Time of Death (10 page)

A three-foot aluminum Christmas tree occupied a section of the floor underneath the pay phone, between two doors with “Women” and “Others” neatly lettered on in white paint. A spotlight with a rotating filter stood next to the tree, lighting it alternately with red and green. Above each door, a few Christmas cards were tacked to the frame. A sprig of plastic poinsettia in a small vase on each table completed the seasonal decorations.

Schultz spotted the proprietor, a woman in her sixties, and waved her over. “You can take our order anytime,” he said. “We’ve been here fifteen minutes already.”

Millie snorted, made a U-turn, and headed away from them.

“Hey, service here,” Schultz said.

Millie made the rounds of the tables, chatting and refreshing coffee cups, taking her time. Finally she headed their way with a pot of coffee in one hand and her order tablet in the other. Schultz and PJ turned over the coffee cups in front of them, and a stream of coffee filled each. Not a drop spilled as Millie switched from one cup to the other. There was only one type of coffee—hot and strong. No vanilla crème, no hazelnut latte.

“Nice to see you, Dearie,” Millie said to PJ, pointedly ignoring Schultz’s remarks.

“Merry Christmas, Millie,” PJ said. “I like your decorations.” They were the same, tired items Millie used last year. Probably most of the Christmas cards were the same, too.

Some of those could be decades old.

“Thanks.” Millie glanced at Schultz, and momentarily her lips flattened and nearly vanished, leaving a line across the bottom of her face that was as effective a rebuke as PJ had ever seen. “Would you like to see the menu?”

“Not today. I’ll just have a cheeseburger, fries, and a strawberry milkshake.”

“Strawberry, not chocolate like usual?”

“Red for Christmas.”

Millie’s eyes lit up. “Gotcha.” Her head swiveled to Schultz. “What about you, you prevert?”

“That’s pervert, for the educated among us,” Schultz said. “I’ll have the same, only make the burger a double, extra onions and can you spare a decent tomato, plus about twice as many fries as she gets, and a large Coke.”

Millie stuffed her order tablet into her pocket and turned away.

“You know, that’s the same order pad she had when she opened this place,” Schultz said. “I’ve never seen her write anything on it.”

“You really ought to be nicer to her. Christmas spirit and all.”

“She’s mad at me, which is nothing new. This time I think it’s because I didn’t send her a Christmas card.” He sniffed. “Haven’t ever sent one, but I guess she keeps hoping. She’s got the hots for me, you know.”

PJ sighed. Schultz’s relationship with Millie was in a well-worn groove long before she came along. There was true feeling, though, at least on Millie’s part. PJ’d seen a flash of it when Schultz got the news that his son had been killed.

“Probably jealous of you,” Schultz said, “but she treats you nice anyway. I give her credit for that.”

PJ leaned toward Schultz, and lowered her voice. “Have you turned up anything new?”

Schultz checked that they were out of earshot of the rest of the customers. She knew he’d been burned once by blabbing details of a case in the diner, and he wasn’t about to do it again.

“Arlan Merrett’s ID was confirmed by dental records, not just the wife’s say-so. The time of death is still estimated at six to nine o’clock Saturday night. Some of the wounds appear to have been made by a scalpel or similar instrument, but used clumsily. We’re not looking for a surgeon. Cause of death was a stab wound to the heart, although the guy would have bled out anyway. The thrust through the heart was anything but subtle, probably made by a butcher knife. There were a few wood splinters in the victim’s back, oak, so they tell me. Ligature marks on wrists and ankles. The skull fracture was postmortem, must have been when his head met cobblestones.”

“Are you still going with the gay murder?” she asked.

Schultz shook his head, nearly knocking PJ’s forehead because he’d leaned in so close. “I think Merrett was not only straight but screwing his partner who by the way inherits the business. That’s in addition to licking chocolate off his wife’s privates. Money and lust. All we’re missing is power, for the big three. Merrett wasn’t a botched sex change operation, either.”

“Why are we sure of that?”

He shrugged. “Because the ME says so. Oh, and June’s alibi checked out, at least so far. Several of the hotel staff recognized a photo of her, and said she was there for the entire workshop. A couple of the lecturers remembered her, too, because she asked a lot of questions. Would’ve made our job easier if they hadn’t remembered her. Arrest wife for killing husband, neat and clean.”

