Perched fully dressed on the examination table, Gwen knew neither of them was completely at ease.
“Annie said an emergency,” Dr. Korver said for starters.
“I need to talk to you.” Dr. Korver didn’t do anything so crass as to glance at his watch, but he fidgeted and Gwen could read the impatience just as clearly. From the look on his face, talk wouldn’t take precedence over so much as an ingrown toenail. “I need to know how my father died,” Gwen said abruptly.
“Cancer. Surely your mother told you?”
Gwen nodded. “Did you see him?” she pressed.
“If I remember rightly, he died in Sioux City or somewhere, visiting I think. You should be asking your mother these questions, Gwen.”
“You never saw him dead?”
He shrugged his shoulders. This time he did look at his watch.
“So you don’t know that he died?” Gwen sounded accusing and he reacted in kind, his avuncular manner disappearing behind a mask of injured pride.
“He had an inoperable brain tumor. Unless he got hit by a truck first, he died of it,” he said bluntly, and stood to indicate the interview was over.
Gwen caught hold of his arm. “Please,” she said. “Could I see my medical records and Mom’s?”
Dr. Korver looked at her for a moment. His visage softened. He’d come to recognize pain in all its guises. “What’s wrong, Gwen?”
She said nothing and the kindness was pushed aside by irritation. “You can see your medical records, though I don’t know what good it’ll do you. I can’t let you see your mother’s without her permission.” He left and Gwen felt as cold and exposed as if she wore only a backless paper gown.
After pulling her file, Annie left Gwen alone in the records room. Quickly, she flipped through the pages. Though she was healthy, so many years of care made it thick. Before 1952 there were seven entries: three general check-ups, an ear infection, fever, a scald on her left forearm, and a hairline fracture of her left foot.
Taking advantage of Annie’s trusting nature, Gwen moved to the filing cabinet and walked her fingers through the C’s. Her father’s file was gone, taken to storage years before no doubt, but her mother’s was there. Still standing Gwen scanned the entries from 1945 to 1952: influenza, broken rib, tonsillitis, sprained wrist. The box marked INSURANCE/HEALTH/LIFE had the word “None” scribbled in it twice. No wonder there was such a paucity of doctor’s visits during those years.
Footsteps sounded on the linoleum outside the door and Gwen hastily fumbled the file back into place. Her heart pounded as if peeking at her mother’s medical history were a capital crime. No one entered the records room and Gwen took a moment to pull herself together before she ventured out and said her good-byes to Annie.
She couldn’t bring herself to go back to her mother’s, not yet. She chewed mechanically through a late lunch at Kapoochi’s on Nicollet and Eighth. The food was more an excuse for the glass of Chardonnay than an end in itself.
When the dishes had been cleared and only another solitary glass or dessert could excuse lingering, Gwen returned to the festive crush on Nicollet.
Because the sun shone, Minnesotans made it a holiday. Flower vendors lined the street. People walked and waited for buses and shopped and chattered in groups. Gwen joined the loiterers gathering sun on the wide brick sills of the Conservatory.
Fortified with wine, she could again think of the skeleton, her mother, and murder. Broken rib, sprained wrist, scalded arm, fractured foot; a history of abuse or just the vagaries of living? Gwen had nothing to compare it to, no government statistics on how often the average mother and daughter damaged themselves in the pursuit of daily life.
Why kill a dying man? Surely it was easier and safer to let nature take its course. Self-defense? Possibly. A favorite with the girls: killed in a moment of jealous rage or because he was going to leave? Also possible.
Madolyn Clear never remarried and Gwen had believed it was because she never stopped loving her dead husband. Could it be that memories of a bad marriage made her shy of the institution? And the lilacs? “Now you can keep the house full of flowers. Small blessings.” Revenge? Planting a man allergic to lilacs under six trees of blooms? Each thought was more wretched than the last, sick-making, and Gwen shook herself free of them as a dog rids its fur of raindrops.
Too many years had passed since the death of a father she had never known for the lash of his murder to cut too deep. Betrayal of truth was the injury; loss of the idea that love existed, that she was born from it and to it. Death of the possibility, of the dream.
