It’s Saturday morning and sunny. Breezy, with the promise of a nice day ahead. Abe has a packed studio for both meditation and yoga. Shavasana is the Sanskrit word for corpse pose. I will always call it shavasana from now on, and I ask Abe to do the same after I relate to him and Emelina the last corpse I saw and how it wasn’t posing.
Emelina says, “Gwen, what did you get yourself into?”
“Worse,” I reply, “I exposed Ken to the whole mess.”
Abe helps us stack the mats, blankets, bolsters, and blocks. His playlist has shifted from woo-woo flutes, bells, and chants to a Tower of Power funky jazz play list. “And you look at this as a failure? I didn’t realize Milford was whine country.”
Both Emelina and I look at him. He stares back. “C’mon Mrs. Strong, you, as an educator, more than any layperson know what the acronym FAIL stands for.”
“Sorry Abe, I must have slept through that class.”
He turns to Emelina. “Ms. Bidwell, don’t tell me you don’t know either?”
“Enlighten us, Oh Great One.” She does a deeper bow than I could ever attempt.
“FAIL stands for First Attempt In Learning. What did you fail at, and what can you learn from the experience?” he asks me.
“I wasn’t prepared to encounter a dead body, especially of one of my former students.”
“You were going to add something else,” he says.
“I wasn’t expecting my number one suspect to become the next murder victim in a matter that I was investigating.” Lately, it has become easier to just speak my truth.
“What if you had gone in there to talk about getting an estimate for your car?”
“I don’t have a car, Abe.”
He shakes his head. “Hypothetically, then.”
“I’d believe that I walked in on an unfortunate accident.”
“And what if you didn’t know him personally?”
“I’d say that I came upon a tragic event. The memory of his body would fade with time, I imagine,” I tell them.
“From what I understand, you also convinced the police to re-investigate the first boy’s death and to look more closely into what you saw at the auto body shop.”
I nod.
“And you may have uncovered a motive.”
“In less than a week’s time,” Emelina chimes in.
“You were exactly the right person to walk in when you did. Nobody else would have seen what you saw beyond the obvious.”
“Well, that is one way of looking at things,” I admit.
“What if every police officer, firefighter, and emergency room worker quit after they saw their first dead body in the line of duty?”
I have him now. “But it’s not my job—”
He interrupts me with a fiery look. “No, Mrs. Strong. What you embarked upon was way more than a paycheck. You followed your calling. You have found your calling. I am afraid this won’t be the first dead body that you will observe. You must persevere.”
“If I don’t?”
“Then you will regret quitting for the rest of your life. That will be the failure.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little harsh, Abe?” I ask. I am not expecting to be stung by someone I hardly know.
“Does it make it any less true?” He zings me good. Abe’s right, dammit. Gwen Strong, Quitter. I roll that around on my tongue for a bit, then I look back and forth between them. Emelina was always my mentor, and Abe is becoming my guru.
“This is just your first time at the rodeo, Gwen,” Emelina tells me.
“You guys are something else.”
“Thank you,” they say in unison, and both bow towards me.
I bow back. “Namaste.”
I walk out to the sidewalk in the brilliant sunshine. My head is spinning from the lesson I just received, and I am not talking about downward dog. Between my revelation yesterday about my birth mother and this tough love talk from two people who I admire, I am finding it all that I can do to place one foot in front of the other as I make my way to the market.
To say that my world has been turned upside down is an understatement, but I realize that I am walking lighter without a lifetime’s baggage, and Abe has helped me gain perspective over Brian’s death and what I must do.
Gene Autry’s “Back in the Saddle Again” comes to mind, and when I sing along in my head, I am back on the case.
Just then, a vehicle stops ahead of me along the curb next to the sidewalk. I don’t pay it much attention, as I’m in my own little song world. The passenger hops down from the truck. It’s bright shiny blue with fancy wheels. The young man closes the distance to me. He is dressed right out of an L.L. Bean catalogue. The clean boots tell me he has scaled no mountains lately. He smiles and extends a hand, and I automatically reach to shake it. Office hands, as my husband would derisively call them, soft and manicured.
The man speaks while still holding my hand in a soft but firm grip. “Hello, Mrs. Strong, my name is Simon Stillman. I believe this is the first time we have met.”
