Coming Unclued (4 page)

“I went in my bedroom because there was a mouse on the loose and there he was in my bed.” I was getting used to saying it. Practically came tripping off my tongue. “Dead. Stabbed to death. Mr. Potter.”

“That’s crazy!”

“And I have no memory of why he was even in my apartment. And I’m getting the idea that the police think I might be a suspect.”

Heather’s eyes widened.

“Have you called anyone? Have you told Evan?”

Evan. How could I tell him? I have a not entirely unwarranted reputation for being an obnoxious drinker. He worries what could happen if I perhaps have a glass too many, though even Evan couldn’t have come up with this one.

“No. I haven’t told him. Julie’s on her way though. She’ll know what to do.”

Heather made a little grimace. Just a small one. Not enough to damage any collagen. She and Julie weren’t especially fond of each other. Julie thought Heather was shallow and “lacked warmth”. Heather was more circumspect about her feelings for Julie, but she tended to be somewhat terse when Julie was around.

“You need to get in touch with people. You’re going to need help.”

“Maybe not. Maybe once all those cops are finished there’ll be a very straightforward answer. They might already have the killer.”

There was a knock on the door and Julie popped her head in. She gave us a bright smile. “Hey.”

I ran over and gave her a hug. Heather was an excellent neighbor, but Julie was my good, true friend.

“Hi Heather.” And then to me. “This is going to be fine. What do we know so far?”

“Just what I told you.”

“You didn’t tell me enough. How was he killed?”

“Stabbed.”

“With what?”

“I don’t know — a knife? What do people get stabbed with?”

“Where’s the knife?” asked Julie.

I hadn’t even thought about that. There hadn’t been a knife sticking out of him when I turned him over. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything.”

Julie sank down on Heather’s chenille couch and gestured for me to do the same. She glanced at Heather’s little Christmas tree, decorated all in silver, grimaced slightly and turned her focus to me. Julie and I met at a playgroup when our kids were both two. She immediately intrigued me. Rather than hovering over her daughter Alice, which was the way things were done at this playgroup, she was reading a Margaret Atwood novel and drinking coffee. When Alice whacked another girl over the head with a car, Julie didn’t go into a long discourse about how Alice should use her words and not her hands. “No hitting,” she said in a no-nonsense voice. “Any more hitting and we’re going home. And say you’re sorry.” And she went back to reading
Cat’s Eye
. We’d bonded over our shared love of books and movies and big band music, and Evan and Alice become the best of friends as well.

Julie adjusted herself on the couch, trying to get comfortable. Heather’s furniture was more about form than function. “You wouldn’t have any coffee made, would you?” she asked Heather.

“I’ll make some.”

“Don’t go to any trouble.”

“No. You’re right. I should make coffee.” Heather hopped up and headed into the kitchen.

Julie rolled her eyes and squirmed a little. “This couch. Who designed it? The Marquis de Sade?” She put her hand on my arm. “So what’s the plan? What are we going to do? Have you called Evan?”

“No I haven’t called Evan. What is the obsession with calling Evan? I don’t want him hanging around, worrying about me. You know what he’s like.”

“Maybe we should go over to your place and see what’s happening.” Two vertical furrows suddenly appeared between Julie’s brows. “Do they know your history?”

“My history?”

She wasn’t going to cut me any slack. “Yes your history. Your history of blackouts.”

“I’d hardly call it a history. A couple of incidents.”

Julie was glaring at me, clearly not pleased with my answer.

“It hasn’t come up,” I said. “Though I have a feeling it might.”

Heather came in carrying what looked like a plate of gingersnaps. She saw me glance at them. “The coffee’s dripping. These are all I have. I don’t know how good they are, but at least they’re organic.”

“Thank God for that,” said Julie, who didn’t really believe in the powers of good nutrition.

“Not for me,” I said. “I’m hungry but I’m too shaken.” I put my hand on my stomach. “And bloated.”

“It’s the carbs,” said Heather. “I’ve tried to tell you about eating too many carbs. And you’re probably sensitive to wheat.”

Julie took a bite of a cookie and looked a little startled by the lack of snap. “How old are these?”

“Oh — sorry. No preservatives.”

