Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (7 page)

“One more thing. Any idea of who might want to
kill Arlen Hagerty?”

She looked like she was thinking about the
question. “I didn’t kill him. I know that.”

“Okay, Ms. de Marco, thanks a lot for talking with
us. We might need to come back to you and talk some more, so I’m afraid you’ll
have to stick around here in town.”

“Yes, she told me that. That’s okay with me. Can I
go?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” I said, as she walked back around
the corner toward the entrance of the Courtyard.

“Let’s go sit in the cruiser, see what we’ve got,”
I said. The car was about fifty yards away. It was warm from the bright sun.
“What do you make of her?”

“Well, she’s got herself a pretty wicked case of
OCD.”

“What?”

“Obsessive compulsive disorder. See the way she
lined up the creamers and the sugar? And carrying around an ashtray?”

“Yeah, I saw that. What’s it mean to you?”

“Well, it could mean nothing. I just noticed it
because one of my sisters has it. It can be a reaction to stress.”

“Yeah, well, she’s had plenty of that. And that’s
only counting the shit we know about. If she wants to line up her sugar packets
and carry around cigarette butts, I’m good with that. What else did you see?”

“Her affect is kind of blank. You notice she
doesn’t laugh or smile. Her voice is flat, and her eyes look empty.”

“Could just be the circumstances of his murder. Or
a reaction to cops. My guess is she hasn’t had a lot of positive experiences
with us in her lifetime.”

“Yeah, but you noticed she didn’t come right out
and say she doesn’t know anything about who Hagerty was sleeping with. Or who
might have killed him.”

“It was like she didn’t want to outright lie to
us,” I said, “but she just wanted to set up boundaries.”

“She probably hasn’t had a chance to think through
how the murder screws up her job, but she knows there’s no way it can be good.
So she’s stalling.”

“Okay,” I said, “but it’s obvious if she wasn’t
doing Hagerty she knows who was. So we’re gonna have to stay on top of her.” I
paused. “You see her as strong enough to kill Hagerty?”

“Oh, absolutely. She’s got pretty good upper-body
strength. Good shoulders, biceps.”

“You could see that through her turtleneck?” I
said.

“Yeah, when we were walking up to her in the
coffee shop. She’s strong.”

“And you can see Arlen wanting to sleep with her?
I mean, she’s young and all, but you see her as attractive?”

“Well,” he said, smiling, “I’m a married man, you
know. But yeah, I think she’s attractive. Really good figure.”

“How do you know that?”

“You see her unbutton her coat out in the parking
lot?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, well, so did I,” Ryan said.

“That’s all it takes?” I wasn’t sure whether I was
trying to learn about Connie or about Ryan.

“No, if you insist. What I like about her is she
covers stuff up. The hair pulled back. No makeup. The turtleneck. It’s like she
isn’t thinking about how she looks.”

“That’s sexy?” I said.

“To me it is.”

“You’re sure it’s not just you knowing she has a
past?”

“Now you’re getting too deep for me,” he said,
smiling. “I took Psych 101. I didn’t get to 102. All I know is she’s attractive
without advertising it.”

I didn’t know if I was getting too deep, but I was
losing my focus. It didn’t matter what kinds of pictures were flashing in
Ryan’s mind. Maybe he was Jesus to her Mary Magdalene. Maybe she was just a
sweet piece of ass. It didn’t matter. The important point was if a good-looking
guy like Ryan saw her as attractive, it’s a good chance Jonathan Ahern would,
too, and it’s dead certain Arlen Hagerty would. “Yeah,” I said, “we’re gonna
have to come at her again. Let’s track down Jonathan Ahern.”

*  *  *

“You a vegetarian?” I said.
Ryan had ordered a veggie burger.

“Vegan: no meat, no dairy.”

“That a religious thing?”

“Nah, just for health.” He smiled.

“You feel better?”

“Yeah. More energy. Only problem is, I have to
force myself to take in extra calories if I do a lot of cardio workouts.”

I looked at him and nodded. This was one strange
guy. He could change his whole diet around because it was good for him. We sat
silently for a few minutes. The server brought the meals.

I pointed at the tomato slice sitting on a
half-wilted piece of lettuce on my plate. “You need this tomato?” I said.

“No thanks,” he said. “You eat it. It’s good for
you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, poking at it with my fork.

