The Man on the Washing Machine

by Susan Cox

  “Before you go—this is going to sound melodramatic,” I said uncomfortably. I glanced at Ben and he still looked bored. But I had seen lawyers look bored before—it was the deceptive calm of a lazily swimming shark. I liked him better when I thought he was a social worker.

  She said thoughtfully: “You think the death of Mr. Callahan and the death of your partner are connected.”

  “Don’t you?” I said in surprise. She made a slight moue with her lips.

  “There’s something else,” I said. She waited. “Can you tell yet when Nicole was killed?”

  She looked at me without answering. “Why?”

  “I was thinking that if it was two nights ago, I had a—a sort of prowler here that night. Yesterday he came into the shop and asked for Nicole by name. I followed him and—”

  “You did what?”

  “I followed him. His name is Charlie O’Brien and he works for a tax service called AcmeTax.”

  Ben stood up suddenly, then rubbed his fingers into his temple as if he was massaging away a migraine. “Doesn’t mean they’re connected,” he said. “You need to stop talking now.”

  “No, I know, I thought … he was here, and…”

  Lichlyter took off her glasses and gave me an unsettling, lopsided stare with her blue and brown eyes. “We’ll check into this, Ms. Bogart. And now I’m going to ask you something that will sound as if it comes out of left field, and I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it to yourselves.” She waited for nods of agreement from me and from Ben. “Do you know anything about rhinoceros horn?” she said.

  For a long moment, I thought I’d misheard her. She might as well have asked the question in Urdu.

  “Er,” I said intelligently. “Do you mean—what do you mean?” Where else had I heard mention of rhinoceros … rhino. Her notebook. It said “rhino” in the notebook she left at Aromas.

  “Anything that comes to mind.” Her tone was casual, but she was watching me intently.

  “Um—let’s see. It’s made of some sort of compressed hair material or keratin, not horn or ivory; some rhinos have one horn and some have two; I know there are different kinds of rhinos, white and black and some other kind from somewhere besides Africa. Sumatra? No, that’s something else. One kind has a pointed lip; the other kind has a sort of square mouth. Um—I know some rhinoceros are endangered and near extinction and poachers shoot them for their horns. But—oh, I know, Arabs use the horns as dagger handles or something. Is that right?”

  “And that’s everything you know?”

  “Isn’t it enough?” I said, a little wildly.

  “Mr. Turlough?”

  “That about covers what I know, too.” He was looking a lot less bored.

  She gave him a speculative look. “It’s a part of the Chinese pharmacopoeia. An expensive part,” she said. She looked expectantly at me, but I was still bewildered. She shut her notebook and rose. “Okay then. No one knows anything. We’ll have a word with Mr. O’Brien.” She gathered up the silent Sergeant Mackintosh and left.

  “Rhinoceros horn?” I said incredulously to Ben. I wasn’t sure what to do next. I felt oddly exposed in my foundling chair. Ben seemed uncertain, too. He ran a hand through his hair and I watched it fall back against his skull in undisciplined waves. He had blunt, powerful fingers. The occasional gray hair in the black curls made him seem vulnerable and I felt a tug of physical attraction. He began to say something when a noise from outside interrupted him. I was relieved. He was making me more and more uneasy. I couldn’t decide whether his involvement was social worker routine or specific to me. Impossible to ask. Impossible not to want to know.

  Grandfather came back with Davie and I gave everyone coffee. They sat on cardboard boxes and ate rice cakes and honey. It seemed like a time for sugar and they were the only sweet thing I had in the glamorous kitchen cabinets. Even Grandfather had one, perched on a cardboard box like a fantastical tweed insect, balancing a plate on his knee and appearing—astoundingly—to enjoy himself.

  “Mr. Rillera tells me that he’s found this fellow; the one you—er—followed the other day,” Grandfather announced.

  “How did you find him?” I asked Davie, who beamed when Grandfather called him Mr. Rillera. He was thoroughly at ease and relishing being center stage.

  He wiped his mouth with his hand and swallowed. “I followed you when you left the store,” he announced, and faltered at my astonished expression.

