked, and I was sad, but none of those things rocked my world like this.” He looked at me. “So what’s the secret, Steve? How do you keep a positive attitude when you run into something that makes you really miserable?”
“I can’t give you a lot of advice,” I said. “After Mary’s second miscarriage, I was as bitter as a sliced radish. Angry at the world, angry at her, even though it wasn’t her fault. Then I went to prison, and that pretty much wiped me out.”
He shook his head. “I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.”
“It was grim. But I saw all these guys who were in worse shape than I was. Guys with life sentences, with no education, with nobody on the outside who cared about them. I had my dad, and one friend from business school, and I realized I only had to get through the rest of my term and I could start over.”
Remembering those days gave me a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I soldiered on. “And then I came back to Stewart’s Crossing, and I was still miserable. But a professor of mine at Eastern remembered me and gave me a part-time job as an adjunct, and then Rochester came into my life, and then Lili.”
I smiled. “You’ve got a big head start on happiness. You still have both your parents, and they love you. So does Mark, and so does Brody. You have an education, you have skills. And outside of today, you have a positive attitude about life. Add all those together and you can face anything.”
“Even losing my dad?”
“Even that. To be honest, even losing Mark.”
He shuddered. “Don’t want to think about that.”
“In a way, it’s like taking a dog into your life,” I said. “Sometimes I look at Rochester and I realize he’s already five or six years old, and big dogs like him don’t have the longest life spans. I think how awful it would be to lose him, and it will be—it’s going to be horrible, I know that. So I try and love him as much as I can while I have him.”
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