Rubout (14 page)

The captain interrupted my thoughts with an announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the bumpy ride today. We’ll be on the ground in about ten minutes . . . .”

I just hoped we would be on the ground in one piece. Right now, my love life was as bumpy as this flight. Lyle and I made up after the Leather and Lace Ball, but things weren’t quite the same between us since that night. We still seemed slightly out of sync. But he was meeting me at the airport, and I was glad.

When the plane finally touched down at Lambert International Airport, the passengers applauded. I found my briefcase, pulled my coat out of the overhead compartment, and tried to straighten my suit. The skirt had more wrinkles than a sharpei puppy, my jacket was sticky from my seat mate’s sloshed drink, and I stank of fear and spilled bourbon. I didn’t care. I just wanted to go home and take a shower.

Lyle was waiting for me at the gate. He folded me
in his arms and kissed me as if I’d been away for a week.

“This
is
a welcome home,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “You’re right. I’ve taken you for granted. So tonight I’m making this a romantic evening.”

I smiled and hugged him, but all I could think was “What bad timing.” I’d never felt less romantic. Lyle talked all the way to the West End, telling me funny stories about his students and his neighbors. We could always talk to each other, even during the worst times. The lights were on at his town house, and it looked warm and inviting. He unlocked the door, and his big gray cat, Montana, greeted me solemnly. Monty had green-gold eyes and a perpetually worried expression. I didn’t think I liked cats, but I liked him. I dropped my briefcase and scratched his ears and tail until he twirled around happily. Lyle stood there patiently until I looked up and saw a dozen red roses on the dining-room table.

“Red roses,” I said. “My favorite.”

But I felt oddly disconnected, as if someone else were admiring them. Lyle lit candles and popped the cork on a bottle of cold champagne. “Sit down,” he said, and I plopped down on his couch. Monty curled up next to us and purred. Lyle kissed me again. He tasted of coffee and champagne, but he must have noticed I wasn’t responding, because he stopped and said, “What’s the matter?”

“I’m sorry. Bad flight. I’m not much fun tonight.” Lyle studied me, looking concerned. Monty jumped up in my lap and looked worried, too.

“You need food,” Lyle said. “I should have realized
that. I have some of my special tenderloin. Would you like me to fix you dinner?”

I realized I wanted to go home and see him another night, but I didn’t say that. “Not a whole meal,” I said. “Just a sandwich.” He made one big enough to feed everyone on the plane from Chicago. So when he wasn’t looking I took it apart, reassembled it, and slipped most of the meat to Monty under the table.

Lyle brought out coffee and strawberries and more champagne. I poked at the strawberries and let the coffee go cold and the champagne go flat while Lyle carried on the conversation. I listened with half an ear. Until I heard him say “Francesca, I know you’re tired, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t bother you with this question, but I have to know. I can’t stay in limbo like this. I love you. I want you. I’ll make you happy. Will you marry me?”

I wanted so badly to say yes. But I was so afraid. How could I trust him? My father wasn’t faithful. Jane’s husband dumped her. Sydney’s husband wanted to destroy her, and maybe he succeeded. No man seemed faithful. I loved Lyle, I really did. I just didn’t feel safe. The silence hung between us. I could have said I loved him and I was frightened. I could have told him about my grim interview with Jane. I could have said this wasn’t a good time to ask. Instead, I blurted out, “Do I have to give up my apartment?”

Lyle recoiled as if I’d slapped him. His face reddened and his mouth tightened. “Yes,” he said impatiently. “It’s time to let go of living in the past.”

“I can’t,” I wailed, and I sounded so desperate,
Monty came over and brushed against my hand to reassure me. Lyle did not. He sounded exasperated.

“You can’t because you don’t want to,” he snapped. “You want to spend the rest of your life mourning parents who didn’t love you.”

“My grandparents loved me,” I said, sounding more like a contrary child than a woman. Monty paced back and forth between Lyle and me, looking worried.

“Your parents didn’t,” Lyle insisted. “Congratulations. You’ve re-created your family. You’ve managed to duplicate their lack of love by working for the
Gazette
—a paper you make richer while it treats you as badly as your parents did. Your editors are jealous of your success and do everything to hold you back.”

