Over My Dead Body

by Dave Warner

  ‘How about a mint-condition Alf still in its plastic packaging?’

  That got him sitting up. ‘Alf the alien?’

  ‘Yep, with the snout.’

  ‘You have it on you?’

  It was still back at Harry’s. Simone had given it to her years ago in lieu of a real birthday gift. Something she’d grabbed from a boyfriend as payback after a bad bust-up. Georgette hated it.

  ‘You’ll have to take my word for it.’

  He pursed his lips, nodded.

  ‘Today,’ she said.

  ‘You’re pushing.’ But he was bluffing.

  ‘It’s officially vintage now. You’ll owe me and then some.’

  He took the samples off her. ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘Everything.’

  As she was heading back towards her lab, Simone called her phone.

  ‘Sorry about before but I had a really important meeting with that casting agent.’

  Georgette figured for once she wasn’t going liberal with the truth.

  Simone said, ‘You’re smart. I’m sure you’ll figure out a solution before it hits Sherlock.’

  What Georgette had been thinking was that if they went public, Holmes would have every expert in the world trying to help him. She kept this to herself, asked how Simone had gone.

  ‘Good, I think. He says he has this hush-hush feature he can’t give details of yet but it’s a Hollywood A-lister’s vanity project and they want unknowns, and well, you can’t get more unknown than me.’

  ‘Are you driving?’ Georgette could make out the telltale crunch of gears and angry horns.

  ‘Yeah. On my way to my lesson with Ambrose.’

  ‘He teaches you, right?’

  ‘Ha ha. I gotta go. I will call you, okay. Give Sherlock a big kiss from me.’ Then instead of ending the call, there was a gasp. ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘What?’ she was worried Simone had hit somebody.

  ‘You’ve fallen for him. Don’t deny it. I can tell. You didn’t even cry for Vance.’

  Actually she had. Worthless buckets.

  ‘Vance wasn’t dying.’

  ‘No, then you’d have been laughing, we all would have. You’re invested, admit it.’

  What the heck. ‘Yes, I’m invested.’

  ‘Knew it.’ Georgette heard Simone greet Ambrose. Then she came back on line.

  ‘I’m here for you, okay?’

  After Georgette ended the call and stepped back into the lab, she began crying all over again.

  Hours passed. Holmes drifted away and back, a shipwrecked man in a vast ocean, slowly, very slowly. Words were strained through an ever-smaller diameter netting, muck cast aside. He considered inflections, physical tells. The cocaine called to him, his own personal siren.

  Not yet.

  More absences swirled through him like the spirits of the long dead: the jingle of spurs, the creaking of hand-carts, the clang of iron hammered on anvil, the smell of newspaper, mown grass, a leather cricket ball, varnish and boot polish, and a train conductor’s swooping cry like a gull as the moment of departure fell due, and images of shop signage, the lettering in faux gold borders, symbols for pennies and pounds, half-pennies. And postcards, and corsets and the sight of masts and rigging in harbors and at the extremity of the horizon while on a coastal stroll to the rustle and swish of a woman’s best dress.

  Banish it. Now. He could not afford the luxury of nostalgia. He must find Noah.

  Now he was wading through a swamp. Over and over, the same faces loomed out of the mist: Morgan Edwards, he had purchased the books and immediately snagged Avery Scheer. Did this make Scheer a sociopath? Not necessarily. He himself might have done the same had he seen the book on offer. And Scheer, unless he was lying, did not even speak Italian. Edwards did.

  Had Edwards been a bomb waiting for the fuse to be lit? The book was the match? And there he was, voila, at the theatre. But he can’t have done it. None of them could. They all had alibies. Somebody then that one of them had inadvertently shown the book or excerpt to, or somebody who had stumbled across it visiting Scheer. Likely by now whichever one of them it was knew and they were covering for … a lover, a son, daughter … patient.

  Avery Scheer claimed he suddenly remembered he needed to make a call to a patient but had forgotten his phone. Could he have recalled such a phone number without assistance? How often had he called it before? That was something needed to be reviewed with Benson. Holmes himself would have remembered such a number, but was Scheer his equal in this? Had the police checked whether Scheer had tried that number again when he had returned home? Unlikely, because they had found Leonard Chester, the man with whom Scheer had wanted to speak, and having confirmed Scheer was indeed his counsellor and that Chester was alibied, eliminated Chester as a suspect.

