by Nancy Bush
I heard a car engine and looked through the window to see a dark blue Mercedes convertible pull into the driveway and park. Emmett Popparockskill climbed from the driver’s seat, removing a pair of Ray-Bans. He glanced toward the heavens, but the rain had briefly abated and rays of sunlight stabbed downward through black-bottomed clouds. Emmett was lean and dark like Gigi, and I watched him run a hand slowly alongside his hair, then do it again, a narcissistic habit that said a lot about him. Then he tucked his hands together in that way golfers do, as if they have an actual club in their palms, swept his arms back and made a deep swing. He finished, arms upward, staring in the direction the “ball” had gone. His clothes were golfers’ togs: tan chinos, collared black T-shirt with three-button placket.
“There were just a few of us at the end,” Gigi went on distractedly. She, too, was watching Emmett’s swing. “I remember Melinda making a point to try to be nice to my mom even though she’d been such a bitch the night before. Renee was really quiet. I think she was scared. Like she knew something really bad had happened. I guess we all knew, just didn’t want to face it.”
Emmett entered the house and Gigi suddenly broke into action, running to him, juggling her wine. She managed to keep from sloshing, but after planting a smack on his mouth, she slurped some more from her glass. Emmett regarded her with a look threaded with both indulgence and annoyance, as if she were a bratty child, which wasn’t that far from the truth. “Watch the wine,” he said.
“Oh, pooh. Let me get you a glass.” Gigi twirled back into the kitchen and grabbed another Lismore. She filled it full, saw that the bottle was empty, and after placing the stemware in Emmett’s somewhat reluctant hand, plucked a new bottle from the fridge.
Emmett clearly hadn’t expected visitors and his expression was long-suffering.
I stuck out a hand. “Jane Kelly.”
“Emmett Popparockskill.”
What a mouthful. He shook my hand and it was a decent handshake.
“She’s here ’cause I invited her,” Gigi said quickly. I shot her a look, not sure if she was hiding my true agenda for reasons of her own or not. “Have some cheese.”
Emmett popped a couple of squares of pepper jack into his mouth and started drinking with more enthusiasm. “I quit my job today,” he said.
Gigi’s mouth dropped open, then shut, then dropped open again. She looked like a beached fish. “What? Why?”
“We’ll talk about it later.” Which was couple-speak for “after the guest leaves.”
But Gigi was having none of it. “How’re we supposed to pay our bills? Oh my God. You’re kidding, right?”
“It’ll all be okay.”
“Oh my God…”
“Nobody knows what they’re doing there. The other salesmen don’t know fuel injectors from wiper blades.” He flicked a look my way. “I work—worked—at Miller-Kennedy, the Mercedes dealership. Mike Miller’s my uncle and there is no Kennedy anymore.”
“A family-owned business,” I said politely.
“You got that right. My dad’s the account manager.” Something about his tone suggested he thought his father wasn’t much of an employee, either. I got the feeling Emmett thought the place would fall apart without him.
Gigi was going through a rapid thought process. “She’s still there, I take it.”
“Everybody’s still there. Except me.” He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the lips.
I wondered who “she” was. Emmett’s mother?
“Well, you can’t quit now, Emmett! My dad’s estate isn’t even close to being settled. We gotta wait.”
“Too late. I walked. Mike was yelling and screaming. I think he scared two customers out of the showroom.”
“You should have that dealership,” Gigi stated flatly. “But Mike’ll leave it to those morons, you know he will.”
“His sons,” Emmett said for my benefit.
“But you’re the only one who knows anything. Y’see?” she said, turning to me. “And then there’s Violet. She gets her family’s money? And she’s awful. It’s just not fair. Unbelievable! She hit Daddy with that tray and killed him and it’s like it never happened! Why haven’t they arrested her?”
Emmett gave me an assessing look. “You know Violet?”
Gigi apparently decided to come clean, saying, “She’s working for her,” then proceeded to put her spin on my role in searching for Roland’s murderer, making me sound like I was just using his death as a means to suck off some of Violet’s money.
