Sandy Gingras - Lola Polenta 01 - Swamped (19 page)

“You mean none of that investing was actually happening.”

“Nope.”

“So what did this company do with his sister’s money if they weren’t investing it?”

“That I don’t know.”

I call Detective Johansen. “You already talked to the accounting people?”

“We traced all of Ernie’s movements on the day he died.”

“What are you going to do about the phony investment thing.”

“We’re checking it out.”

“Ernie found out Richie and Dick’s investments were phony. He probably confronted one of them, and one of them hit him on the head with the putter.”

“It has occurred to me, but there’s no evidence of that.”

“Are you still focused on the cow hairs?”

“We have a system that we use. We gather evidence. When we get enough, we act. It can often seem from the outside as if we’re doing nothing,” he says blandly.

“I knew that,” I say.

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t say anything as this is an ongoing investigation.”

“Oh, all right,” I say. He hangs up on me.

I figure it can’t hurt though, to go talk to Susie or Gladys, see if I can find out anything. I try Gladys’ trailer first. I ring her bell. It goes BLING BLING TRILL TRILL in a hollow way. Cheerily ominous. Gladys opens the door in a bathing suit and cover-up.

“Oh hello,” she says. “I thought you were Susie. We’re heading to the pool.”

“Beautiful day,” I say. “I just stopped by to get one of the prospectuses from Dick’s investment business.”

“Come in,” she says. “I’ll get one for you if I can find one.”

Their trailer feels almost like a house it’s so big. Their décor IS mauve. The furniture is all swirly and dolphin-y. Fish seem to be frolicking everywhere. I think I’d be seasick if I lived here. Gladys pulls out a rattan stool for me at the breakfast bar and disappears down the hall.

Boy, would I love to get into Dick’s office. I bet Ernie had a field day in there. I wonder what Dick is really up to, earning twenty percent yields. Trouble is I wouldn’t know what to look for. It’s a weakness in me this financial gap in my knowledge base. Actually, there are many gaps. But this one is Grand Canyon big. You could fit all the investments in the world in my gap. I wonder if Ernie knew anything about accounting. I’ll have to ask Marie, but I kinda doubt it.

Gladys comes back empty handed.

“I can’t seem to find any,” she says. “He probably has them in a box somewhere…”

“That’s okay,” I tell her. “Maybe Susie will be able to get me one.”

Gladys says, “I think Susie knows about as much as I do, which is not much.” She laughs.

“Your husband sounds like he knows what he’s doing though. They’ve been very successful.”

She shrugs.

“How many people invest with them, do you know?”

“I don’t. Just a few started and then they got so much money back so quickly that they told their friends, so a lot more signed up.”

“Just people here in the park?”

“No, there are people from the marina where we keep our boat and people in Richie’s bowling league. It just spreads by word of mouth.”

There’s a knock and the door opens. It’s Susie, and she doesn’t seem happy to see me.

“Hi,” I say cheerily.

She nods and half-smiles. “Are you ready, Gladys?” she asks.

I tell her, “I was just here for a prospectus. I’d like to find a good investment firm in Florida, put my IRA and some other monies in there. Twenty percent sounds right up my alley. Do you know if your husband has a prospectus?” I ask her.

“I wouldn’t know.”

These two are not exactly walking advertisements for their business. I decide to prod a little more.

“Someone told me your husband lost his license to practice,” I tell Gladys.

She glares at me. “He’s just an advisor really. Richie owns the company.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Dick is good at the social part, getting the clients. Richie runs the business,” she says, shifting all the responsibility over.

“So then maybe, Susie, you know how many clients Richie has?”

“I don’t know,” Susie says. “A couple hundred?” she guesses.

I gulp. Really?! I think. “So is this mostly people’s retirement money he’s investing?”

She taps her foot. “How should I know?” she says. “Listen, we really need to get to the pool. The Aqua Babes class is in fifteen minutes and we need to get a good spot in the pool. I don’t want to be treading water in the deep end.”

