by Sandra Balzo
‘“The waiting room”,’ he echoed, as if picturing the words written in capital letters on a television screen. THE WAITING ROOM.
‘Perhaps the loot?’ Riordan said breathlessly, if a bit behind the curve of the conversation as I envisioned it.
Kate, who had been abnormally quiet so far – probably salting away information for a story in her weekly rag – glanced at Sarah and me before saying. ‘Oh, no. Surely not.’
If I’d been able to detect Chitown’s ‘wheels-turning’, I sure as hell could sense Kate’s mental abacus click-clacking as she tried to calculate the magnitude of Sarah’s ‘cut’ should the money be found on her property.
Or maybe, more important now, to calculate the chances of Sarah allowing Chitown’s cameras into--cue dramatic music--the waiting room.
‘Kate is right,’ Chitown said. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First we need to go in and see what is causing this horrible odor.’
Oh, now he was willing to do the dirty work?
‘Go in? How?’ I asked, moving closer. ‘As I said before, I’ve never seen a door back there. Sarah, have you?’
My partner shook her head.
‘Maybe it’s been walled up.’ Riordan peered around us. ‘You know, like in The Cask of Amontillado?’
‘The what?’ Sarah asked.
‘The Cask of Amontillado. It’s a wonderfully creepy tale, if you haven’t read it. In fact, I may just have a copy of The Best Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe with me.’ She began digging through her huge doggy-bag. ‘Somewhere.’
And emerged with an afghan.
No, not a bred-down version of the hound. This was the kind of afghan my grandmother had crocheted, right down to the variegated earth-toned yarn, zig-zag pattern and lingering scent of fabric softener from the clothes dryer.
Except that Riordan’s throw-blanket had a ball of yarn stuck to it.
‘Oh dear.’ Her face reddened as the woman tried to stuff the whole mess back into the bag.
Hey, it could be worse, I wanted to tell her. Apparently Sarah’d had firearms popping out of her bag, before she’d wisely gone to the handy holster.
Chitown seemed to take it all in before clearing his throat. ‘Well, I doubt there was malicious intent, as with Poe’s Montresor and the, uh, unfortunate Fortunato. But the fact is, especially given the passage of time, any door could have been sealed, so you may very well be right, Elaine.’
‘And yet, so very wrong,’ Sarah said, turning away from the scene to whisper in my ear. ‘No wonder she’s the butt of jokes among the Holly Hobbies. I’m embarrassed to be seen with Elaine here, and I don't have to work with her.’
When I first met Sarah Kingston, her mode of dress had been trousers and baggy jackets, the only requisite being the jacket have pockets generous enough to hold her cigarettes and lighter. My partner had given up the smokes, but not the uniform they accessorized. Meaning there wasn’t a lot that embarrassed her.
But I was in Sarah’s corner on this one.
The afghan was three-quarters contained when the ball of yarn made a run for it, hitting the ground and unraveling until its core disappeared under a shrub.
As Riordan dove after her dwindling resource, I examined the trellis. ‘I could be wrong, but I don’t remember this being pulled away when I looked at the vine.’
‘Looked?’ Sarah repeated. ‘You don’t “look” with an axe.’
‘You kill with an axe,’ from the prophet of doom under the bush. ‘As in, “the brave knight cleaved the villain from helm to nave.”’
Or helmet to navel, and presumably a quote from something else she’d read. Riordan needed to diversify beyond history.
Kate McNamara came up behind me. ‘That’s a trumpet creeper?’ Evidently our intrepid correspondent also had a little trouble continuing in the context of a conversation. ‘My parents had one in their Florida yard. It nearly took over the place.’
‘See?’ I said to Sarah. ‘It’s a noxious plant. I told you I should have cut it down.’
‘That’d only make things worse,’ Kate said. ‘The monster is like a hydra. Every time you lop off an arm it grows ten more.’
‘Actually,’ Chitown interjected, ‘according to Greek mythology, the serpent Hydra had multiple heads, not arms. And when one was lopped off, it grew two more, not ten.’
Yet another show-off.
Kate colored up. ‘I’m just repeating what my father told me.’