Gwen relinquished her place in the sun to a polite young woman with tricolor hair and two nose rings. There was one more stop to be made and then she must go home.
St. Bartholomew’s was in South Minneapolis in what was considered a bad section of town, though to Gwen’s perception—altered by years in other cities—the homes still retained their dignity and the people on the streets didn’t appear to have lost their hope. The church was staid and conservative, an edifice of brick and mortar that blended well with the apartment houses that had sprung up around it in the 1940s. The front lawn was badly in need of attention and the steps had deteriorated, not from the constant tread of feet but from disuse and neglect.
The front doors were locked. Gwen picked her way through the struggling rhododendrons to the rectory behind the church. Decay had taken the small brick dwelling as well. Windows were draped as if against terrible cold, and leaves from the previous autumn lay in dusty piles in the corners of the porch.
After two tries with the doorbell and a rapping that left her knuckles burning, Gwen was turning to go. Soft shuffling from within stopped her. Unconsciously donning a pious look, she waited in feigned patience.
A man so old he looked elemental—cracked stone and sere earth—opened the door and blinked up at her from eyes made milky with cataracts. Beyond the changed flesh Gwen could barely recognize Father Davis, the priest to whom she’d poured out childish confessions. Cataracts and time had clearly robbed him of all recollection of her.
“I’m Gwendolyn Clear,” she told him. “My mother, Madolyn Clear, and I used to attend mass at St. Bartholomew’s.”
For long moments he stared at her. Minute workings of the muscles around his mouth attested to some kind of mental process. “Gwennie,” he said at last, and she was impressed. “Do come in. You’re just in time for something, I’m sure. Tea? Sherry? Coffee? It’s always a good time for company.”
Inside, the rectory was dark and stifling. Father Davis wore wool trousers and a pullover sweatshirt and tapped at the thermostat as he passed, his old bones needing heat from without.
Ensconced in a worn chair by a blessedly dead fire, Gwen accepted a glass of orange juice as the quickest way to absolve both of them of the niceties and waited while Father Davis settled himself. Scooping a tiger cat from the seat of the chair opposite her, he lowered himself carefully into its depths then arranged the cat across his knees like a rug.
“I no longer say mass,” he said. “But I still occasionally hear confessions of the very wicked.” He smiled to let her know he was teasing.
Because he was a priest and because he was Father Davis, Gwen told him everything. She finished and the silence between them was long and comfortable. The old man stroked the tiger cat, the muscles around his mouth twitching as he thought.
“As a priest I’m not allowed to speak of much the good Lord has seen fit to let me remember,” he said at last. “But you mustn’t let these shadows from the past blot out your faith in the things that are good: love and forgiveness, sacrifice, redemption. I have known you all of your life and known your mother most of hers. All I can tell you that might be of help is that to my knowledge your mother loved your father dearly. Indeed, loved him more than she feared God.”
Blinking again in the clear sunlight, Gwen fi
shed sunglasses from her bag as she skirted the shrubbery in favor of paving stones on the way back to where she’d parked the car.
Time had poured its obscuring dust over events but still she held some facts—or educated guesses that she would use in lieu of facts. Gerald Clear had a temper. Gerald Clear was beloved of the ladies. Gerald Clear had inoperable brain cancer. Her mother had killed him or knew the person who had, and hid the crime by burying him in the backyard. Madolyn loved him “more than she feared God.” Medical records catalogued four possible abuse injuries in seven years.
Gwen drove back to Lake Nokomis so slowly that cars honked at her more than once, but she scarcely acknowledged them. At a stop sign less than a block from the house her car came to rest. Traffic was light and no other vehicle appeared to remind her of the business of driving. As the car idled in neutral, the doctor’s reports filtered back through her mind.
No insurance. Not life. Not health.
In 1952 the Clears were poor—poor as church mice, her mother was fond of saying. There would be no money for the medical bills from an extended illness. Dad was going to kick the bucket anyway so what the hey?
