Return to Dust

by Andrew Lanh

  Gracie’s words stopped me dead. This portrait clashed with my own image of the old woman, always smiling at me, always a little too prying, that was true, but—harmless. Even sweet. That was the word for it—sweet. Sometimes a little too sweet, little girl coy and cute, a cultivated sugary surface. But I never gave the woman much thought. She dusted my books. She vacuumed the carpets.

  “She was always nice to me.”

  But I recalled the words of Buddha. She who is born with an axe in her mouth cuts herself when her words are cruel.

  Gracie drained the last of the beer.

  “Women didn’t like her,” she stressed. “Marta wore more than one face in the world. I saw two or three of them.”

  “So she had enemies?”

  “None I knew of. I didn’t belong to her world, you know. But generally speaking, if someone murdered her, I’d lay you odds it was a decent woman.”

  Gracie was in a hurry to leave, especially when she saw me typing some of her reluctant remarks into my laptop. Okay, I was probably less tactful than I should have been. She gave me a withering look reserved for pushy salesmen and religious zealots.

  “That’s the sum total of my knowledge of that evil woman.” But it wasn’t her real final comment. Over her shoulder, “And she called herself a Catholic. At least I didn’t become one of those other Catholics. Like her.”

  Hurriedly I jotted down that last comment. I’d have to follow that up later. What other Catholics? I made a notation—the Brown Bonnets? Those merry mariological happy campers, the right-wing, anti-porn, anti-choice Catholics whose propaganda I found in Marta’s house. What role did they play in her life?

  After she left, blowing Hank a kiss from across the room, he looked up from his iPhone where he was happily texting someone. “That was interesting.”

  I nodded. “A complicated woman.”

  “Gracie?”

  I laughed. “That’s a given. But I was thinking of Marta.”

  He stood over me as I was reviewing the names of people to be interviewed—Marta’s short list of clients.

  Hank read out loud, “Richard Wilcox, Charlie Safako. Farmington College professors who haven’t had sex in years?”

  I laughed. “Put me on that list.”

  He hit me in the shoulder. “Yeah, sure.”

  Hank always assumed I had more of a life than I did.

  “I told you how I met her once, right?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I guess it was her. A cleaning lady. Once, when I came looking for you.”

  “What happened?”

  “She yelled at me—said you didn’t entertain students at home.”

  “How’d she know?”

  Hank laughed. “Maybe she didn’t. It’s just the way she thought it should be.”

  He read the names off the bright screen, along with my notations. “These guys are weak suspects. Wilcox and Safako.”

  “Weak professors make strong suspects.” A little too glibly.

  “Joshua Jennings?” he read out loud. “He’s dead. You’re listing men who are dead as suspects? He was a hundred years old, at least.”

  I looked up. “You knew him?”

  “When I had work study in the library, he’d hobble in, ask for books we didn’t have.”

  “Maybe you’d misplaced them.”

  He laughed. “Such a list you have, Rick. People with dirty houses. Dead people.” He leaned over me and tapped the keyboard. Awkward spelling and spacing: “Rikl vamn Lamm.” He pointed. “She cleaned your apartment, too.” He grinned.

  But then he watched as I made some notes about Karen’s brother, Davey Corcoran, as well as Karen’s holding back info about the insurance policy.

  “Think she did it?”

  I pressed the “save” key and stood up, stretched. My plans for a quiet evening at home—alone—were gone. The Jonathan Kellerman novel sat unread on the nightstand. I punched Hank to move him out of the way. I wanted to get away from the screen—and the Marta case. While his company was especially welcome when I did my tedious and methodical fraud or divorce investigations—he was great at those long, tedious stakeouts, scouting out bathrooms, sitting in a car with his phones and tablets and Twitter feeds, with stale tuna sandwiches on whole wheat and lots of juvenile humor—a young man who could sniff out a Dunkin’ Donuts from a half-mile away—I had some reservations about drawing him into a murder case. Of course, I told myself, I’d already done that.

