Lucky Stiff Read online

  Duane lit up too. "Did they know how the fire started?"

  I exhaled. "It was the deep fryer, a short circuit or something. That's what Uncle Guff said. They took me to live with them, he and Aunt Rosalie. They lived in Ecorse."

  We sat smoking. I felt the effects of the smoke ease into my arms and legs, that distinct feeling of peace you get when you haven't had one in a while.

  "Remember when you swiped those cigars?" Duane said.

  "Do I ever." One afternoon I'd quietly removed two cigars from the box behind the bar. They were Muriel Panetela Extras, and I'd been fascinated long enough by the aroma of them, by the big deal Al and Hiram made of smoking them on paydays. Duane and I smoked them in a far-off alley, each of us quickly sick but undaunted in our determination to master the mystery of smoking.

  "You should switch to Camel Filters, you know," I said. "I give you points for not smoking Marlboro Lights, but you really would enjoy your smoke more if you switched to Camels."

  "Aren't they really harsh?"

  "Marlboros are harsher. Take my word for it."

  "Hmm." Duane watched the smoke curl toward the ceiling. He said, "How did you…How have you dealt with it?"

  "You know, like you said, bizarre things happen. Strange, terrible things happen to people every day in this world. I accepted it. I mean, I was sad and horrified, and I cried for my parents and Trix, you know. But my uncle and aunt were there for me. They did everything they could to give me a life. A…a teenager-hood. I saw that nothing could be changed, and I guess I was a pretty self-sufficient kid to begin with. Guff and Rosalie were regular people; good, factory-tough people. I gave them hell, of course, being a teenager and all. But deep down I understood. Fires start, buildings burn down, people die. Everybody dies. Guff and Rosalie seemed to get over it fairly quickly themselves. They discouraged me from talking about it, from brooding on it. I think they thought that talking about something like that can be bad for you. They tried to protect me from reliving it. I never even saw the newspapers afterward. I missed you."

  For a while, Duane and I sat in silence. There was so much to try to get my mind around.

  "Duane," I said, "what did you mean when you said you hoped I could help you find your mother?"

  His glass was empty. He picked up the brandy bottle, then changed his mind and put it down. He dropped his hands into his lap. "It's like I forgot her for a long time. I guess I felt a little like you must have felt: You go into shock, sort of, and you shut down. I was on and off the streets for a few years, then I snapped out of it. A very good guy helped me. He became my sugar daddy and he helped me get my GED, then he sent me to college. Imagine that! Well, he sent me for a year, anyway, then we broke up. I got a job and managed to stick with school. Now I'm an architect, do you believe it?"

  Glancing around, I said, "Yeah, I believe it."

  "I worked for a couple of firms—in Miami, Fort Lauderdale—until last fall. About every five years I'd get the urge to come back here and look for my mom. I had this fantasy that I'd find her wandering the streets, a bag lady, all dirty. And I'd rescue her, and she'd be," his voice spiked upward, "my mom again."

  "Oh, Duane."

  "And…I guess I still have that fantasy, because last September I moved up here, bought this place, joined a firm in Grosse Pointe, and launched a serious search for Juanita Sechrist. I feel now that my dad…Well, the she-went-nuts-and-ran-off story was always bullshit, but I feel he might have worked on her, you know, to drive her crazy. Or at least drive her away. I feel that."

  He told me about checking all the public records he could get his hands on—phone books, death certificates, there wasn't much. He managed to look into the records of the hospitals and mental institutions, but found nothing about his mother. "I know, of course, she could be in some other state," he said. "I know that, logically. But in my heart I feel she's here. I know she's in Detroit somewhere. Last month I even talked to a private detective. 'That's a pretty cold trail, pal,' he said to me. He talked just like that. His attitude was very poor. I fired him before I'd even hired him." Duane shook his head.

  "Did he venture any opinion as to what happened to your mom?"

  "He said, 'Your pop probably killed her.'" Duane snorted sadly. "The cynicism."

  "Duane, I—"

  "When I told you I thought you could help me, I meant…Well, you knew my mom. I saw you on the street. At first I thought you were homeless. You're not, you said that."

  "Right!"

  "And…" he paused. "Well, what do you do, anyway?"

