Twenty-One

He looks,” I began an hour later, in the viewing room at the morgue. I knew what I was supposed to say: so peaceful.

“Dead,” said Visalia, and it was hard to argue. Cousin Clovis on Monday had been dead beyond a shadow of a doubt. Cold, stiff, and pale. But looking at him then I could see how Mary Shelley might have got the idea for Frankenstein, one night after a good dinner in that villa in Italy, as the mints went round and the candles burned down. Looking at him now, four days later … I could only imagine her out for lunch with her editor in London, giving the two-minute pitch, and the editor saying, “I dunno, Mary. What else you got for me?”

That same orderly was standing off to the side, scrolling through his texts. Hard to believe there was a signal down here, but he was certainly engrossed in something.

I had tried to strategise on the drive over, suggesting that Mizz Visalia throw a wobbler and have to be taken away, leaving me alone with the body. She pointed out that anyone falling ill on county property would be whisked into the ER in case of litigation and she’d had a “potful of county facilities at the jail and could do without the hospital chaser.” Then I suggested she faint and grab hold of the sheet on her way down, uncovering the body and letting me take a quick couple of photos while the attention was on her. “ER for me again,” she said, “and jail for you when they hear the camera click.” I suggested the application of some more dead guys—presidents, to be specific. Visalia pointed out that the staff member would gladly pocket the money and then keep coming back for more until we were both destitute.

“I’ll take care of it, Lexy,” she said. “Leave it to me.”

She sighed and smiled at the orderly. He scrolled. She cleared her throat. He scrolled. She said, “Pardon me.” Maybe he thought she was excusing a burp, but in any case, he scrolled.

“Sir?” I said. “I think Mrs. Bombaro would like to ask something.”

The orderly raised his eyes. They were deader than Clovis’s in their way, since Clovis at least had that residual look of surprise he was taking into the hereafter. My heart sank. This guy had no spark of humanity about him anywhere. Whatever Visalia had in mind, he’d snort and go back to scrolling.

I was wrong.

“Can I look at him?” Visalia said. The orderly glanced at the table and poked his head forward, just once, about six inches. I had no idea what he meant to convey but Visalia, for all she was (Bakersfield) Italian, did better with the minimal gesture than me.

“Oh, yes of course,” she said, “It’s wonderful to see his sweet face, but can I look at … more of him? Can I look at … all of him? He was such a passionate man and marriage is such an intimate relationship and we’ve been married so long … ”

It was a masterstroke. There was no way for the orderly to refuse her request without implying that he was repulsed. And repulsion takes investment. Repulsion is a shit that must be given.

To prove he didn’t have the fixings, the orderly shrugged and went back to scrolling again.

Visalia looked pointedly at me. I had nothing to prove, possessed several shits, and gave them all: repulsion, trepidation, regret, nausea, light-headedness, and—oddly—a clear memory of Clovis’s brown slip-on shoes and long cream-coloured silk socks. But this had been my idea, so I stepped forward and folded back the white sheet, uncovering his pale, hairless chest with its badly-stitched seam, his white belly, concave now after the removal of so many organs and samples, and … Hallelujah, a pair of paper drawers the same cement-grey as the staff scrubs. I kept unrolling the sheet, past his purple, bruised wrists, his doughy thighs, scraped knees, spindly shins, purple, bruised ankles, and long yellow feet.

“Underwear off?” said the orderly in a lazy drawl. Visalia gasped and he finally betrayed an emotion. A smile-like lift struck one side of his mouth very briefly.

“Underwear on,” I said. I had never been more grateful for the wide streak of Puritanism that still ran through American society, even all the way over here on the wacky West Coast, three thousand miles and a cannibalistic Christmas picnic from the pilgrims’ landing. Breastfeeding under a tarpaulin and trying to give smear tests by touch alone was never going to seem any more normal to me than inside cats and lunch at eleven, but I was a big fan of morgue shorts. Big fan.

If I ever needed to tell someone what I did for a living but didn’t want to end up offering therapy—on a plane, for instance, with a chatty neighbour—I was going to say I worked for a company that manufactured paper underwear for cadavers. That would stop a conversation like rolling a marble into a cowpat.

I turned my attention (at last, perhaps) to the bruises on his wrists and ankles. I happen to know that handcuffs come in different sizes. And Clovis was not a big guy. Yet the marks of his restraints were enough to make me wince and want to rub them with balm. His wrists had been badly pinched and mashed together. I looked down at his ankles and saw the same story there. And something else. There was a rectangular dent about the size of the smallest Lego brick, the one with two bumps, except without bumps.

At my side, Visalia let go of a long low breath. “Goodbye, my dear old friend,” she said. “Goodbye, love of my long life. Goodbye.”

