"You're
gonna have to fill this in for me."
Suddenly
we were in a movie that Marge had run before. The original definition
of the word rehearsal strolled across my mind: To raise up or
resummon the dead. Grief, anger, and guilt all give us pause for
rehearsal.
"First,
there's the basic situation." Her voice rising.
"We've
got this beautiful kid, twenty-two years old, God love him, who's
undergoing chemotherapy, who may well never live to see
twenty-three." She rubbed her temples, going on. "His hair
is falling out in clumps. He's a splotchy light yellow color most of
the time from all the chemicals. It takes him three days to get up
and around after each treatment, and what happens?" I shrugged.
"Out
of the blue, it's like suddenly this little beautiful creature
just can't live without him. And does anybody but me be find that
strange? No way. Makes complete sense to them. Those two were just
like the rest of you. They just blandly assumed it was Nicky's charm.
Men always assume it's their charm. It's what makes them so damn
easy."
I
ignored the jibe.
"What
else?" I prodded.
"The
age thing. I mean she looked great, perfect little petite figure and
all, no cellulite, not a ripple, not so much as a vaccination mark,
but there was no way she was the twenty-six she claimed to be. Women
can sense things like that. Heck wouldn't listen to me, but as I'm
sitting here, she was no twenty-six. You couldn't see the lines
because of that tan, but she'd had the work done, I know it. I've
seen it before in my friends. Everything was just a bit too tight.
You could have bounced quarters off her cheeks."
"Anything
else?"
"The
stories. This goes along with the age thing. You wouldn't believe the
stories. At first, I thought she was just eager to please—you know,
trying to make an impression—but it never let up. To hear her talk
she'd been everywhere and done everything—model, advertising exec,
aerobics instructor, river guide, travel agent, butcher, baker,
candlestick maker. Leo, I swear to you, you'd have to be eighty years
old to have had all the experiences she claimed. Yet"—she
waved a finger again—"not one verifiable detail. Not one thing
you could check. Only child. Parents killed in a plane crash. Raised
by a rich aunt. Supposedly from Wisconsin. It went on and on."
"And
nobody but you noticed?"
"She
charmed the socks off both of them. They were pathetic. Nicky was so
in love she could have had horns and he wouldn't have noticed."
"And
Heck?"
"Heck
was just so relieved to see Nicky happy again." She shook her
head sadly, anticipating my next question. "I had to either shut
up or become the enemy. I shut up. I figured, given a little time,
they'd see through her. God knows she was transparent enough."
"What
did—" I began. She interrupted me.
"If
I'd had any idea they were getting married, I'd have kept at it. I'd
have set new records for bitchery. I wouldn't have cared what either
of them thought of me. I'd have kept at it until they paid
attention."
"The
marriage was a surprise, then?"
She
clicked her tongue.
"They
were supposedly just going to Vegas for the weekend." "Came
back married."
She
nodded. "That bitch had it planned all the way. I told Heck the
day they left that they'd come back married."
"How
did you know?"
"I
just knew."
"And
then?"
"And
then what in the hell was I going to do? My only son was married.
What was I going to do? I had to at least seem supportive, didn't I?"
"So
they came back married. What then?"
"The
honeymoon. They began to plan the honeymoon. We offered to buy
them a Hawaiian honeymoon, the Bahamas, the Caribbean, you name
it, we
offered
it. Oh no. They already had their minds made up."
I
could sense we were coming to the end now.
"They'd,
or rather she had, decided to lease a yacht for a month.
Fifty-some-odd feet—just restored—a beautiful thing. They were
going to cruise down to Baja and back. It was her idea. She said that
would save Nicky the embarrassment of the public beaches, what with
his hair and all the splotches. Just the two of them, you know. She
was always so very thoughtful."
"So?"
"So,
they left on a Thursday morning, a month ago next Thursday. Heck and
I went down to Magnolia and saw them off. Champagne across the bow,
the whole bit."
She
heaved a massive sigh. "Friday afternoon we got a call from the
Coast Guard that the boat had blown up and sunk with all hands. Not a
trace. They say the explosion was so loud it woke everybody in Gig
Harbor, which was the better part of five miles away. Supposedly a
fuel leak. They recovered two . . . parts of two . . . bodies.
Brought them back here."
She
was having trouble maintaining her facade now.
"One
was Nicky . . . Dental records. No question. The other body was
female. That's all they could say for sure without something to
compare it—the remains—with."
"And
Heck didn't think it was them?"
"Nicky's
for sure. Even Heck couldn't dispute that. Heck didn't think she was
on board, though."
"Any
particular reason?"
I
sensed that I'd asked the wrong question again.
"Guilt.
It had to be the guilt. Heck felt guilty for not listening to me
about that little bitch. I think he was punishing himself for being
so damn stupid. I think he needed somebody to blame. He needed to
feel he was doing something. First he couldn't face Nicky's illness;
then he couldn't face his death. As long as he kept this ridiculous
thing going, he didn't have to face the facts." She swallowed.
"So childish.
