Fourteen

What is it?” I said, when the front door on the old Worth place had slammed and we were off his property, back on the street quick-marching to where the Jeep was parked.

“Roger.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s got information.”

“Well, just wait while I get a good hold of this stone and squeeze some blood out!” I said. “What information?”

“Tam wasn’t shot,” said Todd. He chirped the Jeep open and clambered in. “Why were you asking about John Worth’s car?” he said, when I had clambered in too.

“Right,” I said. “Let’s change the subject. That seems like a great idea. What do you mean he wasn’t shot?”

“Roger doesn’t want to put it in an email or say it over the phone. So we either wait till he’s home tonight or we go up to the hospital and grab him between rounds.”

“Let’s take him a burrito,” I said. “Poor thing, having to work on a Saturday.”

I’d only visited Roger at work once before, when I presented a workshop on “self-care in times of crisis” to a parents’ support group. It wasn’t successful. None of the parents believed my combination of pizza and bad telly would deliver the results I knew it would, and when I told them it had got me through a divorce and they asked what about the children and found out I didn’t have any, they all folded their arms and gave me the stink-eye. Some of it was figurative, but some of it was literally elbows and eyelids. But even the workshop wasn’t as bad as the complimentary lunch afterwards in the cafeteria. A salad of pink-edged iceberg lettuce and chewy croutons with shriveled grapes for fancy and one of those bog-awful flavoured waters.

Todd was pulling up at the taco wagon and my stomach was already rumbling.

Ten minutes later, with three giant Al Pastor burritos ir and three twenty-ounce watermelon juices, one with light ice because of the daylight robbery ice scam I was onto, we were on our way.

“Ir!” said Todd.

“It means ‘to go’ en Espanol,” I pointed out.

“It means ‘to go’ like ‘I go, you go, he she and it go.’”

“And he knew what I meant.”

“He knew what you meant because he’s had years of gringos who think they can speak Spanish saying it to him.”

“Don’t say gringo.”

“Sorry. Gabacho.”

“Don’t say gabacho.”

“You have no idea what gabacho means, do you?”

“I can guess.”

“Para llevar.”

“Don’t say—”

“Oh for God’s sake! Para llevar means food ‘to go.’”

“Are you okay?” I said. It wasn’t like him to be so testy.

“Worried about Roger,” was all he would give me. Then we were on the freeway and he had to concentrate. It’s not that big a city, Sacramento, but it wears its “worst drivers in America” badge with pride and Saturdays aren’t any better just because the Capitol staffers have all piled up to Tahoe or down to San Francisco. The weaving, texting, and random speed changes took every bit of Todd’s attention until we came off at the hospital exit. And the ambulances didn’t help much.

“How do you feel, coming back?” I said as we made our way from the car to the paediatrics entrance.

“This isn’t coming back,” Todd said. “I didn’t work here. I worked in ambulatory care, way across campus.”

“Ambulatory care!” I said. I knew he meant outpatient and it still tickled me.

“What do you call median strips again, Lexy?” Todd said.

“Central reservations,” I said. “What do you call GPs?”

“Primary care physicians,” said Todd. “What do you call a plainclothes cop who’s not a sarge?”

“I’m not sure how the ranks map onto each other.”

“What are the possibilities?”

“Either detective inspector, detective chief inspector, chief superintendent, or maybe just detective constable. Yeah, you win.”

Todd might never have worked at the kids’ bit of this sprawling hospital, but he was known here. The nurses on the frontline greeted him like the messiah. There were hugs, tears, selfies, and even one cheek-pinch before Roger answered his page.

“Hey,” he said. “You’re just in time for lunch. It’s seafood day at the mac-and-cheese window.”

I held up the package of food and tray of drinks. “Burritos and watermelon juice.”

“From Chipotle?” Roger said.

“Have we met?” said Todd. “From the wagon on E Street and they’re getting cold.”

I felt mean sitting in the café eating a shoebox-sized roll of goodness while everyone else choked down fishy pasta, but we were far enough away not to hear the moans of jealousy. Roger had insisted on this quiet corner and then he sat with his broad, scrub-clad back facing the room, daring anyone to come and disturb us. Todd gave a couple of finger waves to people he recognised but then shifted so no one could see him. I was in plain sight, but no one was likely to come belting over to bother me.

