The Deader the Better

by G. M. Ford

  “If it’s possible to know what happened, I’ve got to know.”

  “Then we’ll do it,” Rebecca said.

  Making the decision to exhume her husband seemed to give her strength. We put together a plan. Claudia and the kids were leaving tonight with Rebecca. Going over to stay with J.D.’s parents. I was going to hold down the fort at Claudia’s place, at least until the autopsy was completed. After that, we’d play it by ear.

  Claudia and Rebecca began to pack. All she had was the two green garbage bags she’d fled the house with, so it wasn’t going to take long. They sent me downstairs. Told me to send the kids up so they could get them dressed. The other children were gone. It was dark and quiet downstairs. A single bulb in the kitchen area cast a dim yellow glow over the room. The woman we’d met earlier was named Juanita. She was closing up the center for the night.

  “It’s good they are going to their people,” she said as she locked a window. “Bad times like these…you got to be with your people.” I told her I agreed. “Us Indians, we know that, you see, ’cause one another is all we got.” She pulled a white plastic liner from the trash can and tied it with a twist tie.

  “You think it’s like the insurance guy says?” she asked me.

  “You think maybe J.D. killed himself?”

  I told her there was no way to tell. “You know J.D.?” I asked.

  “Oh sure,” she said. “He come over all the time. Sometimes for lunch with the kids. Sometimes just to visit.”

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “You never know about people,” she said. “I know white people are crazy about land. They came out here last year…want to make us rich, they say. Fifty grand for every member of the tribe. People say, hey, those Lummi people want to give us fifty thousand a head, I better find my old lady and make me some children.” She laughed. “I say, hey, we already gave them a bunch of land…so look what they did to that.” She laughed again. I was lost. The Lummi were another Northwest Indian tribe. How they qualified as “crazy white people” was beyond me. I never got a chance to ask.

  “Leo,” Rebecca called from upstairs.

  It was full dark. I carried Adam and one of the bags. The two women carried the other bag between them while the little girl walked out in front of us all. Our pathfinder. We loaded the bags into the Avon and the people into the jet boat. With the little boat in tow, we cruised downstream to the confluence and then over to the homestead. I’d have bet the farm that Claudia would have found some reason she had to go into the house. Some memento or something that she needed. But no. All Claudia wanted was for her and her children to be someplace else. I don’t think she even looked at the cabin on the way by. We don’t have kiddy car seats and the Springers’ had been in the Subaru. So we buckled the kids in as best we could. Claudia rode in between them, an arm around each. Rebecca was behind the wheel. I leaned in the window and asked, “What’s the best motel in town?”

  “The Black Bear,” Claudia said. “They redid it last year.”

  “That’s right next to that little downtown park, isn’t it?”

  Rebecca asked. Claudia said it was. I started up the Springers’Blazer and followed them to town. I saw the big bruin sign from two blocks away. It was lit up like an airfield. I blinked my lights and stuck my arm out the window, pointing to a dark area across the street from where we were now. Powers Saw Shop.

  She turned hard; I followed. Rebecca got out with me.

  “No point letting anybody see who’s in the car,” I said. She hugged me, told me to be careful, not to run with scissors and to eat my vegetables. She handed me her cell phone, walked around the Explorer’s passenger side and opened the glove box, pulled something out and returned to my side.

  “Here’s the charger,” she said. “If you’re going to leave it on all the time, then you’ll have to charge it whenever you get the chance. It charges better if you run the battery all the way down.” She hugged me again. For a long time.

  “You know, we work pretty well together,” I said. She nodded. “I just wish it were something else we were working on.”

  I watched until the taillights disappeared and then drove the block and a half up to the Black Bear. A TV was blaring from another room. The X-Files. The sign said to ring the bell, so I did. An old man limped around the corner on a leg so stiff it had to be artificial. “I’m right here, dammit,” he said. He wore a Hawaiian shirt outside of his pants in the Philippine dictator mode and a pair of chinos. Seventy-five if he was a day. Last combed his hair sometime in early spring. Still owned every other tooth, which stood spaced like pickets in his retreating gums. He looked me over and then looked over me out into the parking lot. I confirmed his worst fears.