  “But, why?”

  “I was worried the asshole might hurt you, like before,” he said anxiously.

  I swallowed nervously. Ben frowned. “He hurt you?”

  “He means something else,” I said hurriedly. I concentrated on reassuring Davie. “It’s okay. It’s nothing like that. So what happened next?”

  He went on more confidently: “You went back to the store, and so did I, but later I went back to where he worked and followed him home.” I stared at him blankly. He swallowed a rice cake more or less whole, scattering crumbs all over himself, flicking them off unconcernedly and licking the honey off his fingers. “He lives around the corner from that place where he works. And you know what? I’ve seen him someplace around here.” He looked at me triumphantly.

  “Here in the Gardens?”

  “Yup. Working on a computer. Through a window.” He couldn’t complain that he wasn’t holding his audience’s attention. We were all riveted. But that brought him to the end of his information. He helped himself to another rice cake and dribbled honey on it with a soup spoon.

  “What window? Can you remember?” I said hopefully.

  He frowned in concentration and shook his head. “Nope, but I’ll think about it.” He smiled radiantly. “Did I do okay?”

  “Davie, you did wonderful!” I said. Grandfather winced slightly, but I didn’t care.

  I telephoned Lichlyter’s office and left her Charlie O’Brien’s home address. Learning something more about him made me feel as if I had regained a little dominion over my life. A very little, all things considered, but it cheered me enormously.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  After the coffee party Davie, Ben, and Grandfather all left together when I insisted that I was fine, that I wanted to get some rest, that nothing was going to happen to me, that I would call one or all of them if I needed anything. It took some persuading, but I finally got them to leave. It was late afternoon and I barely resisted the temptation to get into bed and go to sleep.

  I talked to Haruto, who was still shaken but not inclined to talk much. I asked him if he wanted company, but he said he was spending the afternoon with a friend. Sabina brought up a plate of hot food, but I didn’t ask her to stay and she soon left. I couldn’t face the thought of food, especially something that looked like lamb and raisin couscous. I gave it to Lucy. We went downstairs briefly for her outing. Parts of the garden were cordoned off. The compost pile, the toolshed, the koi pond. The compost pile was still the center of some official-looking activity, but the rest of the garden was deserted. I looked over to Nicole’s empty apartment. I couldn’t make my brain believe I would never see her again—she had been a large part of my life here, and a mostly positive part of it. Her intense, enthusiastic friendship had given me Aromas; a connection to the art world I’d once loved; a relationship with a shady chemist—and a barely habitable apartment. I missed her already.

  I spent the afternoon calling Nicole’s friends; it was early evening when Nat arrived by way of my back door.

  “Hey, English,” he said breezily. “Coffee on? Derek’s still workin’ and doesn’t want me hangin’ around anymore so—”

  He so clearly hadn’t heard the news that I blurted it out. “Nicole’s dead,” I said baldly.

  He smiled. “What now?”

  “No, Nat. She’s dead. Killed.”

  “Killed?” He was watching me warily. “Like a traffic accident?”

  “No. Killed. Murdered.”

  “Oh dear Lord on a crutch. When? How?”

 
“Don’t know. We found her this morning. She—” I gave him a sketch of the morning. He went grayish when I described how she’d been found, but I was too involved in the telling to spare him the details.

  His reaction when I came to a halt was unexpected. “Trust Nicole to die so it causes the most possible trouble.”

  “You don’t mean that.” I gave him a glass of Chablis and he took a gulp, looking a little shamefaced. “Can you think of a reason for anyone to kill her? Or both Tim Callahan and Nicole, if the two deaths are connected?”

  He grimaced. “Two violent deaths in less than a week? They have to be connected.”

  We talked about Nicole for another hour and then Nat yawned an enormous yawn and detoured into a non sequitur: “If you wanted to know something about Chinese medicine, who would you ask?”

  “What?”

  He gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry. My head feels like a cat pissed on my brain. But who?”

