Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  I said, “We’d like to talk with you about him. Can we talk here?”

  Connie had finished a plate of something that had syrup on it. A big glob of butter, still round from the scoop, balanced on the side of the plate. A cup of coffee, half empty, sat on the table. To its side were three empty creamer cartons, each with its torn corner pointing to the bowl holding the full cartons. Next to each empty carton was an empty packet of sugar, aligned neatly. “Here’s fine with me,” she said.

  “All right, thanks,” I said. “When did you last see Arlen Hagerty?”

  “Last night. We were going over arrangements for the next few days. Next stop was going to be Lewis and Clark State College in Idaho.”

  “Where did you meet with Mr. Hagerty?”

  “In his room, about 10:30 last night.”

  “Was this an unusual meeting in any way?”

  “No, we met most nights on the road. My job is to do all the arrangements—the hotels, the sites for the debates, the transportation, everything. I’d go over all the arrangements with him.”

  “Did you generally meet in his room?”

  Connie looked at me for a moment, the silence telling me what she thought of the question. “Yes,” she said. She drank the rest of her coffee in one gulp, put the cup down, and turned it so the handle lined up with the edge of the table.

  “And when did you leave his room?”

  “Not sure.” She didn’t look like she was trying to remember. “Between 11:00 and 11:30, I think.”

  “Tell us a little about Mr. Hagerty,” I said. “How did you meet?”

  Connie sighed. She started to talk, the words coming out like someone else had written them. Her eyes looked distant. “I was in some trouble at the time. I’d left home. I was maybe sixteen, had some problems with my folks. I got mixed up with some people I shouldn’t’ve. I saw a billboard for Soul Savers. I was hungry, they took me in.”

  Ryan said, “This was a shelter for runaways?”

  Connie looked at him like she’d rather be talking to me. “You could call it that,” she said, then turned back to me.

  “You seem to have come a long way, this position of responsibility Mr. Hagerty gave you,” I said. “Tell us about that.”

  Connie’s face was expressionless. “Soul Savers got me back in school. I took courses in computers, you know, secretarial stuff. Started helping out at their headquarters. That’s where I met Mr. Hagerty. He liked me, let me help the woman who did his arrangements from the main office. I learned the routine. That’s pretty much it.”

  “How’d you get from the main office to traveling with him?”

  “As the trips got longer, Mr. Hagerty decided he needed a person with him on the road. The woman I worked for didn’t want to do it—she was older, had a family. So he invited me. Not like I had a reason to stay in my studio apartment.”

  “Did he ever consider having Mrs. Hagerty do your job?” I said.

  There was a trace of a rueful smile on Connie’s face. “No, I don’t think that would have worked out.”

  “How so?” Ryan said.

  Connie turned to him. “She doesn’t want to have to do that kind of thing. She wants to concentrate on the big picture. That’s what she calls it: ‘the big picture.’” She looked impatient. “I want a cigarette. Do you mind if we go outside?” She signed the restaurant check.

  “No, that’s fine,” I said. Connie led us out of the restaurant and around to the side of the hotel. We were out of the wind, and with the sun high in the sky, the temperature in the forties, it was pleasant. She took a cigarette out of her bag and lit it. She leaned against the brick wall of the hotel and closed her eyes in the bright sunshine.

  I said, “Tell us a little about Margaret Hagerty. What’s your relationship with her?”

  Connie paused, as if she was planning what she had to say. “Margaret has been very good to me. Not everyone would let me travel with them.”

  “You mean because of your background?”

  “That’s part of it. Someone like me, most people assume I’m going to steal from them, whatever. Or that I’m still using.”

  “What kinds of things have you learned from her?”

  “You met her, right?”

  “A few minutes ago,” I said.

  “She knows how to dress, how to act polite. You know, how to behave with other professional-type people. I didn’t know anything about that world. You understand.”

