The Goodbye Body (16 page)

“Do they think it has any connection to that body you found in the freezer last night?” He gave me a lopsided grin meant to communicate both sympathy and amusement, as if we were sharing a private joke. His eyelid twitched but stopped short of a wink. “It was hard to miss the story on the front page of the newspaper.”

“It must have been a hot topic over brunch at the country club.”

Gary laughed. “It was, but then some duffer made a hole-in-one. From all the hoopla in the bar, you would have thought Elijah himself came down in a fiery chariot to buy a few rounds.”

“It’s nice to know somebody’s having a good day.”

“Have the police identified the body?”

“Yes. You’ll be able to hear all about it on the local news tonight. It would take something along the lines of an alien invasion to supplant it as the lead story—and then only if the little green men sexually assaulted the mayor’s wife.”

“Who do the police say it is?”

I sat back and looked at him. “Why do you care? Did you bring a traveling companion in your golf bag who’s gone missing?”

“It’s interesting, that’s all. How often do I meet a woman who subsequently finds a dead body in the freezer? I did know a couple who found a body floating in their pool one morning, but they’d had a wild party that lasted until dawn. It was deemed an ‘unfortunate accident.’ Gossip suggested otherwise, but the husband was a high-powered politician and his lovely young bride was notoriously friendly.”

“I’m neither of those,” I said, fighting back a yawn.

“What about the woman who lives here? Dolly Goforth, isn’t it? I gathered from the article in the newspaper this morning that she’s out of town. Have the police contacted her?”

“You know, Gary, if I wanted to be questioned about this, all I’d have to do is call KFAR. They’d love to send out a van with a camera crew and a perky little female reporter named Tiffany or Chantilly. They’d probably run over a grandmother and a couple of cats in their haste to get here. We could videotape the interview and watch it over and over and over again. My daughter and her friend, also known as Woodward and Bernstein, would cut a deal with a tabloid. I’d sell a few more books until the thrill-seekers had their fill and moved on to goggle at the next freak celebrity.”

He leaned across the table and caught my hand. “I’m really sorry, Claire. I can see you’re still upset about this. I just figured you might want to talk about it.”

I have to confess that his touch unnerved me. There are people in this world who believe that hugs and kisses are integral to an introduction. I am not one of them. My blood pressure skyrockets when I’m handed a paper gown at my doctor’s office. As far as I’m concerned, the slightest physical contact should be by invitation only. I disengaged my hand and picked up my glass. “I don’t even want to think about it, but that hasn’t been an option. All I know about the victim is that he lived in Brooklyn and was staying in a local motel. He looked like a retired teacher or an accountant. Of course, he may have been a world-renowned lion tamer, but I don’t keep up with that profession. Dolly Goforth claims to be unfamiliar with his name and has no explanation why he was found in her house.”

“So you’ve talked to her today?” When I reluctantly nodded, he went on. “If she didn’t know him, then why was he left in her house? Why not his motel room or out in the woods? Don’t the police have any theories?”

My patience was depleted. “I really don’t know. It was thoughtful of you to stop by. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a nap.” In case he did mind, I stood up and started for the door. “The Book Depot should be open in a few days. If you need another field guide, please drop by.”

“Now I really feel like an idiot,” he said as he followed me inside. “Is there any chance you might be able to sneak out for dinner tonight? I promise we won’t discuss anything more sensational than the nesting habitat of the ruffled grouse.”

“No, but thank you for asking.” I continued to the front door and pointedly opened it. “Perhaps I’ll see you later in the week.”

“You realize that you’ve doomed me to a barbecue at Daniel and Lucy’s condo, where the duffer will pull me aside and relate every last detail of his triumph.”

I managed a faint smile. “I’m sure it will be fraught with drama. I’m expecting a technician from the police department, so you’ll have to excuse me.”

“To check the alarm system?”

“To examine each pine needle for DNA residue. He’s bringing tweezers and a microscope.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Yes, Gary, I’m kidding. I have no idea what he’s going to do, but you probably don’t want to be here when he arrives. It might look suspicious.”

