A Fugitive Truth (12 page)

“Oh. Yeah, sure, Dave. Thanks for your help.”

“Talk to you real soon.” The sheriff hung up.

I looked up at the clock and figured I had enough time for one more quick call before I went back to the house. Then I dialed the number that Dave Stannard had given me hesitantly.

“Morgue,” came the impatient answer. It was a woman’s voice, a 1940s-cinema soprano loaded with creosote and cigarette smoke.

Even though I recognized it immediately, I stumbled mentally, remembering the gnomelike woman. “I’m trying to reach Dr. Theresa Moretti.”

“Well, don’t strain yourself too hard, chickie-pie, you got her.”

I cringed at her creaky joviality. “Sheriff Stannard gave me your number, thought you could answer a question for me—” I started.

“Well, isn’t that nice of him! Boy-o thinks I got nothing better to do than be the Shell Answer Man!”

“It won’t take long,” I promised. I’d dealt with plenty of cranky folks; I could handle her, I thought.

“Who is this, by the way? Momma told little Terry never talk to strangers. Speak up, I got a couple of friends here that aren’t getting any sweeter waiting on me! Oh, hang on a second—”

I heard the phone’s mouthpiece muffled ineffectually, and the voice carried on like a rusty coffin hinge haranguing someone who was apparently in the room with her.

“No, no, no, Ernie! For the love of…Nooo!”

There was a very long pause on the other end of the line.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake…Well,
pick
it up. G’wan, it won’t bite! I know it’s got dirt on it, but I won’t tell if you won’t…Just wash it off, little dust ain’t gonna bother him any, now…Weigh it before you put it back in!”

Eeeeyew! I thought to myself. As the hapless Ernie received more abuse, I remembered that Theresa Moretti had reminded me of a diminutive version of the Wicked Witch of the West, voice, attitude, and all. Make that the Wicked Witch of the Down East, and you’d have it just about right.

“—What? Half a kilo? Jeez Louise, I guess we know what got
him
, huh? No,
you
figure it out—what are they teaching in schools these days? No, I
can’t
! I’ve got some chippie on the phone thinks I’m a public servant or something…”

Chippie indeed! I thought. “Hello!”

That brought her back to my world. “What?”

“My name is Emma Fielding, and right now I’m out near Monroe, Massachusetts. I believe we met when a friend of mine was murdered several years ago, Pauline Westlake.”

“Out by the Point?” the voice demanded, now giving me full attention.

“Yes, that’s right—”

“The crushed skull? Then that other, the convallotoxin poisoning? You the archaeologist?”

I was torn between relief, having found a connection at last with this odd creature, and irritation that my dear Pauline should be reduced to the description of her demise. “That’s me. I was wondering—”

“I remember. I thought you did ’em both, and pretty bold work, far as I could tell from what I could tell. Bodies just seemed to start piling up when you wandered into town—”

Maybe Dave Stannard was right, I thought crazily to myself. Surely the encyclopedia would have been a better idea.

“—but his nibs says not, not that
he
ever caught anyone else.”

I felt obliged to come to the sheriff’s defense, not that he really needed any help from me. “The sheriff solved the case; it was just that the real killer, well one of them, escaped—”

Dr. Moretti snorted, obviously not convinced. “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the straight party line. Well, so long as you weren’t actually busted. What do you want to know?”

I paused, amazed that she should wave her suspicions around like that and yet still offer to answer my questions. But my desire to defend myself lost to my curiosity and my fascination with this ghoul. I said, “I’ve got a question about drowning.”

“Drowning, huh? We do some of that around here, occasionally.”

We must have had a bad connection: I distinctly heard lip smacking. “Well, what generally happens to a person who’s drowned?”

The medical examiner giggled. “Well,
generally
, they die.”

I shuddered. “I mean, what changes does the body go through? Is it easy to drown someone?”

“Depends,” she said, warming to the subject. “Have you got atelectasis following aspiration or do you suspect laryn-gospasm?” Relish of her work and a clear love of the professional jargon dripped from every word. “Atelectasis” was pronounced like it was a beloved name.

I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

Dr. Moretti sighed; obviously I had joined Ernie among the ranks of the hopeless. “Have you got lots of fluid in the lungs—and it doesn’t have to be water—so that the cells stiffen and the lungs can’t expand? Or was there just a little fluid, enough to constrict and close the airway?”

I hated admitting my ignorance. “Um, I don’t know.”

