"V" is for Vengeance (14 page)

“Fine, but she didn't die of a heart attack. She jumped off the Cold Spring Bridge.”

“What?”

“The
Dispatch
. Front page of the second section, just below the fold. If you have it handy, I can wait.”

“Hang on.” I tucked the receiver against my ear and secured it with one shoulder while I dragged my bag from under the desk and pulled out the paper I'd brought from home. The obituaries were uppermost. The photograph of Audrey still occupied center stage. I put the phone down on the desk and used both hands to flap the pages back to their original configuration. I leaned close to the mouthpiece, saying, “Sorry about that. Hang on a minute.”

First page, bottom left. There was no photograph of the victim and Audrey's name wasn't mentioned. According to the article, a Santa Teresa man was coming over the pass Sunday afternoon when he noticed a car parked on the berm. He stopped to investigate, thinking the vehicle was disabled and the motorist might need help. There was no sign of a flat tire and no note on the windshield indicating the driver had gone in search of the nearest service station. The car was unlocked and he could see the keys in the ignition. What caught his attention was the handbag on the front seat. A pair of high heels had been placed neatly on the seat beside the bag. This was not good.

He'd walked to the nearest call box and notified the county sheriff's department. An officer arrived seven minutes later and assessed the situation in much the same way the motorist had. He called for backup and a ground search was instigated. The chaparral below the bridge was so dense that both the Santa Teresa County Sheriff's K-9 unit and a search-and-rescue team were brought in. Once the dog had located the body, it was a forty-five-minute struggle across treacherous terrain to bring it out. Since the bridge was completed in 1964, seventeen people had made the leap and none had survived the four-hundred-foot drop. The victim's driver's license was in her handbag. Identification was withheld, pending notification of the next of kin.

“Are you sure it was her?”

“I am now. When I first read the article, I didn't put it together with the obit. The police made the connection when they ran her name through their computer system. They called and talked to Mr. Koslo, who'd filed the charges against her. Mr. Koslo mentioned it to the guy who monitors the closed-circuit security cameras. Ricardo rang me up as soon as Mr. Koslo was out the door.”

“This is
terrible
,” I said. I could see where someone in the throes of mental or physical anguish might view suicide as a form of relief. The problem was, there was no backing up. The remedy was harsh and precluded alternatives. Life might have looked better in a day or two. “Why would she
do
such a thing? It's just so weird.”

“I guess she wasn't faking the hysteria.”

“No kidding. And here I was feeling so
gleeful
.”

“Hey, me too,” Claudia said. “I mean, what if I hadn't notified Security? Would she be alive today?”

“Oh, man. I wouldn't head down that road if I were you. I wonder what her accomplice is going through.”

“Nothing good,” she said. “Anyway, I gotta scoot. I'm on my break. I'll give you my number and you can call me later if you want to talk.”

I made a note of the number, though I couldn't imagine having anything more to say. For the moment, I was hung up on the idea that the woman had killed herself. Built into bad news is that sense of profound disbelief. The mind struggles to absorb the bare facts, defending itself against the larger implications. I didn't feel responsible for what had happened, but I did feel ashamed that I'd wished the woman ill. I harbor a huffy dislike of scofflaws, unless the breach is mine, of course, in which case I find ways to justify my bad behavior. Who was I to judge? I'd pointed a pious finger and now the woman I'd so heartily condemned had hurled herself off a bridge.

I spent the remainder of the morning and half the afternoon organizing my files, a self-inflicted penance that pulled my attention down to the mundane.
Where did this receipt go? Which of these folders could I relegate to the box I was retiring to storage? Whose phone number was this scratched on a stray piece of paper? Keep it or toss?
I'm not sure which I hate more, the pig piles on my desk or the task of dismantling the mess and setting it to rights. By 4:00, the surfaces in my office were clear and my hands were filthy, which seemed appropriate. I washed up, and when the mail was delivered I busied myself sorting the bills from the junk. There was a notice from the water department, letting me know the water to the office would be shut off for eight hours the following Monday to replace a leaky water main. I made a mental note to work from home that day so I wouldn't be stranded in an office with no working toilet.

