The Lillian Byrd Crime Series Page 7

  The other type of situation, the Garden Club’s spring fashion show, is harder, because you find yourself in the middle of a byzantine ritual that everyone takes extremely seriously. You cannot acknowledge being an asshole, because of its implication for your subject.

  You’ve put on your simple wrap skirt, following the rule of dressing ‘at’ or ‘below’ the level of the people you’ll be reporting on, and you watch and listen seriously, and you take account of the spectacle carefully, in all its gentle pastel gorgeosity, even though your teeth are hurting from all the sugary salads and what you really want to do is run away screaming. For your account will be clipped out and dissected at the next regular meeting and you will hear of any inaccuracies, small or large, and take my word for it, all are large.

  The other characteristic necessary for success in journalism, the killer instinct, is simple. All you have to do is shove everybody else aside to get the story first, or more of it.

  But the problem is, most stories are pretty cut-and-dried. I mean, how much can you do with a traffic study that concludes all the town’s stoplights are exactly where they should be? You want your scrap of a story to be special!

  So you find some weirdo who hates the cops and the traffic commission and claims that the streets will soon be littered with the corpses of children killed by speeding cars unless the duration of the amber signal is lengthened. How do you find such people? They find you, of course. All you have to do is return their calls.

  If you’re covering public officials, you must pounce on the slightest conceivable suggestion of scandal, ready to coldbloodedly destroy any sorry son of a bitch you’ve gotten to know. Dirt sells.

  Most reporters choose to think of such behavior as honest and noble. I haven’t met a reporter yet who isn’t convinced she’s going to heaven.

  Walking along, I resolved to never be on somebody’s payroll again. I’d always saved money; the Caprice was paid for; my habits were inexpensive. Therefore, I was in shape to think about a change.

  I never had any trouble being an asshole when I needed to, but I didn’t know about the killer instinct. Working on a local weekly, you get plenty of opportunities to be dirty and cheap, but it’s not as if you’re fighting for a Pulitzer. Burying somebody, I mean actually destroying a career, even getting somebody sent to jail, for the sake of your career—that’s different. As a freelancer perhaps I’d find out whether I could do it.

  Perhaps more important, I could find out whether I could avoid doing it and still make a living.

  I knew that the Motor City Journal, a slick monthly, was always looking for good features and dishy crime coverage. Yes, I’d promised Ciesla I’d leave the Macklin story alone, except for what I’d learn through him.

  But if the Journal wanted a feature story, given the extra angle I had on it, business would be business: I’d have to do more investigating. Before, when I first saw the police shot of the murdered Iris, I’d felt that odd sense of protectiveness, even secretiveness. Well, I thought in a more pragmatic light, she’s a dead woman and doesn’t need any protection, does she? What she needs is justice.

  I hiked the five-mile trail through the swamp. I didn’t see any new birds, but I have to admit to being a pretty oblivious birder in spite of my last name. Near the end of the loop, I squatted with my hand lens to study a tiny brown toad that hopped once in my path, then stood still. The size of my thumbnail, its little sides heaving, it eyed the large clear disk of glass poised above it.

  A minuscule beetle, the size of a flea, stumbled over a grain in the loam at the toad’s front feet. We both noticed it at the same moment. The toad dipped its head slightly; the beetle was gone.

  “It’s all relative, ain’t it, kiddo?” I said to the toad.

  12

  The next day I called up Ricky Rosenthal, editor of the Motor City Journal, and gave him enough information on the case to let him know I was onto something unusual. Oh, yes indeed, he said, he’d be interested in a nice juicy crime story. I was willing to write it on spec, which meant I’d get paid for it only after Ricky had read it, liked it, and published it.

  There you have the downside of the freelance biz: total uncertainty. I told him juiciness wasn’t my aim, just a good solid story. If part of the reason Iris Macklin died was that she had felt a slice of her life should be secret, an honest account could make a difference to somebody.

  “It’ll be juicy,” Ricky said happily.