Rather than pouncing on my lack of knowledge, the medical examiner seemed convinced she’d made a point. “That’s the problem with drowning”—I heard a slap on a counter, emphasizing her argument—“Even when you got some idea, you still don’t know! You can never prove drowning, you can only rule out everything else, and it’s damned tricky stuff.”

The ME sounded like she was describing an admirable adversary as she continued. “And do you know for sure, fr’instance, that it
was
murder? Drowning’s a real unusual means of killing or suicide. Hell, you get close to four hundred bathtub drownings every year, and I’d be willing to bet that most of the accidental drownings involve alcohol. Asking for it, just begging! Have a drink, slide down into a nice, hot tub, and never come up again! Why not just lie down in front of a Mack truck with no brakes? At least that way, you’d have your clothes on when they found you!”

Obviously, the ME had very strict ideas about how one should die.

I thought guiltily about the whiskey Faith and I’d drunk, but before I could reply, Dr. Moretti was off again after more interesting prey.

“
Now
, let’s say it
was
murder,” she said, sounding gleeful and pleased, like she just spied the dessert cart. “You gotta consider, what size was the victim, what size the perp? Was the deceased conscious, or even alive, when he hit the water?” She ran down the list of questions, cooing like other people do when they see a basket of kittens.

“I suppose you could look for defensive wounds,” I mused out loud. “Bruises or scratches, right?”

“Ooo-eee, bright girl! Yes, yes, yes…but!” Dr. Moretti exclaimed, lobbing the ball right back to me, caught up in the spirit of the game as she saw it. “But! The body can get real banged up, scraping along the bed of the water body during unconsciousness. You can even get weeds or gravel lodged in the mouth this way, if it happened in the great outdoors! It looks like a struggle when it’s just dumb luck!”

Heavens preserve me from Dr. Moretti’s brand of luck.

“Here’s the trick, though, Miss Smartypants. Look for material in the
lungs
! Water alone won’t tell you much, but if you find plant remains or gravel or other such trash in the lungs,
then
you can make a good case for murder.”

She sounded like she’d like to make a good case for murder and keep it as a pet. “Well, I won’t actually be looking myself—”

Dr. Moretti didn’t hear me, however, still caught up in her explication. “Still, it’s very iffy—even if you got none of those markers, you still might just have a killer who’s real quick and real strong. And stone-cold brutal. Man, when a person drowns, if they’re conscious, they struggle, hard, right to the end! It’s a desperate fight that takes a long,
long
time to lose. Minutes! You’d have to be one
mean
sonovabitch to hold someone under like that!” That fact awed her whereas all the others had just been interesting tidbits.

I mulled this over. “That helps me, I guess. I was just curious, and the police and coroner out here haven’t released any details yet—”

“Where are you? Monroe—that’s Redfield County? Well, I can’t say’s I blame you for being impatient,” Dr. Moretti said scornfully. “I know ‘Tigger’ Bambury and he’s even a bigger stiff than most of his patients. Oh, he knows his stuff, just no real
feel
for the subject, let’s say—”

All of a sudden, I had far too vivid an idea of what “a feel for the subject” might involve.

“—That it? I’ve got to go. Genius Ernie here is getting in deep and doesn’t know his gluteus maximus from his proximal radius—just put that Stryker down, Marcus Welby, Mother’s coming!—You can call again.”

“Thank—”

But the medical examiner had already hung up. I got the impression that not many people were welcome to call back, and I wasn’t certain that I could handle another exposure to that side of investigations. Dr. Moretti might know her stuff, but her lack of respect for the dead always made me cringe, particularly after I’d been trained for years to treat the human remains I might find with due dignity. No one should like her job that much.

I thought about what she’d told me as I walked back to the house to meet Brian. Once again I passed the place in the stream where I found Faith Morgan and I remembered what I’d seen that day. I hadn’t seen any sign of a struggle at all; I’d thought the leaves looked like a nest around her body. The stream was awfully shallow there, less than a foot deep, and Dr. Moretti’s words about alcohol and accidents came back to me with a surge of guilt: Maybe I’d been responsible in some way for Faith’s drowning…

C’mon, Em, stop it! Common sense spoke up, unexpectedly on my side for a change. You didn’t force her to drink anything, you didn’t tell her to go out roaming in the middle of the night without a coat or even stockings, and besides, what about her clean shoes? There was no way that she fell down that hill without getting mud all over them. You told the detective that you thought she was murdered and that’s still what you believe in your heart of hearts, so stop looking for even more trouble for yourself.

