Always Kiss the Corpse (32 page)

Mrs. V. answered the door, her questioning look intensifying when she recognized Kyra.

Kyra smiled. “Hi. I just popped by to check on how you are. Is this a convenient time?”

“I suppose.” Her tone was reluctant, but she opened the door wider.

Kyra entered. “The checkup call on ex-clients is a Triple-I special service—” She dribbled off as she realized humor was inappropriate; Maria was barely a week into her grief for Sandro. They reached the living room in silence. “I mean, how are you managing?”

Maria shrugged. She seemed more in control, probably how she usually looked, gray hair, mid-fifties wrinkles, her color better and her body straighter. She was wearing black slacks and a dark gray sweater, not particularly flattering. The desk in the corner between the living and dining rooms was piled with papers, Kyra noted. “I won't stay long, I'm sure you're busy. But could I ask you a couple more questions?”

Maria sat on the sofa, gestured for Kyra to sit also. “I thought you were done.”

“Ah. Sandro has—had many friends. We've been rehired.” Maybe she shouldn't have come. She was blundering. “There's a possibility he didn't die by accident.”

The statement sank into Maria, wide eyes of surprise, a shiver of shock. “What do you mean?”

“The police are investigating.”

Maria's eyes dampened. She wiped them. “How? Who?”

“The police may come to talk to you.”

“But I don't know anything:”

“Just answer any questions they have.”

“Will they want to know about Sandro's—the changes he wanted?”

“They may.” Kyra leaned forward. “How are you—I mean, about all that?” She smiled across the space from her chair.

Maria looked to the cluttered desk. She sighed and placed her hands between her thighs. “That, a change like that, it's minor compared—compared to this. I could have learned to live with a daughter. I'd rather have him—her—here. However it was to be.”

“Does your brother-in-law agree?”

“He's all uproared about Sandro changing.” Her face was sad and severe. “But he wouldn't have disowned him. Eventually. I don't think.” She looked up. “And I wouldn't have! He—she was my child! What are you really asking?”

Kyra held herself in against Maria's sadness. “I'm very sorry for your pain, Mrs. Vasiliadis,” Kyra said. “But we wonder if anybody in your family would be so distressed at Sandro's sex change that one of them might have killed him.”

Mrs. Vasiliadis sat straight, legs together, hands linked on her lap. Kyra thought of elementary school. The silence in the room grew. A car passed by. A crow cawed. A clock ticked. Mrs. Vasiliadis said, “The Family would have been extremely upset at Sandro's choice. The Man is most admired in a Greek Family. And the Family, not just here in America, but there's Family in Greece,” she started to tear up again and pulled a tissue from her pocket. “They would have ostracized him, maybe forever, maybe for a few years. But no one would have hurt him. They would have accepted her. Eventually.”

“Mrs. Vasiliadis. There's someone in your family, a young guy, going around threatening Sandro's friends. He even visited my partner last night. Noel's face is not great today. The man could be charged with assault.”

“Oh.” Maria twisted her tissue. She tightened her lips.

“What's his name?”

She lowered her eyelids and shrugged. “Family's family.” She stood.

Kyra got the message. “Thank you, Mrs. Vasiliadis.” She stood and bowed her head. Maria acknowledged, a small bob. Kyra showed herself out.

≈  ≈  ≈

Vasily turned off the I-5 and headed east along Iowa. He shouldn't have told Andrei about smacking the detective. The detective wasn't about to go to the cops and Andrei would never have known anything. Dumb. So he had his reward—messenger boy. At least the road was dry. The sky threatened again.

It'd been months since he'd seen Aunt Maria. He liked her well enough. Once when he was about ten he'd made some remark and Aunt Maria said to him, ‘We're two of a kind.' He hadn't had to ask what way, he just grinned. Aunt Maria and Uncle Kostas had thumbed their noses at the family, not much but enough to piss off Andrei and the others, by leaving Seattle, and Vasily as a kid sometimes wanted to thumb his nose at them all too.

