So Robert Jefferson Reed, the murdered author of a bestselling collection of homespun family-values wisdom, and Travis Webber, his editor and publisher, were doing some biz together that apparently did not include Karl Sykes, the third person in this little marketing genius ménage à trois.
“Hmmm,” I whispered. “Wonder what this means?”
What the hell, it could mean anything. Maybe the two of them bought some fast-food franchises. Life’s Little Maintenance Manual burgers or some such. They had to do something with all that cash. I put the cursor in the field search line and typed in Harvest Moon Corporation and waited. And waited. And waited.
Then two lines appeared:
INCORPORATED 1997, CAYMAN ISLANDS
NO OTHER INFORMATION AVAILABLE
Well, that put a whole different spin on things. Okay, so nobody buys Burger King franchises through the Caymans without a damn good reason. Wonder if Victoria Reed knew anything about this, and if so, why didn’t she tell me? She’d given me a rundown of his stock holdings, had even shared the latest statement from his broker listing his entire account and its considerable worth.
Wonder if the Harvest Moon Corporation shows up in the will? Wonder if Victoria Reed’s even seen the will, and if so, will she share it with me? And if she won’t, wonder what it’ll take to get a copy of it?
Damn, too many questions. Too little time.
My head was spinning as I shut down the Web browser and closed the modem connection. The bowl of cereal goop hadn’t stayed with me as long as I hoped, either. I needed food and I needed time to think, in that order.
Before leaving Lonnie’s fortress-disguised-as-a-mobile-home I decided to call Marsha. I hadn’t really talked to her since yesterday afternoon. In a few hours, her life had completely changed. For the first time since I’d known her, and for the first time in her career, she had no place to go and nothing to do.
Maybe it won’t be for long, I thought as I dialed her number. The morgue in a city the size of Nashville can’t shut down for long; they’ll be stacking the bodies like cordwood in a few days.
“Hello.” She sounded down, way down.
“Hi,” I said, as brightly as I could muster.
“Hi, Harry. How are you?”
“Fine. I’m over at Lonnie’s. Been using his computer to do a little digging.”
“Oh,” she said. She didn’t ask any follow-up, so I didn’t offer any.
“How are you?”
“Uh, I’m okay, I guess. Just kind of lying around. I woke up about five this morning, couldn’t go back to sleep.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this has been really hard on you. Have you heard from your lawyer or anybody else down at the office?”
“I talked with him yesterday evening. He was going to have a conference with the district attorney this afternoon.”
“Really? About what?”
She sighed. “I don’t know the details. But he told me the mayor’s office had contacted him, too. I’ve got a feeling that there’s some deal brokering going on here. I spoke with Kay this morning. She said Dr. Henry’s not back in town yet. He’s not answering his car phone and he hasn’t checked in.”
“Hmmm, wonder what’s going on?”
“I’m sure I’ll find out eventually,” she said. “In the meantime, I’m just trying to keep from going nuts. I’ve got a guy coming over at four-thirty to look at the Porsche.”
“Yeah, I saw the sign. How come you’re selling it?”
She laughed softly, but there was a bittersweet edge to it. “Another month and I won’t be able to get behind the wheel. No, a 911’s no car for an expectant mother.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Buy something else, I guess.”
“You’ll need transportation. Somehow I just don’t see you standing at a bus stop.”
“I’ve ridden buses before,” she snapped. At last, I thought, a spark.
“You know I’ll be glad to chauffeur you around anywhere you need to go.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that.”
There was a long moment of silence on the phone, the kind of awkward reticence that quickly becomes the reflection of a deeper, more profound silence, the silence of distance between two people. I realized that I missed her, and maybe the thing to do was let her know that.
“I’m sorry things have been so tough lately,” I said. “I really miss …”
It was hard to say.
“Well, I really miss what we used to have.”
“Everything changes, Harry.”
“I know that. But why does it always seem to change for the worse?”
“It doesn’t always.”
“Just lately.”
“I think that what we’re going through has its beginnings way back there,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure we were ever really together. We were both so wrapped up in our work, both carrying so much baggage from past lives, other people. Both so afraid to get any deeper into it.”
“Yeah,” I said after a moment. “Maybe. But does that mean we can’t ever get to where we want to be?”
