Suggestion of Death

by Susan P. Baker

  Jim perched on an adjacent chair and leaned on his elbow. Desks were jammed back-to-back, computer terminals resting on the corners of each. Few other officers occupied the room. The ones that did shuffled papers and wrote on pads and answered phones. Ceiling fans circled overhead. The cool air smelled stale but was a vast improvement from the days when every cop smoked and thick air reeked, making it hard to breathe.

  “Want some coffee?” Denholt asked after he’d typed in Jim’s name and address. “I’m not too fast with this thing so we might as well get comfortable.”

  “Sure.” Jim glanced around the room. Nothing much had changed since he’d had the police beat years earlier.

  Denholt walked to the back and returned with two Styrofoam cups with stir-sticks poking out. “I didn’t know what you took so I brought some sugar.”

  “Fine.” Jim shook out the packet and stirred his coffee. Bitter even with the sugar, the hot substance was still welcome after a long afternoon. He sat back in the beat up chair and crossed one ankle over the other knee, ready to deflect all questions.

  Denholt slurped his coffee and placed it on a cardboard coaster bearing a beer emblem, the kind they put out in bars. “Okay. Got your name and address. And you used to be a reporter. I remember your face snooping around here.” The corners of his mouth tightened. “Let me put the vic’s name here.” He typed a bit. “And the address and the time. Okay.”

  Jim didn’t say anything. He didn’t trust anyone. Until he had something more than uneasiness, some concrete evidence to show the police, he was keeping his suspicions—which he had not quite articulated anyway—to himself.

  “So you said you’re writing a piece about child support. Why?”

  Same old annoying question, like a mosquito buzzing around the bed in the middle of the night. No one had sympathy for people who had problems paying their support. No one. He met the sergeant’s eyes. “Trying to make a few bucks so I can pay my own. Since the paper I used to work at closed, I’ve been living off unemployment, and it’s about to run out.”

  “So you’ve got kids?”

  “Two. Obviously they live with my ex-wife.” That sounded kind of snide, even to Jim’s ears. He shrugged and glanced around the room to see if anyone was in hearing distance.

  “Obviously, if you’re the one paying support. I pay, myself. Well, the Attorney General takes it out of my check every week.”

  “Used to come out of mine. Now I just wish I had a paycheck for it to come out of.”

  “Okay. So you got some kind of hare-brained idea to write about child support, and you said you already talked to the judge and a woman who works at the district clerk’s office at the courthouse.”

  “Right. And this young man, the dead guy, Noel Wannamaker, used to be the only male who worked in that office. I saw him when I went in there.”

  Denholt scratched at his cowlick. “And you said you’re writing this article from the man’s side, right? And you wanted a man’s view of a man’s side?”

  “That’s right. I’ve never seen the man’s viewpoint anywhere. Or, I should say the person who pays the support. But usually the man, right? Even though these days more men have their kids live with them than they used to.”

  “Okay. You’re confusing the issue.” He sipped from his cup again. “Stick to the facts.” He pulled his tie looser and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his dress shirt even though the air conditioning was on in the building.

  “Sorry. Don’t want to confuse you.”

  “Uh-huh. So you go to the district clerk’s office and some girl tells you—”

  “Donna.”

  “Donna tells you Noel quit. So it don’t make sense that you go out to his apartment.”

  “Mrs. Peterson said—”

  “That the supervisor?”

  “Yes. She said he called in and quit, not Donna. I thought I could catch him before he moved out of town.”

  “She said he called in and said he was moving out of town?”

  “Right. So I thought I’d try to talk to him at his apartment where he’d be more comfortable talking about the issue of child support anyway.”

  “And you got the address and went out there and talked that football player into letting you inside Wannamaker’s apartment.” Denholt had accusing eyes. Justifiable, but still accusing.

  “After the girl next door said she hadn’t seen him recently. I thought they’d know in the office if he’d already moved, but he hadn’t given notice, so I suggested we go look at his apartment.”

