A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (27 page)

“That the client?”

“She’s a publisher.”

“A lot of people tell me I should write about my adventures. You’d be surprised what goes on in a rural county up north. Did you see
Deliverance?”

“I live it. She probably wouldn’t be interested. Lady cops are in this season.”

“I’ll use a female pseudonym. I wish you city folk would settle your differences at home. Most of the murders we deal with happen in winter, when the snow’s piled ten feet high and wifie cracks open her husband’s head with a meat tenderizer because he complained about the casserole. The locals respect the tourist season.”

“I’d believe that if I hadn’t counted a dozen satellite dishes between town and the lake. Nobody uses meat tenderizers anymore, not even in Mayberry. You’re going to have to write a new speech.”

He flicked at one olive-drab knee. There was nothing on it. “I don’t like it that Booth and Birdsall Senior went on being friends after Senior killed Allison. He must have known he was a suspect.”

“Who can ever figure out how a writer thinks? Maybe he wanted to use him in a book. Maybe
Some of My Best Friends Are Killers
was more than just a title.”

He watched me for a while. It was hard to tell which was worse, the part that was some kind of Indian or the part that was related to the Vikings. Or whether it was just that he was all cop.

“Where is the manuscript?”

“In Birdsall Junior’s apartment. I know how you are about removing evidence from the scene of a crime so I left it where I found it.”

“You didn’t know that then.”

“I had a better than even chance of being right.” I drew a pencil out of the cup and bounced its eraser on the blotter. “You can expect my client to put in a claim for the manuscript when you’re done with it. Booth didn’t leave any next of kin and I doubt he made any arrangements about his literary estate.”

“I look forward to reading it. Detective fiction relaxes me. Those writers sure know how to tie up all the loose ends.”

“Speaking of those, do you still want that case of whiskey?”

“I’d just drink it up. I got a little problem in that area. You know I’m three-quarters Ottawa.”

“I would’ve guessed Iroquois.”

“They’re overrated. Pontiac was Ottawa. We almost took Detroit away from you.”

“On days like this I’d let you have it.”

29

T
haler, Felony Homicide.”

I grinned at the telephone standard. “I bet you get a lot of hang-ups. People think you’re offering a service.”

“I am. I hope you’ve got news for me.”

“I’ve got Allison Booth’s murderer. Actually I’ve got two. I saved the best one for you.”

“Who got the worst?”

“A sheriffs detective from Black Lake named VaxhÖlm. But I can always avoid Cheboygan County.”

“That leaves you, what, three counties in Michigan?A trip across the state for you must be like a game of checkers.”

“It’s not quite that bad. The Allison Booth case is just filler for him. I gave him Eugene Booth’s killer a few minutes ago.”

“Lowell Birdsall, right?”

I was still playing with a pencil. I stopped. “Lieutenant’s intuition?”

“Kindly go screw yourself. That’s a John Wayne remark got up in Alan Alda clothing. Last time we spoke you were on your way to dangle Birdsall out a window by his heels. Details, please.”

“The story takes telling. Are you free this afternoon for a three-hour round trip?”

“Black Lake?”

“I said
round
trip.” I told her where. “You’ll be back in time for dinner with the inspector from the Fifth.”

“That’s over. The FBI arrested him this morning and I’m nobody’s idea of Hillary Clinton. I’ll drive. That bomb of yours wouldn’t pass an emissions test in New Mexico. The antipollution equipment’s all dummy.”

“When did you join Greenpeace?”

“I just don’t like getting pulled over by those horses’ necks on the state police.”

“I’ll spring for gas,” I said. “Regular or premium?”

“Economy. It’s a company car. Pick you up in front of your building in ten minutes.”

A gold Chrysler LeBaron, last year’s model, took the corner on the yellow and chirped to a stop at the curb. I climbed in on the passenger’s side and buckled up. Cops are among the worst drivers in the world and it’s always the passenger who gets hurt.

“This is a no-smoking car,” she said.

“You’re kidding.” But I put the cigarette back in the pack.

“Holdover from the last chief. The evil men do lives after and like that. We can stop when you need a fix.”

“Not necessary. I only smoke them because I never met a happy ninety-year-old.”

