Left Field Page 10

  Instead of sitting next to me, she took a seat in front of me, so she and her hairdo could turn and keep talking with Sorrel. The both of us got a load of her perfume which incredibly cut through the horrible funeral home deodorizer. Floral and musk together. Emeraude maybe?

  The last people to come in were the Briggses, who owned the Happy Van. I was pleased to see them.

  Leaving Sorrel and Shirlene Cord to flirt with each other—and my purse pointedly on my seat—I went over to talk to the Briggses. After a moment of small talk, I said, “So you guys knew Abigail?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Vivian Briggs, who spoke with an appealing sibilance, on account of a small gap between her front teeth. “She did casework for DeMedHo, you know. We saw some of the same patients. We reported all of our DeMedHo work to her. Fine, fine woman.”

  “Exactly how does DeMedHo work, anyway?”

  She explained that the department was run very simply, without a lot of paperwork, which enabled the program to help people directly.

  “From what I understand, it’s been a godsend for lots of needy people,” I said. The Briggses nodded.

  “It’s a lot of work,” said the doctor, “but it’s more rewarding than anything I’ve done.” Organ music started up, and I went back to my seat. Sorrel and I scanned the backs of everybody’s heads.

  I drilled into Carmen’s especially. At one point, apparently feeling it, she turned around. The look she returned to me would have bent a crowbar.

  14

  The next morning over coffee and my notebook, I gave some more thought to Carmen. I’d joined the team at the Hop Inn after the funeral, but didn’t learn anything much, besides the fact that the owner of the Hop Inn likes to have drunken women hanging around. I didn’t know whether Sorrel had checked out Carmen’s alibi. I didn’t know who knew what. I reasoned that even if she had an alibi, she could have hired some asshole to whack Abby. But if so, it probably wasn’t somebody with a record, given the lack of a print match. Or it was, and they used gloves, and the prints on the bat had nothing to do with the murder.

  That was a good point, but maybe I was overcomplicating it. Whoever’s prints were on the bat had to be the killer’s.

  I phoned Ricky at the Journal and told him what I had so far. He loved the Blair and Donna stuff, and suggested that if Abby’s murder investigation fizzled out, I could do a story like “High-End Squatters of Detroit.” That was encouraging.

  Then he said, “So you met Shirlene Cord.”

  “Yeah, she’s a trip.”

  “She is. From hairdresser to city department head in a single bound.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t know anything about her?”

  “I—just that she founded DeMedHo, like from nothing. I thought she must have worked for some other city agency first…I don’t know.”

  Ricky laughed. “She was the hairdresser for the wives of the mayor’s bodyguards. The bodyguards—or hell, their wives—did the mayor some special favor, I presume. And suddenly Shirlene Cord is on the city payroll, and a minute later, the mayor’s holding a press conference announcing this thing called DeMedHo.”

  “Yeah?” I reached for my notebook and pen.

  “She steamrolled the whole thing into existence—with herself as the head of course. I was just looking at a story we ran about that, and I’m remembering that Abigail Rawson was instrumental in the early stages. Mind you, we never got anything solid on the influence of the bodyguards; I’d love to be able to bring that out someday. Anyway, I think Shirlene needed a legitimate face for the agency, and Abigail had creds—she had the degrees and some experience. She’d worked in mental services, and when she heard somebody in the city was devising this thing that eventually got called DeMedHo—this groundbreaking, no-red-tape program for the homebound—she must have been interested. So she helped Shirlene sell it to the mayor and council, and she went to work there.”

  “I see.”

  “Maybe some friction developed between them,” Ricky said.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Well, keep on it.”

  A minute after we hung up, Flora called. She’d been bitten by the gardening bug after she’d talked some more with Blair, and she wanted my help.

  I hadn’t seen Domenica in a while. I picked up a sack of White Castles on the way, knowing she liked them for lunch. I know a lot of people who scorn White Castle. I don’t get it. They’re decent burgers really. Eat enough of them, and you’ll get full.

