The Morgue and Me (15 page)

I was thinking these thoughts when I pranced into the office, wondering what new nooks and crannies I could search for clues. It was a Wednesday morning, when Dr. Mobley had his pediatric hours on the second floor. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that he would be there until I saw him sitting on the sofa, weeping quietly.

His fingers glistened with tears as he pulled them from his face. He stared absently at me with red-rimmed eyes. Something about the whole scene scared the crap out of me.

“Are you okay, sir? I mean, Doctor?”

I don’t think he even heard me.

He just said, “My wife died last night.”

His voice stayed neutral, like he was giving me a half-interested opinion on the color of my shirt. He must have been up all night and cried himself empty.

“I’m so sorry, Dr. Mobley. Should I . . . would you like to be alone? Or if there’s anything I can do—”

“She bought us this couch,” he said, picking up like I hadn’t spoken a word.

He spread his hands across the tattered, mangy fabric. It might have been blue years ago, but the color had leached out and left only the rumpled gray disaster that Dr. Mobley sat on.

“After I graduated from medical school—we’d been married six months. Our first proper piece of furniture.” The couch was beaten by age like so many things in the office, but he ran his fingers deep into the cushions, clutching at memories.

He’d been a boogeyman to me all summer, and there he was, a frail and brittle old guy, wrecked by grief over his wife. It was so sad I wanted to puke.

The phone rang then and Dr. Mobley tried feebly to push himself up. It would take him an hour to get around to the desk. In that moment, I would have run a marathon if Dr. Mobley had asked me to—getting the phone was the least I could do.

“Medical examiner’s office,” I said.

“Is this . . . Christopher?”

“Uh, yeah.” I recognized his voice right away, and it made me more uneasy than Dr. Mobley’s news.

“Tim Spencer here.” He sounded unduly flustered by the fact that he was speaking to me. Maybe he didn’t know I was working in the morgue, but that seemed improbable. “Actually, I may have to—no, well, forget that for now. Is the doctor there?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, trying to keep the wariness out of my voice.

Dr. Mobley leaned against the desk, breathing with exertion. I handed him the phone as he made his way around.

“Yes?” Dr. Mobley said. “Yes, thanks for calling back. We need to talk. But hold on, hold on.” The doctor settled behind the desk. A measure of life had returned to his eyes, now gazing at me firmly. It was pretty clear what he wanted.

“I’ll just . . . leave you then,” I said. I was probably supposed to add something about his wife being in my prayers or whatever the right catchphrase is, but it was all too much.

On my way out, Dr. Mobley spoke darkly across the line. “No, just a second . . . Yes, okay, now he’s go—”

The door clicked shut and the rest of the conversation was lost to me.

 

 

I can’t even say how much it disturbed me. I’d convinced myself that the sheriff was behind the whole thing. I’d been ignoring the signals pointing to Tim, hoping that he hadn’t really eaten lunch with Dr. Mobley that day. But now I knew it wasn’t a coincidence.

It wasn’t like Dr. Mobley needed to talk to the police very much. He’d only done two other autopsies all summer, and neither had involved any foul play. The place wasn’t exactly teeming with matters of forensic importance.

It was bad enough that Tim and Mobley were talking, but on top of it, Tim had been so awkward. Obviously, neither of them wanted me hearing the first word of their conversation. Yeah—Tim Spencer was knee-deep in this mess.

At home, my dad was reading an old leather book (as usual) in the kitchen, his feet splayed out in front of him and his head lost in some ancient world of Roman heroes. A tempting glass of lemonade dripped onto the table. I got one of my own and sat down with him, pressing the cool glass to my forehead. It didn’t do much for my worries about Tim, but it took my temperature down a little.

The thrumming of the dryer pulsed through the kitchen as my mom bustled in from the laundry room. “I found those clothes of yours,” she said, holding up the shirt I’d worn the night before. I’d tossed it in with the laundry when I got home—not noticing, until just now, the prominent tear across the shoulder. Thanks, Snaggletooth.

