by Sharon Pape
Jeremy leaned closer to shake her hand. “Nice to meet you. Sorry if I interrupted your work, or your dinner.” He nodded to the desktop where the detritus of her pizza sat along with the file folders and the list.
“No problem,” she said forcing a smile. “I actually tried to call you a little while ago.”
His eyebrows drew together in wary curiosity. “Is everything okay?”
Rory sighed. “Not really, I’m afraid.” She steeled herself for the shocked look, the tumble of questions, the awkward condolences. “Mac passed away last week.”
Jeremy surprised her. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head and sank into one of the two small armchairs in front of the desk. “I knew something was wrong,” he said finally. “Something major. Mac always calls me back the same day.”
Rory took her seat again. Neither of them spoke for a minute. She could tell that Jeremy was trying to absorb what he’d been told.
“Mac was one of the good guys,” he murmured, looking down at his hands. “Honest. Conscientious. He played by the rules.” He lifted his eyes to meet Rory’s. “I hope he didn’t suffer.”
“It was a massive coronary.”
He nodded. “This world’s worse off without him. But I’m sure you know that.”
“I do,” she said, struggling to keep her emotions from running wild. If she was going to make it through this little meeting, she was going to have to stick to the business at hand.
“I know he’d want me to do right by his clients. That’s why I’m here, trying to tie things up properly.” Rory opened the top center drawer of the desk and withdrew Mac’s business checkbook that she’d stowed there. “I’d like to refund your retainer.” She glanced at the list where she’d jotted down the amount due each of the clients along with the corresponding name and phone number. “Does three hundred sound right?”
“I’d prefer to have you keep it and take over the case.”
“I’m sorry,” Rory said, caught off guard. “But that’s just not possible.” The thought had never even crossed her mind. She could draw a suspect’s likeness with the best of them, and she might be called Detective McCain, but she had no real experience doing detective work. She would hardly know where to begin.
“Well, there I’d have to disagree with you,” Jeremy said. “Almost anything is possible. And though your lips are saying ‘no way,’ that gun you’re wearing says you must be involved in some kind of police or security work.”
Rory had to suppress a smile. “I can recommend half a dozen experienced private investigators who would be glad to help you. I already have a nine-to-five.”
Jeremy wasn’t smiling. “Before I was lucky enough to meet your uncle, I’d been to those other guys and they weren’t interested in taking the case.”
Private eyes who weren’t interested in a paying client? Rory hadn’t taken the time to read through all of the files she was organizing, but like Mac she was a sucker for a good mystery. She knew she shouldn’t ask, but she couldn’t resist.
“Exactly what does this case involve?”
Jeremy didn’t answer immediately, and Rory wondered what Pandora’s box she’d just pried open.
When he spoke, his voice was calm but strained, like a seasoned pilot asking for clearance to land when all of his engines have flamed out. “The murder of Gail Oberlin, my sister.”
Rory found herself stumbling over the same words and condolences of which she’d lately been the recipient, and she found it wasn’t any more comfortable on this side of the conversation.
“Aren’t the police investigating it as a homicide?”
Jeremy shook his head. “Not since the ME ruled her death an accident.”
“Obviously you don’t think it was. But if there was any indication that it was murder, the police would still be on the case.”
“Hunches and instincts don’t hold much sway with the police department. But I know what I know. There are dozens of ways to make murder appear to be an accident. And there are enough people who would have liked to see Gail dead.”
“Listen, I would help you if I could,” Rory said. “I’m sorry if the gun gave you the wrong impression, but I’m just a police sketch artist. Believe me, you’d do better investigating this yourself.
Jeremy leaned forward in his seat, his eyes locked on hers. “I’m a high school English teacher. Compared to me, you’re Nancy Drew and Matlock rolled into one. I know you understand how I feel. You’ve just lost someone dear to you. There’s a huge hole ripped out of your heart. But at least you know how Mac died.”
Yes, she did. For some reason she found no consolation in that thought. A massive coronary at the age of fifty-two was still incomprehensible to Rory. She may have understood all the medical jargon about how Mac had died, but she still didn’t understand the more basic question of why. Her parents were satisfied with the doctor’s assertion that his diet had been his downfall, but somehow Rory couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the concept that Mac had been felled by one too many fried chicken wings.
Yet wasn’t that the only explanation that made sense? Especially in light of the police report that said there were no signs of forced entry, no signs of a struggle, nothing out of place except for a clock radio they’d found a couple of yards away from the bed, the glass on the LED display smashed. When Rory had questioned that finding, the lead detective on the case had offered up a possible scenario in which Mac had knocked the unit off the nightstand in his effort to grab for the phone and the paramedics had kicked it across the floor as they tried to reach him. That had been enough for her father, Mac’s next of kin. He’d chosen not to desecrate his brother’s body with an autopsy. Mac’s doctor had concurred. Given Mac’s roller coaster blood pressure and cholesterol-laden diet, along with his failure to take his medications with any kind of regularity, the doctor agreed that a heart attack was not an unreasonable outcome. And yet for Rory it still was.
“Jeremy,” she said, “the bottom line is that when someone dies alone, there are always questions left unanswered.”
