by Harper Lin
But the pool was pretty big. He had been dead for a minute or two, while the man with the toilet paper tail had run out less than twenty seconds ago.
The victim was what one would charitably call “stout.” Uncharitably, you would say he had a beer gut the size of Baltimore. What I could see of his face was florid, with a big red nose scarred from habitual heavy drinking.
I needed to check those stalls for evidence. There was nothing I could do for that poor man on the floor.
The first stall had nothing.
As I moved to the second stall, I heard an approaching clamor in the hallway. Uh-oh. Time was almost up.
The second stall hadn’t been flushed. Yuck. I did a quick scan and saw nothing.
I got to the third stall just as the men’s room door opened.
One of the young attendants with the country club logo on his blazer saw me, yelped, and slammed the door. “I’m so sorry, ma’am!” he called out. “I thought this was the men’s room.”
I entered the third stall. Nothing on the floor. I dared a peek inside the bowl, hoping not to suffer the visual trauma I had received from the last toilet.
Floating in the bowl was a small plastic tube. It was about an inch long, the width of a pencil, and closed at one end and open at the other. If there had been a cap, it was gone. The tube moved in a slow, circular motion around the bowl, hinting that the bowl had recently been flushed. Someone had tried to flush this thing, but its buoyancy had made it float back up into the bowl.
My exploration of the mysteries of the men’s room at an exclusive country club was rudely cut short by that young man bursting through the door again. He had finally figured out that this was, indeed, the loo he had been looking for.
“Oh my God!” he shouted. This time he wasn’t staring at me. He had noticed the body behind me.
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
He gaped at me, and I knew I had said the wrong thing. Never claim you didn’t do something. People will immediately assume that you have.
Especially if you’re in the wrong bathroom with a dead body.
I could practically hear the gears grinding in his head. “Sweet little old lady. Dead guy. Men’s room.” Every sacred taboo he had ever learned and every unseemly website he had ever visited rushed into his thoughts simultaneously. His young mind flashed with a dozen different interpretations of what had just occurred here, each more appalling than the last, and it froze him, actually froze him.
I took the opportunity to check the fourth and final stall. I saw nothing of note except some crude comments written on the wall.
Coming out of the stall, I gave the young man, who was still frozen, my sweetest sweet-little-old-lady smile.
“Gah!” he said, backpedaling out of the room. Not very eloquent, but I got the message clearly enough—don’t smile at someone when they think you’re a murderer. That smile would always be misinterpreted.
He was soon replaced by two bulky security men, who grabbed me and escorted me out of the bathroom. Another country club employee stood in the hallway, on his cell phone and talking to the police.
A large crowd of Cheerville’s wealthy set stood and stared. A couple of them took photos of me with their cell phones. Oh dear, I was about to go viral. I had never gone viral before. I’d avoided that sort of thing like the plague.
(It was good to keep a sense of humor in this sort of situation.)
Penny Price came up to us. “She didn’t do it,” she cried.
I had previously found her voice loud and grating, but now I was thankful for it. It meant that more of the gawpers would hear it. “We were standing in line for the ladies’ room when a man came out of the men’s room and said someone had been murdered. She went in after that to investigate.”
A man appeared, looking pale and shaken and trailing a long tail of toilet paper out of the back of his pants.
“That was me,” he said. “I was in one of the stalls. Someone was sitting in the next stall over. He got out, and a moment later, I heard a cry and a thud. I got finished as quickly as I could and came out. That’s when I saw the body. The other person had already gone. He must be the murderer.”
“We can’t know that for sure,” one of the security people said. “We’ll have to hold this woman until the police come.”
“Did anyone see a man leave the bathroom before this gentleman?” asked the young man who had discovered me. Now that I had a burly security officer holding each of my arms, he had defrosted.
Blank faces all around. I had to admit that I myself had been paying no attention to the men’s room door until someone rushed out screaming bloody murder. That was the problem with witnesses to crimes. Nobody noticed anything until after the crime had been committed.
“What about security footage?” I asked.
“We don’t have security cameras inside the building,” one of the security men answered.
I turned to the man with the toilet paper tail. “Did you get a look at the man in the stall beside you?”
The man cocked his head. “What are you implying?”
I rolled my eyes, a habit I had picked up from my thirteen-year-old grandson. “Did he say anything? Did he have distinctive footwear?”
“Um, no. He did sound like he had a cold, though.”
“He was sniffing?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“One of the stalls had a little plastic container floating in the bowl. It should still be there. That sort of container is often used to carry cocaine. It was next to a stall where someone forgot to flush.”
That final comment made him flush, as in, his face, not the toilet.
“Oh. Sorry. I was … distracted.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “You should wash your hands, too, and get that toilet paper out of your pants.”
The security people eased up on their grip but didn’t let go. I had not entirely convinced them.
Mr. Toilet Paper Tail went off to get himself decent. A few minutes later, the police arrived.
