All But a Pleasure

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Okay, Sarge, okay.”

  “Anything that happens, Detective Clayton, it stays happened. Yesterday, last week, last century, ten thousand years ago—makes no difference. On some plane of existence, some world, somewhere, it goes right on happening. That’s what we call ‘Eternity,’ Detective. ‘Eternity.’ And the best we can hope for is that the Gods in their mercy have some way of soothing it over even while it goes right on happening. Since we can’t be sure, all we can do here and now is try to set things right according to whatever it is we call ‘justice,’ and work our damnedest to keep more bad things from happening.”

  “Whew!” Clayton gulped more coffee. “I guess that scorches me well and truly.”

  “Scorches? You call that a scorching? Detective, that was idle theological chit-chat. Better pray I never feel the need to scorch you for real.”

  “Don’t worry, Sarge, I’m praying to every god, saint, and/or angel I can find out about.”

  It must have been more her tone of voice, she thought, than her actual words.

  * * * *

  They didn’t really have all that much to brief the general force on. Just be extra watchful, look out for suspicious characters, the usual blah, blah, blah that should stay in a good polly’s clockround observation anyway. When the rest of them had filed out to their rounds of regular duty, Lestrade turned to her special-assignment uniforms, Officers Kim Little Bird and Stan Vergucchi—one the next thing to a rookie and the other one the next thing to retirement, but the pair who had been first on the scene when that poor bunch of beer-party-in-the-park teenagers spotted the late Harry Jackson floating in the Vigo. “Officers Vergucchi, Little Bird. Start checking the hardware stores, sleaze shops, every other place in town where our sicko could conceivably have gotten his equipment. Whatever he used on Jackson, whether pre- or post-mortem. Don’t forget to try verifying whether any of these places peddle tattoo stamps on the side—but be careful how much you say about that. We don’t want anybody outside this station aware what exact stamp we’re looking for, and why.”

  Thursday, September 21

  Thursday morning. Lestrade put in another call for Chris Grunewald, got a “Try Chris at home later this afternoon.”

  Nothing yet on the tattoo stamp, too much on the other stuff: the sicko could have used almost anything to mutilate Harry Jackson’s body. Probably either stashed away by now to look innocent, or lying somewhere at the bottom of the Vigo. Meanwhile, with nothing but mutilation marks to go on, no photos to show around town except the victim’s, garbage cans picked up and emptied Monday morning before they could have even tried to get a garbage-can search warrant through the Privacy Privilege and Private Communications Acts laws—and even then, the only area they could possibly have gotten one for comprised the neighborhoods along the banks of the river itself… No, barring some accidental find out of the blue, that end looked almost as dead as the corpse.

  Right after lunch, a call to Chris’s home number. Thirty rings. A few big-wheel floaters here and there were getting wire-recorder answering machines, but the gadgets hadn’t filtered down yet to very many ordinary folks and, anyway, it wasn’t an answering machine Lestrade needed to talk to. Four more calls between 1300 and 1600 hours, sandwiched between whatever else she could find to do that might possibly tie into the case…still nothing but rings.

  Finally, at 1737, more than an hour and a half after she should have checked out of the station—she was on her own time now, off the record and unpaid—she caught Chris, who had just stopped at home to drop off suitcases before heading out for dinner.

  “Rosemary! Rosemary Lozinski Lestrade! Good to hear your voice again. Say, what about that gruesome little murder this week down there where you moved for some peace and quiet after our big-city mayhem? Out of the frying-pan, huh?”

  “Not quite that bad yet, but our ‘little’ backwater murder is what I’m calling about.”

  “Aww! Not my charm?” Sounded like the very long week wraparound had really buoyed Chris up.

  “Yes, okay, your charm, too. Look, Chris, sounds like you’ve read something about it. What I need to know is whether those apparent torture marks are pre- or post-mortem.”

  At least Chris didn’t waste time asking why it might be important. “Tricky, Les, tricky. I’d almost say, based on what I’ve read in the papers, next to impossible to say for one hundred percent sure, body having been in the river for—how long was it, again?”

