Tableau

by Michael Kanuckel

  “Guy’s an asshole!” Jagger said, gesturing at Ezra. “Comes in here, no respect, poking his face into our family’s business- and nobody’s got the balls to call him out on it but me.”

  “It looks so ugly when a ginger gets worked up,” Ezra said. “Your skin gets all splotchy and pink, you start looking like deli meat. Makes your acne scars stand out like the mountains on a relief map. Not to mention your shirt didn’t fall back down over your gut when you stood up to flex at me. Maybe no one told you, but the clothes you wore back in private school ain’t fittin ya so great these days.” This got another laugh from the old red crow, who was clearly more than half in the bag at half past ten in the morning. Lifestyles of the rich and famous. Jagger’s little girlfriend said “Ewww” under her breath (but loud enough for everyone to hear) and scooted away from him, silvery skirt pulling up as she went to show a lot of pale thigh and a couple bruises.

  Jagger, somewhere in a realm beyond red-faced now, yanked his shirt down over his white belly. “You bastard,” he said. “You-”

  “Look, this is a hard time for everyone,” Ezra said, overriding him. “There’s been a death here. My job is to act as an agent of the Law in this- to find out why and how this death occurred. Now, will you let me pursue my investigation or not? Because I have to tell you that as a High Guard I am authorized to respond to any attack, threat of attack, or hindrance to my investigation with nonlethal force, as the immediate situation dictates. Is that the avenue you’d like to venture down with me, son? This ain’t the rugby field. If I have to I will neutralize you.”

  Now Jagger seemed uncertain. He looked around at his embarrassed family and soon-to-be ex-girlfriend (if Ezra was any good at reading faces, and he thought that he was), and didn’t find any support. “Is that how it is?” he asked, directing the question at an older gentleman in a shiny green suit that matched the paint job of the gas engine land yacht out in the drive. The gentleman had a thinning, frizzy cloud of blonde-white hair, a florid face, and a tremendous walrus mustache that was a nicotine-stained yellow and completely hid his mouth. He looked like the attorney for a Guild boss- which probably wasn’t far off from the truth.

  “Legally speaking,” the gentleman said, shifting his bulk around a little and picking his shiny green pants away his crotch. “The Guard is completely correct. But let me speak to you in a language you will understand, Jagger. Keep showing your ass and the High Guard is going to kick it in for you. Now sit yourself down and stop making us all look like donkeys.”

  Jagger took his seat; Ezra wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed- part of him had really felt like putting the kid on his ass. The girlfriend, upset that there wasn’t going to be any drama, shrugged away from him and got up, leaving the room in a huff. Ezra only watched her go for a second; she’d looked pretty good sitting there, but she had that Dream Street girl walk- almost like she was bowlegged, and her thighs were wobbly with skinny fat.

  The portly gentleman in the shiny green suit watched the girl go as well, with contempt writ large on the part of his face not covered by the giant mustache. “None of her concern anyway,” he said, whether to himself or the entire room was unclear. “This is a family affair. Honestly, boy,” he went on, making the great effort of turning himself in his seat to address the gingery youth. “You couldn’t have put her on a tram back to whatever bar you found her in before you dragged yourself over here?”

  Jagger muttered something in reply, pulling the polo shirt away from his flabby chest. He was sweating heavily and the fabric clung to him again immediately.

  Leon Jensen rose from his seat. “Terribly sorry for all of this, High Guard Beckitt,” he said, advancing on Ezra with a hangdog grin on his pale face and his hand out in front of him. “We are in a terrible disarray. I hope we can start over.”

  Ezra took the offered hand and shook it. He was surprised by Jensen’s grip- he’d expected a soft handshake, warm and probably greasy, no more than the ends of the man’s fingers making contact with him, but his skin was cool and dry, the shake firm. “No problem,” he said.

  “Now allow me to introduce the room,” Leon said, as if he were the good host and this was an event no different than a cocktail party or charity dinner. The man went so far as to begin taking Ezra by the elbow to lead him, then thought better of it. “Jagger you’ve already met,” he said, gesturing at the fuming boy. “You’ll simply have to forgive him- he’s terribly upset over the death of his grandmother.”

