Scary Creek (15 page)

Virgil wagged his head back and forth confounded by
the possibilities.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe…”

“Do you know where we might be able to find a suit
like that?” I asked, careful not to encourage too much digression.

He made a sour face.
“We could call Good Will, or the Salvation Army, see if they picked up
any old murdered men’s suits lately.”

I nodded my approval. “You got a cell phone?”

He got a number from call assistance and dialed. When
a voice answered, Virgil gave me the phone.

“Hi,” I said. “You don’t by any chance have any old
murdered man suits lying around there do you?”

The line was silent for a few seconds and then a
reply.

“What size?”

I was stunned, surprised and stumped “I’ll take any
size you got,”

“You want any special color?”

“No, no special color, whatever you got will do fine.”

“Let me take a look,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

I couldn’t believe my luck. I covered the mouthpiece. “He’s
looking,” I whispered to Virgil, but the look in his eyes led me to believe I’d
been played. I meekly surrendered the phone and he hung it up. I took a deep
breath.

“Has anyone been murdered in the area recently?” I a
sked
.

He did not answer quickly. His mind was engaged in
thought, but I did
observe a faint glimmer of hope.

“There was a murder in Morgantown a few months ago,”
he said. “It was in all the papers. A young woman killed her husband for one
hundred thousand in Insurance. She tried to make it look like a
convenience store robbery
.”

Cheap, I thought, but double indemnity would kick it
up to $200 thousand, and the amount wouldn’t tip off the insurance snoops.

“How far is Morgantown?” I asked.

“Not far, about
70
miles,” he said.

A trip was easily within the range of possibilities.
It sounds too good to be true. I didn’t want to go back into the house without
some kind of protection, even if I was imbued with the nest fragrance. I
suggested we drive up the first thing tomorrow.

Virgil was doing things inside his mouth with his
tongue, which made me uncomfortable. He said he hadn’t made any plans and was
also curious to know how one acquired the clothing of a murdered man. He
reached into his pocket, removed a small plastic bag and set it on the table.

“What’s this?” I asked, opening the bag.

“Dry cat food,” he replied. “It’s for your wife’s estranged
cat.”

Chapter Twelve

  In the morning
,
armed with coffee and donuts, we drove to Morgantown.
Along the way, Virgil re
called revious
n
ews accounts of
Harry Newcomb’s unfortunate demise. He had married a university student, his
third wife. In her spare time, she had entertained a series of student lovers. After
less than one year of marriage, Harry Newcomb, the owner of a video and porn
shop, went to meet his maker in a poorly contrived robbery and murder. The
police arrested the girl and her lover the same night in their apartment where
they were celebrating with stolen money spread over the kitchen table. The
murder weapon, an antique .38 Colt revolver, was also sitting on the table.
According to recent editions of the paper, the two suspects were free on bail
pending trial.

“With a little luck,” Virgil said, “we might just
catch her at home.”

It was a gruesome thought, negotiating for the
purchase of a suit worn by a murdered man with the victim’s wife. It brought
back painful memories of my own
hapless
marriage.

Three hours later we pulled into the first   Morgantown
service station and checked the phone book for Harry Newcomb’s address. Virgil,
a graduate of WVU, knew the approximate location. We had no trouble finding it,
a lonely little house on a dead-end street. It was small, red brick home, with a
separate two-car garage and a variety of plant life dying of dehydration on the
front porch. There were two cars parked in the drive
,
but the house
was dark. Newspapers were collecting on the porch alongside a cardboard box
full of empty canning jars covered with a dusty film. D
ry brittle
leaves
from trees gathered in remote
corners on the porch.

“Doesn’t look
like
anyone’s home,” I said.

“Maybe she jumped bail,” Virgil suggested.

We were slow getting out of the car. Virgil waited for
me to lead. He held the wooden picket gate open. I climbed the concrete steps
and crossed the porch. There was a doorbell, but from its deranged position -- hanging
out of the socket like a goofy eye -- it couldn’t have possibly worked. I
knocked lightly and then more firmly, but no one answered.

“She’s jumped bail and gone to Mexico,” Virgil said
with relief.

I twisted the knob and the door swung open, something
neither of us expected. Virgil took two steps back. I stuck my head in the open
door and spoke in a hushed whisper: “hello-o-o.”

There was stale, muggy warmth about the inside of the
house that suggested recent habitation, as if someone had been lounging around
in dirty clothes. The rooms were in disarray and hadn’t been cleaned in days. Papers,
bottles, glasses, cups and saucers littered every cabinet and table. A harsh
odor of cigarettes and alcohol permeated every fiber of the carpet and
curtains. The house was awash with the odors of decadence.

We surveyed the living area
and
moved
quickly to the kitchen where someone had
recently
dirtied dishes and
made coffee. There
were crushed cigarette butts with lipstick on them in varied receptacles. The
sink was full of greasy pots and pans. It reminded me of home and conjured up
visions of Myra. I could not help wonder what kind of alien life forms were
taking shape in the refrigerator.

There was a closed door to another room off the kitchen,
which made it all that much more compelling. Virgil followed close on my heels.
I opened the door wide enough to let in fresh air and light. It was stuffy,
pregnant with stale air and immersed in a tomb-like darkness. The scent of
dissolution, spent passion and reeking human flesh mingled with the odors of stale
whiskey and tobacco. There was a tangle of arms and legs on the rumpled bed thrown
together in a heap.

“Good Lord!” I shouted, fearing a murder-suicide pact.