‘I’m sorry, Katy.’ Chitown put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you or your father. I’m just a fan – embarrassingly close to the word’s derivation, fanatic – of all things mythical.’
‘Probably because he thinks he’s God.’ Sarah, again in my ear: ‘And not small “g”.’
Chitown was smiling at Kate. ‘Sometimes I get carried away.’
‘Katy’ twisted her head to smile back.
Weird to see the journalist, always sure of herself to the point of nausea – mine, never hers – defer to Chitown.
I pulled at the top of the trellis and the lattice toppled away from the wall. I caught a cut portion of the vine just in time to keep it from hitting Kate in the face.
‘Watch that,’ she said, jumping back. ‘The bastard’s sap could give me a rash. Or . . .’ A glance toward Chitown and Kate’s color rose again, ‘so I’m told.’
The picture of a woman in lust. Whether it was for the man or for his connections in a much bigger media market remained to be seen.
Nonetheless, Kate safely out of the way, I let the trellis go so it could fall harmlessly to the ground and wiped my hand on my jeans.
‘Huh,’ Sarah said. ‘There really is a door.’
Sure enough, the severed section of vine interweaving with lattice revealed a wooden panel that had been hidden from sight by the stairs as well. The entrance was less than four feet high and tucked in a shadowy corner where the loading platform wall formed a right-angle with the foundation one of the depot itself.
Chitown turned first to me and then to Sarah, his eyes aglow with excitement, as though we were his parents and he knew the gift he’d pestered us for lay, unopened, before him.
I looked at Sarah. ‘Somebody has to go in there. Might as well be him. Without a TV crew.’
Chitown nodded eagerly.
Kate stood behind his right shoulder and Elaine Riordan, yarn safely recovered and afghan stowed, his left. Media Man and his posse.
Such as they were.
Sarah, owner of the building, shrugged. ‘Go for it.’
Chitown reached for the small doorknob and pulled.
Nothing happened.
‘Maybe the thing wasn’t installed according to code,’ I said, referring to building regulations that required doors to open out so people inside couldn’t be trapped against them during a fire.
I pushed against the door and it swung in.
Immediately, the smell and stale warmth hit us like we’d cross-ventilated a blast furnace.
‘Oh, God.’ Kate put both hands to her nose and mouth.
Although the door was swung wide, none of us had moved forward.
‘Don’t suppose you have a flashlight,’ Chitown said.
‘In the office,’ Sarah said. ‘Go get it, Maggy.’
‘I’m not going to go get it.’ God help me, I didn’t want to miss anything. Hadn’t I learned anything from history? Mine, I mean. ‘You get it.’
‘I’m not going to get it.’
‘Maybe you should both—’ Chitown started.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Kate McNamara said, reaching in with one hand to feel around on the wall left of the door. ‘Anybody think of checking for a light switch?’
I heard a ‘click’, and an overhead bulb came on.
‘It’s wired for power?’ I asked.
‘For God’s sake, Maggy,’ Sarah said, ‘it was the 1970s not the 1790s. We did have electricity way back then.’
‘True, but . . . it’s a secret chamber.’ I
n my book, secret chambers do not have functioning lights.
Elaine Riordan tried to squeeze her nose in to peer around.
‘Hey,’ Sarah said, nudging her out of the way. ‘My hidden room, not yours.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, moving Riordan one more place back in the pecking order. So far as I was concerned, when Chitown couldn’t open the door, he’d lost his chance to enter first. Especially now that we could see where we were going.
Bumping into the man himself, Riordan deferred and took her rightful position at the back of the line. Or nearly the back – Kate, looking pale, had moved to a grassy patch, where she bent over at the waist and hurled the undigested parts of her breakfast.
‘Journalistic distance?’ I asked.
She managed to nod, but then her hand went to her mouth and stayed there.
‘Don’t you ladies want me to go in before you do?’ Chitown asked. ‘I know it smells awful and—’
‘Nah, I’m good.’ Sarah hunched down to get through the low doorway, made scuffling noises and despite the new lighting, promptly disappeared.