In my brief time in this sleepy bedroom district, where the younger people mostly worked in the city and the older people mostly snoozed away their golden years doing not much of anything, I had gotten to know the Cheerville Police Department quite well. In fact, I had helped them on several cases.
That did not make me popular. The police didn’t like to be one-upped by a woman in her seventies. The rank and file didn’t know I used to be in the CIA. Perhaps that would have made them feel better. Perhaps not.
I was read my rights as Penny Price loudly objected. Then they escorted me from the building and drove me to the station. At least they didn’t put me in cuffs.
That was right—I got arrested for investigating a crime. That was the level of professionalism of the Cheerville Police Department.
Three
For the first time I could remember, Police Chief Arnold Grimal was happy to see me.
Happy to see me under arrest, that was.
He had heard over the police radio that I’d been arrested, and he stood at the front door of the police station with a big grin on his face and sweet-and-sour sauce on his chin. I’d interrupted him during one of his Chinese take-out meals. I did that a lot. It was an easy thing to do. The guy was supporting half of China with those takeouts.
“Well, well, well, Little Miss Perfect is in trouble with the law,” he said.
I glared at him, but he wasn’t fazed. He was enjoying himself too much.
“You know I didn’t do it. I even have a witness.”
“Oh, but we have a witness who puts you at the crime scene. We need to hold you for questioning. If it turns out your story holds up, you’ll be released.” He said this all in a smug tone of voice. I could tell he knew I wasn’t the murderer. I could also tell that he was going to enjoy every second of my humiliation.
And enjoy it he did. He stood there, rubbing his hands together with glee as I was fingerprinted and photographed. Then I was brou
ght into an interrogation room.
“Don’t I have the right to a phone call?” I asked as he sat down at the table opposite me. A policeman stood guard outside the door.
“Who do you want to call?” he asked.
“My former boss, perhaps.” I didn’t say “the head of the CIA,” because this was being recorded. Only Grimal knew what I used to be.
He paled a little at that then rallied.
“You have the right to do so, of course,” he said, “but I don’t think you want to embarrass yourself in front of your boss by telling him you’re under arrest.”
“Falsely under arrest. It doesn’t matter. I can handle this myself. Did your men recover that plastic container from the toilet bowl?”
“My men are professional law enforcement officers.”
“Did they recover that plastic container from the toilet bowl?”
“Yes. But let’s talk about you. What were you doing in the men’s room?”
I recounted the events leading up to my entering the bathroom and all I had seen when I was in there. I also relayed to him what Mr. Toilet Paper Tail had told me.
“We’ve brought him in for questioning.”
“I suppose you arrested him, did you?”
Grimal chuckled. “Of course not.”
“Of course not. Can I go now?”
“Oh, I suppose. We’ll sign the papers to have you released from custody. It might take a while. Red tape, you know.”
This guy was going to get it. I didn’t know how yet, but I was going to make him regret this little stunt.
The red tape took an hour. At last, I was released.
Octavian, the dear, was waiting for me in the front hall. After catching him up on what was going on, I had him drive me home.
“Do you think it was those mobsters?” He was referring to a gang that had a network of illegal casinos across the region. He had helped me break up that gang, not that he had volunteered for the job. The poor fellow had been kidnapped alongside yours truly.
“No, that gang is all broken up. The few who escaped the dragnet will be far, far from here. I don’t know who this fellow was or why someone would stab him in the back while he was doing his business.”
He kept one hand on the steering wheel and put the other on my own. “It must have been terrible to see that.”
“I’ve seen a lot of death, Octavian. I’ve seen people blown apart by hand grenades. But yes, it was terrible. Death is always terrible.”
The car went silent for a moment. We had both lost our spouses in nice, clean hospital rooms with plenty of family support around us. That had been terrible too.
He got me home, and I invited him in for some dinner. Neither of us had gotten the chance to eat. As Octavian sat on the couch, playing with Dandelion—in other words, petting the little critter and enduring scratches all over his hands instead of further decreasing the value of his rented tuxedo—I made some pasta and heated up some tomato sauce. Hardly a five-hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner.
Octavian appreciated it, though. His stomach was grumbling by the time I served him. Mine was grumbling too. I opened a bottle of red wine for us to share.
“You all right?” he asked once we were about halfway through the meal. I hadn’t spoken much.
“Oh yes.”
“You’re thinking about that case.”
He didn’t call it a murder. He called it a case. Octavian had figured me out pretty well.
“Yes, I am. Someone sat in the stall, waiting for him, perhaps sniffing cocaine. But how did he know the victim would go to the bathroom? And why murder him in such a public place? He was lucky he didn’t get spotted.”
Octavian thought for a moment. “It does seem strange. He was taking a huge risk, and yet at the same time, he did do a few things to cover his tracks, like hide in the stall. Maybe he felt he only had one chance to get this guy, or he had to kill him tonight for some reason. Who was the victim?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”
Early the next morning, I did.
I showed up at the police headquarters, where my good friend Arnold Grimal was hard at work at his desk.
Actually, he was looking at cute kitten photos on Facebook. Well, at least he wasn’t eating Chinese takeout. I guessed they didn’t deliver breakfast.