  “Just what you were hoping for,” I said. “No luggage…one night.”

  “Cash or major credit card?”

  “Which do you prefer?” I asked.

  “Cash,” he said. “Forty bucks even.”

  He picked up a registration card. “You want to—”

  “Not unless you insist,” I said. The card disappeared.

  “Goddamn government…rob you blind,” he muttered. From the next room, sound effects rose toward a crescendo. The old man limped over to the doorway and peered intently around the corner. He stayed that way until it went to commercial.

  “You watch The X-Files?”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “It’s true, you know.”

  “You think so?”

  He waved with his hand. “Hell yeah. They had ’em for years.”

  “Ah…you mean like paranormal…” I hedged.

  “Aliens. They had one since ’.”

  “You mean like Area Fifty-one and all that.”

  “Damn right. Roswell, New Mexico, July eighth, . Bastards covered it all up. But I seen the pictures on the Fox Network.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. I’d seen them, too, and at first thought I was on the Comedy Channel.

  “They’re watchin’ us right now,” he said.

  “We better look busy, then.”

  “Spend two weeks every year down in Roswell, working at the museum and research center. Been doin’ it for eighteen years.” He gave me a sly wink. “Earnin’ my points for when they come back.”

  “Smart,” I said, tapping my temple.

  “Damn right.”

  We spent a full five minutes commiserating on the evils of big government, the failure of the welfare state and the brilliance of Rush Limbaugh. I kept a straight face. In the next room, a short electronic fanfare announced that The X-Files was back from commercial. He clapped me on the shoulder and slid a key across the counter.

  “Room nine,” he said. “It’s the best one we got.”

  When I turned for the door, he said, “I’m up early. I make coffee.”

  Nine was at the east end. I grabbed a couple of Pepsis from one machine and two packs of cheese and crackers from another. Standard-issue roadside motel. Decent-sized room. Itsy-bitsy bathroom. I pulled the cord and the drapes slid back to reveal what appeared to be half a dozen RV hookups scattered among the trees behind the building. I turned on the tube and made a lap of the dial. Sure enough, Channel Fourteen was SFTV, your ticket to scenic Stevens Falls. Got bad brakes…see Junior at Martin’s Muffler and Brake. Looking for that piece of retirement property, Harv Leonard will fix you right up. I switched to ESPN, then sat down on the bed, dialed eight for an outside line and called my attorney at home. The maid answered.

  “Marie, it’s Leo Waterman.”

  Marie was a substantial Norwegian grandmother of eight and the true power behind the throne. “You want the mister, I better hurry, he’s on his way out.”

  “Please,” I said. The phone banged in my ear. It was a couple of minutes before Jed came on the phone. “Leo, you just caught me. I was—”

  I interrupted him. “I need five minutes,” I said. He read my tone of voice. “Go,” he said. I ran the whole scene down for him. He interrupted
me once to tell me that, quotation marks, in the long run, evictions never hold up in court. In Jed’s parlance, this meant that the cost of winning the case would, however, approximate the national debt of Bosnia.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked when I’d finished.

  “I want to start fighting the eviction.”

  “You want my best advice, find a local attorney. Those rural counties don’t like it when city sharpies show up in their courtrooms. I once went two weeks without having an objection sustained. If you want, I’ll make some calls. See if I can’t find you a good man. Somebody who’s familiar with the judges.”

  “See what you can find out,” I said.

  Then, somewhere in the extinct crater of my mind, a smoldering ember suddenly flared. I’d have told him to forget about it, that I’d had a better idea, but by that time he was gone.

  14

  PENINSULA COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE WAYNE Bigelow frowned as he laced his fingers across his ample middle and leaned back in his chair. He had a round pink face and a serious set of jowls. “I am not being difficult, Constance. You simply must realize the gravity of what it is that this young man is asking me to do. He’s asking me to overrule a decision by a colleague.” He pointed to his right. “The man who occupies the chambers at the other end of this very hall. A man with whom I’ve played golf every Thursday for the past eleven years.”

