The Lillian Byrd Crime Series

by Elizabeth Sims

  I come to your home in my real car (a brand-new black Mustang with quad stereo) and I have flowers and a big bottle of wine and you say those are my favorite flowers!! I would love some wine!! Thank you!!

  So we drink some wine and talk on your balcony while the sun goes down and the music is anything by K.D. Lang. We are so mellow. I have written some poems and you say those are the nicest poems I have ever heard. Then you say I would like to go out to dinner. I say let’s go!! We take off in my Mustang and I drive us Downtown to a very special restaurant that has red roses on the table and no-one cares that we are gay!! I hold all doors open for you.

  We eat surf-and-turf and strawberry cake with strawberries in the frosting and only one more glass of wine.

  I am the designated driver!!

  We go to the Snap Dragon and dance three dances, two fast and one Slow Dance. Is everyone ever jealouse!! You dance with no-one but me.

  Then, my dearest Lillian, we go home to my home and I have prepared a special bath with scented oils and candles. The stereo is playing the tape I have made especially for you. You enjoy the songs very much. I have a very good stereo system, I am very good with electronics. You see this!! The dogs are in the basement.

  You take my hand and we have that first kiss. My heart is more powerful than a locomotive!! Then: You finally admit that you love me!! We partake of my bed and it is the most beautiful, exciting, mellow experience we have ever had.

  Everytime I think of this night I know my life will change forever and I will make you the happiest womon in the world.

  My Lillian, I have to show you how special we can be together. I must. Don’t keep me waiting!! I can’t stand much more!! You may call me at any time. I will see you soon.

  Love, Lou.

  I held out the letter. “This is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Minerva took the letter and read it. She laughed only once, then folded it up. “It’s no laughing matter, really. This is what I was talking about. Lillian, this is serious.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do, put out a contract on her? How serious can it be? She’s desperate. Fine. But I can’t imagine she’d ever try to hurt me.” As I spoke I edged casually over to the door and braced the two-by-four under the knob. Minerva pretended not to notice.

  “Neither can she. But if she works herself up enough, she definitely could. And not even know what she was doing. This is how those things go.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Well. Put it away and don’t think about it anymore for now. We’re safe tonight.”

  “Now, that’s a good suggestion.” I glanced at her bag. “I hope that hunk of iron doesn’t come in handy.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  I put on some soft music, good music to make love by: Chet Baker crooning Cole Porter, Sarah Walker swinging with Gershwin, Morgana King going to town on Johnny Mercer. I glanced around the apartment: It didn’t look bad. There was Minerva looking well fed and expectant on my turquoise leather couch, bathed in golden light from one bulb of my pole lamp, which was turned strategically upward to bounce softly off the corner of the ceiling. My chock-full bookcases looked sophisticated, I thought. No TV in sight, and just a little green glow from the stereo components, stacked neatly in an odd, rounded metal case Mr. McVittie had given me. He said it was from a radar room in a ship.

  “Would you like some Scotch? That’s all I’ve got.”

  “Sounds good. I’d just like to sip a little.” She sat petting Todd while I fixed the drinks in the kitchen. “What are your favorite flowers, anyway?” she called softly.

  I paused in my pouring and smiled. “I guess sunflowers. Kind of plebeian, huh? But I love them. What are yours?”

  Her voice came back low and mischievous, “I’m very fond of tiger lilies.”

  I almost dropped the whisky bottle.

  Then she said, “Do you play this? Is it a mandolin?”

  “Yes. Yes. Would you like to hear something?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  I liked to hear her say that word.

  I popped out from the kitchen, paused Chet Baker, and played “Wildwood Flower” for obvious reasons, then “Old Joe Clark,” chiefly because I’d learned an impressive version of it from a record. Then I piled it on with “Ashokan Farewell.” She listened with such an intense expression that I became a little unnerved. I put up the mandolin and restarted the music on the stereo.

  A bar of bittersweet chocolate lurked somewhere in my pantry; I found it and broke it into small pieces and put them on a plate with some fresh orange segments.

