The Lillian Byrd Crime Series

by Elizabeth Sims

  I watched the planes some more. “I wondered if she remembered that.”

  _____

  Minerva had paid for first class, her usual. We settled into our deluxe seats, and she got out a notebook and started to write. The plane took off into the magnificence of the desert sky.

  My mind was going too fast, and I found myself getting more and more nervous. The hot-cold feeling surged through my chest. I gazed out the window at the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains, their crags flattened by the noon sun, every gully exposed. Those mighty mountains appeared tame in that flat light. Tame but somehow not benign.

  I turned back to the interior of the cabin. My mind needed rest. It needed escape. It needed…

  I rooted in my gym bag, found my copy of The Ransom of Angeline Carey where I’d thrown it in the bottom, and opened it. Right away the story occupied my mind and settled my nerves.

  Calico Jones was a marvelous heroine. Oh, the competence of her trigger finger; oh, the lustiness of her grin. I took up where Calico bursts in on the bad guys—you remember Calico’s mission in this one: This sexy young beef jerky heiress has been kidnapped by a PETA-like organization. The organization does not demand a cash ransom; they want nothing less than the immediate destruction of all beef jerky processing machinery in the western hemisphere, starting with the state of California.

  As a person who enjoys a chaw of jerky now and then, I really got involved in the ethics of the story. I myself began to question the motives of the beef jerky industry.

  Well, these thugs who are really committed idealists, they got hold of Angeline Carey and spirited her to this very secret location, which is the place Calico Jones needs to figure out and get to, before it’s too late. The Carey family is bossed by this crusty old patriarch who wishes like hell the animal rights people would take money. He totally refuses to bargain with them in terms of destroying the beef jerky processing machinery. Beef jerky sales, you may or may not know, run to the millions and millions of dollars per year, a tremendously significant share of the snack food market. The author of these Calico Jones books—I forget her name—boy, she really does her homework. Anyway, this patriarch has hired Calico Jones to rescue his precious niece, but he keeps telling Calico what to do and how to do it, and he keeps dicking around, getting in the way of her investigation, all the while yelling at her to do it faster. So annoying. I kept wishing Calico Jones would just blow the bastard away so she could really flex her muscles and get the job done.

  The amazing thing is that Calico Jones is a vegetarian, yet still she took on this case. Well, that’s because she’s a professional. She doesn’t let principles get in the way of business.

  So the bad guys—I should say “bad” guys, because in their eyes they’re the good guys—they’ve got Angeline Carey, and they’ve lost patience with the Carey patriarch, who still thinks he can buy them off. They’re about to do away with her in a particularly grisly fashion when Calico Jones, wearing her trusty .45-caliber semiautomatic, finally breaches the security of their hideout. I hate to ruin it for you, but get this: Having invaded the compound and neutralized the guards outside, she threads her way through the air shafts and drops down from the ceiling right onto this depraved scene of bondage and menace. Single-handedly, she rescues the helpless, gorgeous, innocent yet sexually competent heiress just as the “bad” guys are about to begin their chopping procedures, and she drills only two of them (out of a total abduction team of five) only after they pull their illegally modified 9mm Uzis on her.

  At this point Angeline Carey’s pure violet eyes are bottomless pools of gratitude, and I was betting that Calico Jones would receive quite a special and intimate reward for her tremendous achievement, as of the very next chapter, when I became aware of Minerva reading over my shoulder.

  “My God, that’s awful writing,” she commented.

  “What?” My jaw dropped. “What?”

  “Well—Lillian. Just look at it. Is every sentence in the whole book hackneyed, or is it just that page? I mean, the vocabulary is fourth-grade level, the clichés are so abundant they’re practically—”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Wait just a minute. Are you kidding? Do you know how popular this writer is? Are you telling me that her millions and millions of fans must be dimwits or something? Take me, for instance, I have a college degree. Don’t you think I can tell the difference between a good story and a pile of—”

  Minerva backed off fast. “Lillian, Lillian…” She patted my arm comfortingly. “No, I certainly am not saying that. It’s just that—”

  “I know a good story when I see one!”

  “Yes…Yes, absolutely.”

  “I think the Calico Jones series is great.”

  “I think they’re about to give us lunch.”

  I knew in my heart Minerva was right, but I couldn’t admit it out loud. I just love those books and that’s all there is to it. My soap bubble of fantasy is tenuous enough as it is, without somebody coming along trying to mangle it.

  _____

  I helped Minerva settle in at the Ritz-Carlton in Dearborn, her favorite local hotel, helped her hang up her elegant sophisticated clothes, then got ready to go pick up Todd and look up Duane.

  “Lillian, wait a minute,” said Minerva. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sit down.”

  I did so.

  She sat beside me on a beautiful upholstered thing that I somehow knew was called a divan, not a couch. It’s hard to say why. This hotel was tremendously classy; I’d first met Minerva in its flower-bower lobby. The lack of a clanging casino made the place calmer than the Hilton in Las Vegas—quieter, certainly—but also somewhat boring by contrast. The view from Minerva’s upper-floor suite could hardly compare to Las Vegas: instead of sere mountains and desert—or the dazzling Strip, depending which way you faced—the windows here in Dearborn overlooked the Southfield Expressway, the Ford Glass House, sundry office parks, and the monotonously level, albeit treed, glacier-scraped land. But it was a familiar landscape to me. I was back in Michigan. Back home.