  “Last seen 1930 hours Saturday, when he left Bernatelli’s Pizza on Second Street with four friends. Peeled away from them at the door, talking about getting in an hour at Wallace Library. Body spotted in Vigo River about 1530 hours Sunday.”

  “Up to eighteen hours in cold, flowing water. More than long enough to wash the wounds clean, assuming they bled. Sharper M.E.’s than your Doc Grumeister would let this one slip as ‘Uncertain.’”

  “I want an opinion from somebody really competent in the field. At least an educated guess. If not about the pre- or post-mortem question, at least about length of time in the river, help us target actual time of death a little closer. I seem to remember you’ve got tests and equipment in your Chicago big-city lab that we couldn’t afford even the catalogs for down here.”

  “Well, as long as you’re sweet-talking me…” Chris hesitated. “I could drive down there tomorrow, use up one more vacation day and hit my big-city lab Monday morning when God designed workweeks to start anyway. Or you and I between us could arrange to get the body shipped direct to my Chicago. Me coming down would be quicker but guessier. Shipping it up here would let me educate my guess a little more, but would take longer, depending how much work’s been piling up for me.”

  “How about if you came down here for a preliminary look? Maybe give you a wedge for shoving Jackson’s body to the head of your examination list?”

  “For a fairly high-profile case coming out of a safe heartland burg like Forest Green… Yes, I think I could do that.”

  “Good,” said Detective Sergeant Rosemary Lestrade. “See you tomorrow.”

  Friday, Sept. 22

  Chris matched Lestrade’s memories pretty well: a little older, a few more gray hairs, maybe a kilogram heavier, same attitude of slightly mischievous competence. “Rosemary Lozinski Lestrade, you old hammerhead shark!”

  “Chris Grunewald, you old marine zoologist. Unwound from your drive down?”

  “Hey, slave driver, I’m still technically on vacation. Give me a cup of coffee, a donut, and a little chew about old times in the big city. Then we’ll get down to the serious stuff.”

  Chris had always been very good at boxing the serious stuff away from the happy-hour stuff. Chris also had a long-standing game of “Make Rosemary Laugh.” Once in a while, it worked.

  Three quarters of an hour later they stood in the examining room—about the same size as a medium-income family kitchen—of the Forest Green Police Station, Lestrade watching Chris go over the remains of the late Harry Carter Jackson. Eventually the Chicago forensic examiner straightened up and said, “Educated guess?”

  “Educated guess.”

  “Post-mortem, but not by long, and too much margin of error for any court. If only the poor floater hadn’t spent up to eighteen hours in the river. Well, you’re right about us having tests and equipment up in Chicago that would help me whittle down that margin for error.”

  Lestrade said, “You’ll have the body by Monday.”

  * * * *

  Friday evening, and the regular weekly gathering of the members of Dante’s Delight Purgatorio at Sam’s house. Tonight’s promised to be especially intense. After this week’s murder—they must have been pulling Harry Jackson’s body out of the Vigo even while Sam’s weekly rolegame party was going on—the air needed purifying rather badly over all of Forest Green.

  “Julie?” Sam asked, turning to her. “You’ve put in more than
your share over the years.”

  “So have you, Sam.”

  “Different for me. As grandson of the founder. My point is, do you want a turn as penitent this wraparound, too?”

  “Badly as we need it, after this…this thing that happened here? You bet I do!”

  Paul said, “We should have put in one or two special sessions already this week. We could’ve juggled our regular schedules around.”

  “Who knew how edgy the town was going to get?” Sam excused the group. “It was nowhere near this tense seven years ago.”

  “Much different kind of murder,” said Curly, “the one seven years ago. Well, we can’t start any earlier than now. Add a session tomorrow afternoon, and we can all have our turns at both duties this wraparound.”

  “Good floaters!” Sam’s grin was grateful, genuine, and proud. “All right, then, we all know the drill. Julie and Paul start fasting tonight.” He and Curly were fasted and ready to go now, tonight having been their regular every-other-week turn for penitent duty.

