The Violet Hour

by Richard Montanari

  Elizabeth Crane seemed surprisingly calm for a woman who had lost her husband within the past few days, but Nicky figured that people grieve differently. Italians and blacks went nuts, lots of flailing and wailing, lots of swan-diving onto caskets. Irish got plastered. Jews turned their mirrors to the walls, sat shiva. Protestants, it seemed, got quiet.

  She met him at the door, shook hands with her icy bone-china fingers, led him to the living room, poured coffee. White piano, white carpeting, white walls, white cups, saucers. Thank God the coffee was brown, Nicky thought. And dark brown at that. Certainly better than the hobo shit he had brewed that morning. The coffee warmed him, but he still got the feeling he had been sent to the waiting room outside George Orwell’s Room 101.

  They sat on opposing white love seats, Nicky on the edge of his, separated by a white marble coffee table, a table bearing a fan of oversized European magazines and a vase full of huge red gladiolas, the only real color in the room. As Elizabeth Crane talked about her husband, and the brutal way he met his death, Nicky found his eyes returning to the bloodred flowers.

  She gave him a brief history of her husband’s life, through his undergraduate work at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, his graduation from Harvard Medical School, fifth in his class, his residency at the University Hospitals in Cleveland. At thirty-five, Benjamin Crane moved back to his hometown of Erie and opened a private practice.

  They had no children, she said, by choice. She said his only real diversions were golf, gourmet cooking, and his computer.

  But for some reason, she said, he had erased his hard drive the day of his death. She noticed it when she turned on the computer to retrieve some financial information for their probate lawyer and found the hard drive empty. No programs, no directories, no files.

  She refilled their coffee cups, pensively, obviously distracted. Nicky remained very still; the white room, for a few moments, stealing all sound, all thought. Eventually she spoke.

  She said that she found her husband on the back patio, a packet of heroin and a disposable hypodermic needle at his side. And although it took her a while to get it out, she managed to tell Nicky what the papers meant by ‘stabbed.’

  The Erie County coroner said that, although the official cause of death was heroin poisoning, the large amount of blood that was found was due to the fact that Benjamin Matthew Crane’s lips, upper and lower, were removed with a scalpel.

  Neither were found at the scene.

  23

  THE POETRY SECTION at Paige Turner Books was fairly extensive, at least by comparison to the Science Fiction and How-To sections of the store, each of those covering no more than three shelves.

  As Amelia sat behind the counter, minding the store, she skimmed a dozen anthologies, read a score of indices to first lines, taking time out to ring up a few sales while Paige ran some errands. Nothing. No poem matched the one in the email.

  Along the way she read a poem that made her cry – something called ‘Love Song: I and Thou,’ by Alan Dugan – and a few that made her laugh; more than a few that made her think, kindling an adult interest in a subject she had so violently resisted as a schoolgirl.

  By noon, Amelia had skimmed her way through all the poetry books, including the Pelican Series Shakespeare. Paige returned at one o’clock, a half dozen huge boxes of used books in tow, none of it poetry.

  On to the library.

  The Collier Falls Neighborhood library was a three-room, ivy-laced brick building on Ludlow Circle, and it was known, locally, to have a fairly extensive audio book collection and a rather fancy schedule of hours. Amelia found the library open and all but deserted when she walked in at a few minutes after one.

  She walked the length of the building, toward the darker end of the large main room, away from the windows, looking for the eight hundred section. She found it, stepped down the row, ran her eyes over the hundreds of titles. It was at moments like these that she realized, with equal amounts of joy and sadness, that it was her limited education, and her almost slavish envy of those more schooled than she, that had driven her to Roger St John’s arms in the first place.

  She had been twenty-three when they’d met, her love life consisting of a Saturday night dinner-and-a-movie relationship with Jimmy Barone, Jr., then twenty-six, he of the endless pyramid schemes, he of the spotless Ford Thunderbird and shag haircut. Life, at that time, was living at home, working downtown, and panting her way through a weekly, passionless hump at Jimmy Barone, Jr.’s, tiny apartment at Marsol Towers.

