by Lois Winston
“How much would you get?” Chad asked.
“A hundred thousand is a standard sort of minimum policy.”
He allowed a pregnant pause, and then asked, “Where’s that book?” His gaze roamed over my battered desk, and along my bookshelves.
He must have meant my latest acquisition, a reference book that I’d taken to work to browse during break and to shock people. “Deadly Doses? That’s in my locker, at work, where, incidentally, Jean Alcee Fortier died this morning.”
It wasn’t the smoothest segue, but now I was ready to change the mood. Then the mournful look in Chad’s eyes clicked into place. The poor guy was entertaining the notion that I could have another motive for wanting an insurance policy. The idea struck me as funny and I laughed.
“I don’t see anything funny about someone dying.” He looked so unsettled that I laughed harder, lost all my annoyance, and tackled him.
“It’s not funny,” I agreed.
“Then why are you laughing?”
“You....” I managed between hysterical gasps. But, that wasn’t it either. The truth was that I may have disliked Fortier, but his death, his possible murder, had twisted me tight all morning and now I was popping loose. All my emotions were spilling out in the form of inappropriate laughter.
Chad appeared stunned as though he thought the maniac sitting on his stomach intended to dispatch him on the spot.
I took a deep breath to still myself and managed to coo, “It’d be much too incriminating to kill you here.”
Besides, in spite of my volleyball legs and the arms I’d developed from hefting huge bowls of dough, I couldn’t overpower Chad. He remembered that and we wrestled and made up on the Turkish rug. Lola sauntered in to watch this curiosity.
My mood felt significantly improved after we made love on the floor. Chad’s defensiveness melted away into my arms. We kissed tenderly, a peace offering as we separated. The phone rang.
“Would you get it?” Chad headed for the bathroom, naked from the waist down.
Half naked, I lifted the receiver. “Hello.” I’d never mastered a chirp. I always sounded like someone who hated to answer the phone, which I was.
My greeting wasn’t answered. “Hello,” I said again. “Bueno,” I tried in case the person spoke only Spanish. Another thought occurred to me. “Mary? Hello, Mary?”
“Isn’t Chad there?”
She hated it when I answered the phone. She was the type of mother who preferred to pretend her son was single.
“He’s indisposed.”
I could feel her freeze over the phone. “Well, I guess I’ll have to take the bus to go shopping,” the long-suffering voice began.
“You could call back in five minutes.”
“Oh, no, I know he has a busy schedule....”
I zoned out. If she really acknowledged Chad had another life, she wouldn’t have called in the first place. I was happy that she wrapped up her self-pity and we said our goodbyes before the toilet flushed.
Chad could deal with the call as he wished. I needed to get going. This was the nineteenth and beyond the little anonymous Kringle gifts I’d already given Esperanza, I’d done no shopping. And now, I also needed to get a sympathy card for Alexis, Fortier’s niece who worked second shift.
After taking a shower, I donned fresh jeans and my Jose Cuervo Volleyball Tournament sweatshirt. I hopped into my Karmann Ghia and headed for my favorite shop. I loved my poor man’s Porsche even though the exterior was rust red, the interior smelled like dusty oil, and the whole contraption rattled.
Since nearly two hundred people worked at Archibald’s, we Kringled within departments and shifts. I had drawn Esperanza’s name from Buzz’s chef hat. We were surreptitiously to deliver recipes, little gifts, and snacks to our person until Christmas Day. The day after Christmas, when our seasonal push had ended, we’d have our party and exchange the slightly bigger gifts. For now, these were heaped in the upstairs lounge under a fir decorated with red ornaments and tinsel. I felt guilty that I hadn’t yet added to the colorful pile, not that Esperanza would care. She wasn’t like Suzanne, who shook or poked a package every time she passed the tree.
Tucked behind a health food store, Way of Life featured gallon jars of herbs, natural cosmetic items, a wall devoted to books on herbal, homeopathic, and folk cures, and close, freestanding shelves crammed with gift items. A heady mix of fragrances greeted me at the door.
