The Lillian Byrd Crime Series

by Elizabeth Sims

  The station cut to a reporter at the Hawleys’ home, where news of the arrest had brought out the neighbors. The reporter put his microphone to one of them.

  “She told me she did it!” the man said excitedly. “She came out yesterday morning to get the paper? I was walking the dog and we spoke? I finally killed the SOB, she says. And I’m like, ‘What’? An’ she says Robert, that’s her husband, she says, It was just a matter of time. An’ I go, Adele, are you all right?’ She says, Never better. I thought it was a joke, so I just kept walking. I had no idea. He was a nice guy, a real nice guy. I never knew what a monster she was, though. You never know about people.”

  The reporter asked, “Why do you think she did it?”

  “I don’t know. I always thought she was a nice lady. All the neighbors here, we’re all stunned, just stunned.”

  I sat listening, panting. “Holy hell,” I whispered. “Holy everloving hell.”

  The reporter said, “Novi police are investigating, and a statement is expected from the Oakland County prosecutor’s office later today.”

  She killed the bastard. Oh, my God, she did it. She said she was going to do it, and she did it. I remembered sitting with Adele Hawley at her kitchen table, I remembered her face with its flattened nose and the look of shame in her eyes. I’d watched that shame turn to rage, those eyes shooting needles of fury as I talked with her about her husband, and as the light of realization came to her. Well, Robert Hawley had been a piece of dung, a hateful batterer. And that was the end of him. I switched off the radio, swallowed, and got back on the road.

  My guess was that Robert slapped her around pretty bad after I fled with the letters from Trix. Adele had been mad then, that day, but had she found strength in her anger right then? No; Robert surely would have gotten the best of that match. Perhaps, though, it was for the last time. Perhaps that very night Adele began laying her plan, began honing that carving knife; began, already, the process of giving up her freedom. Of course, she had traded away the freedom of her soul long ago, having remained married to a batterer. Now, having committed murder, she was merely exchanging one kind of incarceration for another. I wondered what she had done in the twenty-four hours or more between the murder and her trip to the police station. Why didn’t she flee? Why didn’t she feel she deserved freedom, albeit with a bastard’s blood on her hands? There was a terrible honesty to what Adele Hawley had done. She had overcome her fear, had gathered her guts to attack and kill, most likely in cold blood. She had gathered herself to plunge a knife into human flesh, pull it out, plunge it in again and again, hear the sounds he would have made—certainly she would have attacked as he slept. Did he wake and struggle, did he fight for his life, or did he sink in shock to oblivion without knowing what was happening and why?

  _____

  At home I released Todd into our flat, where, as always, his careful habits entitled him to the run of the place. It was stuffy, so I opened all the windows wide, letting in a nice warm breeze. Then I went down and brought Duane upstairs. The McVitties stood together in their doorway.

  “Thank you,” I said fervently.

  “Thank you for your love,” Duane added.

  Upstairs, he drew back when he saw Todd. “Does he bite?”

  “No, don’t be afraid of Todd. He’s my closest male friend—since you, anyway.”

  “I bet he sheds.”

  Todd bumped up and sniffed Duane’s muddy shoes.

  I said, “I keep the place clean. Why don’t you take those shoes off?”

  “Are people allergic to rabbits?”

  “I don’t know. I guess some might be.”

  “I’ve never been tested.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Otherwise, this is a nice place.”

  “Why, thank you, Duane.”

  “Kind of ghetto chic,” he mused. “No, not ghetto—which is not an insult, by the way, but…more like military base dumpster aesthetic.”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s pretty utilitarian.”

  “Books warm up a room, though. Even if they’re just stacked up against the wall like that.”

  “Yeah. Look, why don’t you take over the bathroom for a while? Strip off those clothes and get in the shower? I bet you’d fit into a pair of my jeans and a T-shirt. You’ll feel better. Or would you like me to draw a bath for you?”

  “OK. Not too hot.”

