by R. L. Perry
Milt loomed over this collection like a stork, his gaunt frame a larger-than-life presence. He offered me a spongy leather seat across from his desk, and in a role-reversal of the previous day, we sat down to business.
“Thanks for coming by,” Milt told me as we began to talk. “I’m just now beginning to realize the gravity of all of this. What I’m up against. Quite frankly, I’m really not set up for it . . . emotionally or otherwise.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“In this location? About twenty-five years. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep the doors open. Most of my income is built around the Carringtons’ ice business . . . although I do handle a small claim or a divorce now and then. But times are tough all over.”
“Did you see Phil every week?” My question emerged as both a curiosity and a probe, and I could see that Milt was becoming hesitant to tell me more. Although the Carringtons were gone, he sensed that he was now guardian of something larger.
“Well, not every week,” Milt said eventually. “But we did socialize outside of work from time to time. Phil didn’t have many friends. Most of his time and attention was given to the business.”
“I see,” I added. “I guess he knew you would keep his work in order.”
Milt nodded, half-heartedly. He reached behind his desk and retrieved a steno pad. He slid it across the desk toward me. “I made an outline of some things for the funeral. In addition to the eulogy, I’d like to create a powerpoint showing the history of the business. We are celebrating fifty-three years as a company this year and I think the employees would appreciate the retrospective.”
“I’ll have a TV ready. You can do whatever you like.” I opened my purse and brought out a packet of brochures. I walked Milt through the various selections for Phil’s casket, his burial.
Milt listened to the brief presentation and then interjected, “I won’t be good at selecting these things. Why don’t you just make the choice—something similar to what Sheila had—and let me know what the costs will be. I’ll make sure I get you a check for the whole, including the cemetery and the gravestone.”
I nodded in agreement. This was not the first time that the decisions had been placed into my lap. Some families were simply not equipped to decide. A few were apathetic. And in Milt’s case, his focus was on the business side, and on the eulogy. He clearly didn’t want to become the face of the Carrington estate.
“Okay, I’ll take care of everything,” I said. “I’ll keep it simple but respectable.”
“Thank you,” Milt said.
“And I assume you’d like to do this as quickly as possible, too?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s shoot for tomorrow morning. Say ten o’clock.”
“I’ll be there,” Milt said.
I placed the brochures back into my purse, considered my next question, but thought better of pursuing a line of investigation before we had placed Phil Carrington in the ground. After all, we had the hard evidence and the forensic report, and Blanch had made sufficient notes to double-back across any line of questioning. One step at a time, I thought.
I gave Milt a smile and noted that he was eager to get back to the files that were littering his desk. He was not being evasive, but time held sway over his affairs and most of the light had now drained away from the sky. Milt turned on his desk lamp as I stood to leave and he thanked me again for taking care of the funeral arrangements.
“Perhaps we can talk further when this is over,” he told me, lifting his hands over the pile.
“We will talk further,” I said.
I exited the office and closed the door behind me, the scent of dusty paper and book binding clouding my way as I strode toward the street. Outside, facing west, I noted that the sun had dipped behind the warehouses and the first inebriations of another cold night were tottering along on a silent wind. I did not want to hold Phil Carrington too long in the bosom of sleep and, as I slipped into the front seat of my car and started the engine, I was grateful that we could extradite the burial so that I could work on discovering the truth.
I warmed the car, and called to make arrangements with the cemetery. I called Rose and asked her to write up a brief obit for Phil Carrington that we could place on our website. And then I called David.
“Listen,” I told him, “I don’t know what you’ve been able to find out about the ice business . . . but you might want to come to Phil Carrington’s funeral tomorrow morning.”
“I had a feeling,” David said. “It’s a chilling business.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re right,” I added. “But we can’t wait for the spring thaw.”
As I drove toward the funeral home once again, however, I was deep in the throes of hunger. But I couldn’t stop for a sandwich. I had to suit up, place Phil Carrington into a box, and make him presentable to the public. There would also be flowers to arrange in the morning, another procession to organize, paperwork to complete. And the death certificate. Always the death certificate. But I wasn’t sure what to write on this one.
There were so many ways to spell Murder.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lance and I finally settled into our routine at nine o’clock, well after sunset, having completed our respective rounds. Dinner was a can of soup. Dessert a chocolate chip cookie. And conversation at my kitchen table was a retrospective on the varied courses of death and dying. It was obvious that nothing would be moving between us—nothing evident in our energies or mannerisms that would include a nightcap rendezvous.
I moved slowly about the kitchen, wiping down countertop and sink as I reviewed the highlights of my day. I told Lance about Phil Carrington’s autopsy results, my conversation with Milt, along with a few of my deductions. I couldn’t wait to slip into my comfortable slippers, warm myself by the fire. We moved into the living room and bantered back and forth.
Lance beat me to the punch, however, when I began to ask him about leading the processional to the cemetery. “I can’t do it tomorrow,” Lance said. “I’m on patrol. But I’ll make sure we get someone over there to help out.”
“Thanks,” I said, then quickly spun the conversation onto another course. “But there are other ways you could help out.”
