Murder in the Hearse Degree

by Tim Cockey

  “Aw, shit, Hitch, the girl was a looker, what can I say? She’s a little manipulator is what she is.”

  “Did Cindy lure you over to the Dark Side, Henry?” I asked.

  “Easy for you to make a joke.” Across the deck, Pete and Joan were chattering away. Henry tugged on his mustache again. “Good thing I’ve got a comfortable couch in my office.”

  “Did Cindy really walk, Henry, or did your wife fire her?”

  “No. She vanished, that’s the truth.”

  Pete was headed back to our table.

  “Nothing personal, Hitch, but I wish you and your friend just hadn’t showed up. I’ve been cooling Joan off for a month now.”

  “She seems like a nice lady,” I said.

  “She is. I’m just a shit.”

  Pete arrived at the table.

  “Let’s go.”

  He pulled some bills from his wallet and dropped them onto the table.

  “No, no,” Henry said. “It’s on the house.”

  “It’s for our waitress.”

  Henry looked at the bills. “That’s a big tip.”

  Pete smiled. “Tit for tat.”

  Joan had given Pete the name of a bar where she thought we might have some luck locating Cindy. The Swan. She told him that Cindy frequented the Swan.

  “Sounds like Cap’n Henry frequented the Swan, too,” Pete said as we made our way into town. He stared glumly out the window. A minute later he muttered, “I guess I shouldn’t talk.”

  The Swan was located a few blocks west of the statehouse, not terribly far from the home of Kathy Pierce, Sophie’s employer for a year. It was a wood-sided colonial affair painted black with white trim. The sign outside heralded local brews. There was outdoor seating. The several people taking in the late-afternoon sun were only a couple of decades past diapers.

  “This is going to be your crowd,” Pete said to me. “An old fart like me goes in there and starts asking questions it’s going to look strange. This one’s all yours, cowboy.”

  It seemed to me that it was too early to be nosing around the bar. Pete agreed.

  “You want to wait until the place fills up a little. Right now it’s just the bartender and a couple of customers. That’s no good.”

  We decided to give it a few hours.

  “Do you want to go see what Stella Gibbons is up to?” I asked. If Pete thought this was funny he did a bang-up job hiding it. We parked the car near the bar and walked the several blocks back up toward the George Washington Inn.

  “It’s ironic, isn’t it?” I said as we rounded the corner by the statehouse. “Of all the gin joints in all the cities in the world, what are the odds that we’d each have a girl working in the same damn place?”

  Pete stopped to pull out a cigarette. He lit it, holding the lit match a few seconds and giving me a hard look.

  “For one thing,” he said, “this isn’t a gin joint.”

  “I know that. I just never pass up a chance to quote Bogie.”

  “For another thing, this isn’t irony. People are always using the word ‘irony’ the wrong way.”

  “I know,” I said. “Isn’t that ironic?” Munger looked like he wanted to put his cigarette out on my cerebral cortex. “And another thing?” I asked.

  Pete pawed the air. “Forget it.”

  “No. Go on. There’s something else.”

  Pete gazed up at the dome of the statehouse—or possibly right through it, on out into deep deep space. Something was clearly on his mind. He finally brought his gaze back down and put it on me.

  “I was never like you are,” he said.

  “I’m sure you weren’t,” I responded. “But what exactly does that mean?”

  “I mean about women, okay? I got married straight out of college. That’s where I met Susan. Sophomore year we started dating and then when we graduated we got married right off the bat and started a family. Of course we had our rough patches. That’s inevitable. When I quit being a lawyer, all the crap around that. That was rough. That was very rough for both of us. We had some real problems back around then.”

  He looked up at the statehouse dome again. “But I’ve always been faithful to Susan. Right up to now. You can call me old-fashioned if you want, but that’s how it is.”

  He took a hard drag on his cigarette. I didn’t say anything. I sensed that he wasn’t finished and I was right. He pointed at me with the cigarette.

