Writing a Wrong

by Betty Hechtman

  I went up the outside stairs and wiped my feet before I went into the outer vestibule of my building. A man in a dark suit was examining the names on the mailboxes and looked up when I came in. Seeing a formally dressed stranger in the building made me uneasy and I was considering going back outside. He glanced in my direction and picked up on my discomfort.

  ‘Sorry if I scared you, ma’am.’ He opened his jacket and pulled out a badge and I noticed he had a gun holstered under his arm. The badge and the gun barely registered. I was too stunned at being called ma’am. It was a first, and I wondered if I had passed some invisible marker and gone from the nice-sounding ‘miss’ to the frumpy-sounding ‘ma’am’. I was only thirty-two and he was clearly much older. ‘Detective Jankowski,’ he said. He peered closely at me. ‘Do you happen to know Veronica Blackstone?’

  ‘It’s me. I’m Veronica Blackstone.’ My throat had gone instantly dry and I almost choked on my own name. I felt a surge of adrenalin. A detective looking for me couldn’t be good. I looked longingly toward the outside and wished I could escape.

  ‘I wonder if I could speak to you,’ he said. His words might have made it sound like I had a choice, but his tone made it clear that I didn’t.

  I asked him what it was about and he wouldn’t give a clue. I recognized the lack of expression as what I’d seen on Ben’s face. It must be something they taught them in cop school. I certainly didn’t want to talk where anybody in the building could pass by and eavesdrop. But I also didn’t want to join him on a trip to the police station, so I invited him up to my place.

  ‘No elevator, huh?’ he said, following me up the three flights of stairs. There was a tiredness about him that made me think he was already looking forward to retirement, but at the same time he was intent on his job.

  ‘Sorry, it’s an old building,’ I said as we reached the top-floor landing. I unlocked the door and we went into the small entrance hall. Sunlight was streaming in through the living-room windows, making it seem bright and inviting.

  He took a moment to catch his breath after the climb, but nothing showed in his face. It was probably habit now to keep it like a mask with a generic expression. He’d shut the door behind us when we came in but stopped in the entranceway. I wasn’t sure what the protocol was, so I simply said, ‘Now what?’

  He ignored my question and looked around the living room. Was it curiosity or was he trying to gather information on me? His glance moved to the long hall that ended in the dining room. ‘Is anyone else home?’

  Why was he asking that? ‘I live alone,’ I stammered. Rocky made an appearance just then and gave me a look as if to remind me I had a cat roommate.

  The detective was too busy sizing up my place to notice the feline’s arrival. He went from looking around the living room to peering into the open French doors that went into my office and then back to looking down the long hall. ‘It’s a lot of space for one person.’

  ‘And a cat,’ I said, gesturing to Rocky at my feet. The detective gave Rocky a cursory glance and went back looking down the hall and I thought he was counting doors.

  I wanted to tell him that only two of them were bedrooms and the other two were a closet and a bathroom, but I said nothing. There was no reason for me to volunteer information. I thought of a cliché that described how I felt. I let it go since I couldn’t think of any better words than that I was on pins and needles waiting to hear why he was there. Obviously it had to do with a crime he was investigating. What could it have to do with me? And how should I answer?

  I tried to be calm, reminding myself I wasn’t guilty of anything.

  He let out a tired sigh. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’ Everything was a question with him. Would I speak to him, could he sit down? I thought again that his words gave the illusion that I had a choice, but his tone made it clear I didn’t. There was nothing to do but to agree.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, gesturing toward the black leather couch. I sensed that he was glad to sit, even if it put him in less of a power position. I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I offered him a cup of coffee. Or maybe there was method in my … I stopped myself right there before I could finish the cliché and changed it to: I had a good reason behind it. I remembered something I’d learned when I was writing the first Derek Streeter book. Cops looked to be in charge in a situation like this. But by making it more social there was a tiny shift of power to me.