  I was always afraid he might get hurt.

  Fraud investigation could involve playful strategy, much like a board game. Hank, ever inventive and resourceful, was a pleasure to be with. But of necessity and legally he had to stay on the fringes of my investigations. I had the license—he didn’t. I thought of Joshua Jennings’ love of James Fenimore Cooper—I was Natty Bumppo and Hank was Chingachgook, the Indian sidekick. Or, as Mark Twain said, we should call him “Chicago.” If Marta was murdered, I didn’t want Hank to be in the thick of it. This case was much more than people secreting ill-gained money in phony accounts, or people lying about debilitating injuries to get a measly couple thou from Aetna Insurance. This was murder. Maybe. I didn’t want him to get too close to it.

  “Let’s go out for a walk,” I said.

  We headed to Zeke’s Olde Tavern a few blocks west of the town green, about a half-mile from my house. It was surprisingly windy, the hard night air heavy and wet against our faces. The streetlights sparkled brilliantly through the last of the translucent yellow and orange leaves stubbornly clinging to the maple trees. I pulled my jacket tighter around my neck. Winter was coming in. It was still early November but the smell and feel were there. Someone was burning wood in a fireplace. The acrid scent tantalized. I shivered.

  Hank was dressed—as he would have said himself—for the Alaskan tundra by way of some trendy mall outlet. He’d gone to his car to retrieve a thick woolly parka, a ferocious wool scarf, and a Boston Red Sox baseball cap pulled tight and backwards, hip-hop style, over his forehead. He didn’t look chilled at all. The slight boy inside was nowhere to be seen.

  Tucked into an old mahogany booth, age-stained and jack-knife hewn, beer marinated, with lovers’ initials and dates overlapping and disappearing into the grainy shellac, we quietly sipped long-necked Buds.

  “I used to come here years ago,” Hank told me.

  “When?” I asked.

  “College.”

  “You weren’t twenty-one.”

  “Like that stops anyone these days.”

  It was a quiet weeknight. Just the usual town drunks, some late-night college kids with bogus IDs—Hank’s casual observation—and unhappy husbands and wives. The bar had an awkward mix of town and gown, with the locals hating the college kids who in turn mocked the locals. It had vintage mahogany high-back booths, with original tables with scratched-in graffiti dating back to 1900. But as the elegant mahogany stools at the bar wore out, they were replaced with shoddy plastic-covered ones, stools that clashed with the old-world feel of the place. Sometimes the owners introduced plants—real ones—but within the month they died of inattention. Every so often a local got drunk and was thrown out—then the college kids applauded. When a college kid got ousted, the locals raised their beer steins in salute. It was that kind of a place. Tonight there were a couple of barflies, that’s all, the kind with no flesh left on their frames, too much fear in their eyes.

  “By the way,” Hank began, “my mother says for you to stop over. You haven’t dropped in for some time. Maybe Sunday morning?”

  I smiled. “She making mi ga?”

  Hank laughed. “You got it. Your favorite.” The Vietnamese chicken soup. His mother’s version was about as savory as possible, a far cry from the bland versions I’d discovered in Vietnamese restaurants largely catering to white palates.

  “I’ll be there.”r />
  There was a time when I wouldn’t have agreed so quickly to such an invitation. His mother is a sweet woman who accepted me immediately—but she tends to like everyone she meets. The grandmother dotes on me—a highly spiritual woman with her Buddhist prayers and ceremonies. But the men—well, his father fought for the American-Vietnamese forces, a topic he will discuss with me for hours at a time. When he gets drunk, which is often, he attacks the white in me. But the grandfather is the problem—he hates my mongrel guts. He doesn’t want me in the house.

  “I got to warn you, though,” he confided, “my father’s on a kick about the United States opening trade relations with Communist Vietnam.”

  “I won’t mention it.”

  “He’s gonna demand your opinion. Be careful.”