“Good morning, Mr. Stillman,” I say coolly. A gazillion thoughts pulse through my skull in a nanosecond, but none of them are sparking a flight or fight response.
“Simon, please.” He releases my hand. Should I be alarmed? I don’t feel threatened by him.
“I am on my way to the market,” I say.
“May I walk with you? There is something I need to discuss with you, and the fresh air will do me good.”
I stay on the right side of the sidewalk, and he catches my stride to my left.
“Your daughter and the State Police have recently taken an interest in my brother and I and our businesses.”
“That is correct.” No sense BS-ing a BS-er.
“With your permission, I can show her how to add another level of encryption. The government is always a step behind private enterprise. That way, her avatar is completely cloaked.”
“I’ll pass it along,” I tell him. The mention of my daughter in the same sentence as the cops is not upsetting me. Multi-millionaires looking to stay below the radar don’t get that way by being careless.
“I understand your interest in the deaths of your former students, especially because of the lackluster response by law enforcement. One was made to look like a death by suicide, and the other an accident.”
“It’s no secret that is what I think,” I reply.
He stops, so I turn to look at him. “I agree with you,” he says, “and that is why I want you to keep investigating. How can I help you?”
I am not expecting that curve ball, and he catches me flat-footed. “I not sure you can,” I tell him.
“Why? Because you suspect us of the killings? That is a reasonable question, isn’t it? Yes, we dealt with the body shop, and our preference to use cash raised some eyebrows and caused some differences between the partners, but everything got worked out. Business was returning to normal.”
“I see,” I say, and I resume walking. He catches up with me.
“I mean, we can’t give you any money or be obvious about it, but I have more faith in you finding the real killer or killers than in Officer Williams or Detective Shafer.”
“They have talked to you?” I ask.
“Not yet. Eventually somebody will. I’d like for you to make that an unnecessary task for us to have to go through.”
“I am trying to wrap my head around this conversation, Simon.”
“It’s simple, Mrs. Strong. My brother and I do not have a strong alibi on the night of the Dawson shooting, we were home watching a movie—”
“The Rambo movie?” I ask.
“Yes, how did you know?”
“The same reason gangsters have the lines to Goodfellas memorized, I guess.”
He smiles. “But for the Yelito death, we may have been the last persons to see him alive before the killer.”
“You picked up the gas tank?”
“Right again, Mrs. Strong. He called us to come and pick it up. We didn’t have another and would have to order one.”
“About what time was that?”
He holds out a CD. “This is from the ATM camera of the bank across the street from the auto body. Our arrival and departure times are date and time stamped. Yelito is seen moving another car around on the lot after we left.”
“Have the police seen this yet?” I ask.
“No, we do some serious banking there, and they did us a favor. I made something up about thinking one of our vehicles was vandalized across the street and we wanted to check it out.”
“A little white lie.”
“Yes, but we thought about it, and the cops didn’t. What does that tell you?”
I turn the corner to see the market a block away. “You had nothing to do with Jake or Brian’s death.” I am back to zero suspects now, and I must find another motive for their deaths.
“That is correct.”
“But by us pointing out the Mustang to Shafer, the police are looking at the two of you now and you would rather the police not know your business.”
“Exactly.”
“Or the government.”
“Especially the government.” That is his real issue; two local murders are not.
“The sooner the real killer or killers are caught, the sooner the heat is off the Stillman brothers,” I summarize for him.
He shrugs at the obvious conclusion. “There is another vehicle arriving and departing before you return to the shop, Mrs. Strong. We can’t make out the license plate or the driver, I am afraid.”
He extends the CD to me, and I take it. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, huh, Simon?” I look him square in the eyes.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” he replies. “After you shop, we can give you a ride home if you’d like.”
“That is very nice of you, Simon, but I need to think about your proposal.”
“Well, your daughter knows about a dozen ways to contact us.” He smiles and walks back to the street we were just on, and that same shiny truck stops to pick him up.
I text Erin. Call me when you can, new developments in our case.
Will do is her reply.
Just as I reach the door, my cell dings again. She sent me a song. I put in my ear buds. Steven Tyler’s voice pounds my temples as he sings Aerosmith’s “Back in the Saddle.” I swear she can read my mind sometimes.