“Dandy. How are you?”
“Not bad. Now on retainer.”
“In Nota Lake?”
“Where else? Standing in a phone booth in the piney woods,” I said.
“How’s it going?”
“I’m just getting started so it’s hard to tell. I’m assuming Selma talked to you about Tom.”
“Only that she thought he had something on his mind. Sounds vague.”
“Extremely. Did you ever meet him yourself?”
“Nope. In fact, I haven’t even seen her for over fifteen years. How’s she holding up?”
“She’s in good shape. Upset, as who wouldn’t be in her shoes.”
“What’s the game plan?” he asked.
“The usual. I spent time today going through his desk. Tomorrow I’ll start talking to his friends and acquaintances and we’ll see what develops. I’ll give it until Thursday and then see where we stand. I’d love to be home by the weekend if this job doesn’t pan out. How’s the knee?”
“Much better. The PT’s a bitch, but I’m getting used to it. I miss your sandwiches.”
“Liar.”
“No, I’m serious. As soon as you finish there, I think you ought to head back in this direction.”
“Uh-unh. No thanks. I want to sleep in my own bed. I haven’t seen Henry for a month.” Henry Pitts was my landlord, eighty-six years old. His would be the cover photo if the AARP ever did a calendar of octogenarian hunks.
“Well, think on it,” Dietz said.
“Oh, right. Listen, my Florence Nightingale days are over. I have a business to run. Anyway, I better go. It’s friggin’ cold out here.”
“I’ll let you go then. Take care.”
“Same to you,” I said.
I put a call through to Henry and caught him on his way out the door. “Where you off to?” I asked.
“I’m on my way to Rosie’s. She and William need help with the dinner crowd tonight,” he said. Rosie ran, the tavern half a block from my apartment. She and Henry’s older brother William had been married the previous Thanksgiving and now William was rapidly becoming a restaurateur.
“What about you? Where’re you calling from?”
I repeated my tale, filling him in on my current situation. I gave him both Selma’s home number and that of the office at the Nota Lake Cabins in case he had to reach me. We continued to chat briefly before he had to go. Once he rang off, I placed a call to Lonnie’s office and left a message for Ida Ruth, again giving her my location and Selma’s number if she should have to reach me for some reason. I couldn’t think of any other way to feel connected. After I hung up, I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets, vainly hoping for shelter from the wind. The notion of spending the evening in the cabin seemed depressing. With only two forty-watt light bulbs for illumination, even reading would be a chore. I pictured myself huddled, squinting, under that damplooking quilt, spiders creeping from the wood pile the minute I relaxed my vigilance. It was a sorry prospect, given that all I had with me was a book on identifying tire tracks and tread marks.
I crossed to the motel office and peered in through the glass door. A light was on, but there was no sign of Cecilia. A hand-lettered sign said RING FOR MGR. I let myself in. I bypassed the desk bell and knocked on the door marked MANAGER After a moment, Cecilia appeared in a pink chenille bathrobe and fluffy pink slippers. “Yes?”
“Hi, Cecilia. Could I have a word with you?”
“Something wrong with the room?”
“Not at all. Everything’s fine. More or less. I was wondering if you could spare a few minutes to talk about your brother.”
“What about him?”
“Has Selma said anything about why I’m here in Nota Lake?”
“Said she hired you is all. I don’t even know what you do for a living.”
“Ah. Well, actually, I’m a field investigator with California Fidelity Insurance. Selma’s concerned about the liability in Tom’s death.”
“Liability for what?”
“Good question. Of course, I’m not at liberty to discuss this in any detail. You know, officially he wasn’t working, but she thinks he might have been pursuing departmental business the night he died. If so, it’s always possible she can file a claim.” I didn’t mention that Tom Newquist wasn’t represented by CFI or that the company had fired me approximately eighteen months before. I was prepared to flash the laminated picture ID I still had in my possession. The CH logo was emblazoned on the front, along with a photograph of me that looked like something the border patrol might keep posted for ready reference.
She stared at me blankly and for one heart-stopping moment I wondered if she was recently retired from some obscure branch of county government. She appeared to be mulling over all the rules and regulations, trying to decide which were in effect on the night in question. I was tempted to embellish, but decided I might be getting in too deep. With lies, it’s best to skip across the surface like a dragonfly. The more said at the outset, the more there is to retract later if it turns out you really put your foot in it. She held the door open to admit me. “You better come on in. I don’t mind telling you the subject’s painful.”
“I can imagine it is and I’m sorry to intrude. I met Macon earlier.”
“He’s useless,” she remarked. “No love lost between us. Of course, I never thought of Selma as family either and I’m sure it’s ditto from her perspective.”
Cecilia Boden’s apartment was on a par with my cabin, which is to say, drab, poorly lighted, and faintly shabby. The prime difference was that my place was icy cold where she seemed to keep her room temperature somewhere around “pre-heat.” The floor cover was linoleum made to look like wood parquet. She had pine-paneled walls, overstuffed furniture covered with violent-colored crocheted throws. A large television set, dominated one corner, with all the furniture oriented in that direction. Cecilia’s reading glasses were perched on the arm of the sofa nearest the set. I could see that she was in the process of filling out the crossword puzzle in the local paper. She did this in ballpoint pen without any visible corrections. I revised my estimate of her upwards. I couldn’t perform such a feat with a gun to my head.
We took a few minutes to get settled in the living room. While my story sounded plausible, it didn’t give me much room to inquire into Tom’s character. In any event, why would I imagine Cecilia would have information about what he was doing the night he died? As it turned out, she didn’t question my purpose and the longer we chatted, the clearer it became that she was perfectly comfortable discussing Tom and his wife, their marriage, and anything else I cared to ask about.
“Selma says Tom was preoccupied with something in the past few weeks. Do you have any idea what it might have been?”
Cecilia narrowed her eyes at the section of floor she was studying.
“What makes her think there was anything wrong with him?”
“Well, I’m not sure. She said he seemed tense, smoking more than usual, and she thought he was losing weight. She said he slept poorly and disappeared without explanation. I take it this wasn’t typical. Did he say anything to you?”
“He didn’t confide anything specific,” she said, cautiously. “You’ll have to talk to Macon about that. They were a lot closer to each other than either one of them was to me.”
“But what was your impression? Did you feel he was under some kind of strain?”
“Possibly.”
Too bad I wasn’t taking notes, what with the wealth of data pouring out. “Did you ever ask him about it?”
“I didn’t feel it was my place. That wasn’t the nature of our relationship. He went about his business and I went about mine.
“Any hunches about what was going on?”
She hesitated for a moment. “I think Tom was unhappy. He never said as much to me, but that’s my belief.”
I made a sort of mmm sound, verbal filler accompanied by what I hoped was a sympathetic look.
She took this for encouragement and launched into her analysis. “Far be it from me to criticize Selma. He married her. I didn’t. It’s possible there was more to her than meets the eye. We’d certainly have to hope so. If you want my opinion, my brother could have done a lot better for himself. Selma’s a snob, if you want to know the truth.”
This time I murmured, “Really.”
Her gaze brushed my face and then drifted off again. “You look like a good judge of character, so I don’t feel I’m telling tales out of school when I say this. She has no spiritual foundation even if she does go to church. She’s a mite materialistic. She seems to think she can use acquisitions to fill the void in her life, but it won’t do.”