Chapter 35

I’m parked one house down from Dorothy Bull’s house. She’s the one having an affair with Mr. Drainage. She’ll probably keep her own name if they get married, is my guess. Although, it’s kind of a toss up. Her house is navy blue clapboard with purple trim, lots of gingerbread around the peaked rooflines. It’s faux Victorian, and out of place in the neighborhood. It’s a very nice neighborhood, but all the rest of the houses are pink and beige stucco low slung houses with Spanish tile roofs that back up to a lagoon. Even her landscaping is strange. There’s a sod lawn with trim box hedges and geraniums in clay pots. It’s very un-Floridian.

It’s 4:30 and I’m waiting for her to come home from work. I called Joe earlier to see if he had heard anything about William. He said that William wasn’t charged with anything, and after a couple hours the cops released him. George said William read the bible instead of responding to the police questioning. He called a church elder instead of a lawyer.

“Kooky-ville,” I tell Joe,

I see Dorothy Bull drive by in her white Jeep. I have a picture of her, and she looks just like her picture. She’s got strawberry blonde hair pulled back into a pony tail, large white teeth and a weak chin. She whooshes into her driveway. She gets her briefcase out of the backseat briskly, and no-nonsense clippity-clips into the house on her sensible heels. Her pant suit is powder blue and it flaps around her legs. She’s got teacher written all over her. I feel like checking the papers on the seat next to me to see if I’ve gotten all my homework done.

I get out my binoculars. I can actually see right through their front windows and out their back windows to the lagoon beyond. I love open floor plans. There’s one palm tree in the decked backyard. Wow, I think, a little reality.

The whole downstairs looks like one big room: living/dining/kitchen. It’s kind of dollhouse-y Victorian inside, a lot of wallpaper, maroon and forest green and powder blue color scheme, lots of patterns, stripes and cabbage roses, especially. It makes me a little dizzy. The furniture is dark and traditional. My guess is that Dorothy Bull didn’t want to move to Florida. Her house screams of denial. Mostly it screams: take-me-home.

I know from Mr. Drainage that Dorothy Bull’s husband is a lawyer. His company moved him down here three years ago from New York, and he’s been rising steadily up the corporate ladder.

I watch Dorothy make herself a gin and tonic. She slices herself a lime. Then she neatly sits down in front of the TV. Twenty minutes later, her husband pulls up in a BMW convertible. He’s got this apologetic gee-whiz way of walking that makes me smile. His suit hangs a little on his narrow frame like maybe he’s lost some weight recently. He’s got brown curly hair and freckles.

I love these little binoculars. I can see everything. I can see how they greet each other politely from across the room. I can see how he puts his briefcase away in some other room, how he loosens his tie. I can almost see the tension between them.

Mr. Bull goes outside onto the back deck and walks around a little, kind of inspecting his deck. Then he comes back inside and gets a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, then goes back out on the deck and plops himself down in the single deck chair and looks at the water. His arms dangle out of his chair and his long legs shift restlessly. Dorothy Bull is still sitting very still, except for one finger that keeps changing the channels.

I’m only giving them till 6:30, then I have to pick up Joe and Dreamer and go over to Tweenie’s diner. It’s 5:00 now. “Do something,” I say to them. I say it more loudly than I mean to, and my voice sounds hollow in my car.

My cell phone rings. I jump. It’s Ed.

“Thanks for the papers,” he says.

“What?” I ask.

“The divorce papers. I got them from your lawyer.”

“Oh,” I say. “I was going to tell you.”

“No, I think getting them in the mail is the way to go.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought it would take her longer.”

“Well, it didn’t. What, does your whole family hate me now?”

“No…,” I say.

“I guess I have to get a lawyer too,” he says. “Too bad I don’t have a cousin.”

I don’t say anything.

“Why’d you marry me anyway if you were going to go and do this?”

“Why’d you marry me?” I ask.

“Maybe we should’ve had kids,” he says. That’s a sore spot. Ed decided he didn’t want to have kids after we got married. He even had a vasectomy without telling me.

I don’t say anything.

“Or maybe not,” he says.

“We had Dreamer,” I say.

“How is she doing?” he asks.

“She’s good.”

“That’s good,” he says, but he doesn’t say it like he means it. “Listen,” he says, “there’s a lot going on right now. Why don’t we just let it go for awhile.”

“Let it go?” I ask.

“Looking at these papers… it’s like doing taxes. I don’t want to look at them right now.”