“That wouldn’t be a concern for you even if you jogged and ate yogurt.” She wheeled out into traffic. She was wearing a white plastic hairband, a white blouse, and a mauve Ultrasuede skirt with three buttons unfastened at the hem to let her right leg breathe. A matching blazer hung from a hanger over the left rear window. Her flats were mauve too and she worked both pedals with one foot. She had on sunglasses with blue-tinted oval frames. I asked her if they were prescription.

She shook her head. “Contacts. I’m thinking of RKT.”

“I hear you need reading glasses after.”

“Better than glasses all the time. They called me Goggles in first grade.”

“Not twice, I bet.”

“Small talk.” We entered the John Lodge Freeway. A tanker air-braked when we took its lane and blatted its horn. “Tell me what you didn’t tell Black Lake.”

“When my heart slows down.”

“Trucks. My daddy drove one back when you had to be good.”

“Mine too. Teamster?”

She shook her head. “He was long-haul. They had a different union. How’s your heart?”

“Ask me when we’ve stopped. I hung on to the Mafia angle. It cost me some grief when VaxhÖlm asked why Booth stayed friendly with a suspect in his wife’s murder, but that’s not a direction I wanted to go.”

“VaxhÖlm’s the county cop?”

“Yeah. Half Chingachgook, half Eric the Red. You ought to recruit him. He’s wasted up there.”

“He’d be wasted down here. The best ones always are. You think that was a good idea? Booth convinced Allison was a mob job.”

“He wanted to be, so he was. The only other explanation was she’d been sleeping in more beds than Goldilocks. It wasn’t a hit. Those old boys couldn’t use the word
cat
in a sentence, but they knew killing his wife would only make him open his mouth that much wider.”

“Tell me about Birdsall Junior.”

I gave her what I’d given VaxhÖlm. It went quicker the second time.

“If Birdsall killed Allison, why are we making this trip?”

“To prove me a liar.”

That opened a whole new area of discussion, which I ended by turning on her radio. She’d programmed classical, country and western, hard rock, soft rock, and all-talk. The subject of the program was a civil war in Europe. This time we were on the side of the rebels. I turned it off without comment.

“Classical’s to get me through traffic jams without chewing off my lipstick,” she said. “Hard rock’s to blow off steam on the drive home. Soft rock gets me ready for a date, and I like to yell at the idiots on the talk station.”

“What about country?”

“I like country.”

“No jazz?”

“I don’t like jazz. I don’t like monster truck rallies either. Don’t tell the other cops.” She slowed down as we passed a traffic stop. The trooper seemed to have the situation in hand and she sped up again. “Why all the mystery? I don’t even know if I’m supposed to be Tweedledee or Tweedledum.”

“It may not be that kind of interrogation. This will be a more pleasant drive if you don’t ask too many questions.”

“The drive back will be a lot less pleasant if this turns out to be a wild goose chase.” But she didn’t ask any more questions. After a little while she switched the radio back on and punched up Mahler.

The weepy rain kept up until we passed Jackson. Beyond that point it was a full spring day, with fat crocuses blooming in the grass on the median and a Crayola sun beaming all alone on a construction-paper sky.

We hit Marshall just as the early-bird special was starting at the German restaurant. The parking lot was’filled with Jurassic Park-size sedans and we braked for a covey of white-haired pedestrians in Ban-Lon shirts and brocaded mother-of-the-bride jackets crossing the street against the light.

“You wonder how they got to be that age,” muttered the lieutenant.

“Wait till we get to Edencrest.”

The retirement home sat in a patch of obese sunlight with the same employee vehicles and a scatter of visitors’ cars parked in front. No ambulance today. Mrs. Milbocker stood up from her desk in the office and shook Thaler’s hand. “When Mr. Walker said he was bringing a police detective with him, I expected someone more along the lines of Dennis Franz.” The smile on the leathery face was brighter than the one she’d given me the first time; but she hadn’t been trying as hard then.

The lieutenant looked at me. “When did you call?”

“Just before I called you.”

The smile flickered. “Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”

Now Thaler smiled. “No, it’s all right when it’s official. A girl doesn’t like to be taken for granted.”

“How is she?” I asked Mrs. Milbocker.