  The offer clearly caught him off guard. It took a moment for it to register and he started to shake his head in refusal, but then I heard another tired sigh. ‘Yeah, that would be good,’ he said.

  I wondered if he’d follow me to the kitchen to make sure I didn’t make a hasty exit through the back door. He didn’t, and he was looking at his phone when I returned with a couple of mugs of coffee along with cream and sugar. He filled his with so much cream it looked almost beige. Then he dumped in several spoons of sugar. He noticed me watching. ‘Afternoon slump,’ he said as an explanation.

  By now the suspense was killing me – I didn’t even bother chiding myself for the cliché under the circumstances.

  I had taken the chair adjacent to the couch. He drank half the coffee in one swig and put down the mug before taking out a notebook and pen. I considered commenting that it was my way of taking notes too, but by now I just wanted to find out what he was there about and get it over with.

  ‘How do you know Ted Roberts?’ he asked.

  ‘Ted Roberts? The name’s not familiar,’ I said with a shrug. I felt a gush of relief. Clearly it was a mistake. But something niggled at me. I knew that cops were known not to ask questions they didn’t already know the answer to, particularly for a first one. He also didn’t get up and start apologizing that he’d made a mistake.

  ‘Are you sure, ma’am?’ he asked. I cringed at being called ‘ma’am’ again. But I also began to understand that it was kind of like the expressionless face. Not using my name was a way to make it seem impersonal. Though I wondered what the cut-off for ‘miss’ was.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure I don’t know him, Detective Jankowski,’ I said. ‘What makes you think that I do?’

  There was the hint of a grimace as he recognized that I’d turned the tables on him. ‘Just take a moment to think about it,’ he said.

  ‘I can take an hour to think about it. I don’t know who Ted Roberts is,’ I said, getting annoyed.

  ‘Denying you know him isn’t going to cut it,’ he said. ‘I know that you wrote a mystery and were involved with settling the case of that heiress, and you probably think that makes you believe you’re some kind of ace detective. I know how those books go. The cops are always stupid, and an amateur who knits or bakes muffins knows more than the police and solves the crime—’

  I couldn’t resist interrupting. ‘They don’t have to knit. It could be crochet.’ I flashed my eyes. ‘How do you know all that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s on your website,’ he said in a tired voice. ‘Now if you could just tell me about your relationship with Ted Roberts, I can be on my way.’ He said it in an offhand manner, as if it was all about this Ted Roberts person and not about me.

  ‘I’d be happy to accommodate,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know him.’

  He’d finished his coffee by then and looked at the empty mug. Was he expecting me to offer him a refill? No way. I wanted him to accept what I had said and leave. My mug was sitting untouched. My nerves were on edge and coffee was the last thing I needed.

  He looked at me squarely. He pulled out a sheet from an envelope I hadn’t noticed before. He pushed it toward me. It was a scan of checks like the bank sent with a monthly statement. One of them was circled in red. ‘Maybe this will jog your memory,’ he said.

  The check was clearly made out to me and the fact that it was part of a scan sent out with a monthly statement meant it had been cashed. I looked at the account name TR Enterprises, trying to make sense of it. Then in a flash I remembered getting the check and from whom. ‘You mean Tony Rich
ards,’ I said.

  ‘That may be what he told you, but his name is Ted Roberts.’ He paused a moment. ‘Just a little inside dope. People tend to keep the same initials when they use an alias.’

  ‘I knew that,’ I said. I regretted that it came out in a snotty tone.

  ‘Sorry, I was just trying to help with your mystery writing. So, why don’t you tell me what it was that he paid you for?’

  The detective might have known the answer to the first couple of questions, but I had the feeling he didn’t know the answer to this question already. I thought of the Miranda warning, which he hadn’t read, but then I remembered some research I’d done. The Miranda warning was only given when you were taken into custody. As long as presumably you could get up and leave, they didn’t have to say anything. But they didn’t mean what I said couldn’t be used against me. I was wary of giving him more information than I had to. He noticed me hesitating and his face softened. ‘We’re just gathering information about Mr Roberts. If you tell me why Mr Roberts paid you, I’ll be on my way.’

