Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues Read online

  I brought the Ford to a shuddering, smoking stop in the back parking lot of the funeral home. The last time I’d been here was when a distant uncle of mine died a few years back. As a child, funerals terrified me. As a man, they still do.

  I walked in the back door of the funeral home, past a desk where a pasty-faced woman sat behind a telephone desk console that could have been the main switchboard at IBM. Didn’t know funeral homes were such busy places.

  This particular funeral home was more like an antebellum mansion than anything else, with a winding staircase in the central foyer that led upstairs to offices, and parlors off to each side of the great hall where the bereaved families gathered in front of the usually open coffins. Funerals, especially Southern funerals, are pageants, deep-fried dramas, ripping passionate catharsis. I’ve been to funerals where fat ladies tore their pearls off and fainted in puddles of sweat, foam spreading across their lips as they spoke in tongues. And food … God, the food. Some poor high school dropout clerk in a 7-Eleven gets blown away at two in the morning by a demented crackhead, and what does the family do? Scream in agony, tear hair out, yell for the death penalty, then chow down like a bunch of linebackers in spring training.

  I hoped that wasn’t on the agenda for this one. There was a black signboard with little white letters in front of each parlor, MR. E. GIBSON was in the room off to the right. The front room, to my left, had a sign that read DR. C. FLETCHER.

  I walked into the room silently, my footsteps muffled by the thick red carpet. Long blue drapes hung down in front of floor-to-ceiling windows fourteen feet high. Victorian parlor lamps with engraved purple and gray cherubs in the glass shades lit the room dimly. The room was jammed with flowers, and the air was thick and heavy with their perfume.

  And I was the only one there. Except Conrad, of course, who was lying face up in an open bronze coffin on the other side of the room. He wasn’t much company, though.

  I discreetly glanced at my watch. Visiting hours had started nearly an hour ago. Where was everybody? Even in death, it seemed, people didn’t want to spend too much time around the good doctor.

  I backed out of the room and checked out the visitor’s register, opened to the first page on a white stand near the door. There were three names, one a doctor. That was all. Conrad wasn’t going to break any box office records at this pace.

  Back inside the parlor, I stepped across the room over to the coffin. Connie lay in the box, wearing a white shirt, striped tie, pressed blue suit. On his left lapel was an American Medical Association pin of some kind. At least I think that’s what it was; the snake wound around the shaft, anyhow.

  I’ll say this much for him—he looked a hell of a lot better than he did the last time I saw him. He had some color back, his face had filled out some, probably from the funeral director’s padding, and the ghastly sunken purple under his eyes was gone.

  Yeah, he looked a lot better. Not that it mattered.

  I backed away from the coffin, thinking how weird it was that nobody else was there. It was still early; most people had to finish the work day. Yeah, that was it. Had to be.

  The funeral home had conveniently set up a coffee room in the back of the building so the grieving and the bereaved could grab a cup of hot java and a smoke between hysterics. I went back and discovered why the front parlor was empty: everybody was in here on break.

  Rachel sat at a Formica table behind a sweaty can of diet soda, dressed in a severe black dress with a white lace collar. She was staring down at her hands when I came in and didn’t notice me for a second. Mrs. Goddard, Rachel’s protective neighbor, sat to the left. She nudged Rachel when she spotted me.

  “Harry,” Rachel sighed. She stood up and crossed in front of the table, her arms held out to me. “I’m so glad you came.”

  I took her properly in my arms and gave her the usual shared comforting hugs one gives at a funeral home. After a few seconds, we disengaged and stood back from each other.

  “How you holding on?” I asked.

  “Okay. Mostly tired. The rough part’s going to be when the family arrives. My parents get in at six tonight. Connie’s are probably at the airport now.”

  “That’s going to be tough, isn’t it?”

  She smiled gamely, took my arm in hers, and led me out of the coffee room. “I’ll be okay,” she said, pulling me with her down toward the parlor. “I just need a little time.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “You’ll get through this okay.”