I found Henry's number in the Detroit area and placed a call. It was close to 7:00 his time. He and his brothers had been home for ten minutes after a day with Nell, who'd been transferred to an in-patient recovery center.

“So how's she doing?”

“Not bad. In fact, I'd say she's good. She's in a lot of pain, but she managed to sit up for an hour, and they're teaching her to use a walker. She can't put any weight on her leg, but she's managing to hobble ten feet or so before she has to sit down again. What's happening there?”

I filled him in on my shoplifter's demise, giving him the long version just so he could appreciate how stunned I was and how stricken I felt about my lack of charity. Henry made all the appropriate clucking sounds, which alleviated my guilt to some extent. We agreed to talk in a couple of days and I hung up the phone feeling better, though not absolved. Despite my efforts to deflect the subject, the specter of Audrey Vance continued to hover at the back of my mind. I couldn't resist the urge to brood. Granted, my connection to her was peripheral. I doubted she'd even noticed me despite our being in range of each other in the lingerie department. The younger woman was certainly aware of me, but there was no point in worrying about
her
. Without a license plate number, I had no way to track her down.

At 5:30, I locked the office and stopped at McDonald's on my way home. When it comes to comfort food, nothing tops a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a large order of fries. I made a point of asking for a diet soda to mitigate my nutritional sins. I ate in my car, which for a week afterward smelled of raw onions and fried meat.

Once home I left my Mustang in Henry's driveway and headed for Rosie's. I wasn't (necessarily) interested in a glass of bad wine. I wanted familiar faces and noise, maybe even a bit of bullying if Rosie had some to spare. I wouldn't have minded chatting with Claudia, but she didn't make an appearance, which was probably just as well. I flirted with the notion of using William as a sounding board, but quashed the idea. While I felt a need to discuss Audrey Vance's untimely end, I didn't want to get him in a lather about death and dying. In the wake of Nell's fall and his own elevated glucose, he was already feeling vulnerable. In his mind, it was a hop, skip, and a jump from the idea of death to its imminent arrival.

William was a funeral junkie, presenting himself at visitations, services, and graveside ceremonies once or twice a week. His interest was a natural extension of his obsession with his health. It didn't matter to him whether he knew the deceased. He'd put on his three-piece suit, tuck a fresh hankie in his pocket, and set forth. Usually he walked. Several Santa Teresa mortuaries are located downtown, within a ten-block radius, which allowed him his constitutional at the same time he was seeing someone off.

I'd told him about the shoplifter when I was in on Saturday night. Under the circumstances, I didn't think it would be wise to introduce the fact of her toppling over the rail. As it turned out, I needn't have worried. The place was quiet, with only a scattering of patrons. Above the bar, the color television set was on, though the sound had been muted. The channel was fixed on some off-brand game show, to which no one was paying the slightest attention. There was none of the usual background music coming through the speakers and the energy level seemed flat.

Henry's table was empty. One of the day drinkers sat alone in a booth, sipping a whiskey neat. Rosie was perched on a stool at the far end of the bar folding white cloth napkins. A young couple appeared in the doorway, checked the menu posted on the wall, and quickly withdrew. William was behind the bar, leaning forward on his elbows, a ballpoint pen in hand. I thought he might be working on a crossword puzzle until I saw Audrey's photo in the middle of the page. He'd circled three names, hers among them, and underscored the last few lines of the relevant obituaries.

I perched on a stool and peered over the bar. “What are you doing?”

“Working on my short list.”

I meant to keep my mouth shut but I couldn't help myself. “Remember the shoplifter I told you about?” I pointed to Audrey's photograph. “That's her.”

“Her?”

“Uh-hun. She threw herself off the Cold Spring Bridge.”

