All But a Pleasure

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  But the vote split, Curly siding with Julie and Sam with Paul. One more tie vote, on Marge Hokstra. All the rest drew a clear majority No.

  Most of the Purgatorio’s decisions required consensus. When they voted instead, not having a tiebreaker, an evenly split vote meant further investigation—in this case, of the potential candidates. And so it went, through six more names.

  “Anyone else?” Sam said at last. “I think we’ve pretty well named them all.”

  Parting her ruby-glossed lips in a grin that showed off her even white teeth, Julie Whitcomb added, “We also had, for a few minutes there at the beginning, Angela Garvey.”

  Everyone laughed.

  That pretty young blond was nobody any of them could under any circumstances want to hurt even marginally.

  * * * *

  Angela had graduated from college in June, spent the next several months working props and make-up for Hodag Crossing’s communiversity summer theater, and arrived back in Forest Green in September to move in with her mother’s old friend, “Aunt” Sally Fulbright, while deciding whether to rejoin Dad, Barb, and Charley in Florida—a state that had never appealed to her that much—or get a place of her own here in her old home town.

  Aunt Sally’s home was about a kilometer this side of the Marquette House, where Corwin had his apartment. His remaining way wound through some of the most wildscaped of the city parks, and several more blocks went past heavily wooded undeveloped lots. It was the kind of stroll she knew he doted on, especially at night.

  He also loved to come in and visit, but tonight Aunt Sally had gone to a movie with a group of friends, leaving only the porch light and one living-room lamp on for Angela.

  As if to postpone saying good night for just a little while longer, he asked at the door, “Have you still that birthmark above your sternum?”

  “Do you think birthmarks move away to some other country?” she teased.

  “May they not on occasion suffer surgical excision?”

  “Well, there was never any reason to excise this one. Harmless patch of pink skin that you used to say looked a little like a heart.”

  “And thus, I have always hypothesized, inspired you to gravitate to the Raggedy world.” Keeping himself to simple words for Raggedy Andy must have exhausted him.

  She caught him looking at her chest. “Corwin Davison Poe! We were little kids when you looked at my birthmark, and you’re certainly not going to have another look at it now we’re grown up! Just pretend it’s melted away, like Raggedy Ann’s own candy heart when she fell in the water and drifted.”

  “Melted away to permeate her entire precious, stuffed body with sweetness. But did not our Camel with the Wrinkled Knees observe at one point that in this matter Raggedy Ann had been laboring under an erroneous opinion, which she subsequently revised with the discovery that her candy heart was still in place?”

  “Maybe just part of it melted. Just the outside edges. Remember, Beloved Belindy said near the end that she thought Raggedy Andy must have a candy heart, too?”

  “To which I think I responded, ‘No, my stuffing is plain white cotton through and through just now, but perhaps some day I will have a candy heart.”

  “And our Camel complimented you on getting the words so very close to what Raggedy Andy actually says in the book. How could you remember that, Cory, and not remember about the Raggedies being brother and sister?”

  “The words concerning Andy’s hope for a candy heart, I suppose remained in the subliminal depths of my hippocampus from rapid and possibly superficial childhood reading of Gruelle’s magnum opus. The relationship subsisting between the Raggedies…there, my forgetfulness could conceivably have an interpretation delicately suggestive of Freudian overtones…”

  “Say good night, Raggedy Andy.”

  They were much of a height. Stepping a little to one side, he leaned close, murmured, “For old times’ sake, Raggedy Ann,” and put a very tender kiss on her cheek. She couldn’t help reaching up and patting his night-stubbly cheek in return.

  Once inside the house, she leaned against the closed door and rubbed the spot on her cheek. Thoughtfully, very thoughtfully.

  What a bundle of contradictions he had grown up into!

  What a bundle of dear, precious contradictions.