  Denholt smiled, not a pretty sight. “You suggested—it was that important to you?”

  Jim etched his Styrofoam cup with his thumbnail. “Well, I guess I’ve got a nose for something that isn’t quite right.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. So when you opened the door, you could see something wasn’t quite right.”

  “I didn’t open the door, Howard did. But yeah, at that point I thought we needed to call you guys so I went next door and made the call.”

  “And the car? How was it you were sniffing around the trunk of Wannamaker’s car?”

  Denholt might not be as slow on the uptake as Jim thought. He finished off his coffee and looked at the man, trying to decide whether he should say anything about the WiNGS group and what he thought they were doing. God, it sounded so far-fetched when he even thought about it. A bunch of housewives involved in questionable activities.

  He couldn’t tell Sergeant Denholt definitively what he suspected. It all didn’t add up. He looked him over. He looked like a decent sort, a classic cop doing his job. “I asked Howard if Noel Wannamaker’s car was in the lot. Howard looked up the space, and when we walked over to the apartment, there it was.”

  “Uh-huh.” Denholt stared at Jim as he sipped his coffee.

  Jim’s knee started bouncing up and down, as it frequently did lately. He held it down with one hand. “God’s honest truth, Sergeant.”

  “So you expect me to believe that you don’t know anything else about this guy’s obvious murder—since people don’t often crawl into their trunks to die except when writers put them there in stories—other than what you’ve told me?”

  Jim needed an anti-acid. His stomach felt like it was being attacked by an acid bomb. “If I knew who killed him, Sergeant, believe me, I would tell you.”

  Denholt crossed the room to a printer and returned with a paper. “Sign here at the bottom after reading over your statement.” He spoke in a monotone as he stood over Jim. His body odor hadn’t quite reached sweat sock level.

  Jim read it, signed it, and handed it back. “Can I get a copy?”

  “What for? It’ll be on file here.”

  “Sergeant—”

  “All right. All right.” He frowned and shook his head. “Just a minute.” He walked to a copier and returned with a copy of the whole report. “Want to be able to keep straight what you told me, right?”

  When Jim stood, he realized Denholt was way taller, but Jim was way thinner. “Am I a suspect? Is there some reason you think I’m trying to hide something from you?”

  “Oh, no, of course not, Mr. Dorman. No reason to suspect you of anything. Just take your copy and get out of here.”

  “Okay,” Jim said, holding out his hand. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  It was after six by the time he left. The summer sun still cooked everything under it. The country grasses were brown from the heat and no rain. No flowers bloomed by the side of the road. The drought caused even the bull nettle to shrivel up to a fraction of the size of its pesky self.

  Jim drove back to his place and removed his tie. He settled onto a bar stool with one of his generic beers. Someday soon he hoped he’d be able to buy a name brand. He hoped he’d even be able to have a liquor cabinet with bottles of bourbon, rum, and scotch. He wondered if regular poor people—those who grew up really poor—thought about stuff like that. Television exposed them to what they were missing.

  Then he got to wondering whet
her a person with a TV was really a poor person. What did it take in America to be considered poor? No car? No telephone? Utilities cut off? Empty refrigerator? That line of thought would get him nowhere. He draped his tie and jacket over the back of a chair and guzzled the beer.

  Finally, he reached for the answering machine and punched a button, both anticipating and dreading the news the flashing red light might bring.

  “Jim Dorman, Edgar Buck. You know who I’m with. Call me back if you get in before five-thirty.”

  An adrenaline thrill rushed through him, and he hammered the counter. Bam, bam, bam. Just his luck he wasn’t home to get the call he’d been waiting for. He stopped the tape and rewound it, listening again. The next twelve hours would drag like a slow-motion movie. His reached for his beer with happily shaking hands.

  The news had to be good. No one ever said to return a call if it was bad news, they just had someone else call with the bad news. Or send an email. Or send a letter in the mail. Or nothing at all—people weren’t very polite these days, they might not say anything. His chest inflated with a combination of glee and fear. But, nothing he could do about it except wait. He hit the play button again.