  No, that was not quite right was it? There was something they had missed.

  Holmes sat up and seized the cocaine.

  Once more Georgette had put the hamsters through their paces. Thankfully, today no more were showing symptoms. Zoe was lying down panting. A matter of hours. Better she euthanize her now, thought Georgette. An autopsy would be the best and quickest way of isolating the exact problem area. She did not want to do it, these animals were like pets. And Zoe had been the first. The phone rang. It was Holmes. Her brain was scrambled.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good, Watson. Don’t trouble yourself on my account. There is some time yet before the coffin-maker will need his tape.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking –’

  ‘I would expect nothing less. I want you to spend this evening with your father. You should be safe there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I am leaving shortly.’ Sounds in the background suggested an echoey station. ‘For Boston. It may be a wild goose chase but then again, if we don’t look, we shall never know if the nest was empty.’

  With that, he asked her once more to be careful and then ended the call, leaving her with nothing but the weight of a silent phone in her hand.

  21

  Harry was more than pleased to see Georgette sitting across the table from him.

  ‘Pretty good salad, huh? Olives, onion, tomato. My opinion, you gotta have onion.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘We should do this more often.’

  ‘Yes, we should. You want to do Thanksgiving here?’

  Harry always celebrated Thanksgiving with the girls and nearly always here. He considered himself as good at roasting a turkey as grilling steak. It was that or eat out. He couldn’t trust either of his girls with it.

  ‘Sure. I got the room. I suppose you want to invite Percy?’ It was a gentle probe.

  ‘Of course.’

  She didn’t elaborate, so fine, if that’s the way she wanted to play it … Harry dropped further inquiry.

  ‘I haven’t seen Simone’s place in like a year.’ He was thinking last time he’d visited, it reminded him of the Nancy Spungen murder scene. ‘She tell you about her meeting?’

  ‘Yes. She’s optimistic.’

  ‘She’s nothing if not that. So where has Percy gone?’ At first, he’d been hoping there might be some romance there but that had vanished when he learned how irresponsible Turner had been.

  ‘New England. Something academic.’

  ‘I know you’re going to defend him but he shouldn’t have got you involved.’

  ‘Dad …’

  ‘You’re my daughter and I don’t want to wake up terrified every day that you may never return.’

  ‘Join the club.’

  He hadn’t forgotten what she’d said back there at Astoria Park, about the girls worrying about him, had been chewing on it since.

  ‘You and Simone were worried?’

  ‘What do you think? We’d lost Mom. You were our whole world. Somewhere at the back of my mind every day I was thinking “Dad’s out there running down low-lifes who would shoot their grandmother for five bucks.” There wasn’t a day it didn’
t cross my mind that by the evening we could be orphans.’

  It hit him hard in the gut that he had never considered this. All he had ever thought about was that he needed to work as hard as he could to provide for the girls.

  ‘I’m sorry, baby. I never realized.’

  She reached across and put her hand on his arm. ‘It’s okay.’

  He felt humbled, like he was the kid now. ‘You like him?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s a friend.’

  ‘Just a friend?’

  ‘Stop that.’

  Harry wasn’t convinced his eldest daughter’s instinct with men was high but he heard Helen’s voice in his ear: ‘Stop being a cop, enjoy your daughter’s company.’

  They used to play cards together when she was about twelve. He wondered if she’d play a hand or two but didn’t want to risk rejection if he asked her outright.

  ‘Mirsch’s winning run came to an abrupt end in the Catskills,’ he chuckled.

  ‘All good things …’

  How true. He had a flash image of Helen sitting opposite where Georgette was now, the two little girls, what – six and four? – either side. Georgette broke the spell.

  ‘I’m guessing you mentioned Mirsch because you want to see if I can still whip you at poker.’

  ‘You never whipped me.’

  ‘Whipped you good. You get the deck, I’ll clean up. How’s the Rebecca Chaney investigation progressing?’

  ‘I don’t think they have much. Gomez was hot for a while on the super at the apartment building but that ran out of steam, and the ex was alibied.’

