Organize Your Corpses (25 page)

“It’s just worse and worse! The Henley heir could be anyone.”

Professor Quarrington smiled sadly. “I suppose you’re right. Anyone except the two of us.”

 
Life is full of humiliations. Who doesn’t know that? The ribbon of toilet paper trailing from your shoe as you reenter the board meeting, the brilliant glob of spinach on your teeth at the dinner party, or that magical zit that flares on your nose only during job interviews. They all let you know your place in the cosmos. But getting out of a police cruiser, for the second time in eleven days, and stumbling past a salivating crowd into the police station tops everything. I’d never seen a crowd there before, let alone had to push through one. I spotted the WINY logo among other media vans. I wondered if there was some high-profile event going on. A visiting politician? A ribbon cutting? Why would they have to pick that particular moment?

It wasn’t until Todd Tyrell thrust a microphone toward me that I realized I was the main attraction. The TV guys were getting a close-up of the real me, no makeup, insufficient coffee, tousled hair. Apparently your civil rights in this country do not extend to being allowed to change out of your bunny slippers before being hauled off to the slammer.

The cameras panned downward.

Todd said, seriously, “Do you have anything to say to our viewers?”

I knew he was hoping I’d say yes. I shook my unstyled head. The officer nudged me forward, and I trudged up the stairs to the station. My knees wobbled. If I’d been thinking clearly, I might have asked myself exactly how Todd Tyrell knew I’d be taken in. As it was, I merely figured I was descending into hell. And that was before the interrogation room.

Inside the station, people swiveled to watch our progress. I felt dwarfed by the two lanky police officers who flanked me. Pepper marched ahead, her very special nose in the air, radiating triumph. Let me just point out, if you are feeling a bit down and dazed, worrying about being fingerprinted won’t improve your mood. It just leads to you being stressed and slack jawed if they do take your mug shot. I can’t imagine anyone not looking guilty by this point.

I sat fidgeting in the interrogation room for hours, although it seemed more like weeks. I reminded myself that I was just there for questionning. I hadn’t actually been arrested. I had nothing to do but stare at the imaginary ink stains on my fingers. Normally, I try to take advantage of “downtime” to plan something, meditate, and think some useful thoughts. But of course, normally, my mind does not reflect the spin cycle on my washing machine. I tried recounting my blessings in life: a wonderful job, a town I thought I loved, a great apartment, good friends, and best of all, two terrific guard dogs. But every blessing had a downside. Who would hire me after my face had been all over every television screen in town in connection with a bird-flipping incident and a murder? How could I keep my apartment if I was in jail? Who would help Rose get a driver? Who would help Lilith find a job and a place to live? And worst of all, who would rescue Truffle and Sweet Marie if Mommy went to the big house?

I leaped to my feet when the door opened. For one crazy blink, I thought about making a run for freedom.

Not much chance of that.

When Pepper swept into the room, her makeup was fresh, every hair in place. She could have been a runway model in her cool blue suede jacket and top-stitched black skirt. Worse, she knew it and I knew she knew it and she knew I knew she knew it. Not even the small bandage on her ankle detracted. She didn’t bother to keep that cool, amused sneer off her face. Whatever happened to the old-fashioned police detectives with their ratty raincoats and nicotine-stained fingers? The guys who could solve everything in an hour in someone’s living room. They never needed to toss perfectly innocent people into interrogation rooms. They knew what they were doing.

The door swung open again and Margaret Tang entered. She gave Pepper and the other detective an enigmatic nod, and took the plastic seat next to me. Her eyes swept over me, from my hair to my pink, fluffy feet.

“Hi, Charlotte,” she said as she snapped open her leather briefcase and pulled out a notebook and a Montblanc pen. “I got your message and five more from Jack.”

Pepper’s manicured index finger pressed the start button on the tape recorder. Pepper gave the background info, date, location, persons present. Her partner, whose name I hadn’t quite heard, began with the questions. They seemed so harmless. All about who I was, what I did for a living, how did I know the victim. As far as I could tell, he was on my side. That was kind of sweet. After ten minutes or so, I was beginning to relax a bit. The police coffee tasted like iron filings, but it was reassuring to hold something in my hand.