“Oh, my. I read about that, but had no idea she was the one. Did the paper mention her by name?”

“ID was withheld pending notification of the next of kin,” I said. “I didn't see the article at all until someone told me where to look.”

He tapped his pen on the paper. “That settles it. There's a scheduling conflict so I can't attend all three of these anyway. Audrey Vance it is. You'll be going, of course.”

“Absolutely not. I didn't know the woman.”

“Nor did I, but that's hardly the point.”

“What
is
the point?”

“Seeing she gets a proper send-off. It's the least we can do.”

“You're a total stranger. Don't you think it's bad form?”

“But they don't know that. I'll make it clear we weren't terribly close and therefore I can be more objective about her unfortunate choice. With a suicide, family members are often at a loss. It will help if they can talk about the situation with someone and who better than me? Surely there are details they wouldn't share with friends. You know how it is. A veil of privacy descends. I'm both dispassionate and sympathetic. They'll appreciate the opportunity to sort through their feelings, especially when they learn I'm an old hand at this.”

The way William described it, I was inclined to agree.

“What if they ask how you knew her?”

His tone was incredulous. “At a funeral? How
rude
. The right to pay one's respects isn't reserved solely for the next of kin. If someone's gauche enough to inquire, I'll tell them we were distant acquaintances.”

“So distant you never met.”

“This is a small town. How can anyone be sure our paths didn't cross half a dozen times?”

I said, “Well, don't go on my account. I didn't even know her name until this morning.”

“What's the difference?” he asked. “You should join me. We could make an afternoon of it.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. Too ghoulish for my taste.”

“What if her criminal confederate is there? I thought you were interested in tracking her down.”

“Not now,” I said. “I'm convinced she was involved, but I don't have a shred of proof, so what's it to me?”

“Don't be callous. Audrey's accomplice bears some responsibility for her demise. I should think you, of all people, would want to see justice done.”

“What justice? I saw Audrey shoplift, but I didn't see the other gal steal anything. Even if I did, it would still be her word against mine. The salesclerk at Nordie's didn't have a clue there were two of them.”

“Maybe the accomplice was picked up on one or more of the store's security cameras. You could have them print a still shot and take it to the police.”

“Trust me, the loss-prevention officer won't invite me in to review the tapes. I'm not even law enforcement. Besides, from his perspective, it's the store's business, not mine.”

“Don't be stubborn. If the second woman showed up at the funeral home, you could follow her. If she shoplifted once, she's bound to do it again. You could catch her in the act.”

He pulled out the jug of bad wine and poured me a glass.

I considered his proposal, remembering the younger woman's failed attempt to run me down. It
would
be satisfying to see the look on her face if the two of us turned up at the same place. “What makes you think she'll be there?”

“It just stands to reason. Imagine the guilt she must feel. Her friend Audrey is dead. I should think she'd put in an appearance to appease her conscience, if nothing else. You could do the same.”

“My conscience doesn't bother me. Who said it did?”

William arched a brow as he screwed the cap on the jug. “Far be it from me.”

Tuesday morning I skipped my run. The pain in my bruised shin felt worse, but that wasn't my excuse. The visitation for Audrey Vance was scheduled for 10:00 A.M. If I went into the office early, I'd have time to make a few calls and open mail before I had to break away. I brushed my teeth, showered, and washed my hair, after which I took my all-purpose black dress out of the closet and gave it a shake. Nothing dropped on the floor and skittered away so I thought I was safe in assuming insects hadn't taken up residence. I inspected the dress, turning it this way and that on the hanger. There was dust on both shoulders and I brushed that away. No buttons missing, no split seams, and no dangling threads. The fabric in this garment is wholly synthetic, probably a petroleum derivative that will one day be pulled off the market owing to its newly discovered carcinogenic properties. In the meantime, it never wrinkles, never shows dirt, and never looks out of date, at least to my untutored eye.