  I organized my notes and figured my next steps should involve the Snapdragon, Bonnie, and the husband, Gerald Macklin. Knowing that Ciesla and Porrocks would probably talk to Bonnie that day, I puttered at home until mid afternoon, washing and waxing the Caprice, and taking Todd out for a romp in the grass.

  I’d bought my car at a police auction for two thousand dollars; it had been an unmarked detective car and was showing the kind of rough edges a city vehicle gets after four years of hard service. It was a dependable car and I liked everything about it, especially the shotgun brackets in the trunk and the extra map pocket screwed into the driver’s door. The first time I thoroughly cleaned it, I found almost nine dollars in spilled change in the seat cracks. The engine and exterior were in good shape. I liked to keep it shiny. My green machine.

  Todd grazed on grass blades as much as he could, then zigzagged around, slowly at first, then with greater momentum so that I had to work to keep heading him off.

  Mr. McVittie, my landlord, trumped up a reason to come outside and chat. “You’re prob’ly wondering when I’m gonna get those branches trimmed,” he yelled, pointing up at the horse chestnut tree that shaded my balcony.

  “Think they need it?” I yelled back. We were about four feet apart, but he was nearing old age and almost deaf. Mrs. McVittie, who had just torn her seventieth birthday off the calendar, couldn’t get him to wear his hearing aids, no way, no how.

  “Hell yes they need it! If one a them boughs blows through your window, you’re gonna know it!” He squinted at the tree, whose upper branches looked fine to me.

  He was white-haired and a bit stooped but strong as a donkey and spry too. Everything he needed done he did himself, whether he had to lay new vinyl in the kitchens, repaint his station wagon, or clamber up a ladder with a saw and a bucket of pitch to do some tree-doctoring. “I’ll get up there tomorrow!”

  He picked up Todd, whom I’d corralled inside the coiled garden hose, and held him tightly in the crook of his arm. He stroked his nose with his thumb.

  “Mildred’s up in Marquette!” he shouted.

  “Oh?”

  “Her sister’s having brain surgery!”

  “Oh, my!”

  “Neurological problem!”

  “Oh!”

  “I’m having candy for lunch!” When his wife was away, Mr. McVittie indulged in his favorite foods and television programs. He liked Baywatch and all the police shows.

  We shouted back and forth for a while until he wandered back inside. I finished rubbing out the Caprice’s hood, then gave Todd a fragment of a Pecan Sandy, for being so good as to not bite our landlord.

  I watched him nibble the cookie, his little tusks rattling. Then I remembered the tooth I’d found on the ground behind the Snap. Shit! I hadn’t given it a minute’s thought until now. Well, it wasn’t Iris’s; that was the night I’d met her. It probably belonged to an animal, just as I’d thought at the time. But I wondered anew about the Midnight Five—the missing women from around the area. Could any of them have been connected to the Snapdragon, to that dirty back alley?

  I called Ciesla a little later. He and Porrocks had just returned from the Snapdragon, where they’d found Bonnie in the back office doing paperwork.

  “Yeah, we asked her some questions,” Ciesla said. “She couldn’t tell us much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She said Iris Macklin had been working there less than two months and she didn’t know her very well.”

  “You believe that? Did she seem sincere?”
>
  “Mmmph.” He made a rumbly sound. “Actually, Lillian, I could see how you could be suspicious of her. I didn’t get a very good feeling from her.”

  “Well, she’s not all that likable. You must have gotten something more out of her, though.”

  “We asked her about Sunday night. She told us Ms Macklin stayed late after closing to help with some chores, then left by herself. We’re trying to corroborate that.”

  “Check with Emerald, the parking lot guy.”

  “She didn’t say anything about a security guard.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “She admitted to paying her under the table, so we were all correct on that point. She said Ms Macklin kept to herself, just showed up for work and left without doing much socializing.”

  “How did Iris get the job?”

  “She must have seen an ad Ms Creighter ran in a magazine, um, the Triangle magazine—”

  “Who’s Ms Crater?”

