The Killing of Bobbi Lomax (7 page)

They could have been at a college party. Almost everywhere he looked there were teenagers or those who looked just like them. Most of them had probably never even thought of the Grim Reaper before, let alone felt his shadow brush so close against them, but death couldn’t silence them and judging by this room it seemed to make them even more intense.

As Marty moved through the rooms he heard them wonder aloud and to anyone who’d listen why someone so young, so beautiful, so
talented
could be taken like that, all the time silently thanking the Lord and any other deity who might be listening that it was Bobbi who was dead, not them, simultaneously promising to live a Good, Honest, God-fearing Life now that they had been spared. Promises that would be forgotten long before Bobbi Lomax was pushing daisies.

Audrey Lomax, sister of Arnold, sister-in-law of Bobbi, was red-eyed, tissue in hand. Audrey said, far from taking refuge someplace else, Arnold couldn’t bear to leave the house, but ‘Poor, poor Arnold couldn’t face sleeping upstairs’ in the bed he’d shared with Bobbi as man and wife, ‘can’t even bear to go upstairs no more’ as images of his life with Bobbi played on permanent rerun in his head. Earlier, she’d found him sleeping in the downstairs guest room, clutching their wedding photo, him and his Bobbi together under the flowered arch he’d had built specially in their garden for their wedding ceremony. Marty looked outside: the arch was there, young thin branches wound around it. But the cold snap had destroyed any sign of flowers.

Marty counted fourteen framed pictures of Bobbi Lomax in the dining room alone. There must have been hundreds of photos scattered around the house. There was a fine line between love and obsession and it looked as if Arnold Lomax had an acute, maybe chronic, and possibly fatal case of one of them.

Arnold Lomax, fifty-six going on eighty-six, shuffled into view, his hair still wet, ruffled from towel-drying. For a moment the room fell silent. Young hands reached out to his sagging shoulders, patting him, urging him onward; accompanying voices were sorry for his loss, many of them breaking and cracking as they uttered barely a word or two. Lomax nodded as he passed, his head bowed down, watching the movement of his barely shuffling feet. Marty thought Arnold Lomax might very well throw himself into the grave currently being dug for Bobbi at Crystal Heights Memorial Cemetery. He knew Al would press hard for answers as this might be their only chance.

Marty was sure that he wasn’t alone in thinking that this display of grief meant that Arnold Lomax was not guilty of the killing of Bobbi Lomax, his wife of three months, nor that of Peter Gudsen, his former business partner, not to mention the maiming and what could be the murder of Clark Houseman – it’s just that sometimes guilt and grief can be the mirror image of one another, especially when mixed with a splash of make-believe.

Marty knew only too well that people with little or no theatrical experience can, overnight, become consummate performers, especially if it’s the only thing separating them from the death penalty. Two days prior, Marty had spoken to Arnold in the street outside the Lomax house. At that stage, until forensics had been all over the house inside and out, Arnold hadn’t been able to go inside and he certainly couldn’t go anywhere near the scorched lawn where his wife’s once desirable body had lain, now grotesquely altered far beyond anything he would have remembered. Marty had thought his shock and grief genuine. Today, as Marty looked around the room, the absence of anyone aged over twenty or so told him that Arnold’s friends had deserted him, along with all of his family except his spinster sister. What Marty wanted to know more than anything else right now was: why was that?

He stepped out onto the patio area at the back of the house. He’d seen a couple of girls he’d recognized as Bobbi Lomax’s bridesmaids from the picture in the newspaper, watched them take a bottle of Coke and a handful of plastic cups and head out back. Coke is nothing without something added. So now might be as good a time as any to join them.

One girl had the vodka bottle half out of her bag when she caught sight of Marty heading straight for them.

‘This a private club,
’
 he said, reaching to take a cup out of the blonde girl’s hand, ‘or can anyone join?’

They knew he was a cop. He’d heard word go around when he and Al had arrived and while he walked around the rooms, waiting for Arnold to appear, the whispers seemed to precede him, followed almost without a beat by the stares. Blondie poured Coke into his cup. The other girl kept her hand on the bottle, deep inside her bag. He took a sip. ‘Tastes kind of weird, lonely somehow, needs a companion, huh?’ He held up the cup, smiled at them. The blonde one smiled back.