Even though I hadn’t got more than a lick of work done and, frankly, had got more questions than reassuring answers from my phone calls, I did feel a lot better than I had since Faith had died. My improving mood was bolstered when, just over the last hill, I saw Brian’s blue pickup crunching over the gravel to the parking lot behind the house. I waved even though there was no chance that he could have seen me. I picked up the pace a little, but enjoyed watching him get out, stretch, and walk around, without him knowing that he was being watched. Oh, goody—by the looks of him and the truck, he’d been working on taping and mudding the drywall in what was going to be our dining room at the Funny Farm.

I approached but was still too far away to call when I saw a pantomime beginning. A Shrewsbury security vehicle pulled up with a bounce and a squeal of brakes. Mr. Constantino, obviously reenacting some B-grade cop show, emerged and slammed his door angrily, shouting. Brian wiped his hand on the seat of his jeans, obviously going to offer it, but something Constantino said made him rather curl his fingers into a fist and stuff it into his pocket. He started jiggling the change in his pocket, a sure sign of agitation as long as I’d known him.

Brian pulled his fist back out again, still clenched hard, when Constantino jabbed him in the chest. I started to run toward them.

D
ESPITE THE RACKET MY FLAT LEATHER SHOES
slapping the pavement made, neither Brian nor Constantino noticed me until I was practically on top of them. Brian’s jaw was rigid, and I could see his teeth working under the skin of his cheek. His eyes flashed over to me, without registering much recognition. All his attention was reserved for Constantino.

I had no idea what was going on, but fear dictated that I interrupt, defuse whatever was happening. “Hey, sweetie! You made good time! Any trouble finding the place?” I swear dogs could have heard me for miles around, my voice was so high.

“This guy’s your husband?” Constantino asked. He already knew the answer, I could tell.

“Of course he is! What the hell’s going on? Brian?”

“Nothing’s going on. I’m just checking, doing my job.” Constantino smirked, and suddenly, I knew precisely what was happening.

“Good to see you, Em,” Brian said. He finally turned to me, sliding his hand casually over my hip. I knew what he was asking, and I moved in closer to him.

Thinking “Do it!” as loud as I could, I dropped my briefcase onto the gravel and wrapped my arms around him.

Brian generally limits public displays of affection to hand holding or quick brush of lips. There was nothing quick or brushing about this kiss, and I forgot that anyone might be watching. Somewhere beyond the true limits of awareness, I heard the sound of a car door slamming and vaguely realized that Constantino had pulled away.

By this time, the anger had drained out of Brian’s embrace and had been replaced by something a little more agreeable, though no less intense. I didn’t care; anyone kisses me with that degree of emotion, I pay attention.

A moment or two later, he sighed, then whispered in my ear, “I’m sorry.” We straightened up.

“It’s not you, it’s not your fault. We’ve just been lucky, for the most part, that’s all.” I rested my head against his.

“I shouldn’t drag you into it like that. It was childish.”

“There’s no dragging, there’s just no way to win with someone like Constantino.” I couldn’t tell him not to be stupid, it was
our
problem, because that was only part of it. “And besides, what were you supposed to do, punch his lights out?”

He held up a forefinger and thumb of one hand, separated by a scant inch, showing me just how close he’d come to doing just that. “I hate getting yanked around like that. I hate that an idiot like him can push my buttons like that.”

“What’d he say?”

Brian sighed, and looked down the road at the retreating security vehicle. The breeze ruffled his hair. “C’mon, let’s go inside. It’s too cold to stand around out here.”

We lugged his stuff up to my room, and I dug out a towel for him to shower. But instead Brian began to methodically straighten the things on my bureau, kick my laundry into one big heap in the middle of the carpet, take the books off the bed and stack them into neat piles on the desk.

I watched him sort things out for a few minutes before I tried again. “So what happened?”

“Ahhhh, nothing. It was stupid.” Brian shook his head as he closed the armoire door. “He saw the truck, he saw me wearing work clothes. He saw I’m not white. I guess he thought I was here to do some repairs or something—”

“There’ve been workers up at the library.”

“Then ’Possum-head there—”

“Constantino.”

“—got shirty because he thought I was trying to park where I wasn’t supposed to, or at least that’s what he was saying. I protested, so naturally he thought I was trying to pull something and he started the dick waving.” He smiled wryly. “Guy’s got a short fuse.

“Anyway, he began crowding me. I was getting mad but just told him I was here to see you. Constantino relaxed, said there must be some mistake. I relaxed, figured he was going to apologize, but he just said he should have known, the contractor was a friend of his and he wouldn’t hire anyone who wasn’t American.”

“Jesus.”

