Gourdfellas (6 page)

At least I wasn’t spread-eagled against the hood of my car, enduring a pat down in full view of any neighbor who happened to drive by. As my breathing slowed, my mind started into gear again. Michele Castro was going to a lot of trouble, asking me questions and making me wait in the patrol car. Something big, perhaps even unthinkable, had happened. Nothing as simple as an accident along this quiet country road. Clearly, it had something to do with a rifle. Hunting out of season? That wouldn’t be serious enough to treat me as though I were a . . . murderer. That was the word I’d been trying to avoid.

In the rearview mirror, I watched Castro’s normally pretty face screw into a look of puzzlement as she paced from one side of the road to the other. Finally, she flicked off the walkie-talkie and opened the door on the driver’s side.

“I need to see the rifle you found.”

“Good, I’d love to have you take it away.” But I felt no relief. Her still-tense expression told me that this wasn’t going to be a quick and easy jaunt.

“And we need to search your house. We can do it two hours from now, after we get a warrant, or we can do it now with your permission.”

My head dropped against the seat back. I didn’t need this, not when I had so many other things demanding my attention. No clear answers came out of the soup that was my brain, but I heard my Dad’s voice echoing in my head.

He’d told me that when he was on the job, the only judgment he made when someone called a lawyer was that they had brains. Not every cop felt the way he did, he’d said, but that didn’t matter. The smart ones protected themselves.

“I’ll give you my answer in a minute. After I call my lawyer. Can I get out and have a little privacy?”

Castro’s steady gaze was accompanied by a curt nod. I climbed from the cruiser, walked a few steps down the road, and punched in Elizabeth Conklin’s number. I explained the situation in two seconds, and then she put me on hold. Now it was my turn to pace. Disintegrating tissue wads dotted the ditch, along with crushed beer cans and cigarette packs. On the other side of the road, a torn gym bag and a formerly white sock lay abandoned. The detritus of bored teens, I thought, on their way to becoming joyless adults. What was Elizabeth doing? The minutes dripped by like molasses in January. Finally, I heard a click and a voice.

“Listen very carefully. Marjorie Mellon was found in the woods about a quarter mile from your house. Somebody shot her with a rifle. Are you sure you didn’t touch the one in your bathroom?”

I stopped pacing. Marjorie Mellon, dead? Near my house? Her bouncing steel gray curls bobbed into my mind, her brown eyes flashing beneath them. Every bit of her moved when she spoke about starting a consortium to support the casino. Now she was dead.

“Lili? You didn’t touch the rifle. That’s right, isn’t it?” Elizabeth sounded exasperated.

“I didn’t. I don’t think I did. I was too scared. When it fell out of the ceiling, it scared the crap out of me. What do I do now?”

“You let them take the rifle, and you let them search your house. They’d get their warrant, so there’s no use appearing uncooperative. Meanwhile, I’ll call B.H., just in case.”

“B.H.?” Was I supposed to understand, or was this some kind of lawyer code I hadn’t learned?

“Sorry. B. H. Hovanian, the smartest criminal defense lawyer north of the city. You probably won’t need him, but I want to alert him. Like I said, just in case. And call me when the cops leave.”

She clicked off before I could say thank you. And before she could say
Don’t worry, this will blow over in a couple of hours.
But then, Elizabeth wasn’t much of a hand holder. I’d known that for months. Maybe the lawyer, whom I hoped was a combination of Gerry Spence folksy and Alan Dershowitz passionate, was a good idea. It was a stretch to think I’d need his services, but he’d probably be better to work with than Elizabeth, whose clients came to her for wills and pre-nups and business contracts.

Michele Castro walked towards me, her head tilted in a question.

“Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go. You can take the rifle and you can search my house.” So, she’d get what she wanted and I’d go on with my life. After I made a couple of important points. “But I didn’t murder Marjorie Mellon. First of all, I hardly know the woman, so why would I kill her? Second of all . . . Oh, hell,
you
know I didn’t do it.”