  They skipped the meal completely, Julie and Paul sucking hard candies for the energy they needed. They lit their candles—purple for the penitents, white for the angels—and started in procession up the three flights of stairs, Julie in the lead, Sam and Curly next, Paul last, to the Purgatorio in Sam’s shuttered tower room.

  Sam showed himself grateful for their community spirit. Julie felt grateful for having had that date with Dave while the news of the murder was still so fresh that the initial shock hadn’t quite had time to settle into the fear that ate away at the whole town and surrounding countryside.

  Dave had wanted another date for this evening. She’d had to put him off, explaining that she had a long-standing engagement on Fridays. Let him think it was a bowling group or something. Then he’d wanted one for tomorrow night, but she’d seen far enough ahead to make him another excuse, already guessing that they’d add one of their rare Saturday afternoon sessions this wraparound and tomorrow night she’d be too sore even for a platonic kind of second date. Sunday night…yes. For Sunday night, she’d said yes. The weekly rolegame parties were light refreshment. She could easily play from two to four and skip out early. Or skip out on the rolegaming completely for one week, and just spend Sunday afternoon resting and recuperating alone in her apartment until date time. Depending how she felt after her Saturday session.

  She suspected she might have to hope Dave was enough of her prince to wait for bedtime until date number three.

  * * * *

  Curly was initiated to the sixth level and Sam, who had passed through levels two, three, five, six, and seven over and over down the years, experimented by making Julie insert beading needles beneath his right-foot toenails. Nobody ever took the initial level more than once, and as soon as they reached level four—angel duty—they all naturally fulfilled it every other meeting.

  Afterwards, when they had come downstairs again— Sam limping and Curly still stretching her hefty limbs—and when tonight’s penitents had broken their fasts, and when they had retired to the living room for serious talk, Sam harked back to their discussion of last Sunday night. “Well, what do you think, gang? Anyone had a decent chance to sniff out our possible new blood, free Julie up to go emeritus?”

  Paul shook his head—failure, not negation. “I don’t think Marge Hokstra would work out, after all.”

  Curly grinned and chuckled. “Carmine Jones neither, not in the clinch.”

  “Curly! You know the rule.”

  “And I never broke it,” Curly explained. “You know me, Sam. I just teased him with a little kissing, a little necking, a little love-tapping, and he bruised like a scared bunny. We never went a pat deeper, not until I had him crossed off the Dante’s Delight list for good and all.”

  “Well… Okay, Curly, we’ll take your word for it this time, since you bent the rule before tonight. But now you’re ready for seventh level, make sure you give it the full seven days between crossing-off and whatever else you feel like doing with the ex-candidate.”

  Then the three of them turned to Julie. She smiled. “Oh, yes. Yes, I believe there’s quite a strong potential in Corwin Poe.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Saturday, September 23

  Saturday morning in downtown Forest Green. The trees along the walkways were putting on their fall colors—orange and gold, crimson and peach and some still bravely green—all glowing against the clear blue sky. There seemed to be a relaxed, cheerful feeling among the early shoppers enjoying the glorious weather and colorful window displays, and Angela felt happier than she had since… Well, it might have been since Monday evening, if she could have appreciated being set up with a blind date. Dave Clayton seemed like a nice floater, yes, she hadn’t lied to Corwin about that—but for some other woman. So, say happier than she’d felt since Sunday night, the Raggedy Ann game, and not yet knowing anything about that horrible murder, the first they’d had here in seven years, when she was just midway through Riley High, and that murder had been almost plain, near-accidental manslaughter.

  Well! At least things seemed to be getting back to normal now, after a week of gloomy weather and gloomier spirits. Angela gave her mind a little shake and went into Barb’s Boutique for a closer look at that lovely autumn-colors silk tunic in the window.

  They had one her size. She tried it on, stepped out of the dressing room wearing it for the clerk’s opinion, and stood stock still, thinking for an instant that somebody must have moved a mirror in front of the dressing-room door.

