Dead Boyfriends (22 page)

“What case?”

“Brian Becker.”

“Brian Becker . . .” He squeezed his eyes shut as if he could conjure an image of the man from behind the eyelids.

“Carbon monoxide poisoning,” I said.

“Sure. Killed himself in his garage. It was eventually ruled an accident.”

“Only you didn't believe it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I read your supplemental. You did everything to prove Becker was murdered but conduct a seance.”

“If I had thought it would work, I would have tried it,” Sochacki said.

“Why didn't you believe it was an accident?”

“You read the entire file?”

“Yes.”

“Then you tell me.”

“Two domestic assaults in nine days prior to Becker's death.”

“Yeah. Plus the eleven contacts we'd had with him before that.”

“Still. . .”

“I admit it, I couldn't prove anything,” Sochacki said. “There was no insurance claim. No property changed hands. There was no money in joint accounts. Except for getting the asshole out of her life for good, Merodie Davies didn't profit at all from Becker's death. Neither did anyone else that I could find. There was no evidence of foul play—no bruises, no contusions on the body, no signs of a struggle; he wasn't anchored to anything. There was nothing there. Nothing. My partner knew it. The boss knew it. The county attorney knew it. I suppose I knew it, too. It just—it just didn't feel right. You said you were on the job.”

“Eleven and a half years in St. Paul.”

“Then you know what I mean.”

“I know.”

“At first I thought it was the woman in the bar. Maybe she slipped him something. ‘Cept the ME said no way. There was nothing in Becker's blood but booze.”

“Tell me about the woman in the bar.”

“From what witnesses told me, she was drinking alone until Becker arrived. Then they drank alone together. After an hour or so they left. I never could get an ID on her. Witnesses said she had long auburn hair.
Said she was a beauty. Said they never saw her before or since. I had hoped she paid for her drinks with a credit card or personal check, but she was all cash.”

“Was she waiting for him?”

“Witnesses said she was waiting for someone. Whether it was for Becker specifically or anyone who walked through the door, I can't say.”

“Could it have been Merodie Davies?”

“That was my first guess, but no. Not a chance. Merodie had played softball that evening. Afterward she and her teammates closed down Dimmer's, then went to the house of one of them named”—Sochacki shut his eyes again—“Vonnie Lou Jefferson. Merodie stayed the night. Left at nine the next morning. By then Becker had been dead for at least six hours.”

“What about the girl?”

“What girl?”

“Merodie's daughter?”

From the expression on his face, I gathered that Sochacki had no idea what I was talking about.

“Merodie Davies had a daughter living with her at the time Becker was killed,” I said. “She must have been about four years old.”

Sochacki shook his head. “There was no daughter. Merodie and Becker lived alone.”

“Are you sure?”

“I was a very good investigator, Mr. McKenzie. I would have noticed a four-year-old girl.”

 

Twenty minutes later I was standing in front of the counter at the Anoka County Correctional Facility. The woman on the other side of the inch-thick bulletproof glass partition was soft and doughy; she looked like someone Barbara Anderson might beat up for exercise.

“Merodie Davies,” I said, repeating the name for the fifth time.

“Are you her lawyer?”

“I work for her lawyer.” To prove it, I slipped the letter G. K. had given me from my pocket. The attendant couldn't even be bothered to read it.

“You aren't her lawyer, you don't get to see her.”

“Why not? It's visiting hours.”

“She's in isolation.”

“For what?”

“Are you her lawyer?”

“No, but. . .”

The attendant turned her back to the glass partition. Suddenly, I wasn't there anymore.

I called G. K. on my cell, but she wasn't available. I left her a message: “Better check on Merodie.”

 

Sitting idle in Priscilla St. Ana's concrete driveway was her elegant black four-door Saab. In the driveway across the street were a silver BMW convertible and a Lexus. Compared to them, my world-weary Jeep Cherokee looked like refuse someone had abandoned at the curb. No doubt the recyclables people would be around at any moment to cart it away. I longed for my Audi even as I admonished myself for the thought.
Damn, McKenzie. When did you become so shallow?
‘Course, if I could talk Sochacki into selling me the Mustang, I wouldn't care what anyone thought.

