by Lynn Kostoff
“There’s that,” Ben said.
“Wouldn’t mind a couple of them around the house myself,” Buddy said.
Ben overheard Paige tell another girl that the Harry Potter books sucked.
“I meant that, about hoping things work out for you and Anne,” Buddy said, “and that you’re as lucky as Corrine and me. I knew she was the one the first time I met her.”
Ben asked where that was.
“Corrine was waitressing at one of Sonny Gramm’s supper clubs in Myrtle Beach, and I was there for a bachelor party. Wasn’t long after that, I was walking down the aisle.”
“Funny how things turn out sometimes,” Ben said.
Buddy forked a piece of cake, then asked if any of the reward tips looked promising.
“We’re following them up,” Ben said, “but I won’t lie: All those tips, they take up a lot of extra hours, and I’m not sure it’s worth it. Most of them are worthless or end up going nowhere.”
“Stanley’s pocketwatch hasn’t shown up yet?”
Ben shook his head no.
“Oh man,” Buddy said. He went silent for a moment.
“Maybe Corrine is right,” he said finally. “She thinks I need to move on. The reward and the tape recorder with Jack, she didn’t like the idea of either.” He looked at Ben. “I couldn’t do nothing, though. Stanley was the only family I had.”
From the living room came a loud welter of voices and then Paige’s overriding them. “It’s my birthday,” she said. “You have to do what I say.”
“You know, Jack might still remember something,” Buddy said. “It’s not impossible. I know it wouldn’t hold up in court, but maybe a lead. Anne says she can tell he’s trying.” Buddy paused and went back to his cake.
“Have you talked to Raychard Balen lately?” Ben was tired of Buddy’s routine. He was overplaying the family friend number. Ben had decided to give him a push. See what happened.
Buddy frowned. “Why would I do that?”
“Balen doesn’t represent you?”
Buddy shook his head. “Will Patterson’s been our family lawyer for years. I’ve never had any dealings with Raychard Balen, except to nod and say hello at a social function now and then.”
“What about your wife?”
“I’m not sure she’s ever met him,” Buddy said. “Why do you ask?”
Ben was starting to wonder if Buddy Tedros was exactly what he appeared to be. His puzzlement seemed genuine.
“Balen’s name came up in passing the other day,” Ben said. “That’s all. I thought he represented you. Otherwise I’d have never brought it up.”
Anne stepped over from the kitchen. Her face was flushed, and she brushed back a dark lock of hair from her forehead. “Hey, you two, the natives are restless. They want the piñata.”
Buddy and Ben set down their plates, and the three of them herded the kids outside and into a rough semblance of a line near the magnolia. Ben expected Paige, as the birthday girl, to once again assert her right to be first, but she let her classmates go before her, less from manners or affection Ben soon discovered than a belief the others would fail, Paige standing next to Anne with her arms crossed and a bemused expression as Buddy blindfolded and turned each kid in circles and then stepped back as the kid began swinging.
The kid with the spiked hair managed to dent the side of the piñata. The others missed it completely.
“My turn,” Paige said.
Buddy blindfolded her, but Paige complained it was too tight. She handed Buddy the bat and said, “I’ll fix it.”
Ben noticed Paige left the lower left portion of the bandana a little higher than necessary.
“That’s better,” she said, taking back the bat.
Buddy Tedros spun her around.
Paige connected on her first swing, and the piñata exploded, a blur of rainbow-colored fragments and treasure flying everywhere.
THIRTY-FOUR
THE PALMER WAS IN DOWNTOWN Magnolia Beach across from the old courthouse and overlooked the square. The building was unprepossessing, two-story and brown-bricked, wedged between two storefronts, one an antique store and the other a realtor’s office.
The East Room on the second floor of the Palmer was the unofficial watering hole for select segments of the city’s politicians and businesspeople, a place to hatch deals, cut deals, and break deals and the ideal site for long private lunches or quiet assignations. By unspoken agreement, Mondays and Wednesdays from eleven to three were reserved for Republicans, Tuesdays and Thursdays for Democrats, and Friday and Saturdays were free zones. The Palmer was closed on Sundays.
