by Alex P. Berg
“Well, you can’t leave it at that,” I said. “Who was this mystery lawyer you dated?”
Moss waved a hand, but there was a mistiness in her eyes I hadn’t seen throughout the day. “That’s a story for another time. Besides, it slows down the drinking game if you expound on everything, you know?”
“Speaking of which,” said Justice. “Am I supposed to sit here with my hands in my lap? Knowing you, I’ll never touch my lager.”
“You do you, big guy. Nell. You’re up.”
I knew how to play the game, but I also wasn’t entirely sure how far to take it. Moss had shared something mildly scandalous, though, and I figured the whole point was to share experiences that were somewhat embarrassing or incriminating. “Okay. Here goes. Never have I ever… driven my dad’s car into the Earl River.” I cringed as I took a drink.
Moss’s eyes widened. “Really? And I got a funny look for making out in a courthouse?”
Justice looked at me sideways. “You drove it into the river? And you passed the driving course at the academy?”
I set my glass down and wiped my lip. “It was the canalized portion of the river, near Jameson Avenue where the guardrail is almost nonexistent. But… yeah. The front half got pretty wet.” I gave him a sly grin.
Justice erupted in laughter, either at the look on my face or the story itself. “Well, I’ll be. She just raised us, Ginger.”
“You know what that means, Ogden. You’ve got to raise back. Give us something tawdry. Something salacious.” Moss’s eyes twinkled.
Ogden rolled his eyes again. “I’m not talking relationships if that’s what you’re getting at. But I do have something that’s coming to mind. Not an incident I’m proud of, mind you. Never have I ever… accidentally sat on a pixie and sent her to the hospital.”
Justice drank. I sputtered in my beer, and Moss gasped. “No!”
The ogre shrugged. “You think I have side mirrors on this big body? I’ve got blind spots, woman. How was I supposed to know she was there?”
We all laughed, and the rounds continued apace. Appetizers came and went, and the pitcher was taken and refilled. I learned Moss’s appetite for men was bigger than my own, and based on the situations she’d put herself in, she wasn’t too concerned with what other people thought of it. I learned that Justice, for all his dapper attire and professionalism, was someone I never wanted to mess with. More importantly, I got the impression it bothered him that he had to constantly suppress his baser, more emotional side for people to take him seriously, though he never came out and said it in so many words. In return, I think I did a good job conveying to Moss and Justice that I’d been quite the screwup as recently as a few months ago but that I was doing my best to turn over a new leaf, and both of them seemed okay with that. Maybe it was part of being in homicide. They’d seen so much that was beyond the pale that my occasional indiscretions were amusing rather than concerning.
More than anything though, I laughed and drank and had a good time, which was something I hadn’t done in a long while, not even alongside Cliff. Sure, we’d gone out and had dinner and drinks on occasion, but I couldn’t recall a single instance with him where I’d even had a good belly laugh, never mind been wracked so hard with laughter that my stomach ached. Once again I wished Dean had made the time to join us, because if anyone needed the sweet release of laughter, it seemed as if it was him. Perhaps it was his fiancée’s death that still bothered him, or maybe it was the weight of expectations he’d placed on his own shoulders, but even I knew most problems couldn’t be solved by working harder until they went away.
Moss set down her empty pint glass as an epic burp erupted from her lips. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she patted her chest. “Whoa. Pardon me. I guess that’s what I get for downing three pints in two hours.”
“Pretty sure that was four,” said Justice. “And it’s been closer to three hours.”
Ginger glanced at her wristwatch. “Holy harvest. You’re right. About the time, if not the beer. We should wrap this up. If one of us is hung over tomorrow, Dean might find it funny, but all three of us would rub him the wrong way.”
“As you already said, that’s more of a you problem than a me problem,” said Justice as he lifted his glass again. “But that’s what you get for having such a low body mass.”
“Oh, really?” said Moss with a smirk. “Are you suggesting you’d like me better if I was shaped more like you?”
