Return to Dust (13 page)

“Who else?”

“Well, the two of us, and Joshua, and Richard Wilcox and Charlie Safako. We bonded together.”

“Tell me about the falling out with Joshua.”

“I know there was a doozie of a battle between the two of them.”

“About?”

“Not sure, darling.”

“Ideas?”

“I told you—we didn't talk about things like that.”

“But you must have wondered.”

“He wanted to move. She'd go on and on about it—to utter boredom. I don't know if that was
the
fight.”

“Maybe something else?”

“Maybe. But he wouldn't write to her after he moved. No contact. I knew that.” She laughed hoarsely. “I'm not saying she got what she deserved, but she could get pushy.”

“Then he died.”

“How we cried when we read that obituary. Held onto each other like little schoolgirls.”

“She never saw him after he moved?”

She stopped. “I don't know. She even followed him to Amherst to see him. This after he hadn't answered her letter.”

I sat up. “What happened?”

“She came back furious. I'd never seen her so mad. She cursed him.” Hattie was trembling.

“So they fought?”

“She wouldn't say what happened at all. Refused to talk about it. She kept calling him a bastard.”

“Did you ever find out…?”

She interrupted me. “It became one more taboo subject with Marta. Frankly, that list was getting a little too long for me.”

Hattie was in tears now, shaking. I got up to leave.

There was a photograph of Hattie and Marta by the door, framed and resting in an ivy planter. I picked it up and stared into the black-and-white graininess. It had been taken at Atlantic City, I assumed. There was a cheap T-shirt stand behind them, a child in a bathing suit standing on the corner. A boardwalk umbrella. Part of the marquee of a casino. But I noticed two other things. Marta was dressed up the way Hattie was now—gussied up with huge costume sequins and a silk dress slit up one side, oriental style. She wore a sequined comb of some sort in her hair, and her head was thrown back, as though she'd been caught in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime laugh. Sunlight glinted off the sparkling rhinestones on her dress. She shone. Party girl. She looked happy. This wasn't the cleaning woman I knew.

But the second thing was that there was another person in the picture. Standing off in back, turned halfway toward a hotdog stand, oblivious of the picture taking, was a figure I recognized as Richard Wilcox, dapper in a white linen suit.

“Who took this picture?”

She spoke matter-of-factly, dismissing me. “Joshua Jennings. The summer we all got back from Russia. We wanted the party to go on forever.”

Chapter Fifteen

Charlie Safako had a shadowy reputation. A full professor of history, a man in his early sixties, he was a man I didn't like. Not that I'd ever spoken to him, other than to argue at faculty meetings when he screamed about the danger of faculty liberals—the “libs”—infiltrating the promotions committee. Charlie had agendas, to use another one of his words. Agendas, as in educational philosophies or personal mandates on living one's life—and people were always getting in the way of his fulfilling them.

Charlie lived in a small red clapboard, center-chimney Colonial tucked into a tree-lined side street within walking distance of the college. Sometimes, late mornings, I'd see him sauntering to his first class, leisurely and unhurried. Unmarried, he was a bulky man who always looked as if he'd been unable to finish his daily grooming. There was usually a spot of dried shaving cream dappling a cheek, or a ragged spot of beard untouched by a razor, or excessive clumps of lint on a rumpled sport jacket. He'd once been described by a student as an unmade bed, and I liked the notion.

With his beet-red spotty cheeks, his small faraway brown eyes, his thinning tuffs of brown-gray hair, he looked like an incomplete animal. A hopeless snob, he viewed history as the blessed bastion of Anglo-Saxon reserve, fearful of the encroachment of Neo-Marxists in the study of history—to gather from his op-ed diatribes to the local press—and probably only took his clothing to the dry cleaners twice a year. Sometimes he smelled like old rags under a kitchen sink.

I rang the bell four or five times before he answered. His doorbell was one of those ersatz medieval chimes that clashed with the plastic, chipped mailbox and the Walmart all-season twigs-and-twine wreath on the door. I had called that morning so he expected my visit. Now, grinning, he waved me into the room, but didn't suggest I take a seat.

Nor did he offer me anything to drink, which pleased me. Inside everything smelled like old professor. Parchment pages, texts discoloring into yellow pulp, dress shirt starch, and dried funeral flowers. Everything was neat, I noticed. It's just that everything looked flaky, decaying. Marta's cleaning touch was sorely needed here.