Corrine was meeting her husband there for lunch on a Thursday. She’d always suspected that the menu was more elaborate and the service better on a Monday or Wednesday, but she couldn’t deny the small jolt of pleasure that came from being recognized when she stepped through the front doors and being politely escorted by a maître d’ upstairs and handed over to another who exclusively worked the East Room. She liked dressing for the Palmer—today a dark blue dress and black heels—and liked the idea of stepping through the door and being lead to a table among those who truly counted because they had money and power and understood what could be done with each.
The East Room had a richly textured dark patterned carpet, dark mahogany paneling, and soft amber lighting. Scattered about the room in marble-based planters were thickly foliaged hibiscus with large dark red blooms. There were no mirrors, and the narrow windows running nearly from floor to ceiling were shuttered. There were thirty tables in the room, all of them filled, and Corrine spotted Buddy at a corner table talking to Will Patterson, the lawyer handling probate on Stanley’s estate.
She was halfway across the room when someone called out, “April. April Rayne.”
Corrine recognized the voice but wished to her marrow she didn’t. She kept walking.
The voice followed her. “Hey, hold it a sec. April. Come on over here.”
Corrine hesitated, then slowly turned, facing Wayne LaVell. He’d put on even more weight since she’d seen him last. He was sitting at a table with Raychard Balen.
Corrine worked up an expression suggesting mild puzzlement and said, “Pardon?”
“Can’t believe it. Ms. April Rayne. Imagine that,” Lavell said, struggling to get out of his chair. He wore a yellow shirt and red tie dotted with dozens of tiny mermaids.
“I think you have me confused with someone else,” Corrine said.
Wayne LaVell let out a wet laugh. “Come on, baby, something like you, that’s not likely.”
Corrine thought Raychard Balen might help her, but he sat back, his tiny mustache and the corners of his eyes crimped, and waited to see where things were going.
“I’m afraid you made a mistake,” Corrine said. “Please excuse me.” She started to turn away and almost ran into a busboy clearing the next table.
“That’s something I try not to do,” Wayne LaVell said. “Make mistakes. At least not more than once. They end up costing you, mistakes do.” LaVell smoothed his tie over the great curve of his stomach. “Come on, April, sit down and have a drink with my friend Mr. Balen, and me. We can catch up on things.”
LaVell’s voice was louder than necessary and carried around the room. Corrine was aware of the other diners taking note while studiously appearing not to and felt a warm flush building at the base of her throat.
Buddy was suddenly standing next to her, asking her if there was a problem.
“Corrine?” Wayne LaVell said. “Hey, that’s a classy name.”
“I’m not sure I’m following,” Buddy said.
Corrine hooked her arm through Buddy’s and said, “This gentleman’s mistaken me for someone else.”
Raychard Balen finally spoke up. “Wayne, we have a few more things to discuss here. Why don’t we let Mr. and Mrs. Tedros get back to their lunch?”
“OK,” LaVell said, stretching out the word. He shook Buddy’s hand and nodded one time too many and then s
at back down. “You got yourself a real looker for a wife there, Mr. Tedros,” he said, smiling, before pulling his plate closer.
Corrine kept her arm linked through Buddy’s, and even after they were seated she was reluctant to let it go. Will Patterson, the probate lawyer, stood up and said he had to rejoin his party, then added, “Are you ok, Corrine? Your color’s not too good.”
She gave him a weak smile. “I’m just hungry, that’s all. I didn’t get around to eating breakfast this morning.”
When the waiter arrived, Corrine ordered more than she could possibly eat, as if trying to convince herself that what she’d said to Will Patterson was true and sufficient to explain away what she felt.
She half listened to Buddy saying something about a birthday party. She kept her head lowered and her gaze away from Raychard Balen’s table and told herself she’d start to calm down once the food was set before her. At home, she kept the kitchen shelves and refrigerator crammed and overflowing, immediately replacing whatever was used. In restaurants, she’d long established the practice of ordering at least one item that she knew she wouldn’t get around to finishing. There was a blind pleasure and deep comfort in the presence of surplus, of the simple and real fact of more.