  “I’m always diplomatic.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Hank’s fingers circled the neck of the beer bottle. He started to peel off the moist label, flecking it into little balls of paper that dropped like sloppy hail around the base of the amber bottle. With his thumb and index finger he flicked the rolled-up balls of paper at me, like pellets from a gun. They shot across the table and careened off my chest.

  “Are we back in grade school?” I asked him.

  I had a second beer and munched on stale beer nuts. The Tavern, I swear, kept all munchies in back until suitably stale, then served them. Hank refused another beer. That oddly pleased me. Big brother Rick, all over again. Hank leaned over, speaking confidentially. “You want to know the name of your murderer?” A dramatic pause. “He’s here.”

  Startled, I twisted my head, surveyed the bar as though I knew the culprit by sight.

  “Behind the jukebox,” Hank whispered. “He just walked in.”

  I peered through the dim light. I noticed a tall man nearly in shadows. Ken Rodman. I frowned as I turned back to Hank. He was grinning. Ken was the newest tenant on the third floor of my house, a decent-looking man in his early forties. He’d moved in three or four months back. In fact, Hank and I had helped him maneuver an ungainly sofa up the back stairs. Visiting that morning, Hank announced that he always had the bad luck of visiting places when sofas were being lifted up multiple flights of stairs. Though he seemed anxious that we leave, Ken had offered us diet Cokes as a reward. That was my last real contact with him. An insurance exec in Hartford, freshly divorced—Gracie’s gossip. I’d since said only three or four words to him as we crossed on the stairwell or in the back parking lot. He drove a sleek black Audi that’s always impeccably clean, inside and out. I knew that for a fact because I peered inside one time. I couldn’t imagine he’d allow mismatched furniture in his apartment. No, unlike my eclectic lot of dubious origin, his came, I suspected, from some store where born-again bachelors shopped. Pier One, perhaps. Or the Pottery Barn. Everything Scandinavian and Euro teakwood and big off-white linen throw pillows. I shivered at the clinical thought.

  Hank was smirking. “Your murderer.”

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  Hank gave me a Huckleberry grin. “You know how you spend all that time typing Marta’s cleaning clients into your laptop—your tidy list of possible suspects? Which, of course, includes you, probably the real murderer. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  I was impatient. “Yeah. What’s your point? What are you trying to say?”

  “Well, Rick, I know for a fact that Marta cleaned Ken’s apartment at least once. I stopped by to see you and you weren’t home, but Gracie told me Marta would be cleaning your apartment after she finished with Ken’s. So he’s your murderer.”

  I laughed at him. “I already know that.” But I cringed—just how many people did Marta know? Karen had given me the short list of permanent weekly clients, the old professors Marta knew for years and had become friendly with. Everyone kept saying she didn’t do it for the money, that she was loaded, but she certainly kept her dance card full. Have feather duster, will travel. The woman who returned to dust.

  My list struck me as a little foolish. How many other cleaning jobs were there? How many possible connections did she make? Was there somebody out there whose apartment she had cleaned only once? Some maniac? Some—what? Motive, motive! Marta kept no orderly accounting of work done. Much of her pay was under the table anyway. She kept no appointment book at all.

  Hank was stretching, scratching his head.

  “But then again,” he yawned, “maybe not.”

  I got ready to leave, fishing for my wallet.

  I wasn’t happy. Hank’s jesting—he still kept nodding toward Ken Rodman—rankled. There just seemed too many paths now. I liked things orderly, logical. One of my professors at John Jay once lectured our class—a good detective likes things plain and simple, that’s natural, but never expects to find things that way. That’s because life is illogical—so annoyingly unnatural. Detectives have to sift through messy, random lives so that things become clear. Somewhere in the wet swamp of a murder scene there lies the dry island. A good detective swims to that land. I remember getting confused with all those metaphors and swimming directions, but the message was obvious. If you think you’re going to find the murderer behind the first locked, obvious door, you should pursue a less predictable career. You’d have better luck on a TV game show. Door number one? Two?