  “I have something to ask you,” Minerva began. She took my hand. Her eyes were solemn. “I want to write your story.”

  “Uh…what? I mean…You what?”

  “I’m ready to write a book again,” she said eagerly. “My next book. I’m well enough to write again. And I want to write about this. This incredible story you’re living right now, this amazing story you’re discovering, this puzzle you’re solving.”

  Had she whacked me between the eyes with a kielbasa, I couldn’t have been more surprised.

  “How do you feel about that?” she asked.

  “Uh,” I said, “you mean a book about—”

  “About the fire at the Polka Dot Bar so long ago, and about why the embers there are still hot.”

  “Uh,” I said.

  “What do you think?”

  “Uh…I guess I should have realized…uh. I don’t know if I can answer you right now.”

  “Well,” she said, looking at me closely, “please think it over today, OK?”

  “OK. I—I will.”

  _____

  I walked out of the hotel into a taxi for home. I expected to drop my bag in my flat and turn right around again and take the Caprice out, to pick up Todd at Billie’s. My car was all right in my spot at the curb, but as soon as I walked into the vestibule, the McVitties’ door swung open and my landlord, Mr. McVittie, motioned me urgently to come in.

  Their place never changed, except that the footpaths in the shag carpet got deeper and smoother over time. Ever deeper and smoother. That’s shag for you.

  To my astonishment, I beheld Duane Sechrist lying limply on their living room couch. His clothes were filthy, as if he’d been digging a trench. Mrs. McVittie was in the act of applying a damp washrag to his forehead.

  “Duane!”

  He was barely able to speak. “Li—Lillian?”

  He tried to sit up, but Mrs. M
cVittie murmured, “There now, there now.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “He got arrested,” Mr. McVittie explained briskly, “and we bailed him out. Five hundred dollars it cost. Come in, lemme shut the door, I got the air conditioning running.”

  “What?”

  Clutching his damp cloth, Duane struggled to a sitting position. “It’s true,” he said. “When I got back from Vegas I—I sort of lost it. You said to see what I could dig up. So I did.”

  For the second or third time that day, my mouth fell open. “Duane. You didn’t.”

  “I tried to, last night. I didn’t get all the way down before morning, though. So I got caught.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I couldn’t stand it anymore! I had to know!”

  “Were you—by yourself? Or—”

  “Yeah. That money—that $2,000—that was the last of my ready cash. I used it to buy a shovel and an axe—for when I—got there, and to bribe the night watchman. He was only too glad to—”

  “And then you started digging up the grave of Patricia Lynn Hawley.”

  “That’s right.”

  Addressing me, Mrs. McVittie said, “I baked some gingerbread, dear, would you like some?”

  “No, thank you, Mrs. McVittie.”

  “Duane’s already had some, haven’t you, Duane?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ll have some,” said Mr. McVittie.

  “Something to go with?”

  “Glass of milk.”

  “All right, coming up.” Mrs. McVittie made her unsteady way to the kitchen. The both of them were getting up there agewise. Mrs. McVittie’s tremor had become more pronounced in the last year or so. And she had to inject herself with insulin every day, not to mention forego the heavenly gingerbread that was her specialty.

  Duane repeated, “I had to know. Something inside me…When I got off that plane I felt like a complete failure. Then something just went bang! inside me, and I went and did it. You’d mentioned Mt. Olivet, so I knew where to go.”

  I said, “But how were you going to—”

  “I knew what was…there…I knew I wasn’t going to be able to recognize…a person, OK? I knew that. I had a plastic bag. I was going to get a piece of…something that would…have DNA in it. They can tell, if you give them a sample from a body, and blood from you, they can tell if you’re related.”

  I sank into an armchair. “But morning came before you got done.”

  “Yeah!” he said passionately. “The day crew showed up and found me asleep on the grass. I was exhausted!” His voice rose to a wail. “Just look at my hands!”

  They were torn up all right, raw and blistered. Mrs. McVittie returned bearing gingerbread and milk for her husband. Mr. McVittie set the milk on the coffee table, then balanced the plate on his knee and dug in. There was something so effortlessly matter-of-fact about the McVitties.

  Duane went on, “So I got arrested for desecrating a grave. I knew you were still in Las Vegas. Like I said, my cash was gone.”

  “Why did you call the McVitties?”

  He touched his sore fingertips to his muddy hair. “Lillian, I didn’t want my friends to…to know about this.”

  “But you’d never met these people.”

  “I remembered their name. I remembered you speaking well of them.”

  I turned to Mrs. McVittie, who was watching Mr. McVittie chomp his gingerbread. “And you two just…you just…”

  Mrs. McVittie said, “He explained that he was a friend of yours. That was good enough for us. He has no family, you know. So we got the money together and went on down.”