He angled left at Yew, then right on Alabama. Now, he understood Andrei was right, but then, he'd loved it when Aunt Maria told him they were two of a kind. So this errand wasn't all that terrible: taking her the packet of Sandro's papers. Andrei had collected the pile, wiping the record clean, like Sandro hadn't existed. Cancel heating and electricity and phone accounts. And all the stuff Maria had to sign as next of kin. Andrei had shown Vasily one piece of paper that could've caused problems, the change of name form on the bank account from Alessandro to Alessandra, filled out, but luckily not yet mailed in.

He turned left and skirted the northern shore of Lake Whatcom, its water a reflected gray. A left, a right onto Dulcey. The car coming toward him? He jerked his head left. Same damn Tracker he'd seen at Sandro's? Same damn woman detective driving! What the hell, talking to Maria? About? Ask Maria? No, ask the detective, damn it. He screeched into a driveway two houses from Maria's, backed out, saw the detective's car turn left and disappear.

≈  ≈  ≈

Kyra had noticed the gray sedan change its mind about whatever business it had on Dulcey Lane. Now it drove a steady hundred feet behind her. Following? Test it out. At St. Clair she turned left, one block, then right on Texas, right again on Michigan. The gray sedan stayed with her. Okay, confrontation time. She crossed Alabama, a long block to Connecticut and right on Yew. Yep, still back there. On to the circle at the dead-end in front of Roosevelt Elementary School. She turned three-quarters of the way around the circle, slammed on her brakes, turned off the engine. The school's roof overhang covered this part of the circle. The gray car didn't follow her around. Instead it veered left and came to a stop angled, in front of her. Shit! For the first time in her detecting life she wished she carried a pistol. Hey, she had a purseful of Mace.

Okay, Kyra, confrontation time. She grabbed the purse and jumped down from the Tracker with all the aggression she could muster. The gray car door opened more slowly, and a man stepped out, cool and in control. Hell! The black leather jacket. Okay, Kyra, blast him. She walked toward him as he approached her. “You,” she said.

“Listen, lady—”

At two feet they glared into each other's faces. Afterward she couldn't explain why she didn't grab the Mace and blind the guy. Instead her arm swung back and before Leather Jacket could think or move she'd slammed the side of his face with the weight in her purse—Mace, cellphone, wallet.

“Hey!” He threw his left arm in front of his face for protection. “What the fuck you think you're doing!”

Kyra instantly realized he wasn't about to hit her back. “That's for the one you gave my partner yesterday.”

Leather Jacket stepped back. “Listen to me, okay? I tried to tell the guy something and he wouldn't listen to me so I had to get his attention, okay? So just listen.”

Kyra waited. He stared at her. “What?”

“What were you doing at Maria Vasiliadis' house? What're you bothering her about?”

The man looked worried. Hmm. “I dropped by to see how she was doing.”

“Bullshit.” He pointed a finger at her. “You're still sneaking around about Sandro. That nurse hired you to sneak and you won't stop, no matter how much you're upsetting the family.”

Kyra gave him a bleak smile. “Triple-I is not working for any nurse.”

“So you're working for her yourself, on the side.”

“Nope. Not for ourselves either.” A raise of her eyebrows. “Okay?”

Leather Jacket stared at her. “Why not?”

“Because we finished our job for that client.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And suddenly he smiled. “Good. I knew you'd be sensible. What's your name?”

Kyra squinted at him. “Kyra Rachel.”

“Hello, Kyra Rachel.” He touched the side of his face. “No hard feelings.” He reached out his hand, his smile now rueful. “Vasily Constantinides, Sandro's cousin. Can I buy you a coffee?”

Unbelievable. “I'm late for an appointment.”

“Sure. Some other time, maybe. See ya.” He turned, got into his car. He backed away, drove around the circle the wrong way, doing up his seatbelt, and down Yew.

Un-effing-believable.

She watched the gray sedan turn a corner. She shivered. She had hit him. Completely without thinking. She'd slugged a man who could have murdered Sandro. Out of anger, without planning. Stupid. Then she thought: but the Mace worked fine. In its way.

She reached the Tracker. She sat behind the wheel, closed the door. Turned on the engine. Pushed the heater to high. Truly stupid.

And if he'd been carrying a gun? Or if she had?

≈  ≈  ≈

Noel, alone in the silence of Kyra's condo, paced. Friday's rain had washed in sunny early spring. When he paced past the windows he could see sunlight highlighting daffodils, magnolias and flowering cherries. He'd go for a walk, he thought. Later.