Late afternoon, almost twilight, though there were no lights on. He was drinking a diet cola from a can. The room was chilly yet I noticed he was sweating. He was nervous.

“I know why you're here,” he said suddenly. He was already shaking his head vigorously, dismissing me. “Nonsense, pure and simple.” He never once looked at me, and I wanted to leave because the closeness of the room made me dizzy and tired.

“I have nothing to say,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

“Don't you have an opinion? You were a friend. You traveled to Russia and Atlantic City and…”

He cut me off so abruptly I felt as though he were standing over me, looking down at me. Yet we were both still standing, and I was taller. “Young man, what's your trivial game?”

I didn't answer.

He waited a moment. His eyebrows twitched. “I realize that you need to
make
a living. We continue to pay for that stupid war over and over and over and…”

I broke in, flummoxed. “What? Are you talking about the Vietnamese War like it has something to do with my visit here?”

He sighed. “I'm a professor of history. American history. I am endlessly fascinated by the place of evolving immigrant generations into the scheme of things. The boat people from that unfortunate war have insinuated themselves into the colleges and professions and the culture…”

“Bullshit.” I cut him off.

He smiled. “How characteristic! One generation to our shores and you acquire the language of the gutter.”

He was baiting me, pushing me away from my reason for being here.

I asked him, point-blankly, “Just what are you hiding?”

He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

“We're here to discuss whether Marta was murdered.” I smiled disingenuously. “Did you do it?” A pause. “It stands to reason…”

I swear the man's face went from beet-red to clammy white. The big-knuckled fingers crumpled the soda can.

“What are you hiding?” I asked again, enjoying this. He squirmed, something I'd never seen a human being do. Like a Disney cartoon character. Daffy Duck meets Viet Cong.

“Young man.” He took a deep breath. “I have nothing to hide. If you think I'd kill the only person who kept the dust from my coffee table, you must be crazy.”

“More than a cleaner, no? She was your friend.”

He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, then dried the hand on his shirt. Really attractive, very farm hand. “Yes, she was. Sort of. But I always felt she was closer to Joshua and Richard.” He frowned. “Much older men, you know. She and I were closer in age.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Do we really have to go through this?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “If I answer, will you leave?”

“Yes.”

He nodded.

“When did you last see her?” I asked again.

“Two days before she died.” An edge to his voice.

“How did she seem?”

Silence.

“How did she seem?” I repeated.

He rolled his tongue over his upper lip, looking around the room as though for an exit, and said quietly, “All right, if I can get you out of here. She had just finished cleaning when I returned from classes. I asked her if she wanted coffee—we'd often sit and she'd talk and talk. She was very amusing in a way, a domineering woman whom I called my Dollar Store dominatrix as a joke, which she didn't like. She said no. That was unusual. She was in a deep funk. I was in a deep funk—I was hoping she'd amuse me.”

“Why were you down?”

“What?”

“You said you were in a deep funk.”

He narrowed his eyes. “We're not here to discuss—me.”

“It seems…”

He raised his voice. “Marta left, just like that. Walked out. She actually looked pale, like she was sick. I called after her and said, ‘Are you all right?' She didn't answer. Something was on her mind. Distracted—Marta was not a thoughtful woman. I don't mean stupid—just someone who left life…unanswered.” Charlie paused, stuck out his tongue again. “I always regret that I didn't pursue it. My mind was on something else.”

“What?”

Charlie opened his eyes wide, then frowned. He waved at me as though I were a small child he wanted to shoo out of the way.

“You
are
a cretin. Whatever happened to that much-touted oriental behavior of respect the young have for their elders?”

I waited.

“I'll retire in a year or so. I will be free of a generation that includes you—the self-loving egotists of pleasure. And the academic youngsters bouncing to radio waves in their heads while their fingers text inanities via Twitter as I lecture on the Civil War.”

I couldn't let that pass. I leaned back against a table, put my weight on one foot. “There was a time when you didn't distance yourself from the younger generation.”

