Suture Self : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery
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“Cute,” Judith agreed, though her voice had gone
flat. “So you want me to put together a family tree.”
She caught Renie’s gaze; Renie choked on her pear.
“If you could,” Mike said. “Nothing fancy; I gather
the teachers do the artwork and arranging. No real
rush, either, though they’d like to have all this stuff by
the end of the month.”
“The end of the month?” Judith frowned into the
phone. “Why so soon? Mac won’t start school until
fall.”
“The teachers have to make the trees for about sixty
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kids,” Mike said reasonably. “Of course, they have to
decide if they’ll accept Mac in the first place. But the
earlier we get all this stuff done, the more likely he’ll
get into Little Einsteins.”
“That’s the name of the school?” Judith gulped.
“Right. They don’t take just any kid,” Mike said,
pride still evident in his voice. “Of course, it’s not
cheap, but we can swing it. Education’s so important
these days. I mean, it’s not like when I was a kid, and
you sent me to Ethel Bump’s place. All we did was
string beads and finger-paint her furniture and roll
around on our rugs.”
“That was day care, Mike,” Judith said over Renie’s
loud coughing fit . You were there so I could work two
jobs while Dan laid on the couch, starting his day with
an entire bottle of blackberry brandy and working his
way up to his first vodka at eleven in the morning.
“You did more than just play at Ethel’s,” Judith continued. “You learned your numbers.”
“Not all of them,” Mike responded. “I always left
out nine.”
“True.” Judith hung her head. “Okay, I’ll see what I
can do.”
“Great, Mom. Got to go. There’s a message coming
in on my fax. Love you.” He hung up.
“Family tree, huh?” Renie said, having conquered
her choking.
Judith grimaced. “I’ve dreaded this for years.”
Renie offered her cousin a sympathetic smile.
“Don’t you think Mike knows that Dan wasn’t his real
father?”
“Define ‘real,’ ” Judith said with a frown.
“I meant natural father,” Renie responded, eating a
piece of Havarti cheese. “Yes, I certainly know that
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Dan raised Mike, that in spite of being a lousy husband, he was a pretty good dad. I also know that Mike
has always felt that Dan really was his dad. But a year
or so ago, I got the impression that Mike had figured it
out. Do you remember? We were all having our pictures taken with little Mac, and Mike suddenly looked
from the baby’s red hair to Joe’s, and since Mike himself has red hair and Dan was very dark, I got the impression that Mike finally realized the truth.”
“He’s never said a word,” Judith asserted. “Not to
me, not to Joe. But you’re right, I think he must know,
deep down. How much denial could he possibly have?
I wanted to broach the subject with him then, but I kept
putting it off. We’d already had one big conversation a
couple of years ago, and it became clear to me that the
truth would have altered his memory of Dan.”
“He was younger then,” Renie pointed out. “That
was before he got married, wasn’t it?”
“I can’t remember,” Judith admitted. “I know, I tend
to bury things, hoping they’ll go away. But they don’t.”
The phone rang again, this time on Renie’s line. She
responded in monosyllables, then hung up. “Security.
His name is Torchy Magee. He’ll be up in a few minutes, along with a cop.”
“If Joe had never been a cop,” Judith sighed, “and
never gotten drunk that night in the bar with Herself, I
wouldn’t be in this quandary now.”
“Nonsense,” Renie retorted, cutting another slice of
cheese and popping it in her mouth.
Judith didn’t say anything for a few moments. She
was reliving that terrible time when Joe had suddenly
disappeared just weeks before their wedding. She’d only
heard secondhand that he’d been shanghaied to Vegas
by Vivian, and that, while he was still in a drunken stu-80
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por, the pair had gotten married in a casino wedding
chapel. It wasn’t until many years later that Judith had
found out he’d tried to call her later that same day.
Gertrude had intercepted the call and never told Judith
about it. Not hearing back, and feeling compelled to
honor his commitment to Vivian, Joe had stayed married
to Vivian for over twenty years. He’d felt sorry for Herself, he explained to Judith after they were finally reunited. She’d had two unhappy marriages already, and
was trying to raise two small boys on her own. Then Vivian had given birth to their own daughter, Caitlin. Joe
felt stuck, and he knew that Judith had married Dan McMonigle on the rebound. It was only after the children
were raised and Herself had grown more passionate
about Jim Beam than Joe Flynn that he had finally decided to make a break. There had been no need for an
annulment. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Joe’s
marriage to Herself had never been valid. Taking vows
while not in his sane and sober mind was only part of it;
the Church didn’t recognize the union because Vivian
was still the wife of another man.