  “Jimmy, there’s something I need to wa—talk to you about. Please call me before you go to bed.”

  Pat’s voice didn’t sound right. Alarm rang through him. Had she changed her mind?

  Jim rewound to the start of the tape. Edgar Buck, then Patty again. Her voice was high-pitched. Not screeching, but she sounded stressed. He let the machine continue playing. He’d return her call in a few minutes.

  “James, this is Caulfield Marshall. Your agent, in case you forgot. Just like you forgot to call me today. I’ve got something that needs discussing a-sap.”

  Jim winced and gritted his teeth. What a day to be out. The next message came up.

  “Mr. Dorman, you’re going to have to pay your rent by this Friday, or I’m starting eviction proceedings. The owner said he won’t give you more time.”

  The rental agent’s voice sounded bored. Jim tapped his finger on the table. He wanted to pick up the phone and call back and remind her about the work he’d been doing around the place. But he didn’t. By Friday, with any luck, he wouldn’t need the apartment anymore.

  “End of messages.” His machine clicked to a stop. He called Pat.

  “Hello,” Patrick said.

  “Hi, son. Mom home?”

  “She’s at a meeting that came up all of a sudden, Dad.”

  He didn’t like the sound of that. Something serious must have happened for her to leave in a hurry. “She didn’t leave you kids home alone, did she? Did she say what time she’d be back?”

  “Nah. We’ve got a babysitter. Don’t you think I’m too old for a babysitter?”

  He didn’t want to upset Patrick, but with all the crap that went on in the world, he didn’t think any child was too old for a sitter.

  “You may be, son, but your sister certainly still needs one. Bear with Mommy. She’s just trying to do what she thinks is best.”

  Patrick sighed. “Yeah, but I don’t like some girl telling me what to do.”

  “I know.” Just wait until you get married, he wanted to say. “Did she say what time she’d be coming home?”

  “Naw. She didn’t say anything. She just got off the telephone and said she had to go someplace. Then she called Angie to come stay with us. She acted like she was mad but said she wasn’t.”

  Jim really wanted to have a talk with her, find out if she knew Noel Wannamaker and whether she was involved in something wrong. His stomach roiled. He started to hang up and remembered Patrick was on the other end of the line.

  “So did you have a good day, son?”

  “Dad, what’s going on? I know you and Mom are cooking something up. I just don’t know what it is. Are you going to tell us?”

  “I don’t want to lie to you, Patrick. I promised Mommy I’d let her tell you in her own way. It’ll be soon, I can tell you that.”

  “Aw, Dad. Why can’t you tell me?” He could picture the expression on Patrick’s face, the knitted brows, his lips curved down in a frown.

  “You know why.”

  “Yeah. We don’t break our promises. Our word is our bond.”

  “Good boy. Got to go now, son. Kiss your sister for me.” Jim knew that would get a reaction out of him.

  “Yuk. Kiss my sister?”

  Jim laughed. “See you soon. Goodbye.” He hung up and took another slug of his beer. It was going to be a totally boring evening. He would be left alone with his thoughts, a state which he wasn’t sure he wanted. What he wanted was company. He had spent too much time alone over the last eighteen months. Too many hours with no wife, no kids, and no job, and lately not even any friends.

  He picked up the phone and called Ethan Hale, letting the phone ring over ten times. Not even an answering machine picked up, much less voice mail.

  He put the phone down and went around the bar to the kitchen. If he whipped up some dinner and ate it in front of the TV, he could probably use up an hour. The rest of the evening he could spend writing. If he wrote two pages a night, his next book would be done in way less than a year. The other thing he could do was go to bed early. Anything to avoid looking the facts of the child support thing in the face, avoid the building distrust of Pat he felt in his gut, avoid finding out what the names Noel had given him meant.

  He pulled the now wadded piece of paper from his pocket. Unfolding it, he stared at the names for probably the hundredth time. Who were those people, and what did they have to do with WINGS and Mr. Johnson? One of them sounded familiar, Klein, but he couldn’t recall from where. The others were just commonplace names, nothing special.