  I turned to Mr. McVittie, who nodded grudgingly.

  I was about to say something about the bail money when I sensed Duane gazing at me intensely. I turned my attention back to him. There was fear in his face, dread in his eyes, yet I also perceived a question. Yes, there was a question, the question he wanted to ask, the final horror. He wanted to know.

  I gave him a steady look, just to make sure. His expression didn’t change. He was ready.

  I said, “It’s her in there. You almost reached her. Your mother’s body is down there in Trix Hawley’s grave. Trix told me how they worked it—very close to the scenario that had occurred to me. Your dad got your mom plastered on booze and her meds. While she was passed out, he brought her into the bar, put Trix’s ring on her finger, and started the fire. And that was the end.”

  His eyes spilled over and a moan came out of him, from deep in his gut.

  I said, “You know it’s true. I’m sorry, Duane.” Sinking back into the cushions, my friend sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

  22

  I went upstairs, dropped my gym bag, and phoned up Billie. It was Monday, her day off.

  “How’s Mr. Todd?” I asked.

  “Fine, but he misses you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, he’s been kind of listless.”

  “Well, I’m coming right over.”

  In her living room I picked up my good, calm, intelligent furry friend and looked him over.

  “He does look a bit peaked,” I said, feeling his body through his thick silky fur.

  “How the hell does a rabbit look peaked?”

  “Well, like this. See him? I think he’s losing weight.”

  “He didn’t eat much, at that. How old is he?”

  “Eight and a half.”

  “Mm, Lillian, you know, they don’t live all that long.”

  “Yeah, I know. I think I’ll get the vet to look him over.”

  While Todd didn’t look quite exactly right, he had the same effect on me as he always did: tranquilizing, reassuring. I fancied he was glad to see me.

  Billie reminded me that I’d promised to explain to her what the hell I was up to these days.

  “Oh, Billie, it’s a long one.”

  She folded her arms and stood stolidly on her career-waitress legs, ropy with varicose veins. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me?” she said.

  “I can’t, I gotta go. You know, this—investigation I’m doing isn’t over, so whatever I tell you wouldn’t even make any sense yet.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “I trust the hell out of you, Billie!” I did, too. “It’s—this is a family matter.”

  “About Uncle Guff?”

  “No, he’s not involved at all. This is from a long time ago.”

  “Your mom and dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wondered. Other than the bruises you had the other night, there was something I’d never seen in you before. You were somewhere else. Like there was something…about mortality in your face. Look. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Billie.”

  “I don’t have to know the details, but…just…can you just tell me if you’re really all right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “You’re doing it.”

  “All right. Go on now. I’ll call you. We need to eat together. Soon.”

  “Yeah. Let’s break some bread.”

  “Soon!”

  “OK.”

  I loaded Todd into the Caprice’s passenger seat and we began the drive home, twenty minutes from Billie’s house in Warren.

  “Gonna get you an appointment with Dr. Gatz,” I told him. “Gonna get you checked out, buddy, OK?”

  I flipped on the news radio station and we listened along.

  Part of being home in Detroit is hearing the familiar voices on the radio, the announcers with their well-worn nasality or chestiness, the intimately annoying advertisements, the excruciating jingles, the traffic reports on the notorious expressways with their potholes and bottlenecks. It’s a year-round challenge to drive in Detroit. In winter the ice and snow make treacherous the smallest trip, and in summer half the expressways are under repair from the ravages of winter. The expressways all have names, and each calls up a different
feeling and image. The Lodge with its sheer concrete canyons, the soaring skyway of the Fisher, the dismal grittiness of the old Davison.

  The radio reminds you of the reality of Detroit. It’s a hard-luck town, what with the struggles of the automobile industry in the last few decades. But perhaps because of that, it is, thankfully, a totally unpretentious town. You don’t pay extra for jicama garnish because there is no jicama garnish. You get a ham sandwich and you pay for a ham sandwich because ham sandwich is on the menu. Your UAW windbreaker coordinates with jeans or a skirt. A six-pack of Stroh’s is a nice companion for a Red Wings game on TV or while you give out candy on Halloween night. Adventure travel means riding the Gratiot bus line. You’ve got an uncle in the furniture business.

  It was 5 in the afternoon; drive time was heating up. I listened to the national report at the top of the hour: a slow news day. Congress couldn’t make up its mind about a bill affecting agriculture policy, the Federal Reserve wasn’t about to lower interest rates after all, a Third World government had been found to be more corrupt than most. On the local front, a coalition of downtown businesses was raising money to pay for extra street cleaning, a suburban drug bust had nailed ten rich kids, and then there was another item.

  “A Novi woman turned herself in to police this morning in connection with the murder of her husband. Robert N. Hawley, 61, was found dead yesterday in the bedroom of his home in Novi. WWJ reported that a family friend discovered Hawley, who had been stabbed repeatedly. According to Novi police, at 8:30 this morning the victim’s wife, Adele C. Hawley, walked into the police station and confessed to the murder.”

  I pulled into a Farmer Jack parking lot and listened.