Canary

Nathan Aldyne

F
ELONY
& M
AYHEM
P
RESS
•
N
EW
Y
ORK

Memorial Day

“U
H-OH,” DANIEL
Valentine muttered darkly, “another corpse.”

“Is my hem straight?” asked Clarisse Lovelace.

Valentine folded his newspaper shut and dropped it onto the highly polished oak table.

Tall and slender, Clarisse stood anxiously before him in the restaurant aisle, wearing a graduation robe as black as her hair. In her right hand she held her gray-tasseled mortarboard and her rolled diploma with a burgundy-colored ribbon tied about it.

“Well?” she urged.

“It's perfect,” said Valentine, raising his eyes from the fall of the garment, “but what difference does it make? The ceremony was over half an hour ago.”

Clarisse dropped the diploma next to the bowl of fresh sweet william and tossed her mortarboard onto the empty chair next to her. She began unhooking the buttons of her robe. “It made a great deal of difference twenty minutes ago when the class picture was being taken. The photographer insisted on having me in the front row. It was all I could do to smile, I was so worried.”

“Fashion trauma,” said Valentine unsympathetically. “Why didn't you just ask the photographer to let you stand in the back row?”

“I did. He said no. I had to be up front. But to make up for it, he asked me out on Wednesday night.” She had thrown the robe over the back of the chair and now was straightening the cuffs of her off-white pongee dress. Her hair was fashioned into a flattering but practical pageboy that just brushed the nape of her neck. Her eyes were large and dark, and the only makeup she wore was a barely discernible amount of blush and ruby-hued lipstick. She took a cursory glance over the lunchtime crowd at the Atrium, a restaurant located right around the corner from Harvard Square.

“He was just your type, too,” Clarisse added as she opened the menu.

Valentine blinked as if he hadn't been paying attention. “Who was my type?”

“The photographer,” she replied impatiently, peering into the menu. “He was short, very nicely built, Mediterranean looking, and he had a mustache.”

“Did he ask you to marry him?” Valentine asked absently. “That type always does. Don't bother looking at the menu. I've already ordered for us.”

Clarisse put down the menu and studied her friend. Valentine was gazing past her with a blank, preoccupied stare. He wore a well-tailored poplin suit. His shirt collar was unbuttoned and his wheat-colored tie loosened. His sandy blond hair was trimmed nearly as short as his beard and was as neatly kempt.

Clarisse took up her rolled diploma and tapped one end of it against Valentine's hand. “Why are you so glum?” She waved the diploma before his face. “This is a very big day for me.”

“That wasn't the Nobel Prize they were handing out over there this morning. It was a diploma for a five-day course in bartending.”

“I just wanted to get in a little practice at graduating,” Clarisse said defensively. “That's all.” A couple of weeks before, at the beginning of May, Clarisse had completed her first year at Portia School of Law, located on Mount Vernon Street at the top of Beacon Hill. The day after her last exam, she enrolled in a concentrated bartending course offered by the Harvard Extension School. The skill would enable her to work the afternoon shift and fill in evenings when needed at Slate, the bar Valentine managed in Boston's South End. The added income would provide a wardrobe Clarisse thought befitting a second-year student of corporate law.

The waiter came with a carafe of white wine and two glasses. He poured the wine and then a few moments later returned with a large platter of cheese and fruit. When he had gone away, Clarisse remarked, “You were in high spirits this morning. I could see you in the audience, applauding madly when they called my name. What happened between then and now?”

“I bought the
Globe
.”

She bit her lower lip lightly and said, “You mumbled something about a corpse when I came in…”

Valentine leaned back and flipped open the paper. “Somebody got his neck gift-wrapped last night.”

Clarisse took a sip of her wine, plucked a fresh fig from the platter, and pulled the newspaper about. She turned slightly away from the table, crossed one leg over the other, and rested the open paper on her thigh. She scanned the front page until her eyes stopped in the lower left corner. The headline read:

MAN FOUND STRANGLED IN SOUTH END APARTMENT BUILDING

“Barry Pike,” she murmured, taking another sip of wine. “Know him?”

“I don't recognize the name.”

Clarisse quoted from the article. “‘…thirty-six years old… unemployed conductor with the B&M Railroad…five feet nine inches tall…'” She looked up at Valentine. “Why do they give his height?” Valentine shrugged. Clarisse went back to the article. “‘…brown hair, mustache, athletic build…hands, feet, and neck bound by neckties…wearing jeans and a red T-shirt with “All-American Boy” printed on it.'” She looked up. “Are you sure you don't know him?”

“If they ever make a movie, ninety-five percent of the male population of South End could play the part. Who can tell anything from that? I wish I weren't so bad on names. For all I know, I could have served him five beers a night since the day the bar opened.”

“This doesn't actually say he was gay, does it?”

