The Polka Dot Girl

by Darragh McManus

  Cella smiled and said, “Genie. How the hell are you? Still keeping it short, huh?”, flicking the feathered edge of my cropped hair.

  “Well, hey, after that time our friend gave me a knuckle sandwich, remember? By pulling my hair…?”

  She nodded in remembrance and smiled again. Then she said, “C’mere, you little shrimp” and engulfed me in a bear-hug, a real lung-buster.

  I laughed and said, muffled, “Cella, you’ll smother me. You forget how small I am.”

  We separated and I said, “Were you there? In the church?” “Yup. Hangin’ near the back. You didn’t see me. I saw you, though.”

  It was really good to meet her again, but this wasn’t a social event. I raised my eyebrows: “So. You want to talk about something—important?”

  Cella looked around as casually as she could manage and nodded. She put a finger to her lips and beckoned me follow to her car, parked two blocks away. We didn’t speak again until we were sitting in it, windows cracked an inch to allow us to smoke without suffocating ourselves, radio playing at low volume. Cella rooted out a flask of coffee from underneath the passenger seat and poured a cup for each of us. Its steam fogged the windows a little in oddly defined patterns, these liquid streaks and ellipses.

  Then she began, in her deep, rounded voice: “I always liked you in the Academy, Genie. And afterwards, too, you know, working Vice together. We’re not best buddies or anything, but yeah. The point is I knew even back then when we were kids that I liked you. I knew you were straightforward and honest and decent, and I felt—I feel—like I can trust you.” She turned to face me. “Can I trust you? I mean, really fucking trust you.”

  “Yes. Absolutely, yes, you can trust me. Cella, what’s this all about?”

  “No, I mean I know that. I can trust you, I know. But I’m a nervous type of a woman, Genie. Body of an elephant but the nerves of a mouse. And right now I’m very nervous.”

  “Alright, well… Talk to me. Just, you know…give it to me straight.”

  She gave it to me straight: “Misericordiae Greenhill has employed me to find her daughter ’s killer. In my, uh, capacity as a private investigator. I don’t know who put her onto me. She phoned me—direct, herself—the day after the body was found. Asked me to find out who done it, as they say. All strictly on the QT, which is why all the cloak and dagger stuff. She warned me not to tell anyone about this job. She actually warned me, like a threat.”

  I laughed and said, “Wow. Way to have faith in the police, Misery.”

  “Nah, I don’t think it’s that. This—me—I’m like an insurance policy. She’s covering all the bases. If the cops can catch the killer, fine, if not she’ll take care of it herself. Which is where I come in.” I tossed my cigarette out the window—apologies to the street sweepers—and said, “So what’s wrong? I won’t pretend I’m over the moon about this, but it’s her right to employ a private dick.

  It’s your right to take the job. So long as no laws are broken…” Cella laughed queasily. “Yeah. Well, there’s the… Genie, I am really worried here. Because what will Misery do with this infor- mation when she gets it? I’ve heard of… Okay, so I’ve heard these rumors on the grapevine. About a bounty being offered on the killer being brought to Misery—alive. So I mean, what’s she gonna do when she has her? I mean, is she gonna kill the woman or what? Torture her? I can’t be a part of that, Jesus…”

  “Shh. Hold on. Let’s begin at the begin. You heard these rumors from who?”

  “From the sort of sources you don’t want to know where I heard it. I’m scared, Genie. Shit, I only took the job because Misery terrifies me. I didn’t feel I could say no. And now this, these rumors that she wants to kill the killer herself. In revenge, right? Revenge for the girl. I can understand it, sure, who wouldn’t want some payback for something like that? But God, I can’t get mixed up in this. I mean, it could all just be urban legend, but anything is possible with that woman…”

  I lit another Dark Nine and sipped my coffee and ruminated. Cella was right—the old lady was capable of almost anything. The history of Hera City had a secret, unwritten sub-plot: the alleged deeds and misdeeds of Misericordiae Greenhill. Never proven, barely mentioned in polite society, but an enduring narrative thread all the same, whispers and side-of-mouth suggestions, the quiet babble of insinuation. I was sure I’d only heard of a fraction of it, but what I had heard made me feel wary. Powerless.

