Extra Credit (13 page)

More Fred grunting followed by Crawford swearing convinced me that I should wait until they revealed their discovery on their own. Max jumped back up on the counter, and I returned to the table. They came down five minutes later, sweating but happy.

“We found it,” Crawford said.

“Who found it?” Fred asked.

“Fred found it,” Crawford said, giving credit where credit was due. “In the lingo of Nancy Drew, it was a second-story job. A cat burglar.”

He was making light of it, but I could tell that he was confounded.

“Fred looked out the window and saw a crushed bush beneath the guest room window. It was against the house. We all missed it.” Crawford washed his hands at the sink. “There was just the slightest dent in the screen, too.” He ripped off a paper towel and dried his hands. “I can’t believe we missed that. Of course, they repaired it pretty well.”

Fred frowned. “You’re losing your edge, brother. It must have been the worry about the dog.” He downed his beer. “Although I could see how you missed the broken hedge. You two aren’t known for your landscaping skills. Half the hedges in your yard are broken.”

We both ignored him. “Really?” I asked. “That was pretty brazen, climbing up the side of our house and breaking in.”

Fred shrugged. “It was dark. You’ve got those high shrubs at the back of the house. I’m not surprised—whoever it was—that they figured out a way to get in.” Fred’s jacket, a giant piece of fabric with intricate stitching, was draped over the counter, and he pulled it on. “So you’ll be back tomorrow?” he asked Crawford.

Crawford looked at me for approval. “I think she’ll be fine, Crawford. Yes, go back to work.” The sooner we got our lives back to normal, the better.

“I’ll call the village PD tomorrow and see if anything has turned up.” Crawford looked at Fred and shook his head. “You never cease to amaze me.”

Fred made a face that was the closest thing to a smile I had ever seen him attempt.

Max leapt off the counter and grabbed Fred’s hand. “Let’s go. I have to plan for a production meeting tomorrow.” She leaned over me and kissed the top of my head. “See you later. I’m glad the dog’s okay,” she said in that hurried way that made me think that after all these years, she still had a hard time showing me any kind of affection in any kind of overt way. We were probably still a little at odds because of our conversation earlier and the fact that she was being a complete weirdo about her birthday.

After they left, Crawford joined me at the table. “You have enough to eat?” he asked.

“Plenty,” I said. “I’m going to hit the sack.”

“I have to ask you something,” he said.

I waited.

“Christine called today. She’s still insisting that Chick’s death wasn’t a suicide.”

I sighed. “Sure looked like a suicide to me,” I said, desperately trying to wipe from my mind the image of Christine’s brother slumped over a vomit-stained suicide letter.

Crawford ran his hands over his face. He had had it with Christine’s talk of nonsuicide, too. “Do you think you could ask Mac McVeigh if he would talk to her? Assure her that it was suicide?”

I was exasperated, probably more so because I was exhausted. I mulled over his request, coming to the conclusion, finally, that if we were going to get any peace at all when it came to the death of Chick Stepkowski, using my relationship with the medical examiner was a small price to pay.

Sixteen

Mac McVeigh just happened to be the sort of medical examiner who wasn’t averse to talking to someone like Christine. He even went so far as to invite us to his office in White Plains to chat. I had been embarrassed even making the call, but I saw that Crawford was in a bit of a pickle and that this wasn’t going to go away until Christine had some kind of closure—and at this point, I wanted Christine to have closure just so she would go away. The phone calls, the drop-ins, the e-mails … they had to stop. I was as sorry as anyone that her brother had left, come back, and then left for good, but I had my own problems, and they were related to figuring out who broke into my house and poisoned my dog.

If it wasn’t suicide, I was leaning more toward accidental death. Maybe Chick had chronic pain. Why else would he have had all that Vicodin in his apartment? Maybe it was left over from a recent surgery that Christine didn’t know about. Let’s face it: There was a lot she didn’t know about her incredibly eccentric, and up until recently absentee, brother. All I knew was that the guy had offed himself, and coming to terms with it was very difficult for her.