At the end of one set of shelves, I pawed through a small woven basket of earrings. I tried to imagine some amethyst crystals dangling from Esperanza’s ears, but there was something too delicate about them for her. She was a tough lady. Once she’d burned a strip across four fingers that had risen into a path of marble-sized blisters. She’d iced them and finished her shift.
Not that she looked weathered. Her daughter, Delores, had clearly gotten her looks from her mom. They looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. Esperanza was petite, with flawless olive skin, and long, thick black hair just beginning to gray. If the gossip was to be believed, she’d been Fortier’s first conquest in the kitchen.
I admired some blown glass vases and turned the corner. My mother-in-law was entering the store. If I’d been in Woolworth’s, I wouldn’t have been surprised and I would have had an opportunity to evade her.
“Carol,” she said, as startled as I was.
To my embarrassment, I realized she was probably shopping for my gift. After years of unworn polyester robes, recycled silk flowers, and unused smelly perfumes, Mary still had no clue what I’d like, but at least she knew more hopeful spots to fish. Thanks, probably, to direction from Chad.
“How’d you get here, Mary?”
“The bus. I can’t bother Chad every time I want a ride across town. I know you young folks need time to yourself and I don’t want to interfere in your lives.” She patted her maroon hair, pursed her red lips, and tugged her tight, nubby yellow jacket over her huge stomach.
She, in fact, called Chad every day. When I mentioned it, Chad cringed and said, “Carol, she’s seventy-two.” She’d told me that she was sixty-two. His mom lied about everything.
I resented that Mary had never been independent enough to learn to drive or to cut the umbilical cord—unlike my mom, who was also without a husband. My mother had commented years ago, “Carol, why do you always pick men with mothers?”
My conversation with Mary had already ground to an awkward silence. I offered, “I need to find a gift for my Kris Kringle at work.”
“Well, honey, I have no idea what young people like.”
The tone sounded sympathetic. Yet, I knew she meant we young people, anyone under forty, were difficult and picky.
“You know I’ll be working Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,” I said, in case she harbored any illusion of a family celebration. I tested the fabric of a small rug between thumb and forefinger.
A customer squeezed around Mary’s girth. Mary didn’t move. “I don’t understand people going out to eat on holidays.” She puckered her mouth and in spite of her withered face, managed to look like a baby. “It lacks tradition.”
“Brunch or dinner at Archibald’s is their tradition.”
Another customer entered and detoured to a side aisle. “You like that rug, honey?”
“Mmmm. Great texture,” I said, “but it’s light. Slippery.” I moved closer to the shelves. “Look at this.” I held up a small brass menorah with white candles to lure her from the center of the aisle. Before she could criticize the item, I said, “I’m sure I’ll get overtime both days, especially now Fortier is dead.”
“The Cruz’n Cuisine King is dead?”
It was no surprise that she knew him. Fortier had become a minor celebrity. And Mary was his ideal audience—stuck at home, an avid television viewer, and a food lover.
I stood in one place, fingering objects, afraid to move with Mary in tow. Besides, of all the aisles, this was the widest. I told her about Fortier’s collapse.
&nbs
p; “Poisoned,” she said with the conviction of a gypsy looking into a crystal ball. “He was poisoned.”
SEVEN
The Fortier family managed to arrange a funeral in three days. With Christmas looming, and Fortier’s pertinent parts sent to Sacramento for analysis, there was no reason to keep the family in limbo. As busy as Archibald’s was, a solid contingent from work attended the service. Even Eldon slid hurriedly into a pew. Officer Peters stood at the back, scanning the chapel full of suspects. She didn’t question anyone. Perhaps she was waiting for someone to throw himself over the open coffin and confess.
Officer Peters drew a deep breath and folded her arms. I had the feeling the case didn’t interest her much. The paper had given Fortier a nice write-up with the death attributed to an “unknown cause, pending the results from the autopsy.” On the day he’d died, the detectives had been called away from Archibald’s to a very clear homicide on the West Side. They’d left the uniforms to search for the honey. They did a perfunctory job, like they believed they had a natural death on their hands. They didn’t find the jar.