“How’s that?” Lance asked, already stripped down to his T-shirt and navy sweat pants, forearm muscles twitching as he lifted a log for the fire.
“I assume you could secure a search warrant for the Carrington’s house?” I asked.
Lance paused, stared down at the carpet. Then he reached over and stuffed newspaper between the logs. “That might be easier than usual,” he said, “seeing as how both are deceased. You said they have no other family?”
“Not that I know of,” I answered.
“What are you hoping we can find there?”
I didn’t move to tell Lance that I expected to be part of the in-home investigative team. Not yet. I wanted to get commitment first. “They both died from listeria-related illness,” I said. “There’s probably a source in the home.”
“We’ll have to take samples, then?”
“It would help to know what you’re looking for.”
“Such as . . . ?”
“Food.”
“Everyone has food in the home.”
“The Carringtons had a lot of it.”
“How do you know?”
“I looked in their kitchen,” I said. “When I went to pick up Sheila Carrington’s body.”
“And yet another of you many unknown talents,” Lance said, lighting the fire. “A snoop.”
“I wasn’t snooping,” I reminded him. “I was doing my job.”
Lance didn’t answer. He was tending to the fire, blowing the paper shoots into flames as they danced around the dry kindling.
“I think I should be there when you get the warrant,” I said. “I know where things are. I know what to look for.”
“So do we,” Lance answered. “We have detec
tives on the force . . . remember?”
I was admiring Lance’s fortitude, his attention to detail. I loved the way he looked over his work, cared for it. I watched as the fire crept up onto the logs and licked at it, crackling the bark and spitting some of it, popping, onto the hearth. I didn’t want to drop my request, however.
“I’ve got to sign a death certificate for Phil Carrington,” I said. “It would help if I knew a little more before the funeral tomorrow morning.”
Lance pulled the glass doors across the flame and watched it momentarily to make certain it was on its way up the flue. “You’re asking me to go outside of protocol,” he said.
“I’m just asking you to let me do my job,” I told him. “I might be more helpful than you think.”
Lance smiled at me—his eyes melting me down and holding me spellbound. “Come here,” he said, waiting for me to rise into his arms. He kissed me—short but wonderfully sweet, a statement bordering on acquiescence. “I’ll do what I can,” he whispered.
I kissed him back—longer and harder, my hands draped across his broad shoulders. “I’ve got the funeral in the morning. Can we do it tonight?”
Lance, not one usually given to anger, stirred against me. “What? Now?”
He knew I was talking about something other than sex.
“You could get the warrant with a phone call,” I said. “This is something we could do together. Aren’t we a team?”
“A team?”
“Well . . . of a sort.” I kissed him again and felt him loosen. He was almost laughing.
“If it were up to you,” he said, “you’d have me working twenty-four-seven.”
“It’s not up to me,” I answered. “It’s up to you.”
Lance stared into my eyes and noted that neither of us was retreating. Against the wall, the cuckoo clock beat a cadence that was barely perceptible over the crackling fire. I nestled my head into Lance’s chest and didn’t want to let go.
“You’ve got some way over me,” I heard him say. “But what the hell . . . it might be fun at that.”
I laughed, not in a triumphant way, but lilting. At last, Lance had joined me in the outcome. “Do you think you can do it?” I asked.
“Let me make a call to legal,” Lance said. “I can try.”
I padded back to the couch and lay down, staring at the glowing fire, as Lance made his way into the kitchen to make the call. I could hear him asking questions—mostly short and rugged, with undertones of grunts and innuendoes. At one point, he was telling my tale, holding court in the company of experts and reminding them that I was the county coroner who needed to fill out a death certificate. In the interlude, tired to the core, I nearly fell asleep, my head nestled atop an afghan my mother had knitted a year before she had died.
In a few minutes, Lance returned with the verdict. “Grab your coat,” he said. “We’ll drop by and get the warrant. You owe me one. And you owe legal a really big one. I think I woke the court.”
“I owe you, too,” I said.
Lance nodded, then proceeded to extinguish the fire with the same determination as he had used to light it. He turned off lamps. Checked the time. “I’ll be ready in five,” he told me. “Just let me get my uniform and belt on. Let’s do this thing.”
I was quick to lope up the stairs, stumble into my jeans and a double layer of sweat shirts. At the edges of the windows, layers of ice had formed intricate dams of design—rivers and cities and webs of beautiful texture and layers. I could hear the wind stirring against the glass. And I wondered if I were expecting too much of a winter that was already filled with hopes and surprises. I could have—and perhaps should have—left the work to the experts, as Lance said. But something in me could not let go of the discovery, of finding the source of such deadly secrets.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I was staring at Lance’s sidearm as we drove the patrol car across town to retrieve the warrant—an insignificant hoop at this point—but a necessary step. It was after eleven when Lance left me behind in the patrol car, the engine running, to retrieve the papers, but he was back before I could miss him. He dove in, buckled up, and we were off to the Carringtons’ house in due haste.
On the seat between us, I tapped at a small metallic box that contained a few swabs and empty vials, a couple of larger cylinders that I hoped to use to collect samples from the home. Neither Lance nor I spoke as we drove on through the night, the evening slipping away in moonlight and star wheels, frost nipping at the ends of our noses even as we turned up the heater vents, the mercury dipping toward five below zero outside.