Justice shook his head. “Wouldn’t bother me one bit, Ginger. You know that’s not what I like about you.”
“Well, it should be. ‘Cause I look damned good.” Moss got up from her chair and gave a little wiggle, which given her small waist and ample bosom was something worth looking at. “You want to hit the bathroom, Nell?”
I waved her off. “I’m doing okay.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll flag down our waitress if I see her.” She shot a playful wink in Justice’s direction before heading off through the crowd.
She must not have gotten all her wiggles out, or she was feeling the effects of the beers, because she had a decent strut going as she left, even if her back end wasn’t as full and round as my own. It was enough to captivate me, and yet I don’t think Justice gave her a second glance.
I leaned over. “You know she likes you, right?”
“Ginger?” Justice raised an eyebrow. “We’re friends. She might like me, but not like that.”
“Oh, yes indeed like that,” I said. “And you might just be friends now, but I guarantee you she’d be willing to steer that car into a new lane if you waved her over.”
Justice set his glass down. “Look, Nell, don’t get me wrong. I love Ginger, I really do, but not that way. She’s like a little sister to me. I’d put my life on the line for her, and I have once or twice, but that’s it. She’s not my type, and even if she was, we work together. I wouldn’t cross that line. It’s too risky, know what I mean?”
I thought about my relationship with Cliff, who worked patrol at the Williams Street precinct. I’d been concerned about our supervisors finding out we were dating, but now that I’d moved to the Fifth that probably wasn’t an issue anymore. Then again, there might be more pressing concerns for our relationship. We’d talked about my transfer, though not yet in depth. The fact that Dean had picked me up, even without having made me any promises of future success or granting me any favors, might not sit well with him. He was very much a by the books kind of guy.
I brushed my concerns aside. “So if Moss’s small and busty thing doesn’t work for you, what is your type?”
For the first time since we’d ordered our pitcher, Justice stiffened. He gave me a glare that wasn’t entirely playful. “My type is none of your business, same as it isn’t Ginger’s.” He shot a thumb toward the exit. “Go on. You can head out if you’d like. Moss and I will take care of the bill.”
I lifted a slightly beer-soaked eyebrow. “You sure?”
“We make more than you do. Not a lot more, but enough to treat you this once.”
A smile returned to his lips as he said it, enough for me to know I wasn’t in the doghouse for pressing him on his romantic tastes. With a quick glance at my watch, I told him to give my regards to Ginger and headed out.
Chapter Sixteen
The lonely glow of a floor lamp greeted me as I stepped into my apartment, a simple one bedroom with a common space in the front and a half height wall separating the living room from the kitchen. Other than the muted warble of a neighbor’s radio, the space was quiet and still.
“Cliff?” I said in a low voice. “You still up?”
He didn’t respond, so I latched the door shut and took off my shoes. I flicked a switch as I headed into the kitchen, but Cliff wasn’t hiding in the gloom like a brooding father, ready to confront me after breaking curfew. There was a piece of lined paper resting upon the counter however.
I picked it up. The note was in Cliff’s messy script.
* * *
&n
bsp; Nell,
I got takeout. Chicken stir fry with noodles. I don’t know when you’ll be home, so I left it in the fridge. Hope your first day at the Fifth went well.
Love,
Cliff
* * *
The message was short and sweet, but I blinked as I read the valediction one more time. Love, Cliff. We’d been living together for over two months, and yet I couldn’t recall ever having told Cliff I loved him. Surely I must’ve said it in passing? It seemed like the sort of thing I’d randomly utter as he headed off to work or while lying in his arms, playing with his chest hair after sex, but I couldn’t remember having uttered the words, nor could I remember him saying them to me before. Yet here they were, staring me in the face from a note on the counter about chicken lo mein. Had he done it on purpose? Was it a message, or had he scrawled it on his way to bed, not even thinking it over?
