Death by the Riverside Read online

  Chapter 8

  The morning was one of those rare clear cool days. I found myself whistling on the way to work. A teenage boy even asked me what the tune was. He liked it and wanted to know if he might find it at his local record store. I said yes, they might have Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” and to ask for the Ninth Symphony. He thanked me, smiled, and we parted. There’s hope for the younger generation yet.

  Even a morning of slogging through boring secretarial routines didn’t change my mood. I only saw Barbara in passing. She started my day by dumping a load of stuff on my desk and asking if I could get it done as soon as possible. I said yes and asked a few questions about it. All very professional. Then she winked at me and disappeared. It didn’t hurt my high spirits to have those brown eyes winking at me.

  I didn’t see her again until after lunch. We ran into each other in the bathroom.

  “They’re letting us go early today,” she said as we were washing our hands together. “Due to the Super Bowl this weekend. Long lines for beer, I guess. I’ve scheduled you to work next week, so we can do what we planned,” she finished.

  “Why not today when everyone’s gone?” I asked, leaving the water running to cover our voices, just in case anyone was loitering outside.

  “Because I think it’s only the staff that’s leaving early,” she answered.

  “I see.” No, it would not be a good idea for us to snoop around with Milo and his cronies on the premises. Someone else entered and we had to end our conversation.

  Barbara came by about an hour later and told us to go on home. Nobody disagreed. As I was getting my stuff together, I noticed several men entering the front door. Some of them I had seen before, going into the locked left door. Others I had seen only as pictures in Sergeant Ranson’s apartment. They all had that look about them, dressed very well, but in a manner that wasn’t the standard corporate look. Too much gold and colors that were a little too bold. They dressed to please themselves. All except the young guy I had seen before. He still looked rumpled and out of place. Yet he was obviously here without a gun pointed at his head. Something about him said fallen accountant. Again I wondered what his story was.

  I got to talk to Barbara just long enough to wish her luck at Patrick’s play. I left open the meaning of luck at a seventh-grader’s school play. She laughed and smiled and was gone until Monday. This left me with a long Friday evening and a longer still Saturday and Sunday with nothing wonderfully enticing to do.

  It was such a perfect day, I couldn’t face the idea of going home. So I decided to head to Audubon Park, skirt, heels, and all. People were out strolling around. It was the end of January, everyone had been grinding since New Year, and our next big holiday, Mardi Gras, was a long way off. The city was coming up from the winter doldrums for a collective gulp of fresh air.

  I realized that I was humming “Fall” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. I decided to tone down since I was walking toward one of the fountains and there were more people about. There were three boys playing with something in the water, probably a boat. I guessed they were from some parochial school since they all wore gray pants and white shirts, with blue blazers discarded off to one side. There were a number of old men and women scattered around on the benches. Off to the left there were two people engrossed in a chess game. I smiled when I realized that they were both women.

  Then I heard a voice off through some trees to my right say, “Hey, stop it. You’ll drown that kitten.” It was aimed at the boys. And I was now close enough to hear a frantic “mew.” I stalked up behind them, saw that there was a kitten in the fountain and that they wouldn’t let it climb out. I grabbed the boy nearest to me by the belt and upended him into the water. The other two started to run away. I got one by the belt and the other by his collar. He got away but left me with part of his shirt. I tossed the second boy into the water and reached down and scooped up the kitten. It was wet and shivering. I used one of the blue blazers to dry it off.

  “Shall I or do you want to?” said the voice that I had first heard. I looked up from the kitten. It was Cordelia; she had caught the third boy.

  “Go ahead, make my day,” I replied. She dropped him in the water. The first boy was climbing out and complaining about my using his blazer for the kitten. I put my foot on his shoulder and pushed him back in. Both boys made satisfying splashes.

  Cordelia and I grinned at each other. Kitten rescuers extraordinaire. She was wearing old faded blue jeans, an off-white sweater a few sizes too big, and a beat-up brown leather jacket. I am very rarely in the company of straight women who are dressed, shall we say, more comfortably than I am. She wore no makeup and had large hands and feet, somehow reminding me of a lion with its huge paws. When she walked she had a quality of stepping with a surefootedness most people, particularly women used to high heels, don’t have. It was the grace of a lion padding along her jungle path.

  “Hey, give me my jacket back,” one of the boys yelled as we started to walk away.

  “Wait a second, this bag holds everything,” Cordelia said. She started rummaging around in the gray duffel bag she was carrying. With a triumphant “aha” she pulled out a pair of gi pants. I bowed the proper bow to show her that I knew that they were karate pants and I threw the jacket down. I almost threw it in the water, but I figured the kid might need something dry to wear.

  “Don’t be too impressed,” she said as we transferred the kitten, “I’ve only been doing it about four months.”

  “What style?” I asked.

  “Gogu. You?”

  “Shotokan.”

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Eight years. We should spar sometime.”

  “Haven’t we already?” she said in a manner that Jane Austen would have described as arch.

  “Touché. Speaking of which, how’s Karen?”