  Now I remembered something else. Cops could lie and act like your ally to get your guard down. Other than his sharp comment when he’d said he’d ask the questions, he’d been acting more and more friendly, even trying to help me with my writing. I’d watched interrogations where the cops made it sound like all someone had to do was tell them what happened and they’d be free to go. Then once the person talked, the next thing they knew they were in handcuffs.

  I’d thought over how to answer, which probably wasn’t a good idea. The detective most likely thought I was trying to come up with a story. I was OK with telling him the truth, just thinking about what I should leave out.

  ‘You probably saw on my website that in addition to writing the Derek Streeter mystery, I’m a writer for hire. “Have pen will travel”, though now it’s more “have keyboard will travel”. I wrote some letters for him,’ I said finally. I hoped my tone made it seem like that was the whole story, but the detective didn’t relax his stare.

  ‘Who were the letters to?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I just wrote the body of them and he took care of sending them on.’

  ‘And what kind of letters were they?’ he asked.

  I squirmed, not wanting to answer the question, but having no way out of it. ‘Romantic,’ I said finally.

  ‘You wrote love letters for him?’ He stifled a smile. ‘I didn’t know people did that anymore. They were actual letters, not emails or texts?’

  ‘I can’t say for certain that they went through the mail since, as I said, he took care of the distribution.’ I wasn’t saying another word until I knew what the problem was.

  ‘I’m sure I could be of more help if you told me what the problem was with Tony, er, Ted,’ I went on.

  We locked eyes for a moment, and he moved his head just enough to indicate that he was giving up. ‘He’s dead. And it seems like foul play.’ He was peering at me, no doubt to see my reaction. I felt the blood drain from my face; everything seemed out of focus.

  Once the detective had spilled the beans – a cliché but I was panicking so it was OK – he asked me when I’d seen Ted Roberts last.

  ‘Tuesday night,’ I said. No delay this time. I was too stunned to stall. The detective nodded and wrote something down.

  There was a moment of dead air and then he looked over at me. ‘I guess that’s it,’ he said, flipping his notebook shut. He took his time getting up and gave me a hard stare as he went to the door. ‘You’re not planning to leave town or anything?’ he said. Before I could even give him a ‘no’, he said, ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  What did that mean? Was I a suspect, or at the very least a person of interest, which was really just another way of saying the same thing?

  SEVEN

  I was still in shock the next morning. Tony, or Ted, dead? Foul play meant murder, though I suppose the Detective Jankowski would have called it homicide. Whatever you called it, somebody had killed my client and the police were connecting me to him.

  The whole name thing was confusing. I’d known him as Tony Richards and the cop was calling him Ted Roberts. I had to assume the police had the correct name, so from that moment going forward I was going to try to refer to him in my thoughts as Ted Roberts, even though I thought Tony suited him better.

  I wondered what else the cops knew about him that I didn’t. I wanted to kick myself for ever getting involved with him. All that secrecy should have been a red flag, but he’d been so charming, going on about how he’d been so impressed with my website, and there was the fact that he’d offered to pay me more than I asked. At least to start with. Now he’d run up a tab. And when I brought it up, he’d said, ‘I’ll catch you next time’; I guessed that wasn’t going to happen now.

  As I was mulling it all over, there was a sharp rap on my door and I heard Sara calling out that it was her. I opened the door and she seemed relieved to see me. ‘I texted you, but you didn’t answer. I was going to take Mikey out for lunch. I thought maybe you’d like to go.’

  I knew the unsaid message. Mikey was a toddler, and it was easier to go out when you had a spare person to corral him and keep him out of trouble while food was ordered or she made a bathroom stop.