  ‘Wasn’t she meeting somebody though? Surely somebody saw them together some time.’

  ‘Not many. Witnesses! Totally unreliable: age anything from twenty to forty. And no cameras. I’m thinking he was being careful, maybe he had it planned all along but I’m not the Homicide Squad.’ He held up the cards. ‘Gin rummy or poker?’

  It was like she’d never left home. Never gone to college. Never had a boyfriend or too many vodkas. The gentle slap of the cards was as timeless as a Christmas carol. She was giving as good as she’d got, one game each. Third in play. She’d speak to Simone about her staying here a night or two. The company was good for him. Most men widowed early in their lives married not long after, or at least that’s what it seemed like to her. Not her father. He’d had girlfriends, a couple for quite a long time but he’d more or less lived alone here.

  ‘How come you’ve never remarried?’

  He studied his cards, shrugged. ‘I thought about it a couple of times. If I’d have met a woman where I wasn’t comparing her with your mother, you know, if I had reached that stage, I would have been open to it. But I never did. Amelia, you remember her? She was very nice, and we hit it off but I couldn’t give her what she wanted. She found a guy, nice guy. She’s very happy. It was the right move. And then … I don’t know, it just gets away from you.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  He chewed, thought some more. ‘You reach an age you don’t want a better future, you just don’t want to lose the good bits of what you’ve got.’

  The last few days had been growing successively colder. Good. The little lake was near frozen now and everything was in readiness. He’d gone onto his computer and checked a backroads route for the Catskills. No stone to be left unturned, everything in its place. They thought they were so smart. How many bodies did they have working the Noah case now? And how gut-wrenching when he struck. They all wanted the high-profile glory but they couldn’t save the life of one poor girl, could they, Rebecca? He’d given them more than enough to go on with, just in case he might be wrong in believing he was God’s chosen instrument of justice. If that were the case, if they honestly could apply themselves, they might stop him but he didn’t think so. Que sera.

  She had tried Holmes but he hadn’t answered and she couldn’t say she was all that surprised. He would contact her when he was ready. Thoughts pecked her – had he remembered to take a charger? Yes, surely he would. How did he have the money for a train fare and accommodation? Was he thinking of sleeping at the Y? It was too cold to be outdoors for any length of time and his health was likely compromised. That afternoon she had taken Zoe’s limp body to her friend Charmain who performed autopsies on the lab animals. The autopsy demands were not as high as for bloodworks and Charmain assured her she would get onto the autopsy that evening or first thing tomorrow. She had seen how upset Georgette had been.

  ‘She was my first success but I am worried about losing them all,’ she had explained and detailed the apparent cognitive deterioration. Charmain had reassured her she would do her best to pinpoint a problem. Mark had called not long after Georgette had left the building. He had warned her that he would not yet have the results for specific virus markers.

  ‘But what I can tell you is that they are all low in red blood cells; subjects one and two critically so.’ That was Zoe and Vernon. She’d thanked him.

  ‘Don’t forget Alf.’

  No, she wouldn’t forget Alf, in fact she was looking at him right this minute. I need to get Holmes’ blood checked, she was thinking. If it’s something like leukaemia then that is bad but there are treatments that can be implemented. At any rate, he may need some kind of transfusion.

  There was something confronting about being in your old bedroom. For more than half your life this had been the room in which you’d laid your head on the pillow and dreamed: of being famous, or better looking, or kissing some non-entity like Dan Frelling in junior high. He was the reserve for the debating team. They only kept him on it because she insisted. And, ignorant his debating life was on thin ice, Dan then had the hide to demand game time. Ha. He had blown it when he’d hooked up with Maya Sheddick, so with that she withdrew her support and he was never seen near an affirmative premise again.

  She was pretty sure this was a different bed. Maybe Simone’s old one. It was touching when she walked into the room and saw her father had made the bed up himself. The sheets smelled clean but at least one of the blankets was musty. It was too cold to pull it off though – she was frugal with heating but, compared to miserly Harry, extravagant. She’d forgotten that – so she stayed bunched and huddled.

  The teen posters were long gone, the walls bare but not repainted. Towards the end, when her mom was really bad, Georgette would lie in here awake, in tears, and some nights she could hear a wail and then her father comforting or hushing her mom.

