Always Kiss the Corpse (3 page)

Passed away? Gone to meet his Maker? Shuffled off this mortal coil? Each worse than the previous. He'd lost Brendan, that's all there was to it. Passed away? All Noel knew was his single love was gone forever.

Brendan had Died. Nearly ten months ago. Brendan was Dead. Noel turned his head even more to the window, moving away from the pressure of his seatmate's arm; now hanging over his side of the armrest! Dead. No euphemism worked. Dead was Dead. Noel blinked fast. He would not cry.

Down below, a big BC ferry chugged through Active Pass. Up here, just a hop across the Strait to Bellingham. He began mentally collecting himself. Just for the hell of it, nudged against his seatmate's elbow till it dropped off the armrest.

He was looking forward to staying with Kyra in her new condo. A surprise, she'd actually bought something.

≈  ≈  ≈

Kyra watched the float plane send up spray as it glided to the end of the wharf. Ten-thirty, nearly on time. She zipped up her Gore-Tex against the stiff breeze and pulled the collar high. Her hair, a mass of long dark brown curls, helped keep the back of her neck warm. The first sun in over a week had burned a few of the clouds away. A land crew person sauntered along to tie a line from the dock to the plane's strut, then a small door opened and a uniformed man crawled out. Three women climbed down, a young man in fashionably baggy pants, a large man, then Noel, carrying a black leather jacket. Kyra waved. A customs official checked him through. He picked up his overnight bag and his computer and joined her.

She hugged him. “Good flight?” She took his bag.

“Bumpy. Tight cabin.” But he was smiling.

She smiled back and led him up the pier to the adjacent Hotel Bellwether parking lot. “I phoned to tell you I was down here waiting, but you didn't answer.”

He put his arm around her shoulders. “You can't leave a cellphone on in a plane.”

She unlocked her car, a Tracker.

He took his arm back and pulled his cell out of his pocket. “Besides, if I leave it on someone might actually find me.”

“Exactly the idea, Noel.” She'd hoped he would love his Christmas present. Guess not.

He set his computer on the back seat, covered it with his coat. He gave her a hug, and a peck on the cheek. “Hiya partner.”

“Hi yourself. Hop in. We've got twenty minutes to get to Lake Whatcom.” He looked trim and fit, his thinning blond hair newly cut short. He wore a black turtleneck, black jeans and his favorite polished black loafers. At forty-three a handsome man of delicate build, four inches taller than herself.

He folded himself into the passenger seat. “So what do we know?”

“Nothing I didn't tell you last night: Garth Schultz's phone call and Maria Vasiliadis' whispered words,
That's not Sandro
.”

“Who's Schultz?”

“I'm not sure. I had company so I got just the barest details.”

They sped down State Street. “Do we know what he died of?”

“No.”

“Name sounds Greek.”

“Schultz?”

Noel grinned. “Don't be obtuse.” Her cheeks were flushed and as usual her lipstick had disappeared.

“All we know is name, address, eleven o'clock appointment, and it wasn't her son in the coffin.” Kyra turned onto Alabama Street and began the climb up the straight steep hill. She gunned the engine. She didn't much like this car but it had good acceleration. Sam had given it to her when she started her snooping career. He'd thought its name was a good joke.

Under the I-5, Alabama all the way to Whatcom, Kyra talked about her new condo. Noel stared ahead, out the window. He appreciated few things as much as the return of the sun in late winter. This year more than ever.

Kyra shifted to a half-teasing tone. “How's Talbot?”

“I haven't been pushing.”

“No?” She glanced his way and gave him a wry smile.

“Brendan's not going to happen again.”

“I thought Talbot had this crush on you.” Kyra pulled out to pass a cement truck.

“What crush? I want dinner with somebody sometimes. That's about all I can handle. And,” he squinted at her, “who was your company last night?”

“A nice guy from my Art History course. Jerome. You'll meet him Thursday. I've invited him and some others for a potluck.”

“Nice? What's nice?”

“Hmm, dunno. Maybe too nice. The bad thing about him is his dog.”

Now Noel raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“Big slobbery thing. We walk along, he gets between me and Jerome and growls.”

Noel barked a laugh.

“I take it as a personal insult.” At the shore of Lake Whatcom, its grays and thin blues reflecting the sky, they turned left along Northshore Drive. Kyra dug in her purse for a notebook and thrust it at Noel. “I wrote the address on the last page. Dulcey Lane.”

Noel read out street names. “There it is.”

