DRIVEN: A Rita Mars Thriller

by Webster, Valerie

  “What did he look like? Would you know him if you saw him again?” Rita asked.

  “Might, but I might not. Assholes like that I pretend they’re not there. Know what I mean? I got enough to pay attention to.” The woman straightened up as she looked beyond Rita.

  “‘Scuse me honey, got some folks to seat here.”

  When she returned, Rita took her name and number.

  ♏

  The next morning Rita stood at the edge of Dr. Eustace McClung’s front yard. The stench of cat urine had smacked her in the face as soon as she got out of her Jeep. She looked for the culprits who had fouled the approach to the shabby wooden porch. Not a cat in sight.

  But a flock of scrawny strays might be in keeping with this house. The lawn was a bad haircut of tall weeds and shaggy grass. Lots of slats were missing from the peeling picket fence. The wisteria at the front of the porch wound its way like an invading alien life form across the entire expanse of the railing.

  Rita held her breath and approached the steps once more. The second one shifted with her weight. She tottered but caught her balance, making it quickly onto the porch.

  The curtains at the front window were pulled shut even though it was nine o’clock and full morning sun streamed directly onto the house. Rita went to the door. The screen was locked and the window in the front door was obscured by a dingy set of sheers.

  “Dr. McClung,” she called as she rapped on the aluminum-screened frame.

  After a minute, Rita rapped again. She pressed her nose to the screen and tried to peer through the door sheers. She saw a reflection of maybe a hall mirror but no movement. She walked to the window, put her hand to the side of her face to shield the glare and tried to look through the curtains.

  “You a peeping tom, or what?” said a raspy, smoker’s voice.

  Rita jumped. “Dr. McClung?”

  “Yeah.” The front door had opened, but the screen remained locked.

  “I’m Rita Mars, I phoned earlier about meeting with you.” She walked to the front door.

  McClung said nothing.

  Rita could barely make out the troll who stood in the doorway, face far back from the invading sun. He had on a dingy white shirt and trousers with suspenders.

  “May I come in?”

  McClung unsnapped the aluminum door, then walked down the hall as Rita entered. The house was a mausoleum. She blinked her eyes to acclimate to the dim interior. The raw scent of cheap whiskey hung like a cloud.

  In the kitchen McClung slumped into a chair at an enameled metal table. In front of him was a tumbler three quarters full of amber liquid. He picked it up for a sip as Rita took the chair across from him.

  “You’re here for what? I forget.” McClung stared at her with pale rheumy eyes. The lower lids drooped so that the inner reddened linings shone like a fresh scratch.

  “The Bobby Ellis case.”

  McClung picked up the glass again, but did not register recognition.

  “Two weeks ago, at the Overlook Inn,” Rita said. The smell of alcohol radiating from his pores shook her with a wave of nausea and memory. With that odor, she was immediately back in time with her father, during the later years surrounded by the day-after scent of sweat and metabolizing booze.

  “Overlook?”

  “The man who was found hanged,” Rita prompted.

  “Yeah, yeah, now I remember. Guy who hanged himself.”

  “I have reason to believe it may have been murder.”

  “Suicide.” McClung gulped down a big swig from his glass.

  “It could have been murder.”

  “I was there. I saw him. Open and shut.” McClung banged the glass on the table for emphasis.

  “He was in the middle of brushing his teeth when he was hanged.”

  “So?”

  “So why didn’t you ask for an autopsy?” Rita’s jaw tightened.

  “Like I said open and shut case. I’m the coroner. What I say goes. I’ve seen ‘em all. No need for an autopsy.” McClung scratched his unshaven cheeks.

  “Were you in this kind of condition the night you were called to Bobby Ellis’s room?” It was a threat and not a question.

  “What the hell you trying to say?” McClung swayed to his feet. A little man, he was not much taller than Rita.

  She stood up across the table from him. “You were too damned drunk to know what the hell you even saw, let alone order proper procedure.”

  “Get out of my house.” McClung’s body tensed for a fight, but the alcohol jellied his posture. He leaned his knuckles on the table for support.