Margaret left hers sitting there. Relaxing’s not her thing.

Just when I was starting to feel optimistic, Pepper dropped her bomb. She produced an article in a plastic baggie. She dropped it on the table. She met my eyes.

“Is this your pen?” she said.

I peered over at it. “My lucky pen!”

Margaret turned her head toward me and gave me something very close to an expression. “Maybe not,” she said.

I said, “It is! I got it for my sixteenth birthday. You remember that, Pepper You were there. You too, Margaret. I have been hunting everywhere for it. I thought my dogs hid it. Where did you find it?”

Margaret sighed.

Pepper said, “Can you account for why it would have been found under the body of Miss Helen Henley?”

I opened my mouth to speak.

Margaret said, “My client has no comment.”

Pepper shot her a stare that could have melted the paint off a car.

I commented, “But I have no idea how it could get there. Did you really find it there? Perhaps I left it at Henley House. Maybe she picked it up. It’s really hard to say. Can I have it back, please?”

“I don’t think so.” Pepper gave a low, throaty chuckle. That was the warm-up for three hours of very boring questions.

 
“Good cop, bad cop,” Margaret said by way of explanation when we finally emerged. “Watch out for that.”

“Thank you so much for coming,” I blubbered. “That was the longest day of my life. I wouldn’t have survived without you. I thought I was going to be arrested.”

“We were lucky to get you out of there this fast,” Margaret said. “Pepper means business. She just doesn’t have quite enough to lay charges yet.”

“Yet?” I said.

“They have to hang this one on someone. The media’s been all over it. All that beloved teacher bilge. The heat’s on Pepper. She needs a collar. And there you are with your lucky pen underneath the unlucky victim. Oh yes, and she hates your guts.”

“Do you think she will arrest me?”

“She’d need to make it stick. But if she can, she will.”

I stared at Margaret, speechless, for once.

She said, “It’s serious. If they do arrest you for this, you won’t be getting bail.”

The media vans were still circling when I scurried furtively from the station. I couldn’t believe that they’d been there all along waiting for a glimpse. Was there no news at all anywhere else in Upstate New York?

Margaret hustled me past them and into her car. “No comment,” she said, giving them a good shot at her outstretched palm. Unlike me, she didn’t blink when the flashes went off.

16

Tomorrow is another day. Not such an original statement, but hard to argue with, and anyway, it’s a motto that works for me. Get off to a good start, don’t drag yourself down with toxic memories from the day before, remember the lessons learned, and get going. Sally says I make her want to throw up when I talk like that, but I can’t help it. I’m an optimist.

Monday morning I had just finished walking the dogs and eating breakfast, when I heard a small snap, crackle, and possibly a pop in my mouth.

The bottom part of the tooth I had suspected of being cracked was now resting in the palm of my hand. I explored the jagged edge with my tongue.

“Cwap,” I said. “Ith boken.”

I did not check my messages; I did not turn on the radio or television. I did not approach my desk. I called my dentist and wailed.

I hurried through the marble foyer of the Woodbridge Medical-Dental Building. My dentist’s office is across the hall from Benjamin’s medical practice. I didn’t really want to bump into Benjamin that morning. The dentist’s new receptionist has the whitest teeth on the planet and she loves to flash them. She also has the blondest hair and the glamour “do” such hair deserves.

“Charlotte Adams! We were just talking about you.” Her smile dimmed slightly as the words came out of her mouth. What’s the policy about telling your clients you have seen them hustled into police stations and/or giving the finger to respectable citizens on the steps of the public library? Two pink spots appeared on her lovely cheeks.

“Well,” she said, “how nice to see you. So soon after your last visit. What brings you in today?”

Her smile seemed glued-on by this point. Plus a small frown line creased her perfect brow.

She said, “You look a little . . .”

I frowned back. “A lil wha . . . ?”

