Dead Body Language (6 page)

I grabbed my backpack and rode my bike the half-mile home, eager for dinner.

My home, if you can call it that, is a reconverted fifties restaurant once known as the Claim Jump Diner. It was owned by my grandparents, Jack and Constance Westphal, until they died a few years back. The place had sat empty for longer than that before I took it over. I’ve been as faithful as I could be to the original
art moderne
style, restoring and recovering the small booths and stools in red-and-white Naugahyde, refinishing the countertop with swirled black-and-white Formica, and replacing the peeling linoleum with black-and-white tiles.

Old
Life
magazines helped a lot with decorating ideas. So did my grandmother, who had saved a lot of the original decor in storage. Only the kitchen has been modernized, with all the latest accoutrements—dishwasher, microwave, espresso maker. You want to take authenticity only so far in the kitchen.

I even kept the fifties look in the back room where I live and sleep, accessed through swinging doors in the kitchen. The entire place consists only of the diner and the small back area that provides my living quarters, complete with a tiny bathroom. I have a print couch that looks like a Disney version of the space age—something the Jetsons would covet. A blond wood couch frame with jutting arms and stubby blond legs supports four cushions covered in circular design fabric. A couple of wing chairs flank the couch, alongside two blond end tables. The almost matching coffee table sports a heavy marble ashtray, now used for holding chocolate candy that I take for medicinal purposes. I found a couple of black cone-shaped pole lamps at a garage sale, and an old RCA Victor TV console that I gutted and replaced with a new Zenith screen inside that features captioned viewing. Though I haven’t been able to realize it yet, my dream is to open the diner as a haven for the mocha-less of Flat Skunk. Ultimately, I’d divide my time between my two loves, the
Eureka!
and caffeine.

Opening the door, I got an exuberant greeting from my other love, my signal dog Casper, a cream-colored Siberian husky who “hears” for me, and responds to sign language when she’s in the mood. After a hands-and-knees workout with the dog, I helped myself to a stomachful of leftovers which I shared with her, and a hot lilac-scented bubble bath which I didn’t. I changed into a long oversized T-shirt, and plopped on the couch with an ice-cold Sierra Nevada ale. Thinking momentarily of Dan Smith, I made an uncompleted TTY phone call to my ex-boyfriend, then downed the beer to take the edge off the loneliness. The last thing I remembered was lying on my couch watching Jimmy Stewart peer out his rear window at a murderer.

When I awoke the next morning to the flashing lights
of daybreak television news, with kinks in my neck, arm, and side, I was staring at our own Sheriff Elvis Mercer waving an arm in a long shot of Flat Skunk’s Pioneer Cemetery.

I sat up, checked the time—7:35—and tried to read the captions as they danced across the bottom of the screen, but I only managed to catch the wrap.

“I’m Robert Goll and this is Channel Five News.”

I stood as the story ended abruptly with a freeze-frame. A very lifeless body lay on a stretcher next to a waiting ambulance. A corner inset on the screen featured a snapshot of the victim’s familiar face.

It was Lacy Penzance.

L
acy?

I dug frantically into the couch pillows for the remote. I found it under my left foot and switched the channels, hoping to catch another report. Channels 3 and 7 featured flapping mouths, serious eyebrow work, and plenty of photographs of Lacy Penzance, but neither station was captioned at that hour.

What had happened to her? I had just seen her the previous day, and now she was—dead? God! She’d been asking for my help … it was unthinkable!

It took only a few more seconds to realize I could cover the story for my paper—if I got myself to the sheriff’s office fast enough. The hell with my column on frog fricassees. This was a real story, the solid kind of story I had been wanting to write since I got here. But did it have to be this? The death of Lacy Penzance, who already seemed to have her share of sorrow lately with the death of her husband such a short time ago. I would have settled for a nice sex scandal or drug bust. This wasn’t just a story. This was someone’s life. Someone’s death.