“There’s been no change since we spoke. Physically she’s fine. She’s in remarkably good health considering she’s sixty pounds overweight. Mentally, not so good. She went into a bad spell after your visit last week. She had her good days and her bad days before, but she may have seen the last of her good days. Then again she could snap right out of it and remain lucid for weeks. We know so little about Alzheimer’s as opposed to Princess Di’s wardrobe.” She frowned for the first time since we’d met; but she couldn’t sustain it. “Let’s go see if she’s up to receiving visitors. Friday night she threw a pitcher of water at a nurse’s aide. Luckily it was plastic. She has quite an arm.”

The old man in the heavy sweater was asleep in his wheelchair when we passed him in the hall. He might not have moved since last week. Mrs. Milbocker checked his vitals on the fly. Thaler noted it.

“Mr. Goldstein was the first American on Corregidor,” I said.

She said nothing. Her face was green around the edges. In the Wayne County Morgue I’d seen her probe the skin of a corpse that had been bobbing in Lake St. Clair for three days, to test its consistency. I asked her how she was holding up.

“I was just thinking I haven’t visited my grandfather in months. He pitched a no-hitter for the Toledo Mud-hens in forty-eight. Now they’ve got him singing the Alphabet Song in Stockbridge.”

We stopped before the purple door. Mrs. Milbocker knocked, said, “Mrs. Skirrett?” When there was no answer the second time she opened the door and went in.

The small bedroom looked as cheerful as it had before. The curtains were pulled aside from the window, letting sunlight fall onto Lowell Birdsall Senior’s original oil painting for the cover of
Paradise Valley
and the massive bulk that was Fleta Skirrett, squeezed into a wheelchair beside the bed. The pink-and-white crocheted coverlet had been removed from the bed and draped across her lap, above which showed a yellow cotton blouse with birds printed on it. Her plump pink face was a cardboardy color beneath the cotton-candy pink of her hair, with her blue eyes roaming around a pair of sunken hollows as if someone had pushed them in with his fingers. The fat of her great bare arms lay in folds on top of the coverlet. Her wrists were tied to the arms of the chair with strips of white cloth.

“We make it a point to dress them every day and sit them up,” Mrs. Milbocker said. “The ties shock some visitors, but without them they can slide right out the bottom and break a bone. How are you, dear?”

It was the first time I’d heard her address the woman in the high affected voice of a parent talking to a small child.

“Rita?” The cartoony voice had a crack in it, like a worn-out Betty Boop soundtrack.

“No, dear, it’s Mrs. Milbocker.” She looked at us. “Sometimes she thinks I’m her sister.”

I grinned. “Rita and Fleta? Are they twins?”

“Not so you’d notice. She only comes to visit at Christmas. She’s as bony as a hatrack and acts as if a smile would violate her warranty. There’s a theory that says you shouldn’t agitate them by setting them straight. Even if I agreed with it I’m not about to let her go on thinking I’m Rita.”

“I hope you brought something to eat, sis. They never feed me.”

“You had lunch an hour ago. You’re supposed to be losing weight.”

“If I drop three more pounds I can get into those step-ins for the Hudson’s catalogue.”

Mrs. Milbocker said, “Now she’s back to being a model.”

“Tell me the truth, Rita. Do I look like Virginia Mayo? If I get the book-cover job I can say good-bye to lingerie ads.”

Thaler said, “This is useless.”

“Fleta, you got the job,” I said. “Birdsall says you’re perfect.”

It wasn’t going to work. The sunken eyes, of a shade so far removed from the glacial blue of Detective VaxhÖlm’s as to belong to a separate spectrum, continued to roam in their fleshy prison like inmates pacing their cells. Then they seemed to come forward a quarterinch and she sucked in first one lip, then the other, wetting them.

“Oh, I’m so glad. A book is so much more permanent than a catalogue. And Mr. Birdsall is such a fine artist, and handsome. He looks like Van Gogh ought to have. Except for the ear, of course.”

The worn-out quality was gone from the voice. She sounded even younger than she had when she was smoking a forbidden butt and talking about sleeping with Dali. Thaler and I exchanged glances.

Mrs. Milbocker wasn’t smiling. “You won’t upset her, will you?”

“Fleta,” Thaler said, “do you remember me? Sergeant Saunders. This is Officer O’Hara. We’re with the Detroit Police.”

“I remember.” Fleta’s smile was brilliant. “You said I look like Marilyn.”

“That’s right, only prettier. You don’t look made over.”

I turned to Mrs. Milbocker and lowered my tone. “You can stay and make sure she doesn’t get too worked up. Try not to say anything meanwhile.”