  “A little dessert,” I offered as I brought out the tray, “in keeping with the evening. Chocolate was a very important commodity in the New World.”

  “And the famous Mayan orange groves.” She turned from my bookcases where she’d been inspecting titles.

  “Yes, the famous floating orange groves of the Mayan empire, where maidens learned the sensuous arts of harvesting and marmalade-making.”

  We laughed, in spite of the horrors out there in the night. We kept laughing through more dumb talk and chocolate- and orange-nibbling, until we left off nibbling the treats and started in on each other. The smell and taste of Minerva LeBlanc was more nourishing than any food I could imagine. If only food could be as great as sex.

  You know how that first time is usually a bit awkward? Not like in books, where they always just jump on each other like champions, nobody fumbles, nobody messes up, everybody gets a medal—”our bodies fused together as one”—that kind of nonsense.

  Speaking for myself, I can’t help worrying whether she’s worried about how I’ll react to her body, her looks, her desires. Then: Will I have the stamina, the imagination she requires? Is she anxious about orgasms? All of that and more, you know?

  With Minerva, though, there was no awkwardness. No frightened egos, no negotiating. Although she’d been the one in control on the street, I found myself enjoying the lead in the bedroom.

  I always try to set myself a challenge when making love: Which part of her body would she least expect me to dwell on? You can’t imagine the sexual tension that creates. Well, perhaps you can. She’s expecting you to move on, get to the good parts, you know, but you just settle right there and linger and linger, and eventually, if she’s got a normal nervous system, she experiences a sort of breakthrough, you can feel it because a spark runs through her and she just sinks down under you, and you know you really have her. Because now she’s sensitized, she’s really feeling, and when you do get to the good parts—well, hold onto your Stroh’s, fans.

  Minerva LeBlanc, I’m pleased to report, liked my style.

  26

  In my dream I was swimming in a tropical sea just beyond a crashing surf line, surrounded by colorful non-threatening fish and mollusks. My heart was peaceful. I rolled onto my back and floated beneath a luminous green sky dotted by fluffy pink clouds.

  Suddenly a burglar alarm began ringing somewhere onshore, then an outrigger canoe came surging across the waves toward me. Bonnie and her mother were paddling like mad, and Bucky, seated in the stern, was shouting something unintelligible over their heads. He was bare-chested and looked like a boiled pig. Lou, in her overalls and plaid shirt, rose from the prow and took aim at me with a rusty harpoon. I jerked upright with a start, my heart drumming in my throat.

  It was dark, and the phone was ringing. I stumbled naked into the dining room to get it.

  “Lillian. Aunt Rosalie.” Her voice was low and urgent. “Are you getting up? It’s four-thirty.”

  My tongue was thick. “Aunt Rosalie? What—um—why—it’s still night.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t you remember? Uncle Guff? Today’s his last day.”

  A sledgehammer of regret rammed into my chest as I came fully awake and remembered what I’d forgotten.

  My Uncle Guff and Aunt Rosalie had more or less finished the job of rearing me after my parents died when I was twelve. They got me at the dawni
ng of a difficult adolescence, just as I was blossoming from an average, slightly rebellious kid into an ornery, pissed-off teenager. To this day I wince at some of the things I did and said to those kind people. They had no children of their own. I loved them and knew they loved me, though gallons of sodium pentothal couldn’t have gotten any of us to admit it.

  As an adult I tried to make it up to them by calling and visiting and being extra nice. About once a month we three would go bowling or shopping or fishing. Every few years I’d accompany them on a vacation in their boxcar-size motor home. They enjoyed having me around: someone to talk to who remembered the old days almost like they did.

  Uncle Guff was my father’s brother. He’d made a living as a mill worker at Great Lakes Steel for decades, and he was preparing to retire. About two months ago when we were out on the south end of Belle Isle trying to get the perch to bite, Aunt Rosalie had told me when Uncle Guff’s last day at the mill would be, while he kept his eyes on his bobber.

  The special day was today, and I had promised to go and commemorate it with a photograph of him arriving at the plant for the very last six a.m. shift of his life.