  Sara was my neighbor and my friend, but I think she was working on another title – sister-in-law. She was the one who had gifted Ben the writing classes, hoping it would give him another outlet other than going out drinking with his cop buddies. And also as a way to put him together with me. She dismissed all the divorce excuses for him staying single. She was convinced she knew better than he did what would make him happy. I think she felt the same way about me.

  Her husband was a pharmacist at the local Walgreens and worked all kind of crazy hours since they were open 24/7. Spending all that time with a toddler got to Sara, and I was the one she turned to for girl talk and assistance at times like this. I instantly agreed, glad, frankly, to get out and away from thinking about my dead client.

  Sara had the mom look of sneakers, jeans and a black T-shirt. Her brown hair was pulled in a ponytail. She’d told me once that she wore the dark shirts because Mikey invariably left chocolate fingerprints on her shoulder and they didn’t show on those shirts.

  I grabbed my jacket, beanie, scarf, gloves and purse and followed her downstairs. Quentin was standing by the open door, holding Mikey in his arms. He was the antithesis of Sara. Quiet and thoughtful while she pretty much said what was on her mind without much filtering. Quentin was not a modern dad who dove in and changed diapers and took over when Sara needed a break. He seemed oblivious to the chocolate-milk mustache Mikey had, or the fingerprints the toddler had left on his light blue dress shirt. Sara and I both noticed, but neither said a word. It didn’t matter since he’d put on a white pharmacist jacket when he went to work.

  Sara took the toddler and in no time had his face wiped off and his jacket on. Quentin leaned over and gave his wife a quick kiss and wished us a good day as we prepared to leave. I grabbed the umbrella stroller and followed Sara down the stairs. The temperature had dropped in a reminder that winter hadn’t completely left. The sky was leaden, so there wasn’t enough sun to warm things up. It was back to bundle-up time before we went outside. It was getting tiresome to have to zip my jacket, tie my scarf and pull on my gloves. Sara had double duty of doing the same for herself and Mikey. Being a typical toddler, he resisted, and I was getting overheated by the time she got him zipped up.

  It was gloomy outside, but at least the wind was quiet. Sometimes I’d walk outside and the wind would literally take away my breath. We got to the corner and I stopped. ‘Where to?’ I asked.

  ‘I thought we’d go to LaPorte’s,’ Sara said. ‘It’s a good place for Mikey.’

  ‘And it happens they’re one of my clients,’ I said. ‘We can have lunch and I can get more background for what I’m going to write.’

  Now that we’d agreed on a destination, we started down the street. Mikey wav
ed his arms and called out an excited greeting as we passed a few people walking their dogs. They all had on little sweaters to protect them from the March chill. I saw some crocuses poking out of the dirt along an apartment building. It was a reassuring sign that spring was on its way. Quentin caught up with us. There was something purposeful in his step and he greeted us with a quick wave in greeting as he walked on ahead to the drugstore.

  ‘I guess I should be happy that he likes his work so much, but I wish he looked that excited when he came home.’ Her shoulders slumped a little. ‘But then I understand. I love Mikey dearly, but it’s hard all day, every day, putting someone’s needs ahead of your own. I’m at least used to that. It always seems to catch Quentin by surprise. He still doesn’t get that Mikey isn’t going to stay on the couch and watch basketball with him.’

  I nodded in understanding, though I could only imagine what it was like. Sara had left me with Mikey on occasion and, well, I felt a little guilty about it, but I was always relieved when she came home.

  A Metra train pulled away from the station on its way downtown. The tracks were on an embankment and I looked up at some passengers walking on the platform to the stairs that led to the street. Sara and I were joined by some other people as we continued along the street that paralleled the tracks.

  It was quiet in LaPorte’s. It was the calm between their breakfast business and the lunch crowd. We picked a table in the corner where Mikey’s misdeeds would be less noticed. It was a relief to unpeel the winter wear and put it all on one of the light wood chairs.