Die Smiling

by Linda Ladd

  “Oh, yeah, now I remember, ancient Troy and all those cool swastikas you like to wear.”

  Bud said, “Where’d you say you lived?”

  “I didn’t yet, but you oughta know. You’ve been following me all week.”

  Bud looked pissed that he’d been made, but I decided Costin was no fool. Something about his calm demeanor and those still, still eyes. He was just a little bit too smooth for a funeral parlor’s night watchman. My hunch was that he was just chock-full of secrets.

  “Look, I haven’t done a damn thing and you’re treating me like some kind of hatchet murderer.”

  Bud and I looked at each other. We’d had some experience with hatchets and cleavers, especially me. Wasn’t a good memory, either. I wondered if Costin knew about it and that’s why he brought it up.

  Costin went on. “I have nothing to hide. You guys ought to bring in your good buddy, ol’ Shaggy, and interrogate him. If I didn’t bother that girl’s body, and I didn’t, he’s the only one left who could’ve done it. Guess you’d rather sweat me than put a friend of yours under the microscope.”

  “You accusing us of collusion, Costin?” Bud asked.

  Costin shrugged. “I think you two are the ones doing the accusing, not me. I’m just trying to prove to you that I’m innocent and had nothing to do with messing with that body. I’d never do that. Working there gave me the creeps anyway. It was hard enough just to know there were dead bodies in those coffins.”

  “Not a fan of Stephen King, I take it.”

  “I only read history books.”

  Bud said, “That sounds boring as hell.”

  “Not as boring as this,” said Costin.

  The two exchanged death glares. But hey, Costin was grating on my nerves, too.

  I said, “So you’re okay with us coming out to look around.”

  “Not at all, but I don’t have much choice, do I? Just don’t expect me to bake a cake.”

  “Ha ha,” said Bud.

  More glares, but Costin didn’t seem overly averse to our home visit. And he was right. We didn’t want to interview Shaggy. We wanted Costin to just admit he did it so Shaggy’d be off the hook. Who could blame us? Shaggy was a cool guy. Costin was a creep.

  Bud said, “Why’d you think it necessary to give the tape to the media, Costin? That’s just gonna cause a big shitstorm that’ll complicate this case.”

  “Not for me, it won’t. It’s gonna show everybody exactly what I was doing that night and with whom, and it sure as hell wasn’t attaching some lips to a dead broad.”

  Bud said, “Yeah, you showed what you did that night, all right, in a triple X-rated porno. I’m surprised they can even show it on TV.”

  I said, “Dead broad? That’s real respectful. Mr. Lohman must be proud to call you an employee.”

  “I’m not going back there. Suddenly living around here doesn’t appeal to me. Almost seems hazardous to my health.”

  Bud said, “Yeah, especially after everybody in the county’s seen you getting it on like a porn stud.”

  I said, and yes, it was tinged with sarcasm. “Oh, please, don’t leave town, Costin. We’d miss you too much.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I was more specific. “Don’t leave town, Costin, not until this investigation is over. Got it?”

  “Sure. But step it up, would you? I’ve got a dig in Athens planned for early summer.”

  Bud said, “We’ll do our best. We’re pretty good, you know. We might even nail you if you’re guilty.”

  I said, “Yeah, we’ll be in touch, Costin, trust me. Keep your phone close by.”

  He grinned snidely but didn’t reply.

  When Bud and I left the room, we both had sour tastes in our mouths and frowns on our faces. And it was only going to get worse. We dragged our feet all the way next door to Interview Two and Shaggy, and then entered like convicted felons into a gas chamber. Nothing was worse than shaking down and grilling a good friend. Even Costin knew that.

  Shaggy sat at the table, looking haggard and wan and like he wasn’t over the flu yet. He looked up at us. He grinned a little, and said, “Hi, guys.”

  Hi, guys? We sat down across from him, and I took a deep breath. “You’re in deep shit, Shaggy. No mistake about it.”

  “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Why’d you lie to me?”

  “Why do you think?”