Mr. Bull is getting in his car. He’s pulling out. “I have to go,” I say. I hesitate for one moment, then I hang up and decide to follow Mr. Bull. Dorothy is still inside watching TV. He drives down three blocks into town and parks. He goes into a place called Aunt Sadie’s. I go in a minute after. It’s a new-ish place, kind of Mexican looking. There are a lot of potted plants hanging from the ceiling.

Mr. Bull is sitting at the bar watching golf. I sit down one stool away from him and order myself a red wine. He’s drinking a Black and Tan out of a bottle. There are only a couple other people at the bar. I know he’s looking at me as I sit down. Good thing I dressed already to go out to dinner. I’m wearing my black Capri pants and a black no sleeve turtleneck, but I don’t look as bedraggled as I usually do.

“How ’bout those Yankees,” he says.

I forgot that I left my Yankee cap on. I take it off. “Is my hair all mushed?”

“Nope,” he says smiling.

“These spikes are kind of hard to mush,” I tell him.

He nods in agreement. His eyes are a sky blue, crinkly around the edges. “You look like a lost boy,” I blurt out. I don’t know why I say that. There’s just this sealed-in look to him that makes me want to shatter his composure. I kind of shrug at him apologetically.

He looks at me. “I am,” he says. There’s something in his eyes. He’s flirting, but there’s something else there. Something real and sad. He reminds me of Johnny.

“Are you a lost girl?” he asks me.

“Maybe,” I say. I reach out my hand, “I’m Denise Schubert.” It’s the first name I can come up with; Denise was my best friend in first grade.

“Trevor Bull,” he says, shaking it evenly.

“You ever know anyone who really didn’t want to be married anymore, but didn’t want to be divorced either?” I ask him.

He laughs. “Yeah,” he says. “You?”

“Who would’ve thought? But here I am in limbo land.” I look around.

“Is that what they call this place?” he teases.

“Could be. What’s with this?” I say. There are spider plants hanging up above our heads. The sprouts are hanging down like little balls on strings. I bat one, and it goes nowhere. “Remember tether ball?” I say.

“That was a frustrating game,” he says.

“My husband just called to tell me he got the divorce papers, and he’s decided just to put them on the bottom of his “In” box. Where does that leave me?” I ask him. Sometimes the best way to get people talking about themselves is just to throw yourself into the mix. It’s better to share than to interrogate, I think.

“Having a drink with me,” he tells me.

I laugh. “You married?” I ask him.

“Not really,” he says. “Kind of separated.”

“Kind of separated,” I say. I do my archy eyebrows thing.

“It’s hard to explain.”

“You still live together?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t sound too separate.”

He nods.

“Separate bedrooms?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

“We just don’t touch,” he tells me. The way he says “touch” throws me back to that binocular-view of the way they were in their house together, how they almost had separate pathways in their house (invisible “his” and “hers” tracks on the carpets) and how those pathways didn’t intersect. I feel a little guilty that I’ve seen them not touching. Somehow their avoidance of each other is a kind of intimacy.

“That sounds lonely.”

“I like to be alone,” he says. “I’m comfortable being alone. It’s different from being lonely.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says nodding.

“How long has this been…?” I say.

“Fourteen years,” he says.

“No, I don’t mean how long you’ve been married. How long have you been… like this?”

“Oh, we’ve always been like this,” he says.

I must look a little stunned, because he explains. “When we got married, I had a duplex. I lived in the apartment downstairs and she lived upstairs with her mother. We never really moved in together. Then her mom died and we moved down here…”

“And does your wife like to be alone, too?”

“She never complains,” he says. “We’re like two planets orbiting around the same sun.”

“So you have some sort of agreement?”

“Well, not spelled out. No. We just go our own ways.”

“Meet back at the solar system…,” I say.

“Right,” he says.

“What if she didn’t come back one day?” I ask.

“She likes the solar system too much,” he says. “She likes the idea of the solar system.”

“And what about you?” I say.

“I’m not too much of an adventurer,” he says.

I’ve finished my wine and it’s getting close to 5:30. Plus, although I’m getting some good information, there’s something unbearably depressing about this conversation. I put some bills on the bar.