Once he’d finally uprooted his feet from the porch and left, I went back to the patio, gathered up the glasses, and took them to the kitchen. Squeaky Clean would have been discouraged to discover how temporal their efforts had been. Caron and Inez had attempted to clean up, but bits of tomato clung to the edge of the chopping board, and an olive that had rolled under a stool was warily watching me. I started to bend down, then thought better of it and left the olive where it was.

I was eating an olive (from the jar, not the floor) when the technician arrived. He wore a fusty brown suit and a bow tie, and looked to be in his fifties, proving that geekiness was not solely the prerogative of the young. Although he was laden with a large black box and a tool kit, he insisted on showing me his identity card and badge before he came inside. “Not safe to let strangers in your house these days,” he said. “My wife won’t open the door more than a crack for the pizza man until she smells pepperoni. And in a case like this, you probably ought to call the station and confirm my identity. I’ve been a cop for more than twenty years, and I don’t remember anybody finding a corpse in the freezer. It almost makes you think there might be a cannibal hanging around the area. You recall that Dahmer fellow—Jeffrey Dahmer? He kept body parts in his refrigerator.”

“I’m sure Lieutenant Rosen will inform me if there’s a starving serial killer in the neighborhood. Let me show you the telephone.”

He seemed quite happy to examine the base and point out various screws and plates that would expose its interior. “You won’t be able to make or receive any calls until I’m finished, ma’am. It should take about half an hour. Is that a problem?”

It would be if Dolly attempted to call, but the probability of that lay between highly unlikely and none whatsoever. “I think I’ll go upstairs and rest. My daughter and her friend are in the den. Send one of them to fetch me if you need anything.”

He nodded, already engrossed in disassembling the base. I contemplated mentioning his presence to Caron and Inez, then decided they were best left to entertain themselves in a fairly innocuous fashion. After I reached my bedroom, I realized I’d consumed entirely too much caffeine to lie down, much less close my eyes. Neurons, although misdirected, were firing away like guns in a video arcade. Even reading would be too tame.

I paced for a few minutes, then left the bedroom and went down the hall, loftily telling myself that I was merely inspecting the premises to make sure Squeaky Clean had done a thorough job. There were no piles of sheets and towels beside the doors of the other rooms. Sara Louise’s room was pristine. The bedspread had nary a wrinkle, and the pillows had been fluffed to perfection. The backpack was in the closet where I’d tossed it. I didn’t see a purse, but I couldn’t be sure it had been there earlier. In a drawer beside the bed I found the prescription bottle with a cautionary label about imbibing alcohol, driving, and operating heavy machinery. I was surprised to see that it came from a pharmacy in Connecticut instead of a local one. The book in the drawer involved international banking regulations. It was dog-eared; scribbles and punctuation marks in the margins suggested it served as the source of her daily inspirational reading. Perhaps it had been given to her by evangelical Whartonians.

Madison’s room had also passed muster. The bed was neatly made, and patterns in the carpet indicated that it had been vacuumed despite a shoe I’d overlooked in a corner. I sat down on the bed and tried to think where she might be. She’d left the house the previous day, seemingly without coercion. She wouldn’t have left behind her purse if she’d planned to be gone for more than a few minutes. Her calls had suggested that she was unable to extricate herself from her present whereabouts. They were becoming repetitive with their enigmatic references to the danger that Dolly was in. As far as I knew, the only danger Dolly was in might be an overdose of peach daiquiris and pecan waffles. If she was in Atlanta, that is. If the police could do no better than to situate her somewhere in a city of nearly half a million people, it seemed unlikely that civilians could do any better. They had yet to find Madison in Farberville, with its population of twenty thousand.