‘You on duty?’ she said.

‘Right now?’

She nodded.

He feigned a look at his wristwatch.

‘Looks like the end of my shift. My buddy, in there with Arnold, he’s on duty.’

‘You’re not gonna bust us?’

‘What for? Underage drinking in a state drier than the desert?’

The girls looked wide-eyed at one another and were about to protest their innocence.

‘I think there’s some county by-law says it’s not an offence if your friend just died,’ he said as he pushed the cup toward the dark-haired girl. ‘Or you’re here to pay your respects. And maybe find her killer in the process.’

The blonde girl smiled at him, nudged the other girl’s elbow. ‘Go on Elaine, pour him some. He’s cool.’

Cool
.

Now it was Marty’s turn to smile.

Elaine looked dubiously at him as she poured. He could tell she was still half expecting to get the bracelets on and be shoved into a car headed toward the precinct.

Marty turned around, made sure there was no one else watching them in their tucked-away spot. There wasn’t.

‘To Bobbi.’ Their plastic cups met. ‘To Bobbi.’ The girls swigged, Marty brought his to his lips but didn’t drink from it. They wouldn’t notice. They were on a mission to get loaded, but he had stuff to find out before they did.

‘You gonna ask us questions ’bout her.’

‘About Bobbi?’

‘
’
Course, Bobbi.’

‘Not really,’ said Marty.

‘Don’t you wanna ask us stuff, questions for the investigation and all?’

‘I’ve never been fond of questions,’ said Marty.

The cups were filled again. And before the third go-round of the vodka bottle and the second time he’d refused a refill, Marty had learnt that Shona had been at junior high with Bobbi, and Elaine, the brunette, had known her from back when Bobbi’s mom had been alive and they’d lived right next to each other over on Smith Street. Elaine and Shona had met at a make-up class held over at the community college on Tuesday evenings. They’d invited Bobbi in as their model on a few nights last term, right before the wedding. She’d asked them to be two of her seven bridesmaids and they’d both done her wedding make-up. ‘There weren’t anything out of the ordinary,’ said Shona.

‘She was just the same old Bobbi. But all grown-up and engaged,’ Elaine added.

‘And then married, soon as you know it.’

Elaine was hoping to go out to Hollywood in the spring, train to do make-up for the movies. Bobbi was excited by that. She loved modeling, the little she’d done, and she would have died to become an actress. Elaine caught herself when she said this. Grimaced. ‘You know what I mean.’ Marty nodded.

‘Arnold supported her going off modeling?’ Marty was rolling a cherry menthol. Usually he pre-rolled them for the next day, right around midnight, tucked them into his button-down shirt pocket, but everything had been so crazy the past couple of days, living at the station, it had shot his routine to hell.

‘Oh, he would have been supportive. He adored her. She was his princess.’

‘Queen. I think you’re a queen if you’re married, isn’t that right . . . ?’ Shona nudged Marty, ‘Detective.’

‘Marty.’

‘Detective Marty, isn’t that right?’

Marty shrugged, he didn’t know if princesses became queens or not. He thought it would help if they married a king. But Arnold Lomax was no king. In the wedding picture in that morning’s
Desert News
Bobbi Lomax had worn a tiara and a dress that was whiter than white. Next to her was her newly wedded husband, thirty-eight years her senior. He had worn the desperate smile of a man who had been a king a long time, a man who knew the jig was very probably up.

Liss had worn a tiara once, for her eighth birthday party. He had seen the picture a thousand times. Had it in his wallet. She had been Marty’s little princess, but she had never become a queen.