  They said she’d employed violent thugs to break up a construction workers strike at one of her building projects. She’d used blackmail and intimidation on city zoning officials. She was the biggest polluter in Hera and paid off the environmental watchdogs to turn a blind eye. She engineered a cover-up after six people burned to death in a fire-trap slum building she owned in the east side sprawl. There was more, much more. There were also more outlandish, and frankly not believable, indictments: she was the biggest moneylender in the city. She ran drugs in and out of the Zig-Zag. She had a personal army of assassins who struck at the click of her fingers. (Misery didn’t need to do any of that stuff. There was more than enough profit in bending and breaking the rules for her legitimate businesses.) On and on the river of accusation trickled. But murder? Actual, personal murder? That had never been suggested by any reliable source; that would take Misery across the line separating (relatively) venial sin from mortal. There was no turning back from murder.

  I shook my head and said, “I don’t see it. A revenge killing? Even for Misery that is just, that’s beyond… Nah. I don’t see it.”

  Cella shrugged her big meaty shoulders—she moved like a bag of wet cement being worked by a system of pulleys—and didn’t reply. She opened a bar of chocolate and went to take a bite, then looked at it and put it aside with a sickly expression. Now I knew she was nervous: Cella had a famously unquenchable appetite for unhealthy foodstuffs. We sat in silence for almost five minutes, her smoking and glancing nervously in her rearview mirror, me digesting what she’d said. Okay, so where now? I worked it through: Misery was using Cella and using me to some extent, so why not use the Cella/Misery connection myself? Why not use Misery’s time and dollar for my own ends? All I cared about, really, was settling the score for Madeleine—the rest of it was just politics, melodrama and bullshit.

  I said, “Let’s pool our information. And by that I mean, let’s you tell me what you have. On the hush-huh, naturally. If you’re worried about the Misery situation, well, here’s your out. You help me, get me that bit closer to cracking this thing, good old HCPD takes care of matters, you’re in the clear with the old dame. Sound good?”

  Cella nodded eagerly, like she’d been just waiting for someone, anyone to suggest something along these lines. She smiled at me, grateful and still a little antsy. I gave her a few moments as she rummaged around under the seat for a crumpled sheaf of notes, eight or ten pages filled with tiny block handwriting. Cella had been extremely busy over the last few days—that’s what you call a motivated employee. I was sure Misery would have approved.

  She took a deep breath and began: “Okay. I’ve been running down the names on this dossier Misericordiae gave me. Her right-hand woman, that oddball Ileana, she dropped it off. It’s a list of places the kid hung out, people she knew, stuff she did. Very detailed. Scarily detailed.”

  I nodded. The Misery Top Ten, though presumably Cella hadn’t actually narrowed hers down to ten like I did. As I remem- bered, she took more of a blunt, straight-line approach to work: you sat down and spread out the information and began toiling through it, line after line after line. Tedious but ultimately pretty effective. She tossed out several names that I vaguely remembered from my first reading of the Madeleine docs. I’d felt at the time they were only tangential connections and Cella backed up my hunch: nothing to see here. Sometime drinking buddies, the odd former classmate, a woman she’d bought a classic car from, someone else she brought to a social event.

  Then we got to the good stuff; my ears perked up and my sixth sens
e went on full alert. Cella said, “Uh, Odette Crawford. I decided not to hit her until, uh, you and me had, you know, spoken… Out of respect for you, I mean. You and her. I mean, with the personal history and all…” Her words stumbled away into quiet embarrassment.

  I smiled and gently patted her hand. “That’s cool, Cella. I appreciate it. I’ll take care of that myself.”

  Cella sighed in relief. “Okay. Uh, shit, where was I? Right, next up: Mary-Jane Tussing and Bethany Gilbert. Two ex-class- mates of Madeleine Greenhill. Students of that creep Azura LaVey. Both say they hadn’t met Madeleine for a while. So, Tussing: calls herself ‘May-Jay’, if you can fucking believe that. I didn’t like her. Smarmy. I mean, Gilbert was a complete idiot, and obnoxious with it, but I kind of felt she was on the level. Like she wouldn’t have the smarts to fool me anyway, you know? But Tussing… Nope. Didn’t like her. Didn’t trust her. Too composed. For a college student talking to a private investigator about the murder of her friend? And she just breezed through it like it was a goddamn chat with her course tutor.”

  “Agreed. Tussing is not to be trusted. Next, please.”