The slack my mom had cut me the day before was long gone. She was in a state. “Christopher, it’s so dirty. And look at this.” She pushed her hand through the hole, amazed at the destruction I had wrought. “What did you
do
last night? Gwen said you deserted Julia at the party.”

“I wasn’t really with her in the first place, Mom.”

“Where’d you go?” my dad said idly, turning a page.

The dryer stopped and left us in silence. “I left with Mike. The party was kind of lame.”

My mom held my shirt out again, like it was a sick baby. “And your
clothes
?”

“Oh, well, this guy sort of tried to beat us up.”

“Oh, Christopher, you got into a fight?”

“Not really. It was just this weird guy. It’s no big deal.”

My mom peered at me, closer and closer, and then came around for a look at my cheek. Maybe it hadn’t cleared up as well as I thought.

“Oh, dear,” she said, and I almost expected her to reach for the Scotch. She stood there, arms crossed, eyebrows raised to my dad, when I got a reprieve from the doorbell. Just in time.

I was just getting back to the lemonade—placing more and more faith in its calming powers—when my mom returned from the door. Flushed face, bulging eyes. Something wasn’t good.

My dad put his book down for the second time in two minutes. “Dear, what is it?”

“Well,” my mom said, in a
funny-you-should-ask
kind of way. “Timothy Spencer is on our porch. On official business, he tells me. And he would very much like to talk to Christopher.”

H
e was hunkered on our front steps, one foot up on the porch and his hat over his knee. In the driveway, the sun glared off his patrol car’s windshield, obscuring a form in the passenger’s seat. I hesitated at the screen door—I couldn’t fathom what this was going to be about.

Tim gave me a subdued nod. “Heya.”

“Hi, Tim.”

He played with his hat, waiting for me to join him on the porch. Slowly, I walked the plank out to him; that’s what it felt like anyway. “So, Christopher. I’m here about Abigail Shales.”

He said it in that flat cop voice. Icy and removed, portending doom. He wasn’t fondly remembering the times we threw the football around in his backyard, that was for sure.

I shut the front door behind me, buying time, hoping that our conversation wouldn’t carry into the kitchen. “Yeah? Abigail Shales?”

“Look, don’t be scared,” Tim said, but I was not in a frame of mind to be assuaged. My mind did corkscrews, trying to connect Tim with Abby.

Is he the one driving the silver car? The one following her . . . the one who followed me, too?
It was the only thing that really made sense.

“All I want is a little information, okay? Just tell me first: Were you at Abigail Shales’s home last night with Mike?”

This interview felt like sinking in quicksand—or what sinking into quicksand looks like on cartoons and old Tarzan movies. Uncomfortable, at any rate. Sinews popped on Tim’s forearm as his fingers played across the top of his hat. Whatever this visit was about, it couldn’t be good that he knew about us being at Abby’s house. Maybe he’d been staking it out or something—maybe he saw the whole thing. It was becoming impossible to believe that Tim didn’t know every last thing about Mitch Blaylock’s murder.

“Uh, what does it matter?”

“Don’t worry, okay? This’ll be over in a minute.” A hint of annoyance—maybe more than a hint—threaded through his words. “I just need to ask you a couple questions about last night. So you were there, right?”

A trickle of sweat ran a slimy path down my ribs.
There’s no denying it. You haven’t done anything wrong—just tell the truth and keep yourself out of trouble.

Then the door of the patrol car opened and a pair of legs swung to the pavement. Sheriff Harmon got out and rested his elbow on the roof, staring me down from the driveway.

“Christopher?” Tim insisted.

“No.”

Tim stopped fiddling with his hat. “No what?”

“No, I wasn’t at Abigail Shales’s house last night. Who is she, anyway?”

I thought I might black out from the nerves. Somewhere in Indiana, my galloping pulse was setting off a seismograph.

“Look, here’s the deal,” Tim said. “Abigail Shales has gone missing.”

Gone missing!
I was committing perjury or whatever to save our investigation, and now Tina and I would never find out what Abby knew.

“A neighbor saw you at her house last night.”