  The sun was bright on her face. Her hair was a medium brown, pulled back in a ponytail. She wasn’t wearing any makeup. The sun showed faint crows’ feet starting around her eyes. There were a few acne scars on her left temple. Her nose, thin and straight, was framed by strong cheek bones. She had a minor overbite, not really obvious, but enough that her parents would have rushed her to the orthodontist if she had come from the right side of the tracks.

  A logging truck downshifted to make it up the slight rise on the highway in front of the hotel. I waited for the rumbling to stop. “Do you get along with her okay?”

  “Sure,” Connie said. “I do my job, she does hers. I mind my own business. She’s not looking for a friend.”

  “And Jonathan Ahern?” She turned to me and focused, for the first time. “What can you tell us about him?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  “Is he a friend?”

  “No,” she said, her gaze drifting off again. “He’s part of the show. Just another room to book.”

  “Do you ever go out for a drink after the debates with him and Mr. Hagerty?”

  “No, I don’t drink,” she said, taking a folding metal ashtray out of her coat pocket and stubbing out her cigarette. She folded the ashtray and put it back in her pocket. “Besides, I’m not one of the guys. That’s not my role.” She unbuttoned her jacket and pulled back the lapels so the sun could warm her dark blue cotton turtleneck.

  “Got it,” I said, catching a whiff of the diesel from the logging truck. “Did Mr. Hagerty or Mrs. Hagerty ever talk with you about why they have separate rooms?”

  “I know they have separate rooms at home. Maybe she just wants some privacy. I don’t get into that.”

  “Do you know whether they sleep together?”

  Connie gave me a look that said, Back-off. “I don’t know—and I don’t care.”

  “Do you know whether Mr. Hagerty used to have sex with anyone, either at home or on the road?”

  Connie said, “Listen, Detective. I’ve told you what I know. I’ve got a job with the Hagertys. I make the arrangements for the debates. I also do anything else they need me to do, like getting special food when Mrs. Hagerty wants it, or dry cleaning. I’m their assistant. Whatever they do in their private lives, that’s not my business.”

  “One more thing. Any idea of who might want to kill Arlen Hagerty?”

  She looked like she was thinking about the question. “I didn’t kill him. I know that.”

  “Okay, Ms. de Marco, thanks a lot for talking with us. We might need to come back to you and talk some more, so I’m afraid you’ll have to stick around here in town.”

  “Yes, she told me that. That’s okay with me. Can I go?”

  “Yeah. Thanks,” I said, as she walked back around the corner toward the entrance of the Courtyard.

  “Let’s go sit in the cruiser, see what we’ve got,” I said. The car was about fifty yards away. It was warm from the bright sun. “What do you make of her?”

  “Well, she’s got herself a pretty wicked case of OCD.”

  “What?”

  “Obsessive compulsive disorder. See the way she lined up the creamers and the sugar? And carrying around an ashtray?”

  “Yeah, I saw that. What’s it mean to you?”

  “Well, it could mean nothing. I just noticed it because one of my sisters has it. It can be a reaction to stress.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s had plenty of that. And that’s only counting the shit we know about. If she wants to line up her sugar packets and carr
y around cigarette butts, I’m good with that. What else did you see?”

  “Her affect is kind of blank. You notice she doesn’t laugh or smile. Her voice is flat, and her eyes look empty.”

  “Could just be the circumstances of his murder. Or a reaction to cops. My guess is she hasn’t had a lot of positive experiences with us in her lifetime.”

  “Yeah, but you noticed she didn’t come right out and say she doesn’t know anything about who Hagerty was sleeping with. Or who might have killed him.”

  “It was like she didn’t want to outright lie to us,” I said, “but she just wanted to set up boundaries.”

  “She probably hasn’t had a chance to think through how the murder screws up her job, but she knows there’s no way it can be good. So she’s stalling.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but it’s obvious if she wasn’t doing Hagerty she knows who was. So we’re gonna have to stay on top of her.” I paused. “You see her as strong enough to kill Hagerty?”

  “Oh, absolutely. She’s got pretty good upper-body strength. Good shoulders, biceps.”