I pulled the sheet back up to his chin, said, “Goodbye, Clovis,” and then let it drop over his face. “We’ll see ourselves out,” I said to Scroller Boy and, hand-in-hand, Visalia and I made our weary way up to the ground floor and out of the formaldehyde chill into the fetid breath of the day.

“I loved him,” Visalia said.

“I know.”

“He made me want to take off my shoe and beat him to death sometimes.”

“Of course.”

“But if I had my time all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

I decided she meant up to but not including Sunday and just patted her hand gently.

“Did you recognise the pattern the restraints left on his skin?” I asked, once we were underway again. “They didn’t look like handcuffs to me.”

Visalia gasped. “Handcuffs?” she said.

“That’s definitely what Bilbo said the police told him.”

Visalia took a huge breath. I was convinced she was going to say something momentous. But in the end all it was, was: “I’m an old woman and I want to rest. It’s so damn hot.”

It was a sharp drop after the way she had bounded out of bed so recently. I even wondered if she meant rest in the Clovis sense. As in, rest side by side in the morgue and have a double funeral. I wondered briefly if they made grey paper bras for lady corpses, then I wrested my mind away and told her I’d drop her at home and would she just phone the factory and tell them I was coming back. If anyone wanted counselling, they should wait for me in the cafeteria.

And what a shower of lazy wee toe rags! The lunchroom was packed solid when I peered round the corner and in through the glass doors. I did a Pink-Panther tiptoe past and then scuttled up Bilbo’s stairs and burst in without knocking.

“You didn’t knock,” he said.

I didn’t say duh. I’m very mature sometimes. “Sorry to disturb you again,” I said. “I’ve got a question.”

“About fireworks?”

“No. About Clovis and the handcuffs.”

“Cable ties,” Bilbo said.

And a choir of angels sang a chorus above my head as the clouds parted and sunbeams shone through. “Cable ties!” I said. “That’s what that square shape was. That’s it. Cable t—How did you find out?”

“I told you,” said Bilbo. “That lady detective said it.”

“No, no, no,” I said. “Categorically not. You said she said handcuffs.”

“Yes, I did. Well, she didn’t. She said cable ties.”

I waited.

Bilbo’s eyes strayed to his screen. “Well, if that was all, I’ve got a funeral display to design.”

“No, that’s not all,” I said, drily. “Of course it’s not.” I waited. In vain. “Why did you say handcuffs?”

“Because Mrs. Bombaro asked me to. She asked me not to say it was cable ties.”

“So why did you say it was cable ties?”

“I didn’t,” said Bilbo. “I said it was handcuffs.”

I sighed. “I now understand why you initially said handcuffs. Mrs. Bombaro told you to.”

“Correct. But I blew it saying ‘cut off.’ I should have extended the deception and said ‘unlocked.’”

“That certainly would have helped,” I said, as dry as if I’d sprinkled salt on my earlier dryness, left it overnight, and then wrung it out in a towel. “But anyway, now that that’s all straightened out, why did you stop saying handcuffs and start saying cable ties just now?”

“Because Mrs. Bombaro asked me to,” he said. “She asked me not to say it was handcuffs.”

“You just told me she asked you not to say it was cable ties!”

“It’s pretty straightforward,” he said. I didn’t beat him around his head with a computer keyboard. I’m proud of that. “Mrs. Bombaro told me that she didn’t mean you to be told the handcuff lie.”

“What?” I said, and I had to grab a breath to say it with.

“She told me she hadn’t ever meant you to be included in the audience for the handcuff lie. That was just for factory workers so that they didn’t feel suspected or even start to suspect one another. Because we use exactly those cable ties for packing and on the mounting boards. Everyone who works in this factory has got some at home too. Clovis was never strict about that. But Visalia never meant you to be told that version. You don’t work in the factory and there was no need to protect you.”

“Right,” I said. “That makes a lot of sense. That’s very clear.”

“It didn’t cause you any trouble, did it?” he said.

“What?” I said, and I flapped a hand at him. “Of course not. No trouble at all. Can I ask you one last question?”

“Is that—”

“Bilbo!”

“Yes, you can.”

“When did Mrs. Bombaro tell you to stop saying handcuffs to me and start saying cable ties?”

“About twenty minutes ago,” said Bilbo. “Lucky timing.”

I sneaked back past the gaggle of traumatised employees in the canteen and back across the baking car park to phone Todd from his own car.

“The plot splits like bad mayo and turns to a watery mess,” I said, and then went on to tell him what Bilbo had told me.

“Sheesh,” said Todd, “those people are going to get the shock of their lives if Bang-Bang really does take over and fires their asses. She wanted to protect them? She’s a sweetheart, isn’t she? But you know the only thing that worries me?”