  “Virginia Newman. Nice girl, a bit dull. Nothing much worth talking about here. She met Madeleine the day she died—picked her up from Caritas Heights that morning. Says they hung out for a little while, didn’t see her again from, like, early afternoon.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not in terms of information. She seemed genuinely sad, though. You know? That the Greenhill kid was dead? Like she properly cared for her. Wasn’t just using her like the other two.

  But I think this Newman chick might be from money anyway, so…no need to sponge off a poor little rich girl.”

  “Yeah, Misery said the same thing. Said Virginia genuinely cared about her daughter. I think she appreciated the girl coming today.”

  “She was here, huh? Didn’t see her. Anyway, yeah, she was alright. Like I say, nothing special. …You know Tussing’s old dear blew all their money?”

  I said, intrigued, “No, I did not know that.”

  “Sure. Inherited a fortune from her mother—May-Jay’s grandma—she’d made it in logging or transport or some shit. Anyway, Mary-Jane senior blew the whole megillah. Bad invest- ments, stupid choices. So Junior ’s been reduced to the grubby status of scholarship student. Such a fall from grace, ha.”

  “She must be clever, then? To get a scholarship?” “Dunno. Suppose so.”

  “Which is funny, because she told me she wasn’t the brightest, academically speaking.”

  “Mm. Dunno. She’s LaVey’s little pet, anyway. Coupla other girls clued me in while I was loitering with bad intent on campus the other day. Tussing is not a popular girly with the other students. One of ’em said… Nah, I can’t. It’s too rude.”

  I smiled. “Go on. I’m a big girl for such a little girl.”

  Cella smiled too. “She said if Tussing had her head any further up Madam LaVey’s ass she could brush her teeth with it.”

  “Unoriginal, but effective.”

  “Yeah. Charming image. You want another drop of coffee?”

  I nodded yes and she poured out the last of the flask. It had cooled quite a bit but I blew on it anyway as I thought: Virginia Newman clearly had a deep relationship with Madeleine. There probably wasn’t a whole lot else the girl could tell me, but I wanted to talk to her anyway. She was one of the few people who I knew for sure met the victim on the day of her death. But more than that, being honest, I wanted to know Madeleine a little better, through Virginia, through their friendship, their intimate history. I wanted to see if she could help explain why I was starting to care this much.

  Then I belatedly noticed that Cella had started speaking again: “…anne Queneau. Sorry, Professor Orianne Queneau. Teaches Metaphysics at Hera U. Very well-regarded philosophy course. I mean, she’s brilliant, there’s no doubt about it. But I didn’t like her, either. Smooth, intellectual; full of fancy talk, and I don’t mean metaphysics.”

  “What, then?”

  “Queneau is like a politician. You’re never sure that what she’s saying is what she’s saying, ya know what I mean? I checked her out, too, her background: highly respectable, cultured, honorary degrees up the yin-yang, patron of this art, founder of that appreciation society. All that education and achievement makes a dumb broad like me suspicious.”

  I smiled to myself—Cella was a real meat-and-two-veg kind of lady. Not exactly anti-intellectual, but instinctively wary of it. I wasn’t wired up that way myself, but knew the type and didn’t mind too much: my mom had been just like that. When I told her I intended to study philosophy for a short while she had one comment to make: “But sweetheart, don’t you agree you already think about things too much as it is?” One of the many, many reasons I loved that woman to bits.

  Cella continued, “Queneau’s into a whole bunch of other stuff in her spare time, way-out stuff: all that airy-fairy esoteric crap. You know the sort of thing I mean.”

  “Mm-hm. And Madeleine?”

  “Says she hasn’t seen her in over a year. I don’t know.” “You think she was holding back on you?”

  “Maybe not specifically on that—I mean, for all I know she hasn’t seen the girl that long. But something nagged at me… Anyway, seems clean for the night in question. She was hosting a gala dinner at the city museum. Some new exhibition of…whatever. Thing went on ’till the wee hours and Queneau claims she was there all night, except not there exactly but in a smaller private room in the building. Wouldn’t tell me who with, cited right to privacy and so on. But the old wagon assures me they were ‘respectable and well-regarded members of Hera society.’ The usual.”

  The sky was darkening even though it couldn’t have been that late, like someone drawing an opaque veil over the city, fuzzing the edges. I felt like a movie character in a scene that’s about to fade out. Time to step it up: “Alright. Who else?”

