Dead Head: A Dirty Business Mystery (11 page)

For the last week the
Bulletin
had been all Caroline, all the time. Any brief flirtation the newspaper’s management had had with serious journalism left when Jon Chappell departed for the
Denver Post
and his boss, who’d come of age when newspapers were a nickel, retired. Truth be told, even Jon’s conversion was short-lived.

Jon and I had gotten to be pals a few years back, and I’d like to think I’d steered him onto the path of journalistic integrity, but, let’s face it, the Caroline story was just too good to pass up. A blond suburban housewife arrested for being on the lam from a drug rap—it was so juicy Jon was probably writing about it in Denver as an insider who’d known the fugitive. And his successors here were milking it. I pushed the papers away.

“I may have just done something very stupid,” I admitted.

“Join the club. Most of the people who come in here at this hour have done something stupid.”

“What do you mean, it’s not
that
late.”

“Doesn’t matter. Most normal people are home with their families now, or they’re brushing their teeth. They are definitely not just about to sit down for a meal. Unless they’re in Barcelona.”

“Thank you.”

“Sad but true.” Babe leaned in. “See that guy over there? He got wasted at a business function tonight and hit on his boss—who was all too happy to take him up on the offer. Now he’s afraid to go home
and
he’s afraid to go to work tomorrow. He’s been in the john five times already—probably trying to get the woman’s scent out of his hair and off his clothes. He may be here all night if she was wearing Shalimar or something heavy.”

I sneaked a look at the guy. He was not much older than me but probably had the wife, the mortgage, two kids, and a dog. And he’d jeopardized it all with one drink too many and one dance of the horizontal hora. He reminded me a little of Grant Sturgis, sandy hair, bland
good looks—like a soap star, handsome but not memorable. There were millions of these guys whose regular features would open doors for them and who were, more often than not, confused as hell after they walked through them and didn’t know what to do next.

I used to think of Caroline that way, too, with her subdued palette, the sweater tied artfully around her neck, and her Audrey Hepburn ballet flats. I do remember thinking there was something about Caroline that was different—an inner spark. I just didn’t know it was coming from an inner hash pipe. I instantly hated myself for thinking that and groaned out loud.

“So what stupid thing did you do?” Babe asked. “We know
you
don’t have a boss.”

“I volunteered for something.”

“Always a mistake,” she said, slapping the counter. “Send a check if you must, but don’t volunteer. And never let yourself be put on any committees. It’s a wonder there isn’t more bloodshed at committee and board meetings.”

Babe was delivering one of her insightful, Babe’s rules monologues, and I let her go on. Buried in her speeches was always something useful, some nugget of wisdom. And it was refreshing to hear chat that wasn’t about Springfield’s newest archcriminal. Besides, it gave me time to think. It was too late to back out. I’d told Grant I would find the person who’d informed on Caroline. I just had to figure out how.

It wasn’t hard to find someone if you knew who you were looking for, but what if you didn’t know? I stared at the counter, waiting for a bolt of lightning or a Saint Paul moment knocking me off my stool and revealing what I should do next. Eventually it came but not from the sky or a religious epiphany. As if coming out of a trance, I heard Babe’s voice, first faint, and then louder.

“Hello, are you listening to me?” Babe said. “There aren’t any answers in that mug.”

No, there weren’t, but there may have been one under it. On the place mat, next to the two-inch ads for unpainted furniture, pictures of pets plastered on T-shirts, and gold-tone trophies for your bowling team was a small ad that read “Think the Rat Is Cheating? Call Nina Mazzo, reasonable rates, discretion guaranteed. Free consultation.”

With enough time and money you could find almost anyone. You could also trace any call, e-mail, or Web site visit, but I didn’t have to make it easy for Nina Mazzo to discover my identity and to figure out what I was doing. If the tipster could be anonymous, I could be anonymous too. I didn’t need to burnish my reputation as a snoop. The next morning, I drove to the main branch of the Springfield library and logged on to one of their public computers to check out Nina’s Web site without leaving a trail from my home computer. Her home page was a basic template, turquoise and gold, not a lot of bells and whistles. More tasteful than I expected, given her stock in trade. It fit with her credentials as a nonpracticing attorney and former child advocate.