“So,” said Todd, after a good bite, a luxurious chew, and a slug of juice, “he wasn’t shot.”

Roger swallowed, took a glug of his own drink, and shook his head. “He wasn’t shot. And the police—well, Mike, I suppose—are kicking themselves for being fooled.”

“I would think she is,” I said. “How do you think you’ve seen a GS—gunshot wound if you haven’t? Belly-button piercing gone wrong?”

“Oh no, it was a gunshot wound,” said Roger.

“An old one?” Todd guessed.

“Okay, I’ll stop toying with you,” said Roger. He took a mammoth bite of his burrito. He was in the middle of it now, through to the good bit, and he chewed in a state of bliss with his eyes closed. Then he swallowed, huddled even closer, and spilled all.

“The on-call pathologist on Wednesday night was someone I happen to know,” he said. “Todd, don’t freak, okay?”

“Is this the Maurice guy?” Todd said.

“This is the Maurice guy,” Roger said. “Lexy, I have no interest in this guy—he looks like Mr. Burns and dresses like Columbo—but he isn’t getting the message. He’s … friendly bordering on stalker, you know? And he knew where the corpse was found and … I wasn’t happy to discover it, but … he knows that’s where I’ve been living.”

“He does?” said Todd.

“Which, yes, is a worry,” said Roger, “because I haven’t changed my official address and all the mail goes to a PO box and so I’m not sure how he found out, but anyways. Here’s the silver lining to a pretty black cloud. He told me what they found in the autopsy.”

“He emailed you?” said Todd.

“No, he’s not dumb enough to do that,” said Roger.

“He called you?” said Todd. “He has your number?”

“Not that I know of,” said Roger. “No, he came over this morning, oh-so casual, shooting the breeze.”

“Over from where?” said Todd. “Where does he work?”

“Pathology,” said Roger. “What with him being a pathologist and all.”

“Todd, please,” I said. “We can loop back. What came out in the autopsy?”

“He was wearing a Halloween costume,” Roger said.

“Right,” I said. “A Jimmy wig. Stapled on.”

“No,” said Roger. “Under his clothes. He was wearing a second-skin costume. It had chest hair and fake junk and a fake bullet wound. It was on under his sweatshirt and mom jeans. Made of some kind of nerf-style stuff. Neoprene maybe.”

“It was a fake—” I started to say, much too loud. Then I bent over and whispered instead. “It was a fake bullet wound? And Mike fell for it? Oh my God, she’s never going to live this down! She thought a fake bullet wound in a neoprene onesie was a real bullet wound in a guy’s actual flesh? Wow!”

“Four days in the water can do strange things to a corpse,” Todd said, perhaps trying to be fair.

“But he wasn’t in the water four days,” Roger said. “That’s another thing Maurice told me. He spend three days happily decomposing at an ambient temperature, outside but not exposed, and only then did he hit the water.”

“He spent three days lying out in a ditch somewhere without anyone finding him, dressed in a fake birthday suit, junk and all, with a hat on, and no one reported it?” I said.

“So what did he die of if it wasn’t a bullet wound?” said Todd.

“Sitting,” Roger said. “Not lying, Lexy. Sitting. From the pattern of hypostasis in his butt and lower legs. He was sitting. And he wasn’t out in the wilds. There was no rodent damage. He was somewhere pretty sheltered.”

“How?” I said. “How could he be sitting outside for four days? What, like at a bus stop? On a park bench? I know Mo Tafoya said Cuento’s not the community it once was, but that’s nuts.”

“I think,” Roger said. “This is only my theory, but I really do think it’s … seasonal.”

“Huh?” said Todd.

“As in, calendar specific,” said Roger.

I was stumped, but light was dawning on Todd. “Oh. My. Godetia corsage,” he said. “He was sitting propped up on someone’s porch as part of a Halloween scene, wasn’t he?”

“Looks like it,” Roger said.

“But why would someone do that?” I said. “I mean, why would someone do that?”

“Buys time,” Todd said. “Let’s a murderer get away.”

“You’re assuming he was murdered,” Roger said.

“He was at the high school reunion,” I said. “And there’s definitely something fishy about that. We’ve spoken to three people and they’re all pretty jumpy, aren’t they, Todd?”