The girls talked on and on about Bobbi, mostly about how beautiful she was, about how her mom had died so young ’n’ all: thirty-six. Marty didn’t think that was young, just unlucky. Hit and run. Drunk driver. No dad to speak of. They’d caught the driver. That was years back. He was probably out by now. How heartbroken Bobbi had been when Johnny, the school jock she’d been secretly engaged to, had thrown her over for her best friend Melissa-Fay; how she’d started working in Arnold’s office as a clerk on Saturdays and how they’d fallen in love. Both girls said they’d been a bit creeped out by it at first, Bobbi was barely eighteen, but they’d met him and – they both giggled, they were five vodkas in now – turned out Arnold was quite hot for an old guy. Kind of like Tom Selleck. Marty didn’t know so much about old. He thought he might have a few years on Tom. Arnold had told Bobbi he’d been ‘emotionally separated’ from his wife for years, Bobbi was just the catalyst to him divorcing her, not the cause. The divorce was in the papers in one of the salons Shona did a few hours in a week. ‘That bitch made Bobbi out to be some kind of gold-digging tramp. And Arnold out to be some kind of pervert: Bobbi was younger than his own kids, how could he ’n’ all that.’

‘Did you ever meet her?’ said Marty.

‘Mrs Lomax? Never,’ said Elaine.

‘Wouldn’t want to,’ said Shona. ‘After all the mean things she said.’

‘She sat outside here some nights watching them. And if Arnold came outside to ask her what she was doing, she’d just drive away. She said she had friends high up in the Faith and she was going to make him pay. No matter how. That’s why they changed the locks and recoded the alarm.’

‘Did they call the police?’

‘What would they do?’ Shona asked.

‘Their job,’ said Marty.

‘I don’t think Bobbi wanted to make a big deal out of it. She hoped it would all settle down after they got hitched.’

‘And did it?’ said Marty.

‘I think she still came around. Just not as often.’

‘Someone even said they saw her up on the balcony at Mission. At the wedding,’ whispered Elaine, although not as low as she thought.

‘So, the ex-Mrs Lomax thought Bobbi was a gold-digger?’

‘Well, she got it wrong,’ said Elaine mid-glug.

‘Bobbi was no gold-digger, Marty. She liked nice things is all, and Arnold, he loved to spoil her. She was his princess. Queen. She was his queen,’ said Shona.

‘And did he keep on spoiling her?’

‘Never quit.’

‘Bobbi never mentioned anything to you about finances? The company losing money? Arnold being in any kind of trouble?’

‘No.’

‘We hear the funeral’s gonna cost twenty
thousand
bucks.’

‘Elaine!’

‘What!? It’s what I heard. At the salon from Mrs Loudacre, the funeral director’s wife.’

Elaine took the bottle out of her bag again. It was empty. Marty stubbed out his cigarette gently on the brick wall of the porch. Half left for later. The girls were still smoking theirs.

Through the gap at the edge of the net curtains he could see Al getting up and Arnold’s sister moving closer in to her brother on the couch, offering him another tissue as his eyes wandered to his retreat. Behind them two of the Faith’s more devout brethren stepped forward to support him and half walked, half carried him back towards the guest suite.

Marty gave each of the girls his card. Elaine tucked hers into her bag under the empty vodka bottle.

‘Thanks for the cigarettes, Detective Marty Sinclair,’ Shona said, looking at the card. ‘Did she die quick?’ She looked over to where right near the garage the neatly manicured lawn was scorched back to earth and police tape annexed it from its otherwise immaculate surroundings. ‘I can’t bear thinking of her laid there hurting ’til that neighbor found her.’

Marty had read the autopsy report. He doubted Shona knew that it had taken Bobbi Lomax two hours to bleed out. Probably at some stage she’d been able to call out, maybe loud, maybe low, but nobody heard, and if they did they didn’t come until something piqued Mrs Wilson’s curiosity and made her slow down her car and crane her neck as she passed the Lomax house on her way from mid-morning service. He turned to Shona, her anxious eyes looking up at him. He nodded. ‘Yes. It was quick.’

As Marty walked away he heard Elaine ask Shona: ‘Hey, do you think that creep Davey Douglas has any weed?’

He had been there since before lunch. Parked up a good distance, five cars, along from the store. He could watch the people trailing in and out, from up, down and across the street, but there, outside the empty store, in his nondescript car, he knew no one would notice him. He pretended to read the newspaper, but with his eye on his new digital watch and the small notepad in front of him.

