Another Dead Republican (14 page)

Then again, I was not his mother, but his lover.

David was thirteen. On the cusp of serious criminal delinquency. He’d caused trouble in school since first grade.

Veronica and Edgar always rushed to his defense. It was the school’s fault. It was the teacher’s fault. It was the other kid’s fault. Every time, somebody, anybody else, started it.

In third grade he’d almost been expelled. You don’t get almost expelled in third grade unless you are perceived as a serious danger to others.

Every bone in my teacher’s body screamed out that this kid was in serious trouble. He would graduate into an uncontrollable teenagehood unless there was some kind of serious intervention. Teams of therapists would be called for.

One of the oddest things was that with me he nearly always was a fawning suckup, eager to be as touchy huggy as about a four-year-old. I knew I didn’t have the capacity to help him.

In public he was a hellion. The stories in the family were infamous. When he was eight, the family was out at a restaurant. The kid was whiny, crawly, clingy, the kind of behavior that might be normal in a two year old who hadn’t had enough sleep. At that restaurant Edgar grabbed him by the arm and dragged him outside. Each of them were screaming and flailing at each other, arms flying, legs kicking, fingers pinching and gouging, the two of them in a ghastly familial wrestling match as they stumbled out the door. I thought both of them needed serious help.

Once I’d tried to gently steer my sister into a more realistic mode with her kid, but I got instant defensiveness and let it go.

I talked to my parents about the whole thing. Mom said she’d talked to Veronica a number of times about David. Mom’s a peacemaker of extraordinary dimensions. Veronica had rebuffed her, defended her kid, her own behavior, and her husband’s.

Scott, for some reason, was able to work his magic with this one as well. It might have gone back to when David was little, and we were baby-sitting and the kid woke up in the middle of the night with some kind of fluish/stomach problem. Scott knew exactly what to do. A little warm Coke, singing him some soothing songs in the middle of the night in a darkened room, and the kid slept peacefully through the rest of night.

I stood at the edge of the skateboard ramps. I said, “That was pretty spectacular.” Pause. How do you tell someone who is actually getting along with a totally recalcitrant child to stop it. I said, “That’s not dangerous?”

David said, “It was cool.”

Scott said, “It’s getting late, and we should probably be getting ready for dinner. Your mom is probably concerned with how you’re doing.”

They were standing at the bottom of the biggest declivity. Their skateboards were turned on one end as they leaned against them. Scott must have borrowed one of David’s. Patricia and Gerald came to join me in spectating.

“Will you teach me more, Uncle Scott?” David asked.

“Only if your mom says it’s safe.”

“Awww.”

“You know I won’t go against what your mom says.”

“I know.” But the kid didn’t sound as petulant as usual. How does Scott do that?

They climbed out. Gerald asked, “Can I carry that, Uncle Scott?” He gave the skateboard to Gerald.

Gerald took it in one hand and held out the other. Scott took it, and they held hands as they began to walk. Patricia rushed to Scott’s other side. He stopped, reached down, and pulled her up with his left arm, his non-pitching arm. The three of them walked toward the house.

Gerald was the quietest of Veronica’s kids. He always seemed to be watching, hoping for a nod of approval, or a kind word.

David climbed out of the skateboard track trough and looked up at me. He said, “My dad built this skateboard park for me.”

I said, “That was good of him.”

David said, “He built it, but Uncle Scott just spent more time out here with me this afternoon than my dad did in three years.” He brushed dirt off his long sleeve sweatshirt. He said, “I wish Uncle Scott was my dad.” He hefted his skateboard and walked to the house.

It was a heart-stoppingly affectionate thing to say, or maybe a heart-wrenchingly awful comment about what a shit his dad was, or a sad kid trying to cope with his loss in any way he could.

TWENTY-FIVE

Wednesday 8:00 P.M.

After we grabbed something to eat, Scott and I got back to work on the files. We still had stacks of boxes left to go. Nothing I’d found since my meeting with Veronica gave me reason to worry about her financial situation, safe so far.

When we were alone in the room, the first thing I said was, “I’m glad you were able to help David with all the skateboard stuff, but I worry when you do tricks like you did.”

He said, “It was kind of dumb. There’s no need for extra worry at a time like this. I made a bad decision. Yes, I know I was breaking seventeen different clauses in my contract.”

“I wasn’t going to report you to the contract police.”

“I know.” He came over to me and took me in his arms. “But you worry about me, and I appreciate it. It’s not like I’m sacrificing our living standard for a reckless moment.”

“I know.”

“But you’re annoyed.”

I said, “I try to be less rigid about holding to guidelines that make no sense.” This was in reference to what I called ‘mom rules’. These were the dictums drummed into us by our mothers when we were kids that in retrospect as adults, seem kind of nuts.

“And you’ve gotten better at it.”

“And I didn’t say anything.”

It was his turn to say, “I know. And I promise not to do it again.”

“Thank you.”

We embraced. He is so nice to come home to. And his arms are always home.