"What
I really think is that my son is dead, and my husband may well be a
vegetable for the rest of his life, and that none of that macho
bullshit is going to bring either of them back to me."
"So
there was nothing tangible about his suspicions?"
"There
was the missing money and the mortgage on the boat."
"I
thought Heck refused to mortgage the boat."
"He
did. That's where it gets sticky. Nicky mortgaged the boat
during the two weeks before they left on the honeymoon. Never said a
word to Heck or me. Very out of character for Nicky. Five hundred and
seventy-five thousand dollars. He also cleaned out his trust fund.
Another three hundred fifteen thousand. Altogether that's the better
part of a million dollars missing."
"Missing?"
"Thin
air." She snapped her fingers. "The bank said they couldn't
tell us anything. Some privacy law. Just that the accounts were no
longer active. Nicky was over twenty-one, and it was a joint account
with Allison. Right now, their deaths are officially accidents.
We need a court order to get the bank records."
"So,
if it wasn't Allison on the boat, who was it?"
"Heck
hung around the terminal for weeks, pestering everybody.
Eventually he became convinced it was some wharf rat he'd seen
hanging around the marina while they were working on the Lady Day."
"That's
all? Wharf rats come and go. Heck knows that. Doesn't sound like much
to me,"
"When
he couldn't stand hearing that from me anymore was when he moved
aboard. It was ridiculous."
"Why
call me, then?" She was ready for this one.
"I've
been asking myself that for days, and I think I've finally come to an
answer. It's because I need this finished. I need some sense of
resolution, of closure. If this wild goose chase turns out to be the
last thing Heck ever does, so be it, but it needs to have an end. I
need to feel I've done everything I can."
I
understood completely. This need for closure was what kept me in
business. It permitted those who were faced with disaster and guilt a
cushion of hope and allowed those who were left behind to eventually
turn the page and get on with their lives.
I
thought she was finished, but she suddenly continued.
"And
because there's just too many questions left, Leo, even for a
pragmatist like me. Where's the money? Nicky could have had whatever
he'd wanted. All he had to do was ask. And . . . there's her . . .
that bitch. I don't know how to—" She shrugged. "Then
there's the ATM card."
I
waited.
"On
the day of the accident, just before midnight, Heck took five hundred
dollars in cash out of the company account with his ATM card."
"So?"
"He
never used the card. Not once. He liked to go into the bank. He had a
card for the better part of ten years, and in all that time, that
morning was the first and only time he'd ever used it."
"Where
did he do this?"
"That's
another thing. First Avenue. By the market. What could he be doing in
that neighborhood at that time of night?"
I
decided the question was rhetorical and stood mute.
"Finally,"
she intoned, "there's the pictures." "The pictures?"
"I
just noticed them a few days ago. I was shuffling rough all of our
recent pictures, sort of feeling sorry for myself. That's when I
started looking for you. I probably could have lived with the rest of
it, if I hadn't gone through those damn pictures. They flushed me
over the edge."
"What
about the pictures?"
"All
the pictures we took over the couple of months she was around. Heck
had become quite the cameraman. There must be thirty or forty
shots she's in, and you know what, Leo? There's not a single good
picture of her. Not a single frame where her hand isn't somehow in
front of her face, or where she isn't half covered by somebody's
shoulder or by her own hair. It defies the law of averages. It had to
be on purpose. The pictures were the last straw. I had extra prints
and negatives made."
She
opened the drawer in the nightstand, took out a pale green paper bag
with interlocking silver rings woven into the pattern, and held it
out to me. I walked over and took it from her hand.
"Those
are his notes and all the stuff he took out of the apartment. He's
been a man possessed, Leo. He hasn't done anything else but
investigate for the past few weeks. You'll have to go through all
that stuff. I imagine he's just been running in circles. There's also
keys to the Lady Day and to Nicky's apartment." Again, she
anticipated my question. "Heck wouldn't part with the apartment
either. I'll pay the power company so you can see in there. I let it
lapse, hoping if he couldn't see, maybe he'd give it up."
She
rose, folding her arms over her ample chest. "Can you help me,
Leo?"
"I
don't know, Marge. I can promise you I'll try, but I think I should
tell you up front that things are generally just the way they seem to
be. The cops are pretty good at what they do. There are damn few
insidious plots. People generally die in bed or get killed by the
people closest to them."
"I
understand that, but I need to feel that I've done everything
possible. Will you help me?"
"I'll
see what I can do."
"Do
you need some money, a retainer or something?"
"What
I'll need," I said, "is to get with your attorney."
"Why?"
"We
need to follow the money. The money is the only tangible thing we've
got here. Even when there are other leads to follow, it's still best
to follow the money. If your attorneys aren't up to it, I know one
who is."
"For
what we pay them, they'd better be up to it," she snorted.
"Can
you get him down to your office on a Saturday?" "In
his jammies, if I insist." "Insist." "What time?"
"One,"
I said, heading for the door.
"You'll
bill me later?" she persisted.
"Then
I'm working for you?"
"So
it would seem."
"Then
you can count on it."