When Christine arrived in my office the day of our meeting with Mac, however, I immediately regretted all of the bad feelings I had had and the impatience I had felt. The usually perky, pixie-faced woman had been replaced by someone drawn and pale, someone defeated. She had lost weight, and on her little frame, every lost pound showed, not like on us big gals who can hide a five-pound loss or gain with the greatest of ease. I held back a gasp, but she could tell that I was surprised by her appearance.

“I know,” she said. “I look like hell.”

“Sit down,” I said, closing the office door behind her. “What’s going on?” I asked.

She started crying. “I am just so sad. All the time. I can’t do anything except cry and cry and cry,” she said, tears rolling down her pale cheeks.

I sat down beside her and put an arm around her. I don’t think I could have felt worse about having lost patience with her; she was in so much pain that it was radiating from her in waves. “Maybe after we talk to Mac you’ll feel better.”

“He’s just going to tell me what everyone else thinks and that’s that Chick killed himself.” She rustled around in her big purse and came up with an old wrinkled tissue with a lollipop stuck to it. She held it up for me to see. It was green and had a piece missing. “I am way too old to be raising four little kids,” she said, going from crying to laughing in mere seconds.

I handed her the tissue box that was on my desk. After she had wiped her eyes and blown her nose, I asked her the question we had all been thinking. “What makes you believe that Chick was incapable of killing himself?” I asked as gently as I could. There were other questions I would have loved the answers to, like where he had been all those years and why he had so much money stashed away in a tenement, but I left those for another time. Or even, who would have killed him?

Her eyes, a vivid blue normally, were the color of sapphires after her crying jag, sapphires rimmed by red. “He was happy to be back. He wanted to be in our lives. Never once did he say anything about being sad, or depressed.” She blew her nose again. “It was more like he had put whatever had happened behind him and wanted to start fresh.”

In a sleazy tenement apartment in Mount Vernon? It was a little hard to swallow.

“Where did he get the money?” I asked.

She got defensive. “Chick did very well for himself for a very long time.”

It didn’t jibe with the hovel he was living in, and I told her so.

“It was temporary. He was going to move.”

The housing market in the past several years had been glutted with places that had been foreclosed on; in my own village alone, I could think of ten places that he could have seen that would have been a thousand times better than the apartment he had chosen.

Maybe it was temporary. It was probably also a hiding place. That seemed obvious to everyone but Christine.

I’m not above talking myself into and out of things, but all of the signs were pointing toward a brother who was probably involved in something nefarious. Who knew what that was? Who cared, besides his heartbroken sister?

I looked at the clock over the door. “We have to go. I don’t want to be late.”

The drive took a little under a half hour, and we were knocking on the ME’s office door a few minutes after scoring a gem of a parking spot right in front. Mac was sitting behind his desk doing the
New York Times
crossword puzzle, his glasses pushed up on top of his balding head.

“Ladies,” he said, standing. “Before we commence, I’ll need some help.”

I was used to Mac and his crazy non sequiturs, but Christine was a novice. She looked confused.

“Where is Pago Pago?” he asked, tapping his pencil on top of his puzzle.

“Samoa,” I said. How do I know this? Because Fred is half Samoan and has told me everything there is to know about Samoa.

Mac filled in the answer. “Thank you, my friend.” He sat back down and took his glasses off the top of his head. “So, Ms.…”

“Please. Call me Christine.”

“Christine. I hear you don’t agree with my ruling on your brother’s cause of death?” he asked, his tone kind. He offered her a half smile to tell her that he didn’t mind being questioned or doubted. He was friends with me, after all.

Christine sank down in her chair, deflated. “I don’t know why we’re here.”

Mac got up from behind his desk and came around to where we were sitting, perching on the edge. “Can I get you some water? Coffee?”

We both declined.

He looked at Christine. “I can’t imagine the pain you’re feeling over the death of your brother.”

She started crying again. I had been hoping we could avoid that.

“For what it’s worth, I can tell you with certainty that your brother ingested enough pills to kill himself twice over. To me, it seems that he was intent on making sure that he went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

She nodded, her head bowed.