  Hank shoved me as we walked out the door. “Aren’t you gonna cuff Ken?” His lips spread into a thin, cynical line. “He’s already planning his next murder.”

  I looked back over my shoulder. In the dim shadows of the bar, Ken had spotted us. Taking a sip from his bottle, he turned away.

  Chapter Ten

  After midnight, lazy at my desk, my laptop humming, I stared numbly at my feeble list of suspects. Even the word suspect now seemed pretentious. Interviewees—that was better. How many more? Idly, I added Ken Rodman’s name to the end of the list, most likely a throwaway gesture. Someone whose rooms she cleaned killed her—possibly. If murder it was…My fingers typed: “I understand a pesky Marta Kowalski cleaned your apartment one time. Did you murder her? Did she leave a particularly egregious dust ball that sent you into a fevered rage?” I highlighted the line and pressed delete.

  It was late. I was punchy, humming with a slight buzz from the beer, a little annoyed at Hank and not certain exactly why, hazy with the uncertainties of the case. Standing up, I slipped off my shirt and rubbed my chest. I yawned. It was time for bed.

  The phone rang. I glanced at the clock—nearly one in the morning. I debated letting the machine pick up because the caller ID indicated UNKNOWN, but at that hour the temptation was immediate and welcome.

  At first the phone voice was faraway and small, almost indistinguishable, like a small child sputtering into the phone.

  “Who is it?”

  The rambling went on. A thick voice, a man’s voice I could tell now, but a foggy one, as if something were stuck in his throat.

  Nothing.

  I was ready to hang up when I heard my name. My whole name. “Rick Van Lam.” Said sarcastically in a singsong tone.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Like you don’t know.”

  Well, I didn’t. So I waited. Someone knew my name, so the call was deliberate. My eyes half-shut with fatigue. I rubbed my chest as I settled into a chair. We waited, both of us, in silence, the sound of tinny laughter in the background. I guessed the caller was at a bar. I heard the twang of a country song playing on a jukebox, the clinking of glass against glass. Someone yelled, an indistinguishable slurring of words.

  “It’s Davey Corcoran.” The voice spoke directly into the receiver, the words now clear and sharp, but spiked with sloppy anger. Davey Corcoran, calling from a last-call tavern, drunk out of his mind. Great, I thought. A good-night bedtime call, so much better than a lullaby.

  “What’s up?”

  He laughed that phony laugh of bitter drunks, a rumble hearty yet cold
and deadpan. A laugh with no soul. “You know what’s up, man. I just want to tell you one thing.” His words slurred into each other so that the effect was breathy and difficult to understand: Ijuswannatellyaonethinnng. Like that.

  I waited. Silence. “Well…”

  “Well, my sister got a fucking nerve hiring you to do this shit about my aunt. She leaves a note on my door, telling me you’re gonna talk to me. I don’t think you realize that this is a crock of bullshit.”

  “Davey, it’s her money.”

  That laugh again. “It’s my aunt’s money.”

  “Davey…”

  “Save the shit, Lam. Little sister sucked her way into that cash, and that’s a fact. Not that I cared. Or even had a chance. Good old Marta had no use for me and…” He babbled on, again incoherent.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did she leave you out of the will?”

  “That’s not why I’m calling.”

  “Well, why are you calling?”

  “I want this stopped. I don’t want you bothering me—or anyone.”

  “If your aunt was murdered…”

  He gasped. “Shit. It wasn’t murder. Who’d wanna kill that old bitch?”

  “Karen thinks…”

  He cut in, furious. “Let me tell you something about little sister. Karen’s not the pretty little thing that gets you all itchy between your legs, Lam boy. I know how she works around guys. She always got her way. She hated my aunt—Christ, how could she not hate that witch?—but she put up with her shit because she knew I wouldn’t. I don’t know what this game of hers is, but I want you to think about one thing.” A long pause. “You listening?”

  “Yeah.”

  I heard the jukebox music stop. I heard glasses tinkling, someone yelling a man’s name.