It was a cruel jab, said purposely. Charlie Safako may have become the disaffected, seedy professor, but the rumor-mongers insisted he still saw himself as the consummate lady's man. A recurring tale on campus suggested that he'd fathered a child with a coed some thirty years back, when he was newly hired at the college. It had been squelched, as those things were in those days, but the rumor persisted, stayed with Charlie Safako like an old dog, and he always bristled under the tale. No one ever had any proof—certainly no thirty-year-old popped up in U.S. History I and screamed “Daddy, Daddy” like a scene out of a bodice romance—but the story made the rounds every so often. In fact, many undergraduates hero-worshipped him because of it. It gave the old man—famous for his risqué asides in class—a kind of rogue cachet.

He pursed his lips but said nothing. He seemed relieved that I'd taken that low road—as though he could live with the old, dumb rumor. I saw the hint of a sardonic smile that disappeared quickly. He turned away.

I repeated my question. “What are you hiding?”

I waited and thought of one of the precepts of Buddhism:
You must abstain from false speech.
I waited.

But he simply pointed to the door.

People pointing at a door is one of the familiar signposts of the private eye. You learn to nod, smile at times—not this time, I'm afraid—and, well, leave.

Chapter Sixteen

I checked my voice mail when I got back home. The obit writer had left a brief message. He'd never been given the name of Joshua's great niece. He sounded a little peeved. “Otherwise,” he added curtly, “it would have been in the piece.”

I scribbled a note card and pinned it to the wall: Track down the niece.

The phone rang. Gracie wanted to get an early dinner at Zeke's Olde Tavern.

Just as I closed my apartment door, I bumped into Ken Rodman, headed upstairs. “Hello,” I called to him.

“Rick.” We shook hands.

I didn't know much about him. I did know that he'd separated from his wife and three kids in nearby Avon, was some sort of insurance adjuster or salesman, and had lived until his divorce was finalized in a dorm room at some religious retreat in Hartford.

We stared at each other, neither moving. “You knew Marta Kowalski.”

“Why?”

He was dressed in polyester basketball shorts and a new sweatshirt, a gym bag slung over his shoulder. A tall man with long, gangly shoulders, he had a slight paunch that he scratched.

“Well, I'm a private investigator, following a lead.”

My out-of-the-blue question—I obviously take my interviews where I can—didn't seem to faze him.

“Yes, well, she cleaned my apartment twice.”

“That's it? You talk to her?”

“Briefly. Frankly, she was too nosy. About my life. So I left.”

“Ever see her again?”

“No.” He rubbed his stomach again, looked at the stairway. “I was not gonna hire her again.”

“Why not?”

“I told you—nosy. Too many questions.” A slight smile. “Like you.”

“Well, thanks.”

“It's nothing,” He was already headed upstairs, and disappeared from sight.

Gracie stepped out of her apartment, stood at the foot of the stairs. She was frowning. “Odd one,” she whispered. “Secrets.”

I grinned. “They're not secrets if he tells them to you.”

She smiled back. “Nobody's allowed secrets in my building.”

We headed to Zeke's Olde Tavern where we had roast beef sandwiches on rye, with homemade potato salad. The place was quiet, with a couple of college kids playing video games or lost in their cell phones. I ordered her a white wine, but she held up her hand.

“Make it a Bud,” she said to the waitress. “White wine, indeed.” She smirked. “I was a Rockette, baby. We always drink beer.”

Jimmy Gadowicz strolled in, bellowing that he'd called my phone to say he was coming out of Hartford to visit, but it went to message. When I didn't pick up, he knew I was somewhere in the neighborhood. The Tavern was the place everyone checked to find any of us.

“I got my cell phone on me,” I told him. “
That
number.”

He waved his hand at me. “Hey, I memorized one number for you. That's enough.”

Jimmy smiled at Gracie, and I noticed he'd marinated himself in some Walgreen's cologne. Fruit flies could take extended vacations on his round cheeks.

“What did you want?” I asked him.

He ordered a Bud.

“Nothing. Quiet night. Thought I'd check on you. The Case,” he stressed, capitalizing it. “The Case.” He chuckled.

I smiled—Jimmy was one of the good guys.

I sat back, my hands around a scotch and soda, nice and cold, and sighed. These were my good friends, and I was happy. Gracie and Jimmy. He grinned at Gracie, and she twinkled. Lord, I thought—romance in the age of Medicare.