I headed down the hall for a quick change, ran
brushes over my hair and teeth, and washed my face, adding the becoming mandatory moisturizer and makeup. Relatively clean and markedly fresh, I rummaged through my clean laundry pile for just the right outfit to wear to a sheriff’s office. Pulling on a pair of brown jeans, I searched until I found a long-sleeved beige cotton sweater that I felt conveyed the casual confidence of an investigative reporter. I slipped on my black Converse All Stars and black blazer, grabbed some muffins and a carton of juice from the fridge, poured Casper the dog food equivalent of a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, and hopped on my bike.

The most populated part of Flat Skunk is Pioneer Cemetery, where the interred bodies outnumber the living residents. Its five acres are a nationally registered historic site and attract almost as many tourists as the depleted gold mines and booming cowboy bars.

I rode through town and cruised slowly past the cemetery where the televised action had taken place, honoring the yellow “Police Line—Do Not Cross” barrier. The crowds and reporters had dissipated, and only a few town residents remained on the periphery, pointing, whispering, and shaking their heads. I turned around and rode back to the sheriff’s office at the other end of town.

The Flat Skunk sheriff’s office, more like an outpost, is housed in an old brick building that was once an assay office. Sheriff Mercer uses the barred section on one side as a temporary holding cell for the few crooks and criminals we get on occasion—mostly drunks. The other side is a large room taken up by three desks: the sheriff’s, Deputy Arnold’s, and the dispatcher’s. No one was in the office when I opened the door and let myself in, but the smell of lingering cigarette smoke told me someone was nearby.

I pulled the bran muffins and orange juice from my backpack, set them on the sheriff’s desk, and called his name. Then I scanned the top of his desk for information that was probably none of my business. I spied two burglary reports, two assaults, one DUI, and a handful of business cards from the local television stations.

Nothing about Lacy Penzance.

I lifted a few more papers and spotted the Polaroids
tucked into a large manila envelope. Suddenly the scent of cigarette smoke grew stronger, so I snatched my hands away from the pile, and turned to greet Sheriff Elvis Mercer, forcing a casual grin.

“Hi, Sheriff.” I sat on the corner of his desk trying not to look guilty. He came out of the bathroom buckling his holster and tucking in his shirt, the cigarette dangling precariously from his lips, and greeted me with a wave of his hand when it finally became free.

The sheriff’s hands were smooth, hairless, and nicely manicured; not what you’d expect from a person who was supposed to whip a lot of butt, slice a lot of karate chops, or fire a bunch of high-powered weapons in the course of duty. These were office hands that typed reports, answered phones, and patted victims of stolen bicycles.

“C.W.! Didn’t know you were here!” he said, removing the cigarette from his lips and dousing it in an old cup of coffee on the deputy’s desk. He smoothed his wandering eyebrows, wiped something from the corner of his mouth, then went to his desk and began to search among the pile of papers.

In the short time I’d been in Flat Skunk, Sheriff Mercer and I had become friends for a number of reasons. One, I needed information for the weekly police blotter and he graciously supplied it, as long as I spelled his name correctly.

Two, I’d hired his troubled son to help out around my office, and Sheriff Mercer appreciated the respite from his single-parenting duties. Three, on occasion I brought dinner to the station and we shared a pastie or corned beef sandwich while we talked about our favorite cop shows, mystery writers, or hockey teams—“How about them Sharks!”

And four, we both had severe computer fixations. We shared our latest software and sent jokes back and forth via E-mail messages. I sent him stupid criminal stories and he sent me stupid newspaper headlines. It was a sort of competition. He was ahead, three to one.

“I called your name. Guess you didn’t hear me.” I poured orange juice into his chipped “Fifty Isn’t Old If
You’re A Tree” coffee mug. The caffeine residue inside the cup turned the orange juice the shade of burnt sienna.

“I was in the W.C.” He lifted some papers from his desk, then catching a glimpse of himself in the window reflection, he patted his chin and neck. “Do you think I’m getting, you know, kinda fat?”