  Grandmother? Ezra thought. Holy shit. Then he realized that had to be correct. The kid was nineteen or maybe twenty, and he kept forgetting that Beverly Jensen had been a woman in her seventies- no matter how she’d looked.

  “This is Beverly’s younger sister, Faye,” Leon went on, introducing the redhead with the raucous laugh and the tall drink in her hand. She nodded to Ezra, raising her glass once more. “Beverly’s daughter from her first marriage, Danni,” Leon said. A slim brunette, delicate featured but with her mother’s eyes, nodded to him. “She is not,” Leon went on in an aside to the High Guard, “Jagger’s mother. Both of his parents are away on the Continent you know, and couldn’t make it back here on such short notice.”

  Ezra had taken out his notebook to start jotting down details. He looked up at Leon. “Their names?” he said, pen hovering over the page.

  Leon blinked. “Bert and Dorathea Holdyne,” he said. “Bert is Beverly’s son, also from her first marriage.”

  “They’ve been gone for well over a month,” the old gentleman walrus in the green suit said. “They’ve nothing to do with this affair, I can assure you.”

  “And you are?”

  “Waverly Pembroke,” the gentleman said. After a brief struggle from which he emerged purple in the face and slightly out of breath, he stood to come over and shake hands. “I have been Beverly- and the family’s- attorney since she was first wed to old Mister Holdyne. I am here as their agent now, and also as a family friend. Everyone just calls me Lee, less cumbersome.”

  Ezra shook hands with the lawyer, who once he’d gained his feet was well over six feet tall and had the broad shoulders and thick hands of a former boxer or footballer. “Well, that takes care of one question, anyway- whether or not Leon would care to have counsel with him when he speaks with me.”

  Pembroke didn’t look surprised at this statement. Leon did; he looked from the lawyer to Ezra and back again, puzzled and frowning. “Do I need to have representation?” he said. “It was my understanding that this was more of a visit than an interrogation. I was gone when Beverly died. I only just got back from Belvachia in the early morning hours- I was away on business.”

  “And what is your business, exactly, Mister Jensen?” Ezra asked, just to keep things moving and keep the man from getting jumpy.

  Leon shrugged and sort of puffed up at the same time. Like most wealthy men, he was his own personal favorite topic of conversation. “Well, that would be rather difficult to pin a title on,” he said. “For instance, there are people who are teachers, or engineers, or,” he went on, gesturing at Ezra, “High Guards…”

  “And you?”

  Leon shrugged again. “Well, you know,” he said. “I sit on a board of directors here, speculate on some commodities there, do some consultation on stock portfolios for a select clientele, sensitive documents-”

  “Finance,” Ezra said, jotting in his notebook. “Gotcha.” It was amazing to him sometimes, the way people had to try and trump up what they did for a living. It wasn’t good enough, just being a baker anymore- you had to be an “artisan bread specialist” or some shit. “And what was it that took you to Belvachia?”

  “Possibly the next big trend in ecotourism,” Leon said. “Mountainvators.”

  Ezra glanced up from his scribbling. “A what now?”

  “The name’s clunky, I agree. A marketing team will come up with something better, once the project gets the green light. Basically, the idea is to install an elevator shaft straight up throu
gh a mountain. Then, anyone can take in the view from the top of the world- without being in shape, without all the gear and guides, the maybe plummeting to your death in some jagged black crevasse. And at the peak? A whole resort: glampgrounds, gift shops, a sports bar. Several global food chains have already expressed an interest. It might really be something.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ezra said. “And you just got back early this morning?”

  “That’s right,” Leon said. “I haven’t been to sleep since sometime yesterday…or maybe the day before- time gets wonky on you when you’re flying across the world. Old Pembroke here had a rough time of it tracking me down, I can tell you. The village I was staying in, Stirga, they don’t even have vidscreens there. All the villagers get together in a pub at the square to watch the news and old reruns on a cracked black and white television with metal ears. Can you believe it? Anyway, somehow Pembroke got hold of someone at the capital, an ambassador or whatnot, and he sent an attachment of soldiers out into the mountains to find me. Imagine, me sitting there cheek against jowl with a bunch of reeking sheepherders who don’t even know the interwebs is a thing, chewing on a glass of the brown stuff they call beer there and watching an episode of Gunsmoke through the static and the cracks in the screen, and here comes a Captain of the Grand Sea Army to inform me that my wife is dead!”