Nina’s specialty was tracking down deadbeat dads and getting the goods on spouses who strayed, whatever the goods were. I could only assume she, or one of her employees, was the one who stood in the bushes snapping pictures of couples in flagrante delicto while guys in designer
suits made the real money from the subsequent divorce settlements. Like most things, there was a pecking order in the adultery business.

Two or three high-profile attorneys, including Arthur Horowitz, known in some circles as the first wives’ best friend, had provided enthusiastic blurbs that Nina had blatantly incorporated into the banner on her Web site.

So why was she advertising on a place mat?

“Same reason we’re here,” she said in a throaty voice, spreading her arms. She sat opposite me in an overheated barracks-like building not far from the Metro North station. I’d had some trouble finding the place, tucked in as it was between a ceramic tile showroom and a beauty supply distributor. There were two molded plastic chairs, an oversized turquoise desk clearly purchased for a larger office, and the same basic wall clock that you’d see in any hospital or prison.

“Business is off,” she said. “Either people are staying faithful, or the still-rich guys have found better ways to cover their tracks. Alarming prospects for someone like me.”

Whatever the reason, it had Nina spending, in her own words, far too much time chasing down the imaginary bank accounts and safe deposit boxes of someone’s recently deceased granny.

“Half the county seems convinced the old dears socked something away and forgot where they put it, like that women who stashed all her savings in a mattress and then got Alzheimer’s and gave it to Goodwill. Don’t get me wrong—a client is a client.” She cut off her diatribe, her famous discretion finally kicking in.

I unzipped my jacket and unwound the scarf that that been wrapped two or three times around my neck. I swiped at my forehead with the back of my hand.

“I know. I keep it warm in here. I detest the cold. So what can I do for you? It isn’t Grandma’s jewels, is it? No, you don’t have that desperate
hoping-for-a-pot-of-gold expression.” She searched my face. “You may actually be worried about something, Miss…” She glanced at the online registration form I had filled out and submitted from the library’s computer.

“Miss Turner, Miss T. Turner?”

All right, I’d been having a musical moment and hadn’t wanted to type in my real name on the online form. I smiled weakly. She looked at me as if she thought I was going to say I was searching for the rest of the Ikettes.

“That’s right,” I said, rearranging my scarf and my thoughts, “Thelma.” It was the only T name I could think of on short notice, other than Tina or Trixie—and I didn’t think I could pull that one off without pretending that I had a husband named Ed and we lived next door to the Kramdens. “My mother was very old-fashioned.” I rambled on stupidly about the name.

Nina Mazzo unstrapped her plain, tanklike watch and put it on the desk in front of her. I got the message.

“I want to find someone,” I said at last.

“Now we’re getting somewhere. Who?” she asked, sitting up straighter and poised to write on her yellow legal pad. “The father who abandoned you? Child you gave up for adoption? We have a very good success rate with cases of that nature.”

“No,” I said.

“Someone you need to subpoena? I have an extremely reliable operative who makes deliveries. Very high percentage there as well.”

I was encouraged that she had had so much experience.

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know his name, what he looks like, or if he’s even a he.”

She put her pen down. The rest of the meeting went like a riff on the old Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on First.” I was being intentionally vague, and she wasn’t inclined to reveal any of her methods.
Why should she until I was a paying customer? She was deciding how much more time to waste on me when a young man as blank and unformed looking as a Secret Service man entered the office.

She said nothing, he nodded, and she buzzed him into a back office. “One of my operatives,” she explained. It was all very James Bond. I started to think that I had wasted both of our time. “Now back to you.”

After fifteen minutes of circular chat I decided to forgo the rest of my free (you do get what you pay for) consultation and let Nina Mazzo get back to searching for Grandma’s hidden millions. She wasn’t sorry to see me go, but I felt her eyes on me all the way out to the parking lot, where I had to wait for a forklift full of Italian tile to crawl by before I could drive off.