  "I'm a hack writer."

  "Oh, yeah?" He brightened up. "You mean like pulp fiction?"

  "No, I write articles for magazines. Sometimes magazines even pay for them. I do some technical writing. I freelance here and there."

  "Oh."

  "I'm an ink-stained wretch. And it's not going well, OK? I try to pick up a few bucks with my music."

  He brightened again. "OK, OK, but you know the street people, don't you? I guess I thought maybe you've seen her without knowing it. Or maybe you could sort of organize the street people to help us find her."

  "Oh, God," I interjected, "Listen—"

  "Maybe—maybe—I don't know. I just thought you'd, you know, want to help me. Being my friend and all. Being a Detroiter and all. Maybe you'd have an idea I haven't thought of. You always were the brains on the block."

  "Duane, look at me." I took his hand and held it tight. He lifted his eyes to mine. The kitchen was so quiet I could hear his shirt rustle with his breathing. "The detective was right," I said. "Your pop probably killed your mom. He fell in love with Trix Hawley at the bar, and he cooked up a plot. He killed your mother. Trix didn't die in the fire, your mother did. It wasn't Trix's corpse they pulled out of the ashes of the Polka Dot, it was your mother's. Trix left town that night and became Lynette and dyed her hair, and your dad reported your mother missing a few weeks later. And he went down to Florida, you in tow, to meet up with Trix-Lynette again."

  My friend pulled his hand away. "No."

  "Yes. Did your dad ever slip and call her Trix instead of Lynette?"

  "No!" He chewed his lips. "My mother cannot be dead. She is not dead. I know it. She's here."

  "Duane, you have to think here, you have to reason. Trix Hawley did not die in that fire. She became your stepmother. A corpse was planted in that bar that night. The corpse had on Trix's wedding ring. They handed it to her husband, and he read the inscription and said, "Yes, that would be my wife, then.'"

  "Stop!" he screamed. He clapped his hands over his ears in the classic gesture of denial. "You have no idea what you're talking about!"

  I stopped. I took a deep breath and forced myself to back off. But the blood was hammering in my veins.

  If Trix Hawley were alive, that would prove that somebody else wearing Trix's ring was pulled out of that pile of ashes. That somebody else would have been a murder victim, Duane's mother or not. And the murderer set the fire in order to burn the body beyond recognition. There was no DNA testing in those days, and anyway, who would have questioned?

  Hovering in the air above me, looming over my head, was the next implication, which evidently had not occurred to Duane. If the fire in the Polka Dot had been set to cover up a murder—most likely the murder of Duane's mother—then my parents had been murdered too. Most likely by Duane's father.

  "Duane," I said, "this night has changed everything, whether you want to face it or not."

  He couldn't do it. The evening had begun with the two of us rushing into each other's arms, but it was ending with a stand-off. He simply didn't want to deal with the fact that his mother might be dead and that his father might be a murderer. He grew more and more argumentative, challenging me to convince him of the logic that appeared plain to me.

  Finally, sometime after 1 o'clock, I helped myself to a drink of water and picked up my keys. He saw me to the door. I stood there wanting to hug him but fearful of the emotional storm the night had u
nleashed in him.

  Suddenly he put his hand out. "Lillian."

  "Yes?"

  "Promise me…promise me…"

  "Duane, what?"

  His eyes were so sad. "Just say you'll help me."

  I pulled him in for a hug then. "I'll help you, Duane. I'll do everything I can to help you find your mom. I might need you to help me too, you know. We'll work together. OK?"

  "OK."

  "I'm going to think all this over, and I'll talk to you soon. I—I hope my ideas are wrong."

  But all the while the feeling grew inside me, stronger and stronger, that they weren't.

  Chapter 5

  Todd was waiting up for me, good friend. He bumped over to me, as was his habit, sniffed my shoes, then rubbed his chin on the uppers. I squatted to pet his fur and say hello. He was a rabbit who had seen a lot, and who now was inching onto his downslope, so to speak. His movements weren't as quick as they used to be, but he was still the same old Todd: inquisitive, calm, faithful. He was better than a tranquilizer for me. He watched as I checked his food and water dishes, then he nibbled a timothy nugget from my hand and hopped behind me into the bedroom. We had switched to timothy from alfalfa when the vet told me timothy had a higher ratio of cellulose. Rabbits need their fiber.