There was nothing though to buffer the memories that Wayne LaVell dragged along with him.
Corrine wanted to leave but knew walking out now would only buy her more questions and problems. She watched Raychard Balen wave his fork and say something to Wayne LaVell and then LaVell put up his hand like a crossing guard and slowly shake his head.
Buddy was still talking and along the way mentioned a name that caused Corrine to ask him to back up.
“At Paige Carson’s birthday party,” Buddy said.
“You said something about Decovic.” Corrine paused and forced herself to take a sip of ice water. “Who’s that?”
“You sure you’re feeling all right?” Buddy dropped his hand on hers and leaned closer. “That’s what I’ve been talking about. The birthday party, the one you couldn’t make.”
He went on and told her again about meeting Ben Decovic and how Anne Carson and Decovic were seeing each other and how happy he was for Anne because she’d been having a tough time of it with her father and the Alzheimer’s. Buddy said Decovic seemed like a nice guy, a little distant maybe, but he obviously cared for Anne and was trying to be the father Paige had never really had.
Corrine took another sip of ice water.
Across the room, Wayne LaVell broke into a deep, wet laugh at something Raychard Balen said. LaVell then leaned over and knife-and-forked his way into a thick steak.
“Hey,” Buddy said, “you’re trembling.”
She watched LaVell jab a piece of steak. Its insides were pink.
Buddy rubbed the back of her hand.
THIRTY-FIVE
IT WAS JUST BREAKING ON MIDNIGHT when Ben Decovic called his old Homicide partner, Andy Calucci. Ben had talked to Anne Carson earlier, and she’d said there’d have to be a raincheck for his coming over tonight. She was tired, and she hadn’t waited or wanted to elaborate. Ben didn’t push things. Even over the phone, he could hear the layers of exhaustion in Anne’s voice, and he knew that Paige and she had had another long round of after-school meetings about Paige’s continuing classroom behavioral problems.
“Figured you’d probably be up,” Ben said.
“Lemme turn down the television,” Calucci said. “Shit, I can’t find the remote.” A moment later, he was back. “It’s been a while, you and me talked.”
“I know,” Ben said. “I kept planning to call you back, but things have been a little crazy and unhinged here.” He immediately regretted the word choice.
Andy let it go. “Yeah, well, it sounds like you got a real titwringer down there. I watched the Eleven tonight, and there was another segment about that old guy that bottles pop down there getting murdered.” Andy paused. “He got stabbed, what, like thirty-five times?”
“Thirty-nine,” Ben said.
“That’d do it too,” Andy said. “They still probably got you running all those tips, right? That was on the Eleven too, the old guy’s kid putting up the reward. I know what that means. A lot of Blue out there, humping down worthless leads, all the media people shoving microphones at you the end of the day.”
“Absolute zero, so far,” Ben said.
“Yeah, well, no surprise there,” Andy said. “I saw your chief on the news too. Sounds like the higher-ups want to push the drifter angle. Hit and run. No forwarding address.”
“They don’t want to scare the tourists,” Ben said.
“Well, it’s a titwringer, any way you look at it.”
Ben walked into the kitchen of his apartment for a beer. The sink was full of dishes from a meal he couldn’t remember eating. He asked Andy how his wife Judy was doing.
Calucci laughed. “She hasn’t left me yet, though, I figure, you talk to her, she’d say it’s not like that hasn’t crossed her mind on more than one occasion.” Andy paused and then hesitated before going on. “She drove by the house the other day and noticed there was a sign out front.”
“It was time,” Ben said.
“Why’d you decide to sell all of a sudden?” Andy said. “Judy and me, we figured you’d keep renting it for a while, and then it’s still there, you come back home.”
“Things have changed a little,” Ben said. “I met someone.”
“No shit? That’s good, man. Judy will be happy to hear that too.” Andy went on to ask Ben her name and how they’d met.
Ben didn’t get any further than the name before Andy interrupted him.