  I set Duane up in the tub with a glass of ice water handy, then called the animal clinic and made an appointment for Todd for next Thursday. I’d left his food and water dishes clean and had only to fill them. He nibbled up some bunny chow and drank readily enough. “You’re OK, Toddy boy. I’ll get you some raspberry leaves in a little while. I’m glad to see you. Hang in there with me, OK?” I needed all the friendship I could get. I was so ashamed of how I had failed him in the parking garage. I couldn’t imagine going on without him. I sat with him and patted him and let him hop around. We played Follow the Finger, one of our quieter games.

  I thought about Bill Sechrist. I got out my notebook and wrote down everything I could think of. My brain was starting to really take hold of this one.

  When Duane emerged from the bathroom in a pair of my blue jeans and my black Zildjian Cymbals T-shirt he looked like a new man. A shaky man, a troubled man, to be sure, but renewed nonetheless.

  “Hey, cutie,” I said. “Feeling better?”

  “Yes, lots. I feel so butch in this T-shirt.”

  “Yeah, well, I want it back. Listen, you want to stay here for a while? You need a friend, you know.”

  He smiled sadly. “Oh, Lillian, thank you. You’re the best. And I would stay, except that it’s just so hot up here. Look, I’m sweating already.” He blotted his upper lip with the back of his hand. “I have central air in my place.”

  “Well, OK.”

  “Could you run me over to the cemetery to pick up my car? It’s still there. I mean, I hope it is, I parked outside the gates.” He stood expectantly.

  “Sure. What about a lawyer? Do you have a court date?”

  “Yeah, I guess I’d better talk to a lawyer. Do you know a good one?”

  “Well…no. Not really. But I can ask around.”

  “I’m pretty broke right now.”

  “That’s two of us. But you’re going to pay back the 500 dollars to the McVitties, right?”

  “They’ll get it back. I mean, I’m gonna show up in court.”

  “All right. What about work? You’ve got a job, right? In some architect firm? Like, do you have a steady paycheck from that place, or do you get paid on some kind of…” I stopped because he wasn’t listening to me.

  “Lillian, I feel…I feel that my life has changed. And is about to change more.”

  “Yeah?” I waited for him to explain. He gazed into the middle distance. I said, “You mean because of all…this?”

  “Yeah. Lillian, I need some time and space to deal with it.”

  “OK, but I was hoping I could get you to help me find your dad. Because I’m sorry, but I’m going to hunt down that son of a bitch if it’s the last thing I do. And I mean that, I really mean that.”

  Duane sighed miserably. “You want him to pay for what he did?”

  “In one way or another.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “To tell you the truth, right this minute I don’t know what that means. All I know is, I’m not through with this. I have not yet come to the end.”

  “Well…I think maybe I have.”

  “You don’t want to find your dad?”

  “I’m…I…my dad…”

  “I want to make him acknowledge what he did, if only once.”

  Duane’s lean jaw worked side to side. It looked painful. At length he said, “The last person in the world I want to see is my dad. Lillian, he’ll never give you what you want. I know him.”

  I saw how empty Duane felt.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe I would never get a feeling of fin
ality about it all. Maybe I was delusional. But I sure as hell had made a tremendous amount of progress. I’d gone from point zero to knowing what had happened that night and why it happened.

  My friend spoke again. “Lillian, are you after vengeance?”

  “No!” It came out automatically. But in fact, I wasn’t sure. Was the hot-cold feeling pure hatred? I was sorrowful and obsessed, that much was true. Did I want to take Bill Sechrist’s life? Actually kill the bastard? I couldn’t be sure, right then.

  23

  That night found me back at the Ritz having a room service dinner with Minerva. Dishes of seriously prepared food surrounded us. “You know, you could stay with me,” I offered. “Save a lot of money. I could fix you a steak like this. Honest.”

  “You’re the dearest person,” Minerva smiled. “I feel so secure when I’m with you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. But I want to stay here at the hotel because of the space, and the staff. I’ve asked them to set me up a private fax line here in the room; I’ve already got two phone lines, and they’re bringing me a PC tomorrow. They can simply produce whatever I need.”