“The man’s an idiot.” Brian shrugged, too elaborately. “You could tell that last little shot was just a reflex, nothing, really. He wasn’t even thinking about it, it was…a reflex.” He gathered up his towel and his boombox and kissed the top of my head, then made as if to hit the shower.

“We’ve heard worse,” I agreed carefully.

“But you know,” he said, turning around suddenly. “I get so damn tired, sometimes. There are whole weeks, sometimes, when I’m not reminded by someone that my great-grandparents landed on the wrong coast, got off the wrong ships, but then boom! It comes out of nowhere. It gets real old, having to be so
aware
of who I am.” He shut the door behind him.

Down the hall, I heard the bathroom door shut, the shower start. I heard the loud bouncy reggae dancehall music start and just as abruptly stop, followed by a pause. The ensuing music was soberer, a melancholy dub. I picked up the cassette case Brian had left on the bed and saw it was Bob Marley and the Wailers,
Babylon by Bus
. Cold experience told me that there was nothing more I could do, so I resolved to keep my mouth shut and let Brian find his own way out of his funk.

Whatever private exorcism he had performed had apparently worked, for he didn’t look nearly as weary when he emerged. There was, however, something else on his mind.

“Did you make reservations at this place you told me about?” he asked, ruefully flicking at the tie that was sticking out of his duffel bag. “I don’t really feel like getting dressed up.”

“No, we don’t have to, if you don’t want. I just thought you might like French for a change. Something fancy, a treat.”

Brian brightened. “French, huh? Well, that’s what I had in mind! And if we go to the place I’m thinking of, I won’t have to wear the noose, neither.”

He sent the hated necktie flying across the room, and it landed suggestively on the headboard. Then raising one eyebrow in his best John Belushi–Bluto Blutarsky fashion, Brian whipped off his bath towel like a magician and dove under the messy covers of my bed. “You know, we’ve got a little time to kill until the restaurant opens.”

Smothering a grin, I said, “Great. So, how about some cards?” But I was already unbuttoning my blouse and kicking off my shoes.

Brian said, “Sure. Got any twos?”

“Nope. You go fish.”

After, as we got dressed, I was still a little worried about Brian’s alternative restaurant. He’d told me that jeans were fine. “Where’d you find out about this place? It’s near here?”

“A little drive. Roddy told me about it. You’ll love it.”

“Ummm.” I thought about the little archaeological assemblage Roddy-down-the-lab had left in the pickup that he’d sold to us. Under the seat was the latest Victoria’s Secret catalog, two Jolt Cola cans, half a moldy microwave burrito, a nearly full can of chewing tobacco, and a dog-eared copy of a Klingon-English dictionary. The truck runs fine and he gave us a fair price, but somehow I couldn’t see the
Guide Michelin
calling Roddy for pointers on where to eat. “And it’s French, you say?” I asked, not entirely convinced.

“Kinda French! Come on, the sooner we leave, the sooner we get there!”

We drove west into the hill country. “I’d hate to be out here in the winter,” Brian remarked, after the third time he’d only just made a curve at the last second. “That’s a hell of a drop, and with this wind—”

“I’m glad we took the truck,” I remarked as calmly as I could. “I don’t think Bessy can take much more of this.” I tried not to be obvious about digging my fingers into the upholstery.

“How’s she running? Any problems on the way out?”

“Not too bad. Struggling a little up the hills, but nothing major. There’s a noise though, that’s starting to worry me.”

“We’ll get it checked out when you get home.”

Eventually we pulled up outside a long, low wooden building that bore no sign other than a few neon beer advertisements. It was the sort of place that made you look instinctively for a row of choppers out in front, but I saw mostly mid-size imports.

“Are you sure this is it?” I asked nervously. The place looked like it was going to collapse any moment, perhaps under the stress of the pounding rhythms of the band inside.

Brian rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Absolutely.”

The place was surprisingly crowded, even for a Saturday night, but we lucked out and got a booth not too far from the dance floor. A fiddler swooped into a complicated, climbing solo, and the mob on the dance floor went wild when she hit the peak and the rest of the band joined in. Brian whooped, startling me. I looked around and saw people having a good time, just more raucously than I was used to.

Frowning, I picked up my menu. It was half barbecue and half Cajun recipes. So much for “kinda French”; I was having no luck at all translating the names of the dishes and had to rely on the descriptions. “She’s pretty good,” I offered, nodding at the fiddle player.

“Pretty good?” Amazement crossed Brian’s face. “Katie Boudreau’s a certified genius! Queen of the Cajun fiddle! And take my word for it, Le Fevre Acadien is the next Beausoleil!”