“Read on. Top of page six.”

Clarisse turned to the continuation of the article. She again read aloud: “‘Mr. Pike's body was discovered by his roommate, who identified himself only as the victim's “Significant Other.”'” Clarisse paused to groan, then continued: “‘The police have ruled out robbery as a possible motive. The victim's roommate confirmed that nothing had been removed from the scene. There was no evidence of forced entry into the apartment, the door of which was found closed but unlocked. According to the medical examiner's report, Mr. Pike had a high level of alcohol in his blood. The examiner also determined there was no physical evidence of sexual activity. The police say they have no suspects at this time.'”

“When does it say the ‘Significant Other' found the body?” Valentine asked.

Clarisse went back to the inside page. “Yesterday morning. He'd just come back from a business trip. The medical examiner estimates Mr. Pike had been dead a little more than twenty-four hours.”

“This is Thursday,” said Valentine thoughtfully. “He was found on Wednesday morning. Dead for twenty-four hours. So Mr. Pike died early Tuesday morning. Killed by the man he picked up on Monday night.”

Clarisse closed and refolded the newspaper, placing it to one side of the platter, with the murder headline facedown. “I'll go along with that.” Her hand hovered over the platter and finally descended on a small bunch of green grapes. “But I'd like to point out that we're both assuming a trick did it. That might not be the case.”

“Give me another scenario, then.”

Clarisse shrugged. She couldn't.

Valentine leaned forward and speared a wedge of new peach with his fork. He stared at it for a few moments, then said, “I'm trying to think back to Monday night. I was behind the bar, and we weren't very busy, but I still don't recall a mustached thirty-six-year-old man wearing a red, All-American Boy T-shirt. I think I probably would have. There's something I'm trying to remember, but I can't seem…” His voice trailed off.

“Please don't brood about this,” interrupted Clarisse. “Your entire purpose in life—for today at least—should be to celebrate my diploma. You should be thinking about how much help I'm going to be to you this summer. Not only will I be your door person, but I will actually be able to fill in when your regular bartenders go on vacation. You won't have to find substitutes. I'll be the best damn bartender you ever saw!”

An hour later, Valentine and Clarisse returned to Boston, alighting from a Cambridge taxi on Warren Avenue in front of Slate. The late-spring afternoon had grown oppressively warm, and the cloudless sky was a brilliant sharp blue. There was no breeze, and a stillness had settled along the avenue. Valentine had removed his tie, and it now spilled out of the breast pocket of his jacket. Clarisse carried her robe over one arm and held her diploma and mortarboard loosely in her other hand.

The building that housed Slate and a similar adjoining structure stood alone on this end of the block. On one side was an abandoned playground frequented by alcoholic vagrants and nocturnal drug addicts. On the other side was the back of the Boston Center for the Arts, a gray and many-windowed complex of buildings running all the way down to Clarendon Street. Directly across Warren Avenue was a line of carefully restored town houses with tall, healthy maples regularly spaced along the sidewalk. These houses took up three-quarters of the block, while the remainder was occupied by the District D police station. Cruisers were parked at an angle on both sides of the street, and double-parked beyond that. Several officers lingered on the main steps of the station house, savoring the warmth of the afternoon. A couple of them waved to Valentine and Clarisse, who waved back before they crossed the sidewalk.

The first floor of the building adjoining Slate was a storefront, now occupied by Peking Video Rental & Sales. The interior of the place was obscured by posters filling the plate-glass windows on either side of the door. The titles were either Chinese kung fu epics or American soft-core erotic films. Posters for the new acquisitions,
Fists of Anger, Fists of Joy
, and
Dixie Does Duluth
, were prominently displayed. Valentine and Clarisse paused a moment to examine the posters before they walked over to the recessed front door of Slate.

The double doors of the bar were propped open, and music poured out of the dim interior. Clarisse cocked her head and listened as Valentine unlocked a small door about ten feet to the right of the bar entrance. Clarisse followed him inside and up the private staircase to the first landing, where they stopped again. Valentine employed a second key to open the door to his private office.

“That song…” murmured Clarisse, still grasping for the title as the music grew louder.

Valentine opened the office door. Disgruntled, he said, “What else would you hear playing in a respectable in-demand-leather bar on a warm spring afternoon? It's ‘Blue Tango.'”

V
ALENTINE'S OFFICE WAS
comfortably appointed, with an Oriental carpet on the oak floor and two high-backed armchairs raked at an angle toward his desk. Three filing cabinets stood in a corner within easy access. On the wall were several chrome-framed displays of antique playing cards from Valentine's own collection. A second door in the office, directly across from the passage to the stairs, opened onto a narrow iron staircase spiraling down into the barroom coat-check.

“Seventy-five thousand dollars,” said Daniel, grimacing. He went over to the two-way mirror that overlooked the barroom just beneath the office.