The average time spent in there was twelve minutes. Some just a few, others twenty minutes, with only two people arriving whilst someone else had been inside. But that had been the lunchtime rush. Now it was much quieter. He wanted it as quiet as possible. Wanted to ensure that he wasn’t interrupted. The second the old guy in the golf sweater left he would make his way inside. That way, if it all went well, and malicious fate didn’t intervene, he would have them and the store to himself for twelve vital minutes. Or thereabouts. That way there wouldn’t be any diversions that would keep him in there longer than he needed to be or break the spell he needed to cast. More importantly, should it all go wrong there wouldn’t be any witnesses to his failure. People seemed to remember failure as if it were branded into their memories. Part of human behavior, he guessed, to remember the negative, from back in the day when all strangers came with a public health warning and were best killed, rather than befriended, just in case they meant you harm.

Clark looked down at his attaché case on the passenger seat next to him. This wasn’t coins. But it wasn’t an entirely brave new world either. From years secretly building up a respectable collection of literary first editions, he liked to think he knew what he was doing. But, with the forged signature of the author on the title page, Clark knew he would have to navigate his way through the deal like a Zen master whilst wearing the mask of a wide-eyed ingénue.

He didn’t know what they knew about Poe. But he knew what he knew. Most importantly, he knew them. He had to start in a familiar place, a place where he was trusted, rather than a new punk in a new town. But failure here would engender suspicion and doubt. He could afford neither. They could snuff out his plans before the flame even took hold. He smoothed down his tie, picked up his case and got out of the car.

At the jingle of the door’s bell, Clark saw Ron Rook turn around from where he was returning a coin tray to its place amongst the rows of them on his side of the store, where he offered up centuries of domestic and international coins to collectors and gift-givers. The Rooks had been in business since back when Ron’s great-great-granddaddy had built the building and started Abraham City’s first general store.

Clark had been buying and selling coins here for over ten years before Ron and his identical twin, Rod, had taken over the business after their daddy, Ron Snr, had succumbed to a diabetic coma.

Clark was a good customer and an even better seller – he was always greeted with a wide smile, but no handshake. Ron and Rod Rook never shook hands with the customers old or new, despite, or perhaps because, both wore gloves in the store morning, noon and night, from when it opened to when it closed, 9.30 am until 7.30 pm, six days a week. Resting on the Lord’s Day. But even on the Lord’s Day the gloves stayed on. Not white cotton as in the store, but tan leather to match their brogues. For all Clark knew they still had on the white cotton under the tan leather when he would see them at Mission, back in the day when Clark still went to Mission. Even the covers of their antique Bibles were tan leather, as were the patches on their matching tweed hacking jackets. Ron and Rod Rook looked like the men that time forgot. With their neatly groomed moustaches, pince-nez and trim, meticulous appearance they wouldn’t have been out of place in Victorian England.

‘Morning Ron.’

‘Clark, been a while. Where you been?’ said Ron.

‘He’s missed you, for sure, Clark Houseman. There’s holes in his collections. Where
have
you been?’ asked Rod.

‘Oh, you know, keeping busy,’ said Clark. He had been so distracted by his preparation for this that he had let his normal routine go, and almost lost his place in it. He made a mental note to never stray off people’s radar again.

‘Edie had the baby yet?’

‘Next week, Ron, according to the hospital.’

‘May the Prophet guide the child safely into the world,’ said Rod.

‘Amen,’ said Ron from his side of the counter.

Both men looked at Clark.

‘Amen,’ Clark said, hoping it didn’t sound as reluctant as it felt.

Rod took his place behind his counter on the opposite side of the store. His side teemed with religious books and ephemera. The store was divided equally down the middle, flip-sides of different coins, whereas the twins were the flip-side of the same coin.

‘Have you got something for me, Clark? Looks like you have. Some delicious rare coin or other.’ Ron nodded towards Clark’s case.

He knew they trusted him. But he also knew they were fastidious and sharp. Both of which might be his downfall today. Over the years he had sold Ron some of his greatest counterfeited coins and nearly all of his genuine ones. And now this, of all things, had to go right. Be absolutely perfect.