A body on the bed stirred, raised a tangled head of
blonde hair and gazed groggily in my direction.

“Who are you and what do you want?” she asked in a
husky voice.

I was a little disappointed to see that she was alive
and well, only confused and hung over. She tried to shade her eyes from the
living room light. Mercifully, I closed the door.

“Didn’t mean to bother you,” I said, “but I need one
of Harry’s suits.”

Her head returned to the pillow. “What we didn’t sell
at the yard sale is in the closet,” she said, pointing with an arm. “What do
you want it for?”

“Evidence,” I whispered. She made a grunting sound and
tried to wipe the strands of hair away from her mouth and eyes.

“You want me to get it?” She asked in a voice that
conveyed almost child-like naïveté. I could hear her apologizing to jurors for
interrupting their day. I knew she was never going to swing for the murder of
her husband.

“No, thanks,” I replied, “I’ll get it and then I’ll be
moving on.”

I crept to the closet so as not to awaken her
bunkmate. Fortunately, Harry was a clotheshorse, though a small one. I could
tell by the look and feel of the first suit I laid my hands on that he was a little
man but of discriminating tastes.

“Which suit was he wearing when you shot him?” I
asked.

“He wasn’t wearing a suit,” she said, “just jeans and
a shirt.”

 I took the blue suit with a matching vest. I couldn’t
help but wonder if that fact was important to the efficacy of the suit. I
decided to take two just in case. If one trespasser in a haunted house wearing
a murdered man’s suit could confound a ghost, then two such suits on
trespassers could possibly create
pandemonium
.

“My lawyer told me not to talk to you guys,” she said.

“We’re not talking. I need a suit, that’s all, just to
be sure we’re not making mistakes. You wouldn’t want us to make a mistake would
you?” My adrenal gland was working overtime. “Why don’t you forget about it and
go back to sleep?” I suggested

She rubbed her eyes, yawned and rolled over.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Nearly noon,” I said.  “Too early to get up. Go back
to sleep before you wake your friend.”

I gathered both suits in my arms and started toward
the door.

 “Are you sure you’re allowed to do this?” she asked.

“Hey! I got a court order here, you want to see it?”

I pulled a wrinkled envelope from my pocket, but she
was no longer looking. “You have my word on it, believe me. I’m leaving a
receipt on the table. If you have any questions, call my office. My secretary
will be in all day.”

I closed the bedroom door. Virgil was gone. For a
moment, I thought I'd left him inside. He was like that. He could be so silent
and still you wouldn’t know if he was in the same room. The curtains on the
outside door I noticed were moving. I could see Virgil sitting in the car. The
motor was running. I took the steps in a single bound, slid into the car and
pointed down the road. The tires spun and the car, squirmed out of the drive
and down the street. In less than five minutes, we were approaching the
interstate. In five minutes, we were out of town and on our way to Elanville.

“When I heard her voice, the next thing I thought I
would hear was gunshots. You got balls, Case. I couldn’t stand in that room and
talk to her while stealing her dead husband’s suit. You got balls.”

“Maybe,” I said, unable to explain my own behavior,
“but I’ll bet a lot of things are happening to her that have never happened
until now. It isn’t everyday you shoot your husband and the cops let you go
home to think about it for a few months. I think I could probably walk in there
and ask her for a pint of blood and she’d give it to me.”

Virgil was garrulous and full of questions.

“Yeah, I think so. Did she seem sorry?”

“Sorry?” I said, screwing my face up in contempt. “For
what; killing her husband? I didn’t go in there to counsel her. I don’t know
how she feels, but she was in bed with some guy, probably her insurance agent.
Don’t ask me if she was sorry; I have no idea.”

I felt sorry for losing control, but sometimes I found
it difficult to understand why people placed so much emphasis on
reconciliation. It’s okay to steal and murder as long as you regret and repent.

“Take a look at these threads,” I said. “What do you
think?”

The label on the inside jacket pocket had the name of
a local clothing store that seemed to impress Virgil.

“Your size?” he asked.

“A little tight for me,” I said. “I wear a 44 regular.
They ought to fit you, though.”

I could see the idea had occurred to him even if not
consciously.

“I thought you might like to go into the house with
me. I made it out alive and I wasn’t even wearing a murdered man’s suit.”

He gave the idea a moment thought and narrowed his
eyes, as if he were visualizing prowling through the corridors of the house.

“I like the blue one
,
”
he said

*

We drove to his office and changed into our protective
clothing. The gray pinstripe suit fit snug through the chest and shoulders; I
was not able to button the jacket or pants. The trousers were at least two
inches short around the waist. I concealed the gap with a leather belt. The
dark blue suit fit like Velcro on Virgil.

“What are you going to do with these suits when we
finish?” he asked, brushing lint from the lapel.

“If we get out of the house Ryder house alive, you can
keep them.”

He kept the smile off his face, but not out of his
eyes.

I was impatient to get back to the Ryder house, but Virgil
wanted to visit the courthouse, pick up the tax receipt and record some papers.

“I don’t want you to think I’m being ghoulish or
foolish,” I said, “but I would like to stop at a local cemetery and rob a
grave.”

“Rob a grave?” He repeated and remembered the grave
dirt. “There’s a cemetery on the Elkton Road. We shouldn’t have any trouble
finding one that’s ‘fresh dug.’”

On our way out of town, we stopped at the Salvation
Army’s second-hand junk shop and bought two of the oldest and slouchiest hats
we could find. I discovered a forties Fedora, and he found a black and battered
felt Stetson that looked like it once belonged to Hopalong Cassidy.