“Shoot.”

“What did Visalia think you were going to the morgue for, if she already knew he had marks on his body from cable ties?”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s because … Hang on. That’s a good question. Why didn’t she tell me this morning in the bedroom instead of me having to go into that viewing room and see things that made me want to bleach my eyeballs? That’s a very good question. ”

“How about a very good answer?” said Todd.

“Got it!” I said. “I’m an idiot.” The car was starting to warm up, so I fired up the engine and cranked the a/c round to cryogenic. “I was trying not to speak too plainly. I think I maybe didn’t actually cough up any of the sordid details. I think I just said that the cops reckon two different people were involved and I wanted to find out how they knew.”

“But they don’t, right?” said Todd. “That was just Bilbo getting his story pretzeled.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So … hey! You know what that means?”

“Vi’s in the clear?”

“Vi’s in the clear!” I grinned at myself in the driving mirror. “Yay!”

“Only … ”

“Only … Why did she pretend not to recognise the marks? Why didn’t she tell me that the killer used cable ties? Why did she tell Bilbo to tell me?”

“Because … she was … ashamed of having told him to lie in the first place and she didn’t want to come clean to your face?” Todd offered.

“Huh,” I said. “I was going with because she knew I’d go straight back to the factory to ask him and she wanted to get rid of me for some reason.”

“But it can’t be that, if she’s in the clear.”

“And she’s in the clear!” I said. “Yay.”

“Yay,” Todd agreed. “Who did it?”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Someone with access to cable ties and knowledge of fireworks. Sparky, Chucky, Jan, a workers’ uprising? Not Vi and not Barb. That’s good enough for me.”

“This is a good day all round.”

“Oh? No more worms? No bugs?”

“More than that,” Todd said. “Something really truly good is happening. Noleen and Kathi have got guys in to clean the pool and get the filtration system going again. The Last Ditch is gentrifying.”

“That’s your fault,” I said. “First the gays move in and soon there’s no yolks in the omelettes and all the daycare’s for dogs.”

He blew a raspberry at me, like a real chip off the old Barb. I hung up and headed … back to the Last Ditch, which some bit of me not under the jurisdiction of my conscious mind seemed to be telling me was my …

Well, I went back anyway.

And standing looking through the chain-link fence surrounding the pool when I got there were … the people that same bit of me was calling my …

Well, I was glad to see them anyway.

“How’s it going?” I asked as I joined them. Inside the fence two guys in the white t-shirts and work boots I’d come to know so well when I was an up-suburb girl were watching the pool fill from a gushing hose that led from a water tanker parked at the far side. One of the guys couldn’t have been knocked over by a wrecking ball. He made Fred Flintstone look willowy, but the other one was five-ten with broad shoulders and slim hips and …

“You’re drooling,” said Todd.

“Fuck off,” I said. It’s the Scottish version of a raspberry. It made Bran cry once.

“Fuck off yourself,” said Todd. “I’ve already ascertained that he’s straight and single and if Noleen agrees, he’ll be here twice a week. I’ve looked online for swimwear half a size too small for you and we’ll get you a gym membership.”

“Half a size too small?”

“Trust me.”

“And does Noleen agree?” I said.

Noleen looked at the guy’s bum in his jeans and then at me and screwed her face up. “I’m happy to have this windfall,” she said, “but pools cost money and I can just as easy do it myself.”

“What windfall?” I said vaguely. My guy had bent over.

“We won a pool rehab,” Kathi said. “One of those big bowls you toss your business cards into on service desks? A pool company bought the list this month and they offered either a pool rehab or patio landscaping.”

“Call me a bitter old cynic,” Noleen said, “but I thought I knew how it would go. I reckoned they’d come do the pool and tell us—surprise, surprise—it needed a ton of extra work not covered in the small print and could they go ahead and bill us on thirty-day terms. But they’ve restored my faith in humanity. They said the pool’s fine and they gave us two planters and a cabana they can’t be bothered to cart back.”

Then she said some more, but my guy took his t-shirt off and stretched his shoulder muscles out and I didn’t hear her.

“I’m outta here,” Kathi said, fanning her t-shirt. “It’s too hot.”

“I’m willing to stay and get heatstroke,” said Todd. “Lexy, you with me?”

Todd lasted twenty minutes, which was fifteen minutes more than me. I went to stand under the shower and fantasize about swimming every morning again. That is my story of what I fantasized about in my shower and I’m sticking to it.

Moving on. I heard Todd come upstairs when I was sorting out a load of sweaty laundry for Kathi and I called him in.

“Your Adonis has gone to sit in his truck,” Todd said. “Thank God because I was beginning to get red spots in front of my eyes.”

They were prophetic words, as we were to know before the sun rose again.