The house, a trim white bungalow on the north side with a view of the lake between the houses across the street, sat between two mid-size blue spruce. They got out, locked their doors and tramped toward the house. Kyra rang the doorbell, bing bong.

The door opened slowly, with an Inner Sanctum screak. A woman's head appeared from behind the half-open door.

“Mrs. Vasiliadis?” Kyra inquired.

“Yes?” The door opened more.

Kyra introduced herself and Noel. “We're Islands Investigations International. Sandro's friend Garth Schultz asked us to come over.”

“Oh. Garth.”

“May we come in?”

She opened the door fully.

A solid woman in maybe her late sixties, black dress and stockings, comfy beat-up leather slippers, shortish hair on end as if she'd been pulling it. A dark line of mustache on her upper lip. Not sixty yet, Noel thought, but she looks so weary. Heavy lines on her forehead, puffy eyes, cheeks hung to jowls and her shoulders into her upper arms.

“Come in.” She took charge as if she knew she had to, and closed the door. She smiled. At least her mouth did. She turned and they followed through an arch into a living room.

An impression of blue: chesterfield, two armchairs, carpet, curtains, and a painting of hills and valleys on the wooden fireplace mantel.

Mrs. Vasiliadis dropped onto the chesterfield. “Excuse me,” she said. “The doctor gave me something to help me sleep and it's left me exhausted.”

Kyra sat in an overstuffed chair.

Mrs. Vasiliadis said, with effort. “So you're a friend of Garth Schultz?”

“He phoned me.” Kyra glanced at her with a frown of inquiry. “But I'm afraid I can't immediately place him. I'm better with faces than names.”

Noel took a chair—wooden arms, faded brocade seat and back.

“Garth used to be Alessandro's best friend.” She rubbed the tissue she was holding between her palms, and frowned at it. “I thought he said he knew you personally.”

“I've undoubtedly met him,” Kyra soothed, “and I'll remember when I see him.”

“When they were little Garth always stood up for Sandro.”

“If you give us his address, we'll talk with him,” Noel said. “What can we do for you?”

“Find my son.” Her eyes filled with tears and she blotted them with the tissue. “I leaned down to kiss—” she faltered.

Noel pulled out a notebook. “We know this is hard. We'll try to help. Can you tell us what happened?”

She did, and ended in tears. “It wasn't Alessandro.”

“You're certain?” Noel spoke gently.

“Oh yes.” She pulled herself together. “Since it's not Sandro who's dead, he must be alive. I've called and called his house, and no one's there. So where is he?”

“We'll try to find out and—”

“And what mother's son is in the casket? It's not Sandro so we can't bury him. When Sandro dies, he'll be buried in our Orthodox tradition. But he can't be buried if he isn't dead.”

“Why do you believe he's not?”

“Alessandro has a very dark thick beard. He shaves again in the afternoon if he goes out in the evening. That face had hardly any hair.” Maria's eyes welled up again. “This man's skin was smooth, his hair far too long, he looked—”

“Yes?”

“—not like Sandro. The person in the coffin had the wrong lips. The wrong face. No, it's all wrong.” She sniffed. They waited while she composed herself. “Whose is the body?”

“Garth Schultz said the funeral was on Whidbey Island?” Kyra asked.

“It wasn't a funeral, it was a viewing for Sandro's friends. To pay their last respects.” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat. “Sandro moved to Whidbey a couple of years ago. He works at the hospital, he's an LPN, licensed practical nurse.”

“Have you talked to the police?” Noel asked.

“A State Patrol officer. The one who told me Sandro was dead.”

Noel leaned toward her. “What's the person in the coffin supposed to have died of?”

“They say he was a drug addict. They say he overdosed.” Maria took a fresh tissue from the box on the coffee table. “Which again proves it wasn't Sandro. He had no use for drugs.”

“Do you know Sandro's friends on Whidbey?” Kyra asked.

“No.”

Noel asked, “Who was at the viewing?”

Mrs. Vasiliadis shrugged. “My brother-in-law came. Andrei Vasiliadis. He might remember some names. Sandro's taking courses at Skagit Valley College.”

Noel said, “What we can do is explore the situation on Whidbey. Could you give us Sandro's home address?”

Mrs. Vasiliadis pointed to a little black book on the phone table. Noel got up and brought it to her. She thumbed through and read an address.

Noel wrote it down. “Did you try going to his house?”

She looked stricken. “I couldn't.” She dropped her face to her hands. “When they said he was dead, I couldn't. Yesterday, Andrei—My brother-in-law went. The house was locked and silent.”

