Twenty-Eight

If Mrs. Ortiz’s house had swinging saloon doors; if Todd, Kathi, Della, and me were wearing spurs; if Mo, Mo, Patti, and Joan were playing poker; and if the music had stopped, it still could not have been a more classic stand-off. Hoo, those things can last a long time when everyone’s truly gobsmacked.

“It was the cat decals, wasn’t it?” Mo Heedles said at last. “I’m sorry, girls. I should never have tried to persuade you.”

“No,” said Mo Tafoya. “I overdid it with the real estate listing. It’s all on me.”

“Oh please,” said Joan. “It was me picking the wrong porch, trying to send a message. I’ll never forgive myself. And wanting to clean that stupid kilt.”

“It is my doing,” said Mrs. Ortiz, putting down the tray of cakes and coming to squeeze Patti’s shoulders. “I told the wrong story to them when they came. I couldn’t do that to the memory of your father, Patti. I couldn’t bring myself to say he harmed you. I spoiled everything. Old fool!”

“It was none of you,” I said. “You all played a total blinder. You knocked it out of the park, I mean.”

“All except Howie!” said Mrs. Ortiz.

“Oh, Mamá,” said Patti, while the rest of us—the Last Ditch contingent anyway—were all thinking who?

“Is that one of the nephews?” I said. “Because it was the youngsters that blew it. Your nephew taking the class ring off, Mo. And your granddaughter cutting herself on her shears, Mo. And as for your nephew, Joan, blundering into the wrong dry cleaners! They all sucked. But none of you put a foot wrong. Mrs. Ortiz, we never doubted your story for a moment. Your story made us think Joan was lying.”

“I’m sorry,” said Joan.

“And your porch thing worked,” Della said. “We thought John Worth was lying.”

“Poor John,” said Patti.

“And the real estate listing worked too,” said Kathi. “We thought Mike was lying.”

“Who’s Mike?” said Patti.

“Sorry,” Kathi said. “Molly Rankinson. Cop on the case.”

“And no one busted the decals,” said Todd. “I still don’t know what the hell they were supposed to be for.”

“Me either,” said Patti.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I busted the decals. I knew they were phone numbers. I’ve been saying it for days and no one believed me.”

“Yeah, the cat memorials were phone numbers,” Mo Heedles said. “For our burner phones. So we could stay in touch with each other without a record of it. I couldn’t believe it when you started calling instead, Lexy.”

“Burner phones?” I asked her. “Like the one you tried to hide in your key bowl?”

“We got carried away,” Mo Heedles said.

“And why didn’t John’s work?” I said.

“Because his is real,” said Mo Tafoya. “He must have loved that cat. He’s not part of this. We just … at the planning stage, it seemed like a good idea. To mock him. It was only ever supposed to be a private joke.”

“And putting a corpse on his porch?” said Della. “Was that a joke too?”

“It was a warning,” Joan said. “When the body was IDed as Thomas Shatner, John Worth was supposed to keep his mouth shut. He was supposed to find the body, call the police, and then agree that it was Tam Shatner.”

“But he found the body, stripped it, redressed it, and dumped it in the slough,” said Todd.

“Because he lives down in L.A.,” I said. “And he didn’t know Creek House was in the way.”

“And then the missing class ring slowed down the ID,” said Kathi.

“This is all very interesting,” Della said, “but we’re not really getting to the heart of the matter, are we? Who is that in the morgue? And who killed him?”

“The case is closed,” said Mrs. Ortiz. “Thomas Shatner is the one in the morgue. And it was suicide.”

“Except a doctor friend of ours found Thomas Shatner’s medical and dental records, and it’s not,” I said. Todd bridled at the word friend but said nothing.

“What medical records?” said Joan. “I ID’d him on the slab and I loaned the cops my yearbook too.”

“A doctored yearbook?” I said. “Oh yes, we’re onto that.”

“Was it you who stole it from the library?” Mo Heedles said. “That wasn’t very helpful. We knew the cops would go there first because they need a warrant to look at the one in the high school archive. When they discovered it was missing, they were pissed. Luckily, they came to me regarding the real estate listing over the weekend so I gave them my copy—doctored, as you put it—and they IDed from that.”

“Who doctored it?” I said.

“My nephew, Andy,” said Joan. “He’s a whiz. He’s a technological genius. Of course, that can backfire. If he hadn’t downloaded an app that tells him where the free first-name deals are, he wouldn’t have ended up with the kilt in the wrong dry cleaner.”

“I don’t raise my voice much,” said Della. “Even when my son put his bunny rabbit in the tank to play with his clownfish I didn’t raise my voice, but if we don’t stop talking about yearbooks and nephews and start talking about who is in the morgue and who killed him, I am going to blow the glass out of the WINDOWS.”

And just from the decibels she reached in that one word, we believed her.

“Sit down,” said Patti. “Mamá will make more coffee and I will tell you a tale.”

It was irresistible.

Mrs. Ortiz got some extra chairs from deep in the back regions of the house and made some ferociously strong noninstant coffee that nearly cut through the sweetness of the little blue cakes.