  Georgette had her first period here. God, that had been terrifying even though she had read up on it and Mom was still alive to help. There had been a few years early on where Simone had shared the room with her. That naturally ended badly: an image of an angry young self chasing her sister around a softball diamond while wielding a bat came to her. Simone had borrowed her favorite blouse and wrecked it.

  Across the other side of the room was the simple bookshelf where all her Harry Potters had stood, obediently awaiting the call for yet another read even though they were tired and worn and had hot chocolate spilled on them from when Simone had purloined them yet never finished reading them. She didn’t recall wanting to be a scientist back then although it was a bit of a fog. She wanted a pony badly, she remembered that much.

  Her phone pinged. It was sitting on top of a cardboard box of her dad’s old vinyl records. Holmes had sent a text.

  Arrived Boston. Are you safe with your father?

  She typed, Yes at Dad’s. Cold. Lots of memories.

  Ping.

  Just like me, Watson.

  Not for the first time she had an inkling of what Holmes’ life must be like here. Everybody, everything he had known was a ghost, a footnote of history. There was just him.

  Where are you staying? she typed.

  Ping.

  Sunrise House.

  That distressed her. She could have paid for some decent accommodation for him. She was going to type something about the blood test but held off. He doesn’t want to hear that now, she thought.
<
br />   Instead she typed, Are you sorry I brought you back?

  She waited in the dark, bare room. A long time. My God, how many years was this my world?

  Ping.

  I have a purpose, and you, Watson. Sleep well.

  Perhaps it was ridiculous but those words seemed to wrap themselves around her and warm her. There was no further communication.

  And then sleep, smelling faintly of aromatic tobacco, stroked her forehead, and her eyes closed to the imagined rattle of carriages and the bellows of fishmongers.

  Holmes nursed the phone in his long palm the way a schoolboy nurses a dove. Absurd as it was, he missed her. Georgette was as big a part of his life as John had ever been. Would it could be more but with a death-sentence hanging over his head such ideas had to be banished. And this was a good place to banish them, a pitiful receptacle for life’s defeated. The dormitory was six-berth, three double bunks: four of the other beds were occupied. He was on a top bunk above a snoring, bewhiskered old seaman whom he had befriended on the street corner up from Sunrise House, not long after arriving. Sunrise House itself looked like it might once have been a guest house. It was three stories, gabled, wooden, with a slate roof. What had once been wide verandas had been enclosed more than sixty years ago. His guess was it could house around twenty. His decision to wear the second-hand clothes and to leave his suit hanging in the wardrobe in Manhattan had been the correct one. The staff at Sunrise House, a female administrator and a young male health-worker, had been in two minds about him when he presented himself but his correct use of English appeared to convince them that though his brain was addled – just the right touch he congratulated himself – he posed no threat. Fortunately, they did not realize that the walking stick he’d found at Penn Station was, in his hands, a formidable weapon. The revolver he had left hidden in New York, the derringer was strapped to his ankle and covered by baggy trousers. The seaman, Arty, had told him that most of the rooms at Sunrise House were ‘vouched’. This seemed to mean that some organization or medico had signed a form which guaranteed a period of stay. There was, however, Arty told him for the price of a cigarette, a short-stay dormitory where those down on their luck might stay for a night. And then for another cigarette, Arty had shown him to the front desk and made up a yarn about Holmes being a young fellow down on his luck after a motor vehicle accident. By then it had been near seven o’clock and the air outside was cold and pressed down like a giant’s fist. Holmes had been just in time for a meal, something called baked beans, which he quite enjoyed. He had already identified the telephone, a single wall-mounted phone in the second-floor hallway. Over this meal in a large common room, on hard chairs with a mumbling television mounted high on the wall near the servery, Holmes had discretely enquired about the police coming around to ask about a phone call. This caused a bit of a hubbub among his group of six new chums, men ranging in age from about thirty to seventy-five. Clearly it had been a moment of intense excitement in this otherwise stultifying world of ill-matched cutlery and linoleum flooring that gave off a smell of impregnated disinfectant. Two uniformed police had come in looking for a man named Lenny who often stayed there, but he wasn’t in.