After the service, Suzanne wanted to attend the burial, so I rode with her to Collins Rolling Acres Memorial Park. Fortier was laid to rest where we’d drive by him every day. The graveyard sat across the street from the hospital, providing a cheerful view for patients. The hospital had recently added a residential facility and terminally ill customers could travel in a convenient circuit from hospital to housing to grave, a route my brother Donald could have used.
I liked Collins Rolling Acres. The cemetery lacked the manicured green of places like Forest Lawns, suburbia for dead people. Here, after five years of water conservation, only hardy grass survived. Even in fifty-degree December chill, the place had charm. The markers dated back a hundred years, old enough to be historically interesting, yet none of them was ostentatious or pretentious. I wished Donald had chosen a plot here so that I’d have a solid place to mourn him.
The priest intoned the lovely “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection onto eternal life.” As Fortier’s casket was lowered into the raw new hole, my heart ached for my brother, his ashes floating, or dissolved, in the salty sea out from Ft. Bragg. My poor mom, the victim of a cosmic mix-up. First she’d had Donald; then she’d had me. Since Donald didn’t “come out” until his twenties, I had a huge head start on giving her grief. To hear my mom, I first refused to get born, but when I finally plopped on to the delivery table, I asked for cowboy boots and a gun. God had definitely gotten her orders scrambled. I’d once heard someone ask my mom about grandchildren, to whom she’d dryly responded, “My children don’t reproduce.”
Those who wanted stepped forward to toss clods of earth on the casket. I liked the hollow thud, the note of finality. The reminder of our fragile, precarious state filled me with needed humility. I wished Donald had chosen this ceremony instead of cremation.
As we dispersed from the pit, Suzanne fell in step beside me. She dabbed at the corner of an eye.
I gave her a brief, sideways hug. “You okay?”
“He had his good points,” she snuffled. Dressed in black stirrup stretch pants and a mid-thigh black cashmere sweater, she looked pale and lovely.
“Of course.”
She looked at me suspiciously, although I’d meant to concede the point. I’d never met a pure swine or angel. People were complicated. I had only to look at my small family. On one hand, while Donald had promiscuously used sex to make a point, my mother referred to him as a “bachelor,” even as he was dying of AIDS.
“Hey,” Suzanne said, “your eyes are teary.”
I nodded in acknowledgment.
Suzanne’s brown eyes peered into my damp ones. “Hey,” she said, “did you ... did Jean...?”
“Oh, no.” I stuck out my puny chest. “Me? Now if Fortier had been a leg man.... Nah, he only liked me for my scintillating personality.”
She sighed and her body relaxed. “Jean was generous, fun to be with, and great in bed.”
“I’m sure he was.” I hoped my tone sounded comforting. Given Fortier’s success with women, I’d assumed the latter. I also had no trouble believing that when he took out a woman, he wined her and dined her in a slow-paced luxury that blinded her to the inevitable conclusion.
I tried to imagine Suzanne crazed with jealousy, concocting a poisonous brew to kill Fortier. But even aided by Suzanne’s black clothes and somber mood, I couldn’t imagine her as a murderess. In theory, I believed everyone capable of murder. I certainly was. Yet, I told myself that if Suzanne had killed Fortier, it would have been an accident. I realized fully that I believed Fortier had been murdered, that Mary was right about the method, and that I was damned interested in finding out who done it. I wanted to untangle the puzzle, but more than that, I wanted to know if one of my friends could have committed the crime.
“Who was that with Alexis?” Suzanne asked.
I looked up the knoll to see if I could spot Fortier’s diminutive niece, although I knew to whom Suzanne was referring. I was surprised she had not already gotten the scoop on Alexis’s companion. Suzanne was losing her touch. “That’s Fortier’s ex.”
“I didn’t know he’d been married.”
“Me neither.”
Suzanne’s yellow bug was parked in a lane that curved around the low hill. Suzanne perched on the wheel well of her car and diddled with the black ruffle in her hair.
