Chapter
4
M
arsha Pennington's death was the lead item on the eleven o'clock news. It was probably on the earlier edition, too, but I'd missed it. According to the Channel Five anchorman her body had been found by two hooky-playing high school kids. They'd been fooling around when one of them had spotted what they thought was a log floating by the shore. Then they'd realized logs don't have hands, and they'd freaked and called the cops. Bet they won't be cutting classes for a while, I thought as the anchorman rustled his papers and stared straight at the camera.
“The police are investigating,” he informed the audience, “and an autopsy to determine cause of death is planned.”
No shit.
I clicked off the TV as the anchorman began discussing a proposed rise in city taxes and stared out the window. I felt bad and I didn't know why. Even though Marsha and I had been neighbors, we'd never been the best of friends. In fact, there had been many times when I thought that if I heard one more description of what her coworkers were wearing I'd strangle her. Slowly. I clicked the TV back on. Now the weatherman was saying something about rain. What else was new? I tried to pay attention, but I couldn't. I kept seeing an image of Marsha rummaging through her pocketbook looking for the papers she'd left behind superimposed on the screen. I got up and started pacing around the living room.
No matter what I told myself I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something I could have done to prevent Marsha Pennington's death. You want guilt, I thought sourly, call Robin Light. I ran on the stuff. Even though I didn't want to, I started thinking about my mother. Our relationship was the kind therapists make lots of money off of. She'd clawed her way up from a tenement in Hell's Kitchen to a co-op on Park Avenue. She'd wanted me to continue the climb by marrying rich, living on Fifth Avenue, and spending my afternoons at the country club with her and my stepfather. Of course I hadn't. I'd gone off to live with Murphy instead.
We'd had a big fight when I told her I was moving in with him. She'd called me a slut, an ungrateful loser who would never amount to anything, and I'd called her a money-grubbing social climber who'd screwed her way up to the top. She'd run out of the apartment and gotten hit by a car as she'd crossed Park Avenue. At the hospital, before she'd gone into surgery, she'd looked up at me and said, “This is your fault.” My stepfather had added, “See what you did to your mother” as they'd wheeled her into the OR. I knew what they had said wasn't true, but a part of me felt as if it were. I guess I still do, especially when I see her limping along. She's had seven operations since the accident and she still doesn't walk right. I sighed and looked around. Suddenly the house seemed too quiet, too empty. I didn't want to stay in it anymore. I wanted to go where there were people and lights and Scotch, lots of Scotch. I looked at Zsa Zsa, who was now chewing on a piece of rawhide.
“Want a beer?” I asked her.
She wagged her stump.
“Good.” I slipped on my shoes and started looking for her leash. It was time to go to Pete's.
Pete's is a neighborhood bar located over on Westcott Street. The place is strictly low rent in terms of decor, but it does have a good selection of beers, it's nearby, and most importantly my friend Connie tends bar there. I liked the other place she'd worked at better, but when she changed over I'd followed. Most times Pete's is overrun with Syracuse University students, but not tonight. Tonight no one was there except Connie and a couple down at the other end of the bar. Too bad. I could have used the distraction. I sat Zsa Zsa and myself as far away from the couple as possible on the off chance that they were conversationally inclined. Just because I wanted to listen to strangers talking didn't mean that I wanted to talk to strangers.
“Where is everyone?” I asked Connie as I ordered a shot of Black Label and a Samuel Adams.
“Spring break,” she replied, reaching under the bar.
A moment later she set a saucer down in front of Zsa Zsa and poured a little of the Sam Adams into it. Then she plunked the rest of the bottle down in front of me and went off to get my Scotch. By the time she'd come back Zsa Zsa had lapped up the beer and was woofing for more. I fed her some pretzels instead. Too much beer is bad for a dog's kidneys.
Connie set my Scotch down in front of me and pointed to Zsa Zsa's collar. “Very elegant.”