“Violet’s paying me,” I admitted. “She’s fully aware that if I find out she’s at fault, I’ll turn her in.”
He looked skeptical. “She’s a liar,” he told me.
“Daddy used to call her Ultra-Violet, like it was a pet name,” Gigi revealed. “Made me want to puke! She always tried to be so nice to us. I never liked her. I just know she slithered back into Daddy’s bed.” She shivered all over. “They were probably screwing while I was supposed to be walking down the aisle.” Her face was suffused with color.
“She killed him,” Emmett said.
“I’d like some proof, before I go there,” I said.
“She hit him with a silver tray in the head and he died. What I wonder is, why aren’t the police doing their job? She should be in jail.”
His sentiments and Gigi’s were one and the same. “She says he was alive when she left.”
“But she admits she hit him.” Gigi pounced on that one. “Who says he was alive? Emmett’s right. Violet is a liar!”
“Can you think of anyone else who might have a reason to want him dead?”
“Violet hit him,” Gigi repeated stubbornly. “That’s a fact.”
“The Wedding Bandits were there, too,” I reminded her.
“Who says? Violet?” Gigi crossed her arms over her chest. “She could have stolen those things.”
“The police are pretty sure the bandits were interrupted.” I didn’t feel I needed to go over all the particulars. The fact that items had been scattered around the house and yard was well documented.
“I found the body,” Emmett reminded me soberly. “I know the crime scene.”
Gigi tossed her head. “I don’t care what anybody says. Violet killed Daddy. I hope she goes to jail forever. I hate her.” She turned to Emmett, her nose turning red, angry tears welling. “It’s so awful!” Emmett cuddled her into his arms, but Gigi turned her head toward me, her cheek pressed up against his shirt. “You’re going to find Daddy’s killer?”
“I’m gonna try.”
“Good luck.” Emmett didn’t sound convinced of my abilities and I didn’t blame him. They thought I was wasting my time. Neither of them liked Violet. And both of them thought she was guilty.
Hell, she probably was.
CHAPTER FOUR
I spent the next several days making phone calls, going down the list Sean had given me, trying to connect, or reconnect as the case might be, with various wedding guests. Big Jim answered his phone straightaway and this time, when I told him Sean and Gigi had okayed talking to me, he became garrulous to the point of mind-screaming. And he had nothing to contribute. I finally laid my head down on my kitchen table, the phone to my ear, mumbling an occasional “Oh,” “huh,” and “I see.” I was practically in a coma by the time he finally wound down. The other bridesmaids, groomsmen and assorted guests I reached couldn’t offer any further information or insight, either, so I was left knowing little more than I had before. I never reached Deenie but I left her a message, and I put in another call to Dr. Wu’s, where I was told rather curtly that Dr. Wu was out of the country, Ms. Kelly, and he would contact me when he returned.
I also phoned Melinda Hatchmere, Roland’s widow, and Renee Hatchmere, Roland’s first wife, asking each of them in turn to call me back. To date, neither of them had responded. At another impasse, I wrote up my billable hours for Violet and temporarily dusted my hands of the case.
Friday evening I joined Chuck and Officer J
osh Newell for a ride-along expecting the evening to be an uneventful waste of time. I was right about the uneventful part; wrong about the waste of time. While I rode around in the police car I watched the reactions of the people who noticed our vehicle. It broke down pretty evenly: twenty-five percent looked stricken, as if they’d been caught in some nefarious act; twenty-five percent pretended they didn’t see us—like, oh, sure, that’s gonna help; twenty-five percent reacted as if the police were their good buddy-buddy, waving frantically and smiling and generally being the kind of brownnosing suck-ups that drive me crazy; and twenty-five percent acted cool and hard-eyed and tough, mostly teenagers whose smoldering demeanors were for their friends’ benefits and caused Officer Newell to chuckle low in his throat.
