Wabanaki Blues (22 page)

“To justice, for Mia,” he toasts.

“To justice, for Mia,” I echo. A hand brushes mine. No one is near me.

Will taps his temple. “Now that you're working for our side, I feel guilty about tossing your portrait into the landfill after the cops came to the house to grab Mia's yearbook.” He strokes his chin, contemplatively. “I'm surprised I didn't burn it. Fortunately, my work is too good for anyone to trash. One of the locals fished it out of the muck and sold it. I need to buy it back for you.”

“Gee, thanks, Will. Just what I've always wanted, a painting of my glorious face that's been in the dump.”

He bows. “You're welcome.”

Will strolls over to Scales. She and Del have their backs turned to one another. Will tosses an arm around her quivering shoulder. “Bride-y! Mona and I were just saying this is one hell of an engagement party.”

He pours the rest of his magnum bottle of champagne on his slick, axle-grease head and yowls like a wild animal, newly unbound from his chains.

Eighteen

Graffiti Girl

Hartford Police Headquarters appears darker and dirtier than the last time I was here. Perhaps some lights are out, or I'm seeing the place through Del's more critical eyes. The same cop as last time mans the reception desk, rubbing his steel-wool buzz cut. I notice him checking out our guitars.

“You again?' he says. “Don't you have enough to worry about, writing hit blues songs? We checked out the lead you gave us and even the added information from Worthy Dill. We still came up with squat. Bring something fresh and valid to the table and we'll talk.

Del steps in front of me. “I am the victim's son, Delaney Pyne. Is that fresh and valid enough for you?”

I drop my head to my hands. “So much for you staying anonymous.”

The officer practically jumps out from behind the desk and offers his hand to Del. “My name's Mealy, and I'm truly sorry to hear that, kid.” He bangs his fist against his forehead.

“What's wrong?” Del asks.

“We should have solved your mom's case.”

“So why didn't you?”

I put a hand on Del, worried that he's already losing his temper.

Mealy takes my hand off him. “It's all right. I deserve tough talk. Son, what I'm about to say, I will surely regret.” He kisses some saint's medal hanging from his neck. “We botched the evidence in your mom's case.”

Del's lichen eyes transform into Saint Elmo's fire.

Mealy crosses himself. “The janitor who found your mom's corpse tampered with the crime scene.”

“What exactly did he do?” asks Del.

“I'm not sure, exactly. I was a rookie back when it happened, not in the full loop.”

Del rattles the man's shoulder. “How did he get away with it? He could be my mom's murderer!”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. Irving Stone was a decorated veteran of The Gulf War. Trouble was, so was our late chief of police. The two of them were loyal comrades-at-arms.” He scribbles Stone's phone number on a yellow sticky note, hands it to Del, and walks away. “Talk to him. Find out what really happened. But do it soon, before it's too late. He's real sick. Maybe he wants to clear his conscience.”

He turns to Del, “ I should have paid better attention to what your friend had to say. I should have reopened this case. But its easier to live in denial.” He hands Del one of his business cards and writes Stone's number on the back.

Del dials Stone's number. He presses the phone to my ear and huddles with me so we can both hear. A nurse at the Veteran's Administration hospital answers and tells us we can visit Irving Stone right away, and “the sooner the better.” We run red lights the whole way there. Del focuses like a flaming arrow.

“Please let me ask the questions,” I urge. “You may scare Stone into silence.”

“That's fine, as long as I see you making progress.” He remains icy. “This may be it, Mona Lisa, our one and only chance to uncover the truth.”

The signs posted in the hospice wing insist on quiet, and the walls are painted the pinkish-orange of a New England sunset. Yet there is nothing peaceful about Irving Stone's sick room. It smells like a pharmacy, a frat house, and a zoo. The complexity of the scent gives away the severity of his condition.

The nurse who greets us is middle-aged and sturdy. You might say “fat” at first glance but only because she wields every ounce of flesh like a barricade, blocking Del and me from seeing Stone until we've signed in. Of course, Del doesn't write his real name. He wants to meet Stone anonymously.

Sometimes you lie.

Irving Stone is a tissue-paper ghost of a man. He pushes his body up into a sitting position, like he's a kid hoisting open a heavy garage door. “Greetings, Ms. LaPierre and Mr. Woods.”

I roll my eyes over Del's chosen pseudonym. “Greetings, Mr. Stone,” I say for both of us. “We're researching the Mia Delaney case and hope you can shed some light on the subject.”