‘Are you OK?’ I called, scuttling in after her and nearly breaking my own neck as I tumbled to join her on the floor.
‘Watch out, there’s a step down,’ she said. ‘Or two.’
‘Fine time to tell me.’ I stood first and gave Sarah my hand to help pull herself up. ‘I guess we should have known by the size of the doorway and the height of the platform –’ I pointed to the ceiling above us – ‘that they would have had to dig deep to create a room where you could stand.’
Chitown’s head appeared in the doorway.
‘Step down!’ Sarah and I chorused.
‘Yes, thank you.’ Chitown managed the stairs quite well, damn him. He was the type of man you had trouble imagining disheveled, much less crumpled into a pile of limbs on the linoleum.
I looked around. Serviceable, and even comfortable in a seventies’ kind of way. Chairs and a leather – no, make that fake leather – couch on one side and a table and six chairs on the other, metal legs showing patches of rust. An avocado-tone refrigerator was up against the station-side wall and when I levered open the heavy door, even the appliance light came on.
Beer. Three bottles of Miller High Life and one of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Two cans of Schlitz and an Old Milwaukee.
‘Ah,’ Chitown said, snagging a Miller. ‘The Champagne of Bottled Beer. And still cold enough to make your teeth jump.’
‘Well,’ said Sarah, ‘at least some explanation for my sky-high electric bill.’
‘The Milwaukee mob certainly supported their hometown breweries,’ I observed.
A camera flash made us all reflexively turn. Sarah and me, the way we go through life – mouths open and eyes closed – but Chitown beaming the practiced smile of a celebrity.
He even held up his beer so you could read the label.
Product placement, however coincidental. ‘You’re good.’ All those years in marketing had taught me to recognize a natural showman. PT Barnum had nothing on Ward Chitown. This man lived to be loved.
‘Good, schmood. Put that thing away,’ Sarah said to Elaine Riordan, who was madly pushing buttons on her cell phone, presumably to retrieve and examine the digital photo she’d just shot.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Riordan barely glanced up from her miniature screen. ‘I was just documenting.’
‘When you’re in my building, you document nothing.’ Sarah, growling, slammed the refrigerator door. ‘Maggy, can you imagine how much this dinosaur has cost us just to keep that beer cold all these years?’
She and I both knew we were all ignoring the elephant in the room. The dead, stinky elephant.
I looked around as Sarah went to a closet door ajar on the far side of the room. The track lighting that ran down the center of the ceiling cast deep shadows both behind and beneath the furniture.
‘Think a squirrel or field mouse died under the couch?’ I said, a triumph of hope over experience as I kneeled down, trying to see into the dark.
‘Maggy . . .’ Chitown hesitated and started again. ‘I hate to say it, but as a reporter I’ve been around quite a few dead creatures. This one smells . . . bigger. Much bigger.’
‘Bigger?’ I straightened up. I’d stumbled over corpses myself. Didn’t mean that ‘denial’ wasn’t my knee-jerk reaction. ‘Like a rat?’
‘Yeah.’
That last voice was Sarah’s. She had swung open the door of the closet. Beyond her, accented by light from a mesh-covered vent in the ceiling, was an avocado green toilet.
A bathroom. And Sarah’s face matched the color of the outdated porcelain.
‘So, it’s just a rat?’ What does it say about your life when you’re relieved the dead smell in the secret Mafia hideaway beneath your only source of income is ‘just’ a rat?
‘No.’ It was hard to tell in the dim light, but Sarah’s skin tone seemed to be getting closer to forest green.
I crossed the room to her, the stench registering stronger with each step. ‘Sarah?’
Sarah stood stock-still, eyes closed.
I repeated her name.
My partner’s eyes blinked open, the tears yielding to gravity as they trickled down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ she whispered.
She was scaring me. This reaction wasn’t Sarah-like.
‘You didn’t mean what?’ I whispered back.
‘That she was . . . Oh, God. I am so, so sorry.’
My friend shuffled aside and I saw the shadowy body on the floor.
A rat, all right. Only not of the rodent variety.
Brigid Ferndale, Sarah's tattle-tale sales apprentice from Kingston Realty.