For my part, I’m sure I would fall in the looking stricken category. I always feel guilty when dealing with the authorities. I kept quiet in the backseat while Chuck prattled on about how he’d always thought he was going to be a police officer but could never quite break away from his daddy’s business, which, from the hints he broadly threw out, appeared to be quite lucrative and given Daddy’s nearness to the brink of death, could be Chuck’s business soon.
Listening to him, I congratulated myself in forcing a change of plans: I’d boged out of dinner. Yes, he’d offered free food at Foster’s on the Lake, my most favorite restaurant around, but…again…it would be dinner with Chuck. I hadn’t been able to picture myself enjoying a meal with him, with or without Julie and Jenny, as every impression I’d garnered of the man was that he was overbearing, loud and deaf to anything but his own plan. Sometimes a free meal isn’t…well…free. I hadn’t figured out how to squirm out of the ride-along, however, so I met him at the police station parking lot instead of Foster’s. Chuck hadn’t liked the idea but I’d been firm. Either skip dinner, or I was out altogether. Grudgingly, he’d agreed to the plan, so I’d parked my Volvo in the station lot next to various black-and-whites, feeling vaguely uneasy, as if I were in the middle of a criminal act. What does it say about me that merely being around police cars—even when they’re parked in their own lot—makes me uncomfortable?
Anyway, I’d begged off dinner, saying I had to be somewhere later and though Chuck had pressed me, I’d managed to get things the way I wanted them. I was still planning to meet Jenny and Julie at Foster’s, but much later. Chuck just didn’t have to know.
“Hey, Jane,” Chuck hollered now over his shoulder. “So, I was reading on AOL that sausages can be good for you. Ease stress.” He leered through the grate that divided my seat from his and Josh’s. “I can think how they ease stress. How about you?” His laughter came from behind his nose, a dirty, snorting toot.
Chuck is enough of an Oregon Duck fan to only wear green and yellow—a virulent combination that should be outlawed if it isn’t game day. I realized, belatedly, that I only tolerate Chuck because he frequents the Coffee Nook. This is definitely not enough to form a friendship on. I thought about several responses, chief among them being “Shut up, asshole,” and decided to smile tightly and keep my own counsel. If you can’t think of something clever to say, don’t say anything at all.
I’d read that article, too, as it happens, and it was about the sound of sizzling sausages being something comforting as we headed into winter with all its bleakness and cold. But I kept that information to myself, deciding I could play passive/aggressive with the big boys.
“You still meeting Jenny and Julie at Foster’s?” Chuck tossed into the silence.
You would have to torture me for hours to make me give up that information to Chuck. I reminded him, “I’ve got business to take care of later. Can’t meet them.” Before he could press the issue, I said to Josh, “Somebody told me that their sister smashed her car into a tree, and the tree savior people arrived before the ambulance.”
“Was your friend all right?” Josh asked.
“Concussion, I think. Tree had extensive damage. Might have had to be put down.”
Josh said mildly, “I take it you don’t agree with the city’s tree ordinance.”
“I just struggle with people who use the tree ordinance to further their own political agenda.”
“Whaddaya mean?” Chuck asked.
“Like that neighborhood association that tried to stop the guy building that huge house on the lake? They tried everything to stop him. Used the tree ordinance as one means to delay. Had nothing to do with the trees themselves.”
Chuck said, “Who cares? Let’s go hang around the bars, see if we can give somebody a DUI.”
“It’s a little early,” I pointed out.
“Hey, my friend Sonny got picked up at nine-thirty. Jesus, he blew like a .16. Shit hit the fan, I’ll tell ya. Wife kicked him out and now he’s got all these crappy classes where he has to say he’s got a problem. My day, the cops caught you, they just drove you home.”
I gazed at the back of Chuck’s head. “You wanna bust somebody for DUI, but you’re grousing about your friend’s luck?”
“Sonny’s a good guy.”
Josh said to me, “Have you thought about joining your own neighborhood association? Then you’d have some say in the decisions. You could make a difference.” He looked at me through the rearview mirror and I hoped my horror didn’t show on my face.