“Nothing was neat and clean about Arlan’s death.”

Schultz waved a hand. “I mean prosecution-wise.”

A customer headed for the men’s room, passing behind where they were sitting. Schultz cut off the conversation and slurped his coffee noisily.

Millie arrived with heavy white plates loaded with food, Schultz’s actually overloaded. The buns had a sheen of grease and were pierced with toothpicks that held tiny American flags held out stiffly in a phantom wind. PJ could see crystals of salt riding her fries. A few sautéed onions had escaped from the cheeseburger and left shimmering grease trails across the plate. Her mouth watered and she realized it had been a long time since her last meal. There was a plump, perfect strawberry perched atop a dollop of whipped cream on her milkshake, and a small green bow on the tall spoon that came with it.

“Millie, you’ve outdone yourself,” PJ said, waving the spoon with the bow.

Millie half-curtsied in a surprisingly graceful move. As she left, her eyes passed over Schultz as if he were a food stain on the wallpaper.

“Aw, now you’re spoiling her,” Schultz said. “She’s gonna expect compliments every time we come here.” He shook the saltshaker over his already-terminally-salted fries.

They continued talking in low tones, catching up on each other’s news about the investigation. When they left, Schultz paid for both meals, spun a quarter on the counter, and left it as his usual tip. She slipped a dollar under her plate.

Schultz kissed PJ outside the diner—“I like a greasy woman”—and then swept her off to his home in Lafayette Square, over her objections that she needed to get back to work right away.

His house was chilly, but he held her close on the sofa, his coat draped over the two of them, until she warmed up. She rested her head on his shoulder, letting his strength soak into her along with his body heat. PJ closed her eyes and let the corpse with the ruined chest and the sinister package with the red bow fade away, knowing her compulsion to see justice done would be back later.

His roaming hands excited her. She unfastened a button of his shirt, slipped a hand inside, and saw the hairs on his arms rise. She marveled at the power of her touch. Wherever their relationship ended up, she already evoked more of a response from Schultz than she had from her ex-husband for a long time before their divorce. Or had her touch ever been electric for Steven?

They moved to his bedroom, talking softly as if the world had let go of them.

She felt a surge of warmth for Schultz when she saw his room. He’d done something special for her. The room was as neat as she’d ever seen it—the compost pile he called his laundry was gone, and the dusty reference books were missing from his bureau. The wood floor shone, his mirror wasn’t fogged with a coating that made her reflection blurry, and the dust bunnies had been herded into the last roundup. The bed was freshly made with linens that smelled like a sunny day, and there was a rose lying on her pillow.

Forty-two-years-old and I’ve never had a rose on my pillow.

Other women might get turned on by expensive jewelry or trips to Paris or gourmet dinners. Clean sheets and a three-dollar flower was PJ’s aphrodisiac. She stepped close to Leo, wrapped her arms around his neck, and whispered in his ear.

“Very nice, Leo. Looks like you’ve taken lessons in hotel management.”

He pulled away, clapped one hand over his heart, and the other rose to his forehead. He looked like a Victorian heroine about to faint, except for the stubble on his chin and the evidence of his arousal. “You’ve hurt me deeply,” he said. “Deeply. Are you insinuating I don’t live like this all the time?”

“I’m not insinuating,” PJ said. “I know for sure.” She needed to be close to him, touching him, part of him.

“Hey, I read in a magazine that women go for this shit.” He moved behind her and began softly kissing her neck. His warm breath, even smelling of onions, melted the tension in her muscles and sent jolts of desire through her veins.

“I have to admit that under some circumstances, house-cleaning can be erotic,” she said.

“There’s something missing, though.”

“Mmm?”

“You, in my bed.” He deftly unfastened her bra, and her breasts nestled into his cupped hands. She moved her hips against him slowly, feeling his erection pressing against her buttocks, and was rewarded with his sharp intake of breath.

“I want you.” His words came in a hot rush.