  Flora greeted me with her usual verve. “Oh, welcome, Madame Detective! Ha! White Castles! Our favorite guilty pleasure!”

  Domenica, up in her room, looked remarkably thin. More than that, she was subdued; nothing cheered her up—not me, not the hamburgers. Quite a change since the last time I’d seen her, which I realized was more than a week ago. “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” she mumbled. “Never better.”

  “It’s stuffy in here.”

  Flora said, “She doesn’t want the window open anymore.” Then she gave me a funny look.

  “Well, what’s wrong?” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “She’s on a hunger strike,” Flora said.

  “What?”

  “I am not,” said Domenica. “I’m just not hungry.”

  “What’s the matter, Domenica?” I asked. “Does your stomach hurt?”

  She shook her head.

  Flora said, “Dr. Briggs has been in, and he’s not really sure what’s going on, other than, well—”

  “Old age!” interjected her mother.

  “Maybe you should see somebody else,” I suggested. “You know, a doctor with a real office or something.”

  “I like Dr. Briggs.”

  Flora and I made somewhat strained small talk while we ate our hamburgers. Then we left Domenica in her throne, where she liked to doze, and went out to the backyard.

  I said, “You’re really worried about her.”

  “Yes. It’s like she’s…disengaging.”

  “She’d been doing so well, I thought.”

  “Yes! Dr. Briggs was keeping tabs on her, and Viv was working with her on some physical therapy, working on her upper-body strength. She was moving around pretty well—for her anyway.”

  “She’s in a decline.”

  We stood viewing the horrendously overgrown yard.

  “What do you suppose triggered it? She’s always been so excited to see you, for instance. I talked to Dr. Briggs yesterday. I mean, she’s eighty-two years old, all right, and she has issues. The heart’s weak; the lungs aren’t so healthy either. He just says, well, at her stage of life…”

  “But isn’t this,” I said, “a little sudden? It just feels—wrong. I would expect such a decline to be more gradual. But hell, what do I know? Is she depressed, do you think?”

  “Well, she seems so. I don’t know. Actually I think she’s afraid. I caught her mumbling to herself, something about having to guard against somebody. I think it has to do with Dr. Briggs. She’s not afraid of him; I think he was cautioning her about something or someone, and maybe she misunderstood. I can’t imagine he was deliberately trying to frighten her.”

  “And you can’t get her to another doctor?”

  “She doesn’t want to go.”

  “Well, I wonder what in God’s name happened.” Flora just stood there, so after a minute I said, “Come on. Let’s put in a garden!”

  The Pomeroys’ yard looked so Pleistocene.

  “How long have you guys neglected this?” I asked as we picked our way through the little open ground that remained.

  Flora was vague. “The neighborhood association’s ticked at us, but you know? There’s beauty to all this, isn’t there? I mean, who’s to say what’s pretty and what’s not?”

  “I admit you have a philosophical point. But you could hide a pack of timber wolves in here.”

  I figured I could charge Flora $25 or $30 an hour for whatever chopping, digging, and seed
ling planting she required. When you’re a freelancer you always have to balance between jam today and jam tomorrow. This was jam today. My work for Ricky Rosenthal at the Journal was definitely jam tomorrow. If ever.

  Flora pointed to an open space a few yards from the back door. “I think that would do, don’t you?”

  “Well, it’d get sun, but if you fill up that area with plants, you still at least need a path to it. Plus, frankly, all these weeds would keep blowing their seeds all over.”

  We decided that before tilling any dirt, I’d clear the yard of everything but the mature trees and the best shrubs.

  I found some tools in the garage and ran to the store for a pair of work gloves. I started in with the old-fashioned weed cutter, a modified scythe with serrated teeth. I swung it like a golf club, swish-swish through the knee-high weeds, which fell in satisfying clumps. The tools were in decent condition; whoever had used them last must have wiped them down with oil. No rust.

