Relatively Dead

by Cook, Alan

  Mary’s trailer was one of these. At my knock she came to the door wearing shorts, a T-shirt that said, “Kiss me, I’m Irish,” and red hair that was either dyed or a wig. Her body was a bit lumpy and her legs were lined with varicose veins. She shook my hand vigorously and invited me in for a cup of tea.

  When we were seated at the tiny table with full cups in front of us she looked at me, perhaps searching for a family resemblance.

  “So you’re a cousin of Tom on his father’s side. At least, that’s what you said on the phone. I’ve never heard of you before.”

  I launched into an explanation of how I met Tom, and DNA tests, and how I’d found out we were cousins. She verified that her husband’s father hadn’t known who his father was. I went on to tell about what happened in Edinburgh, altering the details to cause the least amount of pain to Mary. I was talking about our trip to Oxford when Mary interrupted me.

  “So you saw Tom fall off the platform?”

  “I didn’t actually see him fall, but I was there, yes.” I gave a short description of the layout of the platform and what I’d seen.

  “I got a call at four o’clock in the morning from this man with what I call a cockney accent—not your lilting Irish, mind you—and he says, ‘Ma’am, I regret to inform you that I have bad news for you.’ What a way to find out that your son’s been killed.”

  I was prepared to comfort her, but she didn’t cry. She took a sip of tea and continued.

  “The man said it was an accident. He didn’t think it was a good idea to try to send Tom’s body home. I guess he was trying to be nice. My God, he was hit by a train. What’s left of him? He said he’d arrange for Tom to be cremated and he’d send me his ashes in an urn. I thanked him and got ready for work. I didn’t cry until the service Saturday.”

  I asked her about the service. She said it was beautiful and the people in her church were very supportive. She said she was going to have Tom’s name engraved on the stone where her husband was buried and where she would be buried. She would spread some of his ashes there and keep the urn in her trailer.

  I asked her where she worked.

  “Bob’s Big Burgers. I’m a cook. It’s hot work but it brings in some money.”

  “Do you mean Bob’s Big Boy?”

  “No, ma’am, Bob’s Big Burgers. We aren’t affiliated with any chain. But we do serve a great burger. It’s my day off, but I’ll take you there for lunch.”

  She got to talking about Tom. She said what a wonderful son he was and how proud she was of him. She said she could scrape by on Social Security and her job, but Tom also sent her some money every two weeks when he got paid. Then her eyes lit up.

  “Recently, he drove out here to see me on his day off. He said he had some extra cash and that we should go to the bank and put it in my account. Do you know how much it was?”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand dollars. I don’t think I ever saw that much cash in one place since the time my husband took me to Las Vegas and one of the casinos had a display case with a million dollars inside. He said he won it in the Lottery. That money will keep me going for a while. I said he shouldn’t give me so much, but he said he had more. ”

  “Uh, one of the reasons I came out here is because I owe Tom some money. Coincidentally, the amount I owe him is five thousand dollars. I can call and have the money wired directly to your bank account.”

  Mary looked suspicious. “Why do you owe Tom all that money?”

  “He, uh, helped me out when I had a problem. It’s too late to pay him back so I’ll give the money to you. If you’ll show me one of your checks, I can relay the information to my bank so they can make the transfer.”

  Mary still didn’t trust me, and I didn’t blame her. I’d appeared to her out of the blue and asked to see her bank account number. I suggested we go to her bank and I’d make the call from there and let my banker talk to an employee at her bank to effect the transfer. Then we’d go to lunch at Bob’s Big Burgers.

  CHAPTER 30

  It was a tough slog from Lancaster to West Los Angeles on a Monday afternoon. What I needed was a jet pack so I could fly over all the traffic. I took the 14 to the 405, which has got to be the world’s busiest freeway. Heading south over the pass through the Santa Monica Mountains, at least I was traveling against the going-home traffic heading out to the San Fernando Valley.