She turned in his arms and slowly, thoroughly, kissed him. Thoughts faded, shoved aside by past images of their love-making and the tingling eagerness of her body. He pulled her shirt and bra up over her head and walked her backward until her legs bumped the bed. Somehow her jeans were at her ankles. She kicked off her shoes and stepped out of the jeans, and out of her panties. In moments his clothes, too, littered the floor.

His eyes drank in her nakedness and came to rest on her face. “I’m the luckiest man in the world,” Leo said.

He wanted her in spite of the twenty extra pounds loitering on her hips, stretch marks left over from childbirth, and an ass that hadn’t qualified as trim and tight in a long time. She was still desirable in his view. A surge of desire spread up through her like lava rising from a volcano. She wasn’t just hot, she was incandescent.

“Less talk, more action,” PJ whispered. Her stroking hand drew a moan from him.

A cellphone’s distinctive ring invaded the bedroom. “Your pants are ringing,” she said. Just then another phone rang.

“Your pants are ringing, too,” Leo said. His hand slid between her legs, his fingers finding the knob that sent ripples of pleasure through her. “Don’t answer.”

The phones continued to buzz their urgency.

“Aw, fuck,” Leo said. He reached down to the floor, pulled the phone from his pants pocket, and flipped it open.

“
What?
” he said. His voice still had the throaty sound of passion, but his angry tone was unmistakable.

PJ sighed, dug around in her jeans, and answered her phone.

S
CHULTZ SAT DOWN HEAVILY
on the edge of his bed and stuck his legs into his pants. Another body had been found. Couldn’t the schmuck who discovered the body have been considerate enough to wait another hour or three?

Why are we getting this call, anyway? We’re not busy enough?

Out of the corner of his eye he could see PJ buttoning her blouse and putting on her shoes. Her phone call had been from her boss, Howard Wall, who could maybe be forgiven for the timing of his call, because he didn’t know where PJ and Schultz had snuck off to, or that they’d done their sneaking together. His had been from Anita, calling from her car. Anita probably did know, because women talked about those things even when they swore they didn’t, and she called anyway.

Fuckus interruptus. Latin for “a cop’s life.”

They drove together, in his car. Because he was pissed off, Schultz went slow enough to earn him several horn honks from people behind him. He also took the time to stop in a post office and mail a letter containing a check he’d written for one hundred ten dollars to Ernestine Bradlock. It was better than facing her in person again.

The victim’s house was in the Bevo neighborhood, near the railroad tracks. There were two black-and-whites parked out front and the scene was already secured. A small group of neighbors, some wearing nightclothes even though it wasn’t late in the evening, gathered behind the tape. He’d seen that look on their faces many times before. They were trying not to show how eager they were to see someone else’s fatal misfortune. The ultimate reality show.

Schultz was the first detective to arrive. Dave was in Chicago tracking down the disappointed clients that were supposed to meet with Arlan Merrett. Anita was on her way to talk with May Simmons. It would be interesting to see what the woman had to say about the Merrett marriage and the fact that her husband had been arrested for murder.

After showing identification to the officer controlling access, Schultz and PJ plucked disposable slippers from the box on the front porch. After slipping them on—a process accompanied by grunting on Schultz’s part as he bent over far enough to reach his feet—they went into the house. The front door had been knocked off its hinges. He noticed that the lock on the door was a lock in name only. It looked capable of keeping out a lamb, and that was probably stretching it. In the living room, a uniformed officer sat next to a distraught man on a tired couch that dated from the 1950s. Schultz and Julia, his ex-wife, had bought one exactly like it secondhand when they had furnished their first apartment. Next to the couch there was a blonde wood end table with spindly legs set out at an angle.

Check. Had that one, too.

Schultz looked around for the starburst wall clock and the green bubble glass hanging lamp.

Must be in other rooms.

The officer came over to them.

“Detective Schultz,” the woman said. “I guess you caught another one.”

“Yeah,” Schultz said. The officer was a new face. “Name?”

“Officer Ran Suhao, sir.”

“Officer Ran, bring me up to speed.”

“This is George Huber, the deceased’s fiancé. He’s the person who discovered the body. Mr. Huber visited the deceased tonight and later returned because he’d forgotten a book he meant to borrow. Marilee Baines is in the bathroom.” At the sound of Marilee’s name, Mr. Huber whimpered and buried his face in a handkerchief.