  Then I used a pair of lopping shears to cut down the bigger stuff—the saplings and rogue shrubs.

  I thinned the gnarled junipers that grew right up to the house wall, the stuff that had been so troublesome to the roof guy. I slashed and chopped, at times even using a saw to cut some tough pieces off at the ground. It was sweaty work, and Flora came out with a pitcher of water. I drank almost the whole thing at once. I raked and dragged debris into piles, figuring I could get Lou to help me haul it away. Maybe the giraffes at the zoo could use some fodder.

  As I worked I thought of Jackie, and I thought I should challenge Carmen somehow.

  I found myself enjoying the physicality of the work: the chopping and squatting and hauling. It felt good to be doing something so simple and useful. Talk about tangible results. I had my orange cap to keep the sun off my face.

  The day was fine, and as I harvested the wild, useless bounty, I smelled the sharp, herbal “What the fuck just happened?” aroma of plants cut down, their hearts and juices open to the air.

  There were thistles and dandelions and chicory, even goldenrod. There were exotic ornamentals I’d never seen before. I mused on our pastoral, ancestral past, when my weed cutter thumped into something oddly soft.

  I pulled away the cut brush and saw a peacock-blue leather purse lying on its side. Its zipper was shut. There was a shoulder strap on it.

  I knew better than to touch it.

  I phoned Jackie and said, “What did Abby’s purse look like?”

  “Why?”

  “Just—please.”

  Slowly, she said, “Her everyday one was a blue one, kind of midsize.”

  “Peacock blue? Shoulder bag?”

  “Yes.”

  My heart all but popped out of my chest. “OK, I gotta go. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”

  I stood back and looked for footprints. The dirt here was soft, but I didn’t see any. I was standing perhaps twenty-five yards from where Abigail Rawson’s body had been.

  So the killer had flung the bat one way and the bag the other? Had it been rifled? I couldn’t tell. It would be typical for a thief to go through a stolen handbag for valuables, then ditch it.

  So the random-mugging theory was gaining traction. Yet—why kill her with the bat? An unarmed woman at night, or evening time anyway—why bash her head in, and why here? Maybe she had resisted handing over her purse. Wham.

  ----

  Lieutenant Sorrel himself arrived, toting a forensic kit. His face was purple with anger. “How did those guys miss this?” he said.

  “Well, it is pretty thick here.”

  He muttered, sweating, as he worked opening the kit and eyeballing the purse, “You’re supposed to search the area. You’re supposed to comb through the immediate area. If the murder weapon’s within a fucking hundred feet, you’re supposed to fucking find it. If the victim’s ID is within a fucking hundred feet, you’re supposed to fucking find it.”

  He carefully lifted the purse, bagged it, and checked around for footprints, as I had done. He didn’t see any either.

  ----

  I got in touch with him the next day.

  “Abigail’s purse, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Prints?”

  He sighed, frustrated. “Only hers.”

  “Really?”

  “The purse was intact. Her wallet was in it. Her money was there, her ID, credit cards, a silver pen.”

  “Gosh. Well, could there have been prints on, like, the strap or something that got washed away during the thunderstorm the night before?”

  “Her prints were found all over the bag and its contents. It was sheltered there, under the bushes, and so close to the house. And it wasn’t leather, it was vinyl, which is easier to work with. If somebody else had handled that bag, their prints should have been on it. Even partials.”

  “So she threw it there herself?”

  “Before or after she was murdered?” Man, he was pissed off.

  I said, “I’m just…trying to figure…why the—”

  “As soon as you figure it out, let me know.”

  I’d never had a cop say that to me before. I knew it was rhetorical, but still.

  15

  The Grinders were starting to practice twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, with games on Sunday nights. Tonight was Thursday; I was a Grinder; I went to practice. I pulled Mercedes aside in the parking lot. “When are they gonna do the fingerprinting?”

  “I think everybody’s gone in already.”

  “You haven’t heard of anyone refusing?”