Okay, Kyra's theory. Maybe a family member had killed Sandro. And then there was Chelsea's surgery/no surgery question: what's that about? Maybe they had to talk with WISDOM.

Back in the den he looked up the coroner's number and dialed. An answering machine. He informed it who he was and asked if the autopsy had been completed. He pulled out the State Patrol's card and dialed that number. Another answering machine. Well, it was Sunday. He left the same message.

Maybe the coroner hadn't answered his phone because he was just finishing the autopsy. If Noel were there, he could get the report in person. But do autopsies get done on Sundays? Only one way to find out. A rental car. He dialed.

≈  ≈  ≈

Andrei entered his study with the envelope he'd received from Vasily and locked the door behind him. He put another log on the fire, sat at his desk, took a file from the envelope, promised himself to be as open-minded as he could, and began to read.

After a half hour, no use going on. He understood well enough what they had done to Sandro. What Sandro had let them do. Andrei felt sick in his gut, and sick in his soul. God had given Sandro a human body, and Sandro together with these so-called doctors had mangled it. And then he'd taken his life. All that nonsense from the woman detective, that he might have been murdered. Sandro had killed himself, simple as that. So in all God's decency he couldn't ask that Sandro be buried in holy ground. But what would he tell Maria?

One act he needed to commit, and now. Sheet by sheet he fed the file to the flames.

≈  ≈  ≈

This was a good idea, Noel said to himself after he'd dropped off the car rental guy and got the feel of the Neon gripping the pavement. When he was a child, his family had gone for Sunday drives, Dad at the wheel, Mum beside, he and Seth in back punching each other. The first car he remembered was a blue '58 Rambler, no seatbelts, no air bags, just car. Seth tickled him, tickled him, tickled him. He punched Seth, made his nose bleed, their mother shouting, ‘Stop the car! Out, you two! Walk home!' They had, over a mile. Had he been about five, Seth nine? The last blocks, Seth had held his hand. Noel thought now, good for Mum, we must have been pests. For sure, Seth was. I was an angel. He smiled. We behaved in the car after that. More or less.

The bridge over Deception Pass. No ferry here. Whidbey, anchored to the rest of the state by this bridge, a spiderline between the chasmed precipices of the mainland where most people lived, a bridge hanging over churning whirlpools below. How had they built the bridge, with cables guiding the girders across? He drove on, ten miles per hour under the speed limit, gazing at the railings, his rental the only vehicle in sight.

He drove around Coupeville, the section between the WISDOM clinic and the town, to give himself a better sense of how one lives here. Some fine nineteenth-century captain's houses complete with widow-walks, a couple in rough shape, some well preserved. He slowed in front of an exceptional one, well back from the road and up a slope, all a warm orange, the windows trimmed in maroon and white. Someone had done a good job.

He drove back up the hill and stopped in front of the WISDOM clinic, a squat building surrounded by the requisite daffodils just about to bloom, some blue flowers and the omnipresent dusty junipers planted to hide the foundation.

The door. Locked, of course. Sunday, of course. Tomorrow he'd phone for an appointment, present himself as a potential trans. Use a pseudonym. Yes, Kyra's idea had logic. But he didn't like it.

He was hungry. That restaurant by the water, did it serve lunch?

EIGHTEEN

Noel sat in his car and poked at numbers on his cell. Once more, answering machines for the sheriff, coroner and morgue. He drove to the hospital, parked, walked in and down the stairs. At the morgue he tried the door. Locked. What else to expect. He took the highway north, crossed the Deception Pass bridge, on to Bellingham. In Kyra's kitchen he checked the freezer, found a chicken chow mein—good, but later—and sat down with the TV guide. In an hour
The Thirty-nine Steps
would be on one of the obscure channels. That'd do just fine.

≈  ≈  ≈

Question: What's dumber than leading a possible murderer and partner-basher down a dead-end street, then getting out of your car and confronting him without benefit of weapon other than a can of Mace that you don't even use?

Answer: Smacking him across the face with a purse and pissing him off and letting him think you were off the case even though you'd only bent the truth a little, but he'd misinterpret and figure you for a liar and come back and get you good, that's what.