  “You’re a cocky son of a bitch sometimes,” he said.

  “I’ve taken that rap,” I admitted.

  “And your whole thing with women . . .” He trailed off.

  I protested. “What whole thing?”

  Munger waved his hand off in the direction of the inn, which was just up at the end of the block.

  “That’s just another of your fly-by-night girls in there. I’m not criticizing, I’m just saying. You’ve got this whole come-and-go attitude, you know? That’s fine. That’s none of my business. But I’m not you, okay? I’m not on a goddamn lark here. I’m on the verge of busting up a twenty-nine-year-old marriage. Whole damn relationship’s nearly as old as you are.”

  “Fine, Pete. I realize all that. So what are you saying?”

  “What I’m saying is that Lee is not just some girl. That’s not how I operate. Truth is, I don’t know what the hell is going on. But this is not just a lark. You and I don’t ‘each have a girl working in the same damn place.’ That’s not what’s going on here.”

  “Is that your message?” I asked.

  He dropped his cigarette and ground it out under his heel. “Yeah. I guess.” He didn’t look up from the ground.

  “Well, I respect it, Pete,” I said. “I didn’t mean to make light. I apologize.”

  “Forget it.”

  “No. I mean it. You’re absolutely right. I withdraw my comment. You know I’m fond of Lee, Pete. I think she’s great. And you’re right. There’s nothing fly-by-night about her. Or about you, either. That’s not what I meant. I apologize.”

  Pete looked me square in the face. He was a hard book to read. But then his lopsided grin—or at least part of it—slotted into place.

  “You do have your fun though, Sewell, don’t you?” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” I answered. “I keep my eyes on the prize.”

  We continued on up the street to the inn. Lee hadn’t arrived yet. Pete parked himself at the bar and asked for a cup of coffee. It was clear that he didn’t want company. I pushed through the kitchen door and found Faith chopping up onions. Her eyes were moist with tears. She looked up as I came in and gave me a wet smile.

  “It just rips you up, doesn’t it?” I said.

  “Well, if it’s not my little undertaker friend.”

  I got a slightly bigger kiss than I had expected. A couple bits of onion on the back of my neck. I came out of our wild clutch and licked my lips.

  “Mmmm, you taste like a pumpkin, pumpkin,” I said.

  “Pumpkin soup,” Faith said. “Do you want to help me? I need all those carrots cut up.”

  She handed me a Jack-the-Ripper knife. “You want these cut up or slaughtered without mercy?”

  We worked side by side, she on her onions, me on my carrots. Faith noted that we worked well together. I told her maybe she could come up to Baltimore sometime and we could embalm together.

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  “I pray God that you’re kidding.”

  Faith wanted to know if her steering me toward Bradley Hansen the other day had cleared things up for me concerning Sophie.

  “It helped,” I said, and then I gave her a brief rundown of the lay of the land. Her ears pricked up when I mentioned the Swan.

  “That’s a pretty popular place. I go there sometimes myself.”

  “Well, according to Joan, Cindy went there a lot. She says it’s a pickup joint.”

  �
��That’s a silly term. It’s just a bar. So how do you think this Cindy is involved with Sophie? You don’t think that she killed her, do you?”

  “At this point it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that I killed her. I have no idea where Cindy fits in or whether she even fits in at all. But she must. She made the call to Fallon about hanky-panky at the ARK. Sophie and Tom went to Crawford Larue’s house and met with him. That can’t just be a coincidence.”

  “Maybe Sophie and Cindy knew each other,” Faith said. “They both worked for the same family, after all.”

  Faith’s assistants had arrived. Faith introduced me to them.

  “You have to go sit on that stool now,” she said to me. “You’re now officially in the way.”

  I sat and watched the team for a while. Faith threw me a look now and again. She had a dusting of flour on her cheek. Drives a man wild, that flour. After a bit, Stephanie showed up. She was pitching in for the night. We hugged like old pals.