  “You could see that through her turtleneck?” I said.

  “Yeah, when we were walking up to her in the coffee shop. She’s strong.”

  “And you can see Arlen wanting to sleep with her? I mean, she’s young and all, but you see her as attractive?”

  “Well,” he said, smiling, “I’m a married man, you know. But yeah, I think she’s attractive. Really good figure.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You see her unbutton her coat out in the parking lot?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, well, so did I,” Ryan said.

  “That’s all it takes?” I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to learn about Connie or about Ryan.

  “No, if you insist. What I like about her is she covers stuff up. The hair pulled back. No makeup. The turtleneck. It’s like she isn’t thinking about how she looks.”

  “That’s sexy?” I said.

  “To me it is.”

  “You’re sure it’s not just you knowing she has a past?”

  “Now you’re getting too deep for me,” he said, smiling. “I took Psych 101. I didn’t get to 102. All I know is she’s attractive without advertising it.”

  I didn’t know if I was getting too deep, but I was losing my focus. It didn’t matter what kinds of pictures were flashing in Ryan’s mind. Maybe he was Jesus to her Mary Magdalene. Maybe she was just a sweet piece of ass. It didn’t matter. The important point was if a good-looking guy like Ryan saw her as attractive, it’s a good chance Jonathan Ahern would, too, and it’s dead certain Arlen Hagerty would. “Yeah,” I said, “we’re gonna have to come at her again. Let’s track down Jonathan Ahern.”

  * * *

  “You a vegetarian?” I said. Ryan had ordered a veggie burger.

  “Vegan: no meat, no dairy.”

  “That a religious thing?”

  “Nah, just for health.” He smiled.

  “You feel better?”

  “Yeah. More energy. Only problem is, I have to force myself to take in extra calories if I do a lot of cardio workouts.”

  I looked at him and nodded. This was one strange guy. He could change his whole diet around because it was good for him. We sat silently for a few minutes. The server brought the meals.

  I pointed at the tomato slice sitting on a half-wilted piece of lettuce on my plate. “You need this tomato?” I said.

  “No thanks,” he said. “You eat it. It’s good for you.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, poking at it with my fork.

  We ate for a few minutes without talking. We weren’t yet at the point in our relationship where we could be comfortable without talking, but that would come.

  “So,” I said after shoving the last bite of the hamburger into my mouth, “what do you think’s the percentage chance Arlen was doing Connie?”

  Ryan put down his fork and knife and tilted his head upward, as if he was doing some calculations. “I’d say ninety-five. With a margin of error of two points.”

  I smiled. “And that’s because of what? The way Connie smiled when she said Margaret wouldn’t—what was her phrase?—wouldn’t do what Connie had to do?”

  “I think her phrase was that Margaret ‘doesn’t want to have to do that kind of thing.’”

  “You read that as Margaret didn’t want to have to sleep with Arlen?”

  “Yeah, that’s how I read it, but that’s not the reason I’m ninety-five percent sure Connie was doing him.”

  “Okay, so why?”

  “Because men are pigs.”

  “Just like that: men are pigs?”

  “You can take it to the bank,” Ryan said, nodding.

  “So you’re a pig?”

  “No, not me, personally. I have the potential to be a pig, but I choose not to be.”

  “You just choose to be what you are?” I could tell Ryan was half teasing me, maybe borderline flirting.

  “No, you don’t choose to be what you are. God chooses that for you when He creates you. But then you choose how you act, what you do. And that in turns defines what you are.”

  I stabbed a couple of fries with a little more force than necessary. “So then you create what you are, after all?”

  “Unless you think God gave you the potential to make those choices that you make, in which case He creates you.”

  I put my fork down. “You okay with the fact you’re talking in circles?”

  “The circle’s the perfect shape, you know: no beginning and no end, just like God’s love for you, Karen.” He gave me an open smile. “That’s why wedding rings are circles.”

  “Yeah, and because a square ring wouldn’t fit so good.”

  He laughed. “I can see you lack a taste for the mystery of God’s creations.”