  “You have such a good camera,” Aunt Rosalie had said.

  Now she was saying, “Lillian? Are you there?”

  “Ohhh,” I said into the phone.

  “I’m so glad I called,” she whispered. “He’s in the bathroom now. If you’d forgotten to be there, he never would have said anything, but I know how terrible he’d feel. I’m fixing him ham and eggs.”

  “Oh, God, Aunt Rosalie, thank you for reminding me. I’m—I’m—yes, I’ll absolutely be there. In fact, I’m on my way. Yes. Absolutely.”

  I hung up, mumbling, “Oh, God, oh, God.”

  Of course she knew I’d forgotten; I couldn’t fake it with her. Nothing would have cut any ice, not even, “Gee, Auntie, I’ve been mixed up in a murder investigation where I almost got killed, and normal responsibilities have been slipping my mind.” No. I’d shown her, conclusively, that even in a once-in-a-lifetime situation I was not to be counted on. This for me would be yet another shameful thing to wince about once or twice a week for the rest of my life.

  But I had a chance for redemption. I’d go and set myself up for the best triumphant-workingman picture any shutterbug ever took.

  I grabbed a roll of Plus-X and my Canon and set them next to my keys, then returned to the bedroom.

  Minerva had been undisturbed by the phone call. She lay on my thin futon sleeping deeply, her body a perfect sculpture beneath the soft folds of the sheet.

  I employed my patented “kiss-awake” method, and she stirred. I briefly explained my mission and urged her to go back to sleep. “It isn’t even five o’clock yet. I’ll be back by seven, I think. I’ll pick up some doughnuts. Do you like crullers?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she sighed. “This is a great bed.” I was amazed; she turned onto her stomach and appeared to try to burrow deeper into the futon, which I regarded as little better than a stale pancake. It rested right on the floor. Mine was a low-tech bedroom.

  Her skin felt cool, so I drew my light summer blanket up to her neck and tucked it around her. Todd was sleeping in his bed in the corner.

  I threw on some clothes and gave her one more kiss on the back of the head, which stuck out from the blanket like a satiny coconut, then hurried out.

  The street was empty. I fired up my besmirched Caprice and headed for the Downriver steel town of Ecorse.

  Whenever I asked Uncle Guff to tell me about his work at Great Lakes, he invariably answered with a three-sentence resume: “I started in the flues.” Long pause, and a look into the far distance, lower lip between the teeth. Work in the flues, everyone knows, was dirty and dangerous. “Then I pulled ingots for a long time...real long time.” The gaze shifted nearer, into the middle distance, the mouth relaxed, and a series of nods would begin. “Now, why, obviously, I’m a crane operator.” And the shoulders would square up, and he would meet anyone’s eye with the confidence of a man whose place was high above the factory floor, who was entrusted with other men’s lives and took pride in it.

  When I was little I thought he was involved in the production of soft drinks, as I would hear about “the coke works” and “pouring slag.” I thought it would be exciting to mix big batches of Coke and pour off the resulting slag. Slag sounded like something I would force my enemies to drink, while I’d refresh myself with only the purest-quality Coke, iced down, of course, and fizzier than the kind found in restaurants and stores.

  I cruised down West Jefferson alongside the Detroit River, silvery ribbon of maritime commerce, and made it to the main gate with ten minutes to spare.

  The steel mill’s distinctive silhouette loomed like a sawtoothed mountain range over the riverside neighborhoods. Six miles of shoreline—that’s how big the place is. The docks front the water, then the mill buildings back up to them, then there are the rail yards, sort of all over the place. To get to their jobs in the mill, the workers have to climb up to a covered catwalk then cross over a thick braid of railroad tracks.

  I hung around the Quonset hut next to the catwalk looking for good angles. Men and women were coming to work, walking past the guard in ones and twos; I knew that as the clock neared six a.m., the influx of workers would become a thick stream. I watched for Uncle Guff’s red suspenders and knew he’d be watching for me.