Gwen shook her head as if disagreeing with some unseen adversary. Madolyn had loved her husband more than she feared God. And the pieces fell in place. Sudden tears choked Gwen and she sat at the intersection and cried till the pressure of a Volvo in the rearview mirror forced her to move.
Madolyn Clear was propped up in her hospital bed, sun from the bay window making a patchwork of light and shadow across her legs. While Gwen had been out she’d been given a shampoo and short snow-white hair fell in natural curls. A pair of reading glasses hung around her neck on a cord of psychedelic colors. One hand, slightly gnarled with arthritis, rested on the book she’d been reading.
When Gwen came in she smiled. The teeth were yellowed and crooked but they were all her own and Gwen thought her smile beautiful. It faded to a look of concern as Gwen crossed the hardwood floor close enough that her mother could read the strange lines her face had fallen into after the storm of tears.
Gwen sat in the window seat, the light at her back, and took the ring from the pocket of her dress. Laying it on the coverlet between her mother’s hands, she said: “I know all about Daddy.”
Madolyn stroked the dull gold with one finger as if it were a tiny living creature. “And do you hate me?” she asked without looking up. Beneath white lashes tears sparkled in the sun. Gwen pretended not to notice. Her mother had seen fit to hide them for over forty years. It would be ungracious to discover them now.
“No, Momma.” Gwen wanted to take her hand but lacked the courage. Instead she laid hers on the coverlet touching her mother’s as if by accident. “I admire you. I’ve always admired you.”
They sat for a time without speaking. A house finch came and hopped along the windowsill beyond the glass and Madolyn’s old Siamese cat crept close to fantasize.
“Why lilacs?” Gwen asked. “Dad was allergic, wasn’t he?”
Madolyn looked startled, then laughed. “That’s right, he was. It’s been a very long time. Gerry said they were his favorite flower because they gave me so much joy. He knew he couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground so he asked to have lilacs planted over his grave. So I’d visit often, he said.”
“Was he afraid of the pain? Of losing his faculties?” Gwen asked.
“Your father wasn’t afraid of anything,” Madolyn said. Then: “Of course he was. Who wouldn’t be? But he would have faced it as he faced everything. He knew he was dying and that the medical costs would eat up our savings, our car, even our home. You and I would be left alone with nothing. He loved us very much.” Tears trickled from beneath the papery lids and found channels in the wrinkled cheeks. This time Gwen did take her mother’s hand and Madolyn held tight, her grip warm and dry.
“But he didn’t kill himself,” Gwen said.
“It would have meant his soul,” Madolyn said. “And there never was a finer.”
DETECTIVE: CARLOTTA CARLYLE
MISS GIBSON
Linda Barnes
WHEN LINDA JOYCE APPELBLATT BARNES (1949– ) became a full-time writer after working as a drama teacher and director, she created a series about Michael Spraggue, a wealthy actor and private eye, which lasted for four books, beginning with Blood Will Have Blood (1982). Carlotta Carlyle pops up now and then in a relatively minor role. The character proved to be so good that Barnes decided to create a series for her. She made her solo debut in A Trouble of Fools (1987) and starred in an additional eleven novels before Barnes wrote her first stand-alone mystery, The Perfect Ghost (2013).
Carlotta Carlyle began as a police officer but now is a pretty tough Boston taxi driver when she is not being a pretty tough Boston private investigator. She’s an imposing figure at six feet, one inch tall, though she regularly weighs only about 155 pounds; when her weight drops below that number, she says “I get demoted from thin to skinny.” Bright red hair tops off her appearance, making it difficult to fail to notice her.
The daughter of a deceased Scottish-Irish policeman and a Jewish mother, Carlotta is close only to her Jewish grandmother, for whom she tenderly cares. While a member of the Boston Police Department, she was close to Joe Mooney and has occasionally given him tips. Her part-time job as a cabdriver brought her in close proximity to Sam Gianelli, a law-abiding member of a Mafia family.
“Miss Gibson” was originally published in Women on the Case, edited by Sara Paretsky (New York, Delacorte, 1996).