Meanwhile, Judith had lived a lie, at least as far as
Mike was concerned. Joe didn’t know that she was
pregnant when he ran off with Herself. Judith had
never told him, not until almost a quarter of a century
later. Dan had raised Mike as his own, and perhaps his
often antagonistic attitude toward Judith was a form of
punishment for bearing another man’s child. Whatever
the cause, Judith had suffered a great deal during the
nineteen years that she was married to Dan.
“But he was a good father.” She repeated the phrase
so often that it was like a mantra. She could never
make Dan happy, but she could honor his memory, especially in Mike’s eyes.
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“Yes, yes,” Renie said testily. “But Mike’s a grown
man now, he can handle the truth. It’s not fair to Joe. It
never has been, and I’ll bet my last five bucks he resents it, deep down.”
Judith heaved a big sigh. “Yes, I know he does. I
guess I’ll have to bite the bullet.”
“It’s about time,” Renie said, still testy. “Your problem, coz, is that you hate making decisions, you can’t
stand rocking the boat, you’re absolutely terrified of
change. Go ahead, make out that family tree, and fill in
all of Joe’s family. His brothers, his parents, the whole
damned clan.”
“I never knew his mother,” Judith said, as if her
early death might give some excuse for abandoning
the project.
“Do it,” Renie barked. “I’ll help.”
Before Judith could respond, a burly, uniformed
man in his late fifties poked his head in the doo
r. “Mrs.
Jones?” he said in a gravelly voice.
“Here,” said Renie, raising her left hand. “You’re
Torchy Magee?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the security guard responded as another, much younger man in a patrolman’s uniform followed him into the room. “This is Johnny Boxx, that’s
with two xx’s, right, Johnny?”
“Right,” replied the young officer with a tight little
smile.
“He’s fairly new to the force,” Magee said, swaggering a bit as he nodded at Judith and approached
Renie’s bed. “Me, I was a cop for over twenty-five
years before I retired a while back. Arson, vice, larceny, assault—I did it all, and have the scars to show
for it.” He chuckled and gave Johnny Boxx a hearty
slap on the back. “Yessir, see this?” He pointed to a
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long, thin scar on his right cheek. “Attacked by a knife
there.” Magee rolled up his left sleeve to reveal another
scar. “Shotgun, just below the elbow. Hurt like hell. I
was wounded three times, here, in the shoulder, and
just above my ear. Got a plate in my head to prove it.”
“My,” Renie said, keeping a straight face, though Judith could tell it was an effort, “you’ve had some bad
luck.”
“Just doing my job,” Magee responded. “That’s not
all, either. I got my nickname, Torchy, when I was in
arson. Look, no eyebrows.”
Sure enough, Magee’s forehead stretched from his
eyes to the bald spot on top of his head. “What happened?” Judith asked.
“Let’s put it this way,” Torchy Magee responded
with a chuckle and a wink, “when you’re investigating
an arson case, you should make sure the fire is out
first.” He chuckled some more, a grating sound, then
turned to Renie. “Okay, little lady, let’s hear all about
what you saw from this third-story window.”
“ ‘Little lady’?” Renie curled her lip.
“Well . . .” Torchy shrugged. “In a manner of speaking.” He rested one foot on Renie’s bed frame. “So
what’d you see?”
“I was standing by the window,” Renie began, eyeing Torchy’s foot with annoyance, “when I saw Mr.
Kirby leave through the front entrance.”
Officer Boxx held up a hand. “How did you know it
was Mr. Kirby?”
“I’d just met him,” Renie replied. “He was wearing
a trench coat, he had a beard, it wasn’t that hard to
identify him three floors up.”
“Sounds right to me,” Torchy said. “Go on, Mrs. J.”
“Mrs. Jones,” Renie said with emphasis. “Anyway,
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he’d just started toward the parking lot when a beige
car, a mid-sized sedan, came from out of nowhere and
struck Mr. Kirby down.”
“Heh, heh.” Torchy chuckled. “Now, Mrs. . . . Jones,
a car can’t come out of nowhere. Which direction?”
Renie looked exasperated. “I was watching Mr.
Kirby. You know damned well a car can come from
three directions out there—the parking lot, the main
drive into the hospital, and the ambulance and staff
area off to the right of the main entrance. That is, my
right, from my point of view, through my window.”
Torchy’s expression had grown serious. “Through
this window.”
“Yes.” Renie’s patience appeared to be wearing thin.
“Tell us about the car,” Officer Boxx inquired. “It
was a beige medium-sized sedan. Any idea how old or
what make?”
“Very clean,” Renie answered, “so I thought it was
fairly new. It was shaped like so many cars these days,
especially the Japanese imports. Bill and I have a Toyota,
about the same color as the car I saw. In fact, our car
looks like every other car these days. Sometimes I get
mixed up in a parking lot and try to get into the wrong
one. My husband and I call our Toyota Cammy. Except
Bill says Cammy is a boy. I don’t agree. Cammy’s a girl.”