  “You’re pathetic.” Rita shouted.

  “Get out of here you stupid little girl trying to act like you’re so smart.”

  Rita halted at the open front door. “You’re nothing but a damned drunk,” she hurled back at him and was out in her car without waiting for his reply.

  She hit the gas and shrieked off. She drove with one hand as she bit hard into her other fist. She was out of control, angry and sad about events that had nothing to do with Eustace McClung or even the death of Bobby Ellis. She almost drove by the Friendly Mortuary without stopping.

  Chapter 8

  Rita expected organ music as she stepped into the silent hallway of Friendly Funeral Home. On either side of the long narrow passageway were viewing rooms. Most were open; one at the far end was sealed by a folding vinyl door.

  The air was redolent of the waxy fragrance of greenhouse flowers. Rita took a few steps and glanced into the rooms to her left and right. One was empty; the other was lined with folding chairs.

  “Hello?” Rita kept on walking, checking rooms as she went by.

  Finally she encountered a dead end where another hallway crossed the first like a T. She heard loud music behind the metal door to her left, so she chose the other end of the corridor where she was rewarded with a door marked Office.

  She had gone with her mother to Phillips and Sons when her father died. They entered such an office and sat with a nicely groomed young man who assumed they were grieving. Rita brought her father’s blue suit and a shirt and tie, her mother having decided not to bury him in his state trooper uniform. They walked through the casket showroom. They went home and came back the next day with eyes as dry as they had left.

  “Hello?” Rita tapped lightly on the door as she opened it.

  A startled older woman with rinsed grey hair had been typing behind a shining wooden desk. She had on a rose brocade dress with fake diamond accessories. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t hear you come in. There’s an electric eye up front that rings a bell back here, but with this computer on, I don’t hear it all the time.”

  “I’m Rita Mars. I called earlier today.”

  “Do you remember who you spoke to?” The woman flipped through the big ring bound calendar on her desk.

  “Joe Friendly,” Rita answered.

  “Now which Joe would that have been?” The woman looked up. “Mr. Joe is the old man, the owner. And we’ve got Joe, Jr. and Uncle Joe—he’s only kin by marriage—and Young Joe.”

  Rita stared back. “I have no idea. I was talking to him about the body he prepared for transportation to Maryland about two weeks ago, the suicide at the Overlook Inn.”

  The woman brightened. “That would be Young Joe.” Immed­iately the smile dampened to appropriate concern. “Would you be family?”

  “No, no, I’m not,” Rita said. “I’m a private investigator and I wanted to ask Joe, uh, Young Joe, a few questions.”

  “Well, now we followed state procedure. We’re real strict on that here. If somebody had a problem with that body, it surely happened at the receiving end.” Now the woman drew herself up in defense, her rose brocade a stiff fabric of armor.

  “Actually, there was no problem in that sense,” Rita assured her. “I’m working on a murder investigation. So if you could call Joe for me, I won’t take much of his time.” She smiled as a conciliatory offering and hoped the woman would just get on with it.r />
  The woman picked up the telephone on her desk, but kept a wary eye on Rita. She whispered into the mouthpiece and turned her back as she spoke.

  “He says go on back.” The woman stared pointedly at Rita’s cuffed trousers, following them up to the turtleneck and cashmere jacket lapels.

  “Thanks.” Rita shook her head.

  “Door at the end of the hall. It’s a work room,” the woman called after her.

  Rita faced the door she had first rejected. Loud music pounded inside, muffled as it was by the thick metal. She could have sworn it was ZZ Top playing “Sharp Dressed Man.”

  Rita knocked. The music crashed on. She knocked again, reluctant to barge in on who knew what.

  “Joe,” she called. “Joe.”

  An older man in a black suit scurried out of one of the viewing rooms toward her with a disapproving scowl on his face. He opened the door and slid inside so that not much music could escape. In a few seconds the music halted, the older man return­ed and held the door open for her.

  “Sorry.” A man in his late twenties stood at the front of a metal gurney on which lay a white-sheeted figure covered from head to foot.