Michele Castro didn’t show a flicker of emotion. “I don’t know anything yet. I need you to come down to the department and get fingerprinted and give a formal statement about the rifle. And I need you to stick around for a couple of days.”

My throat closed up. “A couple of days? I can’t. I have to go to New Hampshire tomorrow. You know, it’s not so far. I’m in a new show at a prestigious gallery there. My work has to be set up for a show on Saturday afternoon. I’m not going to run away or anything. But I have to be at that opening.”

She shrugged. “I can’t force you to stay. But I can make sure you have a police escort the whole weekend. And I still need you to come to Hudson and give me a statement and get fingerprinted—after I follow you to your house so we can get that rifle and check things out.”

I doubted that the sheriff ’s department had the manpower to spare someone to babysit me for a trip to New Hampshire, but even if Michele Castro wasn’t making idle threats, no way would she stop me from going to New Hampshire.

“Fine. I’ll come by this afternoon. And that escort? You want to try for Officer Garrison? He looks like he’d know how to behave around a bunch of patrons of the arts.”

Her boyfriend would, in fact, not be bad company for a weekend. She glared at me and then strutted off to her car and gunned the engine while I managed to turn the car without landing in the ditch.

 

I’d been mugged once on a deserted street on the Lower East Side, and hustled by a couple of would-be thieves on the subway, but I’d never felt as helpless as I did when three members of the Columbia County Sheriff ’s Department tossed my small home. They went through every drawer and closet, every box and bag, impersonally peering beneath T-shirts and under towels. They opened every container in my gourd studio, and pawed through each folder in my file cabinet, until I was ready to scream.

But they were relatively neat and they were efficient and they made an attempt to be courteous and even apologetic. Nobody answered my questions about how the rifle might have gotten into my attic—they just poked through everything and then left. Michele Castro directed traffic, and directed herself to go through my underwear drawer. At least she was the one to learn that I had thirty pairs of the same off-brand panties, in red, blue, purple, and white. What she didn’t know was that they served as a private, color-coded reminder to help me get through the day—red when I needed energy, blue when I wanted to be calm, purple when I had to be assertive, and white when I felt in need of a spiritual boost.

Today, I should have been wearing one of each color.

Not that it would have helped. My feeling of violation gave way to a weariness that felt bone deep. I still had to get fingerprinted and then go the mediation session. But not before I spent ten minutes lying on the sofa and staring out the window at the sparrows fighting over the seed in the feeder. Which helped me remember that Elizabeth had asked me to call her when Castro and company were gone.

“He wants you to meet him at the Creamery tomorrow morning at ten,” she said when I’d identified myself.

“Who? What are you talking about?” Puzzles and word games, usually among my favorite forms of entertainment, were more annoying than intriguing right now.

“The lawyer, the one I said I’d call. B.H., remember? He thinks this may get some attention because of the casino connection and he wants to meet you before the news hits the fan.”

“Tell him I’ll meet him tonight at nine,” I said. Even my attorney wasn’t going to stop me from making that gallery opening.

 

I’d been through the messy ink-and-roll procedure once before, when I applied for a job at a bank. That time, I hadn’t cleaned one of my fingers thoroughly and had ruined a perfectly fine yellow cotton sweater. This time I’d be more careful. As double insurance I threw an old denim work shirt that was stained with leather dye and gilder’s paste over my mediation slacks and sweater, and then drove into Hudson.

Warren Street buzzed with activity as the county prepared for the return of seasonal visitors. I was still too protective of the slow, uncrowded quiet of my new life to welcome the intrusion of Them—city people. If that casino was built, the stream would turn into a flood. Maybe, too, I just didn’t get the appeal of gambling because I was missing the gene that got excited when the dice stopped or a little ball rolled into my number. Instead, the gene that hated losing kept me from getting involved in matters of pure chance. Either way, I’d heard about how gambling joints changed not only the look of a town but also its feel. The culture of neighborliness became corrupted into theme-park friendliness that disappeared when the money ran out. All the arguments about jobs and expanding the tax base and seeing that justice was served for Native Americans wouldn’t convince me that a casino was the only way to achieve those good ends.