  Bud was not in a patient mood. “Quit bullshittin’ us, Shag. You’re in big trouble here, and we have you on tape in the funeral parlor the night Hilde Swensen’s body was tampered with. We got two eyewitnesses, too. What the hell were you doing there?”

  “It was stupid. I should never have done it, but how was I supposed to know somebody was gonna open the casket again?”

  “Oh, God, Shaggy, why’d you go there and get yourself mixed up in all this? You gotta tell us why you wanted to go and mess with that girl’s body. You gotta tell us what you did that night.” I waited, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear his explanation. That X-rated videotape had been disturbing enough.

  Shaggy caught my drift real fast, and said, “Get real, Claire, I’m no pervert.”

  “Call me old-fashioned, but it seems a little perverted to secretly visit an embalmed body in its casket at the stroke of midnight.”

  “I meant well.”

  “You meant well?” That was Bud. He had turned on the contempt; his words dripped it. “Well, now, that makes everything all hunky dory, now doesn’t it? What the hell were you doin’ there, Shaggy? And stop lyin’ or you’re gonna to find yourself in jail for criminal desecration of a corpse.”

  “I didn’t desecrate her. I tried to help her, and that’s all.”

  I said, “Tell us what happened, Shaggy. From the beginning. You’re our friend. We want to help you if we can. But you’re not making it easy for us.”

  For a long time, he just sat there and said nothing. Not Mahatma Gandhi when it came to patience, Bud got mad and stalked outside. He slammed the door. I knew he was upset because he liked Shaggy as much as I did. The three of us were good friends, more than good. We had pretty much assumed that the perp had tampered with the body, but I didn’t believe for a moment that Shaggy had killed Hilde, much less cut up her mouth. Now, however, it was pretty damn apparent that he was somehow involved. Why else would he go there and why would he get in an argument with Costin, a man he said he hardly knew?

  “Shaggy. Look at me.”

  Shaggy looked up, then avoided my gaze. Not a great sign, that.

  “C’mon, man, what’s up with this? You can talk to me.”

  “You came to my house and accused me of killing her. Why should I trust you?”

  “Because we’ve been good friends for years, maybe? Because we like each other, trust each other?”

  “I meant well.”

  I felt my nails biting into my palms. I wanted to jump across the table and jerk his dreadlocks until he told me the truth. He looked up again when Bud reentered the room, calmer now and holding a can of Mountain Dew and a package of barbequed Fritos. Oh, sweet, a peace offering. Bud was an even closer friend to Shaggy than I was, and they’d known each other longer, too. They’d even flown out to Las Vegas on vacation together a couple of times. This had to be killing Bud. Bud was getting hit from all sides on this case.

  We sat again in silence and watched our friend drink his soda and crunch his way through the pack of Fritos. It was a few minutes past six now. The sex tape had run on the news, and we were in for a helluva long week.

  “You know me, Shag. I’ll sit here for a month, if I have to.” My threat didn’t seem to faze him. We sat some more. Shaggy finished the Fritos and wadded up the package.

  “I meant well.”

  “Maybe so, but it didn’t turn out that way. You got caught. Why the interest in this dead girl, that’s what I want to know.”

  “Buck told me about the murder when I called in sick, and it bothered me a lot. You know, what he
did to her, so I went down to the morgue to look at the body.”

  Bud and I didn’t move. He was ready to talk, and we weren’t going to do anything to trip him up. We remained silent.

  “She was just so beautiful. I guess I kind of felt like I had to be with her one more time before they buried her.”

  “Oh, God, no,” Bud said.

  Shaggy jumped up really fast and started pacing around the small room, rubbing his palms together and shaking his dreadlocks. “I know what you’re thinking, Bud, and it’s not like that, so quit thinkin’ it. I felt sorry for her, real sorry, to have her mouth cut off like that. God. It wasn’t fair. It was terrible, awful. It made me wanna puke. I went back home, but it was all I could think about, the way that son of a bitch had cut off her lips and left her that way for everybody to see. I hated it, that’s all, it was. I really did. I wanted to do something to make it better, to make her look better.”

