Sort of Dead

by Rob Rosen

  My groan repeated. “Until someone tried to kill you.”

  “Yes,” I heard from the barely-there kitchen. “The police asked me about the document on Nord’s computer. They showed me a copy. It was an old document, redundant by now, which is what I told them.”

  My heart began to race. Like Kentucky Derby race. Like drag queen race, which seemed a better analogy, all things considered. “What was so important about that document that it might have gotten Nord killed?”

  I could see my mom’s face from the corner of my eye. She didn’t look so hot. I imagined I looked the same. Like I’d said, the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree, even though the tree had been uprooted and a new tree planted in its place. Probably a ficus, if the trend was holding.

  “No idea,” said Glenn. “Again, old document. Old data. Couldn’t possibly be of value anymore. Was barely of value when I created it for Chaz a couple of years back.”

  Huh, I thought I had created the document, but it was Glenn. That’s why I couldn’t remember it. Still, I must’ve needed the document for a project. Chaz must’ve asked Glenn to create it so I could use it. That wasn’t all that unusual. I was looking at Clark. Clark was looking at me. We had to be thinking the same thing, that at least one piece to this fucked-up puzzle got put in place, but it wasn’t even a corner piece, just some random one in the, gulp, dead-center.

  “So what’s the connection?” I asked. “An old document and a new death. Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Ah,” said Glenn, “but it wasn’t an old document, seeing as it actually wasn’t the one I’d created.”

  All heads turned as one. “But,” said Clark, “you just said it was.”

  “Yes,” said Glenn, “it was an old document I created for Chaz, but I could see right away that it’d been altered. There were values that were too high, numbers that wouldn’t have fit into the kind of document I’d created.”

  It was then I remembered what Bruce had told us way back at the beginning of all this, even though way back was barely back at all. “The final numbers,” I said. “They were inflated. If you shared those values, someone, or some project, could look better than they or it was. That’s the other reason we thought you might have killed Nord, as a cover- up to something you did, something he might have stumbled across.”

  The room went silent. Maybe Glenn didn’t put that wallpaper on his computer screen, maybe Glenn wasn’t a raging homophobe, but he still could have wanted me dead for being in possession of that document. I knew it, we all knew it, even Glenn must have known it.

  “I didn’t edit that document,” he said. “I never saw those values before the police showed them to me, just like I never saw that wallpaper.”

  “Plus,” said my mom, “someone tried to kill Glenn.”

  “Did you see that happen, Sylvia?” asked Clark.

  She paused. She paused and we knew the answer. She pushed her way through and placed her hand on my shoulder. “Glenn did not kill my son, Lewis. I know Glenn. I know his wife. Glenn would not have killed Nord, could not have killed Nord. If he says he didn’t doctor the document or put that wallpaper on his computer, I believe him.” She looked me right in the eyes. I wish she could have known who she was actually looking at. “I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t believe it.”

  I sighed. I believed it. That is to say, deep down, which is all I really had left of me, I didn’t feel like Glenn was my killer. Naïve, sure, perhaps misguided, but there it was. “Tell me about how Glenn almost got killed and ended up here with us, please.”

  “I was at home,” he said from across the room, “waiting for Sylvia.”

  “Please,” I interrupted, “tell me you don’t have a large dog.”

  Glenn tilted his head a few inches to the right so that I could see him. “I don’t have a large dog. My wife was allergic.” He grinned. Odd, but what wasn’t these days? “Seems she was allergic to lots of things in our house.”

  Mom grinned, too. Mom laughed. None of this seemed like a laughing matter, but then we all started to laugh. Seems lesbian humor was all the rage. “Besides,” mom said, trying to catch her breath, “Glenn had a large, um, me.”

  Glenn nodded. “I didn’t even know someone was in the house. Must have come in through a window. He had a gun. I think he was maybe a few seconds away from shooting it. I saw my life pass before my eyes. I prayed to God. I knew that this was it, the big bye-bye. But then, Sylvia knocked on the door. The guy looked up, moved the gun away. I kicked him and hollered for Sylvia to call the police.”