  I’d successfully transferred five thousand dollars to Mary’s account. We’d eaten lunch at Bob’s Big Burgers, which had better hamburgers than a lot of fast-food places I’d tried. She wanted to show me around Lancaster. Having some time on my hands, I acquiesced to that. She talked about Tom in loving terms, but said he was hopeless with girls. I hoped she’d survive now that she was essentially alone in the world, and gave her my address and phone number, intending to stay in touch. She thanked me profusely for the money and for being a friend of Tom. I felt guilty, especially when she gave me a bear hug as I left.

  I went west toward the beach on I-10 from the 405, exited and headed south and west to Venice, and parked in a Venice beach parking lot because I didn’t have any change for parking meters. I needed to stretch my legs after being cooped up in a car, so I walked along the beach walk past some of the exotic peddlers offering tourists T-shirts and costume jewelry, to the apartment building where Jason III lived before he was murdered and where his ex-roommate, Evan Hunter, still lived.

  When I’d called Evan in the morning before I set out for Lancaster, I didn’t know how to announce myself. I’d been Aiko Murakawa the one time I talked to him, but he never would have found my phone number in North Carolina using the name Aiko, so he must have somehow discovered I was really Cynthia. In fact, he must have asked for Cynthia when he talked to Audrey, or she would have said something to me. Although she was vaguely aware I’d used the name Aiko, that was ancient history to her.

  In any case, I was shunted to voicemail. Perhaps Evan was in a drug-induced coma. I compromised by leaving both names on the message. He called while I was driving to Lancaster, but being in a law-abiding mode I didn’t take the call and only called him back after I parked on a street in Lancaster. This time I got him.

  “Hi, Evan. It’s uh, Aiko, I mean Cynthia.”

  “Hi. I’m glad we connected. Can we get together this evening?”

  His voice sounded clear, not spaced-out. We arranged to meet at his apartment at six. As I approached the building I glanced at my watch. It was ten of six. Oh well, better to be early than late. I called his cell phone and he answered immediately and said he’d meet me at the entrance.

  I didn’t recognize him when he came out the door. True, I’d seen him in a dim light before. But now his longish brown hair was neatly combed, he was clean shaven, and he was wearing sharp-looking clothes, including a sport shirt and pressed pants. He wasn’t tall, which accentuated a starter pot-belly, and he had a rather two-dimensional face, with a small nose, but his smile was sunny.

  Fortunately, he recognized me. He gave me a smile and stuck out his hand. “What should I call you, Aiko or Cynthia?”

  “Cynthia’s fine. You’re looking good.” That burst out before I could stop it.

  He laughed. “So are you. I think you caught me when I was on my last binge. When Jason died, that shook me. I had two ways to go—down or up. Fortunately, the upside won. I’ve got a real job and everything now. Are you hungry? I could eat a blue whale. The downside of stopping all the bad stuff is that you develop an insatiable appetite.”

  I admitted I was hungry. He suggested we walk to a local restaurant featuring good seafood. That was fine with me. While we were walking I asked him how he’d found my phone number.

  He gave me a sly smile. “First I Googled Aiko Murakawa. Once I got the spelling right, I found your video. I must say you look good in it.”

  I gave my standard response. “I was a lot younger then.”

  “You haven’t changed. Anyway, as much as I liked the video, that was a dead end
as far as finding you was concerned. So I called Marcia.”

  “Jason’s girlfriend.”

  “She told me she’d called your bluff, but you showed her some kind of fake British driver’s license with the name Aiko.”

  I laughed. I almost told Evan the license was legit, but decided he didn’t need to know that.

  “The only other person I could think of to ask was Nelly McIvor. She said your real name was Cynthia something or other. If you Google Cynthia you get two hundred eighty-four million hits.”

  I’d told Nelly my real name when I was trying to convince her to get out of the syndicate. “How long did it take you to go through all those?”