  “I’m sure it was a shock,” Ezra said. “Have you seen her?”

  The little smile Leon had worn while telling his story, with the tone and delivery of a humorous anecdote recited to get some laughs from a circle of friends at a cocktail party, fell away. “I have,” he said. “That was my first priority when I got back into the city. There was some rigmarole at the Justice Building, official hours or whatever, but I put in a personal call to Jim Gorton and got in to view her- her body. Yes. Now, maybe we could get to the reason for your dropping by, High Guard Beckitt. Not to extend your sympathies, I’m sure.”

  “You do have them,” Ezra said. “I’m not a fan of people dying- it’s only my job to investigate it when it happens.” He saw a chair that looked like it might have been designed for someone to actually sit in off to the side of the archway where he stood and pulled it over. He took a seat, rifling through his notebook. “Here’s what we know,” he said. He frowned then, patting at the pockets of his suit jacket. “Now what did I do with that,” he muttered to himself, coming up empty every time he put a hand in a pocket. “I’ll tell ya- if my head wasn’t attached to my shoulders I’d lose it, I swear to the Carpenter. Any of you notice a pen, a black rollerball pen, anywhere?”

  Leon Jensen’s face grew stony. “It’s in your hand, Mister Beckitt,” he said.

  Ezra blinked at his hand. “Well I’ll be,” he said. “So it is. That’s just what I’m talking about, you see? In my hand the whole time. Sorry. And just Ezra will do, Mister Jensen. Ezra will do us just fine. Now. Here’s what we know…” Ezra trailed off again, rubbing at his brow with the hand not holding his pen. “Say, I know this is an expensive house, lot of fine furnishings and all that. Would you mind terribly if I smoked? Horrible for you, I know- but they say that the nicotine really helps your focus, something about increasing the relay speed of the synapses in the brain, something like that. Me, I need all the help focusing I can get. Would you mind, sir?”

  Jenson was frowning now. So were the others, all but Faye- she was laughing again. “Not at all,” the master of the house said. He took out a solid gold palmscreen and tapped at it; a second later the device produced the amplified sound of a tinkling hand bell; another moment, and Benson materialized from out of the gloom behind Ezra, almost making him jump from his seat.

  “You rang, sir,” the butler said. He made no direct contact with anyone in the room.

  “Yes Benson,” Leon said. “Do go and fetch High Guard Beckitt the standing ashtray we kept here in the living room at one time. The wrought iron one with the cut crystal dish, you know. I believe it’s stored in the hallway closet.”

  “Very good, sir,” Benson said. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  Leon raised an eyebrow at Ezra. “Well, Mister Beckitt?” he said. “Do you require something else? Perhaps a tray of biscuits, some coffee- my travel receipts from the arduous journey I’ve only just completed, if I dare use the word when I left with everything still up in the air, so to speak?”

  Ezra held out his hands in a “stop, please” gesture.

  “Just the ashtray then, Benson,” Leon said. The butler nodded his head and receded into the shadows. He returned after a moment or two, during which time the clan gathered in the living room stared at Ezra while he flicked the wheel of his lighter, carrying the required item in his gloved hands. Benson sat the claw-footed ashtray down with a bit of force; Ezra couldn’t help but feel that the man didn’t care for him much.

  “Thanks, Benson,” Ezra said. The butler might have said “Hmmph” before turning away.

  “Now then, Mister Beckitt,” Leon said. “If we could-”

  “Say,” Ezra said. He lit his Chesterfield and puffed at it, producing great grey plumes of smoke that hung about the living room. “This is a nice piece of furniture. I’d love to have something like this at the house, you know it? Most of the time I just tap my ashes into a Pipsee can, toss the butt in there too. I know I don’t have to worry about the house burning down when I put my cigarette out in that last swallow of pop in the can. Makes that little hiss, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s out. This was your wife’s?”