“Oh nothing. I mean maybe a little out of breath. How can we help you today?”

“I haff bwoken hoof.”

“What?”

“Bwoken hoof.”

“Sorry?”

I opened my mouth and pointed.

“Oh gosh,” she said. “I’ll tell the doctor.”

The dentist, you mean. “He knowth,” I said, and I settled sulkily into the cappuccino leather seats in the office to wait.

She vanished behind the door, recently redecorated in a tasteful taupe. I was left alone, trying not to let my tongue explore the rough edges of the broken tooth. That had become like a full-time job. That tongue wanted that tooth. Now they both hurt.

I gazed around the office, trying to keep my mind off the throbbing. I’d been coming to this dental clinic since childhood. I’d been to this current dentist’s father and my mother had been to his grandfather. They were old Woodbridge. I remembered the office of my childhood, full of oak and mysterious white enamel things and towers of
National Geographics
. I remembered the dentist’s mustache and his twinkly blue eyes. I remembered getting a new toothbrush every visit and my horrified fascination with the very pink model of the freestanding gums with the full set of teeth.

The new dental generation was spiffy and stylish. Cavities might be in decline after all those toothbrush giveaways, but fresh business opportunities abounded. Hollywood smiles dazzled from every wall. Brochures for cosmetic dentistry grinned from the side tables.

I didn’t feel much like smiling, and all those acres of teeth were making me twitch. I turned my gaze to the furnishings. Much more soothing. Business must be booming, if the solid wall of patient files was anything to go by.

Where was that receptionist? She’d been gone forever. I had visions of her draped seductively over the dentist’s chair, gradually working her way up to mentioning my bwoken hoof. This dentist was one of the few truly eligible bachelors in town. Maybe
her
clock was ticking. I could have walked off with half the high-end furniture in the time she was gone if I’d been so inclined. Naturally, I simply sat there fidgeting.

Eventually she reappeared. Did I just imagine that she was straightening her blouse?

“The doctor will see you now.”

I ignored the scowls from the patients who had arrived before me but would have to sit there longer. Minutes later I was in the chair with my mouth open. The one thing I hadn’t liked about this guy’s father was that he asked me complicated questions when my mouth was open. Junior had inherited that habit.

“Keep seeing you on television,” he said with a merry chuckle. “You sure do know how to keep in the news. Wish I could find a way to get on the tube like that. That would bring them in.”

The assistant giggled.

I said something unintelligible.

Perhaps my inaudible answer encouraged him. We moved on from the weather, Thanksgiving, how was my mother, how was business, and other topics to the one I dreaded.

“Saw you at the funeral. Everyone in town was there. That was something, wasn’t it? So many people turning up. Quite a celebration at the reception, wasn’t it?” Blah, blah, blah?

Mmmph, mmmph, mmmph.

“Right. I wasn’t sure about all that chocolate though. Ha, ha, ha.”

I could have done with a fistful of chocolate right at that moment.

“Still, there you go, you can’t beat the entertainment value. Of course, I’ve lost a patient, and that’s always sad. She might have been hard on other people, but she took good care of herself. And her teeth.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. It didn’t stem the verbal tide.

“But she wasn’t all that likeable, even if you didn’t go to Catholic school. But I guess every family has to have one.”

I made a sound indicating a question mark.

“Henleys have been coming to us going back to my great-great-grandfather. Gotta say I liked the others better. Randolph used to flirt with the girls, but he didn’t smell too good so he never got lucky.”

The assistant wrinkled her pretty nose.

“And Olivia Simonett is always so sweet to everyone. Sad to see her going downhill so fast. She gets excited about her new toothbrush, just like a little girl.”

The assistant shuddered. “It must be hard to lose everyone in your family.”

Maybe not everyone, I thought. Let’s not count Crawford out until we know for sure.

He leaned over. “Now let’s see what we can do about that tooth of yours.”

I lay there for the duration, wondering if I’d ever get out of that chair. It was tied with the interrogation room for Most Miserable Place to Spend a Big Chunk of Time.