Stone signals his nurse to leave—which she does grudgingly. He tries to clear his throat in order to speak, but fails. His blue-spotted hand reaches for a short paper cup of water—the kind found in dentist's offices and kindergartens—but he can't grasp it on his own.

“Allow me to help you, Mr. Stone,” I say, assisting him with his drink, even though I know that he may be a well-camouflaged monster.

After taking a sputtering sip, Irving speaks to us through faintly purple lips, his rumpled eyelids fluttering, “Of course they ruled Mia's death an accident. They figured she got locked in the basement unintentionally. Maybe some kids were fooling around, locking doors, and didn't know she was there. There were no wounds, no harm done to the body. But you must already know those technical details from your research. Right?”

“Right, right,” urges Del.

Stone pulls himself away from him, toward me. “One of the students told me it was that motorcycle bastard boyfriend of hers who did it. He was the one who locked her up in my closet.”

“I think we both know that's not the real story,” says Del, leaning into Irving's bed aggressively, like he's prepared to squeeze the last teaspoonful of life out of the old man if that's what's necessary to get him to admit to Mia's murder. “I think you locked her in. You had the keys.”

“No! That's just it. I didn't have them. They weren't hanging on my key rack that Friday.”

“That sounds pretty convenient.”

“Not for me. The principal gave me a bad mark on my personnel file and laid me off. I was the first to go with the city cutbacks.”

Stone's fists tighten beside his emaciated cheeks and his eyes widen into a silent scream. He is obviously remembering some terror, perhaps his own violent actions in the war or something worse.

He stutters, “If it hadn't been for the school board and their budget cuts, I would have been working at Colt as a janitor that summer. I would have found Mia in time. Damn those budget cuts. Damn them.”

I try to prop Stone back up on his drool-stained pillow, to help him take another drink, to keep him talking. His eyes drift in different directions as if he is having another flashback, or a spell, or his heavy medication is taking its toll. He appears to have lost track of his surroundings.

I try to bring him back. “Tell me what Colt High was like back then.”

Stone's hands clap in recognition as if everything has realigned. “Poor Millicent Dibble! I felt terrible for her during the investigation.” His voice fades. “If it weren't for her rheumatism, she'd have never found herself in the center of that messy murder.”

“Dibble was principal when Mia Delaney died?”

“Yes, indeed. She had been a music teacher and was promoted when Principal Wheeler retired. It was more charity than promotion. Her fingers were no longer nimble enough to play her music very well.”

The revelation that Dibble was principal at the time of Mia's murder is only overshadowed by the news that she was once a music teacher.

“What instruments did she play?” I ask, spilling the remaining contents of his water cup on the floor.

Irving sways, remembering some absent tune. “She played keyboard and a mean axe. It was sad, what happened to her.”

Del rubs his bad leg from standing still for so long. I'm being insensitive with this digression but I can't help it. “Could she sing? Did she write music? Did she have her own band? Was she any good?”

Irving slips down on his pillow, flustered by my barrage of questions. He needs help to sit up again, to remain alert. But I'm afraid to grip his arm. Red marks remain on his skin from the last time I helped him. I worry his nurse might accuse me of abuse.

Del grabs him and hoists him up, refocusing the questioning. “What did the janitor's closet look like when you first found Mia's body?”

Irving re-settles himself. “That's the foolish part. I was determined to be the perfect worker when they brought me back at the end of August, so they could never lay me off again. I headed back to that school, ready to make it shine. I was focused on that one goal.” Stone makes a weak fist. “That's why, when I saw the graffiti all over my closet walls, I attacked it with a vengeance. I couldn't believe somebody had broken into my office and made such a mess. I assumed the vandal was the same person who took my keys.”

“Graffiti? What did it say?” Del hulks over the man's bed. I'm leaning in, exactly the same way.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid me!” Irving beats the bed. “I hate myself for what I did next. I'm so sorry, so very sorry.” Stone grows visibly weaker. A full deathbed confession appears to be cresting on the crusty edges of his purple lips. Del kneads his fists while Stone slobbers drool down his neck. “You'll hate me when I tell you what happened.”

Del's fists clench so tight his entire body quakes. I reach out and hold his hands with all my strength.

Stone's face loses all tension as if he's letting go of something painful. “You see, I began washing the walls without bothering to read what was on them. I was nearly done cleaning before I spotted that skeleton face peeking out from what I thought was a pile of rags on the floor. I might not have noticed it at all if that face hadn't been wriggling with maggots.”