  “Sasha Hiscock, the TV presenter,” Cella said. “Complete airhead. I mean, smart in some ways, but ultimately a bubblehead. One I definitely don’t figure for any connection.”

  “No?”

  “Genie, are you kidding me? The woman is terrified of the public finding out she even moved in some of the same circles as Madeleine Greenhill. Hiscock is too self-obsessed and career- obsessed to be a murderer. Christ, can you imagine it! She’d be worried about the blood spattering her new three-grand shoes. Took me two days to get an interview, and even then she had her lawyer present. ’Course, I couldn’t tell her who I was working for. Old Misery’s name woulda opened up a few doors.”

  “And she had an alibi for the night of the murder, I’m presuming?”

  “You’re presuming right, my little friend. Spent the whole evening with our beloved Deputy Mayor.” She smiled slyly. “You remember Henrietta, don’t you?”

  Henrietta Villa. That moron. Sorry, let me rephrase: that back- stabbing, avaricious, greasy-pole-climbing, megalomaniac moron. Villa, in a previous life as the civilian head of Internal Affairs in HCPD, had tried to pin a corruption beef on me and another patrol cop with absolutely no evidence. Claimed we were taking bribes to turn a blind eye to a gambling racket. It was all BS, a clumsy attempt to make a case and make a name for herself.

  When I heard about it first, I laughed. Then I got really worried. Then I got angry and threatened to sue her for defamation if she didn’t issue a formal retraction and apology to both me and the other girl. It was only later, when I’d cooled off a bit and Villa had scuttled back under her rock, that I realized how close I’d come to getting canned. And realized that I had more guts than I’d known.

  I drawled, “My pal Henrietta. How’s she doing? You know, I miss her sometimes.”

  Cella chuckled and said, “I think we all miss Henrietta in our own way. Okay, I got one more for you: Noni Ashbery. Her full name’s Winona but everyone calls her Noni. A psychologist and therapist, private practice. Madeleine was referred to her aged— lemme just check this—aged 1
6. Bulimia and suspected anorexia. Classic signs of a damaged teenager. Anyway, she saw this Noni Ashbery for about six months. Seems to have helped her a lot. I mean, she never went back, so… Sorry, no, that’s not the full story. She never went back for the eating disorder thing, but they kept in contact. A loose sort of arrangement. Madeleine would drop in for a chat every now and again. Nothing too structured or formal, but it was counseling. So says Ashbery herself. She was very forthcoming. For a medical person, I mean. No problem talking about Madeleine, within certain parameters of course.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “Ashbery? Nice, yeah. Genuine. Straight-up. I mean, she looks exactly like a therapist should look, you know? Soft features, warm smile, even her voice…it was pitched just so. Just right. Really relaxing, being in her company. Yeah, she was very nice.” I took it all in, creating the mental file, cataloguing and ordering, like a sub-program running under the surface, sifting through the data, structuring and assembling.

  Then Cella said, “Really, that’s as far as I’ve got. So is it any help to you or what?”

  I stretched my back out, twisting and scrunching up my face with muscular relief. “Yeah, it all helps. Okay, so that’s it, that’s who you’ve talked to?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Right, well I’ve met with LaVey myself. Who else, who else?

  …Camilla C—might swing by her tonight. Anneka Klosterman’s obviously out of circulation.”

  “Yeah, I hear you guys have her downtown. Heard she confessed to the whole thing. What a lucky break for you, huh?!” I raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Her and about five others. Ah, it’s all a wash, Cella. Someone’s playing games. Playing us for saps.”

  “Any ideas who? Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that.”

  “No, it’s alright. You can ask. I probably won’t answer, though.” I chewed over her question. If we were going to swap information, well, a swap worked two ways. But I wanted to hold back on my own theories for now. Etienne knowing about it was one thing, but Cella was out of the club; she wasn’t one of us anymore. I knew I could trust her, but something told me, no, hold back. I felt I’d be ceding some measure of control over the situation if she knew as much as I did. Maybe it was the Misery connection, and that thought made me feel almost as edgy as Cella still looked. I had decided a long time back in the conver- sation that I was going to work this Cella angle, but considering it now, becoming fully cognizant of my decision, made me nervous as all hell. You just didn’t play games with La Greenhill, but I was about to do exactly that.