“Sure, it’s just that maybe we don’t want to be in the same place.”
“We could figure that out,” I offered. “Perhaps there’s a way to find out. Then if there isn’t, at least we tried. At least we gave it a shot.”
“I don’t know. With the way the rest of our lives is going, now might not be a good time to begin a voyage of self-discovery. The good ship Lollipop might turn into the Titanic.”
“You never know,” I said. “Now might be a perfect time. Think about it.”
“Okay, I will.”
“By the way,” I said casually, offhandedly, “the police questioned me about Mrs. Hawkins’s death. It seems her son is trying to claim his inheritance by having me declared her murderer.”
She gasped. “Jesus, Harry, are there any dead people out there you didn’t kill?”
“Thinking about changing my name to Lee Harvey. How’s that sound? Lee Harvey Denton …”
“Almost appropriate, given the circumstances. How serious are they?”
“Fouch asked me a few questions. I tried not to get any smarter with him than I had to. He said the family wants the body exhumed. Hey, maybe you’ll be back in the saddle and get to do the autopsy.”
She laughed. “Not a chance! I don’t even want to be in the building when that one comes up.”
“I hate to see it happen,” I said. “The old lady deserves better.”
Marsha was quiet for a moment, then spoke again, her voice somber. “If I thought an autopsy was a sign of disrespect for the dead, I’d get out of this line of work. Once you’re gone, the body’s just an empty house.”
“I guess there’s no point in worrying about it.”
“Try not to even think about it.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
“Anytime, soldier. Call me later. If this guy buys the Porsche, I might need a ride to the store.”
I smiled. That meant that, at the very least, I’d get to see her. “You got it, Doc. No problem.”
I tried hard to focus on the labyrinth of information I’d gathered in the past two days on the world of R. J. Reed. Part of it was that I was being drawn further and further into this case. But a big part was that this gave me the chance to escape my own world, which seemed to be more and more uncomfortable with each passing tick of the cosmic clock. A man my age should not be living hand-to-mouth and facing a solitary future. I couldn’t avoid the feeling that somehow I had managed to screw up just about everything: career, marriage, relationships, money. The only reason I even had a roof over my head was because somebody else died and, through whatever misguided sensibilities, left me that roof.
And now it looked like even that might be coming down around me.
“Stop that,” I said out loud, pulling into the parking lot of Mrs. Lee’s. “You’re just feeling sorry for yourself and there’s too damn much work to do.”
I slung my bag full of paper over my shoulder and walked into the restaurant. It was a little before twelve, but there were only about a dozen people in the place and nobody in line at the counter.
“What’s going on?” I asked Mrs. Lee as I walked up to the register.
She scowled at me. “What? You not see TV last night?”
“No, what are you talking about?”
“Dat damn channah foah,” she complained. “We on dat t’ing dey do evah week on restaurants.”
“What?” I asked. She was upset When Mrs. Lee gets upset, her accent thickens and she’s hard to understand.
“You know. Dat ‘eat, dwink, be wahey.’ ”
“Oh,” I said. “Eat, drink, and be wary.”
The local NBC outlet, Channel 4, has a weekly news segment where they report the health department’s sanitation scores on local restaurants. They pick the top three scores and the bottom three. It’s always fun to see the really expensive places get nailed.
“What did you do to piss off the health department?” I asked. Jeez, seems like everybody’s having a tough time.
“We have bad day, dat’s all. Vehy busy, not have time to wash wooden spoons in breach. We clean evaht’ing up. Dey come back Monday, recheck us. All be okay!”
“I’m sure it will be—”
“Pay hell wid customahs,” she interrupted. “Nobody come eat heah. We d’ink maybe sue!”
“They’ll be back,” I said. “Look, here I am.” I spread my arms as if acknowledging a crowd of admirers.
“Yeah, who you? You only buy cheapest stuff on menu.”
“Not anymore, my dear. I happen to be temporarily flush. I’ll take the Governor’s Shrimp.” It was just about the most expensive thing on the menu.
“Whah you get so much money? You rob a bank?”
I started to tell her bank robbery was kid stuff to a guy accused of two murders but decided she might not get the joke. I pulled a twenty out of my wallet and handed it to her. “Just get me some lunch, okay? I’m starving.”
