Dead Head: A Dirty Business Mystery (7 page)

Outside the diner, not far from the planters, where I was adding
topsoil, sat a sandy-haired man, fair skin, around fifty to fifty-five years old—I could never tell anymore. He was extremely fit and attractive despite a nose that had obviously been broken and never fixed properly. If he were a woman, he’d be what the French might call
jolie laide
. I was amused to see a ripple of interest pass through the Main Street Moms’ tables, and I made a point of not staring at the man—he was getting enough female attention without my adding to the adoration.

A stack of real estate brochures was fanned out on the table in front of him, and he pored over the booklets with more than the casual interest of diner patrons, who generally leafed through them only after they’d ordered and were waiting for their meals to be served. He even took notes. I could imagine Gretchen Kennedy and her colleagues who filled the Free-Take-One! racks coming to blows over a buyer as motivated as this one.

For some reason I assumed he was single and so did the rest of the women, who consciously or unconsciously sat up a little straighter and spoke with their heads tilted at flattering angles. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, although that didn’t prove anything. But straight or gay, how many guys went house shopping without wife or partner? I had to pass him three or four times carrying large bags of the mulch that I used to camouflage the nursery pots in the planters.

“May I help you?” he asked, getting up from his seat.

“No thanks,” I said, breathing heavily. “I’ve got it covered.” And I did mostly. I was out of breath but tried not to show it.

“You’re pretty strong.”

Was he checking out my muscles the way I’d been checking out his? I kept working and didn’t respond.

He dog-eared pages in the brochures and finally got up and approached one of the Moms’ tables. Despite the banged-up nose he had an elegant, catlike grace, almost like a dancer.

“Excuse me, ladies. I know this is presumptuous, but I was wondering
if I might ask you a few questions about Springfield?” He fanned out the real estate brochures as if to show them he was for real.

The sea of females parted for him, and before long the women from the second table had dragged their chairs over to assist the handsome, well-spoken man. I could almost hear the gears moving as the quickly confirmed single man was being mentally seated next to divorced friends at future dinner parties.

There went my chance—I should have let him help me with the bags of mulch. I could have had first dibs on one of the only eligible men in Springfield. A sudden peal of giggles erupted from the women, who had regressed in age and maturity due to the unexpected novelty of a man in their midst—and during the day. Flirting. It was like riding a bicycle.

I finished up, stored my tools in my Jeep, and went inside. Through the window, Babe had been keeping an eye on the action outside.

“Something tells me if that guy really does buy a place around here, those girls are going to reinstate the welcome wagon, but instead of cookies and kitchen tools there’ll be rubber and latex in the goody basket.” I cleaned up and joined Babe at the counter, where a cup of coffee was waiting for me.

“He got here an hour before you did,” she said. “Had breakfast inside and about five refills on the coffee. If he doesn’t come in to pee soon, he’s going to make medical history.”

When the man first arrived, he’d asked Babe if this was the only diner in the area so many times that she was close to throwing him out, but he apologized and explained that he’d gotten the directions from a friend and just wanted to make sure he was in the right place. That’s when he began studying the real estate booklets. When the Moms arrived, he took his research outside. One of them, Becka Reynolds, was being particularly helpful.

“Look at them,” I said. “They’re fixing him up already and he could
be a potential mass murderer. And he hasn’t even seen a house yet, much less made an offer. Wait until those real estate harpies get their hooks in him. He’ll be toast.”

One of the regulars, a guy named Carl, was paying his check and overheard me. “You girls just can’t stand to see us single and happy,” he said.

“Shut up, Carl, before I tell that sweet young wife of yours what you think about marriage.” Babe handed him his change and returned to my end of the counter.

“You never told me about that wedding you and Lucy went to,” Babe said. “Did you find your soul mate?”

“That doesn’t happen in real life. In real life one bridesmaid looks fabulous because she lobbied for the dress that was most flattering to her, and the rest of them look ludicrous in it, and they’ll never wear it again no much how much it’s shortened. She may be the one who gets lucky. The other guests are not hooking up. They’re wondering which of their friends will marry next and whether they’ll be the last lonely member of their group, rolling her walker over to the center of the banquet room to try to catch the bride’s bouquet in her gnarled, liver-spotted hands.”