  “Bonnie Creighter,” and he spelled it. “That’s her last name.”

  “Oh. The Triangle’s the local gay rag. Do you know it?”

  “Yeah, Ms Macklin must have picked it up somewhere, maybe another bar.”

  “Or one of the bookshops or coffee shops, you know. Counterculture nation,” I said.

  “Yeah. Look, I gotta run.”

  “Wait, Tom. Did you by any chance take a walk down the back alley?”

  “We did. Why?”

  I told him about finding the tooth.

  “Well, we didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It couldn’t have been Ms Macklin’s anyway, right? You’re sure which night it was?”

  “Yeah. To me it looked like an animal tooth.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, I guess—I don’t know why I thought that. I mean, who’d expect to find a human tooth just lying on the ground like that?”

  “Where did you put it?”

  “I threw it. I was grossed out. I don’t even know which way my hand was going.”

  He paused. I could hear him silently trying to justify sending an officer out to look for it. “Well,” he said, “try to find it, OK?”

  My turn to pause. “OK.”

  I asked him if he’d seen a copy of the Eye yet.

  “No, they usually deliver around five o’clock. Why? Something special about your article on this?”

  I snorted. “Naw, I got fired. God knows what the article’s gonna look like, if there is one. Didn’t Ed call you yesterday? To get the basic info?” I told him about Bucky, the blade, and the boot.

  “I always thought you were too good for that paper.”

  “Thank you and God bless, Tom. I’ll be on my own now—I’m going freelance. Putting something together for the Motor City Journal on this.”

  “Go for it. But be careful, and remember what you promised. Anything I can do to help, let me know.”

  “Tom, if I can just count on you to tell me what’s happening with this case as it moves along, that’d be great.”

  “I’ll give you as much information as I can. You have to understand that I won’t be able to tell you everything.”

  “I know. Thanks. So you’re really not into Bonnie Creighter as a suspect?”

  “We need to do more work on it, but there’s nothing emerging right now. Ms Macklin could have been abducted outside the bar, or she could have gone somewhere to meet somebody—who knows? We’ll talk to the husband again before the week’s out. I want to get a better handle on him.”

  When I got off the phone, I jogged downstairs to see if the paper had arrived, and it had. For the Macklin story, Ed had simply plagiarized verbatim from the News and Free Press stories the day before. The rest of the paper looked all right; I’d already edited almost all the copy and written the editorial. He added a few stock summertime photos to fill up the front page: kids eating hot dogs at last year’s Parks and Rec picnic. “Huh,” I said sarcastically to Todd.

  The phone rang, and I thought it might be Ciesla calling back.

  “‘Lo.”

  “Lillian.”

  I didn’t recognize the voice.

  “Yes?”

  There was a long sigh, then, “Oh, Lillian, I’m so glad you answered.”

  I knew the voice now: the scratchy tone, the professional-wrestler enunciation. I sighed too. “Hi, Lou.”

  “I really need to talk to you.”

  “Well. What, uh, what’s on your mind?”

  “You.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” I swung into my big orange armchair and set the phone on the floor, keeping the handset to my ear.

  Though it caused me no end of inconvenience, I still used a rotary dial phone. In plain black. Ah, the innocent, unhurried pace of yesteryear.

  She went on, “When we talked at the bar that night, I didn’t really tell you how I felt about you—how strong I feel about you.”

  “I thought you came on plenty strong.”

  Todd hopped over to me, and I reached down to pet him.

  “I’ve been thinking about you a lot. All the time.” Lou’s voice was like rocks grinding together along a fault line. “I can’t seem to get you out of my mind, no matter what I do. It’s even—it’s even hard for me to concentrate on my work. I got bit twice yesterday.”

  Lou was an animal control officer for the city of Detroit.

  “Gee, Lou, I’m sorry but—”

  “And that tells me I need to see you again.” I heard a little hiccup of emotion. “Lillian, please go out with—please—me. I’ll take you anywhere you—we can do anything you—I just really need to see you.”