“Graduation night, 1968,” Patti said. “I went to the dance with my three girlfriends. We were ahead of our time. And then we went to the after-party at the old Armour homestead. And …” She took a breath. “Tam Shatner raped me. And John Worth didn’t stop him.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“I stopped him,” said Patti. “I killed him. Hit him on the back of his head with a rock and killed him stone dead. Then Papá put him in the lye pit at work so no one would ever find out. And I went to Florida and stayed there. The story that got around town was pretty similar.”

“Except the other way round?” I said, and Patti nodded, smiling.

“If Tam had ever come back, the cops would have wanted to ask him about me; and if I had ever come back, the cops would have wanted to ask me about him. But as long as we both stayed away, it was a stalemate. Mamá put on a show of looking for me, but it all died down pretty quick actually.”

“I see,” said Della.

“And I could have stayed away,” Patti said. “But two things happened. It was lovely when my mother and father came to visit, but when my father died, he died here and I wasn’t beside him. And now my mother is getting older and … I don’t want to say it, but I need to be here at home.”

“What’s the other thing?” Kathi said.

“Howie Baumgarten,” Patti said. “Head of the chess club, winner of the debate team challenge, player of the bass drum in the marching band. He retired a little early due to ill health. And he moved to a small beach town in southern Florida. And I discovered that he had always carried a torch for me. He recognized me. Forty years later, he recognized me.”

“Forty years?” said Todd.

“Yes,” said Patti. “This has been ten years in the planning. Howie’s cancers didn’t progress as quickly as we feared. It took ten years until he was ready to go. Ten years of changing all the yearbooks.”

“Did you Photoshop the smiles off the girls?” said Kathi.

“No,” Patti said. “We weren’t smiling. Because Tam really was there. He took the photographs and when it was just girls, he was nasty.”

“So,” I said. “Ten years?”

“Ten years of making a false history of Tam Shatner in Florida. He was ready a year ago, but the fiftieth reunion seemed like it was meant to be.”

“So it really was suicide?” I said.

“It really was suicide,” said Patti.

“He drank lye?”

Patti bowed her head and when she raised it again her eyes had filled with tears. “For me,” she said. “For what I went through. To thumb his nose one final time at Thomas Shatner and so I could come home, Howie drank lye. It never occurred to him, I don’t think, that it would point back to me, and to my father. He died alone in his hotel room—booked under the name of Shatner—which was what he wanted. And then we put him on John Worth’s porch, as he had agreed. So far it had all gone according to plan, we thought. But then everything went wrong. Everything. Blood on the cutty sark, no costume on Mama Cuento, John putting the corpse in the slough, no class ring, Joan dry cleaning her ex-husband’s family’s kilt, John’s heart attack, some mysterious stranger calling the cat memorial numbers. Everything. And most especially you.”

“Me?” I said.

“All of you,” said Della. “Investigating, interfering, working things out, getting things wrong.”

“Yeah, how in the name of the Goddess did you get it into your skulls that Tam Shatner was gay?” said Mo Tafoya.

“Ummmm,” I said. It was a good question. How did we?

“We should never have pounced on that and tried to work it into the story,” said Mo Heedles.

“I panicked,” said Joan. “I messed that up big-time.”

“But,” said Patti, glaring at me, “even though you got that wrong, you got plenty right. And you had a dose of luck. Offering cleaning to Andys on exactly the wrong day. Comparing stories, coming to speak to my mother. Even—now you’re telling me—getting insider information on the autopsy.”

“Are we in danger?” said Della. “Are you threatening us?”

“No,” said Patti. “We’re trying to persuade you. It was suicide. And the death of Tam Shatner was manslaughter and I’d do it again today. I’d happily take out a rapist with a rock to the back of the head. Wouldn’t you?”

“But do you really think you’ll get away with it?” Todd said. “Don’t you think if all of this is bothering us, it’s going to be bothering the cops too?”

“The case is closed,” said Patti firmly. “John Worth is recovering. I’m here with my mamá in the twilight of her life.”

“I’m not threatening you,” said Todd. “I’m trying to advise you. Cases can reopen.”

“I’m not worried,” Patti said. Then she cocked her head.

We could all hear feet coming up the front path outside and we all saw the front door open.

“Mom?” came a voice. “I see you finally took those dumb decals off your—”

Mike stopped talking and stood in the doorway. It was bar-room stand-off time again.

“Mom?” I said, looking round the room and wondering.

“I’m just going to go ahead and rewind,” said Mike. She held my gaze. “I didn’t come here. You didn’t see me. You’re not going to take my badge and ruin nine lives over nothing, right?”

“Nine?” I said. I ticked them off on my fingers. “Yours, Mike. Patti and Mrs. Ortiz, Joan, Mo Heedles, Mo Tafoya, and John Worth. That’s seven. Who are the other two?”

“Diego and me,” Della said. “Right, Mike? ICE, ICE, baby?”

“What?” I said.

“Educate yourself, Lexy,” said Mike. “If you’re going to stay here, for God’s sake, get a clue.”

“I would,” I said. “If someone would tell me to. But there’s no one here telling me to. At least no one I can hear. No one I can see. The door’s blown open, but maybe it’ll just blow shut again.”

Mike pulled the door towards her and it latched with a soft click as her footsteps began to recede back down the path.

It’s what passes for a happy ending round here these days. It was going to have to do.