“I told the desk sergeant not to let you through,” Grimal grumbled. A grumbling Grimal had become one of the mainstays of my life.
“I ignored him as usual,” I said. “Cute kittens.”
“Nothing wrong with taking a break,” he snapped.
His entire career had been a break.
“Well, at least you’re not looking at porn. Did you hear about that government official? He was just in the news. He obsessively looked at adult sites at work and managed to infect his entire department with malware.”
Grimal nodded. “Kitten photos are safer. I read about that idiot. He accessed more than nine thousand websites. That’s not a perversion, that’s an addiction.”
“It’s funny how you can catch a virus for misbehaving online the same as you can in real life.”
Grimal looked at me askance. Nothing made people more uncomfortable than old people talking about sex.
“Why are you here?” Grimal asked.
“You know why I’m here.”
I sat. He stared. I remained seated.
“All right,” he said with a sigh. “The victim’s name is James Garfield, aged sixty-five.”
“Garfield? As in the cartoon?”
“As in the president. He’s a direct descendant. Or was. He was also president and chief archivist of the President Garfield Historical Association.”
“I doubt that’s why he got bumped off. What else did he do around town?”
“Nothing. He only moved here a week ago.”
I cocked my head. “Really? He sure made enemies quickly.”
“I was thinking that someone from his old town—he moved here from Cincinnati—might have followed him here, but the charity dinner organizers said all the guests were from the local area. Mostly Cheerville, Apple Bluff, and a few of the smaller towns.”
“Surprising he even knew about the charity dinner,” I said.
“One of the first things he did when he came to town was apply for membership in the country club. Someone told him about the dinner, and he bought a spot.”
“A good spot? The tables were organized by how much you donated. I donated five hundred dollars and got stuck way at the back.”
“He donated two thousand dollars and was right at the front.”
“Well, he certainly must have made a splash.”
I had a vision of him lying in two different puddles next to the urinal and immediately regretted my choice of words.
“He was a retired property developer,” Grimal said. “A major one. His net worth was well over five million dollars.”
“People like that often make enemies.”
“He obviously did. No obvious ones, though. We’ve only just started our investigation.”
“Have you ruled out the kittens as suspects?”
“Har har.”
“Did you send that plastic tube to the lab?”
Grimal nodded. “CSI is busy on all that. No fingerprints on the knife. Our perp wore gloves. There were fingerprints all over the stalls and bathroom door, so many that they obscure each other. It’s going to be tough to get decent matches.”
“That’s too bad. Any other witnesses?”
“Just the guy in the next stall, a Mr. Geoffrey Pike. He said that the stall next to him was already taken when he entered and, um, sat down. He thinks the man had on gray slacks and brown shoes but couldn’t be sure. Witnesses usually have bad memories of that sort of thing, and of course he wasn’t paying much attention. The man in the stall next to him was sniffing, and Mr. Pike assumed he had a cold. Then he heard the man flush and leave the stall. After that, he heard Mr. Garfield cry out and fall to the floor. M
r. Pike called out, asking if he was all right, and when he didn’t get an answer, he peeked under the stall and saw the body.”
“And that’s when he ran out into the hall, trailing toilet paper.”
“Yes. And that’s when you ran in and disturbed a crime scene. That’s a criminal offense, you know.”
I narrowed my eyes. Grimal looked away. He and I both knew he wouldn’t press charges for that. That “arrest” the night before was just his way of getting back at me for making him look like a fool time and time again.
“Check on that plastic tube the murderer tried flushing down the toilet,” I said. Well, ordered, really. “It probably contained cocaine or a similar substance.”
“The lab is doing a chemical analysis. Initial report is that it’s clean. The perp probably tried to flush it, and it floated back to the top. It might not have any residue left.”
“Did James Garfield have any relations or friends in Cheerville or the surrounding area?”
“We’re checking. None have come forward. No one at the country club knew of any.”
“Why did he move here, then?”
Grimal shrugged. It was one of his more annoying gestures because he did it so often.
I stood. There was nothing more to find out here.
Finding a lead on a man who had moved to town only a week before and supposedly didn’t know anybody was going to be tricky, but at least I knew one person who could help.
Four
My son was not what you would call a chip off the old block. He had never fired a gun, never been to a war zone, never traveled farther than England—where he got food poisoning from some fish and chips—and had certainly never overthrown a Third World dictatorship.
Needless to say, he never knew what my late husband, James, and I did for a living. He thought we worked in “international development” for the federal government, which was true as far as it went.
Frederick was a successful real estate agent and provided very well for his family. His wife, Alicia, was the brains of the family—sorry, Frederick—a particle physicist who worked with the CERN, the massive particle accelerator that had been responsible for so many important scientific discoveries I didn’t understand. Their son, Martin, was thirteen and going through his early teen years fairly well—skateboarding, violent video games, shockingly messy room, occasional mood swings, decent grades, polite to his elders and kind to his juniors, avid reader. Not a bad balance.