  We strolled casually into the room. Standard practice at the funerals I’ve attended calls for the closest, most grieving, family member to guide each visitor up to the coffin to pay respects by remarking how natural the person looks in death. I genuinely hated that custom, mainly because nobody looks natural in death. They just look dead.

  Two other people were already in there now, standing close together a few feet away from the coffin. The woman was my height, within an inch or so, with striking black hair flowing down over squared shoulders. Even from behind, I could tell she was a looker. The guy standing next to her barely came to her chin: rumpled khaki suit, slightly dumpy around the waist, thinning curly mousy brown hair. Odd pair, these two, I thought. I sensed from their proximity that they weren’t strangers.

  Rachel led me around them to the open lid of the coffin. She stared down at Connie and let loose with a deep sigh, then squeezed my arm tightly.

  “God, I can’t believe it,” she said, sniffling and pulling me close. I put an arm around her and scrunched her shoulders. She stifled a sob, largely without success.

  “I’m so sorry, Rachel,” I said. And I was.

  She raised her head again and stiffened her neck, as if gathering strength for the next two days.

  “I know, Harry. I appreciate your being here. It means worlds to me.”

  She stepped back, turned from the coffin toward me. “I’m sorry it took this to get you back into my life,” she continued. “But I am glad you’re my friend again.”

  “I never wasn’t your friend, Rach. Things just happen the way they happen, that’s all.”

  She gazed at me for a long time, intently, seriously, a look that was as much troubled as saddened, as much afraid as grieved.

  “Maybe it’s not too late to get it right this time,” she said, almost a whisper.

  I was close to being embarrassed, standing here in front of Conrad Fletcher’s coffin, talking to his wife this way. Then, I thought, what the hell, he can’t hear us.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “Maybe.”

  A throat cleared behind us. I suddenly remembered that we weren’t alone. I turned. The guy in the khaki suit was staring at us uncomfortably, the pale light mostly unflattering on his sallow complexion. The woman, though, was as elegant and as lovely as I’d guessed from a rearview shot. Her skin was smooth, flawless, her features sharp and beautifully defined. Her cheekbones would give Katharine Hepburn’s a run for their money.

  “Mrs. Fletcher?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered, holding out a hand, “I’m Rachel Fletcher.”

  “I’m Al Zitin, Dr. Al Zitin. And this is Dr. Jane Collingswood. We were taking our surgical residencies under Dr. Fletcher. We’re so sorry about this.”

  Zitin and Collingswood, I thought. What a nice surprise.

  This voice inside my head said: think fast, boy. Rachel obviously hadn’t met these two and couldn’t know that Jane Collingswood and Albert Zitin were firmly established in the ranks of Conrad haters. I knew she was about to introduce me to them, but as who? Did I want them to know I was an investigator? Did I not want them to know? I wish I’d read a few more books on this business.…

  “Thank you for coming,” Rachel said, extending her hand now to Jane Collingswood. “This has been a terrible shock to all of us. All of us who loved him, respected him.”

  I thought I detected a slight twitch in Al’s right eye. Dr. Jane, though, was beautifully sculptured ice.

  “This is Harry Denton,” R
achel said, pointing to me.

  “Hi,” I interrupted. “I’m an old family friend. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  We shook hands and made pleasantries for a moment. Then we all turned, as if choreographed, toward the coffin. It was a profoundly uncomfortable moment.

  “We just came by to pay our respects,” Al Zitin said. “We’ve got to get back to the hospital in a bit.”

  “Yes,” Jane Collingswood agreed. “I’m sorry we can’t stay too long.”

  “When is the service?” Zitin asked.

  “Tomorrow at three. I didn’t see any reason to delay. This has been bad enough for all of us without dragging it out.”

  Jane Collingswood looked at Rachel for a second, then said, “I think you’re being very brave. I don’t know how I’d hold up if I were in your shoes.”

  I did. Jane Collingswood could survive the sinking of the Titanic. Her eyes were deep, intelligent, determined. And, by the way, incredibly lovely.