  My mom shrugged. “I left my cellphone at home, though. Guess I’ve been a bit preoccupied lately.”

  Glenn grinned again. “Didn’t matter. The guy ran away, out the back.”

  “And Glenn let me in,” said mom, “through the front.”

  I nodded. Clark nodded. “So,” I said to her, “you didn’t actually see any of it, the maybe-murderer, I mean?”

  Her head slowly went left to right. “Not exactly, no.” The smile was replaced by a bit of a grimace. “But I believe him when he tells me he didn’t kill my son. A mother knows.”

  Did she? Could she? If I lined up ten people in front of her, and one was my murderer, would she be able to pick him or her out of a lineup strictly from mother’s intuition? Was it that easy? Or was it that hard? Because none of this was easy. And yet, again, I also believed Glenn. Call it victim’s intuition. Or maybe I simply needed to believe my mommy—at least one last time. Plus, if the murderer knew that Glenn knew about the document, and if Glenn knew that the document had been altered, then Glenn could be a liability, just like I had been.

  “So,” I said to Glenn, “who would benefit the most from those inflated numbers?”

  He shrugged. “The account manager at the time. The client. The company.” His shrug went on auto-repeat. “But those numbers aren’t real or at least they don’t add up.”

  “But,” said Clark, “maybe they just needed to be real for a set amount of time. Just enough to fool someone.”

  Glenn started to speak, then stopped, then started, then rubbed his chin. “Except…”

  My heart began to race again. “Except what?” I asked, almost in a pant.

  He nodded and walked toward me. Or tried. It was a bit like a sardine can in there by that point. “Except,” he continued, “that document, like all financial documents at the firm, are created by financial software. You plug the values in, you get the document. I saw the document. I could tell immediately that it was created through the software.”

  Clark nodded. Me, not so much. “What’s with the nod?” I asked him.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. In his heels, it was something of a far reach. “You can’t inflate the numbers on a software-created document, especially on a financial document.” He looked back at Glenn. “Right, sir?”

  Glenn again nodded. “One plus one always equals two. Except…”

  Eve snapped her fingers. Must not have been easy, seeing as she had nails on that’d make a cheetah jealous. “Except, there is a way to override the software, right?” she said. “I’m guessing someone, or ones, had that ability. I mean, the numbers don’t add up, were changed at some point, so that has to be the explanation.”

  Glenn did his nodding shtick. “There is a way to override the software. Sometimes, for legitimate financial reasons, you need a way to auto-insert information. Except…”

  “Please,” I said, my heart not being able to take much more of his excepts, “no more of those.”

  “Except,” he continued, “only two of us can do that.”

  Clark pointed at Glenn. “You, as the CFO.”

  “Me,” he agreed, “And Chaz.”

  And there it was. All roads really did lead back to him. If it looks like an azz and talks like an azz and walks like an azz, then, blah, blah, blah. In any case, he was an azz, and, it looked like, a murdering one. I mean, we’d ruled out Glenn and Didi. Paula had the chance to kill us and didn’t. Though that
didn’t mean she didn’t kill me the first time. And that document was on my computer and Chaz must’ve been the one to alter it if it wasn’t Glenn. And Chaz moved money around, post-murder, and it was the same amount of money on the document, so he would be the one with the most to lose should I have stumbled across whatever it was he was up to.

  I grimaced. I told Glenn what we knew, especially that last part.

  “So here’s what I’m guessing happened,” said Glenn. “The company must’ve had a client, probably a big one, with an account that wasn’t doing well. Chaz doctored that financial document to make it look like they were doing better than they actually were. All the client saw were the final numbers—or at least that’s all they cared about—but Chaz still had to move money around so that those final numbers were real, at least in the client’s eyes. Best guess, the money came from a corporate account and was wired to the client. Maybe we ran a campaign for the client, set up a site, and paid them the dividends.”

  “That something the company does?” asked my mom.

  “Sure,” replied Glenn. “Sometimes. Saves the client time and resources. It’s a nice offering we have. Then when the campaign is done, we show the client our books, or at least their portion of it, and they make sure they receive the correct funds.”