  CHAPTER 2

  Monday, September 18

  On the salary of a junior police detective in a town of thirty-five thousand—even a police detective with a nice little legacy of lands and money, the latter going into making the former more livable—Dave Clayton cut corners where he could. This morning he was at the yearly health fair in the Friends’ Meeting House, where flu shots cost less than anywhere else. He was also running late for duty, thanks to uncooperative traffic lights.

  “Hey!” he announced, marching in behind his identification card. “Police detective here.”

  “Detective!” a neat, gray-haired lady in blue tunic and trousers greeted him. “Is there any trouble?”

  “None at all, M.,” he answered, turning the volume down on his baritone voice. Why did people always jump to that assumption? “Just hoping I can get my flu shot and still make it to work on time.”

  “Of course. Are you investigating that dreadful murder right here in Forest Green?”

  “We’ve always got a lot on our plate, M. But, yes, that one’ll be taking precedence until we’ve got the killer in custody.” Which might be a lot sooner if the Old Woman wasn’t quite so tender about risking miscarriages of justice; but Dave kept that thought to himself. Solidarity before the public.

  “Right this way, Detective.” The gray-haired lady led him straight to the head of the line, nodding out apologies on the way. “Here you are, Detective. Nurse Whitcomb, can you take this police detective next?”

  The nurse giving out flu shots glanced up from patting an adhesive mini-bandage on the arm of a little girl about nine or ten. “Surely, M. Esteridge. Right away.” Handing the little girl a cookie, she shooed her off the chair and beckoned to Dave. “Next.”

  Quite a beauty, Nurse Whitcomb—Nurse Julie Whitcomb, he saw by her name badge. Black hair braided up on top of her head behind the white nurse’s cap, green eyes with just the merest suggestion of epicanthic folds and Butterscotch skin to match, straight nose, luscious red lips, long neck…

  “Smooth or rough, Handsome Detective?” Nurse Julie Whitcomb teased him as he took his seat on the folding chair and rolled up his sleeve. “You don’t look like a man who’s afraid of needles.”

  “I’m not. But make it smooth, anyway.”

  The time he got studying her bosom while she bent over his arm, imagining what lay beneath that neat nurse’s collar and smooth white tunic, was all too brief. “Finished,” she announced.

  “You were smooth! I never felt a thing.”

  “Comes with long practice. How about a Bugs Bunny bandage?”

  “Hey, what happened to ‘Handsome’? Now you think I look like a Bugs Bunny type?”

  “Oh, in features you’re more a Cary Grant type. But with that mischievous twinkle in your eye…” She flicked her tongue out between those fleshy red lips just long enough for him to appreciate its pinkness. “Whoops!” she went on. “All out of Bugs Bunny. Take a Dizzy Duck instead.” She slapped one on his arm and told him, “Now roll down your sleeve and head on out, Handsome Detective. Other people are waiting.”

  “The name’s Dave. David Clayton. You in the phone book?”

  “How else can I make myself available?” She gave him a wink and a shove on the back. “Ciao, Detective Dave Clayton.”

  He thought it was a joke. He was sure it had to have been just a joke. Nurses didn’t have to take any extra work on the side. And even if one did, she surely wouldn’t broadcast it to a pollydeck? Would she? It had to have been just flirtatious banter.

  He was going to phone her t
onight. Make good and sure.

  Maybe that was what she wanted to make sure he’d do.

  Nice thought.

  * * * *

  Moonlighting with local yearbooks, night Desk Officer Holly Davenport had come up with thirty-six possible matches for the corpse’s face. Even thirty-six was an impressive job of weeding down, and might easily have missed the one they needed. His character, his psychomystique, the millions of big and little things that had made him unique in the world when he was alive—all had vanished after death into a corpse that could have belonged to almost any one of a quarter of the young male population in the country. Age probably between twenty and thirty, medium build, black hair, hazel eyes, probably good-looking in a generic kind of way when he was animated and happy, teeth distinctive only to the dental records.

  Dentists. That was the place they’d start this morning, as soon as Clayton got in. Meanwhile, Sergeant Lestrade set Officers Little Bird and Vergucchi, reassigned to this case full time, at work with the telephone directory, phoning every family they could find for the young men on Officer Davenport’s list. Then Lestrade sat down to make her own list: the dentists in town.

