Desperate Measures

by M. Glenn Graves

“Broader than that. See what you can find in the history of the world.”

  “And what do I do in my spare time when I have finished this daunting task by early afternoon?”

  “Funny. Try twiddling your thumbs,” I said and closed my phone.

  I was riding the out-of-the-way corridor of I-81 instead of enjoying the manic pace of I-95 through D.C. and Baltimore. I preferred to dodge the trucking industry that utilized the 81 corridor as opposed to ducking the thousands of frantic governmental workers in and around the environs of the Washingtonian club. Most truckers were actually excellent drivers when they were awake.

  The Interstate 81 corridor was my second choice. I much preferred taking the Massachusetts 9 to US 13 South. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was busy with some road improvements which forced me to select my current route. While it literally added hours to my travel time, it did afford me the opportunity to do something which PIs generally do a lot – think. I was recapitulating what I knew about my investigation. My accumulated knowledge was so think at this juncture that I was able to review several hundred times during my extra hours of drive time.

  Sam and I arrived at Uncle Walters’ house on the second day after our departure from Norfolk. We had spent a restful night at the Spencer House Bed & Breakfast in Milford, New York. My penchant for avoiding both I-95 and I-85 through the megalopolis along the Eastern Seaboard allowed the pleasurable northward trek. Besides all that, it was Sam’s idea. He insisted upon dining as we were passing an exit for Milford. The dining took place at a Mom and Pop burger joint where I learned about the Spencer House. Sam insisted that we check it out. I was too hungry and too tired to argue.

  It was raining in Boston when we arrived. The late summer rain had the cooling effect on the city and the surrounding areas. It was still rather warm, but the heat was not oppressive.

  I told Walters about the lab tech’s discoveries.

  “Appears to be more to it than a violent suicide,” he said.

  “Seems so.”

  “And forgive me, Clancy. I stated the obvious. All suicides are violent. What I should have said is that your case is perplexing in its complexity,” Walters explained.

  “Without a doubt,” I said.

  “It’s your move now.”

  “Like our chess matches years ago. I think I shall move some apparent pawns to see if I can unsettle the more courtly pieces.”

  “It can have that affect,” he said. “You have an angle?”

  “I will as soon as Rogers calls. She’s doing some background on the method of this particular apparent suicide.”

  “I take that to mean the use of fire and then shooting one’s self.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Where are you headed with this?”

  “Honestly, I do not know. I’m just picking up rocks and looking under them. It’s the way I do what I do. I move things around. I look to see what’s there. Whatever is hiding, I want it exposed. I ask a lot of questions and have Rogers do the research. I probe. I upset people. I anger some. I provoke. I am an unsettling presence.”

  “I find great comfort in being with you. You do not unsettle me,” Walters said.

  “Yeah, but then again, you have nothing to hide.”

  “You have one more technique, if you please, that figures prominently into your work as an investigator,” Walters said.

  “And that would be what?” I said.

  “You are relentless,” he said, smiled, and handed me a cup of hot coffee.

  29

  It was still raining the next day when I pulled into a parking lot of Regis College. I was sitting in the College Café area waiting on my trusty investigator’s keen vision to kick in and to spot Raney Goforth passing through. Coffee and a warm muffin were also in play helping me to pass the time. The muffin was a blueberry descendant with some nuts involved. The coffee was passable. Hot and dark.

  Sam remained with Uncle Walters at Walters’ insistence. He was going hiking and thought Sam would like that better than sitting around in a parked car for a good portion of the day. Sam readily agreed when the idea of the hike was presented to him.

  With two bites of the muffin left and forty minutes into my keen observance of the multitude of young students moving hither and yon, Becky Lewinski appeared suddenly and sat down at my table without an invitation. Perhaps we were moving towards BFF-ness.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” she said as she dropped her backpack on the floor and took a long gulp from her oversized, lidded cup that advertised some fast-food place. It was at least a sixteen ounce drink with a purple straw that extended some three inches from the lid to her mouth. She set the huge cup on the table and stared at me for several seconds.

  “Becky, right?” I said.

  “Hey, for a PI, you have a good memory.”

  “I try to remember important people.”

  She smiled and took another long sip on her drink. I watched her eyes fall upon the last bit of muffin resting on my paper plate.

  “You hungry, Becky?” I said.

  “Like starved,” she said. “Don’t you know that most college students stay hungry the majority of the time?”

  I left her sitting at the table for a few moments, bought a couple of muffins and returned.

  “Banana nut with cinnamon or blueberry with nuts?” I said as I stood over her at the table.

  “Wow, the blueberry sounds intriguing. Let me see … like that one,” she said and pointed to the blueberry.

  I placed the muffin in front of her as I sat down. I watched her feast on the muffin for a minute or so. She acted as if she had not eaten in several days. After her blueberry muffin was inhaled in no fewer than three bites, I pushed my uneaten banana nut muffin over to her.

  “Here, I think you can use this as well.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t eat much breakfast.”

  “Or supper from yesterday,” I added.

  “Like how did you know?” Becky said as she lit into the banana nut offering.