I set the note down, thinking I might need another drink to help me understand the implications of it, but as my stomach growled in frustration, I realized I might need the stir fry instead. For as many beers as I’d tipped back at the Jjade Palace, I’d only eaten a few potato skins and soft pretzels, which constituted more of a snack than a true meal.
I pulled open our fridge and searched inside for the leftovers, which wasn’t a tall order given the appliance’s perpetual state of emptiness. With the waxed paperboard box in hand, I pulled a fork from a drawer and tested the contents. The noodles and chicken had cooled, but they weren’t stone cold either, which was the only bar they had to clear for me in my inebriated state.
I cast a glance at Cliff’s note as I stuck a forkful of sauce-slathered noodles into my maw. Clearly, Cliff’s amorous intent would have to be carefully considered, but I was in no condition to do it now. More importantly, I didn’t want to, so I folded the piece of paper in half and tossed it to the side before retiring to the sofa chair in the living room.
My mind remained pleasantly empty as I shoveled cubed chicken and oily noodles down my gullet, but I could only sit for so long in the quiet before my mind wandered off in search of more intriguing surroundings. Luckily for me, those environs weren’t hypothetical fantasies of Cliff’s and my future but rather the Vernon and Daly aviary.
Not that I was a seasoned expert in the detective game, but it seemed to me as if Dean, Moss, Justice and I had spent far too long trying to identify the remains rather than answering the far more pressing question of why anyone would’ve dumped remains there in the first place. Don’t get me wrong. I understood the value in identifying the bones. Without knowledge of who’d been murdered, we couldn’t speculate as to a motive for murder, but gosh darn it if the motive for leaving the remains in the aviary wasn’t the real head scratcher.
The fact that the ground underneath the ash and bones had been scorched suggested someone had placed the remains there on purpose, intentionally setting fire to the ground cover to make the scene look realistic. I could only assume the intent was to frame someone for murder, but who? Krzysztof Radoslaw, the zookeeper with the sallow skin and the bags under his eyes, or one of the other attendants? Why would anyone come after them? As carnies, they wouldn’t have financial assets to speak of, so maybe the frame was personal. If the bones belonged to Stella Vernon as we suspected, perhaps the motive for her murder was related to something salacious. According to JT, she largely led her own life. She was often out and about. If her drug use was any indication, she was depressed, and Vernon’s statements made it seem as if she was disaffected with her life. It wouldn’t be crazy to think she was having an affair. Maybe her husband even knew about it, but he wouldn’t murder her over it, would he? If she’d been the one committing infidelities, he could divorce her without having to worry about giving her a portion of his assets, and that’s assuming someone like JT Vernon would divorce her at all. Given his political campaign, he might choose to keep such behavior close to his vest, at least until after the election. So who then might have a motive to off Stella? Someone at the circus who loved her from afar?
Then again, maybe the remains weren’t left in the aviary on purpose. After all, if the murderer intended to frame someone, they’d done a terrible job at it. There was no murder weapon at the scene, no witnesses, no body, and no physical evidence. If not for the diamond recovered from the ash, we wouldn’t have anything tying the bones to Stella Vernon, though I’m sure we would’ve made the connection eventually after a missing persons report was filed. Maybe the remains were left there on accident. As Cortez mentioned, it was possible that recently cremated remains could’ve scorched the earth under them, but that presented an even more implausible situation than a poor frame—that someone had been carrying Stella Vernon’s hot remains in a thermos or cooler, been spooked, dropped them, and abandoned them.
It all came back to the same thorny question: why were the remains in the aviary?
I dug around in the bottom of my paperboard container, searching for the last of the noodles. Maybe the drug angle Dean uncovered was more important than he’d realized. Perhaps it wasn’t Stella’s dealer who murdered her but a fellow user. After all, someone would have to be high out of their mind to carry their friend’s cremated remains around, stumble into an aviary, and accidentally lose them. But what explanation made more sense?