  He berated himself, knew he had to follow up on this thing. The simplest way was to call them and find out. His hand shook again as he got out the phone book to look up the first name. His worst fear was that Patty, his Patty who he was fixing to get married to again, was mixed up in bad business.

  He found the third name on the list in the first town in the phone book. The phone rang three times before a young female voice answered.

  “Flores residence.”

  “Is Mr. Flores there?”

  There was an abnormally long pause.

  “Hello?” Jim said.

  “Uh, he’s not here,” the voice said.

  “Well, what about Mrs. Flores?”

  “She’s not here either.”

  “When will Mr. Flores be home?”

  “Can I ask who this is?” The voice grew higher.

  “Jim Dorman. I’m a writer, and I wanted to talk to Mr. Flores about interviewing him for an article I’m doing. Are you the housekeeper or babysitter or something?”

  “Oh—no. I’m his—their daughter. My mother is at a meeting.”

  “It’s really your father I want,” Jim said.

  The girl didn’t say anything for a few moments.

  “Hello,” Jim said. “Are you still there?”

  The girl sniffed into the phone. “You can’t talk to him because he’s dead.”

  Jim felt like a horse had kicked him in the stomach. He bent double. Her mother was at a meeting, and her father was dead. Just what he’d suspected and didn’t want to face. His tone softened. He got his breath and stood up. “I’m very sorry to hear that. When did it happen?”

  “Last November,” she answered in a soft, reverent tone.

  “Do you mind if I ask you some questions?” Call him calloused, but he had to get to the bottom of what was going on.

  “What kind of questions?” She sounded like she’d crossed her arms, ready to defend herself.

  “About your father. About you and your mother.”

  “What for?” A defensive tone.

  “Like I said, I’m writing a magazine article. I wouldn’t have to use your name if you didn’t want me to. What’s your name by the way?”

  “Olivia.” She had a singsong way of pronouncing her name.


  “Olivia,” Jim repeated. “That’s a nice name. How old are you, Olivia?”

  “Sixteen tomorrow.”

  “Well, happy birthday, sweet sixteen. I have a daughter, but she’s only eight.”

  Olivia didn’t say anything. She just breathed into the phone.

  “Would you mind answering some questions, Olivia?” His notepad sat beside his computer, and he didn’t want to put the landline down. He dug for a pen and paper in the kitchen drawer.

  “Depends on what they are.”

  “That’s fair. I wasn’t going to ask you about your love life or anything like that.”

  She snickered, her laugh sounding like tinkling crystal.

  “Okay. Here goes. How long had your parents been married when your father passed away?”

  “Um. They weren’t. They got divorced when I was little. Two, I think.”

  Divorced fourteen years. Interesting. “But they were living together as if they were husband and wife?”

  “No, sir,” she whispered. “My mother hated my father.” He could just picture her with her hand cupped around the phone so no one could overhear.

  “Is someone there with you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  She giggled like the nervous young girl she was. “I don’t know. I just never talk about my dad.”

  “Okay. How come when I called your father’s number, you answered?”

  “My dad willed it to me. This house. My mother is what they call the guardian of my estate.”

  “Oh. So you and your mother are living there now?”

  “Since about a month after he died. I don’t like it here. I want my mother to move, but she won’t. I want to go back to school with my friends again.”

  “Did you say that your mother is at a meeting?”

  “Yeah. A WiNGS thing. Do you know about that?” Her voice rose higher at the end of the second sentence.

  Jim sphincter muscles constricted, and he couldn’t get his breath for a moment. His gut muscles felt as tight as iron pipe. Oh yeah, he knew about that and was learning more every passing moment. “Yeah, I’ve heard of it. Do you know when she’ll be home?”

  “No, sir. It’s not a regular meeting. She left in a hurry and didn’t say when she’d be back. Want me to write down your name and phone number for her?”