  “The old me would have given up at that point. The new me cornered Nelly and told her she had to remember your last name. I plied her with wine and tried to hypnotize her, but that only made her giggle. Using trial and error we finally came up with S-a-k as the start of your last name, which narrowed the search all the way down to triple digits. When I found the amnesia story there were recognizable pictures of you. Once I knew your name and where you lived, it wasn’t hard to find your phone number.”

  “You sound like a budding Frances, the woman who helped me recover my identity. She can find anybody. Has Nelly gotten out of the syndicate?”

  “She talked to Marcia about that. Marcia promised she’d get her money back, but I don’t think she’s seen any yet. She’s a cute chick, by the way, but, unfortunately, she’s engaged to someone a lot richer than I am. Or so she says. She doesn’t wear a ring. He’s supposedly on a top secret mission somewhere. I told her I’m going to be rich. Meanwhile, she’ll go out with me as long as she doesn’t have a better offer for the evening. The only good thing about not being rich is that I wasn’t able to invest in the syndicate.”

  Evan asked me about my amnesia and I gave him the two-minute version of the story. By that time we’d reached the restaurant. We sat at a small table and ordered wine and swordfish. I asked him why he wanted to see me.

  “Once I sobered up I realized I knew more about Jason’s murder than I thought I did.”

  “Did you go to the police?”

  Evan shook his head. “If I talked to the police I’d have to tell them about the syndicate, and I’ve been asked not to do that by Nelly, Marcia, and several other people. I don’t want to get anybody into trouble. For the same reason, I didn’t talk to Jason’s grandfather.”

  “He knows about the syndicate.”

  “Anyway, since you were very interested in Jason and seemed intelligent, I figured you were the best person to talk to. You didn’t have a stake in the syndicate or anything. I think you said something about being a reporter, but that didn’t help in tracking you down, so I figured it was bogus. I did finally figure out you’re the female cousin Jason mentioned he had but said he’d never met, because I vaguely remembered seeing you at his memorial service. He said you were supposed to be hot. That tied it together for me.”

  “I suppose that’s better than being cold.”

  “Worlds better. But back to Jason. He appeared to me to be nervous in the couple of weeks before he was killed. I’m sure it was something to do with the syndicate. He was always so cocky and self-assured, so it was easy to notice the difference, even in my, uh, mentally altered state.

  “A couple of weeks ago, after I got cleaned up, I remembered his nervousness. I also remembered that a while back Jason suggested we rent a bank safe deposit box together to store some important stuff we didn’t want to lose, such as our birth certificates, passports, and Social Security cards. He said it would be too easy to misplace them in our apartment. I had sense enough to agree with him.”

  “You’re right. When I had amnesia and didn’t have any of those, all of which are government-issued, by the way, I was a non-person as far as government was concerned.”

  “I’m beginning to realize how scary government is. We had two keys to the box, which we hid in our apartment. Fortunately, I remembered where they were. One we kept taped inside the water closet of the toilet. I retrieved it and went to the bank and took all of Jason’s things out of the box.” Evan indicated a brown envelope he’d brought with him. “They’re in here.”

  “They should probably be given to Jason’s grandfather.”

  “Yes, but first I want to show you something that was in the box.”

  Jason opened the clips and lifted the flap. He pulled a piece of white paper out of the envelope and handed it to me. It was folded in half.

  “What do you make of this?”

  I unfolded it. Other than that fold, it didn’t have any creases. There was black computer printing on it.

  “Well, first of all, it doesn’t appear to be quite standard size.”

  Evan smiled. “Ah. Very sharp. When you say standard size, of course you mean the size for letters, magazines, forms, catalogs, laser-printer and copying machine output we use here in the U.S. Eight-and-a-half by eleven inches. However, there is an international standard based on the metric system. This paper is known as A4.”

  “I’m aware other countries use another size. Where did this come from?”

  “The only place Jason traveled to recently outside the country is Northern Ireland for his cousin’s funeral.”

  “You know about that.”

  “Of course I do. He was my roommate. Apparently you do, too.”

  “Yes. I’m guessing you haven’t told anybody.”

