Deadly Kiss

by Bob Bickford

  “As a doctor,” he said, “I would call it her hoo-hoo, but I don’t want to throw a lot of medical terms at you either.”

  He held the solemn look a moment longer and then dissolved into laughter. His hilarity was so infectious that I couldn’t help joining him, and in a minute we were both wiping away tears. When it subsided, we looked at a red-faced Molly, who gave us the brush-off. It was several minutes before he could go on.

  “She was locked down with a few other women, and this next part isn’t really funny. I guess after an hour or two she thought she’d been in there long enough and started hollering for someone to come let her out. No one did, so she set fire to someone else in her cell.”

  “My God. She set a person on fire?” Molly asked, aghast.

  “You bet,” he nodded. “The woman was asleep, or passed out, and she lit up her clothes. Luckily, I guess, she wasn’t wearing anything very flammable, and when a whole bunch of women started screaming and yelling. That got the guards in quick enough. Earned her a six-month stay in Metro State prison, though, and with bad behavior it was a year before she was back in her trailer.”

  I stood up and went to the sideboard. I offered the coffee pot, and he nodded.

  “And they’re not together anymore?” Molly asked.

  “No, no, she’s long gone. Probably somewhere in the city if she’s still alive. She and Arthur got into another of their disagreements one day and she locked him out of the trailer. He pounded and was yelling at her to open the damn door or he was going to kill her. Finally, he grabbed up a baseball bat laying out in the yard and took a swing at the door. I don’t know if he thought he was going to knock it right off its hinges...”

  His voice trailed off, and he sat staring at his coffee. We saw his shoulders begin to shake and realized he was laughing again. Molly and I looked at each other and smiled and then laughed with him, although we didn’t know what was coming. His joy was infectious.

  “Oh, Lord, I shouldn’t laugh--there but for the grace--anyhow, he swung at it as hard as he could, and the bat bounced right back off the door and popped him in the knee. Busted it. He fell backward off the steps and lay in the dirt, howling and rolling around grabbing himself. Florence ran outside, picked up the bat, and purely laid a beating on that man, nearly killed him. Good thing for him the police showed up. I don’t think any of the people watching were inclined to take up for him.”

  “And that was the end of the marriage, I guess?” Molly asked.

  “That was the end, yes.” Roy chuckled. “Arthur went back to live with his mother, and he’s there still.”

  “Poor man,” she said. “He looked so tough, so scary, but he’s almost pathetic when you hear about his life. He’s like a...sad...um...a sad clown.”

  I nodded agreement. Knowing people’s histories often softened first impressions.

  “He is a sad clown,” the doctor said, suddenly somber. “Funny thing. In the dark, everyone’s afraid of a smiling clown. Everyone. No one ever worries about a sad clown, though. We don’t look past the teardrops painted on their cheeks and the broken umbrellas they hold up against the rain, and we should. Sad clowns are the ones that’ll sneak up behind you and kill you.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Sam Latta,

  Marietta, Georgia, Monday, October 7, 1946:

  The sheriff stood with the boy at the front door. The boy’s mother pulled it open and stood with her hand against the screen, as if she were braced for a strong wind.

  The sheriff took his hat off. “I’ve brought you your son, ma’am,” he said. “He’s been telling me a story. I think I’d better come in.”

  The woman stood aside, and they filed in. The boy looked around, unsure, seeming more like a guest than someone who lived there. He was thinner than he had been, and there were dark smudges under his eyes.

  “What is it?” the mother asked, her voice rising. “What’s wrong?”

  The boy’s father appeared. Home from work, he had been washing for supper, and he stood in his shirtsleeves, drying his hands over and over with a small towel.

  “Evening, Ben,” he said.

  “Nathan.” The sheriff nodded. He looked down at the boy. “Go along in,” he said. “I got to talk to your folks now.”

  The boy trailed up the staircase in front of them, pausing once to look back over his shoulder before he left their sight.

  The sheriff turned his hat in his hands. “We have a problem,” he said. “Your son came to see me, Nathan. You keep a pistol in the house. Do me a kindness and check on it?”

  The father went to his office and checked his desk drawer. When he returned, he offered the gun, butt first.

  “No, I don’t want it,” the sheriff said. “Lose it.”

  “Lose it?” the father asked. He feigned bewilderment, but he knew.

  Ben talked for less than a minute. When he was done, he raised a hand to quiet the parents’ protests. The mother had her hands to her mouth, holding her composure by the thinnest thread. The father looked at the gun in his hand, as though it had come to life and was showing teeth.

  “I’m not going to do a thing,” the sheriff said, “unless I’m forced to. Done is done, and I’ll be damned if I see this mess stirred up again. You’re going to do your duty as parents and citizens and make sure your boy doesn’t tell any more tall tales to anyone else. Anyone. Ever. Do not make me deal with this. Are y’all understanding me?”

  The mother said nothing, staring and unaware of her own hands, which were crawling across her bosom, touching collar and buttons. The father nodded once, his mouth a grim line. He was clearly frightened and glanced at the stairway where his son had disappeared.

  “Yes, we understand,” he said. “We’ll make the boy understand too.”