  “Don’t let all this fool you,” Rachel said. “I’ve had my bad moments. But I know that Connie would have wanted me to hold up. He had such high standards, for himself and everyone else.”

  There went that twitch again in Zitin’s eye. “Yes, he certainly did. He was a tough taskmaster.”

  “But no tougher on anyone else than he was on himself,” Jane added.

  “We’ll all miss him,” Zitin concluded.

  “Yes, we’ll all miss him.”

  “Thank you,” Rachel said, taking both their hands in hers. “Connie’s work meant a lot to him. People meant a lot to him. He would have appreciated your coming by today.”

  Amidst Rachel’s incredible graciousness, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that people were starting to file into the visitation room in some number now. James Hughes, wearing a crumpled green sport coat over a white shirt that he might have slept in, wandered in with four other obvious medical students. I didn’t recognize any of the others.

  I turned my attention back to Rachel.

  “Thank you so much for coming by,” she said, finishing her speech.

  “We were glad to do it,” Jane Collingswood said, unwrapping her hand from Rachel’s and extending it toward me. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Denton.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, taking her hand. There was something solid, slightly cold, in her grip. Jane Collingswood was an unreadable woman, reserved, cards held close to her chest. Could she kill a man? I asked myself. “I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

  Zitin extended his hand to me as well. I shook it. His palms were wet, his grip slightly unsure. “Maybe we’ll get to see you again, sometime,” he said.

  “I hope so.” Zitin didn’t impress me as the kind of guy who’d have the nerve to kill someone in cold blood. Then again, he’s a doctor. He’d know what he was doing.

  Rachel looked over Zitin’s shoulder at the crowd milling in, then disengaged herself politely to take care of her other guests. How do people get through these ordeals? I wondered. I watched Zitin and Collingswood as they meandered toward the door, pausing to speak to a couple of colleagues, shaking hands with a student, making more small talk. People shook their heads sadly, as if wondering how anything this horrible could disorder their safe professional world.

  I watched them until they left the room, then shifted through the crowd as quickly as possible and followed them. Their pace inside the room had been slow, respectful, dignified. But once they got out into the hallway, their heels clicked away like a mechanic’s ratchet. I picked up my pace to stay ten feet or so after them, then watched as they went through the double doors into the same back parking lot where I’d left my car.

  This was one of those times when I really had to wing it. I wanted to talk to them, to ask the kind of questions that would provide some indication of whether they might really be involved in this mess. But what questions? How could I feel them out without putting them so on guard they’d lock down completely?

  Damn, man, I’m going to have to take some lessons in this one of these days. But then I remembered something I learned a long time ago as a newspaper reporter, something that helped me get past the suspicions and distrust that people naturally seem to attribute to reporters: when all else fails, tell the truth.

  I shuffled up behind them just as Zitin was fumbling with the key to his 300Z. He crossed around in back of the car to the passenger’s door, then opened it and held it for Jane.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “you guys got a minute?”

  They turned to me. Jane, I noticed, was cool, subdued. Zitin flicked his eyes over to me, then back at her, then back and forth a few times. Nervous already.

  I walked up to the deep-blue sports car, wondering just what surgical residents make to afford this kind of wheels. Maybe he came from money, I thought.

  “Yes, Mr.…” she said, “Denton, was it?”

  “Yeah, Harry Denton.” I hesitated a moment, then plunged in. “What Mrs. Fletcher said in there is true. I’m an old family friend. I’ve known Rachel and Connie since we were undergraduates together. But I’m also a private investigator, and I’ve been retained by Rachel to look into Conrad’s death.”

  Okay, so I wasn’t being entirely truthful. I’d actually been retained by Rachel to get Connie out of trouble with his bookie. But all things being relative, this truth was close enough to the real truth, and would serve for now.

  Zitin flushed visibly. The doctor was about as smooth as a fourteen-year-old caught locked in a bathroom with last month’s Playboy. Jane narrowed her eyes and looked at me. I thought she was being somewhere between suspicious and sexy, then I realized the sun was coming over my shoulder and blinding her. I grinned on the inside, remembering what my father told me about his World War II flying days: always come at your enemy out of the sun.