“Hmmm.” At that point, it was a struggle just to stay in control of myself. The sheriff caressed his stubble as he watched on from the driveway. The interview had turned into a full-on, out-of-body experience. “Sorry,” I said, “but whoever it is, they’re wrong.”

Tim pinched his eyes. He didn’t bother hiding his frustration anymore. “Christopher. C’mon. This is really serious.”

We’d never had hard words before. I’d worshiped him for years, and part of me couldn’t let it go—his disappointment hit me with a slap of shame.

“Are you saying she went missing last night?” I stalled. Tim nodded, but it didn’t make sense. Everybody knows they don’t look into these things until twenty-four hours have passed. “That was only a few hours ago. How do you know she’s even really gone?”

Tim sighed. “There was an altercation at her house last night. Some people on her street heard it. But I’m sure that’s not news to you because they saw two kids leaving in a Porsche around that time, and I know that could only be you and Mike. Her husband came to the hospital last night. He needs her, and she’s gone.”

I was trying to swallow the news—trying to force it down and figure out some way it didn’t spell huge trouble for me, and Mike, and Mitch—when the sheriff pushed off the car and headed toward the porch. Tim saw him coming.

“So this is it, Christopher. We’ll just forget what you said before. Now tell me what happened at that house last night.”

“I wish I could,” I said. “But I don’t even know who that lady is.” Below us, the sheriff grasped the railing to the front steps.

“How we doin’?” he said in his cavernous voice.

“All done,” Tim said, and glared at me as he retreated down the steps.

 

 

My mom was lying in wait for my return.

She’d stationed herself on the farthest edge of the living room sofa, while her foot tapped against the hardwood floor with the ferocity of a speed-metal drummer’s. My dad gave her calming pats on the back while he spoke with an airline operator, confirming that they’d have vegetarian meals for their flight. I needed to get in touch with Mike fast—Tim and the sheriff were probably on the way to his house right then.

“Well . . . ?” my dad said as he hung up.

“It was nothing,” I said quickly.

My mom was dubious at best. “Nothing?”

“Yeah, I guess somebody saw that guy picking the fight with us. They just wanted to be sure we were okay.”

She inched back on the sofa, letting an ounce of tension ease from her hair-trigger nerves. My dad hummed, noncommittal. They looked almost as frustrated as Tim had, and it tempted me to ease their nerves further with another heap of lies about how totally fine and sunny my life was going.

“Christopher,” my dad said, “you’re getting into a lot of . . . situations here. That’s what concerns your mother and me. We’re leaving tomorrow, you know.”

“I know. It was nothing, seriously. I’m gonna go read, okay?”

They were mumbling to each other as I raced up the stairs.

 

 

“You gotta do something for me.”

“What?”

“Lie to the cops.”

“That’s my specialty,” Mike said. “What about?”

I made sure my bedroom door was locked and spoke softly into my cell, even though I knew my parents were still downstairs, trying to decide how much of a delinquent their son had become and whether shipping me off to the Marines was the only option left. “Last night,” I told Mike. “You gotta tell them we weren’t at Abby’s house.”

A long silence darkened the connection. “Are you serious?” Mike said finally.

“Tim Spencer and the sheriff just grilled me about it. Somebody saw a car like yours at their house, but I told them I didn’t even know who Abby Shales was. Can you back me up?”

“Why would you lie about
that
?” Now Mike was getting hysterical, too—the one person I could count on to stay calm no matter what. I wanted to stuff him and my parents in a car and send them to a day spa. They could take mud baths and stop worrying about me while Tina and I wrapped up the case and restored order to Petoskey. They’d get back just in time for the parade, where the mayor would give us the key to the city and proclaim our greatness.

“I had to,” I said. “I told you, Tim and the sheriff are behind this somehow. They didn’t come here to do their police duties—they’re trying to make sure the murder stays covered up. If they know we’re on to them, who knows what they’ll do.”

“But what if they
didn’t
do it? No offense or anything, but it’s just slightly possible that you’re wrong. I mean, I do love screwing with the police and all, but this is kind of hard-core.”