3 Women Walk Into A Bar

by Linda Sands

  “When you called,” I said, trying hard to not think of Buffy as the kind of woman who’d use a dead kid as an excuse to punch out an ex-lover. “You told me you had a case that you wanted me to look into.” I rubbed my sore jaw. “This wasn’t why you wanted to see me, was it?”

  She shook her head. “No.” Her face went soft. “I don’t know if I can do this.” Her eyes welled with tears and she turned away, talking to a spot across the room. “She was all we had. Mick and I tried for years to have more kids. Maybe that was wrong. We should have been happy—lots of people have just one child. We should have stopped trying, stopped talking about it. But for a while it consumed us. It affected us all more than anyone realized at the time.”

  She looked at her hands gripped in her lap, opened them, and smoothed her skirt. “Chamonix—that’s my daughter—was my daughter. She went into therapy once, as an adult, when she was ‘artistically blocked.’ I don’t know what it was all about, but we had to join her in a session. The shrink told us that by being so vocal about trying to have more children we had devalued Chamonix in her formative years, made her feel like she wasn’t special, as if she wasn’t enough for us. And that was why she relied on her art so much. It was what fed her, where she felt her honor, her pride, and her worth. But, my God, Bill, she was so special. You should have known her. Everyone should have known her. She was amazing, she—”

  Barbara swallowed hard and shook her head, then reached into her purse for a flowered handkerchief and a photo. She handed me a picture as she blotted her eyes.

  I was a little surprised. I didn’t know people still used handkerchiefs.

  Buffy-now-Barbara had come a long way since serving watered-down cocktails and dodging ass-grabbers at The Frisky Biscuit.

  The picture was of Barbara standing beside a girl in a cap and gown. The proud mom couldn’t shine brighter than the knockout redhead with the ice-blue eyes, though. Chamonix. Christ, I would have done her. I mean, if I was ten years younger—and she was still alive.

  After Barbara left I sat down with the files. She’d managed to get copies of everything. I didn’t want to know how. There were coroner’s reports, newspaper accounts, background and logged reports, a copy of the surveillance DVD from the night of the incident, even pages from the detective’s notebook.

  With all the information in front of me, and as much as seemed obvious—their boss killed them—it was still only a start. The why question pointed in a general direction, but I’d have to reach out and open the real gate. Usually, I’d have to ram it with my hip because it would stick, and more times than not, it would squeak when I opened it, alerting the guard dogs before it slammed hard behind me.

  Chapter 3

  FLANNIGAN’S

  The cozy bar on the corner. There’s one in every city. A hole-in-the-wall that does more business than any big hotel bar. It also has more character, hides more stories, and even though most nights the biggest tip will only be a crumpled ten-spot tucked into the waitress’s cleavage, the place will cash out stronger than the big guys. Add an honest owner, and it could be around for years—like Cheers, minus the high-paid actors and cheesy laugh track.

  I felt it as soon as I walked in. That I-wish-it-was raining-so-I-could-have-an-excuse-to-hunker-down-in-the-corner-booth-with-a-smoky-Scotch-and-a-beer-chaser feeling. The idea hit me next that some people would do exactly that even if the sun was shining and the boss was waiting. Then another feeling began to sink in—kind of sick and wormy—that some people, even if they couldn’t afford the Scotch part of the fantasy, would spend their days in that corner booth drinking away their future, trading their life for temporary liquid happiness.

  It was this feeling that kept me away from imbibing in quantity. Maybe it was a control thing with me. I'd never had a problem with beer, been known to tip a few cold ones at the ballpark, but I stopped when I got buzzed and didn't drink real booze anymore. I’d learned over the years that me plus hard alcohol adds up to asshole.

  Anytime I thought I might want to try the latest flavored vodka, all I had to do was come to a place like this and take note of the loner at the bar, the one trying to look like he had it under control, though you could smell the loser on him, or the guys slamming shots at a back booth, killing precious brain cells, getting louder and more idiotic by the minute. I’d be quickly reminded of the jackass nature of the drunken male and would order a soda, drink it, and leave.