  Little Bird and Vergucchi had found a dozen families and crossed them all off—either the young men were safely accounted for or else they had moved out of state some time ago—by the time Clayton strolled in humming.

  Lestrade tapped her fingernail against the bowl of her cherrywood pipe. Like three-fourths of the floaters who used to carry pipes a dozen years ago when it was the big craze, Lestrade’s had never known tobacco. Of all the substitute flavors that were still available, she preferred anise.

  “Well, Detective,” she greeted him sourly. “Finding murder something to hum about these days?”

  He blanked his face at once. “No, Sergeant, sorry. It wasn’t the case I was humming about. It was the nurse who just gave me the smoothest flu shot a floater could ask for.”

  “And you made it to work anyway, a mere —” She glanced at the clock—“seven minutes late. Impressive. I don’t even want to know,” she added, cutting him off with a wave of her pipe stem. “You like this one that much, save her for when you get off duty. And I had my flu shot a week ago.” She stood up, pocketing her list. “Don’t bother sitting down, either. We’re out to pick up some dentists for body identification.”

  Holy martyred Silverstairs! Lestrade hated getting people in to identify dead bodies. Whether it was a mere formality or, like now, a necessity.

  With the third dentist, they struck paydirt. Dr. Marvella O’Connor stood there a good hundred and twenty seconds, staring down at the face Lotus Blossom Lee had arranged with the expertise of her former life as a mortician’s assistant, once Doc Grumeister was through with his so-called examination. “I’m not sure…” the dentist said at last. “It could be… They look so different, don’t they? When they’re dead.”

  Even when it had been a peaceful, natural death. Both detectives nodded sympathetically.

  “And then, if it is…You understand, I would’ve known him only as a patient…” Dr. O’Connor stretched her hands out toward the mouth, hesitated, glanced first at Lestrade and then at Clayton. “Do you mind, Detectives? That is, I wouldn’t be…corrupting the evidence, or anything?”

  “Whatever you need to help us identify him, Doctor,” Lestrade replied.

  The dentist touched the lips, jerked her hands back from the shock of dead flesh, reached again and, using just her fingertips, eased the mouth open for a look inside. “Ahh!” she breathed. She turned her head to look from a slightly different angle. “Ahh! Yes…yes, I’ve worked on these teeth. I remember the gap between his upper left lateral incisor and cuspid—tiny, but distinctive. And I put that big filling in the lower right second molar just a few weeks ago. Thought…I thought it’d last him for years. I remember the day he got it, he was talking about maybe getting a real tattoo, if he could figure out a design that’d work for both his Hallowe’en costume this year and the rest of his…life…afterwards. Yes…what was—is?—was?—his name? Sorry, I’ve got so many patients…Jack… No, Harry…Harry Jackson…Harry Carter Jackson! Oh, dammit to hell, Harry Jackson!”

  “Thank you, Dr. O’Connor,” Lestrade told her gently. “We’ll have to check your dental records for our official books. But when we catch whoever did this, it’ll be largely thanks to you. If they still watch us from…whatever name you give it…Harry must be cheering for you now.”

  “Sergeant Lestrade… They said on the news…it was torture? Not just murder, but…”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Lestrade replied, swearing the news media out in her mind. “Long as his body lay leaching out in the water, all those marks could just as well have been made post-mortem.”

  Thank the Lady the damn media had at least cooperated far enough to keep that tattoo out of the news. A secret Lestrade refused to break now. Not even to draw back the white sheet and get the dentist’s opinion whether or not it could have been the one the late M. Jackson had talked about maybe getting.

  Somehow, she didn’t think it was.

  * * * *

  The body definitely identified, next thing Lestrade did was make a call to Chris Grunewald back in Chicago. Chris was out of town. Some kind of forensic examiners’ conference in Denver, followed by a few vacation days to visit a brother in Chillicothe. Try again Thursday.