Enid Achtenberg walked in about nine. Veronica was with the kids putting them to bed. The last few well wishers were helping clean up – with Mom and Darryl, in the kitchen, with Dad and Lionel in the living room. The distantly related Grums who were in attendance had been among the first to leave.

Enid met with us in Crippled Critter Central. Scott and I sat in separate chairs behind the desk. Enid sat in front of it. We had boxes neatly labeled and organized alphabetically by company all along the floor. Every paper in each was filed by date with the most recent on top.

She began, “I found out a few things. I’ve got to talk to Veronica when she’s done with the kids. How is she holding up?”

“Keeping busy. It’s been crazy all day.”

Achtenberg pointed to the no-longer mess. “You guys have been busy.”

“Not even half done.”

I showed her the further Trust documents we’d found and the insurance papers. She knew which pages to go to in the Trust that were the most important.

She held a stack of papers out to us. “This is the Grum Family Trust which is different from the Trust documents we looked over earlier. This one is fairly clear.”

“How so?”

“When Mr. and Mrs. Grum die, and if Edgar has predeceased them, the money does not go to Veronica, but to her kids.”

“Is that normal?” Scott asked.

She shrugged. “I’ve seen lots of different things.” She shuffled to the important sections. “This is the most recent.” She read through two pages. “It’s pretty ordinary. There are a few odd things that go back to the family upon his death.”

“I know,” I said. “The grizzly goes back to the Grums.”

Achtenberg said, “And a few other things. There must be an antique china set somewhere. If a moving truck drives up looking for the grizzly, it goes.”

We went over a few more papers and confirmed the opinion that I’d already given Veronica. She was going to be okay.

I said, “Some of it doesn’t make sense.” I showed her the bank deposit stuff.

She said, “It could be innocent.”

I said, “Or he could be a crook. He got murdered for some reason.”

Achtenberg said, “And sometimes people die for no reason at all.”

“Did you find anything out about what the police have?”

She took a deep breath. “Some. The guy who found the body is Mike King. He’s a private investigator from Chicago. Mrs. Grum wanted the investigator arrested for killing Edgar.”

“Did they?”

“Even the police here need proof. I think.”

“Why was he around?”

“He was hired by someone, I don’t know who yet, to find out how the Governor’s side was going to steal the election.”

“They had proof?”

“He was supposed to get proof.”

“One of the family members told me that one of the campaign workers died, a reporter. I checked the Internet. Several bloggers insisted the Grums must have been involved. None of the bloggers offered any proof.”

“I know those rumors are believed by the recall campaign. I have no facts or data either way.”

We filled her in about what we had found out from Azure Grum and Veronica’s gynecologist.

Scott asked, “Could it possibly be true that they’ve covered up murders before?”

“I know Azure Grum a little. She’s drunk a lot. A friend of Veronica’s for sure, doesn’t like her in-laws. Her husband is a decent, quiet man. But murder? I just can’t imagine. Although imagining the Grums doing awful things isn’t hard to do.”

I asked, “Do the police think the investigator did it?”

“The cops were on the scene fairly quickly. The investigator had a gun which he was licensed to carry. They already know his gun hasn’t been fired recently. Also, the investigator had no gunpowder residue on his hands.”

Scott said, “But Mrs. Grum claims that he did it?”

“Maybe she’s just making it up? Who knows? What I did find out was that Edgar was shot execution style. That’s all I’ve been able to find out so far. The police are keeping very quiet.”

“Isn’t that kind of usual in this kind of case?” I asked.

Enid said, “They’re hunting for suspects.”

“They’ll need to look at everybody who ever knew him.”

She sighed. “We already knew Edgar was a menace and most, if not all, members of the Grum family are evil incarnate. Nobody has any actual facts that point to a murderer.”

“Assumedly the cops are going over the surveillance tapes from the headquarters, and the news station’s video footage from Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.”

“There seems to be about a three-hour time frame in which the murder could have been committed. People were in and out of the hotel, the ballroom, and the headquarters next door all the time. It’s all one huge convention complex. They’ve got over three thousand people from the ballroom itself, plus the guests from the hotel not connected to the election, and the people from the floors that housed business offices, and the people who worked at the hotel. It will be impossible to pinpoint where everyone was. If they get one suspect, they could narrow it down with the footage. Maybe.”

Scott said, “All the areas have video coverage?”

“That’s another problem. Just some areas.”

I had a notion from the modern spy/thriller movie, where one guy sitting at a computer goes through thousands of hours of video footage from a zillion cameras in a major city, and it takes him five minutes to find the person he’s looking for. Bull phooey. And here, how would they ever get all the names of all the people they saw?

“What happened to the private investigator?”

“They questioned him for hours. His prints weren’t on the gun. The video footage with him on it shows the murder had to have happened before he got there.”

“Anything about the gun?”

“Unregistered, possibly homemade, they’re waiting for forensics on it.”

“Homemade? We found gun making manuals.” I got them out of the desk drawer and showed them to her.