by Matthew Iden
I eyed the cracked and bowed steps leading to the deck as I approached the Fleetwood, wondering if it was safe to step on them. They held my weight, though, and at the top, I thumbed an orange plastic doorbell. The bubble of plastic made a clicking noise, but didn’t ring, so I rapped on the door.
“’Round back,” a voice yelled.
I retreated down the steps and went around the Fleetwood. Another raised deck tumbled from the rear of the trailer, sporting the same weathered, graying, and missing boards as the one in front. Six-foot-wide diamond-patterned wooden lattices, crudely cut away to make room for storage, hid the underbelly of the deck. A kerosene tank lay on its side underneath along with a couple of bald truck tires and a weed whacker, its orange cord snarled and lying in a pile next to it.
On the deck sitting in a plastic lawn chair was a woman with a Coors in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. As I rounded the corner, she stood and leaned over the railing to take a gander at me. She was slim and well-built, which was made obvious by cutoff denim shorts and white V-neck t-shirt. Her hair was a frosted brown or black, making it hard to tell her age, but her face gave her away. Forty tough years were written in the creases of her skin and the hard, flat stare.
“Ginny Decker?” I asked.
She took a drag and stared at me boldly without speaking for a minute. When she did start to talk, it was with a hoarse voice made raw by too many cigarettes and midnight binges in bars. “Insurance or God?”
“Have you found Jesus, Ms. Decker?” I asked.
“Shit,” she said, and straightened up. “I thought for sure you was insurance.”
I held up a hand to apologize. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. Name’s Marty Singer. I’d like to ask you a few questions about J.D. Hope.”
Her face became very still and I had the impression she wanted to turn around and run inside. She opted for wrapping her arms around herself instead, propping an elbow on her wrist to hold the cigarette. Too casual. “You a cop?”
“Retired,” I said.
“What do you want? I told that redneck Warren everything I know.”
“I’m not connected with the local police. Scout’s honor. I just need five minutes of your time.”
“What for?”
“I’m looking into J.D.’s murder.”
She gave a little huff of a laugh, too high and too nervous to be real. “Retirement too slow for you?”
I shrugged. “From what I hear, J.D.’s case isn’t being investigated as thoroughly as it could be because of his previous…proclivities. I knew J.D. years ago, heard about his murder, and thought I’d spend a few days down here to see if I could get to the bottom of it.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Well,” I said. “If you’re the Ginny Decker who married the guy, I think you could tell me a hell of a lot more than anyone else around here. No one seems to know much of anything about the guy and it’s getting frustrating.”
She took another drag, watched me through the smoke as it drifted in front of her face. Her eyes flicked over my shoulder and back, as if expecting someone to sprout up behind me. Finally, she shook her head.
“Is that ‘no’ as in, you’re right, no one else knows anything?” I asked. “Or ‘no’ as in, you’re not going to talk to me?”
“Like I’m not going to talk to you.”
“Just like that?”
“That’s right. Just like that.”
“Anything I could say to change your mind?”
She shook her head. “You got an airplane ticket to California on you? And a million bucks, maybe?”
I patted my pockets. “Afraid not.”
“Then, no, there’s nothing you can say. There’s a reason nobody wants to tell you anything about J.D., mister. Take a hint.”
She straightened up, stubbed her cigarette out, and went inside the mobile home with a bang of the screen door. After a minute, I got the sense she wasn’t going to come back out and I didn’t want to feel any dumber than I already did, so I walked back to my car and drove away.
Chapter Eight
I headed back to town from Woodland Corner, chewing over Ginny Decker’s reaction. It wasn’t just fear. There’d been defiance…and something else. A calculation, maybe? Like she’d wanted to say something, weighed her options, and found I came up short. Which was too bad, since I’d been counting on her to shed some light on the situation. I could pound on her door and demand answers, but somehow I didn’t feel like that option would get me very far, seeing as how I didn’t have a jot of authority in this town. I’d have to wait her out or find something that would get her to talk.
A doughnut shop caught my eye and I found myself pulling into the parking lot before I’d even thought about it. Even when I was a cop, I wasn’t a big doughnut guy—stereotypes be damned—but I did like coffee. With no Starbucks within sixty miles, a doughnut shop was my best option if I didn’t want to get stuck with what they were serving at Lula Belle’s diner. I parked between a black SUV and a gray Cadillac and went inside.
Midday, midweek there wasn’t much going on. I was third in line behind a grandmother taking her time picking her dozen doughnuts one by one, and a young, tall, thin guy in a gray suit clutching a pen that he clicked spastically. It made a sound like a tiny machine gun going off and put my nerves on edge. The old woman muttered something in his direction as she paid and left. He moved to the counter, then turned and called to a booth on the side, “You guys want anything?”
I glanced over. The booth had three other men in it, all in their twenties or thirties, all dressed in gray or blue suits with cheap ties like the guy in front of me. One of the three answered, “Second cup is on you, Freddie. You know you can only expense the first one.”