I took Madison’s purse off the dresser and dumped the contents on the bed. I set aside the scraps of paper for the moment and opened her wallet. Although the girls had led me to believe they were broke when they appeared on the doorstep, she had more than three hundred dollars, as well as enough gold and platinum credit cards to play gin rummy. Her driver’s license indicated that she was twenty-three years old and lived in Sands Point, New York. She had declined to donate her organs, which were probably also gold and platinum. In case of emergencies, authorities were directed to contact Richard D. Hayes at Velocchio & Associates, Purveyors of Fine International Antiques and Antiquities, at an address on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. It seemed she’d been named after the address of her father’s business rather than a dead president. It was fortuitous that the antiques store had not been located on Mott Street or Broadway. I scribbled the telephone number on a gum wrapper and tucked it in my pocket. Scattered among the credit cards were a few cropped snapshots of handsome young men, all with the arrogant posture of heirs to vast family trusts. One was astride a polo pony, another at the helm of a sailboat. None of them was wearing a hard hat.

The scraps of paper were for the most part credit card receipts from stores and boutiques in Manhattan. One was for a purse that had cost seven hundred dollars and change. I retrieved Madison’s purse and studied it. I could see little difference between it and one that could be purchased at a local discount chain for less than twenty dollars. Then again, no one has ever accused me of harboring lust for the finer things in life, particularly those with bloated price tags.

I continued down the hall to the master bedroom. The bedding was so rumpled that I might have assumed, had I not had evidence to the contrary, that Caron and Inez were still asleep. Damp towels were heaped in the bathroom. Squeaky Clean clearly adhered to its standards. Although the detectives had searched the room, I opened the closet door on the chance a diary or journal might tumble off the top shelf. Unless Dolly had stored her winter wardrobe in a closet I’d yet to notice, she’d taken much of it with her. A red wool pantsuit that I’d admired was gone, along with the lined raincoat she’d worn through Farberville’s drearier months. Other outfits of a similar nature were missing, as indicated by bare clothes hangers. It was an odd choice for Dallas—or wherever she’d temporarily taken refuge.

And that’s exactly what she’d done, I told myself as I closed the closet door. She’d known Mordella, had spoken to him when he arrived at the motel, and at some point ended up in possession of his cell phone. He’d ended up dead, either before she left Farberville or shortly thereafter.

I briefly considered straightening up the room, then concluded that Caron and Inez had failed to strip their bed and were therefore doomed to sleep in it. There were plenty of towels in linen closets, and should the supply be deleted, the two could bite the bullet and run a few loads in the washing machine. Or take them to the creek at the park and pound them with stones while they chatted with my science fiction hippie about the prevalence of trolls.

I heard Caron call my name. I carefully closed the bedroom door behind me so I couldn’t be accused of anything as gauche as snooping, then went downstairs. Caron pointed at the technician as she headed back to the den to further elaborate on the terror that would leave indelible scars on her fragile postpubescent psyche and require intensive analysis, if not incarceration in a mental hospital.

“Everything’s all set,” the technician said. “Let me show you how it works. If someone calls and you want to tape the conversation, push this button. You’ll hear a little beep, but the party on the other end won’t hear anything. A green light will come on and blink while the machine’s recording. After you hang up, push this other button. There’ll be a red light to remind you that there’s something on the tape. To listen to it, push this. To erase it, hold this down until the red light goes out.”

I nodded as if all this was as clear as bottled water from a European spa. “Would you be able to tell if the line’s tapped?”

He began replacing tools and bits of wire in his kit. “I did a scan, and it’s not. Why do you think it might be?”

“Somebody mentioned the possibility,” I said.

“It’s almost impossible for local authorities to get a court order. As for the feds, nobody knows what they can do these days. They could put surveillance cameras in your bathroom if they wanted to. Hack into your computer and read your personal e-mail. Dig through your trash bags. Bust into your house in the middle of the night and haul you off without reading you your rights or allowing you access to a lawyer. They can keep you locked up for months, claiming they have evidence of suspicious behavior.”

“They wouldn’t go after a modestly unsuccessful bookseller in a little Midwestern city.”

He closed his kit. “You carry any copies of the Koran? Any foreign students from Middle Eastern countries ever come in the store? Ones with funny names like Ali or Rasheed?”

“One of the professors at the college teaches comparative religion,” I admitted. “I stock some of the books on her reading list.”

“Then don’t be surprised if federal agents show up and demand to see your sales receipts.”