“I think so.” It was jeweledâpearls in a rhinestone setting. The all rhinestone one had seemed too gaudy.
One of my neighbors had said I must have chosen Zsa Zsa because her fur color and my hair color matched. I never bothered to tell them that when I'd found her huddling under Mrs. Z.'s porch she'd been so dirty there was no way of telling her coat was red.
“I bet she's embarrassed,” a gravelly voice behind me said. “I know I would be if I had to wear something like that.”
I half turned. My friend George Sampson was standing there. As per usual I hadn't heard him come up. Despite his size, he was 6'4” and weighed almost three hundred pounds, George moved more quietly than anyone else I knew.
“Where'd you come from?” I asked. “I didn't see you at the bar.”
George nodded toward the back. “I was talking to Sal.”
“I see.” Although Sal was ostensibly a cook, he spent most of his time making book out of the back room of the bar. “I thought you weren't going to do that kind of thing anymore.”
George's eyes narrowed. “We were just talking,” he informed me, his tone daring me to say something else. I guess he was still touchy about the four hundred he'd lost on The Final Four.
I sniggered. “About world affairs no doubt. I hear Sal's a real expert on NATO politics.”
George's eyes narrowed even more. “Heard from Ken lately?”
“No, but I'm sure I will,” I lied. I'd lent the guy five hundred dollars three months ago, and he'd skipped town without paying me back. It was still something I didn't like to discuss. Which George knew. Which of course was why he'd brought it up. I decided it was time to switch to a more neutral topic of conversation. “You look very elegant,” I told him.
“Thanks. I'm trying.” Mollified, George surveyed his khakis and the pink oxford cloth button-down shirt that emphasized the black sheen of his skin. Since he'd quit the police force and gone back to grad school for Medieval History, he'd abandoned his hightops, sweats and T-shirts and gone prep. I was still trying to get used to his new look. And his new persona. I had a feeling George was, too.
“Another Dos Equis?” Connie inquired.
George nodded and sat down next to me. Zsa Zsa wagged her stump by way of a hello and pawed at my hand to let me know she was ready for more beer.
“So how's campus life?” I asked as I poured a smidgen more into Zsa Zsa's saucer.
“It's okay,” he answered, even though his face clearly said that it wasn't and he didn't want to talk about it. He started drumming his fingers on the counter. “So what's up with you?”
I took a sip of my Scotch and rolled it around my mouth for a few seconds before answering. Then I swallowed and told him about Marsha Pennington.
“Yeah,” Connie said as she plunked George's beer down in front of him. “I heard about it on the news. Poor lady. She always looked as if someone kicked her in the teeth. Then last month she started looking happier. And now this.” Connie gave a little shake of her head. “It just proves you should get as much as you can when you can.”
“You knew her?” I asked, pointedly refraining from commenting on Connie's latest rational for sleeping with every guy she could.
“Sure.” Connie ran a hand through her cropped, magenta-toned hair. “We get a whole crew from Wellington in here most Friday afternoons. She was always one of the ones that came early and stayed late.”
“Was she in this past Friday?”
“You mean Good Friday?”
I nodded. Maybe she'd stopped off here after she'd been to see me.
“Sorry. I couldn't tell you. I had the day off.” The door in back of me creaked open and then banged shut. As I half turned my head to see who had come in Connie leaned over and whispered, “These guys look like live ones. Talk to you later.” And she plastered a big smile on her face and cruised toward the three men now sitting in the middle of the bar.
George took a pull on his Dos Equis. “She break up with whatshisname?”
“Ed. How'd you guess?”
“I was a policeman, remember? I know these things.”
I laughed and fed Zsa Zsa a pretzel. I fed her another and ate one myself, and while I did it occurred to me I hadn't had dinner yet and that I was hungry. Then I wondered if Marsha had ever forgotten to eat. Somehow I didn't think so. I shook my head. For some reason I just couldn't seem to get that woman out of my mind.