  Then her brother Garth invited her to a party at University Circle and introduced her to an old CWRU classmate named Roger St John.

  The first time she saw Roger he was leaning against a wall, a Rob Roy in hand, talking to a young woman who looked like a cross between Bizet’s Carmen and a South Dakota truck-stop hooker. Amelia immediately categorized this handsome stranger with the wavy hair, winning smile, and great shoulders. Here was a thirty-something man hitting on a child. Of course, the child was only a few years younger than Amelia, but Amelia felt so much more dignified and ladylike in her tartan-plaid skirt and turtleneck. And so much more, well . . . unscrutinized was probably the proper, unfortunate word, considering the attention that Miss Way to Go was generating by comparison.

  Or perhaps it was because she was so instantly attracted to Roger that she felt that way.

  Twenty minutes later, when she accidentally spilled a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon on his lap, she got the opportunity to find out. Amelia’s second image of Roger St John was of him standing in a roomful of people, a roomful of women, with a large round target that had, as its bull’s-eye, his crotch.

  Maybe that should have told me something, Amelia thought. Maybe that first night should have been an indication of what was to come. Maybe it—

  She sensed someone nearby. A flash of color in between the stacks of books.

  Amelia drew a breath, bent her knees, looked over the jagged tops of the books, cocked her head, there – the sound of cotton on cotton. Someone kneeling down to peruse the bottom shelves. She looked through the openings again, didn’t see anyone, listened some more. Nothing.

  But someone was near.

  She could hear breathing . . .

  She looked out into the aisle, around the main room, but the only other person she saw was Mary Ellen at the front desk, nibbling a brownie, reading a Dean Koontz novel.

  Oh well, Amelia thought. Must have been my imagination.

  Then the man in the dark coat grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into the shadows.

  24

  THE INTERVIEW WITH Elizabeth Crane had been a lot more draining than Nicky had realized. Talking to people who have just lost a loved one was hard work. Especially a loved one who got hacked up in such a horrible fashion. How the hell did cops do it?

  Nicky remembered his father coming home many nights, pouring an inch of bourbon into a jelly glass and sitting in front of the television, still in uniform, his thousand-yard stare in place. His dinner would sit on a TV tray most nights as the inch turned into inches and the five-year-old Nicky would cry as his mother would have to help Officer Vincent Stella to bed. Big, tough guinea cop being helped up the stairs by the five-two Nicolette Stella, the frail, iron-willed woman he had married after two dates, the woman he would lose to breast cancer before her fiftieth birthday. His father was not a drinker, far from it, but sometimes the craziness got to him, sometimes he had to numb himself to the madness. Now that his father had retired, though, the stories were coming more frequently, with greater ease. And with far less booze.

  But what would Vincent Stella do now? Nicky wondered. Call the police? Did he really want to get involved to that extent? Was this some kind of conspiracy? Did he have some sort of moral obligation here?

  He realized that he was not prepared to answer a single one of those questions as he turned off Lee Road onto Chagrin Boulevard, and headed for Normandy. He could barely keep his eyes open.

 
; But as soon as he saw his house, he knew something was wrong. For some reason, his landlord had installed a giant lawn jockey on the front walk. Then he realized it wasn’t a mammoth landscape ornament at all.

  It was Frank Corso, sitting on his front steps.

  Fuck.

  Frank looked even bigger than Nicky remembered. He had cut his hair into a spiky crew, and in the afternoon light, even from a block away, Nicky could see the ridges and valleys of a half dozen scars on his face. He also could see that Frank Corso now had a gym bag with him, sitting at his feet like a small, napping pit bull. What the hell was in there? Nicky wondered. Did he bring instruments of torture?

  Nicky slowed down, looked up the street. There was a black Firebird parked across from his driveway. Nicky suspected that it was Frank Corso’s ride.

  Four grand, Nicky thought. Four grand or my testicles.

  He pulled into a driveway about a half dozen or so houses north of his own, backed out, and headed back toward Chagrin Boulevard, checking his rearview mirror, suddenly wide-awake. He saw Frank lighting a cigarette, oblivious. He hadn’t been spotted.