  “No. You can check with that detective. What’s on your mind?”

  “What do you think of Carmen as a suspect?”

  “I’m suspicious as hell of her,” Mercedes said. “But if she gave her prints voluntarily, she must be clear.”

  “Unless she got somebody else to do it.”

  “God, yeah.”

  I was surprised to see the Happy Van pull into the parking lot and trundle down to the end, which was even with the third-base line. It stopped.

  I gestured toward the van. “Do you happen to know what they’re doing here?”

  “Oh, yeah. They’re Christy’s parents.” She busied herself with her clipboard and practice sheets.

  “The Briggses? I didn’t know that.” I glanced over at Christy, who had lined up the bats and balls next to the bench and now was fussing with the water jug and cups.

  “Abby helped get her involved with the team. She was kind to Christy. I think she let her help with little jobs from time to time. Christy’s a little…different, you know.”

  “No shit. I’ve seen her laughing to herself, and when I ask what’s funny, she ducks her head, and her eyes go sort of unfocused. She’s not so great at saying complete sentences either.”

  “Right,” said Mercedes. “Well, she managed to get a driver’s license, and she lives in her own apartment, so I guess she’s got a fair level of independence. She’s actually quite intelligent—brilliant with numbers, for instance. She’s just extremely awkward. I don’t know if she’s got one of those syndromes or what.”

  “Does she work?”

  “Yeah, she does the bookkeeping and billing for the Happy Van. So it’s pretty convenient for all of them.”

  “I see.”

  “Uh-huh. Viv and the doc like to show up at the odd practice, and they always come to our games. I kind of like having them around, in case of injury, you know.”

  “I didn’t see them last week.” Our first game had been at Clark Park in Mexican Town. My first time at bat, I drew a walk, then managed to steal second and third, even with the no-leadoffs rule. Then I scampered home on a bunt by Risenda, our second-base woman. I struck out the rest of the time, but I’d gotten such cred already that it didn’t matter. No Grinder ever had stolen third, I was informed. Jackie pitched well, and caught a couple of hot line drives with thrilling grace. We won nine to four.

  “They were there,” said Mercedes.

  “Oh. Cool.”<
br />
  The affinity between Jackie and me grew stronger, in the form of high-frequency electricity that caused us to need to meet each other’s eyes as often as possible, from any distance on the ballfield, near or far. The eye contact served as a discharge valve for the electricity, which built up relentlessly between periods of eye contact.

  I don’t suppose it was all that noticeable, unless you were looking for it.

  And Carmen was. She gave me the evil eye nonstop, whenever she could get me to look at her. She glowered like nobody ever glowered before, I’m quite sure. I almost started to enjoy it. You know that feeling of having influence over someone? Boy, did I have it over her.

  Though I’d become known as the fastest base runner, my hitting still sucked. I looked forward to our next game, when I could try to hit without Carmen squatting malevolently behind me.

  An idea had hit me: if somehow Carmen got the concept that the police (or I) were on to her—maybe already had gotten some incriminating evidence against her—perhaps she’d flee or do something else out of the ordinary that would indicate guilt.

  I had seen this work on police TV shows.

  Carmen’s over-the-top catching armor bugged me. My suspicion about her as a murderess aside, I felt the armor showed weakness or insecurity. She always carried it from her car and made a show of putting it on at home plate. Her territory, like a little pit bull.

  When my turn came to bat, I strolled over to the plate, bat on my shoulder. As I scuffed the dirt, pretending like it was necessary, I kicked a little toward Carmen and murmured, “You think all that padding can protect you from the truth?”

  I felt the shock-vibe right through her face mask, her eyes angry behind their little black bars.

  Her voice shot out at me. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.” I let it stay there as I whiffed on two consecutive pitches, took a ball, then grounded out weakly to third. I knew Jackie was trying to be merciful and serve me up the easiest pitches she could: no spin, no nothing. When I managed to open my eyes while swinging, all I could see was her. Oh, well.