  “Correct again, because the trip was related to the syndicate, as I suspect you know. His cousin was involved in it.”

  “Timothy. He was my cousin, too, although I never met him. My cousins are dying like mayflies. Apparently Jason checked his email in Northern Ireland and printed it there. It’s from someone whose email name is Ironsides. It looks like gibberish. What does it mean?”

  “Ironside was an old TV show starring Raymond Burr, and Old Ironsides was an American frigate in the War of 1812, but I would venture to say this person isn’t related to either of them. What do you think the letter means?”

  Evan’s manner could be obnoxious. I liked him better when he was stoned. I examined the printing. The body of the email read like this:

  Now Is the Month tO get youR houSe in ordEr.

  XXXXXXXX

  XXX

  XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

  XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

  XXXXXXXX

  XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

  XXXXX

  XXXXXXX

  There was no signature line. I sipped my wine and looked at it for a minute, but nothing jumped out at me. I tried to put my first impressions into words.

  “It could be a warning. Which means it could be from the killer. Presumably, email addresses can be traced. The most interesting thing about it is the capitalized letters in the first line that spell out NIMORSE. Either that or the sender doesn’t know how to type.”

  Evan laughed. “See, you’re already beginning to work on it. Your brain is much more suited to this sort of thing than mine is. I suspect you have the math gene, just like Jason did. I mean, you’re his cousin, right? When I found you on the Internet, I read an article written for a newspaper in North Carolina that told some of your adventures while you had amnesia. Apparently, among other things, you won some money off a con man playing a mathematical game.”

  I smiled at the memory. “A gay conman who also happens to be an ex professional football player. I try to stay away from him. What are you going to do with this?”

  “I’m going to give it to you, along with the rest of the contents of the envelope, to dispose of as you see fit. That gets me off the hook, I hope, since I will be honoring my commitment not to talk to anyone about the syndicate, and yet no one can say I’m withholding evidence.”

  “I can give this stuff to Jason’s grandfather. He knows about the syndicate. Of course, he’d like to keep it quiet since it affects the Boyd family honor, but perhaps solving the murder will be more important to him.”

  I kept the pag
e in front of me while we ate our dinner, glancing at it, occasionally, but this was not the kind of atmosphere conducive to solving puzzles. Evan and I chatted about various things. Now that he’d turned the information he had over to me he didn’t seem to be interested in trying to figure out what the email meant. However, he’d apparently turned his life around, just as he said. He was working in the food processing industry. I immediately thought of Tom Kelly, which sent a chill through me, so I didn’t mention him.

  I declined an offer of dessert from our waitress, but Evan ordered some gooey chocolate concoction, claiming it was the last time he was going to do this. When the check came I took it, telling Evan I was thankful to him for the information. I asked him if there was anything more we needed to do together.

  “Nothing, unless you want to go out with me.”

  “Thanks, I’ll pass.”

  “It never hurts to try.”

  “Stick with Nelly. I don’t know whether her fiancé is real or a figment of her imagination. If you get rich maybe you can win her. I’ll do this with you. I’ll walk you back to your apartment and give you a hug.”

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”

  CHAPTER 31

  It was getting late. Rigo had to work tomorrow. I’d called him from Venice Beach and told him I’d meet him at my motel about seven-thirty. It was closer to eight when I arrived. He was waiting for me in the parking lot. It was our first time alone together since I’d left for Edinburgh, and it was too short.

  We’d made love and said sweet things to each other. Now he was getting dressed, and I was preparing to return to North Carolina. I told him a little about my meeting with Evan. Partly in an attempt to delay the inevitable, I pulled out the email Evan gave me and showed it to Rigo.

  “I suspect this is some sort of a code. Perhaps a warning code to Jason concerning the syndicate. Of course, the real question is who sent it to him. I’m going to give it to the older Jason to see if he wants to give it to the police and try to trace the sender. The question is whether it’s more important to him to find the murderer or hide the fact that young Jason was involved in a Ponzi scheme.”