  Nicky drove to Avalon Road, turned left. He parked, got out, locked the car, and made his way through the backyards. He stopped when he reached his yard. Frank Corso’s Pontiac was still parked on the street.

  He selected the right key and dashed across his backyard in a dozen silent steps, leapfrogging a Big Wheel bicycle belonging to his downstairs neighbor’s son Aaron in the process. His leather soles on the wet grass left a lot to be desired as prime track and field equipment, but he managed to hold his balance and slip-slide to the door.

  He quietly turned the key in the lock, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him in one liquid move. He removed his shoes and padded up the steps, put his ear to the door of his apartment, heard nothing, let himself in, did a quick perusal of his two rooms. Intact. He took one of his folding chairs and tiptoed back to his door. He checked the lock, the dead bolt, then wedged the chair under the knob.

  That’s it, he thought. That’s the best I can do. Fort Knox is sealed. If you want me that bad, you fat fuck, come and get me. Give it your best shot.

  Bed.

  He removed his socks and crashed on the mattress, just asking for bad dreams. He was asleep within minutes.

  The bad dreams obliged.

  When the phone rang two hours later, a lipless, blood-drenched Benjamin Crane was chasing him through an opium den, right into the arms of Frank Corso, who was suddenly naked, Chinese, and holding a pair of sparking cattle prods.

  And in the center of the room – while Cavalleria Rusticana played on – lay a cold Louie Stella, bright yellow daffodils growing from his eyes.

  25

  ‘I SHOULD KICK your ass,’ Amelia said.

  They were sitting in the Bagel Shoppe across the street from the library. She had yelled at her brother for scaring the shit out of her – both the scaring and the subsequent tantrum a Randolph family tradition. But it had started to rain heavily, so the dressing down of Garth Randolph was relatively brief.

  When Amelia was done with her harangue, she hugged her brother, then they slid into a booth, dried themselves with napkins, ordered coffee. She sat and stared at him as he looked at the menu, cataloging her brother’s features, marveling once more at how everyone she knew seemed to get older except Garth. It had been almost two years, and he had picked up a few lines near his eyes, but he looked to be in very good physical shape. Garth had been a wrestler in junior high and high school, an all-around athlete until the car accident after college that injured his back, and sent him to the hospital in Pennsylvania to have part of his face rebuilt. Incredibly, Garth had come out better-looking than when he went in.

  The last time she had seen him he had a long beard and was living on a dairy farm in Orwell, recovering from nervous exhaustion and the collapse of the advertising agency that had once made him rich. He had called her once or twice during that Return to the Earth phase, swearing he was okay and would reenter the world of cigarettes, newspapers, booze, exhaust fumes, and dental hygiene soon. That was two years ago. Now he was clean-shaven. And wearing a very nice suit.

  ‘So . . .’ Garth began, ‘how’s your sexy friend Paige?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Amelia answered. ‘She’s not seeing anyone, you know.’

  ‘Still the matchmaker, huh?’

  Amelia laughed. ‘She has her own business now. She opened a bookstore on Marble Lane. You should stop in and see her.’

  ‘A bookstore?’

  ‘Yep. Nice little place, too.’

  ‘Cappuccino and latte alongside the John Grisham and T.S. Eliot?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Amelia replied, the name jumping out at her. Had she looked up her mystery poem under T.S. Eliot? She didn’t think she had. She made a mental note to do so. ‘But one of these days she wants to do the espresso-and-biscotti thing. On the other hand, Paige would have to hire someone to handle the culinary end. I’ve seen her in the kitchen. I know whereof I speak.’

  ‘And how’s my little redhead?’

  ‘Maddie’s good. She misses you.’ She retrieved a photograph that Paige had taken of Maddie at the Annie auditions and handed it to her brother. ‘But I’ll be honest, she brings your name up less and less. I’m afraid that she’s going to forget you.’

  Garth handed the photo back. ‘Did she get the part?’

  Amelia laughed, then felt a little guilty. ‘Let me put it this way. She gets her singing talents from me.’