Miss Gibson
LINDA BARNES
I HATE TO TRAVEL except by car or cab. Even then I like to call the shots, do the driving. If you see me on board an airplane, someone else is surely footing the bill. If you find me flying first class—United #707 to Denver, connecting first class to United #919 to Portland, Oregon—you can be absolutely certain that the lady paying the freight is Dee Willis.
You remember Dee, the pop/blues singer who snatched seven Grammys after twenty years of hard-luck bar gigs. The hot new songbird with—can it be? is it possible?—a shred of dignity, a smidgen of integrity. Stubborn as they come, Dee couldn’t be bothered following trends. She just kept on doing what she always did. Never dumbed down her act for an audience. The fans had to catch up to her.
Hell, even I have to admit it: Dee’s got more than a few remnants of tattered integrity. She supports good causes, sings her heart out at benefits for sick musicians and AIDS-infected kids. I tend to choke on her acts of kindness because I’ve been jealous of Dee as long as I can remember: first and always for her sweet soaring soprano; second, because some time ago she ran off with a Cajun bass player, my then husband, Cal Therieux.
No surprise that her hastily scrawled plea hadn’t been enough to make me abandon my Cambridge, Mass., digs. Neither was her promise of primo plane and concert tickets. Only a carefully negotiated fee had me peering nervously from the Boeing 737’s pitiful excuse for a window.
Dee owns one item I’d rather have than anything you can name, and I certainly do not speak of my ex-husband, who’s no longer a member of Dee’s band and was never her “possession” to give or to take. Twenty-five years ago, Dee studied at the feet of the Reverend Gary Davis, the blind bluesman who wrote holy spirituals and, when the spirit moved him, played such hymns to human weakness as “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.” The Reverend was so taken with Dee that he willed her Miss Gibson, his favorite guitar. Dee hardly plays Miss Gibson anymore, what with her stock of custom-made electrics and glittering Stratocasters. I’d treat Miss Gibson right, give her a better home.
The vision of the Reverend Davis’s Gibson keeping company with my old National Steel guitar had me up above the clouds, grasping the armrests, trying to fly the plane via mind control.
Ridiculous. I took six deep breaths, accepted the futility of telekinesis, and lapsed into fitful sleep.
I switche
d planes at Denver’s International Airport, wandering into a nearby ladies’ room, where I splashed my face with cold water, shook out my red hair, glared at the mirror, and hoped the lighting was bad. A mother of twins maintained serene calm while one offspring vomited and the other wailed.
While we were waiting to take off for Portland, a guy across the aisle asked the flight attendant for a Baileys-on-the-rocks. I hadn’t indulged during the Boston-to-Denver leg in spite of the free flow of liquor, but Baileys sounded like such a good idea I decided to join the party.
Baileys was my dad’s home tipple of choice. At bars, it was a shot and a beer, like the other Irish cops. Even after my folks split, Mom kept a bottle for him. She drank schnapps. Peppermint. Disgusting.
Many Baileys later, the jolt of the plane’s wheels smacking the Portland landing strip made me grind my teeth. I didn’t relax my jaw till the damn thing slowed. Out of control, that’s how airplanes make me feel.
Dee Willis always had style, now she’s got the cash to go with it: a guy in full livery waited at the gate with CARLYLE printed neatly on a signboard. Broad-shouldered and burly, he resisted conversational gambits and stood at attention until the luggage carousel disgorged my bag. Hefting it, he gawked at its pathetic lightness, staring me down with narrowed eyes, as if he wanted to ask why I couldn’t have carried my stuff on board and saved us the twenty-minute wait.
I saw no reason to explain that I needed to check my luggage because it contained a Smith & Wesson 4053, two magazines, and sufficient ammunition to turn an aircraft fuselage into Swiss cheese. I’m no U.S. marshal, just a private investigator; I can’t carry on planes. To carry at all, I’d have to check in with the Portland cops, explain my mission, and get a temporary license.
I’d told Dee to hire somebody local. Seems like I’ve been giving Dee good advice all my life and she never takes one word to heart.
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 163