“Wow. That’s a depressing image,” Babe said. “Is that what you were thinking?”

“Only once or twice.”

Babe herself had been single for many years since her husband, Pete, had died in a motorcycle accident. They’d moved to Springfield with their twin boys and opened the diner years ago. Not long after, Pete went out for a ride with a buddy and had a smashup on Route 7. She didn’t talk much about the years right after that. It must have been hard being a single mom and the sole breadwinner with a young family and a fledgling business to get off the ground. When she did share memories, they were of her happier days with the Jimmy Collins band.

I’d had no idea who they were and had had to look them up. They’d had a few hits back in the days when Babe was a backup singer named Wanda Sugarman—before the band had dubbed her Babe and Pete had given her his own last name.

“Look at that guy,” I said, pointing with my cup. “All he had to do was smile and say,
Aw shucks, ma’am, I’m new in town
. If a woman had done that with a group of men, she’d have been handed a scarlet letter and a needle and thread.”

“It’s a cruel world.”

On the day I was to see Caroline, I headed to the Paradise for a hearty meal before our meeting. I was leaning toward Caroline’s side of the fence now and wanted a base in my stomach just in case Caroline decided to seal our partnership with a toast or three.

Babe hadn’t seen Caroline for days. I tried her again on my cell and I got the same message I’d gotten the previous week—disconnected.

“What’s the matter?” Babe asked.

“Her home phone’s disconnected. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“Plenty of people are dropping their landlines and just going with cells,” Babe said. “It’s the economy. Don’t you have her cell number?”

“I do but her house is in a dead zone. She never uses it at home. Besides, I don’t see Caroline and Grant belt-tightening in that way. I’m going to go see what’s up.” We had a date and Caroline was so anxious to talk to me; it wasn’t like her to disappear without leaving me a message. I finished breakfast and headed for the Sturgis house. Halfway to Caroline’s I thought perhaps I had screwed up the days. Was this the day she was accompanying one of her friends to the doctor’s on a bizarre mission to see whether or not the friend’s three-year-old was biologically suited to be the next Roger Federer? What the hell. I’d go anyway. If I had the date wrong, I’d leave a note. When she got home, she’d be thrilled that I
was more interested in her proposal than I’d been when we last spoke. And I was. Between losing the real estate gigs and being sent home with hand-me-down clothing, I was a lot more inclined to consider her offer than I thought I’d be. I hadn’t seen her business plan yet, but she was a smart woman. And so was I.

When I pulled into the Sturgises’ driveway, Caroline’s silver Land Rover sat at the entrance of the house. The driver’s side door was wide open. I parked behind it. I took my time walking up the front steps and rang the doorbell, expecting to see Caroline, perfectly coiffed, perfectly clad, and given the early hour, holding the perfect Bloody Mary in a lead crystal glass. There was no answer, so I rang again. This time I noticed a sliver of light between the door and the jamb. It wasn’t latched. I gave it a gentle push and it creaked open.

“Caroline? Caroline, are you here?” The vestibule was empty. Entering her house uninvited was a breach of suburban etiquette and I wasn’t sure I should. Then I heard a sound coming from the family room—a gasping or choking sound.

“It’s Paula. Are you okay? Can I come in?” I waited for an answer, then tiptoed into the cathedral-ceilinged room, not knowing what I’d be interrupting.

Caroline wasn’t there, but her husband, Grant, was. He was on the sofa, clutching a huge pillow to his chest and mouth and rocking back and forth. Tears were streaming down his face, and his eyeglasses were fogged and slightly askew.

“Where’s Caroline?” I asked. I was afraid to know the answer. “Is she all right?” He didn’t seem surprised to see me. He took the corner of the pillow out of his mouth.

“Caroline’s not here. They’ve arrested her. They say she’s…she’s not Caroline Beecham Sturgis. I don’t know who she is, but she’s not Caroline Sturgis. My wife is a stranger.”

When you’re my
age, it’s easy to look back and say I should have done this or shouldn’t have done that. It’s like the aerial view of a garden maze. From above it looks easy. The pathways are clear and it’s obvious which way you should go. When you’re on the ground, of course, it’s much easier to make a wrong turn.