Five minutes later I was wading through a pile of papers and stuffing my face. It’s amazing what you find when you start opening people’s closets without asking them. In the years before discovering R. J. Reed, for instance, both Travis Webber and Karl Sykes had been sued in civil court over a long series of debts and charge-offs. Spearhead Press had been named in several civil suits as well, including one for copyright infringement and several lawsuits from authors claiming that they hadn’t been paid royalties.
Four years ago Webber’d gone Chapter 7. That meant that two of the three people involved in the success of Life’s Little Maintenance Manual had encountered financial problems severe enough to land them in bankruptcy court.
And up until the dough started rolling in from the book, they all must have had shitty credit histories. When I examined their credit reports, I saw none of them went back further than two years. I figured they must have gone back and settled up with their past creditors to get their files cleaned up. They couldn’t get those bankruptcies off, though. Once you wind up in bankruptcy court, it’s almost impossible to get that blemish removed.
I turned to all the information I’d gathered on Erica Benedict, Reed’s editor at Spearhead Press. Truth is, Lonnie was right. Having this kind of information on someone made you feel kind of cheesy. I had her age, marital status, next of kin, address, unlisted phone number, credit history, the outstanding balance on her condo mortgage, her employment history, and a ballpark estimate of her yearly income. I had her college transcripts, a copy of her divorce decree from 1994, a copy of her DMV sheet—jeez, she likes to drive fast—and the fact that in 1985 she was arrested for misdemeanor possession and received a year’s probation. She also forgot to pay her Visa bill on time last month. About the only thing I didn’t have was her shoe size, and I could probably find that out if I looked hard enough.
I shook my head. None of this was any of my business, yet here it all was. I don’t want to even consider the moral and ethical implications of what I’d done.
Yeah, don’t want to, but I can’t help it. I’ll put if off for now, though.
I sipped my tea and finished the last of the Governor’s Shrimp. My impending blood-sugar crash had been staved off. I felt tired but reasonably ready to go back out and tackle the world.
I checked my watch. Reed’s funeral was in a couple of hours. I still hadn’t decided how to handle that one. Chances were, Erica Benedict as well as Sykes and Webber and a ton of other people would be there.
The thought occurred to me that I hadn’t yet checked my office answering machine today. At least do that, I thought, and see if Victoria Reed or anyone else had called. I took my tray over to the large wastebasket by the door of the restaurant, dumped my trash, then walked down the short hallway leading to the restrooms. Perched between the doors to the ladies’ and gents’ rooms was a pay phone. I pumped in a quarter, dialed my office number, and tapped in the code to play the messages back.
“Hello,” that annoying computer voice said, “you have … twelve … messages.”
“Crap,” I muttered. I’ve got to get rid of that damn thing.
I scrambled for a pen and slip of paper as the messages began playing. The first was from Sergeant Fouch, who had apparently tried my office this morning before he got me at home. The next was from Victoria Reed, with a request that I call her.
“Good,” I muttered, scribbling a note down.
Then there were ten messages from reporters: TV reporters, print reporters, radio reporters. Damn, I used to be one and now I hate them.
But why would they be calling me? I’m old news. Has there been something new with Reed’s murder? Maybe they’d caught the murderer and I was off the hook.
The first one to call, of course, was Randy Tucker at the Banner. I dialed the main switchboard of the paper and got switched through.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Harry Denton. I just got your message, along with a dozen others. What the hell’s going on?”
“Christ, you haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?” Suddenly, the taste of recycled Governor’s Shrimp filled the back of my throat.
“There was a press conference this morning at the DA’s office. They’re getting a court order to exhume the body of your landlady!”
“Damn it!” I said. “I can’t believe they’re going through with this.”
“You haven’t heard the rest,” he said.
“There’s more?” I asked weakly.
“Your landlady’s son was at the press conference. He’s quite a preacher.”
“Oh, no, what’d he say?”
“He says you killed his mother, Harry. He says you killed Mrs. Hawkins. They’re pushing the police to arrest you.”
I stood there a moment, staring at the wallpaper. The pattern was alternating green and red swirls, sort of a Chinese-restaurant version of Christmas wrapping paper.
“Any comment, Harry?”
This is insane, I thought.
“Harry?”
“No. No comment,” I said slowly.
How many times had I heard criminals say that in my years as a reporter? Now it was my turn.