Mac leaned in and took her hand. “I also can tell you that he didn’t suffer. There was no pain. Not at all.”

Her weeping grew louder, and I took her other hand. My mind flashed on the vomit on the desk, and I wondered if that was normal or if Chick had had a change of heart at the last minute and tried to undo the damage that he had inflicted on his body. Now wasn’t the time to explore that possibility. Or ever.

“Please believe me, Christine,” Mac said. “I’ve been doing this job since, oh, Lincoln was president.” He smiled when Christine laughed through her tears. “I’m so sorry, but your brother took his own life.”

“What about the gash on his head?” she asked, grasping at straws.

“He hit it on the desk when he passed out.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes while Christine attempted to digest the news, news she already knew but had been reluctant to take to heart.

When she didn’t respond, he continued. “Let’s think about this logically. How could he have been murdered,” he asked, “because I know that’s what you’re thinking, if he swallowed pills?”

“Maybe somebody made him take them?” she asked.

Mac nodded slowly. “Maybe.” He crossed his arms. “Did you know of anyone who wanted to kill him?”

She smiled sadly. “I didn’t even really know my brother anymore, when it comes right down to it.” It was the first time I heard her make this admission. Maybe the truth was finally dawning on her.

“I know you’ve spoken to the same detectives I have. No one, based on the surveillance camera mounted on the corner, came in or out of that building who didn’t belong there. They have verified every last person on that tape.” Mac touched her arm. “I’m sorry, Christine.”

“Maybe it was someone in the building?” she asked.

“Do you really think that someone in the building killed him?” Mac asked.

We let that sink in for a while. The silence told me that she didn’t think a resident of that sad and depressing place had killed her brother.

She stood suddenly. “I don’t know why I’m asking you this, but I have to.”

Mac and I both braced for another, more pointed question about Chick.

She surprised us both by asking something completely unrelated. “Can I give you a hug?”

Mac stood and threw his arms out. “I thought you’d never ask.” He wrapped his arms around her while she cried a little more.

“Thank you,” she said. “You’re a very nice man.”

“Thank you for saying that,” he said. “My ‘customers’ usually don’t send me thank-you notes for my services.”

Typical Mac gallows humor, but it made Christine laugh, regardless of the fact that her brother had been one of Mac’s “customers.”

We walked outside into the crisp autumn air and stood on the sidewalk in front of the low government building.

“Lunch?” Christine asked hopefully. She looked at her watch. “Albeit a late one?”

I didn’t really feel like eating after having been in an office adjacent to the morgue, but more than that, I needed to get some work done. “I’m sorry, but I really need to go back to school, Christine,” I said.

She looked disappointed. “That’s fine. I have a babysitter meeting the kids after school, so I thought I’d take advantage of that.” She laughed. “Funny how I thought that once the girls were over eighteen, I’d get my life back. Now look at me.”

“Tim’s kids seem great,” I lied. Thoughts of one of them hiding Trixie’s tennis ball popped into my mind, but I pushed them aside.

“They’re a little … rambunctious? Yes, that’s a good way to describe them. But we’re working on that.”

I went around to the driver’s side of the car and unlocked the doors. “Are you better now that we talked to Mac?” I asked.

She looked at me across the top of the car. “Honestly?” she asked. “I don’t think I’ll ever be better.”

Ask a stupid question, get a tragic answer.

Seventeen

The next day, I invited Meaghan to go to lunch, away from school and the hullabaloo of the cafeteria where quarters were close and a private conversation was nearly impossible. She’s not stupid; she knew if I was spiriting her off campus, there was something serious we needed to discuss.

When we sat down at Merryweather’s on the avenue, my new go-to place for an off-campus lunch, we ordered drinks and chatted about the upcoming basketball season, her practice schedule, and the new coach. Through no fault of my own, I had been the interim basketball coach for a spell when Meaghan was a freshman, and as Fred, my volunteer assistant coach, had once said, it didn’t really suit my skill set. That was an understatement. I had never been so happy to go back to teaching, even if I missed interacting with the girls on the team.