  Today, I was planning on spending time alone in a bar strictly for the case. I’d called in a favor at the police department with a sexy little bombshell named Sasha. We used to play racquetball together, among other things. She told me “on the down low” that the triple homicide/suicide wasn’t receiving much attention at the moment, given the morning’s bomb threat at The Dome. It only takes one suspicious package to divert the station’s dicks. I mean that in the most professional way. Truly.

  Sasha told me that the homicide location was being released at noon to the cleanup crew, which meant they’d arrive at Flannigan’s around two o’clock. She slipped me the key, then whispered something in my ear that made me blush. Before I could return the favor, she waved me off, warning me to not forget while tapping her watch.

  I’d figured I would drive to Flannigan’s and do a quick once-over, then return and slip the key—and maybe a little something else—to Sasha in her apartment, where we’d agreed to meet for an extended lunch.

  Flannigan’s didn’t need the flipped-over sign on the door to tell people it was closed. The bright yellow police tape across the door would have dissuaded customers well enough. And if anyone had been able to push through the doors, they would have first noticed crushed paper coffee cups and donut boxes by the front door and white traces of fingerprint powder on every flat surface. Cop debris. Then surely they’d notice the blood, dried in pooled ovals, in splatters on the mirrored walls, on the keys of the cash register, reflected in the broken glass everywhere. And then, they would smell what I smelled.

  Something the cleanup crew must be used to. They didn’t toss their cookies mopping human fluids or scooping up organ bits or brain matter. I wondered if they’d become numb to the terrible things people do. What do you think about when you’re vacuuming up bone fragments or removing bloodstains from walls, stools, and floorboards? How do you not dream about that?

  I took out a photo from the homicide file to study one of the dead bodies on the floor, matching it up to the stains. I could see how it would have gone down. I slipped the photo into my back pocket and made my way through the bar to the back stairs.

  I imagined it would take a few months for the regulars to find their way back. Maybe longer, if the ghosts of the murdered girls kept the place from reopening.

  But it would reopen. This place had always been a bar, as far back in Syracuse history as I could remember. The location was perfect and the recent renovations to the building and the block were just the sort of thing to attract a buyer. Flannigan’s could even be the next Coyote Ugly.

  Standing in the small office overlooking the service area, I could imagine our guy, James Smith, looking down on his bar and feeling lordly. There was a sense of omnipotence at this angle. The one-way glass wall would have served two purposes. Below, the waitresses and servers could use the mirror to keep an eye on the room, while upstairs behind the glass, their boss could keep an eye on them.

  It was sort of creepy in that bad-guy-dreams-up-evil-plot way, and made me think of an ex-girlfriend who refused to ever use dressing rooms. She thought all mirrors were two-way—except apparently the one over my bed, or maybe even that one too, judging by the way she always came to bed wearing makeup and dimming the lights just so.

  I stepped away from the glass and sat behind the desk. Ergonomic leather chair, high-quality paper in the printer, Mont Blanc pen in the drawer, plus various cords leading to sleek, unidentifiable electronics. Mr. Smith was no slug.

  According to the file Buffy had given me, James John Smith had been bor
n in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on April 19, 1965, and was single with no children, parents deceased. He had won the property and entire contents of the bar in an online poker game and taken possession shortly thereafter. The cops knew all that and probably more, now that they had his laptop. I ran my gloved hand over the suspiciously empty space on the dusty desk.

  I figured they’d also gone through his drawers, but I was here and had time to kill, so I opened the file cabinet and went to work.

  Stashed between the previous owner’s folders labeled, “Recipes that work,” and “Things that need doing,” I found a receipt, less than a year old, signed by J. Smith for the wiring of an exhaust fan and the installation of both an industrial double fryer and a freezer. It looked like Mr. Smith had some experience in the restaurant business, or some educated help.