We ate for a few minutes without talking. We
weren’t yet at the point in our relationship where we could be comfortable
without talking, but that would come.

“So,” I said after shoving the last bite of the
hamburger into my mouth, “what do you think’s the percentage chance Arlen was
doing Connie?”

Ryan put down his fork and knife and tilted his
head upward, as if he was doing some calculations. “I’d say ninety-five. With a
margin of error of two points.”

I smiled. “And that’s because of what? The way
Connie smiled when she said Margaret wouldn’t—what was her phrase?—wouldn’t do
what Connie had to do?”

“I think her phrase was that Margaret ‘doesn’t
want to have to do that kind of thing.’”

“You read that as Margaret didn’t want to have to
sleep with Arlen?”

“Yeah, that’s how I read it, but that’s not the
reason I’m ninety-five percent sure Connie was doing him.”

“Okay, so why?”

“Because men are pigs.”

“Just like that: men are pigs?”

“You can take it to the bank,” Ryan said, nodding.

“So you’re a pig?”

“No, not me, personally. I have the potential to
be a pig, but I choose not to be.”

“You just choose to be what you are?” I could tell
Ryan was half teasing me, maybe borderline flirting.

“No, you don’t choose to be what you are. God
chooses that for you when He creates you. But then you choose how you act, what
you do. And that in turns defines what you are.”

I stabbed a couple of fries with a little more
force than necessary. “So then you create what you are, after all?”

“Unless you think God gave you the potential to
make those choices that you make, in which case He creates you.”

I put my fork down. “You okay with the fact you’re
talking in circles?”

“The circle’s the perfect shape, you know: no
beginning and no end, just like God’s love for you, Karen.” He gave me an open
smile. “That’s why wedding rings are circles.”

“Yeah, and because a square ring wouldn’t fit so
good.”

He laughed. “I can see you lack a taste for the
mystery of God’s creations.”

“Guess I just don’t like mysteries,” I said. “Like
who killed Hagerty.”

Ryan had finished his meal. He pushed his plate
away. “We’ll figure this murder out, Karen. No question about it. And when we
do, we’ll put the bad guy away. And we’ll have solved one more mystery.”

“Yeah, and we’ll find out Hagerty was some kind of
perv, and someone else is a murderer. So much for God’s mysteries.”

“Sinners only serve to highlight God’s majesty,”
Ryan said, taking a sip of his ice water.

“Are you gonna be like this all the time?” I said,
sighing.

“All the time,” he said, lowering his voice and
leaning in to me, “except when I’m taking in Connie’s bodacious rack.”

“You’re right. Men are pigs.”

“All part of God’s majesty,” Ryan said, his palms
up in a gesture that said, Case closed.

“Oh, Lord,” I said, shaking my head.

“Amen, sister,” he said, toasting me with his
glass.

We paid our bills, left the restaurant, and
approached the uniform posted at the reception desk. I told him we wanted to
interview Jonathan Ahern.

The uniform pulled out his notebook. “Mr. Ahern
went to the driving range about forty-five minutes ago.”

It was a three-mile trip to the driving range,
which was attached to the local municipal course. In late Fall, the course was
open on weekends, unless there had been snow. But the driving range was always
open.

From the parking lot, we saw a solitary figure
hitting with a driver. The ball arced high and smooth, landing out past the
200-yard flag. Ryan said, “Look at that. He’s pretty good.”

“You play?” I said.

“In college. But for some reason Kali’s not sure
it’s the best use of forty bucks and five hours on Saturdays.”

“Women, huh?”

Even though we were crunching the gravel path
pretty loud, Ahern didn’t hear us because the wind was in his face. He jumped a
little when I said, “Mr. Ahern?”

“I’m sorry, Detectives, you startled me,” he said,
putting his driver back in the black nylon bag leaning against the stand near
the tee. “Hope I didn’t take you too far out of your way. The policemen at the
hotel said it would be okay.”

“No, this is fine. Can we talk over there?” I
said, pointing to the clubhouse patio. A few green plastic chairs were set up
around one of the tables. The rest of the chairs were stacked and locked
together up against the clubhouse wall. The sunshine snuck in under the roof,
hitting the table.

Once the three of us were seated, Ryan said, “We’d
like to offer our condolences. Seemed like Mr. Hagerty was a friend.”