Inside the sheriff’s department, the smell of disinfectant nearly knocked me over. I was reminded that policing was a job in which you might be exposed to bad odors and bodily wastes, and in a county jail that would happen regularly, especially in the drunk tank. I shivered with distaste and headed for the desk.

“Hi, is Officer Castro around? She asked me to come by.” I smiled in the direction of the heavily mascaraed woman on the other side of the counter, but she continued to stare at her computer screen as though I hadn’t said a word.

Seconds marched by, my patience seeping away with each tick of the clock. Public servants, my foot. Public torturers was more like it. “Hello!” I shouted as I slammed my hand on the counter and sent two papers fluttering to the floor. “Anybody home?”

Glaring, the woman glanced away from the fallen papers and pushed her chair back. She pointed to a sign on the counter.

PRESS THE BUZZER FOR ATTENTION.

In the uninflected voice of someone who has never heard the melody of human speech she said, “No need to be sarcastic. What can I do for you?”

The notice was as clear as my regret. “Sorry. I didn’t see the sign. Michele Castro wanted me to come in.”

The woman followed my speech with her eyes, not her ears. I waited while she dialed an extension, spoke into the receiver, and then motioned me to a seat on a bench. How would it be to live in a silent world, to not hear music, to have only your eyes, your nose, your skin to alert you to changes or dangers in the world? Maybe it was peaceful. No traffic, no jackhammers, no shouting.

I was so lost in thought that I didn’t hear Castro’s footsteps. Startled by her sudden appearance in front of me, I jumped up to a standing position.

Funny, I’d made myself deaf for a few seconds.

“You all right?” she asked, and when I nodded she led me down the corridor to her small office. As I had last fall after I’d found Nora’s husband’s body in a pond, I sat across from her, wrote out my statement on the yellow legal pad she pushed toward me, and tried to include every detail. Without looking up, I knew Castro’s eyes were on me. When I was finished, I handed her the paper.

“Am I still a suspect?” I asked, keeping my voice light. “Do I still need a babysitter this weekend?”

Michele Castro pushed her ponytail behind her shoulder. Fine lines crisscrossed her tan cheek, and a frown furrow had begun to form between her plucked brows. She was too young to be sporting worry lines, but there they were. The stress of work, the sun, irregular hours, eating food that came from a chemistry lab instead of a farm, had all left their mark on her. For a second, I wanted to send her home with a hot meal and some expensive skin cream. The impulse didn’t last long.

“You and everybody else in town. But, yes, you. The rifle was in your house and you have no corroborated alibi for the time of Marjorie Mellon’s death. Not yet, anyway, until I check out your statement. So, yes. That’s why I told you to stick around town, that’s why I needed to search your house, and that’s why you’re here now.” Her chair squeaked as she leaned back. “We’re looking at some other people too. I’m not going to say who.”

Great. Other people. The only thing that kept me from utter despair was the knowledge that my prints were not on that rifle. Thank goodness I hadn’t touched it.

“When will you check my prints against the ones on the rifle? Because if they don’t match, then I move down on your list, don’t I?”

“As soon as we can.” She got up and poured herself coffee, gestured to ask if I wanted any but I declined in the interests of my stomach.

“Okay. Whatever that means. Is it all right if I have someone come out and fix my roof? I mean, I found the rifle because my roof has a leak somewhere. I don’t want to be charged with tampering with evidence or anything, but I don’t want the whole house to get ruined.” No rain was forecast in the near future. Still, I didn’t want to watch my bathtub go floating down Iron Mill Road because my damaged shingles were evidence in a murder case. She could take all the pictures she wanted, but I intended to have that leak fixed before the week was over.

Before she could answer, her phone rang. “Castro,” she said in her official voice. She tapped the eraser end of a pencil as she listened. Once, her eyes cut to me before she scribbled something on the note paper in a neat cube on her desk. “Don’t let anyone near it,” she said, standing and motioning me to the door. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

It
had sparked Castro’s interest enough for her to almost forget that I was supposed to be fingerprinted.