  Thirty minutes and bupkes later, I figured Mr. Smith wasn’t much of a filer. He probably had one of those machines that you feed your paper receipts into, wirelessly sending them to a magic accounting program, and then have a bonfire. He was a probably antinewspaper, an e-book lover. I shook my head and moved back to the desk, pulling open the bottom drawer. Even if Smith was technologically advanced, he was still a man, and that meant this was where he’d keep his personnel files. And if he was that predictable, I knew I’d also find his car keys and at least one intimate detail about him in his underwear drawer at his apartment.

  Bingo. The files still had new hire sheets attached to their covers. Looked like Smith stole his chef and fry cook from The Dubliner and hired a college student from Syracuse University as his bookkeeper, which I saw as a good move.

  Students tend to buy into the whole work-smarter-not-harder thing, and usually do the job cheap. It’s a great deal on both sides—as long as they show up for work when scheduled. It’s much better than hiring some thirtysomething who is so lost or screwed up by his family, girlfriend, or the last two jobs that you spend all your time fixing his shit. And, if you hire a woman you gotta worry about that time of the month, and even then she’ll probably go get pregnant, leaving you in the lurch for fifteen months, with you paying to have her at home lying on the couch watching soaps with a kid on her tit.

  Nah. Forget equal employment. Get a young, impressionable kid, preferably attractive, nonsmoking, and gay, then shape them into the perfect employee.

  That was my theory anyway, and although I didn’t own a restaurant, I’d had great results when I went that route and hired Tommy Bane. I had no problem with him being a student or liking the color periwinkle.

  I opened the folder on top and started reading. The fry cook and chef had two pages of background that would all check out. I felt nothing squirrelly there, and I’m big on following my instincts.

  The next files were for the girls: Roxanne Dupont, Crescent Moon, and Chamonix Leonard.

  Chapter 4

  ROXIE ONLY SOUNDS LIKE A STRIPPER NAME

  Roxanne Dupont had that certain something that made people look twice, that certain aura—if you thought in those terms—that attracted attention.

  She wasn’t a great beauty, nor did she possess extraordinary charm. It was something inside her, something no one could explain, something that radiated outward.

  Relatives and family friends of her parents, Robert, an entomologist, and Nell, a second-grade teacher, had tried to find an explanation. They ignored Robert’s Roman nose and told stories of royal English ancestors—a Duke of three generations, once removed. They claimed her maternal grandmother was a famous Spanish gypsy, though Nell had been adopted in New Jersey.

  Roxie might have romanticized her legacy, broadened the tales to include herself, but she chose not to. It wasn’t important what her family looked like or where they came from. It wasn’t important how twisted the roots of her family tree, only that they appeared to be happy, that they loved one another as families do. It was important to her that they appeared normal, that her family blended in perfectly with the dozen others on her block, the hundreds of people at their church, the thousand middle-class families on their side of town.

  Robert and Nell Dupont had raised five boys when families were large, when good Catholics followed the Pope’s decree on birth control.

  They were already mini-men when Roxie had been born, sticking around just long enough to name her like a family pet, then zipping off to boarding school, college, and the Navy. Now the boys were grown with families of their own.

  Roxie had been the “oops baby,” the baby that almost never was. The baby that Nell thought she’d been too old to carry, too tired to raise. The baby that survived the saltwater abortion attempts that left Nell sobbing on a bloodstained tile floor in the boys’ old bathroom on the third floor.

  Nell made a few prenatal visits, declined any testing, and left it all up to fate. She had almost convinced herself one Sunday, on her knees in front of a cold marble altar, that another boy might not be so bad, when she went into labor. Ten hours later, she gave birth to a daughter. A tiny, blue little girl.

  The birth had been difficult. No one blamed Nell when she failed to give any immediate attention to the baby. The doctors called it postpartum depression, prescribed rest, tea, and warm baths.