“Oh. Does Beausoleil play Cajun music too?” I asked.

Amazement changed to pity. “Look, I know I have my work cut out for me, and that’s fine, I love you dearly, but at times, you’re just
so
unhip…”

“I am not! I’m just…differently hip.” I turned to the waiter who came for our order. “I’ll have the chicken caesar salad and a glass of the house white—”

“Oh no, no, no!”

The waiter and I both paused to look at Brian, who had a horrified look on his face. “You don’t really want a chicken caesar salad, do you? Not here?”

“It’s on the menu,” I said defensively.

“Take a walk on the wild side,” he pleaded. “Just give it a shot, this once.”

“Fine, whatever.” I threw my hands up. “It’s your party, just nothing too spicy, okay?”

He brightened. “Then how’s about…two large orders of ribs, an extra side of sauce, two plates of rice and beans, and a bunch of deep-fried okra. A Blackened Voodoo Lager for me, and a margarita for my differently-hip wife—or do you want a Turbo Dog?”

Turbo Dog? I didn’t dare ask. “It’s completely up to you, I renounce all responsibility,” I said. “I’m going to find the bathroom. Don’t start your cholesterol-induced heart attack ’til I get back.”

It wasn’t as easy as that, however. The dance floor was packed, but the waitstaff were moving so quickly around the tables that I didn’t see any other way over to the door marked “Les Filles,” so I just dove in and slinked around the dancers as best I could.

Just when I thought I’d made it clear of the two-steppers, I got jostled. I stuck out a hand to keep from falling but a woman in tight jeans and a bright red silk shirt caught it and saved me, turning it into a dance step. She twirled me around, gaily shouting, “
Et toi
!”

I managed to follow her a pace or so without stumbling. “Thanks,” I shouted over the din. The sultry warmth of all those moving bodies was enervating, seductive.

“’S’all right,
chere
!” Our eyes met and then the smile fled her face, fading with her fake Louisiana accent. “Oh.”

It was Detective Kobrinski. She stopped dancing.

“Yo, Pam!” A compact blond man, muscles clearly delineated under his T-shirt, grabbed her hand and swung her around. “
I’m
over
here
!”

I made it to a relatively empty space near the bathroom and looked back at Pam Kobrinski and her date, moving swiftly and surely around other less skilled couples. One more turn and she met my gaze briefly, then deliberately turned away and focused on keeping up with her partner.

The food was on the table by the time I navigated my way back, and Brian had already accumulated a small pile of neatly cleaned bones on his plate. I looked at my plate and saw a length of ribs that looked like it had come off something from a natural history museum.

“Bar
baric
,” I said. My husband had a smear of barbecue sauce on the corner of his mouth and it was all over his hands. He looked as though he’d been in a bad fight.

“Oh, man, it’s great! Dig in!” He threw back a couple of nuggets of batter-dipped okra and shoveled in a spoonful of rice after that.

I eyed the spread dubiously. “You just pick them up? No forks? Hey, look at the ends of the ribs! You can see that they were sawn! You know, by looking at the way the bones were cut, you can tell a lot about the ethnic tradition the chef is following, or what was available to him locally. Now if they were snapped off the ribcage, or cut with a knife, you’d see a much more jagged edge—”

Again came that pitying look, mixed with exasperation. “Em. God almighty. Grab one. Start gnawing.”

I started in, tentatively at first, but rapidly becoming obsessed about scraping more of the tender meat off the bones. The smoky tang, the crunch of the cooked fat, and the morsels of sweet pork, were more than enough to convince me. “Whoa, Bri—”

“See what I mean?” he asked, tossing another cleaned gray-white bone on the heap. “It pays to chuck the Emily Post every now and then.”

“Easy for you to say.” I sucked the meat off another rib. “You don’t do anything, you eat everything in sight, you never gain an ounce. I, on the other hand…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He eyed my plate and the ribs that I hadn’t got to yet. “So, are you going to finish those?”

“Take a hike!” I pulled my plate protectively closer.

“Spoken like a convert!” He signaled the waiter for another round of drinks.

But even after some truly dedicated eating on my part, Brian had to help me clean up the last two. “You got another Wet-Nap?” I held my sticky fingers up.

A voice came from over my shoulder. “I’ve heard some interesting things about you, Ms. Fielding, but nothing to suggest the way you can put away the barbecue.”

I looked up to see Pam Kobrinski, still flushed from dancing, standing over our table. Her date loitered impatiently by the door with their coats, checking his watch in an obvious way. I wiped my hands off on my jeans as best I could, trying to decide if I was supposed to invite her to join us.