Julie dropped the cookie on the plate and turned her attention back to me.

“What about your drinking?” Julie asked. “Have they asked any questions about that?”

“They know I was at a party. I did mention that I don’t have the clearest memory of last night.”

“It’s going to come up Val. Unless they happen to find the murderer hiding under your bed, they are going to be looking at you. And you do have a history.”

“Minor incidents — nothing like this.”

Heather and Julie shot each other a glance. A loaded glance.

Heather crossed her legs and leaned forward, giving me a little pat on the knee. “We’re not trying to upset you Val, but we have to face facts. The police are going to be asking questions. There’s no denying you do have a history of violence when you drink.”

“There’s the Richard Bannon thing,” she continued. “And Jack’s wife. And I don’t know —there’s probably some other incidents.”

The Richard Bannon thing. That could hardly be considered violence. Richard Bannon is — well everyone knows who Richard Bannon is. A forty-something movie star who makes a decent movie every five years and a lot of drivel in between. When I had my encounter with him he was especially ‘hot’. He’d recently married a young starlet, had an adorable little daughter and he was constantly on the cover of all the tabloids; the picture of a devoted family man. Richard was in Toronto filming a movie. A fun family movie co-starring a talking horse because he “wanted to make a movie my daughter could see.” I saw it. The comedic high point was when the horse took a dump on the kitchen floor.

On a Friday night after a particularly long week I’d met Julie downtown for dinner. We had Indian food and then decided to pop into a piano bar for a drink. One grown-up cocktail and then home. We found a great table in the corner and settled back to watch the action around us. And then little Richard Bannon came in. That’s how I think of him now. Little Richard. He couldn’t be more than five foot six inches in his boots. Little Richard and his entourage settled in at the bar and there was no way Julie and I were leaving. We ordered a second drink and then a third and Julie tells me a fourth as we watched the drama unfold at the bar. The rest of the night is a little hazy. A lot hazy. I can’t remember any of it. Apparently Little Richard was getting very friendly with a beautiful young girl. Extremely friendly as in nuzzling her neck and whispering in her ear. Given that all the young women there that night were six-foot glamazons, he must have been standing on his tiptoes. In any case, what apparently transpired is that as we were leaving I gave Richard a really hard kick in the rear-end and told him he should be ashamed of himself acting like that when he had a wife and baby waiting at home. Like I cared about Richard Bannon’s family life. Well it seems that I kicked him so hard that he fell over. From all reports it was quite a scene and while Julie somehow managed to hustle me out of there before I was arrested for assault, the story made all the papers. They got my name from my Visa receipt. Little Richard’s people managed to spin the story so that I came off as a crazy drunk and Richard being a good, kind family man wasn’t going to press charges. I could hardly defend myself, since I had no recollection of the incident. Crazy drunk was actually a pretty fair assessment. It wasn’t my finest moment. An amusing anecdote, mind you, but hardly worth the grief. Mr. Potter came to me a few days after the news hit the papers and told me, and he did seem genuinely sad about it, that my promotion to customer service associate would have to be delayed until the fuss died down. That was three years ago and I’m still in my little cubicle where I won’t scare the clients.

“Do you think the police will find out about Little Richard and think I have violent tendencies?” I asked.

Heather looked saddened by my question. “He’s not so little. He’s really well built. Just kind of compact.”

That was the kind of comment that kept me from truly bonding with Heather.

Julie looked me in the eye. “Yes, I think the police are going to find out about Richard. Wee, tiny little Richard. And they are going to find out about Sylvia.”

Sylvia. That was nothing. Hardly worth mentioning. I don’t know why Julie even brought it up. Sylvia is my ex-husband Jack’s new wife, the woman he married the day after our divorce was finalized.

What happened with Sylvia is that the first time I met her I gave her a tiny little slap across the face. It was Evan’s high school graduation and Jack and I had decided to be civilized and have a nice family dinner after the ceremony. Jack, who as he told me a number of times, had never known true happiness until he met Sylvia, ordered champagne, and I guess it went to my head. According to Evan, I stood up and completely unprovoked proceeded to lean over the table and wallop Sylvia across the face. My feeling is that I must have been extremely provoked and he hadn’t been paying attention. I can’t imagine I would slap her for no reason. So Sylvia filed an assault charge against me and then changed her mind after a couple of days. Jack said that she found me so pathetic and pitiful she couldn’t find it in her heart to take me to court. A good, kind woman is Sylvia.