All I’d learned was that without a name, driver’s license, or description it was difficult to know where to start looking for someone. Most of Nina Mazzo’s clients were looking for the money.
Quel surprise.
What was I looking for?

In fact, what was I doing? I was playing with someone’s life. Someone’s hopes. I got back in my car, determined to get in touch with Grant and call the whole thing off; then I heard the echo of Grant’s voice telling me how much Caroline trusted me and needed me. Me. I hadn’t been needed for anything other than the perennial beds for a long time. And whether I liked to admit it or not, sometimes even they did just fine without me.

If it hadn’t been for Caroline, Dirty Business might have gone under. Our friendship had sneaked up on me when I wasn’t paying attention, like those extra five pounds or a bad habit that you don’t even realize you’re engaging in until you see yourself doing it in a reflection or a photograph. It hadn’t been easy striking off on my own. If I admitted it, I would have been lonely in Springfield without her and Babe.

I left the downtown decorating area and took the back roads home to my place, past my new favorite nursery, the pond, and the school
where I voted. Not far from the school, I got trapped behind a school bus that had its hydraulic stop sign sticking out. A seemingly endless stream of children exited the bus and the driver waited for each of them to waddle off in their colorful puffy jackets and disappear into their homes.

I put the car in park and sat there thinking. If I couldn’t look for a
who,
maybe I should be looking for a
why
that would lead me to a
who.
And maybe it wasn’t cherchez la femme as much as it was
cherchez d’argent
. Perhaps I
had
learned something from Nina Mazzo. I called the Sturgis home. Grant answered on the first ring.

“It’s me. Listen, was there a reward offered for Caroline?”

I heard nothing, then a quiet “not as far as I know.”

Rats. That meant there had been no financial incentive for a stranger or a bounty hunter to track Caroline down and inform on her. On the other hand, that meant it had to be someone she knew, either here or back in Michigan. Grant listened in silence as I explained.

The schoolkids had vanished and the bus drove away.

“Grant, are you still there?’

“I’m here.”

“Have there been any new people in Caroline’s life lately? Anyone she might have shared her secret with?”

There was dead silence on the other end; then he answered in a monotone. “Mickey Cameron asked me the same question a few hours ago.”

“And?”

“
You’re
the only one she would have told. Only you. How could you do it?”

The crash of Grant Sturgis slamming down the phone rang in my ears until it was replaced by the sound of cars honking their horns at me to get moving.

It was true. I had befriended Caroline, I’d had drinks with her on more than a few occasions, I was a former television producer (read ambitious, unscrupulous wench), and I was getting a reputation in Springfield as an amateur sleuth and a busybody. And it was no secret I wasn’t rolling in dough. No wonder Grant Sturgis thought I’d informed on his wife. He probably thought I had sold her story for big bucks and was already casting the lead for the eventual movie of the week.

But I never had a chance to explain. To him or to anyone. Grant stopped taking my calls, probably on the advice of his attorney, and I noticed a distinct chill in the air at the Paradise Diner whenever I arrived. As we’d all learned when Caroline had been arrested, bad news travels fast in a small town. My phone had stopped ringing. The leaf cleanup jobs had evaporated. No one had said anything—they didn’t have to. The suggestion that I’d been the one to drop a dime on Caroline Sturgis had rippled through Springfield. That and the fall weather were enough to make me a pariah.

Some hard-liners must have secretly supported the tipster; once or twice I thought I saw a little smile from people who thought that I’d been the informer. One woman, Althea Tripplehorn, the self-appointed moral compass of Springfield, had even started a petition that all newcomers should somehow be vetted by the real estate agents who sold them their homes. A little thing like the Constitution didn’t bother Althea. I knew sex offenders had to register in some towns, but former media execs? Ex–New Yorkers?

It got particularly quiet when I entered the diner and the Main Street Moms were in attendance. Caroline might no longer have been one of their own, but I doubt they appreciated an interloper coming in and shattering their nice neat little world.

After three years of hard work, I’d reverted to being an outsider again, except to Babe, who stuck by me. I took to going to the diner at off-peak hours so I wouldn’t see anyone I knew.