I took another pretzel and began flicking the salt off it with my fingernail. “George,” I said as I gathered the coarse grains up and licked them off my fingertip. “Do you know where the LeMoyne Reservoir is? I can't find it on the city map.”
He took a sip of beer. “It's off Thompson Road. Why?”
“What's it like?”
He shrugged. “I don't know. I've never been there.”
I ran my finger around the rim of the shot glass. “I wonder why Marsha was?”
“You said she was an ESL teacher at Wellington, right?” I nodded. “Maybe she was looking for one of her kids. I hear the reservoir's supposed to be a Wellington hangout.”
“Maybe,” I said, trying to picture Marsha doing something like that. But I couldn't. When I'd known her she'd been a strictly paint-by-the-numbers sort of person, and something told me she hadn't changed.
“You don't sound convinced.”
“I'm not.” Suddenly I felt an overwhelming desire to see where Marsha had died. George's statement hadn't allayed the suspicions I'd been fighting since I'd heard the broadcast; it had inflamed them. “Exactly where on Thompson is the reservoir?” Obviously it was near or on the LeMoyne College campus, but try as I might I couldn't remember seeing any large or even small body of water in that area.
George drained his beer and threw a couple of dollars on the bar. “Come on. I'll show you.” He laughed when he saw the expression on my face. “Don't look so surprised. I told you. Now that I'm not on the force I can afford to help you. I couldn't before. Not when I thought I was going to make it a career. It wouldn't have been right. But now that I'm not ...” He let his voice drift off for a second, and I wondered if he regretted his decision. “And anyway,” George continued before I could ask him, “I could use the break. I've been sitting in front of my computer screen for too long.” He stood up and stretched. “I'm going home to change. I'll meet you back at your place in twenty minutes.”
“Thanks.”
He smiled. “I'm looking forward to this.” Then he left.
I picked up Zsa Zsa and waved at Connie as I headed toward the door. Not that she noticed I was leaving. She was too busy showing off her cleavage and making goo-goo eyes at the three men. Personally I didn't think any of them looked real good, but Connie's standards were more elastic than mine.
I stopped off for gas and cigarettes on the way home. Then I walked Zsa Zsa around the block. I was just unlocking my door when George pulled up in his three-year-old Taurus.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Be right there.” I put Zsa Zsa in the house and jumped in the car.
George took off as if he were driving at Watkins Glen. He'd driven fast when he'd been a cop and he drove fast now. As he squealed around the corner I glanced over. His face was expressionless as he concentrated on the road.
“So how's your paper going?” I asked. It was his first research paper and I knew he was nervous.
He frowned. “Badly.”
“Why? What's the matter?”
“I don't know.” We turned onto Thompson Road. “I just sit in front of the screen and stare. The words don't seem to want to come.”
“Maybe you should start out with a pencil and paper. That always worked for me when I got stuck.” George didn't say anything. “It's always hard in the beginning,” I persisted, trying to be encouraging.
George leaned over and turned on the radio instead of answering. The subject of school was now obviously closed for discussion.
I shrugged and sat back and listened to the music. If he didn't want to talk, it was fine with me.
“This is it,” George said ten minutes later. He was pointing at a “No Trespassing” sign.
I squinted into the dark. At first I didn't see anything and then I did. The entrance to the access road was narrow and half-hidden by the scrub trees on either side. I must have passed by it hundreds of times and never given it any thought.
“Here we go,” George said as we turned in.
Suddenly it was pitch-black. George switched on the high beams. Trees loomed on either side of us. The spindly trunks looked sickly white in the headlights' glare. Some had their tops broken off while others leaned against one another. Tires and abandoned plastic gallon jugs were scattered on the ground. The road itself was curved and rutted. We bounced along it faster than I thought wise.
“Don't you think you should slow down?” I finally asked.
“I'm afraid we'll get stuck in the mud if I do,” George answered. Then he cursed and turned the wheel.
I slid against the door. “What the hell?”