“Oh man,” he said. “Carson. Did I hear that right? I’m thinking, that’s the same last name as the guy saw the murder. Please tell me I don’t already know where this is going.”
“It just happened,” Ben said.
“You don’t get involved with witnesses,” Andy said. “Rule One of the Job.”
“I’m not working Homicide anymore,” Ben said.
“Oh man,” Andy said. “Listen to yourself. How many times did you have to split that hair?”
“I know what I’m doing, Andy.”
He let that one go too, and when he did, their conversation started trailing off and then ended, a little strained on Ben’s part, a little dubious and solicitous on Andy’s.
Ben finished his beer and went into the kitchen for another and discovered he was out. He also realized he was hungry, very hungry in fact, but had no more luck there than he’d had with the beer supply. He’d gotten used to eating most of his meals out or at Anne’s, and any groceries he bought tended to end up on her shelves or in her refrigerator.
Ben stood in the middle of his kitchen. The apartment was suspended in the same uneasy silence that arose in the interval between someone clearing his throat and speaking. Ben grabbed his keys and wallet and left.
The parking lot of the White Palms was coated in the lunar frost of the halogen lights. There was no wind. Ben felt a small pinprick of panic.
He got on Cantrell and took it to Bowman and then to Heritage, fully intending to end up in the aisles of the twenty-four hour Winn Dixie and restocking his refrigerator, but instead Ben found himself on Farrow and then parked with his lights off in front of Anne Carson’s place. He rolled down the driver’s side window and watched the dark house for fifteen minutes.
Whatever he’d hoped to find there tonight eluded him. The palms of his hands were damp on the steering wheel. His thoughts were not his friends.
He got back on Farrow and then took Edgewater, and over the next seventy-five minutes, he simply drove, heading initially through the industrial sector of northwest Magnolia Beach with its rehabbed textile mills and small manufacturing plants and the new trucking hub and warehouse complexes, slowing as he passed the main gates of Stanco Beverages, and then turning south and west when he came to Route 17, moving through new housing developments anchored by expensive new schools and the new commercial boom
, the mall and factory outlets and car dealerships and chain motels and restaurants lining Old Marketplace Boulevard. Ben cut as far south as the airport, then mainlined it straight east on White Stone, catching Atlantic Avenue and following the coastline north toward downtown Magnolia Beach through a thicket of condos and resorts and restaurants.
Over the last ten months, Ben had driven the city, but he’d driven it as a cop with cop eyes and the structure and rhythm of Patrol shifts. Tonight he was driving it as a civilian, and all that structure had collapsed, and what he saw on the other side of the windshield was unbearably strange and foreign, and his thoughts had taken on the same cast, as if they belonged to someone else, and once that happened, he was back to where he had lost everything.
Dead was dead. Ask any cop or mortician. A corpse was a corpse. One was no different from another. Death was always a tautology.
Except somehow against all logic, it wasn’t. You knew it in your bones that some deaths meant. They refused to be reduced to a least common denominator and flared, however briefly, in and against the darkness.
Ben Decovic’s wife’s death should have meant. Their love and her life should have ensured that it did.
Diane Decovic went to the dry cleaners, and then she was dead.
Cause and effect fled. Nothing held or fit. A sequence of events, that’s all, no sense, all underwritten by Accident. She was alive, and then she wasn’t.
Diane’s sister had been getting married that weekend, and Ben was supposed to pick up his suit from Central Cleaners on his way home. Paperwork had kept him working overtime, so Diane said she’d pick up the suit instead. Ben thanked her and said he’d see her soon.
Her last words to him had been to ask what he wanted for dinner.
Then Greg Hollinger happened.
And Diane Decovic bled out in the parking lot of Central Cleaners under a cloudless January sun.
When Ben tried afterwards to inhabit his days, Greg Hollinger happened there too. Ben listened to and read all the subsequent news and police reports, patiently waiting for a motive to reveal itself, sure that one had to be there to account for the death of his wife and the four others, a motive that, in turn, would be the first step for him to find a way to give shape to his grief.