  I decided to set up for a few different shots. I peered through my viewfinder, mentally noting light-meter readings and fooling with my shutter speeds and stops. I became absorbed with the problem of exactly matching up the mill’s roofline with the rising sun. The light meter didn’t like it.

  After a minute I heard the scuff of a shoe on pavement just behind me; I turned, and there was Uncle Guff looking the other way, as if he’d merely come over to inspect a weather-beaten fence post.

  “Uncle Guff!” I gave him a big hug and a kiss, and he looked down and tried not to smile.

  He was a trim man with thin lips and squared-off teeth, and bright blue eyes behind heavy safety glasses. He had on his usual work outfit of clean blue jeans, blue work shirt, and red suspenders. The suspenders were his only overt statement of individuality. The other employees favored heavy leather belts. One lean hand was wrapped around the handle of his dented black lunchbox. He held it up and said, “I’m gonna throw this here in the river after lunch.”

  I punched his arm. “All right!”

  We got down to business. I positioned him and started shooting. He stood calmly, ignoring the curious looks of the other workers, his expression dignified. Working quickly, I took shots in front of the door to the catwalk stairs, through the fence with the old administration building in the background, from a low angle showing the mill in the background, and a few close-ups. I got one glorious smile out of him when I called, “Think about clocking out this afternoon!”

  “That’s enough,” he said.

  I promised to get prints to him and Aunt Rosalie in a few days, and he turned and merged with the stream of workers going in. It was three minutes to six.

  I smiled all the way back to Eagle, thinking how happy he’d be at the end of the day. In retirement he’d go fishing more often, work in his garage shop, and take Aunt Rosalie on more trips in the motor home. He liked to fish wherever he went. Aunt Rosalie told me how he once dropped a line off the stern of the Staten Island Ferry when they were in New York for some wedding. He snagged a big dead turtle, and the deckhands hollered at him.

  I stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Woodward and picked up half a dozen crullers plus two large coffees. I love their crullers: The dough is very nice and eggy, and not as sweet as the other varieties.

  As I drove on home, I felt my confidence and optimism grow. Sure, I was in a fix, but I had Minerva LeBlanc on my side now. Together we’d get the goods on the Creighters, save my butt, and give her another book to write.

  What’s more, I was falling in love. I thought Minerva the most intelligent, sexy,
creative, fun person I’d ever met. I pictured us together in a variety of exciting situations, some involving armed confrontations with steely-eyed thugs, others featuring gourmet room-service trays and thick terry bathrobes.

  I parked the Caprice in my usual spot in front of the house. It felt good to be up and about so early. The birds were twittering; the neighborhood was coming alive. As I carried my camera and the doughnut go-tray up the porch steps and into the vestibule, I noticed Mr. McVittie’s front door standing open. That was unusual.

  The two flats shared a common front door into a vestibule; the McVitties’ front door opened to the left off the vestibule, and my stairs led upward to the right. In the summer the McVitties’ window air-conditioning unit was usually on, which called for all doors and windows to be shut. I listened for the hum of the air conditioner.

  Then I heard him calling my name from inside. I set my stuff on the stairs and went in.

  The flat was furnished in high ‘70s style, lots of avocado and gold, heavily worn shag carpeting, and plenty of antiquing and swags.

  “Lillian? Lillian!” he called. I followed his voice to the dining room.

  He was standing there in his pants and undershirt, barefooted, talking to the ceiling, staring at something up there. “Lillian?”

  “Mr. McVittie!”

  He turned and gave me a bewildered look. “There’s something. I can’t see so good.”

  I looked up and saw a stain on the ceiling about the size of a dinner plate. It was wet and very red. And it appeared to be spreading.

  The McVitties’ dining room was directly beneath my bedroom.

  27

  I tore out of the McVittie flat and rushed upstairs to mine. I couldn’t have moved any faster, yet I dreaded the moment I was hastening toward.

  I stopped at the doorway to the bedroom, seeing already the inconceivable, impossible, horrible reality.

  Minerva LeBlanc lay just as I had left her, facedown in my bed, the back of her head the only exposed part of her. There was so very much blood.