  Leon, who had been returning to his seat on the sectional sofa between the lawyer and the sister, paused and turned back. “It was,” he said. “I don’t smoke. Why do you ask?”

  Ezra raised his hands in front of himself, trailing smoke from between the fingers of his left hand. “Well, it’s just that when you asked Benson for it you spoke as if the ashtray hadn’t been in here for a long time,” he said. “But your wife, she’s only been dead for a couple days. Seems odd to me that something the lady of the house used every day would be tucked away in storage, you see.”

  “I see,” Waverly Pembroke said. The tough old lawyer struggled to his feet once more, puffing and blowing. “And I resent the hell out of it, Beckitt. We met with you here in good faith, and in return you start throwing accusations around. And enough with the bumbling old Guard act. If you were going to try that, you should have put the costume on before you knocked on the door. Now, the fact of the matter is this- most everything in this house has been packed up for some time. We only brought out these living room furnishings to meet with you- and to have the wake for the family and friends, if you ever see fit to release Beverly’s body.”

  Ezra checked his notes- or pantomimed doing it, anyway. “This residence is listed as Beverly Jensen’s address on her driver’s license,” he said.

  Faye laughed again. “Yes,” she said. “Her license also lists her age as forty-three.”

  “Hush now,” Pembroke said, without turning to the woman. “No one says another word to this man until he starts playing straight with us. There’s enough bullshit in this room to fertilize a field of corn. I, for one, have had quite enough of it.”

  “Man, you got that right,” Ezra said. “Okay. Now, how about you tell me the whys and whatnots of this place being packed away when the lady was supposed to be living here, and we’ll go from there?”

  Pembroke and Jensen huddled up, foreheads almost touching while they talked it over in hushed whispers. Jagger only glared at Ezra, trying to make his flabby arms look muscular by folding them over his chest. Faye drank. Danni still hadn’t uttered a word since Ezra came into the room. Her eyes were cool- mountain lake water. Ezra smoked and waited to see what would develop, playing with the crease of his suit pants. There were a lot of angles here, but he was a pool player- he understood angles.

  When Pembroke and Leon broke, Ezra almost expected them to clap and say “On three, on three,” or something. Instead the old warhorse of a lawyer (and forget about calling him Lee- Ezra c
ouldn’t consider calling the man anything but Pembroke) patted his client on the back and gave his shoulder a big, reassuring squeeze.

  “No one has lived here for some time,” Leon said. “Due to the demands of my business I’m often abroad- I have residences in five different countries. Beverly would often come along with me, if I was going somewhere tropical with beaches and casinos. She had no interest in a trip to the misty peaks of Belvachia, though- she also didn’t like to rattle around in this giant house alone, so-”

  “So she would spend time in her little crib uptown,” Faye said. The younger sister of the deceased (who actually looked older- she hadn’t spent as much time on the table as Beverly) was starting to list ponderously to starboard. Her speech was getting mushy. “Little love nest, just big enough for two.” And then she laughed at the room, while everyone else scowled. She slopped up the last of her drink and then held the glass out, shaking it back and forth until Pembroke finally took it from her and went to the bar underneath that ugly painting to fix her a new one. Ezra suppressed a shudder as he watched the lawyer go to work; the lady’s drink was basically raw vodka, with a few ice cubes and a splash of lemon flavored water on top.

  Leon’s lips pressed together until they were nothing but a thin white line, like an old scar. “I was often away,” he reiterated. “How Beverly spent her time, and her money, was her own affair. So there you have it, Mister Beckitt,” he went on. His face brightened and his voice lightened as if a switch had been thrown somewhere inside him. “One mystery solved- the case of why no one was home and the ashtray was packed away. Riveting.”

  Ezra nodded, stubbing out his Chesterfield in the cut crystal dish of that ashtray. The clawed feet were slightly uneven and the whole thing rocked as he did so. “So here’s what we know,” he said. “Two days ago your wife got in her car and went down to Londell’s. She parked in front of a conshop there-”