“Maybe so, but just imagine how you’d feel if you were sure someone was responsible for Mac’s death.” Jeremy took a shaky breath before continuing. “It eats away at you. It consumes you. There’s no peace.”
Rory saw the pain and exhaustion in his eyes and she knew that he was right. She wouldn’t be able to sleep or eat or work if she suspected that Mac had been murdered. She would be obsessed with finding the murderer, and if she did, she wasn’t sure she could wait for the courts to mete out justice. She’d seen the system fail too often. She might very well be tempted to take matters into her own hands.
“Coroners are only human,” he said, “and in my book that means they’re not infallible.”
“Everything you’ve said may be true, and believe me, my heart goes out to you, but even if I wanted to take this on, I’m not allowed to moonlight. I could lose my job.”
Jeremy slumped back in his chair, head down. He seemed worn out, defeated. “Of course. Sorry.” His voice was hardly more than a whisper. “I should never have tried to put you on the spot like that. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s understandable. There’s no need to apologize.”
Jeremy drew himself to his feet. “Thank you. You’ve really been very kind.”
Rory opened the checkbook and started to write.
“No, please. Keep the money. Mac was already working on the case when he . . . when he passed away.”
She started to protest.
“Please. I insist.”
She put the pen down and came around to the front of the desk. “I’ll read through Mac’s notes and type them up for you. That’s the least I can do.”
“I’d appreciate that. Thank you.”
“And I’ll ask around at the precinct. Maybe someone can suggest a PI you haven’t tried.”
Jeremy nodded, then turned and once again made his way around the file folders and into the anteroom. Rory
followed him.
“I hope you find your answers,” she said at the door of the suite. She watched him as he headed toward the single elevator that served the building. His shoulders were slumped as if the burden he carried had physical weight and mass.
Rory closed the door and locked it. She went back to the desk and threw away the remainder of her dinner. She wasn’t as hungry as she’d thought. She tried to focus on the list of clients she still had to call, but all she could think about was Jeremy and his certainty that his sister had been killed. Relatives sometimes had a sixth sense about such things. She remembered Mac telling her that. Maybe that was why he had taken the case when the police had closed the file and other investigators had declined to help. What did it matter? There was nothing she could do about it anyway.
With Jeremy’s words still ricocheting around in her mind, she dialed the next client on the list but hung up before the call went through. She couldn’t imagine telling one more person tonight that Mac had passed away. The rest of the calls would have to wait.
She started cleaning up the piles of folders and placing them in the large cardboard boxes she’d brought along. For now she would store them in Mac’s basement. She put the active files in a separate box. These she would send to the clients in the hope that they would find them useful in pursuing their investigations.
When she came to Jeremy’s file, she put it aside with the intention of taking it home to type up the notes immediately. But before she’d finished packing the remaining files, curiosity got the better of her. She picked up Jeremy’s file and sat down at the desk again.
Mac’s notes were carefully dated and well detailed, but they were handwritten and therefore required some patience to decipher. He may have surfed the Internet and shot off e-mails like one born to it, but he’d insisted on using pen and paper for his notes.
Most of the file proved to be background information that Mac had gleaned from Jeremy and then checked out for himself. That was Mac’s style. It had nothing to do with how much he believed or trusted his client; he knew that everything processed through the human brain wound up slanted and colored to one degree or another. After her first week as a police sketch artist, Rory had come to the same conclusion.
When she finished reading the notes on Gail’s case, she knew that in spite of everything she’d said, she couldn’t just let this case go. She picked up the telephone and dialed Jeremy’s number.
Chapter 3
Jeremy answered the phone on the third ring.
“Hi,” Rory said and reintroduced herself. “I’m glad I caught you.”
“Good timing, I just got in.”
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you and your sister, so I started reading over the case file. Now, like I told you, I can’t moonlight, but I guess there’s nothing wrong with me checking out some things for a ‘friend.’ ”
“Hey, that’s terrific,” Jeremy said, more animated than she’d heard him previously. “Just name your price.”
“No, that would mean I was working for you and I can’t do that. Besides, ‘friends’ don’t charge each other for little favors. And that’s all this can be.”
“Right, sorry. You just took me by surprise, but I understand completely and I’m so grateful, you have no idea. Do you mind if I ask what made you change your mind?
“I’m not really sure I know. Maybe it was your absolute belief that there was more to Gail’s death than what the medical examiner saw. I mean—what if she was just one more case at the end of a long day? You know, work her up and get home in time to tuck in the kids with a bedtime story? Maybe it’s because Mac believed there was merit to your concerns. Or maybe you just got to me when you said I wouldn’t be able to rest either if I didn’t know how Mac had died. But I don’t want you to have unreasonable expectations about what I can find out for you.”
Rory didn’t mention that the small piece of cellophane the medical examiner had found tangled in Gail’s hair had piqued Mac’s interest. He’d even scribbled a note about it in the margin of the report. Most people might have simply accepted the ME’s conclusion that the stray bit of trash had come to rest in Gail’s hair courtesy of an innocent gust of wind, but Mac had solved a number of his cases in the past few years on the basis of just such an unlikely clue. In any event, Rory wasn’t Mac, and coming up with anything new remained a long shot, so there was no point in pumping up Jeremy’s already soaring hopes.