  “Private investigator,” she commented. “I thought I’d heard your name before. You were the detective who found Dr. Fletcher’s body.”

  “Yeah, that’s more or less how it happened.”

  “I should think you’d be more worried about the police investigating you,” she said coolly.

  “Let’s just say I’ve had a talk or two with them.”

  “I’ll bet. And what do you want from us?”

  Zitin, I noticed, was nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. I’m no expert on body language, but I know anxiety when I see it.

  “I’m trying to get a portrait of Dr. Fletcher’s relationships with his colleagues at the hospital, the med school. I understand that you and Dr. Fletcher didn’t necessarily get along that well. I just wondered if you’d be willing to tell me about it.”

  Zitin pursed his lips, seemingly irritated now, as if he had somewhere he needed to be and I was keeping him from getting there. Which was probably true.

  “Now’s not particularly convenient,” Jane said. “We both have commitments.”

  “Can I drop by the hospital sometime?”

  “We’re awfully busy there,” Zitin shot back.

  “I won’t take up much of your time.”

  “I don’t know—” he said.

  Jane interrupted him. “I suppose if we don’t talk to you, then you’re going to be suspicious of us. Right?”

  I smiled at her. “Probably.”

  “Then I’ll make time to talk to you. Check in at the switchboard. They’ll page me. That all right with you, Albert?”

  Zitin scowled, not wanting to have anything to do with this, but not wanting to buck her either. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

  Jane Collingswood started to slide past the door Zitin held open for her. “There is one thing,” she said.

  I turned back. “Yes?”

  “Most of us came down here primarily to make sure he was really dead.”

  “Jane!” Zitin said. He practically tripped over himself helping her into the car. Then he scrambled to the driver’s side. He peeled out of the parking lot, jerking
into traffic without stopping. I stood there in the hot sun, grinning.

  I could see why he was in love with her.

  Back inside the funeral home, James spotted me in the main hall.

  “I see you met Dr. Collingswood and Dr. Zitin,” he said, as we stood in a corner away from everyone else, kind of underneath the curving staircase.

  “Yeah, but they wouldn’t talk to me. We set up an appointment for later. So tell me, guy, how come you showed up here? You didn’t like Fletcher very much. Why pay respects?”

  James hung his head slightly, a lock of his long hair falling down on his forehead. “Most of us came here to make sure the guy’s really dead.”

  “You’re the second person to say that to me in the last five minutes. What’s the story here, babe? How come everybody hated the guy? Really.”

  James surveyed the room, making sure no one was close enough to hear.

  “Med school’s rough enough without being nailed just because some smart s.o.b. doesn’t like you.”

  “C’mon, James. Didn’t like you?”

  He bristled a little but kept a cool head. “I’m no dummy, Harry. And I work my butt off. What I’m not clever at is sucking up. And the only way to get anywhere with Fletcher was to suck up to him or, if you were the kind of woman he took a notion for, to hop in the sack with him.”

  “That’s a pretty rough accusation these days,” I said. “How come he hasn’t been brought up on sexual misconduct charges? Women don’t put up with that garbage like they used to.”

  “I don’t have any doubt that he would have someday, one way or another. In fact, a couple of women came forward, but they mysteriously wound up leaving school before anything could happen.

  “You see, Harry, he knew that for every med student, just surviving medical school’s the be-all and end-all. You know what you do when you flunk out of med school, Harry? You go to work as a pharmaceutical salesman, or you wind up running a place like this.…” He swept a small arc with his arms, taking in the surroundings.

  “Fletcher had a way of getting to you,” James continued. “He knew that most of us would do anything to stay in school. He was cutthroat, and he was politically powerful. I don’t know if he had pictures of the dean with a goat or what, but nobody crossed Fletcher. I hated the guy. I admit it. Rumor was that he was trying to bust Jane Collingswood out of her residency program. He had the hots for her, and he figured if she wouldn’t put out for him, then he’d drill her out of the program.”