  There she was! Nearly heart-shaped pale face framed in gold-blond hair, broad forehead, medium-thick curving eyebrows, nose slightly upturned, small rounded chin, surprised expression…

  Then both young women started to laugh.

  “I beg your pardon!” Angela exclaimed. “You’re wearing my face!”

  “And some ladies,” the other young woman cried, “get all out of alignment if they see someone else wearing the same tunic and trousers!”

  * * * *

  “Her name is Gaia Soderstrum,” Angela explained to Corwin several hours later, when they met for lunch at the Sorrento. “We helped each other accessorize our new outfits, and then had coffee together at Queequeg’s. She’s thinking about getting a necklace-style tattoo. Then we’ll look less alike, at least when she wears a low collar. The Soderstrums only moved to Forest Green about a year ago. That’s why we never happened to run into each other before.”

  “Another Angela! But does not Raggedy Ann have numerous sisters identical to her in every physical attribute?”

  “So does Raggedy Andy. Brothers, that is.”

  “From my vantage, there must always be room in the world for an additional Angela Garvey. I am not, however, entirely persuaded but that a single sublunary Corwin Poe might be one too many.”

  “Oh, Cory, now you’re fishing for compliments.”

  “Am I?” He paused and seemed to consider the question. “Well,” he said at last, “It is hypothesized that each and every individual of us has somewhere on this terrestrial globe a doppelganger. Why should not yours be here in Forest Green whilst mine, with any luck, resides in Timbuctu or Manchuria?… Wait! Have I veritably caught stray glimpses of her at some little distance— M. Gaia Soderstrum, you said?—imagined her to be you, recollected that you had yet to return to us here, concluded my eagerness to have misled me, and erased the episode from the immediately active regions of my cerebrum?”

  “Besides, I don’t imagine men and women go into all the same kinds of places.”

  “There might prove to be greater overlap than our residual cultural stereotypes frequently appreciate. Still,” he added, “unless she were another haunter of the hushed and hallowed catacombs of Wallace Public Library, which seem to have been devouring the bulk of my own hours in the greater megalopolitan shopping district of Forest Green…”

  “Oh, y
es! How is all that coming along?” Angela knew he had been turning his hours since graduation into research for two classmates who aimed at writing novels and one already more or less established author whom he had met during his years at the University of Astoria on the west coast.

  “Diana desires to embark upon the Tyrrhenian Sea with the antique Etrurians, Atramentacia’s latest communication was specific in its nonspecifity— ‘Just whatever umwelt looks fruitful to you’ constituted her directive, allowing me rather more considerable scope than truly desirable—and Harve discovers the absolute necessity of further jots and tittles to round out his essential acquaintanceship with the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “Just a hint, Cory. Don’t try applying them to the game if you play that scenario again. You managed to get yourself eliminated quickly enough as it was.”

  “True, alas. Rather agonizingly so. I spare you additional details.”

  “Please do. After what really happened to poor Harry Jackson.”

  Corwin nodded. “You are entirely right. I spoke in the poorest possible taste…” His voice died away and they sat in silence a few moments before he resumed, “And last Sunday I had before my eyes that distracting carrot of a plum role awaiting me in your scenario in the adjoining room.”

  “Good. I think maybe we should just go back to Marcella’s nursery right away tomorrow.”

  “One of the few guiderules chez Imani is the avoidance of utilizing any scenario two weeks in a row. They prefer, rather, to let them lie fallow at least one Sunday, after the method of crop rotation, and with much the same motivation. Meanwhile, how fares your quest for a socially beneficient avocation?”

  Angela sighed. “Slowly, Cory, slowly. I wouldn’t want to use up a paying job somebody else might need for the salary, they already have too many pink ladies at the hospital—the best they could do was put me on the waiting list—and they don’t even need another volunteer at any of the thrift shops just now. In another month or two, they all said, when the Christmas season gets underway. And then I can ring a bell at a Salvation Army bucket, too. But that’ll last only until New Year’s.”