  The room was completely concrete. Rita noticed the slope of the floor that led to a drainage grate at the center under the gurney. She swallowed hard and kept her eyes on the young man who was holding out his hand.

  He was cheery with a sweet round face and the broad smile of an altar boy. Built like a runner, lanky but coordinated, he was sockless with a pair of loafers and jeans.

  “I’m Young Joe Friendly,” he said. “Sorry about the music. It kinda takes my mind off what I’m really doing in here.”

  Rita’s hand suspended in mid-shake when he said this.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I wasn’t doing anything like—you know—serious. I’m doing some cosmetic stuff.” He pointed to a table against the wall. “And I took off my gloves already.”

  Rita was afraid to touch the hands of Doctor Death. But she pushed herself and shook his hand with a hearty, if abbreviated grasp. “Thank you for agreeing to see me,” she said.

  “Glad to. How can I help?” His eyes followed hers as they rested on the inert form behind him. “This make you nervous? We could step into the casket room.”

  “No thanks,” Rita said. “This shouldn’t take long. I said I was working on the Bobby Ellis case.”

  “Guy who was hanged.” Young Joe nodded.

  “Curious you say it in that way. Everybody I talk to says it like he hanged himself.”

  “That’s how the doc called it.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “Didn’t say that.” Young Joe shifted his feet as he checked his loafers.

  “But maybe Dr. McClung was mistaken.” Rita chose her words carefully. She caught and held Young Joe’s earnest eyes.

  “Could have been.”

  “If he were mistaken,” Rita posed for him, “what would have been the details he could have overlooked?”

  Young Joe grew very interested in his loafers and jabbed his hands deep into his lab coat pockets.

  “Joe, this is so important,” Rita pleaded. “It’s possible that Robert Ellis was murdered. We can’t let a murderer go free if we can help it.”

  A long pause followed until Joe lifted his head to look Rita in the face. “Well, to tell you the truth, I was surprised how much hematoa—bruising—there was on the throat. I mean the guy was supposed to have hanged himself with a silk tie. Something like that doesn’t leave that kind of damage.”

  “Anything else?” Rita waited.

  “Petechial hemorrhaging was severe—that’s the burst capillaries in the eyes. Seemed, now I say, ‘seemed’ to be too much for the way he supposedly hanged himself. And there was one other thing. He had a small scratch on his neck just under his ear. You know, like maybe from a fingernail.”

  “A fingernail,” Rita said. “So what you’ve just described to me sounds like strangulation rather than hanging.”

  “It’s what I told Lamar.”

  “And Lamar said what?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Said Doc’s signed the death certificate and that’s that. He told me to prep that body for transport to.”

  “And you did that?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did. There’s rules around here that aren’t written down, but you don’t dare ignore them. One of those rules is not crossing Lamar.” Young Joe stared into Rita’s eyes with some expectation of understanding.

  “I appreciate your help, Joe.” Rita held out her hand. This time her grasp was warm and grateful.

  “I don’t want any trouble with Lamar,” he warned. “And I will change my story.”

  “I hear you loud and clear,” Rita promised as she left Young Joe Friendly.

  “Sharp Dressed Man” blasted once again from behind the door.

  ♏

  A lazy orange sun reclined just above the mountaintops. The temperature of the brightly lit autumn afternoon turned sharply into the deepening shadows. Rita could smell wood smoke on the chill air as she came out of the Overlook’s lobby after checking out.

  She had taken one last look around Bobby Ellis’ hotel room before she left, but she had no sense of him. She cued in on neither tragedy nor despair in that impersonal space, envisioned no transaction of his death. She didn’t have ESP—she’d have to do her work the regular way.

  In the span of two minutes Rita traveled the length of the Harper’s Ferry town center. She passed the combination police station-city hall-post office-liquor store and glided by Friendly Undertakers. No one was on the street at this late afternoon hour. She passed the little wooden Bolivar grocery. The door was wide open, but the interior was too dark to see inside.