  Rather than get to brooding, I stuck to my standard bedtime routine of reading for an hour before turning out the light. I'd picked up a used copy of the latest Calico Jones adventure at John King Books, and gratefully turned to its exciting pulp pages to crank my mind into neutral.

  In this one, The Ransom of Angeline Carey, the gorgeous and accomplished private sleuth Calico Jones is called to San Francisco to locate and rescue an incredibly attractive beef jerky heiress who's been kidnapped by a PETA-like organization. I resumed reading where Calico Jones is exploring a cargo barge that's being towed out to sea beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. She's got reason to believe that clues as to Angeline Carey's whereabouts are on that barge, so she's investigating when suddenly she realizes that the tow cable has been released and she's now adrift alone on this barge full of hazardous medical waste, and strong tidal currents are moving it out to sea, and the fog is rolling in, and all Calico's got in her pockets are a ballpoint pen, four dimes, a small box of Milk Duds, and a sturdy barrette. Of course, she's got her .45-caliber semiautomatic strapped to her hip, but as you can imagine, it wouldn't be much help in a situation like that. I won't spoil it for you, but I'll just say that Calico Jones summons her phenomenal ingenuity, courage, and physical strength, and makes it out alive to continue her search for the kidnapped heiress.

  Todd made himself comfy in his box of cedar chips, and I went to sleep reassured by the fact that at least in books everything usually works out for the best.

  A sunny Saturday morning crept in around the blinds. I made coffee and toast and got out my notebook and my blue Pentel mechanical pencil. I shook the pencil and heard the wispy rattle of spare leads inside. Spare leads give me confidence.

  My little flat in Eagle, two blocks north of Eight Mile, was a comfortable and cheap home for Todd and me. My landlord and his wife were more interested in having a stable tenant than squeezing rent dollars out of some well-off but nasty careless person who wouldn't take as much of an interest in them as I did.

  For once I was glad to have neither a pending freelance assignment nor some brilliant idea for one that I would have to doggedly pitch to editors. I set my mind, such as it was, to working on last night's events.

  I wrote FACTS I KNOW at the top of a page, then I scribbled:

  Trix Hawley is alive.

  She changed her name (Lynette) and hair color.

  Bill Sechrist married this Lynette after a move to Fla.

  Third body in the Polka Dot fire was not Trix.

  The body wore Trix's ring.

  Juanita Sechrist disappeared same time.

  Bill Sechrist disappeared (?) 3 years later.

  Trix-Lynette went out of Duane's life.

  Reviewing that list, I saw that everything depended on the first fact, that Trix Hawley was alive. How could I be sure of that? Well, I was sure, but I forced myself to admit she could in fact have died in the fire and Bill Sechrist had told the truth to his son: that Juanita Sechrist really did run off, crazily or not. I forced myself to admit that Bill Sechrist would have just naturally found himself attracted to a supernaturally Trix-like person.

  Key #1, I wrote, Find Trix.

  I drank my coffee and munched my toast and thought about the rest of it. If Bill Sechrist and Trix Hawley wanted to run away together, why not just run away together? Why kill Juanita Sechrist first? Maybe the body in the bar wasn't Juanita's. If not, whose and why? Why fake Trix's death? And why do it all at the Polka Dot? Were my parents and I supposed to be killed too, or did something go wrong? If we were supposed to die, why? Did Bill Sechrist and Trix have something against us?

  I thought about the Sechrists, remembering everything I could about them.

  Bill Sechrist and my father, Martin Byrd, had been Navy buddies in the Korean War. They were as close as buddies could get: Bill Sechrist had saved my dad's life when a torpedo hit their ship.

  "We were belowdecks scrubbing pans in the galley," my dad told me, "when there was this WHAM! and the next thing I knew I was up to my neck in seawater. Bill yelled Come on! and I knew we'd be sealed off any second, all the galleys were flooding, the torpedo had hit just aft of them. I couldn't move. My belt had caught on something. Bill swam over to me, cussing the whole way, and he took hold of me and ripped me loose. My belt just broke. We got out of there just in time. I had a bruise halfway around my waist for a month."