  “Spitting nails. At small children.” I laughed, because it was something that I could see Karen doing. “Can I carry the kitten for a while?” she asked.

  I handed him over. He let out a breathy mew at being moved, but he didn’t seem to mind too much. Cordelia pulled her jacket around him. He was a little marmalade cat with big green eyes.

  “Do you want her?” she asked.

  “No, I’ve already got one cat too many.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “One.”

  “Oh. Good. I’d like to keep her. I’ve been thinking about getting a cat. Maybe I should name her ‘Fountain,’ since that’s how I got her.”

  “How about ‘Drowned Cat’? That seems more appropriate.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  We walked on, a companionable silence marked by purring from the unnamed kitten.

  “Who are you?” she suddenly said. I looked at her. Damn, she was a little taller than I was. “First I thought you were one of those hustlers that Karen plays with. But you weren’t after money. Now I find you saving kittens from wanton boys, dressed like a professional. Explain.”

  “Twenty-five words or less?”

  “Thirty or even more, if you need. To start with, what about the standard boring question, what do you do?”

  “As little as possible.” That was my standard answer.

  “In a gray suit and black heels?”

  “Temp work.”

  “Temp work?” She sounded disappointed. “Somehow, I never pictured you as an office temp. Aren’t you in the wrong city if you want to be an actress?”

  “I don’t want to be an actress. I want to be what I am,” I countered.

  “Which is?” Cordelia had a manner that was more no-nonsense than blunt. I actually liked it; I just didn’t like all her questions. I’m used to being the one doing the asking. For some reason it nagged me to let her think that I was a lowly office temp. Usually, the more misinformed people are about me, the more I like it. Once, for six months, I let Aunt Greta think that I was on welfare. I pulled out my license and showed it to Cordelia.

  “A private investi
gator?” She still didn’t sound very impressed. “Do you earn any money at it?”

  “Of course,” I answered, incredulous that she could doubt it.

  “So why are you working as an office temp?” So that was what she thought. As this was the one time my word processing skills were actually connected to my work as a private investigator, I didn’t want her to think otherwise.

  “I’m investigating the company,” I answered.

  “Investigating for what?”

  “That’s confidential.” She looked dubious. And I had run out of impressive things to tell her about myself. I suppose if I had been her I would have been dubious too.

  “Isn’t it kind of…tawdry?” she asked. “Snooping around for dirt on one person to be used by another person.”

  “Sometimes, yes.” I couldn’t deny it. “But I try to pick and choose my cases.”

  “Try to?”

  “Yes, try to. There’s rent to pay, cat food to buy.”

  “Slave to money,” she muttered.

  “Some of us weren’t born rich,” I countered. “I have to work for a living,” I added with emphasis on have to.

  “Funny, someone just said that exact same thing to me. She was a prostitute.”

  “Meaning?”

  “If we want to, we can find an excuse for anything. You do what you want to do, so you justify it by ‘trying to pick’ your cases.”

  “Look, one of the things people pay me for is privacy, so I can’t and won’t trot out the cases that I’ve done for your approval. But I’ll bet I do more good than you do.” I stopped walking, forcing her to stop and face me.

  “Think so? Why don’t you come down to Charity Hospital some time and put your good against mine?”

  That shut me up. I was pissed, at both of us. I had walked into that one. Of course, she would be some nurse or doctor to outrank me on the do-gooder scale. But I had been the one to suggest ranking us. However, I bet she had no problem paying her bills. We stood silently glaring at each other. The kitten mewed.

  “He’s hungry,” I said. I wanted to say, How dare you judge me? You’ve lived your life under the umbrella of Holloway money. I wore hand-me-downs and haven’t stopped working since fifth grade when I had two paper routes. But there was no point in it. We didn’t want to understand, only to score points.

  “Yes, she is,” she answered.

  “She?” I questioned, just to put a hole in her surety.

  “Yes, she. I looked.”

  I shrugged to show that it wasn’t important. I turned back down the way we came.

  “I’ve got to get going,” I lied. “Thanks for the sparring match,” I added as I was walking away. I walked a few more yards, then couldn’t stop myself from glancing back. I caught sight of her disappearing around a bend in the path. The victorious lioness with her kitten.

  These shoes were hurting my feet. It was time to go home and change.

  When I got there, I kicked off my shoes and flung my gray suit in a heap on the floor. Hepplewhite, mistaking it for a new bed made just for her, snuggled in. I left her, even though I knew this was a dry-cleaning bill I couldn’t afford. I poured myself a drink and began listening to Beethoven’s Ninth. I put on headphones, turned the volume up, and sat thinking of things that I could have said. Beethoven’s Ninth is one of my favorite pieces of music and I don’t listen to it very often. I don’t ever want to get tired of it. It is a refuge, a place of solace. Soon, I stopped thinking and started listening to the music. I sat for a while even after it was over. When I finally got up, I noticed the light on my answering machine.

  It was Danny.

  “Kant’s categorical imperative,” was her message.

  “Damn it, Danny, I’ve tried to call you,” I said to the machine. Not very hard, my little voice answered.

  Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative, which is what I assume she was referring to, is, basically, to see people, including oneself, only as an end in themselves, never as the means to an end. Danny was hinting ever so subtly that I was coming up short in the means versus ends department, at least as far as our friendship was concerned. Perhaps there was a bit of truth in this. But not a truth I cared to ponder upon at the moment. I decided that I was out and didn’t get in until late and that I would deal with Danny’s phone call tomorrow.

  By the time I called her on Saturday afternoon, she wasn’t there. At first, I thought I had called the wrong number because the voice on the answering machine wasn’t hers. It was Elly’s. I hadn’t realized that they had been living together long enough to be changing not just messages but voices on their machine. It also made me realize that any message I left for Danny would not be private.

  “Hi, Danny, this is Michele. I called your office earlier, but you were out of town. Which formulation of the categorical imperative?” was the message that I left. I did owe her an apology, and I would give her one when I could talk to her personally. Perhaps Cordelia was right, perhaps we can find an excuse for anything.

  Chapter 9

  It was Monday morning again. But this was the last Monday morning that I would have to deal with bright and early, at least for a while.

  Barbara and I had lunch together. She told me stories of Patrick’s play, with its missed cues and tottering scenery. Saturday had been spent watching Cissy’s (Melissa’s, formally) Little League team play. She made it sound like fun to be a single mom and have two kids.

  My “This evening?” and her “Sure, why not?” were the only discussion we had about breaking into the locked file drawer.

  The afternoon dragged slowly by. I wanted to go on an adventure, do something right, and impress at least one of the women in my life.

  At last, four-fifty-one arrived and we were in the copy room by ourselves. I crumpled up a piece of paper, then ran it through the machine. It ate the paper and got indigestion.

  “Oh, dear, the copy machine’s broken,” I said. Barbara started to giggle, then put her hand over her mouth to stop herself.

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” she said, in an exaggerated Southern accent.

  I started to laugh. Then forced myself not to. Our hands touched and we looked at each other for a moment. I thought about kissing her, but I backed away. Barbara was possibly going to be a very good friend. A much better friend than lover. I wanted to keep her around for a while, something I hadn’t been very good about doing with lovers. So I backed away. I think she caught it, but she didn’t say anything.

  We waited until there were no more people sounds from the office. Barbara took a quick look around just to make sure. Then we headed to the file room. She punched in the combination. We didn’t turn on the light, since there were two windows out to the street; instead we used a flashlight. I wanted to do this quickly and get out of here.

  I crouched down next to the file drawer, and Barbara held the flashlight on the lock. It took me a couple of minutes of fumbling before I could get the lock open. No alarms went off when it finally gave way. A good sign. We’d be out of here in five minutes.

  I slowly slid the drawer open. There was a flicker of red light, then it was gone. Shit. A bad sign. We had tripped some electronic eye.

  “Get out of here,” I said to Barbara. Better they find me than her. I grabbed the top notebook out of the drawer, stood up, and kicked the drawer shut.

  “But hadn’t you better re-lock it?” Barbara asked.

  “No, they already know.” Her eyes widened. “Electric eye,” I explained as we left the room. “Now, go, get out of here.”

  “But I can’t leave you…” she started.

  “Yes, you can. You’ve got two kids.”

  She was beginning to look pale. I didn’t blame her. I wasn’t feeling great myself. We hurried back to our side of the office. Just as we got to the hallway, I heard the guard getting off the elevator.

  “Get out of here. I’ll be okay,” I said again. Barbara nodded and headed for her desk. I ducked into the copy room because the
re was no other place to hide without running straight into the guard. I looked desperately around the room for a place to hide the notebook. If Ranson wanted it, she could find a way to come here and get it. I heard the guard in the hallway. He was talking to Barbara. Not good. I was hoping he would let her out since he knew her pretty well. But it didn’t sound like he was going to. Even worse, I heard the sound of a second guard’s voice. One to block the door and another to search.

  Where to hide this? There were stacks of paper and two copy machines, one with a broken sign on it. Inspiration hit. I opened up the broken copy machine, exposing the inner workings. That’s where I put the notebook. I had to sit on the cover to shut it, doing an untold amount of damage. Then I closed up the copy machine and figured it was time to bluff my way out of this place.

  I walked out of the door and into one of the guards.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. What a clever question.

  “That damn copy machine. It always breaks down when you need it, and the little one doesn’t collate,” I said in the best helpless female voice I could manage. He led me down to the reception area where Barbara was waiting with the second guard.

  “Is something the matter?” I asked as innocently as possible.

  “Break-in,” said a guard.

  “No! Maybe we should call the police? You don’t suppose he’s still around,” I continued as a helpless female.

  “You’re going to have to wait here,” was all one of the guards said.

  “But that’s not possible,” I said. “I’m supposed to meet my boyfriend in twenty minutes in the Quarter and I’m always late. So last week we had a big fight about it and I promised, I mean, promised him I’d be on time. If I don’t show up he’ll kill me, I just know it.” My guess was that the best way out of here was the bimbo route.

  “Sorry, lady,” said the guard.