  Robert told her, “It’s just a phase. You’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”

  But when he brought them home and rolled the baby in her bassinet into the master bedroom, into Nell’s sanctuary, filling it with noises and smells and tiny, strange things, Nell responded by pushing the bassinet into the adjoining bathroom and letting the infant cry. She told Robert that the baby must be sick, that they should send her back to the hospital. After all, she was so small, so pale, so breakable.

  Robert felt it would be best to take time away from the lab and stay home with his “girls,” as he called them. He rose at night to feed, change, and soothe Roxie. He sat by Nell in the afternoons, encouraging her to hold her daughter, to please just look at her. But Nell only resented the baby, resented the fact that the tiny thing had such control over Robert. Apparently over everyone—they no longer looked at beautiful Nell, but instead, their eyes flashed over her and settled on the baby. Even the checker at the grocery store.

  “Oh, she’s precious! How old is she? A month! My, you must be so proud.”

  But proud wasn’t what Nell felt.

  She began to wonder why she even bothered to fix her hair, apply her makeup, or change out of her pajamas. She was just the lady with the “precious” baby.

  Nell whispered in Roxie’s tiny, perfect ear, “I wish you had never been born.”

  Robert eventually went back to work. But he’d changed. He was no longer the husband Nell desired. He hardly spoke to her when he came home each night. Instead, he was drawn straight to the bassinet. When he wasn’t with his bugs, he was attached to Roxie. A baby always needed something.

  Nell felt a twinge in her heart when she saw the two of them together. Roxie made Robert smile. Roxie cried for Robert in the middle of the night. And Robert left his wife’s warm bed and climbed the stairs to a nursery Nell had never completed to comfort, to soothe, to love another girl.

  Raised ten tears later, Roxie would have been the child snatched at the bus stop or kidnapped from the crowded lobby of a resort in Cancun. She was keepable in a doll-like way, as if you could take her home and put her on your shelf, show her off to people, dress her up, and play with her forever.

  Nell saw none of the beauty in her little girl. She continued to ignore Roxie, instead filling her day with activities. She joined every club the town had to offer. She spent weekends gardening and practicing calligraphy. She met with authors and history buffs, dressing up once a month to take part in Civil War reenactments. When she wasn’t sewing costumes or reading, she was studying for online courses in art appreciation.

  Robert called this a phase too, and waited patiently on the sidelines, raising their daughter, filling her head with pleasant stories of the woman Nell used to be. He said, “Your mother loves you very much. She just has a har
d time showing it.”

  For years, Roxie chose to believe him.

  As Roxie grew she became less adorable toddler, less precocious grade-school child, and more awkward adolescent. She began to blend into the world, and as she became less dependent upon her father, she became more bearable to her mother.

  As long as she was quiet and stayed out of Nell’s way, Roxie’s home life was fine. Her father dropped her off at school every morning in a gleaming black Bentley that was the envy of the other parents. They lived in a great neighborhood, went to the most popular church, and took regular vacations—always joined by the brothers and their clans, resulting in a multitude of ill-posed photographs that ultimately graced someone’s Christmas card.

  On the outside, it would have appeared her life was perfect. And that was all anyone knew. Roxie never brought friends home. She never had a sleepover or a birthday party at a pizza place. She was complete on the outside: a kind, slim, pretty girl, but hollow as a cheap chocolate Easter bunny.

  One summer, Robert and Nell went on a church marriage retreat. They left Roxie home alone with a list of instructions. When they returned, they acted like sappy lovesick teenagers, unable to keep their hands off each other. Roxie called her brothers and told them how weird their parents were acting. They said it wasn’t weird. They had fallen back in love.

  Roxie couldn’t help wondering how and when the falling out part had happened and whether it happened to everyone.

  After a few months the three of them settled into a happy coexistence with Roxie as the roommate, the nosy neighbor. She thought sometimes that it was sweet that her parents spent a lot of time together, that they were obviously still in love, but when she looked at it sideways, she thought it was bent. She swore she would never ever get married, never share that much of herself with anyone.