“Okay,” Jeremy said, sounding almost lighthearted. “What’s the next step?”
“I’ll have to read through Mac’s notes again and decide where to start. Of course, I welcome any input from you along the way.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
After they’d said good-bye, Rory put down the receiver and sat there for several more minutes second-guessing her decision to help. It had seemed like the right thing to do, but it wouldn’t be the first time her impulsiveness had led her into trouble.
“Mom!” Rory called in a voice that sounded a lot like the “quick, come kill the spider” voice of her childhood.
Arlene McCain jerked her head up from the armoire drawer that she’d been emptying of Mac’s shirts. “What’s wrong?”
Rory was across the room from her mother, sitting on the floor near the open closet. She was holding a pair of Mac’s old sneakers and frowning over her shoulder at the empty doorway to the bedroom. “Did you see that?”
Arlene followed Rory’s gaze to the doorway. “I didn’t see anything,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“I thought I . . .” Rory shook her head as if to clear it. “Never mind, it’s nothing. Probably just a floater in my eye.”
“What did you think you saw?”
“Something, a shadow. I don’t know. It was gone so fast I’m not sure.”
“If it’s a floater it may just go away by itself,” her mother said, turning her attention back to the drawer of shirts. “But if it doesn’t, you should probably see an ophthalmologist.”
“I suppose,” Rory murmured as she dropped the sneakers into a carton marked “garbage.” Or maybe a psychiatrist, she added to herself. Twice now she’d seen something that apparently wasn’t there. And both times it had been at this house. In spite of what she’d said, she was pretty sure they weren’t floaters. She just didn’t want to alarm her mother. It was bad enough that it was beginning to rattle her, and she wasn’t a person who rattled easily. Though she had to admit, the very prospect of going back into Mac’s house had been daunting. Walking into that deep emptiness conjured up images of wading into the cold waves of the Atlantic too early in the season. It would have to be done in stages, preferably with someone beside her. Her reluctance had nothing to do with fear. Fear was the bogeyman hiding in the closet when she was five. Or being lost for hours when she wandered away from the family picnic when she was eight. Fear was a child of the unknown. She knew what awaited her in Mac’s house—memories, so many memories that she might drown in them. She’d been grateful for her mother’s offer to help.
On their first visit, they’d stayed only long enough to stow the cartons of Mac’s old business files in the unfinished basement. The second day they spent several hours going through the mail and newspapers, feeling uncomfortably like trespassers. They didn’t venture upstairs until their third visit, that Saturday morning. They came in separate cars in case Rory decided to stay overnight. There had to be a first night alone in this house, she’d told herself sternly, and it might as well be sooner than later. Accept that the first night would be uncomfortable and just get it over with. On a rational level she knew that each subsequent night would be easier than the night before. Slowly, but inevitably, she would come to feel that the house was hers and the aching memories of Mac that now filled every corner would take up peaceful residence in her heart.
Rory had stopped at a local deli to pick up sandwiches for their lunch, turkey with lettuce, tomato and honey mustard on whole wheat. She would have preferred
the rare roast beef that was beckoning from the deli case, but in light of Big Mac’s heart attack, she figured it might be a good idea to start paying better attention to what she ate.
When she’d pulled into the driveway, her mother’s sedan was already there, and Rory was glad to see that she was waiting in the car. Apparently she hadn’t wanted to go inside alone either.
They’d unlocked the door and turned off the alarm. After putting the sandwiches into the empty refrigerator, they’d grimly marched up the creaky, old stairs. In unspoken agreement, they’d started with the two smaller bedrooms. The one that had served as a guest room was spare and neat, the closet bare except for a dozen assorted hangers. The other Mac had used as a study. Bookcases lined three of the walls, all crammed with books in no particular order or design. Rory would go through them at her leisure once she was moved in.
They’d spent some time going through the papers on the desk to make sure that no bills had been overlooked. Then they’d turned stoically to Mac’s bedroom to tackle his clothing and other personal items. The plan was to give the best of the clothing to charity and dispose of the rest.
As Rory worked she kept checking the doorway, but whatever she had seen, or thought she’d seen, refused to show itself again. She couldn’t decide if she was pleased about that or not.
The hours passed. They worked right through lunch without feeling hungry. Finally the closet and drawers were emptied. The boxes destined for charity were taped closed and loaded into her mother’s trunk to be taken over to her church’s thrift shop. The boxes of discarded items were stacked near the front door to be brought down to the curb on Monday for garbage pickup.
“Well done.” Her mother sighed. She was standing at the front door, pocketbook and car keys in hand. “So, what do you think? Are you staying here tonight or coming home?”
Rory was tempted to say that she would go back to her parents’ home for at least one more night. Or maybe until her new mattress was delivered. But she knew that she was just looking for excuses, and she refused to cut herself any more slack on the issue. Tonight would be it. Tonight she would stay here in this house, her house. And if she couldn’t bear to sleep in the bed that Mac had died in, well, she could sleep in the guest room or on the couch in the living room.