Freddie paid for a twenty-ounce refill and carefully tucked the receipt away in his wallet. I got my own twenty-ounce house blend, snapped the plastic lid into place, and walked back to my car, sparing a glance at the other vehicles in the lot. The plates on the SUV and Caddy were both Virginia, which didn’t tell me anything, but there were other signs if you knew what to look for and were sharper than a butter knife.
I had my hand on the handle, ready to get into my car, when I heard a rattle and two thumps of another vehicle coming into the lot. I turned. A battered red pickup pulled in and parked across three spots. It was an older model with a boxy cab and sharp corners. An aging F-150, maybe. Sitting in the passenger’s side was the fat kid from the convenience store, the one I’d elbowed in the face. A butterfly bandage stretched across one cheek and he sported the blackest black eye I’ve ever seen. It was probably exaggerated by the contrast with the pale, freckly skin of his face but, still, the effect was impressive. The blue-green discoloration went from below his check all the way around the socket. His eye, when he turned towards me, was filled with burst capillaries and gave him a baleful, mean look. Then again, a black eye like that would give Mother Teresa a baleful, mean look.
That eye widened and he turned in his seat to say something to the driver, who was obscured. After a second, the kid got out as did the driver and someone from the backseat on the driver’s side. The three of them came around the front of the truck. The skinny kid from the convenience store—the one who liked slushies and who, when last I saw him, couldn’t breathe—was the passenger from the backseat.
The driver wasn’t anyone I’d seen before. He was slender, maybe five-ten with messy, sandy-blond hair just shy of shoulder length. A threadbare, baby-blue t-shirt with a Camel cigarette logo on the left breast showed broad shoulders. Jeans with the knees ripped out, aviator sunglasses, and a three-day beard completed the California stoner imitation.
The three of them walked over to me. The fat kid slid his eyes away and to the right, not meeting my gaze, while the skinny kid glared at me from behind his hair. The driver stared right at me, though I saw his head turn and glance once at the SUV and Caddy, then back. From the corner of my eye, I could see the booth full of suits watch
ing us though the window.
The three toughs stopped and glared at me. I glared back at them. I wasn’t scared, but if Fat Man and Skinny Boy had planned their revenge, they might be carrying more than a ten-dollar flip knife this time. And I’d handled two of them, but three was a different story.
“So, this is the guy?” the stoner said.
“That’s him, Jay,” the skinny kid said.
“You don’t get free doughnuts, either,” I said to the skinny punk. “So, if you plan to steal a bunch of crullers from the nice folks inside, I’m going to ask you to pay again. Probably with the same result. Especially if you make me spill my coffee.”
Jay, the stoner, said, “He’s kinda old. You let him kick your ass?”
“Asses,” I said. “Collective plural. I kicked both their asses.”
I thought it might rile him, but he just smiled. “You a cop? You sound like one.”
“No,” I said, and shifted my stance. My SIG Sauer P220 Compact was in a waistband holster and I wanted to make it easier to reach if they thought I was a softy.
Jay seemed to understand what I was doing and raised his hands open and waist high. “Easy, chief. We’re just here to grab a couple of doughnuts.”
“Fine,” I said. “But if you think you’re going to step on me while you’re at it, that’s not going to happen.”
Jay was going to say something smart and amiable, I think, when the skinny kid gave a high-pitched yell and charged me. He’d been sidling closer as Jay talked and, like his move at the convenience store, he’d telegraphed it five minutes earlier. I took a split second to make sure he wasn’t pulling a gun, then had half a split second to watch as he tried a bad rendition of a roundhouse kick.
I’m not as fast as I used to be, but I had plenty of time to duck, grab his foot with my free hand, and help it on its way. All the way, in fact, so that his body described a complete circle, like a helicopter crashing. He lost his fight with gravity and fell into a heap on the ground. He scrambled to his feet, grabbing for something in his pocket, but I’d had enough. I stepped forward and planted a right cross on the bridge of his nose. The cartilage gave way under my fist and the kid sagged back and hit the ground. I felt a sting in my other hand and I looked down. A burp of coffee had spilled out of the sip hole and scalded my wrist.
I backed away, watching the other two. They hadn’t moved. After a second, Jay glanced at the kid on the ground, now bleeding from both nostrils.
“Dwayne, get off the ground, will you?” he said. “This is embarrassing.”
The kid tried to stand, but one leg was bent underneath his body and his head was lolling around like a broken doll’s. Jay looked at me.
“You mind if we give him a hand? Or you gonna shoot us?”
“Be my guest,” I said and stepped back. My right hand was smarting, but I resisted the urge to rub it. Tough guys have to maintain appearances. I did flick away the coffee that had burnt my wrist, though.
Jay and his compadre got the skinny kid on his feet and poured him onto the backseat of the truck, then got back in their spaces and took off without glancing back, doughnutless and a little worse for wear. I glanced at the guys in the window who’d watched the whole thing. One of them gave me a grin and a thumbs-up.
At least I’d made someone’s day.
Chapter Nine
They say that homes, like pets, eventually come to resemble their owners.
It’s an interesting idea. If you’re a skeptic, you’d probably say it was fait accompli, that the house or the dog or the cat was selected because it resembled the owner in the first place. As time passed, of course it would increasingly come to look like its owner. If you’re the more believing type, then you’d subscribe to the original premise and decide that there’s a mystical force in the universe that tries to pair like objects together, no matter how disparate.