“I may be moving,” I said. Like, oh, sure. Me in the neighborhood association. I had a mental image of do-gooders of all ages, earnestness oozing from their pores. “And I’m a renter.”
Chuck singsonged, “Bor—ing.”
I decided that Chuck was right and changed the subject. But Josh regarded me thoughtfully in his rearview for the rest of our trip. I found this unnerving. It was lucky Chuck was so all about himself that he neglected to bring up that I was a private investigator. Somehow I didn’t think that would go over well with Josh. Unless his sister Cheryl had already spilled the beans, which was highly probable the more I thought about it.
I said good-bye to them both at the Lake Chinook Police Station. Josh headed inside the building and I gazed after him. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to know someone on the force, but he struck me as one of those by-the-book, ultra-sincere types that never seem to get me.
Chuck ambled over to his car, an even older Volvo than my wagon, a sedan in pretty decent condition. I’d just about written Chuck off, but now I thought I might have to reevaluate. Volvo drivers feel absurdly like kin to me. I might have to give him a second chance, but it wasn’t going to be tonight.
After Chuck drove away, I ignored my own car and walked from the police station, which is on A Street to Foster’s, which is on State, the street that runs parallel to the Willamette River. There’s terminally difficult parking near Foster’s, so I figured I wouldn’t bother. It’s not a long walk, but it was windy and chilly and I was shivering like a plague victim by the time I blew into the front bar. The back patio’s closed this time of year, for obvious reasons, so I entered the low-ceilinged front room with its bloodred Naugahyde booths, cozy tables with flickering, votive candles and sunken bar at the west end. Patrons sit at room height around the bar, while the bartender and servers are working several steps below. This is because the bar is street height and the restaurant slopes down a half-level toward the rear dining room and patio, which are lake height. In February 1996 the greater Portland area flooded from a massive amount of rain. The Willamette River crested at the top of its banks, and Lake Chinook, which is fed by the Tualatin River, ran more than a few feet beyond its highest point, spilling water through the businesses that lined State Street and running across the road to damn near meet up with the river. Sandbags around the buildings saved them from devastating ruin, but from all accounts, it was one massive mess. Fortunately, Foster’s was saved.
Julie and Jenny were in a booth near the pane windows that look onto State Street. Those windows have exterior white lights surrounding them all year and illuminate passersby, so Julie and Jenny had seen me coming. They waved at me and I realized Jeff Foster, owner of Fos
ter’s, was flirting outrageously with them. I pulled up a chair and asked for a Screaming Orgasm. Foster smiled at me and left.
“What’s in a Screaming Orgasm?” Julie asked.
“Vodka, Bailey’s and Kahlua. You need high-quality vodka or the Bailey’s may curdle. We’ll see what Foster brings.” My days as a bartender serve me well from time to time.
Jenny said, “Oh my God, bring me two.”
Jeff Foster served me up a Screaming Orgasm himself. No curdling. Unfortunately, he expected me to pay for the drink, which I grudgingly did. I let Jenny have a taste and she upped her order to three. I looked around for Manny, my favorite bartender, the one who sometimes comps me drinks when Foster isn’t looking, but the bar was being tended by a young woman deep into eyeliner and red lipstick and a metro sexual guy whose shirt and hair were military perfect. A gas fire, faced with that layered narrow rock that is so popular it’s everywhere, was heating the place up like an oven. It was cheery, though, and I felt myself relax in that bone-melting, apres-ski way that seems to only come from a combination of warmth and alcohol.
They wanted to know about my evening with Chuck and I gave them the pertinent details. Jenny finds Chuck funny in that I-can-enjoy-an-ass way, but I think he just gives Julie a headache though she’s too polite to say so about a paying customer.
A group of men and women suddenly exited together. I overheard something about the civil war game between the two Lake Chinook high schools and I remembered my promise to Dwayne. “I’m going to have to go,” I said regretfully, swigging down the end of my drink and standing.
“What? You just got here.” Jenny pointed at my vacated chair. “Sit down.”
“I’ve got a job to do.”