“But my readers love me,” I said. I sounded pathetic. I was too big to whimper.

“Like your grandparents, they are beside the point,” he said brutally. “When are you going to wake up?”

“Right now,” I said. I could feel my fury rising, wiping out my fear. “You want me to give up everything I care about. Maybe
you’re
the jealous one. I’m the celebrity. No one ever heard of you. I’m not going to quit my career and keep house for you. I can’t live without my work.”

“I’m not asking that,” Lyle said, raising his voice. “I want you to stop clinging to the things that hurt you. You’re talented. You can work anywhere. Leave this city where everyone knows your past. Leave this loser newspaper. Go where you’re appreciated. I’ll follow you. I’ll go anywhere you want.”

“Then go to hell,” I screamed back. “I don’t need
your pop psychology. Quit practicing psychiatry without a license. Your degree is in English.”

Monty stood between us and meowed loudly. We ignored him. I grabbed my coat and my briefcase and stormed out of Lyle’s place. He didn’t try to stop me. He didn’t say anything. He turned his back on me and walked out of the room. I let myself out and slammed the door. I walked for several chilly blocks before I realized I didn’t have a car. Fortunately, the Inn at the Park was nearby. I found a cab there and directed the driver to take me home.

Home. Home to the South Side, where I belonged. Home to the familiar comfort of my grandparents’ apartment. Lyle and I were finished. I didn’t need any man. I didn’t need marriage. I didn’t need anyone. I wrapped myself in my grandmother’s brown-and-yellow afghan and cried myself to sleep.

T
he next morning I felt dead. I even looked dead. After a night of restless sleep, my skin had a corpse-green tinge, which set off the bright-red zit on my nose. But I guessed the zit was proof I was alive, no matter how dead I felt. Dead people don’t get pimples. They also don’t get bags under their eyes and puffy red eyelids from crying. Damn Lyle. He wasn’t worth crying about. I wished my burning anger could dry up my tears.

Since I felt half dead, I might as well spend some time with people who were all dead. I’d try for a morning at the morgue. I had to know if Sydney’s autopsy revealed anything about her killer. I was in luck. Cutup Katie, a pathologist who’d helped me out at the medical examiner’s office on another case, had assisted at Sydney’s autopsy. Katie’s boss did the autopsy on a celebrity like Sydney, but Katie was there to assist. She invited me to the autopsy, but I refused. The cops had to tough out autopsies, but I
didn’t. I knew I’d disgrace myself and pass out. I offered to take Katie to lunch to talk about the results, but the local citizenry had been industriously stabbing and shooting one another, and Katie couldn’t break free for several days. This morning I called her again to bug her for an interview.

“If you can get here in twenty minutes, I can talk to you for a while,” Katie said.

Of course I could get there in twenty minutes. Everything in St. Louis was twenty minutes away, and if it wasn’t, we didn’t go there. I’d even have time to rummage in the refrigerator for breakfast. I found a jar of garlic cloves, a bottle of ketchup, and a grapefruit. I’d eat the grapefruit and get a healthy start on my day. I picked it up, and my thumb went through the squishy skin. One side was green with mold. So much for a healthy start, unless you counted the penicillin growing on the grapefruit. Well, I’d skip breakfast. I wasn’t hungry, and there would be less to hurl—always a consideration for a morning at the morgue.

I’d better call my office. I got Louise, the Family department secretary, and told her where I’d be that morning. I could almost see her comfortable middle-age body and home-permed hair hunched over the phone and her morning mug of coffee.

“The morgue? What an awful way to start your day,” she said. Louise was always sympathetic.

“Going to the
Gazette
would be even worse,” I said.

“You got that right. The publisher’s secretary told me Charlie may announce more changes today, and I should watch out. I’m worried.”

“You? Louise, you run that department. Why should you worry?”

“Everybody here worries these days.”