  “You best do that. If you don’t, or can’t, I think you’d do better to load your car and leave the county.”

  So it happened. The boy was dismissed and hushed, and the secret of the kiss grew larger and larger. The possibility of its escape became its authority. It was passed along through blood and marriage, and grew powerful with the passing years, even as its origins faded like an old photograph.

  ***

  Present Day:

  Dad’s lawyer had an office off of Marietta Square, on the third floor of an old red brick building. Molly was with me when I went to see about my father’s will. The lobby was cool and dim and had green linoleum on the floor. It smelled old. There were a couple of dusty plants in large pots. I rubbed one of the leaves. It was cloth, and my fingers came away grimy.

  “Why are you touching that?” Molly asked.

  “I just wanted to see if it was real.”

  “How could it be real, Mike? There’s no light in here. Anyway, does it look like anyone in this building would remember to water it?”

  Smiling slightly, she headed for the elevator and pushed the button. It didn’t light up, and the floor display above the double doors was dark, too. We look for the stairs.

  “I have trouble imagining Dad having a lawyer in the first place,” I said. “But if he needed one, trust him to find this place.”

  “Was he the typical absent-minded professor?” Molly asked from behind me on the stairs. “Head in the clouds?”

  “No, not really. He was disdainful of customs, and a little bit cheap. Spending money on a lawyer would have seemed stupid to him.” We stopped at the third floor landing, and I pulled open the door. “He didn’t really fit in. High schools are like jails, or the military, or any other institution where the people in them don’t much want to be there. They need rules to exist, and he didn’t much care about rules. He didn’t defy them. He just didn’t care about them.”

  “His classes must have been chaos,” she said.

  “That’s the thing. They weren’t. He didn’t put up with any bullshit. He didn’t pay attention to rules for students, and you knew right away that he didn’t care about rules for teachers either. If you didn’t want to be in his class, if y
ou weren’t engaged, he threw you out and not let you back. He couldn’t have cared less what your parents or the school administration had to say about it.”

  We reached the door we were looking for. It had a frosted glass insert, with gold and black letters, like something from an old movie.

  “He treated kids like adults, and he never negotiated with them. It wasn’t a pose. He didn’t waste time with stupidity, and it was part of his reputation. Kids really liked him, mostly. The administration didn’t, but they put up with him.”

  “Was he the same way with you at home?”

  “I don’t know, Molly. He didn’t notice me, mostly.”

  “And your mother?” she asked. “She taught at the same school? Was she the same?”

  “No, she was a lot younger than him. She taught languages. French, Spanish. Most of her training was music, so I don’t really know why she didn’t teach it. She didn’t really have the patience for teaching, period. She was too...romantic. She liked living in Europe. Georgia and everything about it, including me, probably seemed temporary to her.”

  “I’m sure you weren’t temporary to her, Mike. Do you have any more pictures of her? I didn’t see many when we were looking through your dad’s stuff.”

  “Sure, at the house, I guess. There should be more. Why?”

  “I want to know what she looked like,” she said, “without the veil.”

  Robert Crider’s office was a throwback to the South of my childhood. The floor was dark linoleum, the furniture was chrome and vinyl. The secretary who looked up at us was middle-aged and overweight. Although sleeveless, her dress looked hot and uncomfortable. When I identified myself, she checked her own handwriting in a large appointment book and pursed her lips disapprovingly. She reluctantly gestured to a settee against the wall. Molly and I sat. There was a large ashtray in a metal stand at my end.

  The woman had an old computer on her desk, but the monitor screen was dark. She tapped on an electric typewriter. A floor fan behind her desk swiveled back and forth. When it reached the end of its sweep, it buzzed and clicked before it started back the other way. It hardly seemed to stir the air. There were piles of paper on every surface around her. I wondered if the fan had a higher setting would it create a snowstorm of deeds and certificates and records that could never be sorted out.

  When enough time had passed to suit her, she stood up, opened the door to the inner office, and went in, closing it behind her. She came back out and sat down. The telephone rang, and she answered it and consulted some kind of a large ledger while she spoke. Finally, she hung up and looked over at us.

  “Mr. Crider will see you now.”

  Molly and I looked at each other. I shrugged, led the way to the inner office door, and opened it. Roger Crider sat inside, looking at us expectantly. His hands rested on top of his desk, which was completely empty. It was the only clean surface in the room. Like his secretary, he had files stacked everywhere, most full to overflowing and contained by elastic bands. Four chairs faced his desk. Two were unoccupied by paper records and we sat down.

  He suddenly stood up and reached awkwardly across his desk to shake our hands. He was tall and slightly stork-like. His white collar was loose and his graying hair needed a trim.

  “So what can I do for you folks?”

  “Sam Latta,” I said, and when he looked blank, I prompted him. “I have an appointment about his will.”

  He raised his eyebrows and regarded me. Then suddenly, he stood up, crossed quickly to a filing cabinet, and pulled open a drawer. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he threw open the door to the outer office and left. I wanted to laugh and glanced over at Molly. Her face was serene, and she studiously didn’t return my look. After a minute, he came back in, sat down, and opened a very thin file.