  When she visited small towns like this, she would suddenly be struck with a weariness and longing. Life seemed simpler here. But then the words of Young Joe about Lamar spoiled that happy illusion.

  She sped up and turned on the state route that led back toward Interstate 70. She had a lot of work to do when she returned to Baltimore. As she wound around the narrow cliff and ravine lined road on which she arrived, a car behind caught her attention as its headlights switched on in the gathering twilight. A police car?

  Young Joe had certainly given her some things to think about. She wondered if it might be possible to order an exhumation. Still, the coroner’s death certificate said suicide and she’d have to come up with a lot more evidence in order to have a judge rule in her favor.

  The car behind came up fast and close as if he was going to touch bumpers. As quickly, he dropped back.

  “Asshole,” Rita mumbled. The word transported her to her meeting with Eustace McClung. “Waste of human breath.”

  The road widened now, though traffic was sparser as she travelled through more open countryside away from the cluster of small towns behind her. Rita settled back in the Jeep and switched on the radio. Only a sliver of sun peeked over the mountains now.

  A siren. Rita glanced at the speedometer though she knew full well she was cruising at the posted limit. In the rear view the blue gumball machine lights spun like pinwheels. She eased to the side of the road. Damn, it was Lamar.

  A quick glance around told her she was in the middle of God’s country. To her right was a rocky pasture with a scatter­ing of grazing milk cows. Across the road was a harvested and stubbled cornfield. Not much traffic this time of night just outside of Harper’s Ferry.

  “Step out of the car, please.” Lamar towered over her as she slid out from the wheel. His hard serpent eyes fastened on her.

  “Officer, I . . .”

  “Driver’s license. Registration, please.”

  Rita reached for her wallet inside her jacket. Lamar slapped his hand to the .38 on his thigh. Rita threw her hands to the air.

  “My wallet’s in my jacket pocket,” she said. Even in this chill mountain air, sweat beaded at her temples. She could feel her knees turn to mush.

  Lamar kept his right ha
nd on the handle of his gun while he patted first one side of Rita’s jacket, then the other. He made sure to press against her breasts with a squeeze of his wide palms. Rita’s reaction was to attack, but she knew it would be suicide. Instead she held her tongue and never let her eyes wander from his.

  This is how it happens, she thought. My word against his. He could do anything out here.

  What would she do? She could scream. She could fight. It would be useless. Later she would have to decide if enduring humiliation was worth the price of seeking justice for Lamar’s liberties with speeder’s rights.

  Lamar slid her wallet out of her jacket. With a deft flick, he opened it and with a thumb he sorted through her credit cards and photographs even though her driver’s license was clearly in the first of the card pockets. He edged out an old photo of Diane and looked toward her.

  Rita said nothing, but kept her eyes fixed on him.

  “I’ll have to check this for outstanding warrants,” he said. “You come on back to the car.”

  When Rita didn’t move, Lamar grabbed her arm and pushed her ahead of him. She sat in the back seat while he radioed in her plate and driver’s license numbers. The car smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke. The radio check came back negative, but Lamar took his time writing out her speeding ticket.

  He walked her back to her car. “Speed limit’s forty-five. This ain’t the city where you can do whatever you want and get away with it. And we don’t like people who come here and act like they can.” He slipped her wallet back into her inside jacket pocket, again he squeezed against her breast.

  When he was gone and Rita sat locked in her car, she shook. “God damn you,” she screamed over and over and pounded her hands on the steering wheel. “God damn you.”

  Chapter 9

  Rita’s assistant, Beverly, lived in a restored Queen Anne town house in Baltimore’s historic Mount Vernon. Her grey stone building faced a tiny urban park where the homeless and hookers occasionally took comfort on formal garden benches. In another time, the park bore the unappetizing, but appropriate tag of The Meat Market. Before the age of disease, it had served as a cruising ground. Now, after revitalization efforts by the city, the area drew a stable settled community of young professionals and wealthy gay men. The neighborhood was presided over by a lighted marble obelisk commemorating the contributions of George Washington.