  “Wow.”

  “You can get a lot done fast if you’re willing to pay for it. And you know money isn’t an issue for me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Besides,” she said, “I love room service, don’t you?” We were sitting in springily upholstered chairs the waiter had pulled up to the dining cart. The suite, four rooms plus two baths, was larger than the one we enjoyed in Las Vegas. The furniture was a bit heavy, but there were some fantastic pictures on the walls, an assortment of vintage and contemporary art I admired and envied. They actually had a Lewis D. Lewis in that suite, a small exquisite landscape done in fine pencil. It made me feel good just to look at it.

  “Oh, yes,” I agreed, inhaling the pleasant aromas. “This beef is awesome. And the side dishes. I’ve never seen such side dishes. Minerva, I—”

  “You make me smile, Lillian, you make me feel so good. Your energy. Your purposefulness. You make me feel whole.”

  She was relaxed, and I saw that she was continuing her journey toward better and better health. This made me so happy. She was preparing to fling herself into work again. And this too should have made me happy.

  “Minerva, I’ve got something to bring up. And I’m just going to, uh…I’m kind of worried. Uh, OK. You know I want to find Bill Sechrist. You know I want you to help me find him. We’ve talked about that. You’ve got resources like I never could hope to have. I’ve blatantly and shamelessly asked for them. I’ve asked for your time and effort and however much money it takes.”

  She listened with a bemused smile.

  I said, “But I’m not sure I want you to write about it afterward.”

  “Well,” she began carefully—

  “Wait. Please wait. We need to have an agreement before we go any further. Do you really want to help me?”

  “Yes, Lillian.”

  “Will you help me even if I—” I stopped. “I just realized you have the right to write about any of this whether I want you to or not, with or without my permission, or even my cooperation.”

  “Lillian.”

  “I’m not saying you would. I’m just realizing you could.”

  She swirled the wine in her glass. Her hand was graceful, holding that crystal bulb, her face thoughtful.

  “What,” she said, “is your objection to my writing your story?”

  “I’m just not sure I want the world reading it. I don’t want people to know…I mean, ideally I want Bill Sechrist brought to justice. Of course, I don’t know whether that’s possible. I want him to at least be brought to my justice. The justice of Lillian Byrd! You know I want to confront him. I feel if I can do that, I’ll be able to put the whole horror behind me. I want to look into his eyes and see what’s there. I don’t feel the need for the world to know the whole goddamn story.”

  I paused, and Minerva waited. “And I—I care for you, Minerva LeBlanc. You feel that I’m good for you. Well, you’re good for me. You’re good as hell for me, I’ll tell you. But frankly, I’m so…well, so obsessed, I know I am, and I can feel it growing. It’s like I want to work Sechrist out of my system, find my way to the end of this nightmare first. And then…there’s you. I don’t want my passion for resolving this thing to get mixed up with my passion for you. You’re an amazing woman, but I don’t know that I’m an equal for you.”

  With a direct look, she said, “Are you trying to say you want to back off from having sex with me?”

  “I don’t want that. But I feel it might be the right thing to do, temporarily. What do you think?”

  “I want you. And you want me. I delight in you. Why didn’t you bring your mandolin tonight?”

  That took me aback. “Do you remember me playing for you that night?” I asked. The night she was attacked.

  “Yes, I do.” Her face just opened up, right at that perfect moment. “I want to hear your music again.”

  She circled the top of her wine glass with her middle finger. The gesture hypnotized me.

  “Lillian. Listen to me now.” Her voice was low and steady. “You know I want to tell this story. I don’t need money, but I need work. I need work to feel alive. This is the work I do, I write crime. I write the real thing. You just don’t know, you don’t understand how much I could do with this story.” Plainly, her feeling for what she was saying was intense, yet I also thought she was making an effort not to frighten me with it.