  “Samuel Latta,” he said. “I am his executor, which you may or may not know. Beneficiaries are, equally, Michael Latta and Angela Trevethan. The two of you, I take it.”

  “No. Angela Trevethan is my ex-wife,” I said. “She’s in Canada. Does she need to be here?”

  He looked up from the file at us. “In this case, no, not really,” he said. “There isn’t much to talk about. There will be little to disburse, if anything.”

  “Well, not much,” I said. “The house, car, whatever he had in the bank. We won’t be disputing anything, though. The money isn’t that important to either of us. I just need to wrap up his affairs, and get home.”

  “It’s not going to be entirely that simple, I’m afraid. I’ve taken a preliminary look at things, and Mr. Latta’s situation has changed significantly since this will was drawn up. Let’s see, he amended it, ah...six months ago, give or take, to include Ms. Trevethan as equal beneficiary.”

  That was about the time our divorce had been finalized. My father had loved her and blamed me, rightly perhaps, for the divorce. If he had changed his will, I was surprised that he had left me in it.

  Still, I was glad that his relationship with Angela had survived our split.

  “The house is heavily mortgaged. He’s also borrowed heavily against it, secured line of credit.” He turned a page, and shook his head. “You need to understand that my first duty is to satisfy the claims outstanding against the estate. To simplify, you and Ms. Trevethan will divide what’s left after those are paid.”

  “You need to back up. He hasn’t owed anyone a penny in years.”

  “I’m surprised, given current economic conditions, and the real estate market right now, that any bank would let him get in this deep. There’s also credit card debt. His bank accounts are virtually empty. There may, of course, be things that I don’t see right now, but to be honest, his pension income wasn’t enough to meet his obligations, let alone provide money for him to live. I’m sorry to give you such bad news. You must be very disappointed.”

  “That house was paid for years ago,” I said. “When I was a teenager. When my mother was killed, he used the insurance money to pay the mortgage off completely. I don’t understand this.”

  “When I last went over things with him, he was comfortable, in a modest way. Whatever’s happened, it was recent. I just haven’t discovered what he’s done. If he’s made a major purchase, it will come to light. There might be a significant asset we haven’t seen yet. He didn’t discuss anything like that with you?”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “He was frugal to the point of being cheap. A year ago his old car threw a connecting rod. It would have cost ten times what the thing was worth to put in a new engine. Angela had to read him the riot act to get him to buy a replacement. He was going to walk everywhere. As it was, I think he spent a thousand bucks on a ten-year-old beater to get around in.”

  “Well, he’s disposed of a significant amount of capital somewhere, and relatively quickly,” the lawyer said. “He’s close to penniless. A pension check and his Social Security every month, but a mountain of new debt. I don’t know what to say.”

  “His money’s all gone,” I said dully.

  “It appears that way, yes.”

  I shook my head, thinking about the phone messages, and about Wanda Sutton’s history of extortion. “He was being blackmailed. It all makes sense now.”

  Beside me, Molly nodded. She was thinking the same thing.

  “Why do you say that?” the lawyer asked.

  “He came up to stay with me in Canada. He was terribly upset, looking for help. He was getting around to telling me about it and died before he finished. He was frightened by something that was happening down here. He said people were angry and out to get him for something he did a long time ago. We found threatening phone messages on his machine.” I was getting more and more angry. “He was being blackmailed. That’s why his money is all gone.”

  The lawyer was shaking his head. “Blackmailed about what? A scandal? He was an old man!”

  “Something happened when he was just a kid. He felt bad about it apparently and tried to make amends. It blew up in his fa
ce.”

  He looked out of the window, lost in thought. “It does seem to fit the facts,” he said. “Preposterous as the idea is, it explains some things.”

  “The woman who I think was threatening him has a history of blackmail. She went to prison for it once.”

  “This is dreadful,” he said. “I’m not sure where to go with this.”

  “Can I even sell the house? Am I free to do that?”

  “You might be better off to let the creditors take it, to be honest. If you assume any part of your inheritance, you’ll assume the whole thing, including the debts, and unless the money turns up, it may end up being painful.”

  “Do I have time to think about it?”

  “A little while, of course. You’ll protect your own position if you don’t remove anything from the property. A few photographs or mementos no one will mind, but anything of value should be left alone, I’d say. If you decide to walk away from the situation, it could be made out as theft later on.”

  “So I probably shouldn’t even be in the house?”

  He seemed to shake off the formality he had been trying for. “I think,” he said, “that you’ll end up wanting to get out of Dodge on this one. The more distance you put between yourself and this estate, the better for you. So, no, don’t live in that house. If it means a lot to you, it’ll probably be cheaper to buy it from the bank after they put it on the market than to protect your interest in it now.”

  “Time to go on home then, I guess,” I said. “Let’s lock the damn place up and go home.”

  “Do you yourself know why he was being...extorted?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “So taking this to the police could be ultimately embarrassing,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “There was something he was willing to pay everything he had to keep secret, apparently. If you go to the police and they uncover it, it could be...regrettable. How can you know?”