“Was it natural causes?” Todd said. “Did he just party too hard?”

“Ohhhhh!” I said. “If he drank himself to death at the party maybe his dependents could sue the Alumni Association. Or the Farmers’ Market. Is that it?”

“We’ll make an American of you yet, Lexy,” Roger said. “Straight to litigation! No, he didn’t drink himself to death. Well, not in the way you mean. He was poisoned.”

Roger was used to the idea, having had all the time since the Maurice guy blabbed it to him. He took another caveman bite of his dwindling burrito and waited to see what we made of the bombshell.

“Food poisoning?” I said. I looked into the open end of my own burrito. I love that taco wagon and I hate sissies, but you do hear things.

“Nope,” Roger said. “Hydrogen peroxide.”

Todd winced.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Caustic soda,” said Roger.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Lye,” said Roger.

“He drank lye?” said Todd.

“He drank lye.”

“Who drinks lye?” I said.

“Which is what made Maurice so sure it was murder and not suicide,” said Roger. “No one in their right mind could make themselves drink lye. It would be like trying to suffocate yourself by holding your breath. But that’s what killed him. It burned out his throat, burned away his gut. It even dissolved the composite they used to fix the gap in his teeth. On its way down, you know.”

“Wait, what?” I said. I clutched Todd’s arm. “Mo! Original Mo! Mo H! Roger, we spoke to a woman this morning who went bolting off to her bathroom to puke when we mentioned the gap between Tam’s front teeth!”

“That’s pretty suspicious,” Roger said.

“And we also spoke to another woman who’s got an empty rocking chair on her Halloween porch,” I said.

“And one seriously freaked-out dude I’d swear knew Tam wasn’t shot,” Todd added.

“Are you saying you tipped off a murderer?” said Roger, going still.

“She’s going to kill us for interfering, but we need to tell Mike, don’t we?” I said. My heart sank at the thought of it.

“I’ll do it,” Todd said. “She hasn’t just tried to arrest me and had to back down. I’ll do it with tact and decorum. We don’t need to ruffle any feelings or upset anyone.”

While those words were hanging in the air I became conscious of movement at the far side of the cafeteria. Something large and red was barrelling towards us, weaving between tables but knocking over the occasional chair. It was a nurse, I realised. Or it was a nurse if nurses wear red scrubs and, right enough, no one else in the cafeteria was decked out like a blood clot. She was moving at quite a pace.

“It is you,” she screeched as she got within a few yards of us. She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her.

“What the?” said Roger, craning over his shoulder.

“What did you say to him?” the woman bellowed. She tripped over some guy’s foot as he stuck it out into her path and she stumbled for a few lurching steps. Then she righted herself and kept on rolling our way. “What did you do to him?” she shouted. “What have you done? What did he ever do to you?”

The guy who’d tried to trip her up was chasing after her now. He was dressed in grey scrubs, which rang a faint bell, and he’d surely had them tailored to his physique. They hugged him like spandex. The red scrubs of the running woman hugged her like spandex too, because her physique was scrub-shaped. She could certainly haul it around though. She was nearly upon us. I still couldn’t place her. But at my side Todd gasped.

“Becky?”

Of course!

“Becky Worth?” I said. “What’s wrong?”

She was in no mood for talking. She came right up to the table, took me by my lapels—well, the zip of my hoodie—and shook me. “What did you do? What did you do?”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “Stop shaking me!”

Todd was trying to prise her fingers off me. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said. Roger was on his feet, reaching out.

The grey scrubs guy was here too now. He stepped between Roger and the woman in red. “I’ll take care of this,” he said. “Let me get rid of this for you.”

“Maurice?” Roger said. He shot a look at Todd, who let go of Becky’s hands. Becky took the chance to shake me even harder, sending eighteen ounces of watermelon juice and two thirds of a large burrito on a carnival ride round my insides.

“He’s had a heart attack,” she said. Sobbed, really. She was sobbing now.

“Mr. Burns?” said Todd, looking between the svelte guy in the grey scrubs and Roger’s face, which was purple. “Columbo?”

“And it’s all your fault,” Becky was saying. She had lost some of her fire now. I managed to get out of her grip and pushed her into a chair. “What did you say to him? What did you want with him? He was fine and now he’s dying. He’s a good man.”