I hopped out of my seat and headed back to the kitchen, licking the sauce from my fork as I considered my hypothesis. I didn’t know much about benzedrine, but from what Dean told me, it was a dangerous drug. I didn’t know if it could cause paranoia or psychosis that could turn an otherwise normal individual into a crazed killer, but we didn’t know for sure that Stella Vernon or her friends were only using benzedrine. If they were hooked on one kind of pill, that made them more likely to be abusing other drugs as well, or so my high school health teacher would have me believe.
Of course, if the case turned as much into a narcotics investigation as a homicide one, how would that affect Dean? He’d taken it hard learning that Stella was an addict, and though he’d composed himself in short order, I had to assume being confronted with the same drugs that killed his fiancée time and time again wouldn’t be easy for him.
I shook my head as I tossed the paperboard container into the trash and the fork into the sink. Even thinking about what happened to his fiancée made my heart ache for him. While I couldn’t relate exactly to what he’d gone through, I had an inkling. My father was still alive, but alcoholism had irrevocably changed him, taking from me the man I’d loved and killing him as effectively as an overdose might’ve.
Still, seeing Dean in that moment of weakness, seeing him stripped down to his raw emotional core and laid bare, he’d seemed so much more human. It wasn’t that I didn’t like his cool, analytical side. His intellect and drive, while intimidating from a professional standpoint, were eminently attractive, but the humanity he’d shown me in the car was even more so.
Actually, if I was being honest with myself, there were a number of things about Dean I found attractive.
I chewed on that fact as well as my lip, glancing at Cliff’s folded note. I shook my head and sighed, wondering what I was doing as I headed toward our bedroom. I opened the door slowly, slipping inside without a sound. Once there, I worked quickly, stripping off my uniform, brushing my teeth, and emptying my bladder in the attached bath, all before sliding into bed next to Cliff. He shifted and groaned, turning onto his side and preemptively putting a stop to any cuddling that might’ve happened.
I settled my head into my pillow, my gaze on Cliff’s broad back. “Sorry,” I whispered as I closed my eyes. “I’ll be home earlier tomorrow. Promise.”
But even though he was asleep, I didn’t say I love you.
Chapter Seventeen
Only Justice was in his chair when I arrived at my desk the following morning. He tipped his head at me as I entered our cluster. “Morning, Phair.”
I gave the ogre a small wave as I passed him. “Morning, Justice.”
I must not have resp
onded with enough verve, as a knowing smile spread across his lips. “Feeling alright this morning, Officer?”
I sat down gingerly, setting my mug of coffee beside me. I spoke with more conviction than I felt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective.”
Justice snorted. “Sure you don’t. But I appreciate your willingness to tough it out. That’s one thing you’ll learn about us. Do whatever you please in your own time. So long as it doesn’t affect performance, none of us will give a darn about it.”
I took a long draught from my mug, filling my nostrils with the brew’s vaguely earthy aroma. Truth be told, I wasn’t in bad shape. I’d woken up with a headache and a dry mouth, but of nausea I had none, nor had I barfed up my noodles. I would’ve appreciated a few more hours of sleep, but when wasn’t that the case? “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Justice turned to the materials on his desk, but I wasn’t quite ready to get back to work. Wasn’t that one of the perks of being a detective, after all? Getting to waste the first half hour of the day over a mug of joe?
“I had fun last night, for what it’s worth,” I said. “It was nice getting to know another side of you.”
Justice turned back around, his chair complaining. “Me, too. But that was last night, and now we’re on the clock. The socializing is best kept for after hours.”
So much for my delusions of a slow morning. “Got it. So where’s everyone else?”
Justice lifted one of his thick eyebrows. “You’re telling me your early arrival is an accident and not a plan to show how much of an eager beaver you are?”
I took another sip of coffee to hide my reaction. “Um… no. Clearly I’m trying to prove how dedicated I am.”
Justice snorted and gave me a toothless smile. “Fact of the matter is, I’m not sure where the others are. Moss doesn’t always get the worm, if you catch my drift, but Dean practically lives here. I’m surprised I beat him, much less you. Although… Speak of the devil.”