Chapter Five
Her open matte-finish eyes. The sewer-odor from the involuntary release of bladder and bowel soaking her short silver dress, overwhelmed by the putrefying stench of evolving decomposition, fueled by our unseasonable warm snap.
I had seen – and smelled – it all before.
‘Is everything OK in there?’ I heard Kate McNamara call from outside.
Sarah and I looked at each other.
‘Close quarters, Kate,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you stay where you are.’
As I reached the last word, I was nudging Chitown back before he could see what we had. Then I closed the bathroom door. Brigid deserved what little dignity some tardy privacy could give her and, honestly, Sarah had enough problems without an investigative reporter being third witness on the scene.
My partner collapsed onto the couch, staring. Her catatonic state reminded me uncomfortably of another partner, on another day, after finding another body.
‘Could you wait outside, please?’ I said to Chitown softly.
‘I . . . um . . .’ He looked back and forth between Sarah and the bathroom door, seemingly torn between not wanting to increase my partner’s suffering and his journalistic instinct to know what caused it.
‘Of course,’ Ward Chitown said finally, chivalry overcoming curiosity. He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Would you like me to call 9-1-1?’
‘No, thanks. I have kind of a direct line.’
Brookhills County Sheriff Jake Pavlik ducked his head through the doorway and saw Sarah and me, now both sitting on the couch.
I’d asked Ward Chitown to take Elaine Riordan outside, update Kate, and then wait with them to direct the emergency responders.
Logical, but my reason for getting rid of the audience was more personal.
‘Sarah, are you all right?’ I’d asked when we were alone.
She didn’t answer, just patted her pockets, absently checking for a cigarette.
‘You gave up smoking,’ I reminded her, though I knew Sarah still struggled. It was like being an alcoholic – you could stop drinking, but that didn’t mean you weren’t an alcoholic. The urges were still there.
And, honestly, if I’d had a cigarette I’d have given it to Sarah. A drink wouldn’t have hurt, either.
‘She was my responsibility.�
�
I shifted on the couch to face my partner. ‘You mean Brigid?’ I asked gently.
‘No. Mother Hubbard,’ she snapped. ‘How do you like her shoe?’ Sarah waved her arms at our surroundings, back to her old self. For what that was worth.
Of course it was the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, not Mother Hubbard, but when Sarah was in these moods, it was best to take the high road. The other ones led straight to hell.
‘Brigid was your responsibility,’ I said, holding up my hand to stop Sarah’s objection to being quoted against herself. ‘At work, you may have failed her.’
‘I did not—’
Geez, even agreeing with Sarah couldn’t shut her up. ‘But unless Brigid was holding an open house in the bathroom of –’ I made finger quotes – ‘the “waiting room”, this had nothing to do with selling real estate.’
‘What was she doing here, Maggy? How could—’
Pavlik stuck his dark, shaggy-haired head through the entrance-way. ‘Where?’
I pointed to the bathroom door. When you’re as close as the sheriff and I were, who needed words? We could practically read each other’s minds.
Pavlik’s was thinking: How the hell did I get myself involved with this broad? It’s like I’m Lassie, she’s Timmy, and every day is a new well.
A sheriff’s deputy had followed Pavlik in and the two of them crossed to the bathroom, the uniform opening the door.
‘Jesus,’ he said, clapping a hand over his nose.
Pavlik just continued in, the deputy reluctantly following.
When they emerged, the deputy quickstepped to the waiting room’s entrance and left us. I heard him call to someone.
As Pavlik closed in on us, a man I recognized as a crime-scene technician entered. He nodded to Pavlik, but hesitated when he saw Sarah and me.
I shrugged.
An answering shrug and the two men moved back into the bathroom.
‘Going to do his job,’ Sarah said.
I looked at her. ‘Please tell me you’re not making potty jokes at a moment like this.’
‘What?’ She genuinely seemed puzzled.
‘Never mind,’ I said.
Pavlik returned again, probably for a while, since he sat in a chair across from us. ‘Can you identify the deceased?’ he asked, hooking a notepad from an inside pocket of his charcoal-gray topcoat.