  All right. Body into coldest possible storage for a little longer before it could be released for burial. Another unwelcome job for the family. Who had to be told right now. The “formality” identification.

  Of everything Lestrade hated about her workline, this part was the worst. She’d cheated a little by trying to sneak in her call to Chris first. No more excuses to put off notifying the family.

  They had a nice house in the Joliet Park area. Turned out the late M. Harry Jackson had been re-alighting at his old home nest while he sent out feelers for a position that could use his brand new Ph.D. in Astrophysics.

  The Jackson-Carters had thought their second-born was overnighting with a young lady downtown. They hadn’t started worrying until news of the murder hit the media. Another hour without at least a phone call from Harry, and they’d have called the police station themselves.

  People reacted in different ways. Harry’s mother turned white, left her husband to ask the usual questions of shock and disbelief and “no possible mistake?” and walked slowly out of the room. To return in a little under ten minutes, carrying a thick book that could have been from Ward and Roebuck but turned out to be a sample book of tattoo designs.

  She looked back and forth a couple of times between Lestrade and Clayton before handing her burden to the junior partner. “Just last Wednesday,” she told them numbly, “he borrowed this from a local tattoo artist. I don’t know which one. We…we’ve always been tolerant about it, it’s so popular what else do you do? but never really interested, nobody else in the family. Except Linda, who got a tasteful little rose last year. Along with the rest of her graduating class. Harry thought he had narrowed it down to Egghead McJones, the solar system as an atom, or…or…”

  Linda Jackson of the tasteful rose tattoo supplied, “Or ‘Love and Peace’ in Elvish script.”

  “Or ‘Love and Peace’ in Elvish script. I think he may have decided, forgotten to take the catalog back. It should go back now. This catalog. Harry was always so careful to get his library materials back on time. This should go back, too. I’m sorry, I don’t know which…body artist. Somebody local. I know it’s somebody local.”

  They thanked the family, explained about releasing the body as soon as they could…it might be two or three weeks, maybe even as long as a month, but it was absolutely necessary for them to keep it until it could get a second examination. Not necessarily a full autopsy, no, and everything would be kept as integral as possible, but these things needed a second opinion, and it’d be m
uch better if they kept the body now instead of having to exhume it later. Meanwhile, could they have one or two recent photos of Harry?

  And, very sorry about this, M.’s, but some member of the family would need to come in to make the formal identification.

  Some families liked to hold memorial services right away, even if full interment had to wait.

  While Lestrade took her turn driving, Dave sat silently for a couple of miles through city traffic, the sample book in his lap. She knew he didn’t like informing the survivors any better than she did. Any polly who liked that duty, wasn’t fit to serve as a polly.

  At last, halfway to the station, Dave said, “Egghead McJones, the solar system as an atom, or ‘Love and Peace’ in Elvish script.” Her peripheral vision caught his slow headshake. “Nope. I can’t connect any of those with the one he actually has.”

  “I can’t either, Dave,” said Lestrade. “I can’t, either.”

  * * * *

  Chicago had a body artist on every corner, but Forest Green had four to serve the whole town and surrounding area. Tattoos were usually permanent, and people had only so much skin area to cover, no matter how popular good body art might be among about forty percent of the population. And then, there were some groups, like rolegamers, who as often as not preferred the paint-on or peel-off versions, so as to change their body art with the scenario.

  Three of the town’s body artists were as legitimate as their business. Only two of the fifty-five Reformed States had ever outlawed tattoos—Rhode Island, which probably did it to be quaint, and Texacali, which probably did it to give her tattoo enthusiasts the thrill of mild and harmless lawbreaking.

  Lestrade hated having that kind of law on the books. Helped blunt the force of the real laws, the laws every society needed. The law against murder, for one. The law against what had been done to Harry Carter Jackson.

  Come to think of it, about the only thing Rosemary Lestrade liked about her workline was getting to clear the occasional innocent party.