“Sylvia retracted that charge. How would the police find out?”

Julie sighed. “The original charge will stay on the books. They’ll find it.”

Was that true? The assault charge stays on the books? That’s the thing about Julie. She says things with such authority that everyone assumes she knows exactly what she’s talking about.

“Well anyway, two minor incidents is hardly a history,” I said.

“It’s a pattern Val,” said Heather, taking a sip of her herbal tea. “The police will see it as a pattern. You know, where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

“And they’ll probably find other stuff if they start digging,” added Julie helpfully.

This was looking bad. I had to take charge. I couldn’t just sit there on Heather’s uncomfortable sofa and wait for the police to dredge up information that would assure them they would not have to look further than my living room to find Mr. Potter’s killer. “I’m going back home. I have to find out what’s going on in there.”

“I’ll come with you,” Julie said.

“Me too,” chimed in Heather.

“No, you’d better stay here,” I told her. “I don’t want the police getting ticked off about people contaminating their crime scene.

Heather hesitated, and then gave a nod of agreement. “Just remember I’m here for you Val.”

I gave her a quick hug and headed into the hall, Julie shutting Heather’s door firmly behind us.

The door to my condo opened and a man emerged, pulling a stretcher. On the stretcher was a black body bag. A body bag with Mr. Potter’s body in it. Julie and I pressed ourselves against the wall as the stretcher went by while the man looked around the hallway in consternation.

“There’s no elevator,” I told him.

“No elevator? For frig’s sake. Not even a service elevator?”

“Nope.”

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, as he headed back into my condo, leaving the stretcher in the hallway in front of Julie and me.

“Nice. Very professional,” said Julie. “Is he with the police? I should get his badge number.”

“Please don’t,” I told her. I was trying not to look at the body bag. This was surreal. How could Mr. Potter be lying in front of me zipped up in a black plastic bag?

The man came back, this time with a police officer in tow. “I’ll take the head,” he said, and they casually picked up Mr. Potter and ventured down the stairs.

“This is like something from the Twilight Zone,” I said to Julie. “He’s talking about my boss’s head.”

“Well, at least it’s still attached to the body.”

I gave her a look of disgust.

“As opposed to being decapitated. Look, I’m just trying to see the bright side here.”

“Good job. Maybe you could write a self-help book.
Look on the Bright Side. At Least He Wasn’t Decapitated.”

Julie gave me a slight smile. “Look at that,” she said, suddenly excited, pointing to the floor outside my condo. “What’s that? Is that blood?”

I looked where she was pointing but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“What is that?” asked Julie, walking over to the door and bending down.

Peering closer I could see a red drop glistening against the beige tiles. We both bent down to get a closer look.

“If it’s blood,” said Julie, “that could be evidence that someone left your apartment after the murder.”

I touched the tip of my finger to the red drop. “Don’t touch it,” snarled Julie. “You’re contaminating the evidence.”

“It’s wet,” I snapped. “Wet blood.”

“Shit,” said Julie. “It must have dripped off the body bag.” She stood up. “Sorry for getting your hopes up.”

Julie watched as I wiped my finger on my pants.

“Did you just do that? Corpse blood?”

“I wasn’t thinking — in case you haven’t noticed I’m under a lot of pressure here.”

Detective Crowley was sitting on the couch talking on his cell phone. “I’m not getting skim. I’m sick of all this low fat crap. Julia Child drank full fat and she lived till she was ninety.” All in a day’s work for a detective I guess. Zip a man into a body bag and then go to the grocery store for some fatty milk. The detective looked up and saw us. “Gotta go. Text me.” He shoved the phone in his pocket. “My wife wants us to lose some weight before Christmas.”

“Ahh.” I said. Christmas was in a week. He had a good forty pounds to lose.

“So Ms Valentyn,” he said, nodding his head at an officer holding a roll of yellow crime scene tape. “Your apartment is going to be off-limits for a few days, but we’d like you to stay within reach. We’ll need to be in touch with you. Is that a problem?”