  “Mr. Choy on the corner. His father used to keep a Chinese herbal place. I bet he could tell you what you want to know. Whatever that is,” I added nervously. Why couldn’t I get away from this Chinese medicine business? Only the promise made to Lichlyter kept me silent about the rhinoceros horn.

  “I should have thought of Mr. Choy,” he said slowly, and faded into silence.

  “What do you want to know about it?”

  I thought nothing would make me smile on that ghastly day, but Nat managed it, deliberately or not.

  “It sounds trivial next to Nicole, but it’s those damn herbal concoctions Derek is taking all the time!” he burst out. “I keep telling him to get a real medical prescription if he’s so damn worried about his hair—there must be something besides Rogaine—but he’s takin’ things I’ve never heard of and I’m afraid he’s poisonin’ himself! You can laugh,” he added, when I could no longer keep myself from chuckling, “but some of them turn his pee purple.”

  I hugged him. “Get home to your man. And stop worrying. He’s no fool; most of those herbal remedies are made of mushrooms and squid, like chow mein. Call me tomorrow, okay?”

  Minutes after he left, Inspector Lichlyter telephoned and asked if I would accompany her to Nicole’s apartment the following morning. They had determined, she said formally, that Nicole had not been killed there; they’d appreciate some input on whether anything was out of place in the apartment.

  “Right,” I said. “Of course. Ten o’clock? See you then.”

  When I’d hung up, I almost fell asleep with the receiver in my hand, and jerked awake, wanting desperately to crawl into bed. I decided to take a hot bath before calling Nicole’s sister in Wisconsin. I took my time, washing my hair and wrapping it in a huge towel so that I looked like a cross between a snowman and a Bedouin in my white terry bathrobe.

  I couldn’t remember the married sister’s name, but I thought Nicole might have put her address in the Aromas laptop. I went down the back way in my bathrobe and slippers. The garden was completely quiet, although it wasn’t all that late. The police had strung plastic tape around the diminished compost pile and I heard it rustling.

  I turned on a couple of small table lights as I made my way to the office. At night, the flowery ceiling is mysterious instead of fresh and outdoorsy; the shop intimate and denlike. The front window was lustrous, shutting out the street. It gave me a vivid picture of myself as I stood in the center of the shop. I inhaled deeply. Nicole’s death had somehow lifted a huge weight from my shoulders and I was having trouble feeling terrible about it. No, I realized in some alarm, I was having trouble not feeling euphoric. I caught my breath on a jubilant high, before my mood plummeted downward and I broke into racking sobs. I buried my face in my hands and wept. Tears ran over my hands and down my arms and dried. The storm spent itself and still I stood unmoving.

  I eventually went weakly into the tiny bathroom. A glimpse of my red face and puffy eyes was all I needed to remind me that I’m not an attractive crier. I soaked some paper towels in cold water and held them over my eyes as I sat at my desk.

  Footsteps outside hesitated and Ben stuck his head around the back door.

  “I saw the light,” he said. He was breathing hard, as if he’d been running.

  “Looking for a telephone number,” I said awkwardly, keeping my face averted by carrying the laptop over to the counter. Ben came into the shop and looked around.

  “Are you okay?”

  I didn’t answer and he looked at me carefully.

  “It’s enigmatic in here. Suits you,” he said.

  “It’s not so enigmatic in daylight,” I said.

  He reached out his hand so casually that I quite naturally gave him mine. He kissed my palm lightly. It was an intimate, unexpected thing to do and it left me breathless. He raised an eyebrow at me and gave me that smile, then left without another word.

  The shop was alive and beautiful in the lamplight. Like a bower.

  I remembered why I was there and found the number. I hesitated outside the door to Ben’s studio, but it was quiet within and I didn’t quite have the nerve to knock. What if he asked what I wanted? Yet I felt in the mood for a shared gesture. On an impulse, I went back into the shop and filled a muslin bag with herbs—mostly rosemary, lavender, and chamomile—and left it dangling from the studio door.

  I had been dreading the call to Nicole’s sister, but I needn’t have worried. Even though I soft-pedaled the details, she was only superficially interested. She and Nicole hadn’t met for more than fifteen years, she said in her flat, Midwestern voice. She asked me to take care of what she insisted on referring to as “the arrangements.”