  “But then,” added mom, “wouldn’t you have noticed the missing funds, the ones Chaz stole from the company?”

  Glenn shrugged. “Chaz could’ve been doctoring the books all along. All I see is what he provides me, what he wants me to see. Chaz is good at what he does. Meaning, he’d make a great crook, if need be.” Glenn again looked my way. “But say someone notices a financial document that is way off. Say there’s a two-year gap between when that document was created and when that someone notices. What if that someone calls it to my attention? What if I were to go back over two years of documents and find a whole slew of discrepancies?”

  I sighed. I, after all, was that someone. Even if I never noticed said discrepancies. “Meaning, Chaz realizes I have the document in my possession and moves his personal funds back into the company’s account, so that, if there’s ever an audit, the numbers add up again. That is, after he kills Nord, just in case. No loose ends, and all.”

  So horribly sad: to be nothing more than a loose end. In any case, all of it made equally horrible sense. All roads led to the azz. Chaz had the most to lose here. Chaz had easy access to yours truly. Chaz was already a cheater and crook; why not throw murderer into the mix? Plus, and this was a big, old plus, he was a dick. A dick with a big dick, but still.

  I started to speak again, but Eve’s cell beat me to the punch. She looked at her phone and shrugged. “Hello?” she said. Her eyes went instantly wide. Then wider. Wider still. “Uh huh,” she said. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Okay then, thanks.” She blinked. She looked at us each in turn. “That was Didi.”

  Glenn squinted. “Chaz’s wife? Why is Chaz’s wife calling you? How in the world do you know Didi?”

  We hadn’t told them the whole story yet, how Glenn wasn’t the only one of them with a recent encounter with near-death. After all, we’d been sort of busy with Glenn’s. “What was with all the uh huhs?” I asked. “She scheduling a puppy grooming?” The question came out in a pant. I knew the answer was far less everyday than that. Doomsday was probably more like it if recent events proved anything.

  “She, um, called to tell us that Chaz and Paula have been arrested for Nord’s death.” The room stood still at that very moment. Not one atom dared to vibrate. “The financial document on Nord’s computer, Chaz’s shuffling of money recently, circumstantial but enough for them to arrest Chaz.” She blinked again. “And there was some blood.”

  I sucked in my breath. Some blood. Only I had lost blood that day. “Something not so circumstantial?”

  She shook her head. “A speck. On the jacket Chaz wore that day.”

  Clark scratched his head. “But why didn’t they know that right away? Why are we just finding out about that now?”

  Eve shrugged. “Didi didn’t say. Chaz was arrested. Paula was arrested as an accessory to murder. Nothing else reported. Both are in custody. Case closed.”

  I looked at Clark. Clark looked at me. I could feel the spirits looming nearby. I glanced at my mom, who had her hand over her heart the entire time. She sighed. “I wish it made me feel better,” she said, “but, surprisingly, it doesn’t. Nord isn’t coming back either way.”

  My own heart, or at least the borrowed one, was frantically pounding. If she only knew, I thought, and then said, “But if he’s watching—Nord, that is—maybe this will bring him some closure.” The poof, I meant. Though poof was not what was happening. At least not yet. I needed to get back to Arby’s. The pull was working in reverse now. I had to leave her. Again.

  My attention went to Clark. I’d have to leave him, too. I could see it in his eyes, the sadness. This is what we’d been searching for, the murderer, closure—to my life, to my sort of death. We should both have been happy, but happiness was proving elusive. The killer was found but our newfound friendship was forever lost. I guess there really were no winners here like I thought there would be, hoped there would be, however naively.

  And then there was Max. What would happen when I got back? What would happen after the poof? What, that is to say, would happen to us? So, yeah, my heart was still frantically beating, borrowed or not. Who could blame it?

  I parted the throng. The umbilical cord had been cut long ago but there was still yet another tether. “Can we talk?” I asked her.

  She seemed to force a smile. “There enough oxygen in this room?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe outside?”