“Seemed, was,” he said, shaking his head. “No way
I saw that coming.” Ahern looked down at the table, tracing the pattern on the
plastic tabletop with his finger.

“When did you see him last?” I said.

“Same time you did. After we left the bar and you
brought us back to the hotel. I went upstairs, watched some TV, went to bed.”

“Tell us a little about how you met Mr. Hagerty
and got involved with the debates.”

“It was about four years ago. I had just lost my
job as a legislative aide to Johnny Trautman. He was a state senator from
outside Atlanta. I’d always been interested in politics, and when the chance
came to work for him, I grabbed it. He was a Democrat, which was pretty rare
outside the city. He was quite a man. A hunter, fisherman. He knew how to
appeal to the rural Georgians. Very big on church values, the Second
Amendment.”

“You say ‘was.’ He died? That’s how you lost your
job?”

“No, he’s dead now, but he was voted out of
office. His wife, Rebecca, got MS. She was a wonderful woman. She had some
other health problems, and the MS just tore right through her. This was when
all the publicity started for stem-cell research. So, Johnny came out for the
research, both guns blazing. That turned out to be one liberal position too
many for his constituents. In less than a year, he lost the election, Rebecca
died, and he died.”

Ahern was tearing up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was
with him on his last night. He’d had a stroke a few days before, but they were
sure he was going to live. He looked at me and said, ‘Jon, I just don’t have
any more fight left in me.’ If you knew Johnny, that would have knocked you
over. Even at seventy, he had more fight in him than I do at my age. He
squeezed my hand. I looked down at his hand as I felt the grip loosen. I looked
at his face. He closed his eyes and, just like that, he was gone.”

Jonathan Ahern pressed his thumb and index finger
up against his red-rimmed eyes. It looked like he’d been up the whole night. He
hadn’t shaved; the stubble, more grey than brown, added ten years.

“So how did you link up with the Hagertys?”

“By chance. I had written some campaign literature
for Johnny about stem cells, so I knew the basic arguments on both sides. I was
at one of Arlen’s gigs near where I lived, just outside Atlanta. I asked some
questions. Margaret came up to me, started talking. We just took it from there.
I had formed Research Horizons, as an interest group. I wanted to honor Johnny
and Rebecca, and I hoped to bring in contributions. It’s never taken off,
though.”

Ryan said, “What did you do before you got
involved with the state senator?”

“I was an accountant.”

“Was it hard to give that up?” I said.

“Not really. I’d always loved politics, and I was
just drawn to Johnny. And the way he threw himself into the stem-cell debate …
This probably sounds a little corny, but I found it inspiring. Besides,” Ahern
said with a sad smile, “Western civilization will survive without one more
CPA.”

“You know, my partner and I were kind of surprised
last night when we saw how well you and Arlen Hagerty got along. I mean, with
you two being on different sides of the issue.”

“Yeah, we got that a lot. But it’s really no
mystery. Both Arlen and I have been around the block. We know how these things
work. You make your case, you try to get to the appropriate public officials,
you raise money, you talk to ten people in a living room. You work the system,
try to change minds, one at a time.

“We both understood this is an issue that’s going
to play out in the legislatures and in the courts. It’s going to be with us for
the rest of our lives, back and forth, just like abortion. Besides,” Ahern
said, “Arlen treated me with respect. And, to be honest with you, taking me on
the road with him means … meant that I don’t have to do people’s taxes
anymore.”

“What are you going to do for a living now?”

“Haven’t had a chance to think about it yet.” He
shook his head. “It’s Margaret’s call.”

“You think she might be able to find a place for
you?”

“She might decide to take over in the debates. If
so, I might still have a job. I haven’t talked with her except to tell her how
sorry I am.”

“I see. You think she might want to do the
debating herself?”

“She’s a great talker. She doesn’t have the fire
that Arlen had, but the sentences come out smooth. She’d do fine.”

I said, “I take it her position is the same as
Arlen’s was?”

“You know,” Jonathan Ahern said, “in all my years
with them, I never spoke with her about the issue. I remember once—it was a few
years ago, I don’t remember where—I asked her about stem cells, and she said
she leaves all that kind of thing to Arlen. I don’t know whether she meant the
debating or the issue itself.”