“I’m sorry to hear he’s ill,” I said. “Although if he got to a hospital still alive after a heart attack, he’s probably not dying, you know. But I’m going to have to disagree with you on one score, Becky. He is not a good man.”

“Good men certainly are thin on the ground around here,” Todd said.

Maurice flicked him a glance but had little attention to spare from Roger. “Are you okay?” he said. “Should I call security?”

“Why would you say that?” Becky was asking me. She blew a snot bubble out of one nostril and even if she had just assaulted me and even if her brother was a murderer, I hated to see a fellow woman so humiliated in front of these three gorgeous men. I passed her a tissue.

“Blow your nose,” I said. “Because he’s a homophobic bigot, Becky. That’s why.”

“Who is?” said Maurice. “Roger, is someone harassing you?”

“Yes,” said Todd. “Someone is. Someone not a million miles away.”

“And who are you?” Maurice said, looking at Todd as if he’d been tracked in on a shoe.

“He’s not a homophobic bigot,” Becky said. “Why would you say that? He works down in L.A. He’s a sound engineer. He’s got more gay friends than anyone I know.”

“Maurice, this is my husband, Todd,” Roger said. “Light of my life, fire of my soul. Like I told you.”

“Loins,” said Todd. “The quote is ‘fire of my loins.’ You friend zoning me now, Roger?”

“What is he talking about?” said Becky.

“I’m at work, Todd,” Roger said. “Loins is not appropriate language.”

“Saying he wouldn’t piss on a burning gay is homophobic enough for me,” I said. “And he knew Tam wasn’t shot.”

“What’s she talking about?” said Maurice. “Roger, I told you what I told you in confidence.”

“When someone’s married,” said Roger, “confidence extends to the spouse.”

“My brother didn’t kill Tam Shatner,” said Becky. “What did you say to him after I’d gone?”

“I’m not saying he did,” I said. “If me asking questions about Tam has given John a heart attack, I think that’s on him. Not on me.”

“But he’s really, really not a bigot,” Becky said.

“No one ever admits to being a bigot,” said Todd.

“No, but—” Becky said. Then she glanced at her watch. “I need to get back to him,” she said. “I promised I’d only be away five minutes while they moved him out of the ER into the ICU. I’ve got to go.”

“Do you have someone coming to support you?” I said. “Do you want me to come with you?”

Becky snorted as if she’d rather have Dick Cheney wax her legs than put up with me as a shoulder to cry on. Then her face crumpled. “If you would stay till our sister gets here from Reno,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You go on,” I told her, “and I’ll be right behind you.” I turned to Todd. “Put the rest of my burrito in my fridge for later,” I said. “And swing round by the Worth place. See what she was cramming into the wheeliebin in such a hurry this morning. And look in my diary for a time you and Roger can come to see me.”

“What?” Roger said.

“I mean it. Mr. Burns indeed! That was a rookie mistake, Roger. Maurice, would you like to go out for a drink sometime?”

“With you?” Maurice said.

“With me.”

“Uhhhhh, no,” he replied.

“Exactly,” I said. “Now listen: you’ve got as much chance with Roger as I’ve got with you, so do yourself a favour and move on. Okay?”

“Why do I need to come?” Todd said as Maurice swished off with as much dignity as scrubs ever allow. “This is a clear case of Lexy Campbell says one-side-sucks.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see Roger alone.”

“No way,” said Todd, as I knew he would. “I want to hear what you both say about me.”

I kissed them both on the cheek and together we left the cafeteria. Todd, though, stopped dead in his tracks as we passed the drinks dispenser.

“Oh God,” he said. “That’s not even funny.”

He pointed towards a hospital health poster pinned on the wall behind the fountain. Drink less soda for health! it said, on top of a shot of Coke fizzing over ice cubes.

“Hard to argue,” Roger said. “How could anyone—even a murderer—kill someone by making him drink lye?”

“Here in the land of the well-ordered militia,” I said, “what’s the point of all that mess and bother instead of a nice clean bullet?” Todd and Roger were both staring at me. “I’m not asking!” I said. “I’m trying to put myself in the murderer’s shoes. Like Roger said: why lye?”