  “Frank always said he cheated on his score,” Constance Hart said.

  When the judge chuckled, he shook all over like Jell-O.

  “Let us say that Milton often renders somewhat liberal interpretations of the rules of golf,” the judge corrected. “A habit much in keeping with his general judicial proclivities.”

  “Do you necessarily have to reverse the decision?” I said.

  “What would you suggest?” he asked affably.

  “Just delay the eviction?”

  “The insult to my esteemed colleague would be the same in either instance.”

  Constance Hart chided him like a schoolboy. “Wayne, if you can’t or won’t do it, just say so,” she said. “But for gosh sake, let’s skip the song and dance.”

  The judge pursed his lips and then sat forward with a twinkle in his eye. “Constance…your choice of words reminds me…” He looked over at me. “I hope you’ll forgive me, Mr. Waterman, if I conduct a bit of private business. It’s a rare day indeed when Mrs. Hart graces my chambers.”

  “By all means,” I said.

  He turned his attention her way. “As to the aforementioned matter of song and dance…” He began to redden. Her eyes narrowed. “Yes,” she said.

  The judge began to sweat. “The country club is having its…the, ah…annual New Year’s Gala,” he said. He spread his hands. “As a board member…it is somewhat de rigueur that I attend. I was wondering if you…perhaps would do me the honor of…”

  She bailed him out. “Why, Wayne,” she said. “Are you asking me for a date?”

  He sat forward quickly, harrumphed twice and said, “Yes, I believe I am.” He was the color of a beet, working his way toward a concord grape.

  She shot me a look I didn’t care to interpret. Wayne slumped slightly.

  “Under no circumstances will I occupy a table with that Macdonald woman,” she said finally. She looked my way.

  “You have never heard such prattling.”

  The judge perked up like a terrier. “She shall be banished to the farthest reaches of the building,” he assured her.

  “Well, in that case…it would be my pleasure, Wayne,” she said.

  He sputtered a bit, but for the most part managed to look like he knew all along she was going to say yes. They agreed he’d call later in the week to work out the specifics. He got to his feet and began to pace. His color was down to a good sunburn. “Legally, they’re within their rights,” he said. “I looked up the case and the citation when Connie called me this morning. The action conforms to the letter, if not the spirit of the law. That particular statute was intended to allow municipalities to recover property from homestead ers who found the rigors of Northwest life too taxing and deserted their claims.”

  “So what do we do?” I asked.

  “You do understand, don’t you, that any competent law firm, given, say, a year and a half and several hundred thousand dollars, could undoubtedly overturn this or any other eviction order?”

  “The widow doesn’t have either,” I said. He stroked his chin. “Yes…I gathered that from your tale.”

  I’d laid the whole thing out for him in detail. Everything I knew. How, at this point, accident, suicide or murder all seemed about equally likely.

  He rubbed his hands together. “Well…in that case”—he gave Constance an impish grin—“we fight fire with fire. One old law deserves another.”

  He crossed to a bleached oak table on the far side of the room, picked up a lawbook and opened it to the page indicated by a red leather bookmark. He read. “Washington statute number twenty-seven-forty-three, dated June nineteen and seventeen, otherwise known as the Widows and Orphans Act of .” He snapped the book shut. “Shorn of its arcane legal trappings, the act says that widows and orphans shall be given special consideration when it comes to such things as delinquent taxes or even legitimate suits from third-party creditors.”

  “Sounds awfully sensible, for the law,” I said. The judge agreed. “That’s because it’s bad law. One of the spur-of-the-moment Band-Aid statutes that, in all probability, should have been dealt with at some level other than the law. The intent was to protect widows of the First World War. As I understand it, there was a rash of carpetbaggers buying up paper, preying upon the unfortunate survivors to the extent that some oaf felt a statute should be enacted.”

  He crossed to his desk and sat. “I’m going to ask the state Supreme Court to rule on the obvious conflict between the Homestead Act and the Widows and Orphans Act of . In the meantime, I am going to issue a restraining order forbidding further action against the property until such time as our state’s highest court can see fit to rule on the matter.”