This image makes me weak. I've always pictured Mia as perfect, even in death, a fairy tale princess in a glass coffin. The vision of Mia reduced to a rotting corpse sickens me.

“What was written on those walls?” asks Del, still firm.

“That's just it. I don't know. I went into shock when I saw the body. It wiped my mind clean. That information has never come back to me, not since I saw Mia. My buddy the police chief said if I told anyone I washed the walls I'd be fired from my job. He kept that information out of the police record.”

My hand falls over my nose. “Didn't you smell the decomposing body as soon as you entered the room?”

“No ma'am,” shrugs Irv. “I got no sense of smell. I lost it in an accident back in the army. I figured it was a blessing when I started scrubbing toilets and mopping up kids' puke for a living, after I came home from Iraq.”

Del rips into the conversation. “Can't you remember even one word of what was written on that wall?” His words are frostbitten and demanding.

“No sir, not a thing, except that it was written in reddish-brown, like dried blood.” Irving turns to the side of his bed and vomits into a bag. He gags and has trouble catching his breath. I instinctively reach for the nurse's emergency button. Before I touch it, he comes back to us, sitting up on his own, revived.

“Oh my God!” He pokes a finger toward the ceiling. “I remember something. For the first time since that day, I remember. One of the words on that wall had something to do with a bug.”

“A bug?” My mind races to fill in the blanks. “Like an ant, or a bumblebee, or a beetle or…a cricket?”

Irving slaps his head with the sheet, clearly relieved. “Yes, that's it! A cricket! After all these years I remember. Bless you, youngsters!” He waves us in for a hug.

But Del can't move. His eyes are pogoing around the room, putting it all together. “Mr. Stone,” he asks, “who claimed to have seen Mia leave with Will?”

“I don't recall,” says Stone.

Del pulls out Mealy's card and phones him. “Hey Mealy, it's Del Pyne. What was the name of the student who claimed to see Mia leave with Will?

There is a silent pause while he listens.

“So it was Cricket Dill.” Del's face inflames. “Thanks, Mealy. I think I'm onto something. We'll talk soon.”

“We're going to the Dill house.” He turns to Stone, “Good-bye and thank you, sir. You may have just solved the Mia Delaney case.”

“I don't think it's a good idea for us to go there, Del.”

“Probably not. But I already know where the Dill home is located. The address for Beetle's house was linked to your Bonepile website by some stalker fan. It's your choice whether or not you want to join me.”

“Can you at least explain why we are going there?”

“I want to confront Cricket before she has time to lawyer up, to see the look on her face and hear what she has to say, for myself. I want to catch her off guard.”

***

We carry our guitars to the front door of the green glass house with steel trim. Our cover story is that Del's just another musician friend, stopping by to jam with Beetle. Del strangles Angel's neck while we wait on the Dills' doorstep.

Mrs. Dill cracks open her money-green glass door and begins her strange adolescent ritual of putting a stray blond hair behind her ear and fiddling with her hemline before saying a word. It's as though I possess super invisibility powers that work on her for a good ten seconds every time we meet. Now that I know she is responsible for Mia Delaney's death, her ritual appears sinister.

After my ten seconds of oblivion is up, she speaks as though interrupted in the middle of an important task. “My goodness, Mona. It's you. I thought you were still up in the boondocks of New Hampshire. Beetle was expecting Rasima to come by today, not you.” Mrs. Dill drops her eyelids in the direction of Del's guitar. “Are you another musician?”

“Yes, Beetle invited him to our band practice,” I reply, resolved not to respond emotionally to anything she says. The stakes are too high.

Del can't hold it in any longer. “I've heard a lot about you, Mrs. Dill.”

She raises her finely penciled eyebrow, “From whom, may I ask?”

“Irving Stone, the old janitor at Colt High. He says your name was written on the walls of the janitor's closet where Mia Delaney died.”

Cricket mimes the words, “My name?” She flattens an imperceptible wrinkle on her blouse and nearly loses her balance as she reaches for her hem.

“Mom, who's at the door?” shouts Beetle from behind. He appears, dressed in an ice-blue polo. As soon as he sees us, his deep licorice eyes turn to sludge. “Mona, I recognize this guy from the Winnipesaukee Powwow.” He turns to Del. “You're Del Pyne, the guy who stole Mona away from me at the Farewell Dance.”