The maid, Caroline, met me at the door. This time she allowed me to wait in the foyer while she summoned her employer.

Cilia's heels made a loud tapping sound on her tile floor as she approached, and for a moment I wondered if she was going to or coming from a business meeting, or if she always dressed so exquisitely around
the house. She was wearing a butter-colored dress under a matching jacket. The skirt on the dress was shorter than most high schools would allow.

A looker,
Michael Piotrowski had said.

She was a beauty,
said Detective Sochacki.

“My goodness, Mr. McKenzie, what happened to your face?” Cilia asked.

“I ran into a door,” I told her.

“A door?”

“A car door.”

“Did it hurt?”

A silly question, I thought.

“I've been hurt worse playing hockey,” I said.

Cilia nodded, but I don't think she believed me any more than Sochacki had.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“Has the Anoka County Sheriff's Department contacted you yet?”

“Have you come all this way to ask that again?”

“Among other things.”

“The answer is no. I have not spoken with anyone from the sheriff's department. Why would I?”

“The check.”

“Why is the check so important?”

“It proves that someone was in the house other than Merodie when Eli Jefferson was killed.”

“Apparently, the authorities haven't accorded it nearly as much importance as you have.”

“Apparently.”

“There's something else you wish to inquire about?” Cilia asked.

“When last we spoke, you explained how you came to take custody of Merodie's daughter.”

“Yes.”

“You took charge of Silk after Brian Becker was killed.”

“Yes.”

“According to my information, Silk was not living with Merodie when Becker died.”

“No, she was here. Or rather she was with me.”

“Imagine my confusion.”

Cilia smiled, and for the first time I realized that there was no joy in it. Nor did it ever change. Cilia could be looking at a sunset or a plate of mashed potatoes or me—her smile was always the same.

“Silk would stay overnight with me on the evenings that Merodie played softball with her friends. It was my understanding that having a four-year-old daughter to care for cramped Merodie's—style, is that the correct word?”

“No, but it's close enough. So Silk was already with you when Becker died?”

“Yes. She was safe in my home in Andover.”

“You're not a natural blonde, are you, Cilia?”

“McKenzie. What an impertinent question.”

“I have a reason for asking.”

Cilia studied me for a few moments and then smiled as if she could read my mind. “No,” she said. “My hair is naturally auburn. I began coloring it when I turned forty, to hide the gray.”

“You wore it long.”

“Longer than it is now, yes.”

“You had long auburn hair when Becker was killed.”

“Yes.”

“If I may be so bold . . .”

“Bolder than you've already been?”

“Back then most men would have described you as being a stone babe.”

“They still do.”

Cilia smiled her empty smile.

“Yes,” I said. “They still do.”

Cilia smiled some more, waiting.

Somewhere in the distance I heard the rumble of thunder. It was only after staring at Cilia for a few moments that I realized it was the sound of a vacuum cleaner overhead. Caroline had worked her way down the upstairs hall and was now on the staircase.

“An attractive woman with auburn hair was seen with Brian Becker the night he died. She hasn't been identified.”

“That was me,” Cilia said.

The fact that she admitted it so freely caught me by surprise, and my expression must have shown it. Cilia smiled again, but this time it reached her eyes. I had the distinct impression that she was enjoying herself.

She rested her hand on my arm. “Do you play chess, Mr. McKenzie?”

“Chess? Yes, I play . . . I used to play . . . Cilia, do you realize what you're telling me?”

She took my arm in both hands and gave it a squeeze. “Let's see what kind of game you have.”

Cilia led me across her sprawling living room to a den. Inside the den was a fireplace so large I could have parked my Audi inside it. We sat in front of the fireplace in ornate wooden chairs carved in the Spanish style, facing each other across a matching table. A chessboard was on the table, the pieces already arranged in neat, orderly ranks.