“Have the police been there?” An easier question.

She lifted her head but didn't look at him. “I don't know.”

“Do you have Mr. Schultz's address?”

“And your brother-in-law's,” Kyra prompted.

She read from her book.

“A woman at the viewing told Andrei she had his house key to feed his cats,” Mrs. Vasiliadis remembered. “And that she was a nurse too.”

“We'll talk to them all,” Kyra reassured her as she stood. She gave Mrs. Vasiliadis a pamphlet explaining Triple-I's fee structure.

She glanced at it, and set it aside. “Andrei will take care of that.”

“We'll be back to you very soon.”

“Don't get up,” Noel said. “We can see ourselves out.”

≈  ≈  ≈

Dr. Lorna Albright could feel that the day would test her elasticity. Some mornings she woke with a sense of the hours ahead; other mornings while still half-asleep she'd already solved a couple of upcoming problems. The night gone by had been of the second sort.

She dressed. She lined her eyebrows, her only concession to the cosmetics industry. A plump person in her early fifties doesn't need makeup. But she did have very thin eyebrows. She chose the small silver clamshell brooch and pinned it to her suit jacket. She poured a glass of orange juice. The telephone rang. Dawn, from the clinic: Stockman had asked for a meeting. Gary and Richard were busy till three o'clock and four o'clock respectively, was late afternoon possible for Lorna? She checked her daybook. Nothing at four. Still, irritating. Luckily Tuesday was her day at WISDOM anyway, not at the lab. She ate a bowl of cereal.

On Tuesdays she didn't see Terry Paquette, her research team partner and Richard Trevelyan's wife. Terry, who ran WISDOM's lab, was as close a friend as Lorna Albright had. Often when Lorna was at the lab they went out for lunch.

She hoped the meeting wasn't about the Vasiliadis death. A shame that, but they had to move on. She locked her front door, started her car, headed onto the island highway. Ten minutes later she parked in her space. WISDOM's home was a low cedar-sided building fronted by grass, a bushed-in garden in back, and shrubs that flowered in their seasons. From behind the counter in the reception area Dawn greeted Lorna. Dawn Deane, now in her late thirties, had been part of WISDOM, the Whidbey Island Sexual Definition Management clinic, for twelve years, and was definitely a team member. They'd hired her as a redhead. Three years later she became a blonde, then shifted to ebony. Now she was blonde again. Her vivacity made her attractive to men and women, older people and kids, and whatever she did to her hair or her face suited. She handed Lorna a printed list of her day's appointments, the first at 11:00. The 4:00
PM
meeting was inked in. “Coffee?”

Lorna's office was the smallest because these days she consulted less often with clients. She'd agreed to it; her real place of work was the lab. She was trained as a gynecologist, but most of her work had shifted from clinical to research. Dr. Gary Haines had set up the contract with Bendwell Pharmaceuticals, he was their schmoozer, but Dr. Lorna Albright ran the lab. Terry was in charge of day by day functioning, but Lorna organized, directed and evaluated the work. Tuesdays at the clinic she met the occasional client, consulted with Stockman, Gary and Richard, read the journals, and spent a chunk of time on-line, checking in with distant colleague-friends, reading through the circumlocutions of other sexual definition centers around the world.

Dawn brought Lorna a steaming cup of coffee. Lorna settled in to a week's worth of paper mail. She glanced at her watch; past ten. Then she gave herself over to the pleasure of checking abstracts of the articles she'd later choose to read. At four o'clock Dawn knocked on her open door. “They're ready in the board room.”

Around the long table, eight chairs. Lorna used to argue for a smaller table but the others believed a client should be allowed a physical distance from the three men and the woman who might transform his or her life. Stockman Jones, the urologist and surgeon of the team, now sat at the head, looking downright casual. To his right, Gary Haines, their psychiatrist. From the start Gary had specialized in human sexuality in large part because he himself loved sex and saw no need to hide this. Lorna couldn't understand why women flocked to him considering he normally wore a pungent-pine aftershave that would work better as mosquito repellent. Across from Gary sat Richard Trevelyan, their endocrinologist and the most recent member of the team, with them for twelve years now. It was Richard who, thank goodness, had brought the clinic to the island. At sixty he was also the eldest team member. His comfortable face was handsomely craggy under a lot of white hair. Lorna smiled, said “Gentlemen,” her usual opening statement at such meetings, sat beside Richard and tried not to inhale Gary's cologne.