  I looked at Bud. He looked as perplexed as I felt. He took over the questioning.

  “So you went to the funeral parlor. Then what happened? What exactly did you do to the body?”

  “I didn’t do anything gross to her! What’d you think I am, some kind of freak pervert? I can’t believe you’d think I’d do something like that.”

  “Why do anything? Hilde Swensen’s a complete stranger to you, right? Why’d you take it upon yourself to screw around with her corpse and put your job in jeopardy?”

  “I just wanted her to look better at the funeral. That’s all. I swear to God.”

  I said, “It was a closed casket, Shaggy. Nobody was gonna see her, anyway. You risked going to jail for nothing.”

  Bud said, “Look better for the funeral? That’s all you have to say?”

  “That’s right. And your girl, Brianna, she ended up seeing her, didn’t she? So I did the right thing sewin’ her up. So, there you go, there it is, and that’s all there is to it.”

  Bud repeated wonderingly, “You went there and sewed some lips back on a woman you’d never met before because you thought she was pretty and that somebody might decide to open the coffin, even though it was designated closed casket. That it?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Why’s that so hard to believe?”

  I began to feel like I was caught in one of my more unpleasant nightmares, the ones about plummeting down into hell. “How could you even do that? What did you use for lips?”

  “I used her lips, that’s what. Buck was gonna keep them as a tissue sample. So I went down to the ME’s office and took them out of the evidence refrigerator, and then I brought them over there and sewed them back on her. I did a good job, too, didn’t I? You saw. I bet you could hardly see those tiny little stitches I made, and then I covered them with mortician’s makeup so she could be buried looking pretty.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. He was proud of this, wanted us to admire his work. “Are you freakin’ serious?”

  “Yes! You gotta believe me. It wasn’t right to go ahead and bury her like that, with part of her missing. But that’s all I did to her, you gotta believe me. I’d never dishonor her by doing anything else.”

  “Dishonor her?”

  I stared at Shaggy, disbelieving he’d get himself into this much trouble for something this moronic. Bud got up again and walked out. His patience level was wearing thin again, tell me about it. I sat back and shook my head. I needed sleep. I needed a nerve pill. I needed a new profession.

  “Shaggy, do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”

  “Yeah, sure, I’m not stupid.”

  “Buck’s probably going to fire you flat out now that you’ve admitted you stole evidence out of his office and tampered with a body. Charlie’s gonna have to charge you with something. Hell if I know what it’ll be.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s like I told you. I heard about the closed casket and didn’t think anybody would ever find out. I just had to do it. I can’t explain why. Him cuttin’ off her lips just ate at me. I couldn’t stand to think about it.”

  “And you didn’t move the body or do anything else to it?”

  “No, damn it.” He looked highly offended. “You know me better than that. I wouldn’t ever do that.”

  “I didn’t think you’d do something like this, either, Shaggy.” I took a deep, cleansing breath that didn’t make me feel the least bit better.

  Bud returned, stone-faced, and said, “What about Costin? What’s your connection with that guy? He’s a jerk.”

  “Yeah, he is. I already told Claire all that. I just met him a couple of times.”

  “What were you arguing about when you got there that night?”

  “He didn’t want me to come in because he had his girlfriend in there.”

  “Okay, this has gotta be Charlie’s call. Just sit tight while he decides what he’s gonna do with you.”

  After a long and profane tirade, Charlie got the prosecutor to charge Shaggy with tampering with evidence and hold him as long as he could in the county jail until the press frenzy over the murder died down. I left with Bud as soon as we could get free, wanting to get the hell out of there. I was saying uncle. I’d had more than enough for one day.

  Outside in the back parking lot, I was more than surprised to find Black waiting for me, more than pleased, too, I must say. He was leaning against the front fender of his giant black-and-chrome Humvee. I was so glad to see him there, so glad he’d made the first move at reconciliation, that I felt stupid and emotional and like I was gonna tear up.

  Bud said, “Your ride’s here and doesn’t looked nearly as pissed as he did last time I saw him. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at the pageant.”