“Good thing we both have skinny butts,” I said, bumping her to create room for me. Behind us, near the groundskeeper’s house, the lines of the flagpole dinged in the crisp air. I glanced toward the wooded hills leading to Archibald’s while Suzanne lit a clove cigarette.
She exhaled pungent smoke. “So how did you find out about Fortier’s ex?”
Other mourners trickled down to their cars. Alexis and the mystery woman left the grave with a man who had to be Fortier’s brother—Alexis’ father—and the tiny, white-haired mom, her old face red with silent weeping.
“Eldon. He called Alexis when Fortier died.” I didn’t feel ready to share my suspicions. “This woman answered and said she was Julieanne Fortier. When Eldon heard the name, he thought it more appropriate to tell her the news than to leave a message for Alexis, but first he decided he should know who she was.”
“She’s not what I’d expect,” Suzanne whispered as the four black figures approached. In deference, she ground the cigarette against the tire, put the unsmoked portion in a small enameled case, and tucked it into her black clutch bag.
“Except for the tits, me either,” I whispered back. The inside of Fortier’s locker at work left no doubt about his predilections. Julieanne was plain with shoulder length, brown curled hair. Her body was not fat, but lacked muscle tone. From years of observing naked women at the Spa, I knew how she’d look undressed, her stomach, butt and thighs dimpled with cellulite, her breasts losing the fight against gravity, not a match I would have imagined for Fortier.
“What is she doing in Santa Cruz?” Suzanne asked.
I sprang up from the wheel well. “That’s what I plan to find out.”
EIGHT
When I opened the door, Chad was wrapping a large box in red foil. He labored in the middle of the oak floor.
“For me?” I asked coyly, putting hands over my eyes. Through the peek holes, I spotted his mom at the end of the couch, planted like a Buddha. I grimaced at her, all playfulness vanishing. I disliked this woman from the maroon hair down to the duck feet crammed into shoes that she pretended fit because they’d been on sale. In a week, she’d want Chad to haul her to the podiatrist. Compared to the roiling I felt in Mary’s presence, my past reactions to Fortier seemed like sardonic amusement.
“Hello, Carol,” Mary said in a voice that might fool Chad as he wasn’t looking at her. The small eyes pinned me with loathsome jealousy that declared I’d never fully appreciate this gift. “We couldn’t find any scissors for the paper.”
&nb
sp; No, “How was the funeral?”
“You couldn’t find the scissors, Chad?” I wasn’t having any of her “we” shit. At her house scissors would have been easily located, not because she was organized, but because she had four or five pairs.
Chad shrugged. “No problem. I just tore it. You’re gonna love this present, Carol.” He beamed.
“Don’t tell me what it is.” I departed to our bedroom. I couldn’t watch Chad wrap. We wrapped to different drummers. Plus Chad would start dropping hints, while I liked surprises. I’d have to work to keep this present a secret, even with only two measly days until Christmas. I also wanted to get away from Mary and change out of my black skirt and heels into some sweat pants.
On the nightstand I kept my one photo of Donald, his senior picture. I picked up the heavy, pewter frame. He looked clean-cut, handsome, athletic and straight, as he no doubt yearned to be. What could be more painful than being a homosexual teenager? I turned the plastic latches on the back, popped out the cardboard, and removed the paper from behind the photograph. I’d cut it from the program for his service. One thing about dying slowly, you could plan your funeral. Donald had chosen this passage from Lewis Thomas’ The Lives of a Cell: “The obituary pages tell us of the news that we are dying away while the birth announcements in finer print, off at the side of the page, inform us of our replacements, but we get no grasp from this of the enormity of the scale. There are three billion of us on the earth and all three billion must be dead, on a schedule, within this lifetime. The vast mortality, involving something over fifty million of us each year, takes place in relative secrecy....”
I guess that put death in perspective, I thought, as I returned the clipping to its spot, but it made me feel so gloomy that I returned to the living room. Chad was putting the Scotch tape into a kitchen drawer.