I was looking more closely at the Hope residence than I had the first time and I was finding, despite an innate cynicism that I never left home without, that I believed in the theory of a mystical, universal force. The home was grand and sweeping, austere from one angle and gaudy from another. The fieldstone foundation spoke of permanence and respectability, but gave way to plank siding that was in need of updating and repair. Several shutters were crooked and leaning off their hinges and the ornate architectural details I’d noticed before were peeling and in need of a coat of paint. It wasn’t shabby, not yet, but it wouldn’t be long before it started the downhill slide.
The owner of the house, who so closely resembled it—or it, her—was in the front garden deadheading flowers. Clad in lavender slacks, a white blouse, with a green pinstripe apron and a floppy hat for shade, Dorothea Hope was gardening at a sedate pace. Her decision to move slowly didn’t seem so much surrendering to her age as it was her exact intention to move with purpose and efficiency. She wore diamond earrings dangling and sparkling from her ears and I’m sure I would’ve smelled her carefully applied rosewater perfume if I hadn’t been watching her from across the street, parked and waiting in my car.
With few options open to me, I’d driven to the Hope mansion, parked catty-corner down the street, and waited for Mary Beth to leave. I was hoping that, if I could get her alone, Dorothea might reveal things to me that she wouldn’t in front of her daughter. It was a long shot and, what that special information might be, I didn’t know, but ninety percent of detective work is wading into the middle of a situation and seeing what happens. I got lucky and, a few minutes after I arrived, she came out of the house, got into her car, and took off down Beal at a good clip. Her brake lights winked at one, two, then three intersections before she turned left and disappeared. I waited another minute, then climbed out of the car and walked across the street.
Dorothea was carefully trimming a boxwood, sprig by sprig, with a pair of gardening clippers. She wore yellow-and-white gardening gloves and carried one of those kneeling mats that help protect the knees. I crossed the neatly manicured lawn—wondering if it, too, was maintained blade by blade—faking a cough to give her some warning as I approached.
She turned with that wide-eyed look older people are unaware they carry. But those same eyes narrowed shrewdly when she saw who it was. Was it my imagination that she pointed the sharp end of the clippers at me?
“Mr. Singer,” she said, pursing her lips in distaste.
“Mrs. Hope,” I said back. “Sorry to bother you. I was hoping you could spare a minute to talk to me about your son.”
She tilted her head. “Perhaps I was not clear before, Mr. Singer. I don’t want to help you and do not plan on doing so. Did I not make myself understood?”
“You did,” I said. “But I’m a stubborn man, Mrs. Hope. And an optimistic one. I was hoping you could put away your dislike of me for a short time so we could talk about J.D. Surely you want to bring his killer to justice?”
“Of course.”
“Then give me a half hour of your time. Tell me about J.D. Help me understand what kind of person he was.”
“Should I list the pets he had as a child? His favorite toys, perhaps?” Her voice was mocking. “I fail to see how any of that might help. I did not involve myself in his criminal life.”
“I understand. But all information has value. I don’t always know the questions to ask the first time I meet with someone, don’t always operate from a position of knowledge.”
“And you think me telling you about my son’s childhood will change that?”
“It’s worked for me before,” I said.
“What if I say no?”
“I’m pretty good at being incredibly annoying. I might keep asking. Like, for forever.”
She sighed. “Will you leave me alone if I agree to talk for one half hour?”
“Yes, if I possibly can.”
She peeled off her gloves and dropped them on the grass. “Very well. I was wondering when you were going to get out of your car. Come along.”
. . .
She
led me around the side of the house to a veranda that overlooked a spacious backyard with yet another perfectly manicured lawn. Hedges and the wilting remnants of azalea bushes formed a border that hid the neighbors from view, while more towering oaks like the one out front shaded most of the yard. It struck me how impressive the place must’ve been years before. Mint tea and cookies on the porch, maybe croquet or badminton on the green. My eyes followed the pillars to the roof of the veranda and noticed the same peeling paint and crumbling structure I’d seen in the front.
When I lowered my eyes, I saw Dorothea was looking at me archly. She had put her gardening gloves and hat on the table, and sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap. “Does it meet with your satisfaction, Mr. Singer?”
“It does,” I said, sitting opposite her in a vintage white metal lawn chair. “It must’ve been a lovely house.”
“It still is a lovely house,” she said tartly. “Ferris is a fine landscaper and can fix anything with moving parts, but he’s afraid of heights, I’m sorry to say. So the paint will continue to peel and flake until nothing of the outer shell remains. But I’ll be gone by then and it can be someone else’s concern.”
“Speaking of Ferris, I saw him not long ago, while I was having breakfast.” I paused.
She raised her eyebrows. “Does your statement have some hidden significance?”
“Not particularly. Although I found it interesting that Ferris was, in essence, J.D.’s stepbrother.”
She sighed. “Really, Mr. Singer? Do you think Ferris killed my son? His stepbrother, as you say?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “But I find those kind of connections can be significant. It’s what we ex-cops call ‘need to know.’”