“Naw. You look good. Especially on TV—I saw you.”

“Guess you heard the news, huh, along with everyone else in Calaveras County?”

I shrugged. I’d learned not to be too eager when trying to pull information out of a mouth that’s supposed to stay shut. I took the “who-cares” approach. I’m sure he saw right through it, but he didn’t let on. It’s a game we play.

“It’s certainly a shock,” I agreed. “I can’t believe Lacy Penzance is dead. I just saw her yesterday. So what happened?”

“Mickey videotaped the broadcast. I looked kinda puffy around the eyes.” He tapped the puffiness.

“No. You came across great. Really natural and poised. Very professional.” Truthfully, I hadn’t noticed how he’d come across. I’d only caught the ending. But he’d been complaining about feeling old lately, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to tell him what he needed to hear.

The sheriff, in his midfifties, was basically trim except for the impending middle-aged spread and the beginning of a slumped and burdened set of shoulders. There was a sprinkling of gray around the ears and in the tangled eyebrows. His smooth, even mouth was easy to read when it wasn’t smoking, chewing gum, or eating the muffin he had just popped in.

“Gotta cut down on these muffins. My cholesterol’s up again.” He sat down at his desk, grabbed a handful of papers in one hand, and finished the rest of the muffin without even looking at it.

The sheriff is not your typical stereotype of a macho law enforcement officer. He’s patient, caring, hardworking, fair, and even a little neurotic about his job, as well as his appearance, and his personal life. He buys self-help books to help him deal with his divorce. He sees a therapist to help him work on his relationship with his
son. And he attends singles events at the community college, hoping to meet the right woman.

His only real flaw is a bad habit of abbreviating words. When he shortens a word or uses only the initials, I really have to struggle.

“You look ten pounds lighter on TV, really.”

He tried not to smile. It was time to push the fat aside and chew on something solid. I sat down in the chair opposite him and leaned back, my hands folded across my chest.

“Sheriff, what happened to Lacy Penzance?”

“Don’t know exactly. Kind of odd circumstances. Won’t know anything until we hear from the M.E. Don’t tell me you’re thinking about writing something for your newspaper. This isn’t your usual stuff.”

I fluffed my hair, attempting to appear nonchalant. “Maybe not. But I’m getting tired of reporting the occasional untimely amphibian death. I thought I might look into it, see if I can give it a personal slant. She was well thought of in this town, wasn’t she?”

Sheriff Mercer shrugged, took another sip of orange juice, a bite of a second muffin, and talked with the wad of food shoved to one side of his mouth. He was nearly incoherent, but I turned up my hearing aid and caught the main thrust. The trouble with being deaf is you have to keep your eyes on the speaker. It’s tough to do that and appear only mildly interested in the conversation. That constant eye contact comes across as intense to many hearing people.

“Well, it looks like—and I do mean ‘looks like’—Lacy Penzance may have committed suicide. Right there on her husband’s grave.”

“What?” I said, losing my poker face. “I can’t—that’s not—” All I could do was open and close my mouth.

Sheriff Mercer washed down the muffin with a giant gulp of juice and jotted down a few notes.

“At this point in the P.I.—preliminary investigation—we’re tentatively calling it a suicide, and I do mean tentatively. She was found on her husband’s grave, dressed to
kill you might say, with a knife stuck in her middle. There was no sign of a struggle. It could have been self-inflicted.”

I leaned in toward the sheriff, my hands gripping the edge of the desk. “But, Sheriff! A woman doesn’t stab herself when she wants to commit suicide! She takes pills. She turns on the exhaust. Maybe she jumps off a bridge. But she doesn’t use a gun or a knife. You know that.”

He patted his chin again. “I know, I know. But it appears she was U.I.—under the influence. She reeked of it. The M.E. will tell us more.”

“Still, how can you think it might be suicide when—”

He looked at me directly for the first time since he’d sat down. “She left a note.”