No one of sound mind was driving and the roads, vacant and roughshod, seemed to crumble beneath the tires as we moved silently through the night. We drove past the Indianapolis Speed-way, over exit ramps, across certain sideshow lots littered with the vestiges of Christmas lights and moving parts of Santa sleighs and reindeer, and eventually into the Carringtons’ neighborhood. None of the neighbors’ homes were lit, the cold taking them to bed or pulling them toward the lure of a glowing television screen, and all was silent and bereft.
Lance eased the patrol car into the driveway. “Let me get at the lock,” he said. “We have tools.” He didn’t expect me to stay long in the car alone, and exited quickly to make haste with the front latch. My memory retreated to Sheila Carrington, a diagram of the house forming a kind of diorama in my mind. It was dark—and for a moment I shuddered at the thought of entering the house again.
Sitting there in the darkness I noted that a light snow had started to fall—beautiful, translucent flakes, large as hoarfrost. The air, dry and frigid, gave the snowflakes a brittle appearance, and as they settled upon the windshield of the patrol car I could see them glistening in the faint, angular light from the street lamps. It was a soft snow, mostly air falling on air, but seemed to pick up steam as the weight of the precipitation began to settle over the ground and shimmer against the darkness.
I could see that Lance had made quick work of the lock and, when he opened the front door and turned on the porch light, I slipped out of the car and gingerly made my way across the front sidewalk to the steps, taking Lance’s hand as he led me into the surprisingly warm interior. I dusted a few snowflakes off of my shoulders after I closed the door. Inside, I could smell antiseptic mixed with less familiar odors coming from the kitchen. I stepped into the hallway and turned on the lights. Rooms blossomed into brightness and, after Lance closed the front door, I realized I was the one leading the expedition, of sorts. “What’s next?” he asked.
“I want to show you something,” I said, noting on the face of the grandfather clock that it was now eleven thirty. I led Lance down the hallway into the bedroom. The bed, much as I had left it the day I removed Sheila Carrington’s body, was mussed and incomplete. “He was too sick to make things over,” I told Lance. “She had died here on the bed. Too weak to move.”
“He never made it home,” Lance reminded me. “You said you were probably the last person to see him alive.”
I nodded, a shiver running down my spine as I considered all of the places I needed to look. I took out a steno pad, made notes . . . and snapped photos on my cell phone. There were over-the-counter pain killers on the back of the sink—a short row of other remedies that the Carringtons may have tried, to no avail. Inside the medicine cabinet I discovered the usual: old tubes of antibiotic ointment, a jar of Vicks, another tube of Ben-Gay, lost past-potency prescriptions of various assortment, a few Nicotine patches that Sheila Carrington may have tried. There were also band-aids, strips of gauze, antiseptic tape, an ancient vial of merthiolate that, around the edges, was bleeding crimson. Nestled on the bottom shelf, I also noted a plethora of bismuth tablets, antihistamines, and several orphan aspirins—like polka dots against a strip of electrical tape that was securing a connection to the cabinet light.
I made notations quickly, shot a few photos. Lance stood next to me, supportive but bored. “Anything in particular?” he asked.
<
br /> “Nothing jumps out at me,” I said. I reached into my coat pocket for rubber gloves and squeezed my fingers into them. I glanced down at the floor where, after Sheila’s death, Phil Carrington lay slumped and vomiting against the toilet. I removed one vial from my kit, sunk it delicately into the toilet, and removed a water sample.
“Really?” Lance said.
“Might as well start with the head source,” I noted. “Stranger things have happened.”
“What’s next?” Lance wondered.
I led him back down the hallway toward the living room, took in the décor, the basic living conditions. “She kept a clean house,” I said aloud. “Or they didn’t spend much time in here. Maybe she hired a cleaning service. Nothing seems to be out of place.”
“What about the kitchen?” Lance asked. He was staring ahead, his gaze fastened on the plethora of cakes and pies still spread across the granite countertops. Nothing had been moved.
“I think you should get a cleaning crew in here in a day or so,” I said. “This stuff will start to go bad. Or perhaps I can ask Milt if he knows someone who could help out. They had friends. We just want to make sure the environment is clean first.”
Lance propped himself in a corner of the kitchen opposite the refrigerator and watched me as I gathered the samples. Primarily, I focused on the food that it looked like the Carringtons had sampled at some point. There were a few missing wedges of pie, an uncovered plate of beautifully decorated sugar cookies—green Christmas trees, sugary snowmen, blue bells, red angels. A pineapple upside-down cake also looked suspiciously appetizing, and I portioned a sample into one of the vials.
Opening the cupboards, I also discovered some opened bottles of liquors, unwashed wine stems, and an opened tin of designer popcorn—a parmesan mixture with nuts and peppercorns that had been manufactured locally. Likewise, a large bowl of mixed fruit—apples and apricots, oranges and grapefruit—formed the centerpiece of this trove, but all the fruit seemed to be gathering was fruit flies and I looked past it.