“What are you smiling at?” Jimmy asked.

“I like being here with the two of you.”

Jimmy looked at Gracie. “A lonely boy, this one.”

“You do know I'm sitting here, right?”

“That's the point,” Jimmy smiled.

Gracie grumbled. “We got to get him married.”

“He should marry Liz again. A beautiful woman.”

“A good-looking couple,” Gracie answered.

“I like Liz.”

Me: “So do I.” I grinned. “You both know that.”

“He's been seen around town with that Karen girl.”

“A job,” I emphasized.

“The Case.” Again, capitalized.

“So how
is
the old case going?” From Gracie.

“Fraud is a lot easier,” I said glumly. “It's cut and dried.”

Jimmy leaned into me. “Tell me the one thing that bothers you so far? Of them all, the one thing that doesn't fit. Pick one thing—the burr under the saddle.”

Gracie leaned in, too.

I thought for a minute. The two of them, each with raised drinks, stared at me, expectant. “She fought with Joshua Jennings—and never made up. Something was definitely on her mind the day she died. Wilcox said she sounded panicky. She was headed to Richard Wilcox's to tell him something.”

Gracie spoke up. “Perhaps she made it there after all, told him something, and he had to kill her. He walked her home by the bridge and pushed her.”

“Maybe.”

“Or,” Gracie went on, “that squirrelly nephew of hers might have acted out of drunkenness. You said…”

“Or,” Jimmy interrupted, “Karen herself is afraid of something.”

“C'mon, Jimmy. Then why hire an investigator? The case was closed.” Gracie blinked her eyes.

“The obvious is wrong, the least expected is true, and…”

“Spare me,” Gracie turned to Jimmy. “Is he spouting that Buddha bit again?”

“…the insurance money,” Jimmy concluded. “Karen has to prove it was murder to collect, even though she is the murderer.”

I interrupted, smiling. “Excuse me, beloved duo. Whose case is this anyway?”

“But you're so young and—untutored.” From Gracie.

“Ah, Gracie, my rock 'n' roll friend.”

I ordered another round of drinks for us.

“You know what I also find alarming.” I sat back. “I've learned that Marta, admittedly an attractive woman for her age…”

“—Of her age,” Gracie interposed, frowning.

“Of her age. Sorry. I mean, she was a real flirt, vivacious. She liked the company of men. She had a way with men….”

Gracie made a groaning sound.

Jimmy grinned. “She probably flirted with me.”

I jumped in. “You never met her, Jimmy.”

“But if I had, she would have.”

“Which,” said Gracie, “would be like flirting with a Disney character.”

He made a face. “That makes no sense.”

Gracie went on. “Men found her charming. People talked about her behind her back.”

“The only person she
never
flirted with—is me. She was a little coy but…”

Jimmy punched me in the arm. “He's feeling insecure because a dead old lady never came on to him.”

At that moment Ken Rodman walked into the bar, spotted us, and looked ready to flee. He caught me watching him, so he walked over, said hello, nodded at Jimmy. But he was jumpy. Of course, the three of us were perched there like the Spanish Inquisition. He stammered a quick I'll-see-you-I-was-just-gonna-get-a-beer-but-it's-really-too-late, didn't wait for a response, and hurried away. We watched him stumble out. He was dressed in a muted flannel shirt and a buckled bomber jacket, black boots and jeans. Everything looked spanking new, as though he were rehearsing a new look for a new season during a new lifetime. It was a little sad to see those sharp store-bought creases and shiny military boots and careful, unblemished leather. A catalog photo come to life, something out of the winter Eddie Bauer mail-order brochure.

Gracie laughed low and hard, purposely throaty. “We ruined that man's plans for the evening.”

“Which were?” Jimmy asked.

“Being anywhere we three ain't.”

“But why?” I asked.

Jimmy spoke. “Looks like he wants to be where nobody knows him.”

“But why?” I repeated.

“Some people are private.”

“But why?” I said again, grinning.

Gracie examined a broken nail. “I knew I shouldn't have rented that third floor to him. I'm better at screening folks.”

“You rented to Rick,” Jimmy told her.

“He was too good-looking.”

“Thanks. But Gracie, come on. The man is innocent until proven guilty.”

“For God's sake, Rick,” she laughed, “who the hell still believes that?”