“Can’t you tell by looking underneath?” Torchy
laughed aloud at his joke.
“I never thought of that,” Renie said with a straight
face and a flashing eye.
“License plate,” Boxx put in. “Did you get any kind
of look?”
“Ah . . .” Renie bit her lip. “I didn’t notice.”
The young policeman frowned. “Do you remember
if it had in-state plates?”
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Her eyes half closed, Renie seemed to be concentrating. “Yes, I think so. I can see it from the rear as it
headed toward the parking lot. I’m a very visual person.”
“Huh?” said Torchy.
“I’m a designer, an artist by trade,” Renie explained.
“I see more than most people do, but sometimes I don’t
realize it until later.”
“But you didn’t see any letters or numbers,” the policeman prompted.
“No.” Renie looked chagrined.
“So this car went where after hitting Mr. Kirby?”
Torchy inquired.
“Toward the parking lot,” Renie replied. “You can’t
see much of the lot because of those evergreen trees
and shrubs. Anyway, I was riveted on Mr. Kirby.”
“How is he?” Judith broke in.
“Kirby?” Torchy turned around. “Broken leg,
bruises and so forth. Kid stuff.” The security guard
touched his head, presumably where he’d been shot.
“He’ll live.”
“That’s more than his wife did,” Renie declared.
“She never got out of this place alive.”
“Now, now,” Torchy said in a soothing tone. “That
was a different matter.”
“How different?” Judith asked.
“Well,” Torchy began, then paused and scratched his
bald spot, “she had an operation. And then . . . well,
maybe she was taking some stuff on the side. You
know.” He winked again.
“Actually,” Renie said, “we don’t know. Mr. Kirby
doesn’t think his wife was taking ‘stuff on the side.’
Have you talked to him, Security Officer Magee?”
Torchy gave a little jump. “Me? Why, sure. That’s
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my job. But what do husbands know about what wives
do when they’re not with the old man?” He winked a
third time. “Or the other way around, for that matter.
Besides, she was an actress. You know what those theater people are like.”
Renie held up a hand. “If you wink again, I’ll
have to kill you. Yes, I know something about theater people. But the real question is, what do you
know about the untimely deaths of three well-known
local residents in this very hospital? Isn’t that your
business?”
Johnny Boxx had strolled to the door, maybe, Judith
thought, in an effort to disassociate himself from
Torchy Magee. “If you think of anything else,” Boxx
said to Renie in a courteous voice, “let us know.” It was
clear he meant the police, not security.
“I will,” Renie promised.
Torchy lingered after Officer Boxx w
ent out into the
hall. “Let me know first,” he said to Renie, his jocular
manner evaporating.
“Sure,” Renie said, her brown eyes wide with innocence.
Judith pushed herself up on the pillows. “Drugs,
huh?” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “Fremont and
Somosa both, I heard. And Bob Randall committed
suicide. How horrible.”
Torchy’s close-set gray eyes narrowed. “Where’d
you hear all that?”
Judith shrugged. “Hospital scuttlebutt. You know
how people like to gossip.”
The security man, who had been midway to the
door, stopped at the foot of Judith’s bed. “Don’t pay attention to what you hear. Of course,” he went on,
lightly caressing the iron bedstead rail, “sometimes
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truth has a way of getting out.” Once again, Torchy
winked.
“That’s so,” Judith said, smirking a bit and ignoring
Renie, who was making threatening gestures at Torchy
with her cheese knife. “It’s hard to imagine why Bob
Randall would kill himself. It’s even harder to imagine
how he did it.” She gave a little shudder, which wasn’t
entirely feigned.
Torchy frowned. “I’m not sure I know yet. That is, I
couldn’t say if I did, of course. That’d be telling tales
out of school.” Torchy gave the bedstead a quick slap.
“Gotta go. No rest for the wicked.”
The security man left. The cousins stared at each
other.
“What do you think?” Renie inquired.
“I think,” Judith said slowly as her eyelids began to
droop, “that no matter how Bob Randall died, it wasn’t
suicide. I’m willing to bet that it was . . .”
She fell asleep before she could finish the sentence.
SIX
JOE AND BILL arrived shortly after three o’clock.
Both had already heard about Bob Randall’s sudden
death. Joe was wild; Bill was thoughtful.
“I don’t get it,” Joe raged, pacing up and down the
small room. “There’s nowhere you can go in this entire world and not run into a dead body. If I shot myself right now with my trusty thirty-eight, and you
entered a cloistered nunnery tomorrow, the first
thing you’d find is the Mother Superior’s corpse,
carved up like a damned chicken!”
“Joe,” Judith pleaded, “you know I was apprehensive even before . . .”
“Post-op anxiety, depression, fear—it could play
out that way,” Bill was saying quietly to Renie, “but