“Would you like something to drink?” Cilia asked.

“Drink?”

“Yes.”

“Iced tea?” I said.

“Nothing stronger?”

“Put a shot of gin in it.”

Cilia smiled at that. “Caroline,” she said.

The maid appeared at the doorway.

How did she do that?

“Two glasses of your special iced tea laced with gin.”

“Ma'am,” the maid said, and departed.

“So,” said Cilia.

She moved her pawn to E4. I countered with the identical move to E5. Cilia slid her king's bishop to C4. The move was insulting. She was going for a Scholar's Mate. In four moves it was nearly the shortest checkmate possible—a strategy you'd only use against an amateur. I easily countered it by moving my king's knight to F6.

“I expected more,” I said.

“I only wanted to see if you were paying attention, Mr. McKenzie. You seemed dazed.”

“It's not often that I hear people confess to murder for no particular reason.”

“Did I confess to murder, McKenzie? I don't think so. I will, however, if you wish.”

“Ms. St. Ana . . .”

“I told you, McKenzie—it's Cilia.”

She moved another pawn.

“Would you like to hear it?” she asked. “The whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

I moved a pawn of my own.

“Please,” I said.

“It's a long story.” Cilia smiled her empty smile. “Perhaps we should wait for our drinks before we begin.”

We sparred quietly on the chessboard, neither of us gaining an advantage, until Caroline arrived. Cilia set her drink on a coaster without touching it. I took a stiff pull of mine.

“Where to begin,” Cilia said. She studied the board for a moment and hid her knight behind a pawn. “It begins, I suppose, with the death of my mother. That's when I decided that I would never allow a man to abuse me in any way ever again.

“You see, McKenzie, my father was an evil degenerate. Corrupt. Depraved. He treated women, treated my mother, maids—as far as my father was concerned, women were a royal prerogative to do with as he wished, a natural entitlement of wealth and power. His specialty was live-in maids. It gave him immense pleasure to tease them, flirt with them, pursue them, and eventually abuse and terrorize them. And worse. Much worse. A lot of money was spent to hush up his transgressions. Then he began . . .”

She paused for a moment, as if she were gathering her strength.

“My father raped me from age fourteen to age sixteen. He would climb into my bed and he would take me and afterward he would say, ‘That's my little girl.' My mother knew this, of course. Her way of dealing with it was to commit suicide. My father insisted that Mother's death was the result of a traffic accident. Yet even as a child I knew you don't drive cold sober one hundred and twenty miles an hour into a bridge abutment on a sunny summer day by accident.”

Cilia cursed under her breath. She moved her bishop carelessly.

“She was weak,” Cilia muttered.

I moved a rook into position to counter the bishop.

Cilia shook her head to dislodge the black memories and sipped a generous portion of her drink before removing her bishop to its original position. I sent another pawn forward.

“I was not weak,” she said, and moved a pawn to match mine. “Shortly after my mother's death, I went to my father's bed. I crawled in next to him—he seemed to like that—and I gently placed the blade of a ten-inch-long butcher knife I had spent fifteen minutes sharpening against his throat and assured him that if he did not leave me alone I would kill him. I spoke calmly, Mr. McKenzie. Softly, almost in a whisper. I think that's why he didn't believe me. He shouted at me, insulted me, told me to get out of his bed. I didn't move. But the knife blade did. It moved about an inch across his throat.

“The cut wasn't deep, but there was a great deal of blood. It spilled
down his neck and onto the pillow and sheets. He clutched his throat to stem the bleeding. ‘You're crazy,' he told me. ‘You're insane.' But now he believed. I told him to leave me alone, to leave Robert alone. He said he would. He kept his promise. He never forced himself on me again. Nor did he ever again engage me in a conversation that lasted more than thirty seconds. He made it clear that I would need to fend for myself—myself and my brother. It was because of my brother that I stayed in the house even after I reached my majority. It's your move, Mr. McKenzie.”