  “So what brings you here?” she asked, then she looked over at Faith. “Oh . . . you breeders,” she cracked. “You’re something else.”

  Stephanie tied on an apron and plunged in. I finally decided that I was becoming a piece of furniture. I got off the stool and came up behind Faith while she was gutting a butternut squash. I gave her ponytail a tug.

  “Me leave now,” I said.

  She turned her head. “Go bar?”

  “Go bar.”

  “Later. Come back?”

  I gave a peck to her flour patch.

  “Come back.”

  I agree; it’s disgusting the way people talk sometimes. Stephanie thought so, too. She made great big goo-goo eyes at me as I left the kitchen.

  Pete was in a heavy powwow at the bar with Lee when I came out of the kitchen. He was facing away from me. Lee glanced up and saw me but didn’t acknowledge me. It was clear from her expression that Munger wasn’t telling her any jokes. At least not any good ones.

  The sun was gone. The moon was a sliver. A faint serpentine cloud scribbled a sloppy Z in the coal-dust sky. I walked in the opposite direction from the Swan, swinging down to the harbor and to the theater where The Seagull had been playing. A red banner—CLOSED—ran diagonally across the production poster. I crossed to the corner where the dark sedan had clipped Tom Cushman. The glass had already been replaced in the ice cream parlor window. There were several customers inside. A couple was seated at the same table where Tom had landed after crashing through the window. They were giggling about something, which for some reason began to get me angry.

  I headed off for the Swan.

  The place was packed. A pair of TVs in opposite corners over the bar were broadcasting a couple of college football games, though nobody in the bar seemed particularly wrapped up in them. The ceiling was stamped tin, painted black. A historical marker at the door suggested that colonists used to get schnookered on this very spot back in the early days of the Republic. It’s nice to see some continuity in this great nation of ours.

  In honor of our forefathers I took a frothy mug of stout from the bartender, nearly slipping my shoulder out of its socket maneuvering around the crowd to reach my drink on the bar. It dawned on me—awfully damn late, I think we can all agree—that I didn’t even know what Cindy Lehigh looked like. It was entirely possible that she was no more than five feet from me in any direction. Was she the blonde with the large teeth? Was she the brunette with the snorting laugh? Maybe the pale Morticia Addams–like creature erect and disdainful seated dead center at the bar? I contemplated the question while I worked on my beer. Pete had warned me earlier against asking direct questions when you’re trying to locate someone who might be nearby. “When you’re looking for someone, you don’t necessarily want them to know that you’re looking for them. If they don’t want to be found you might just scare them away.” Well, great. What was I supposed to do, stand here and pray that Cindy Lehigh was a) present and b) would get it in her head to simply come over to me and identify herself?

  I consulted my beer and together we chewed the issue over. The population of the bar seemed to be spread fairly evenly between clusters of one sex checking out clusters of the other. I spotted a sign taped to the bar mirror: BEER. GETTING PEOPLE LAID SINCE 1886. I guess that about tells the story.

  I finished my beer and called for another, at the same time sticking my thumb in my ear, placing my pinky at the edge of my mouth and sending my eyebrows up the pole. The bartender pointed. I took my beer to the rear and found the pay phone. A few minutes later I emerged looking for a tall thin young woman with straight brown hair down to the middle of her back, small breasted and likely wearing leather pants, black, brown or dark green. According to Libby, Cindy’s standard prowling garb nearly always included the leather pants.

  I took a tour of the bar but didn’t see anyone fitting the description. The pale creature seated by herself showed a little promise; her hair was closer to black than brown but it was long and straight, as was the woman herself, the way Libby had described. The crowd was in a little too tight for me to make out her pants at a distance. I worked my way forward, and when I was close saw a pair of legs—no leather pants—that I have to say were well worth the effort. She caught me looking and she tried to shame me with a heavy-lidded stare and a curled lip. Minimal movement seemed to be her oeuvre.