  Her brother made a face, obviously recalling the years of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper deconstruction that had taken place at the Randolph home on Edgefield Road.

  ‘That bad, huh?’

  ‘Yep,’ Amelia said.

  Garth smiled, finished his coffee. ‘And how are you and Roger getting along?’

  Amelia hesitated for a split second, but that was plenty for Garth. Her brother could read volumes about her in that amount of time. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘You know. Good.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ God she hated it when he did this.

  ‘Meelie.’

  She hated that nickname even more. ‘We’re fine, okay? Just marriage shit. That’s all. Just the soot that settles every day from people rumbling around the same space. If you’d ever get off your high fucking horse and fall in love again, you might get to experience these profound and wonderful joys.’ Garth, who had never married, was famous for the one-year relationship. She hadn’t seen him in love since his college days.

  ‘You only swear when you’re hiding something,’ Garth said. ‘You gonna tell me?’

  ‘Roger had an affair.’ Somehow it just tumbled out.

  ‘I see . . .’ Garth said. ‘Anyone you know?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes,’ Amelia replied. ‘Unfortunately, I am cursed with a highly detailed image of the two of them rutting in the slop like barnyard animals.’

  Garth tapped the back of his sister’s hand. ‘I told you not to marry him.’

  This was said in jest, Amelia knew, but it still rang true. Garth had not seemed thrilled when Amelia said she was going to marry Roger St John. ‘It’s a very strange feeling, brother o’ mine,’ Amelia said, calming herself. ‘I love him, and I want to push him out a window. Does that make sense to you?’

  ‘Yes, Meelie. It does.’ They fell silent for a few moments. Then Garth asked, ‘Do you want me to talk to him?’

  Amelia smiled. ‘Gonna slap him around for me, big brother?’

  ‘I’ll t’row him a few if I have ta,’ Garth replied, doing his pug thing.

  ‘He’s out of town, Garth. He’ll be back in the next few days. You can punch him then.’

  ‘Oh well.’ He grabbed the check. ‘I’ll try and call you later anyway,’ he added, although Amelia knew it was just Garth-talk. Yet he did appear to be on the fast track again. Maybe he would stay in touch. He kissed her on the top of the head, started toward the door.

  Amelia calle
d after him. ‘I have my writer’s class tonight, but I should be home by nine-thirty.’

  Garth waved acknowledgment, paid the bill, said something to the counter girl that made her laugh. Amelia watched the young woman and realized how much she missed her brother. He could be charming as hell.

  She caught him halfway through the door.

  ‘Hey,’ Amelia said, kissing him on the cheek. ‘Welcome back, big brother.’

  Garth smiled, turned up his collar, and stepped into the rain.

  She had taken a half dozen weighty poetry anthologies out of the library and stacked the books on the dining room table. She checked the messages. Nothing. Not even a ‘miss you’ call from her husband.

  Ten minutes later, while Maddie played a video game, Amelia found herself staring at her closet, wondering what she was going to wear to her writer’s class. And she knew why. She hadn’t exactly fantasized about the man with the dark curls – she’d insist on learning his name tonight – but she had thought about him since her last class, thought about the way he had come to her aid, thought about the cut of his jeans. Yet if it was just harmless flirtation on her mind, why did she feel so guilty?

  She decided she was being childish. She selected a denim skirt (knowing full well it climbed halfway up her thigh when she sat down) and a black pullover. She laid them out on the bed and went downstairs, poked her head into the computer room. ‘Pizza okay?’

  ‘Yep,’ Maddie said as she changed the color of the curtains in Dolly’s Dream Chalet computer bedroom.

  Amelia called Domino’s, found her purse, put the money and a two-dollar tip next to the front door, and checked her watch. What the hell, she thought. She’d do it. There was enough time. She walked over to the linen closet and took down the two boxes of rinses, and found the jar of facial mask. She put them on the counter in the bathroom and changed into her combat sweats, the ripped and stained fleece she wore for heavy cleaning, the clothes she wouldn’t wear into the backyard even under the cover of darkness.