‘Oh, I’ve something, Ron, you’re right about that. But, sad to say, it’s not for you, but for your brother.’

‘Really?’ said Rod. ‘What is it?’

Rod peered over the counter towards the case, like an excited child, as Clark brought it up to rest flat on the glass display cabinets that divided him from the twins. The twins were stood together now, like a mirror image, right opposite where Clark had settled in the book half of the store. They watched expectantly as Clark placed his briefcase on the counter, slowly rolled around the tumblers to the correct numbers, and then clicked open both locks at once. Theatre and suspense were always good for a sale. He propped the lid of the case open and slowly removed something from inside, holding it up, swathed as it was in rolls of white muslin. He began to unwrap it very, very slowly.

‘Is it a book? A pamphlet? A
Bible
?’ said Rod.

‘It is . . .’ Clark hoped the silence would sound like a drum roll. ‘A book. A collection, to be exact.’

Clark held the slim volume up.

‘By an exceptionally important American author.’

Ron looked disappointed. ‘You don’t usually sell books, Clark,’ he said as he peered over his pince-nez.

‘No, you’re usually buying them from me,’ said Rod. ‘I hope that doesn’t change.’

It was true, Clark had spent or traded an inordinate amount of money on Rook’s first editions, ever since he sold his first coin, a forgery, to their father for fifteen hundred dollars when he was just fourteen. The penny Clark had altered had only cost a dollar, and he’d gotten the electro-plater for Christmas. He figured fifteen hundred was a pretty good return on a buck and a few teenage hours spent altering the coin. Collector’s magazines had respected his wish for anonymity and called it ‘an astounding find’. He grinned like the Cheshire Cat for most of the summer until it came time to go back to school. His mother, believing him when he said he’d found the coin on the street, had hidden the $1500 in her sister’s account so his father wouldn’t know there was spare money he could fritter away, or donate to the Faith in a vain attempt to curry favor at Mission. Instead, it had paid for Clark’s dorm the first year of college before he upped and quit, preferring to forge or forage coins than sit in a lecture theatre. He had already wasted a year on his calling for the Faith and didn’t want to waste another moment of his life in another institution.

‘Don’t worry, Rod, I’m still buying, that won’t change. It’s just this was such a special opportunity I couldn’t pass on it – it could be good for all of us.’

Clark handed the volume to Rod, whose gloved hands were already reaching out for it.

‘A collector down in South Carolina, a guy I get a lot of coins from. His grandmother died. He doesn’t know a book from a rhino. He knew I knew something about ’em, so he FedExed all the old-lookin’ ones up to me last week, for my opinion. I didn’t even have time to look at them ’til yesterday evening.’

Rod held the volume in one gloved hand, supporting it, cradling it like a newborn baby, and turned the pages gently with the other. ‘Well, I love Poe, for sure,’ he said. ‘And “The Raven”, first edition. 1845. Wiley & Putnam, of course. I haven’t seen one this fine before. It’s a beauty, Clark.’

And then he saw it, the inscription on the frontispiece. Clark saw a light go on somewhere at the back of Rod’s eyes, his gaze suddenly more focused than before.

‘“Michaelmas, Providence, 1848.”’

Clark could barely watch as Rod picked up his magnifying glass and peered down onto the page.

‘“For My Beloved Sarah – Love. Ever. Yours. Edgar Allan Poe.”’

Rod looked up, trying desperately not to let Clark see how excited he was.

‘How much you looking for, Clark?’

Clark smiled, but before he could answer he heard a woman’s voice outside thanking someone for a lovely lunch and then the familiar door bell jingled behind him as someone entered. He wanted to turn around, to see who it was. If Rod rejected the book, he didn’t want anyone else in the room eavesdropping, remembering faces, details. Failure.

Ron looked up from his cataloguing. ‘Afternoon, Mrs Rose.’

Clark couldn’t help himself. He had to look, it was an unfamiliar name, but it might not be an unfamiliar face. Someone from Jack’s kindergarten? A teacher? He couldn’t remember a Mrs Rose. A mother, perhaps? As he turned the very attractive redhead smiled at him. He nodded.