  “I’m looking for someone named Cindy,” I blurted, ignoring Pete’s advice. I could practically feel the swirl of wind as the suave, sly Hitchcock flew out the door at gale-force speeds.

  “I’m not her,” the leggy one replied.

  “My name is Hitchcock,” I said, niftily completing the blowing of a cover that I suppose never really stood a chance anyway.

  “What do you want with Cindy?”

  She knew her. At least it sounded as if she did. I took a slug of beer as I tried to arrange my thoughts. The woman on the stool looked monumentally bored. I was reminded of the Sphinx.

  “I ran into her here a couple of weeks ago,” I lied. “I’ve been out of town. I thought maybe I could catch her.”

  The woman simply blinked. Slowly. “The person you want to talk to is Paula.”

  I gave a scratch behind my ear. “Well, no. The person I want to talk to is Cindy.”

  “Paula’s her roommate.”

  “Oh. Well, then you’re right. I’m sorry. The person I want to talk to is Paula. Is she here?”

  “She will be.”

  “What about Cindy? Doesn’t she usually come in? It’s Saturday night, after all.”

  “I haven’t seen Cindy in a couple weeks. I think I heard she was gone.”

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  Blink . . . “You’d have to ask Paula.”

  “Right.” I gave a shrug of indifference. “It’s no big deal, but if you happen to see her, Paula, maybe you could let me know.”

  “I can do that,” she said.

  Okay, I thought, but don’t strain yourself. I left the lady and her legs to fend for themselves and worked my way to a spot near the door. Despite the crush of people, my Sphinx lady remained easy to spot, a tall implacable lighthouse in a sea of bobbing faces. I tried to get interested in the football game under way just over my head, but neither team seemed capable of moving the ball down the field. I chewed on what the Sphinx had just said. If I could believe her, Cindy had not been coming around for several weeks now. That was about how long it had been since Cindy had suddenly stopped working at the restaurant. It was also, I realized, somewhere around the same time that Sophie Potts had taken a header off the Naval Academy Bridge.

  I watched an interception turn into a fumble. Two helmets collided violently above the wobbling ball. Each player dropped to the ground and the ball squibbed out of bounds. The two players got up off the ground, each a little unsteady, and gave each other a congenial fist tap. No hard feelings here on the collegiate gridiron.

  Nearly an hour pa
ssed. A guy next to me was trying to make some progress on a pair of women with a display of his aptitude with lyrics and tunes to old television shows. Exactly how far along he thought he might get with a display of such trivia I couldn’t say, though it appeared in fact that one of the women was beginning to nibble at the bait. I was nursing my third beer and it was down to its final inch when I picked up the signal from my beaconess. She caught my eye and then pointed with her chin as a woman passed directly in front of her. She was a frosted blonde in jeans and a sheer blue top. She squeezed her way to the bar and a minute later was sucking on a pink drink in a martini glass. A minute later I was squeezing in next to her, ordering another beer.

  “What you got there?” I asked, indicating her drink.

  She was tapping a purple fingernail against her glass. Her hair was teased up as if one of her toes was stuck into an electrical outlet.

  “Cosmopolitan,” she said.

  “Can I buy you another?”

  She had heavily made-up eyes and she trained them on me with a mixture of curiosity and mistrust.

  “I just got this one.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s just a stupid line I use. My name’s Hitchcock.”

  “Like the director?” she asked.

  “Exactly like. Except in my case it’s my first name.”

  “Is your last name Alfred?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. Something akin to a lightbulb flickered above my head. “It’s Lehigh.”

  “Really?” Her eyes played about my face. “I know someone with that name.”

  “First or last?” I asked.

  “Last.”

  “Well, it’s a pretty common name.”

  “I guess.”

  “Who’s your Lehigh?” I asked.

  She took a sip of her cosmopolitan. She left a big red lip print on the glass. She shrugged. “No one really. Someone I know.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do with the little corner I had backed myself into but I decided to take a plunge.

  “It wouldn’t be Cindy Lehigh by any chance, would it?”