  “Lillian, you would be a heroine in this book. You are a heroine. My God, you set out to solve a crime that’s more than thirty years old. You were a kid growing up in a rundown bar—”

  “It wasn’t rundown, it was blue-collar.”

  “Well, in a blue-collar bar where there were probably rats, and you almost lose your life in a hellish conflagration, and you become an orphan, and you overcome that, and one day a chance encounter prompts you to relive the whole tragic thing, and you set out to solve this mystery you never even knew existed! You dig around, you get your face bashed in, you fly to Las Vegas, you impersonate a mob babe, you get involved in a high-speed auto chase, you rescue this drug-addicted hooker with your bare hands from a burning car, you uncover the kind of betrayals that would absolutely destroy a weaker person, you persist in the face of danger and hopelessness, and yet you sit there as if you’re just some…average person, drifting through life!”

  She paused to catch her breath. I had to catch mine, too, after all that.

  I said, “How did you know about the rats?”

  “Damn it, Lillian, I wasn’t trying to be funny! I was trying to make you understand!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize!” I thought she was going to throw something. But I waited, and she calmed down. She sighed, and flipping her hair out of her eyes, said, “Look, we don’t have to decide anything right away. Anything about what I will or won’t write.”

  I said, “Do you think I’ll owe something to you if you help me?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  I could see pressing the issue would do no good. I still felt uncomfortable. “Minerva, I just don’t know.”

  Quietly, she said, “What’s really bothering you about this?”

  I took a long breath and came out with it. “I don’t want you exploiting my pain in a book.”

  She was insulted into blankness. She opened her mouth but nothing came out.

  I said, “I—I’m sorry. That’s just the way I feel. I’m glad we’re having this conversation now.”

  She composed herself with visible effort. “Lillian, we should give this issue a rest. Let me simply tell you two things. One, I promise that I’ll give you all the help I can, all the resources I can muster, to help you find Sechrist. Ask anybody in law enforcement who knows me, and they’ll tell you that’s a lot. And two, I guarantee I won’t let the issue of my writing come between us.”

  “That relieves m
e,” I said. “But how?”

  She smiled patiently. “You can’t control everything, you know. Just leave this part to me. All right?”

  “Well…OK.” I was baffled, but Minerva’s smile was so kind and loving that my fears slipped away.

  “Now, my brave ideal, tell me what you’re thinking regarding Sechrist. You said you organized some ideas. What do you say we start with those?”

  Instantly I warmed to our mission. “OK,” I said, sitting forward. “We ought to start in Florida, in Miami. I figure public records would be one way to go. He doesn’t have any need—that we know of—to use an alias, so the public records are a reasonable bet. Do you have any sources in the military bureaucracy? I mean, I guess some military records are public, but not all, right? Since Sechrist was in the Navy, if he got an honorable discharge, he’d be eligible for certain veterans’ benefits. Loans, maybe health care. And if he filed for something, if he filled out forms, those forms would have his address and maybe much more information, right?”

  “Right.” Minerva just smiled away.

  “Then,” I went on, “aside from the Navy, there’s other public records. Like if he got arrested for something, even something minor, there’d be a record of that.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m so glad you’re on my side, because you’ve got access to—well, you’re like a private investigator. You’ve got access to all these specialized, consolidated computer databases they have these days, don’t you? Where you put in somebody’s name and all kinds of shit comes up—real estate transactions, bankruptcies, that kind of stuff.” I looked at her. “How’m I doing?”

  “Superbly.”

  I really liked how her lips formed that word. “Well, you know, I’ve read all your books. Plus, I’ve read Calico Jones. I know what you think of those, but that author knows all about that stuff too—she endows Calico Jones with this supercomputer where she can find out all these incredibly arcane bits of information, with just the click of a mouse.”

  “Relax, Lillian, I know better than to sneer at Calico Jones.”

  Now she was making me laugh. “So, in the morning, you’ll get going on all that? You’ve got investigators you can call on to do those database searches, right?”