  “Okay.”

  I walked over to the Humvee. Black said, “You want to drive?”

  Feeling magnanimous and ultra relieved to see him, I said, “You can.”

  I climbed into the passenger’s seat and watched him get in, turn the ignition, and fire the engine. He stared straight ahead for a moment, then leaned against the steering wheel and looked across the seat at me.

  “I thought I’d stay at your house tonight, if you don’t mind.”

  Wanting to meet him half, even three-quarters of the way, I said, “No, you always have to come over to my house. I’d be thrilled to come to your place, if you’d rather. Maybe I could learn how to make chocolate chip cookies real fast and bring those, too.”

  Black grinned, showing all those damn dimples that turn me on so much. I smiled back, indeed turned on and rather giddy, too, I fear, and that was that. Fight over. No problem, unless and until he was visited by more hoodlum cohorts. I felt relief flooding over me sort of like warm vanilla cream and wondered just how far gone I was on this guy.

  “You may want to reconsider that offer,” he said. “Jude’s back in town for tomorrow’s pageant, and I sure as hell am not in the mood to entertain my ex-wife tonight.”

  “So the truth’s out. That’s the real reason you’re here, olive branches be damned.”

  “Yeah. It’s just gonna kill me to have to sleep in your bed again.”

  I laughed, and he shifted into gear and took off. I considered telling him how glad I was to see him and how glad I was that he came to find me because I was feeling pretty low about Shaggy, and the case in general, and a hundred other things, but couldn’t quite bring myself to be that vulnerable. He’d be okay. He was used to me. I knew his close familial associations with known criminals and my unwillingness to commit to what he wanted was still there between us, like some kind of thick glass wall, that we’d have to discuss it and work it out, break it down someday somehow, but I didn’t want to do it now. We’d hash that big question mark out some other day when everything else in my little world wasn’t going to hell in a handbasket like it was today. He didn’t broach the subject, either. Apparently, he was willing to wait a spell, too.

  So we drove in companionable silence for a few minutes before Black said, “I caught Costin’s sex tape on Channel 7. Pretty risqué stuff. They h
ad to blur out most of it and cut the feed, but Shaggy showed up clear enough at the end. Want to talk about it?”

  I declare, he does have such a nice shrinkish way of broaching subjects. “Nice, right? Real Paris Hilton kinda stuff.”

  “What’s Shaggy have to say now?”

  I told him about Shaggy sewing on the lips and how Bri was acting like she’d lost her mind. Just the usual pleasantries between a man and his gal pal.

  “Hasn’t exactly been great for you the last few days, has it, Claire?”

  “Nope. Not even close”

  “Let’s stop and get a Big Mac. That oughta make you feel better.”

  I nodded and relaxed even more. Black knew my comfort foods, but truth be told, I already felt better because we’d patched things up, at least for the moment, and I didn’t have to go home alone. He was a good sounding board with good insight, and a nice strong, hard body to snuggle into at night, and that’s exactly what I needed.

  We took a sack of fast food to my place, and I told him everything that went down in the hospital with Carlos Vasquez and today with Shaggy and Costin. I asked him what he knew about Esteban Rangos’s murder, and he told me that the boy had been Jose’s favorite nephew and protégé and was murdered several years ago by unknown assailants. He said Rangos was heartbroken and had vowed to find the killer. But Black stopped short of revealing whether or not Rangos had put out an open-ended hit on the killer. I didn’t ask for any more details, either, and he didn’t offer them. We let it drop, and he sat and listened silently while I paced back and forth in front of him. After a while he stood up.

  “Okay, let’s work out together. Maybe you’ll work off some of this tension and dare I say it, aggression. That’s what I did when I got off the plane this morning. It cleared my mind.”

  We headed for the backyard, and he held my punching bag while I absolutely beat the ever-living hell out of it for about fifteen minutes. After a while, though, I collapsed on the mat, breathing hard and red faced, my upper arm aching, sweating with exertion. Black dropped down beside me and propped his head in his palm.

  “Feel better, sweetheart?”

  “No.”