  “Guess I just don’t like mysteries,” I said. “Like who killed Hagerty.”

  Ryan had finished his meal. He pushed his plate away. “We’ll figure this murder out, Karen. No question about it. And when we do, we’ll put the bad guy away. And we’ll have solved one more mystery.”

  “Yeah, and we’ll find out Hagerty was some kind of perv, and someone else is a murderer. So much for God’s mysteries.”

  “Sinners only serve to highlight God’s majesty,” Ryan said, taking a sip of his ice water.

  “Are you gonna be like this all the time?” I said, sighing.

  “All the time,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning in to me, “except when I’m taking in Connie’s bodacious rack.”

  “You’re right. Men are pigs.”

  “All part of God’s majesty,” Ryan said, his palms up in a gesture that said, Case closed.

  “Oh, Lord,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Amen, sister,” he said, toasting me with his glass.

  We paid our bills, left the restaurant, and approached the uniform posted at the reception desk. I told him we wanted to interview Jonathan Ahern.

  The uniform pulled out his notebook. “Mr. Ahern went to the driving range about forty-five minutes ago.”

  It was a three-mile trip to the driving range, which was attached to the local municipal course. In late Fall, the course was open on weekends, unless there had been snow. But the driving range was always open.

  From the parking lot, we saw a solitary figure hitting with a driver. The ball arced high and smooth, landing out past the 200-yard flag. Ryan said, “Look at that. He’s pretty good.”

  “You play?” I said.

  “In college. But for some reason Kali’s not sure it’s the best use of forty bucks and five hours on Saturdays.”

  “Women, huh?”

  Even though we were crunching the gravel path pretty loud, Ahern didn’t hear us because the wind was in his face. He jumped a little when I said, “Mr. Ahern?”

  “I’m sorry, Detectives, you startled me,” he said, putting his driver back in the black nylon bag leaning against the stand near the tee. “Hope I
didn’t take you too far out of your way. The policemen at the hotel said it would be okay.”

  “No, this is fine. Can we talk over there?” I said, pointing to the clubhouse patio. A few green plastic chairs were set up around one of the tables. The rest of the chairs were stacked and locked together up against the clubhouse wall. The sunshine snuck in under the roof, hitting the table.

  Once the three of us were seated, Ryan said, “We’d like to offer our condolences. Seemed like Mr. Hagerty was a friend.”

  “Seemed, was,” he said, shaking his head. “No way I saw that coming.” Ahern looked down at the table, tracing the pattern on the plastic tabletop with his finger.

  “When did you see him last?” I said.

  “Same time you did. After we left the bar and you brought us back to the hotel. I went upstairs, watched some TV, went to bed.”

  “Tell us a little about how you met Mr. Hagerty and got involved with the debates.”

  “It was about four years ago. I had just lost my job as a legislative aide to Johnny Trautman. He was a state senator from outside Atlanta. I’d always been interested in politics, and when the chance came to work for him, I grabbed it. He was a Democrat, which was pretty rare outside the city. He was quite a man. A hunter, fisherman. He knew how to appeal to the rural Georgians. Very big on church values, the Second Amendment.”

  “You say ‘was.’ He died? That’s how you lost your job?”

  “No, he’s dead now, but he was voted out of office. His wife, Rebecca, got MS. She was a wonderful woman. She had some other health problems, and the MS just tore right through her. This was when all the publicity started for stem-cell research. So, Johnny came out for the research, both guns blazing. That turned out to be one liberal position too many for his constituents. In less than a year, he lost the election, Rebecca died, and he died.”

  Ahern was tearing up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was with him on his last night. He’d had a stroke a few days before, but they were sure he was going to live. He looked at me and said, ‘Jon, I just don’t have any more fight left in me.’ If you knew Johnny, that would have knocked you over. Even at seventy, he had more fight in him than I do at my age. He squeezed my hand. I looked down at his hand as I felt the grip loosen. I looked at his face. He closed his eyes and, just like that, he was gone.”