  He pushed a button on his desk. “The widow or her authorized agent must, of course, immediately pay the taxes.”

  “I have her power of attorney,” I said.

  He held out his hand. I passed it over. A light knock and then the door opened. Young guy, under thirty, with bad skin and wiry black hair. The judge introduced him as his clerk, Robert Downs. They huddled at the judge’s desk; Robert took notes on a small spiral-bound pad. Constance Hart was leafing through an old Arizona Highways. As Robert started for the door, the judge got to his feet.

  “I certainly hope I can persuade you two to join me for lunch. Robert will have your paperwork ready by the time we’ve finished.”

  “That would be lovely,” she said.

  I guess judges are like baseball umpires; they’re always right. An hour and a half later I stood in the courthouse parking lot with Constance Hart. I had in my possession a restraining order forbidding any and all legal action on the property. A Peninsula County authorization to pay delinquent taxes, which demanded the signature of the city clerk herself, and a county document declaring that I was the registered agent for one Claudia Teresa Springer. Six copies of everything. All of it on file with the county.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” I said to Constance.

  “No need,” she replied. “You made Wayne’s day.”

  “His year,” I corrected. We shared a strained laugh. When I’d called her early this morning and told her I needed her help, she hadn’t hesitated, but had merely asked for my number and said that she’d call me back. I hadn’t mentioned Misty. I figured if she had something she wanted to share with me, she would.

  When she pushed the button on her electronic key ring and popped the Caddy’s door locks, I thought the subject was dead. I opened the door for her. Thanked her again. She started to slide into the seat but stopped, regained her balance and met my eyes with her predator gaze. �
�I’m on my way to see Misty,” she said.

  “How’s she doing?”

  She searched the clouds for a moment. “A little better, I think,” she said finally. “I…she’s living in a residential center in Edmonds. She has full-time counseling there…young people her own age…some of whom have had similar…”

  She let it ride. She put her hand on my arm. “When last we met, Mr. Waterman, I’m afraid our parting was somewhat less than pleasant.” I assured her it came with the territory, but she wasn’t through. “You tried to tell me…but I wasn’t willing to listen. All the way along the line, you tried to tell me.” Her grip was powerful on my arm. The diamond as big as the Ritz was gone. “She needed so much more than I could give her,” she said.

  “You made a wise choice,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “The situation she’s in now is probably her best chance.”

  She made a rueful face. “Does this mean that love really won’t conquer all?”

  “Better not tell Wayne,” I said. This time we shared a real laugh.

  She released my arm and dropped her purse inside the car. She had a gleam in her eye that I hadn’t seen before. “And I don’t want you to think you sold me into bondage or anything,” she said. “I knew perfectly well what Biggy Bigelow was going to want in return. Lord knows he’s been clogging up my phone lines for months.” She looked down at the pale streak on her finger. “I had been refusing all social invitations. I thought Misty and I would…”

  “She’s where she belongs,” I said.

  She took a deep breath. “Yes, she is.” I held the door as she seated herself in the car. “I was thinking this morning, after you called, and I’d heard Wayne panting on the phone. This is my first date in thirty-nine years. I believe I’ll buy myself a new dress.”

  I allowed how it was a girl’s right, closed the door and watched as she drove off.

  15

  THE STEVENS FALLS CITY BUILDING SPOKE OF A MOREprosperous time, back when nearly thirty thousand people had used the town as the hub of their daily lives. The kind of public edifice that spawned a sense of pride and solidarity in those whose labors had made it possible. Designwise, it was more or less a brick mockup of Monticello, complete with the classical portico, the columns and the dome on top. The sign in the lobby said the city attorney’s office was down the hall to the left. Beneath the sign, a tray of brochures. Your City Government. I took one and stuffed it in my pocket. One-twenty-four was the office at the end of the hall. Big gold letters outlined in black. MARK TRESSMAN. Underneath, CITY ATTORNEY.