  The story, which I asked to hear over and over, never failed to stir me. As I grew older, questions occurred to me.

  "Were any other sailors killed?"

  "A few guys." My dad would answer patiently and vaguely.

  "How many?"

  "Three, I think."

  "How did they die?"

  "I don't know."

  "Did they drown or get killed from the torpedo?"

  "I don't know."

  "Did they find their bodies?"

  "I don't remember."

  "How did your belt get stuck?"

  "I don't know. The ship lurched when the torpedo hit, we all got knocked off our feet into the shelves and everything. That's when I got stuck."

  "Did you ever save his life back?"

  "Never had the chance. Next time you get to crying about something or other, you just remember Bill Sechrist and be glad. Because without him you wouldn't be here, because I wouldn't be here."

  "Would Mommy have married somebody else?"

  "I don't know. Probably not."

  "But if she did, they would've had me."

  "Nah, you'd be half you and half some other kid. See? Because half of you's from your mom and half of you's from your dad."

  That was unsettling, and I didn't like to think about it.

  It was a coincidence that Daddy and Bill Sechrist were both from Detroit. After the war they returned to their wives and got jobs in factories.

  Evidently the work didn't suit my father, because a year before I came along my parents decided to try the tavern business, and the Polka Dot was born. In a way I was their second child.

  Even though we lived just two streets over from the Sechrists, my mom and dad and Bill and Juanita Sechrist didn't socialize as couples. Juanita Sechrist was a nice mom, plump and pretty, but you know she rarely left the house. It was just this thing everybody took for granted, this oddity. She didn't drive, didn't go to the grocery store. Once in a while she would force herself out to church, for confession and Mass. I once saw her exit the confessional just before I went in and wondered what she'd had to confess. I couldn't imagine. Did she, like me, fabricate sins to satisfy the requirement of confession? I used my theft of a nickel from the floor of the grocery store over and over.

  Bill Sechrist came around to the Polka Dot often, after work. He was a f
oreman at Dodge Main in Hamtramck, day shift. So I remember him coming in as I was doing my homework and listening to Peggy Lee on the jukebox.

  Sechrist was fanatically proud of having served in the U.S. Navy. Even though you're not supposed to, he pinned his most important campaign ribbons on the breast of his ordinary poplin jacket, and he wore his dog tags on a chain under his shirt. He left the top buttons of his shirts undone so that the tags could be seen and remarked upon. When he leaned over the bar or a table, the tags spilled out and dangled there interestingly.

  "I want dog tags," I told my father once.

  "No, you don't," he said.

  How long had Sechrist and Trix known each other? I remembered them always being around the bar. They talked and laughed with my dad. I never noticed them acting like lovers, holding hands or kissing. Sometimes Sechrist would sing along to a stupid song on the jukebox: "The Hokey Pokey," "Too Fat Polka." And sometimes he'd sing slow songs with fake pain in his voice, "Goodnight, darling, I'll love you till you die.…" His voice actually wasn't bad.

  So Sechrist had a recluse for a wife and a pert girlfriend in the neighborhood gin mill.

  I wrote "Insurance money?" then crossed it out, because he killed his wife secretly; he didn't want her death to be known. There couldn't have been any financial gain in it for him, because as Duane described it, life in Florida had been far from deluxe.

  And then, three years after going to all that trouble of liquidating his wife and life in Detroit and settling down in Florida with his sharp-tongued inamorata, Sechrist disappears. He takes off, or walks in front of a bus without identification on him, or gets abducted by spacemen. He dissolves. And Duane becomes a de facto orphan.

  After the fire, as I've said, Uncle Guff and Aunt Rosalie protected me from the news coverage. Suddenly I found that strange. They'd made sure I didn't see any newspapers or listen to the radio or television in the week or so after the fire. At the time it didn't even occur to me that there would be news coverage of the fire. Later I wondered about it, but my characteristically morbid curiosity stopped there. My parents were dead, nothing could bring them back, I had been there, and I didn't care to know how the world had heard it. Then, having worked as a newspaper reporter for a while, I learned what a miserable muddle most reporters make of news. After that, I really didn't care.