‘Afternoon, ma’am.’

She smiled a wide smile. ‘Good afternoon.’ She turned back to Ron. ‘And good afternoon to you, Mr Rook.’

‘What may I help you with today?’ said Ron.

‘Just a small gift for Zachary. It’s his birthday Thursday.’

‘Sure, let me see what I can do. He had the 1924 penny last birthday, didn’t he?’

‘He did, what a good memory you have.’

‘Like an elephant,’ said Rod, not looking up from leafing very very slowly through the Poe volume, page by page.

‘Perhaps this time ’25 and ’26, they’re about the same cost total as the ’24 – is that what you’re thinking of, Mrs Rose, a similar spend?’

Ron pulled out a tray and pointed with his gloved hands to the two pennies.

‘I’m sure he’ll love them. Thank you.’

Clark looked over at the coin counter. Mrs Rose smiled back at him. Clark wondered if the ’25 penny was one of the 1923 ones he’d altered last year and sold to dealers far and wide, including Ron. If it was, it was pretty much worthless.

‘Clark, how much you looking to get, did you say?’ said Rod.

Clark turned back to where Rod was still clutching the book. ‘Thirty-three hundred should cover it.’

‘That’s too much for this, Clark. It’s very good to fine.’

‘You just said it was fine,’ said Clark.

‘But it’s got some very small foxing and a tiny amount of sun damage. You know that reduces the value, a lot, even if it’s borderline.’

‘What I do know,’ said Clark, ‘is that Poe spent Christmas in Providence, Rhode Island in 1848 with his fiancée Sarah – and that, as this was his last published book at the time and she was one of his biggest fans, and a fellow poet, this inscription is where the book’s value really is. But if you don’t agree, I got to get the best price for my South Carolina contact, so I’ll have to send it down to Phoenix Books, see what they’d give . . .’

The mention of a rival focused Rod’s mind.

‘Sarah . . . ? The fiancée?’

‘Sarah Helen Whitman. The poet.’

‘Of course. I’d forgotten. Poe was running around with so many women his last year, it’s easy to forget their names.’

What Rod should have said was: I know that, Clark, I’d hoped you’d forgotten, or probably didn’t even know, you being a relative newbie in the collectors’ book trade. Clark moved his hand towards the book, as if to take it from Rod. Rod’s gloved hand moved it an inch or two out of Clark’s reach. Done. Now Clark knew that there was only the deal to be finalized.

‘Twenty-four hundred cash,’ said Rod.

‘How about two thousand cash and twenty-five hundred in first edition trades?’

‘You just said thirty-three hundred.’

‘That was cash, Rod.’

‘Two thousand cash and fifteen hundred in trades.’

‘Two thousand in trades. You know you’ve marked retail up fifty to eighty per cent.’

‘Two thousand, and seventeen fifty in trades.’

Clark nodded agreement.

As Rod took out his cabinet keys, Clark turned to Mrs Rose. ‘Excuse me, ma’am. You might want to pick the 1928. It’s a little pricier, but I hear it’s running scarce, so it might be a better investment for your son, Zachary, is it?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, my son. He’ll be eight.’

‘Something towards college, maybe,’ said Clark.

‘Thank you, sir. That’s kind of you. How interesting about the ’28. May I have a look at that one, Mr Rook?’

‘Sure can.’ Ron handed it to her.

‘How much is this one?’

‘More expensive, almost double. Two hundred and forty-seven dollars, even.’

‘I’ll take it. Why not? Like the gentleman said: it’s an investment.’

Rod Rook finished opening up the first edition and high value cabinets and left Clark to choose whatever he wanted, to a retail value of $1750, while he went out back to the cash safe. It was the trades Clark really wanted, although the cash was good. He had his eye on a couple of the Faith’s early religious pamphlets and a first edition of
The Wind in the Willows
.

Outside on the pavement, Clark watched as the early winter’s snow fell on the city. It had already covered the peaks for a month. The bulky wedge of cash in his inside jacket pocket and the very carefully wrapped volumes in his hand told him, should he have any doubts, that he had done it.