  “Should I let her uncle know? Doesn’t he live out here?”

  There was a brief pause. “You’re right. He’s a half brother to Nicole’s father—we were only stepsisters, you know. Now what was his name?”

  The pause grew so long that I said: “If you think of it, perhaps you’ll call me—”

  “There are a few pieces that belonged to our mother. If I text photos, will you have them shipped to me? I’ll reimburse you of course.”

  I swallowed. “What about her other things?”

  “You can have anything you feel is worth keeping, or I’m sure the Salvation Army could use it.”

  “There’s a new women’s shelter around the corner. How about that?” I said.

  She gushed at me a little. So grateful, she said.

  I asked about Nicole’s collages and paintings, but I could have been speaking Martian.

  “Her what?” Her tone was completely uninterested. I heard a young voice yelling in the background. The lady muffled the receiver and shouted back and then apologized. “You know teenagers,” she said comfortably.

  “Her paintings. Her artwork.”

  “Well,” she said doubtfully, “are they any good?”

  Her attitude was inexplicably heartless. Nicole’s work was better than good. She was maturing as an artist, and her recent work was especially compelling. I agreed to send her sister some photos so she could make her own determination, and all I could think was: I’d want someone, anyone, to care more than that if I was murdered.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Unreasonably, I slept like a log. Lucy and I were still asleep when Lichlyter arrived at 9:55 the next morning. She was wearing the red jacket and had two men in tow.

  “While you and I are in Ms. Bartholomew’s apartment, I’d like your permission for these two officers to search your flat here.”

  “Seriously? Why?” I was tucking my shirt into my jeans and felt less than ready to face the world.

  “A matter of elimination mostly,” she said blandly. “I could get a warrant, but I thought I’d ask first.”

  “But what are you looking for?” God, I needed a cup of tea and a bagel or something.

  She screwed up her face a little. “There may be some small thing.”

  “But Nicole hasn’t been here. I only moved back in myself a few days ago. It’s been a construction
site forever.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  I shrugged uneasily. “Fine. Why not? Be careful of Lucy, that’s the dog,” I explained to the two men. “She’s little; but she’s fierce. Don’t upset her, okay?” They nodded without speaking. I couldn’t imagine it would take them more than five minutes to hunt through the entire flat.

  I tried prospecting for a glimmer of humanity in the inspector. “Can we walk past the coffee shop? I need help waking up.”

  “I haven’t been to sleep yet,” she said neutrally. “The first thirty-six hours in a homicide investigation are usually nonstop.”

  There was a sign on the door of Aromas reading Closed Due to Illness. A knot of people with too much time on their hands stood gazing from across the street, from which I deduced that the neighborhood bloggers and Facebook posters were in full cry.

  She wouldn’t let me buy her a cup of coffee and punctiliously paid for her own. Helga gave me my usual mug and asked the inspector if she’d prefer a return-deposit ceramic mug or a disposable cup. She took the paper cup, which raised my hopes a little. Maybe she didn’t expect to be around long enough to need a mug of her own.

  “How are you doing?” I asked Helga as she handed over our drinks. “You were pretty close to things at the sale table yesterday.”

  She shook her head. “Why bury her there? Why do that?” She sounded genuinely puzzled and I understood how she felt. It was disrespectful, making the murder even worse somehow. “Here,” she said, “have a doughnut. On the house,” she added awkwardly. “Fresh this morning.” No wonder she looked shattered; after the emotional day yesterday I’d barely been able to drag myself out of bed at ten o’clock. She offered Lichlyter a doughnut, too, but the inspector refused, so I breakfasted alone as we left through the back door of the coffee shop and walked across the garden.

  After a quick glance I avoided looking at the compost pile. Most of it had disappeared and when I mentioned this, Lichlyter said: “Evidence,” as if that explained it. And perhaps it did.

  “We didn’t find any drugs in her apartment,” she said suddenly. “It was one of the first things we looked for.”