  Her shrug mirrored mine as she soon joined me outside. Alone. For the last time. I had so much to say and no way to say it. I’d already died. She barely knew me. And yet…“Funny,” she said, “but it feels like we’ve met before, like we’re old friends, if that makes any sense.”

  “I…” I was stuck. Funny wasn’t the word I would have chosen. Neither was friends. She was my mom, emphasis on the was. I didn’t want to say goodbye. I didn’t know how. Sad was the correct word. I’d been given that rarest of chances to say goodbye, to thank her for everything, to tell her how much I loved her, that I still loved her, and, yet, I couldn’t say any of those things. “I…” I tried, again, but then suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder.

  I turned around and up. Clark was standing by my side. “I think what Lewis is trying to say, Sylvia, is that we’d like to, you know, stay in touch. If that’s okay with you.”

  I reached up, my hand over his. “If Nord is watching this from somewhere, I think he’d like that, too.” Nothing, in fact, would’ve made me happier, not even the poof. Or probably not even the poof. Still, it’d be nice to know for sure.

  She put her hand on my other shoulder. I could feel Max doing the same. I’d never been overly schmaltzy in life, but death had made me a veritable walking Hallmark commercial. “You boys are always welcome in my house.” She closed the gap between us and pulled me in for a hug. I hugged her tightly in return. This, I realized, was all the goodbye I needed. “Thank you for everything,” she added.

  I nodded into her shoulder. I fought not to cry, but, then again, who doesn’t cry at a Hallmark commercial, walking or otherwise? “Just remember,” I whispered in her ear, “Nord loved you very much.”

  I pulled away. I needed to go. The living needed to move on with their lives; I had…well, I didn’t know what I had, but I also needed to get on with it. I kissed her cheek. I led Clark to behind the van.

  “We’ll be right back, Sylvia,” my friend said over his shoulder.

  We. Not me, though. I’d already come back, tempted fate more than enough. Probably not a good idea to tickle it and pull its hair, too.

  “Well…” I said when we were alone, out of anyone’s sight, just two grown men in full-on drag standing behind a van. Happens every day, right? “I…” And again, I was stuck.

  �
��I…” His mouth wobbled. I think he was stuck, too. We’d grown close in such a short amount of time. I’d never made friends easily. Took my death to find him; it’d take my death to lose him.

  “Voltan,” I managed to say.

  He nodded, smiled, grabbed my hands. “I know, Nord. I know. I won’t screw it up, promise.”

  My smile matched his. “I’ll come back to haunt you if you do.”

  He laughed. He cried. He laughed some more. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  I wiped the tears from his cheek. A smear of makeup followed in my digit’s wake. He now had a face only a mamma raccoon could love. Or a diminutive mystic. “Enjoy your life, Clark. Go outside. Make friends. Have fun.”

  “And remember you.”

  My grin amped up. “As if you could forget.”

  The others were crowding in around me now. Max was eager to return to Arby’s. Voltan was eager for Clark. Bruce was there for support, which I greatly needed as much of as I could get. “Goodbye, my friend.”

  And then…

  Poof!

  Chapter 10

  “Hi,” Max said.

  I blinked my eyes. Or tried to. Only, I had no eyes anymore. Or at least not Voltan’s. “Hi,” I replied, pulling him in. “Are we…”

  I looked around. He looked around. Bruce was by our side shaking his head. “Nope,” he said. “Still Arby’s.” He pointed to the spirits on all sides, at all the dangling willies and boobs.

  I sighed. Or, as usual, tried to. I missed those borrowed lungs. I was glad to be back at Arby’s, back with Max, with Bruce, happy to be rid of the pain and anxiety of life but surprised, just the same. I had died, been murdered, my killer captured. I even told my mom I loved her, or mostly told her, and still I was where I’d started, poofed back to Arby’s, but no farther.

  “Huh,” I said.

  Max patted my rump. “Maybe it takes some time. Chaz hasn’t been put away yet. There’s still a trial. For Paula, too. Maybe the universe needs that, maybe you do as well. We did our part; let the authorities do there’s.” He pointed up. “All the authorities.”