“The body count is piling up,” I said. “I just want to survive this next round. But I’m sure you’re safe.” Her phone started ringing again, and Louise hung up quickly. I used to love the newspaper business. Now, with all the changes, the newsroom was as jittery as a bunch of junkies who couldn’t score. The camaraderie was gone. The staff was worried and surly, and utterly without hope.

I put on some makeup and a dark suit that made me look like an undertaker’s assistant. Ugh. I took off the white blouse and put on a red blouse that matched my eyes. If I didn’t force some color in my face, someone at the morgue would shove me in a drawer and put a tag on my toe. I drove downtown in a daze, trying not to think about Lyle or the turmoil at the
Gazette.
The day was damp and cold as a tomb, and low-hanging gray clouds added to the gloom. At least traffic was light. I found a parking spot on the city lot next to a lumbering gold car that reminded me of Lyle’s beloved gold tank, Sherman. This car had a bad case of cancerous rust, and I felt a malicious glee, as if it were eating Lyle’s body instead of the car’s. What was the matter with me?

The first thing that hit me about the morgue was the smell. It was a hospital odor mixed with strong disinfectant and a faint hint of spoiled meat that I knew was not somebody’s old sandwich. The guard showed me to Katie’s office, a grand word for a closet with a desk. Katie would join me shortly, he said. I opened her door carefully, hoping I’d see nothing
gray and creepy floating in glass jars. I couldn’t face pickled diseased organs and dead babies.

Katie’s small room was soothingly ordinary. There were fat, dignified brown and red medical books on shelves, framed diplomas and honor society certificates on the walls, a golf putter in the corner, a potted plant on the desk. No jars of preserved innards. No fleshless skulls or stray bones. Nothing unusual except one shelf with a curious combination of everyday objects: three toy trucks, a hot sauce bottle with a broken string around the neck, a vibrator, a bed knob, a light bulb, and a 1950s blond wood chair leg with a big screw at the end.

I was examining the chair leg when Katie came in the door. Katie called herself plain, but she was too smart and funny to fit that description. She was about thirty-five, with brown eyes, short brown hair, and a sturdy, muscular build. Katie was a country girl who drove a pickup and liked to play pool and golf. She was embarrassed about the golf, because it was such a doctor cliché. At least she refused to join a private club. She played on the city course.

Katie had only one major fault. She forgot the effect her job had on civilians. Today her lab coat was covered with brownish-red stains that made my stomach leap up and bounce off my rib cage. I started babbling so I wouldn’t think about what fluids were coloring her coat. I pointed the chair leg, screw-end first, at the odd accumulation on the shelf.

“What do these have to do with medicine?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s my collection of weird items removed from rectums,” she said. “I did some time in the
emergency room. You wouldn’t believe what people get stuck in their lower anatomy and then have to go to the hospital to have removed.”

I thought about where that chair leg had been and dropped it on the shelf with a shudder. I wondered what a six-inch hook-and-ladder truck could do.

“Nobody died from this stuff?”

“Nope. Not unless you can die of embarrassment. But it was touch and go with the hot sauce bottle. If that broke, the guy would have been mighty unhappy.”

“Maybe we should talk about Sydney’s autopsy. It might be less disgusting.”

Katie fished a file from her desk. “Give me a minute to look this over,” she said. “I want to get the facts straight. These celebrities can come back to haunt you.”

“Especially in your line of work,” I said, but Katie was immune to death puns. She skimmed the autopsy report and then started talking about Sydney.

“Someone was sure angry with her,” Katie said. “She was attacked with a motorcycle drive chain, which was found next to the body. It made a nasty weapon. My guess is the victim was caught by surprise and hit upside the head first, which stunned her. She recovered enough to try to fight back. But by that time the killer was whipping that chain around pretty fast—maybe thirty or forty miles an hour. The victim had serious front and side damage to her skull. It looks like the killer got a lucky shot and drove the nasal cartilage right up through her brain, which probably killed her. But the victim also had considerable damage to the right temple. Either
injury is fatal, and whoever did it kept beating her after death. There’s not much left of what used to be a fairly pretty face. Good face-lift, too. Anyway, the woman’s death was violent. It takes the big three to get someone this mad: sex, drugs, and money.”