  I kneaded the upholstered arm of the chair. It was a deep comfy one, covered in nubby fabric the color of solar flares. I like bright colors in my home.

  I took a deep breath. “Lou, you’re a nice person. A good person. A well-liked person. And it isn’t that I don’t like you. But I don’t want to go out with you. I wish—”

  “Your wish is my command!”

  “Lou.” I stood up, to add authority to my voice. “Listen to me—”

  “No! You listen to me. Are you listening? I love you.”

  “Oh, Jesus. That’s not possible. You—”

  “It is!”

  “You barely know me, Lou. I don’t want to talk anymore. I appreciate your asking me out, but no thanks. No. All right?”

  “Not all right. Lillian?”

  “C’mon, Lou. Goodbye.”

  I went into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. Stovetop percolators are coming back, I hear; well, I’ve always liked the smell and the sound of them. While the coffee perked, I leaned against the counter and tried to shake the Lou-ness away. I wondered how much, being a regular at the Snapdragon, she knew about Iris, or whether she knew Bonnie very well. I would have asked her a few questions, but I didn’t want to prolong the conversation, and I didn’t trust that she wouldn’t run and say something to Bonnie. And Bonnie was the last person I wanted to spook.

  My guess was I’d hear from Lou a few more times. I felt sorry for her, but people get over these things.

  13

  Since the afternoon was wearing on and Bonnie was at the Snap, I decided to wait until early the next morning to return to the alley to look for the tooth. Nobody’d be around at daybreak.

  I was disappointed that Ciesla and Porrocks hadn’t found anything dramatic yet, but I guessed that was my cue. As suspicious as I was of Bonnie Creighter, I really needed to give Iris’s husband equal time. I located Gerald Macklin’s number in my notes.

  “Mr. Macklin, my name is Lillian Byrd, and I’m reporting on Ms Macklin’s case for the Motor City Journal. I want to extend my sympathies to you.”

  “Uh-huh.” His voice sounded youngish and tired.

  “I know the last thing you may want to do is talk to a reporter, but I was wondering if you’d be willing to meet with me, at your convenience, maybe for just fifteen minutes.”

  “No.” Click.

  I fired up the Capri
ce and drove out to the apartment complex. It was one of those sprawling expensive ones, with a pool, a clubhouse, berms, and cedar fencing around the dumpsters.

  I was standing in the vestibule of Macklin’s building debating whether to buzz him, when a couple of tykes in bathing suits scampered out. I grabbed the door and made my way through thickly carpeted corridors to the apartment. The door opened a moment after my knock.

  “Mr. Macklin, I really think it’s important we talk.”

  He was on the tall side of short, with an interesting narrow face, light-skinned, glasses. He would have been the latte to Iris’s espresso.

  Startled, he moved to heave the door shut, but I said, “I knew your wife.”

  He took a step backward, his expression tightening. He looked me up and down. “Come in for a minute.”

  He was alone, wearing khaki slacks with a blue webbed belt, a green alligator shirt, and Timberland loafers with no socks. Throwback yuppie style. He stood rigidly in the center of the room. White carpeting and white soft furniture magnified the sunlight bouncing in through a patio doorwall.

  Though his voice had sounded quite young on the phone, he was closer to middle age. His hair, which showed a little gray at the temples, was conked and slicked back.

  “What do you want?”

  “Well, uh, it’s that—” I broke off and sat down on a marshmallowy couch. “Can we sit down and talk for a few minutes? Come on, man.”

  He sat opposite me on the edge of a matching couch, on the far side of a glass-topped coffee table. Arranged diagonally on the table were a large vase of white silk calla lilies and an Ansel Adams photography book.

  “First of all,” I began, “were you aware of Iris’s other job?”

  His mouth shifted from side to side. “Uh-huh.”

  “I saw her a couple of times there, over at the—”

  “That bar.”