  “Your ravishing appetite seems to be a tell-tale sign,” I said.

  “You talk funny like. Anybody ever tell you that?”

  “A few. When you finish chewing that bite, tell me something I need to hear,” I said.

  “I don’t know whether you need to hear this, but I wanted to tell you something I remembered about Melody.”

  “Lay it on me,” I said as I took a swig of coffee. It wasn’t as good without the bites of muffin between sips.

  “I lied to you about meeting Melody’s mother,” she said and took another large bite. Her second muffin was more than half eaten.

  “Tsk, tsk,” I said.

  “Nobody says tsk, tsk anymore. You’re like really strange, you know that?”

  “So I’ve been told. When did you meet Duchess Legrand?”

  “When I went home with Melody. It was a long weekend and she had like had a bad week and all, so she begged me to go home with her. Like she didn’t want to face her mother alone and all. So I went.”

  She chewed the last bites of her muffin and gulped down more of her drink. When the straw began making that slurping sound that denotes the end of the drink, I waited for eye contact so we could resume.

  “Want a refill?” I said.

  “They don’t serve this here,” she said.

  “I could buy you a replacement, another brand, another straw.”

  “Cherry Cola with a lemon twist,” she said.

  I returned from the counter with her lemon twisted cherry cola and set it down in front of her. I watched her remove the purple straw from her oversized cup, exchange it with the white straw in her new drink, and begin drinking once more, now with the purple straw. It must taste better with that color, I thought. After several seconds she came up for air.

  “Anything happen while you were with Melody and her mother?”

  “Are you kiddin’ me? Drama city, like those two are straight out of a Virginia Wolff story, you know. The
y take yellin’ and screamin’ to an art form, like nothing I have ever done with my mother, who’s pretty dramatic in her own right. Like this was some off-Broadway production of let’s see who can be the bitchiest. You know what I mean?”

  “I’m getting an image. Tell me more.”

  “They were doin’ this mother-daughter yellin’ and screamin’ bit for hours on a Saturday, then like, finally Melody says let’s go back to school, so we left.”

  “You want another muffin?” I said.

  “No, I’m good,” she said as she slurped on the cola.

  “You recall the essence of their yellin’ and screamin’?”

  “Like you’re really funny, you know… essence, my ass... that’s funny. Yeah, like the essence of it was that Raney Goforth had just dumped Melody after he got her pregnant and all, and she goes home to confront her mother.”

  “Confront her mother?”

  “Like really, yeah. Her mother was the reason that Raney dumped Melody. Raney told Melody that her mother was a better sexual partner, or some such crap as that, like who does that? Like her mother? Give me a break,” Becky said.

  “Did Duchess have much to say about all of this?” I said.

  “She laughed at her and gave her some money, like money is the solution for everything.”

  “Trying to buy her off?” I said.

  “Naw, the money was to pay for the abortion,” Becky said just before she slurped out the last bit of her Cherry Cola with a lemon twist.

  30

  I waited the rest of the afternoon for Raney Goforth to appear. Several muffins and too many cups of coffee later, I decided to return to Boston. All that sugar and starch was not setting too well with the soap opera drama I was uncovering. I also needed to process the new angle that Becky Lewinsky had laid on me.

  Sam and I went jogging to clear my mind while Uncle Walters prepared a late evening meal for us. Sam was feeling his oats and set the pace faster than I would have preferred, so when we returned to Walters’, I was tired, hungry, and sweaty. Still, I felt better than before the run. Sam was hardly breathing heavy. A long hike with Uncle Walters and a jog with me. Sam had the stamina of a bull moose.

  Walters set the table and had the food ready to eat by the time I finished my shower. A good soaking usually refreshes me, and this one was no exception.

  For our evening feast, my uncle prepared a new recipe of his own invention for Chicken Cordon Bleu accompanied by a delightful casserole composed of green beans, squash, and an assortment of spices and flavors that made my palette rejoice. There was also a salad of mixed greens latticed with raspberries and pecans with a touch of Walters’ homemade blueberry vinaigrette dressing.

  I ate more than I should and left myself absolutely no space for a piece of the apple pie Walters had baked that afternoon while I was sitting around Regis College waiting on Raney.

  “You can either have it later or enjoy it tomorrow morning with your first cup of coffee,” Walters said.

  “Or both,” I suggested.

  “Or both,” he nodded. “Did you learn anything helpful?”

  “Helpful might be a stretch at this point, but one never knows what helps. I just add the pieces as they come and then try to form a picture with whatever odds and ends happen along. Some fit nicely; others, not so much.”

  “Do you ever tire of your work?”

  “Not yet. I do, however, grow weary with the way we humans treat each other. Some days it’s enough to question the merits of the human race,” I said.

  “Mark Twain once quipped, ‘You have to remember that man was created at the end of the week when God was tired,’” Walters said.

  I laughed. “Insightful,” I said.

  “Still, there are some decent folks around, maybe more than we realize. You happen to have the privilege of dealing with the underbelly of our culture,” he added.

  “And yet some of these criminals I chase appear to be normal, functioning members of our society. They blend in too well with the rest of us. Hard to see the significant differences without some detailed investigating.”