If I’d had that nice clean aerial view when I was nineteen, I wouldn’t be walking through O’Hare Airport with two federal marshals, a barn jacket thrown over my handcuffed wrists, rushing to catch a flight to Detroit, back to the city and state I hadn’t even wanted to fly over for as long as I could remember.

I’d thought about this moment every day for the last—what is it—twenty years? Twenty-five? Who remembered? Early on, I jumped every time I heard a siren or if the front door open unexpectedly. Gradually, that feeling faded, like an old scar you forget you have until you look for it and see that it’s still there, right where it’s always been, and you were crazy to think that it had ever disappeared. Now it’s over. They know. And I can exhale.

That time and place, B.C., before Caroline, seemed like fiction, a novel I’d read or a movie I’d seen before my real life began. If only.

My friends and family were in shock when I was arrested at cheerleader
practice, on the football field with the rest of the squad around me and Coach,
who looked stricken. I sleepwalked through the trial and sentencing until I heard the words, twenty years. Only then did it become real for me. Twenty years was longer than I’d been on the planet. I’d be almost forty when I got out, older than my father. Way older than my mother was when she died. People kept saying thank God she wasn’t there to see me, but I didn’t thank him, I wanted her with me. To tell me what to do. Maybe if she’d been with me, I wouldn’t have been in such a mess.

In prison I spent months crying myself to sleep every night—afraid during the day and more afraid to let my defenses down and go to sleep at night. It was like that for eighteen months until one day a dozen of us were chosen for a work release program that was to last two weeks. After a few days I noticed cracks in security, the times when a guard could be distracted and frequently was. I stayed on my best behavior for twelve days. On the morning of the thirteenth day I simply didn’t get on the bus that took the others back to prison. Only one other inmate saw me slip away behind a delivery van and all she did was close her eyes, a slight curl to her lips. Maybe she was laughing to herself as the van pulled away with me hunkered down in the back. When the driver stopped for gas and a bathroom break I crept out of my hiding place.

I walked for miles, tearing off my work shirt and tying it around my waist. I turned my prison-issue T-shirt inside out, and in those days the look passed for grunge. Then I hid at a construction site where I knew my brother Luke would be at 6:30 that night. He’d gotten a summer job as a security guard making sure no building materials disappeared overnight. Once I was sure all the workers were gone, I scooted over to the hut where the blue light from a cheap portable television reflected off the window. I tapped on the glass. My brother scrambled out of his chair and opened the window.

“Sweet Jesus! What the—how did you get here?” He pulled me inside, closed the door, and hugged me. We both collapsed and started to cry.

I hid in the booth until 4:30
A.M.
By that time, I hoped it would be
safe
to go to a motel and steer clear of the construction workers who’d start arriving soon. Luke had thirty bucks in his pocket. He gave me twenty-five and I checked into a hot-sheet motel near the interstate highway until my brother returned with a bag of clothing and all the cash he could scrape together without arousing suspicion.

“They’re looking everywhere for you,” he’d said. “I didn’t even drive—I rode my bike because I was afraid of being followed. You can’t stay here.”

As if I wanted to—waiting for the cops to come banging on my door to drag me back to that place. Early the next morning, after saying good-bye to Luke, I sat fully dressed on the edge of the bed wondering what the hell I was going to do. Then I heard one of the truckers checking out. He was making a noisy exit, he and his vehicle belching and grunting. I ran outside and climbed on his running board before he left the long, narrow parking lot and turned onto the highway.

“Will you wait for me?”

In five minutes I was out the door, grabbing a motel washcloth and a sliver of soap and the bag my brother had brought.

“Not much in the way of amenities here,” the trucker said, looking at the pilfered items.

I stuffed the stolen goods into my bag. The guys who drove me from Ann Arbor
to Dayton and from Dayton to Pittsburgh didn’t really want to know my name. The first one thought he might make out—teenage runaways were probably less discriminating and undoubtedly found themselves in situations where it was easier to just do the deed than to get beaten up and tossed out of a moving vehicle. But after a few feeble attempts to engage me in sexy chat, he dropped the idea and was just grateful to have a human to talk to on his long drive south, instead of simply singing along to oldies on the radio.