  “Hence, the need for people like you,” Walters said.

  “I hope that’s true,” I said.

  “Oh, but it is,” he said. “In fact, I could say that our world could use a lot more people like you.”

  “That would be an overstatement, without question,” I said.

  “You want some coffee with a piece of pie now?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me. Let’s sit on the balcony and enjoy the evening lights of the city,” I said.

  Several minutes later Walters returned with a tray of two mugs, a pot of hot coffee, and two large pieces of apple pie. A slither of cheddar cheese was melting atop the pie pieces he had zapped in his microwave. He set the tray between us.

  “I’m so glad you learned to cook,” I said.

  “It was a passion early on,” he said. “As much as photography, I suspect.”

  “You and mother have contests growing up?” I said.

  “You mean like cooking contests?”

  I nodded while I chewed a bite of the hot apple pie and melted cheese.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I never tried to outdo your mother. She was an excellent cook in her own right in the early days. We shared some duties in the kitchen with your Grandmother Clancy, but we never competed. She had her skills and I had mine.”

  “What were her skills besides cooking?” I said.

  “Oh, my … Rachel Jo was a crack shot. You didn’t know that?” he said.

  “A crack shot … at what?”

  “Anything she put in her hand. Handguns, rifles, shotguns … it didn’t matter, Rachel Jo could outshoot anyone in the family and won several turkey shoots in her teenage years. It became so embarrassing for the men of Clancyville, that they asked our father, your grandfather, to keep her home so someone else could win after four or more years in a row of winning. He refused for a long time; but then, finally, after a run of eight straight years of winning the local Clancyville Turkey Shoot, he relented and kept her home. Helped the men to save face finally.”

  “So she stopped shooting then?” I said.

  “Oh, no. She still entered other contests and into college was quite a marksman.”

  “She wasn’t shooting when I was growing up,” I said.

  “True. She stopped when Bill Evans came along,” he said.

  He had finished his pie and was now enjoying his coffee. I was still slowly relishing every last morsel of my dessert.

  “Mom and Dad never competed, huh?”

  “No, she refused to do that. I can remember him begging her to go shooting with him, but she said no.”

  “Why do you think she wouldn’t shoot with him?”

  “She wanted to marry him. If she competed with him in a shooting contest and beat him, it might spell the end of their romance. She told me that she couldn’t take a chance on that happening.”

  “My father was an excellent shot with all kinds of weapons,” I said in his defense.’

  “I know. But your mother was better.”

  “No proof of that,” I said.

  He swallowed some coffee and smiled while he stared out at the lights of the city of Boston.

  “You’ll have to trust me on that one. I doubt if anyone I have ever known could shoot like your mother when she was a teenager and into those early years of adulthood before she met Bill Evans.”

  “How could she give it up so completely?” I said.

  “If you ever love completely … well, that’s how you do it,” Walters said.

  31

  I was sitting in my car in the driveway of Duchess Legrand’s home in the Mystic Valley region of West Medford. Sam was in the backseat checking the surroundings. Walters had business to handle in downtown Boston, so Sam came with me. I was pondering some possible questions to ask the Duchess. I was also pondering whether I wanted to encounter this woman on this day with what I had uncovered.

&nb
sp; Sometimes facts emerge which leave a lot to be desired in terms of providing enjoyment for me. Getting shot, kidnapped, and asking a mother about having sex with your daughter’s fiancée are three things low on my to-do list.

  Sam growled just before the tapping on my side window startled me. The Duchess was standing next to the car and smiling at me.

  “You coming inside or do you plan to sit there all day?” she asked. “Bring the dog along. He’s welcomed, too.” She headed towards her front door, stopped, gestured again for me to follow her, and I did so. Sam came as well.

  This was not the reception I had expected on my third visit here.

  “You want some coffee or something stronger?” she asked as we walked down the long hallway towards the back of her small estate.

  “Coffee will do,” I said.

  “I’m having something a bit heavier, if you don’t mind,” she said.

  “Your house, your call,” I said.

  I watched her mix a splash of gin with a splash of scotch with a long pour of something else along with some ice. The end result had the color of cognac.

  “Curious?” she said as she joined me on the leather sofa.

  “My nature.”

  “It’s called a Boston. Made with Calvados brandy. I prefer the Napoleon because it has aged about six years, I think. Like drinking a velvet apple,” she explained.

  “Never thought about drinking a velvet apple. I prefer to eat them,” I said.

  “Charming, I’m sure. I like something to get me going in the morning. You interested?”

  “I’ll stick with caffeine in the coffee, but thanks for the information.”

  “I assume you have some further questions for me about Melody, or you have discovered something in your digging around. Let’s have it,” she said and downed the remainder of her drink.

  “I was told that you gave Melody some money for an abortion.”

  “My, my. You cut to the chase quickly, don’t you?” She moved from the sofa back to the bar and began mixing another Boston. Her measurements were not what one might call exact in the making of her drink. A splash here, a heavier splash there. Most bars would have fired her for excess in selling their booze.