Raked Over

  * * *

  That afternoon, as we worked on maintenance projects at the Finnegans’ in the eastern part of the county, Liz and I talked about my visit with Barry Correda. The more we discussed it, the more I felt that because I knew that he lied about a lot of what he said, what made the rest of it any more true? Like any of the parts about Shannon? Carol may be right about coincidences, but Barry Correda’s behavior just did not ring true. Before I talked to him I was about ready to believe Shannon had started drinking again and committed suicide—just as his story laid out. But now, I didn’t believe him. I put thinking about the Facebook photos of a drunken Shannon aside for awhile, because I was convinced that something was not right about them, either. For one thing, why would Shannon want to advertise that she was drunk?

  Always fighting injustice herself, Liz Burzachiello was indignant, too, about Barry Correda spreading false reports about Shannon to get everyone to believe that Shannon was capable of spiraling downward into suicide. Liz had worked long hours alongside Shannon that summer and had a high regard for her.

  “He seems slimy to me,” she said. “Seems like, well, seems like he should be shown up as a liar! I mean, he’s really trashin’ Shannon!” She stabbed her shovel blade into the ground in emphasis. Things were becoming personal for her, too.

  “How, though? It seems he has everyone convinced he’s the good guy, and that Shannon was a drunk.” I was frustrated that Barry Correda had made himself look so good at Shannon’s expense.

  But then I thought of another viewpoint. “Not everyone’s fooled, though. Those people didn’t really know Shannon. The ones of us who knew her are having a harder time accepting her supposed behavior.” I thought about that for a moment as I pulled the tarp, piled high with weeds, closer to where we were working.

  “I doubt if he knows that Bernice doesn’t consider her niece a drunk—Bernice saw her, talked to her—because he doesn’t know that Shannon was visiting her on the way back from business trips. And he didn’t know how well Hannah knew Shannon before he was in the picture, so he just gave her the standard line,” I said.

  “And he didn’t convince me, because it was hard for me to believe just about anything he said. He was such a bad liar! I think he thought he didn’t have to put much effort into fooling an ‘old lady’.” We both laughed.

  “Yeah, an ‘old lady’ who can do this kind of hard work all day!” she said in answer to Barry’s immature thinking.

  I smiled at her compliment, and started deadheading the rose bushes along the walkway on the north side of the house. Liz Burzachiello was hot to take some action. “We ought to do something!” This went on all afternoon, interspersed with my pruning instructions for the roses, and more pulling of bindweed. Always more pulling of bindweed.

  Finally worn down I asked, “Just what do you have in mind?” not intending to do anything.

  “I don’t know—something.” That was helpful. “Maybe talk to him again? Emma always says to double-check your perceptions,” she said, as if quoting her partner would add weight to her argument.

  As far as I was concerned, there was no argument, and continued loading up Wanda, ready to go back to town.

  “I know!” she said, “Let’s go over there, it’s not that far. Let’s go over there and, uh—”

  “And what? Ask him out in the parking lot and accuse him of being a sleazebag?” It was true that it wasn’t that far over to the small town of Pursgers, where Binder Enterprises was located, but what good would it do to go over there?

  “Come on, I’d like to see the place,” she said. “It’ll be an adventure!” feeding my own words back to me about embracing adventure, taking the scenic route, and other blather that she patiently listened to over the years. Perhaps now it was time to walk the walk.

  “Well, maybe.” Despite my denials, my curiosity was getting the better of me. “If we go over there, and if we have thought of something on the way over that makes sense, and if it is doable, and if we won’t get caught—no! We’re not going to do anything that would matter if we do get caught!” I said adamantly, trying to control the situation before it happened. “But we’re not going to get caught because we’re not going to do anything!”

  “Yeh, boss,” Liz Burzachiello smiled as she unhitched the trailer, and put it and her car on a side street.

  We took off for Binder Enterprises.

  As we pulled into the huge Binder parking lot, we still had no plan. I pulled into a spot close to the main building, and parked; Liz suggested that we walk back and see if the limo might be there, and that maybe we could talk to the limo guy.

  “About what?” I asked as we made our way along the side of the building.

  “I don’t know. You can think of something—you’re the chatty one.”

  “Yeah, right,” I sputtered, “We’ll take a quick look in the back.” I wasn’t sure I could come up with any reason to question the limo driver. Did he chauffeur Bernice Thorton? Where? Hopefully it was to DIA and onto a plane for a sunny around-the-world cruise.

  Liz hissed “Stop!” and interrupted my thinking. She motioned to look around the corner.

  I peered around and saw Barry Correda and another man lighting up cigarettes by the back entrance. Looking the part of a clean-cut young man on his way up in the world, Barry had taken off his suit jacket, and his long-sleeved, crisply ironed white shirt glared in the sun. The other guy looked scruffier, wearing a mashed trucker hat, dirty low-hanging jeans, a days’ old beard, and aviator sunglasses. The pair of them didn’t seem to fit, but they were in animated conversation, with Barry Correda strutting around in front of the other guy like a bantam rooster. We stepped back next to the wall around the corner so they couldn’t see us.

  “Who is it? Is it Cowboy Binder?” she asked in a loud whisper. Liz loved that name. “Is it Barry Correda?”

  “Barry’s the short guy. I don’t know who the other one is.”

  “What do you want to do?” Liz asked, peering back around the corner. “Wish we could hear what they’re talking about.” She was impatient for action.

  “Yeah, be a fly on the wall,” I said. “Invisible.” Then it dawned on me: What is more invisible than something you see everywhere? Like maintenance workers. Like a crew with leaf blowers working flower beds. What if we became those invisible workers and worked our way down to the two smokers? Maybe we could hear something.

  Liz Burzachiello liked the idea. But she looked at me and said, “He’s gonna recognize you, you know. Even if you don’t look the part of an ‘old lady’ today.”

  She was right, Barry Correda would recognize me. I didn’t want to send Liz down there by herself, but she was raring to go. I calculated that any risk for her was slight, and that it would be worth a try.

  We quickly went back to the car and loaded Liz up with the leaf blower, pulled her Cincinnati Reds hat down low on her head, and added a windbreaker, the only thing I had that looked uniform-ish. As we hurried back from the car, I instructed her to keep the leaf blower off—just use it as a prop—so she could hear. Then she came up with an even better idea.

  “You know that phone Louie gave me?” she asked. I nodded, remembering that sister Louie was a technology first adapter and she recycled her old models through Liz. “It’s got a great microphone. Why don’t I call you, and try to keep real close; then you can hear what they’re saying, too!”

  We took another look. The guys were still smoking. “No, they’ll get suspicious of you, I think, trying to stay in one place.” Then I smiled. “Let’s use the phone, but see if you can get close enough to slide it under the bench they’re on.” I pointed to a juniper behind where they sat, and said she could pretend to prune it, and then stoop down and put the phone on the bare ground beneath them or just behind them as she walked by. “Think you can do that? It’ll take some acting.”

  “Sure!” Liz Burzachiello always had confidence in herself.

  “Put the mike on high, dial me, and punch on t
he speaker phone; then slide it under the bench, and come on back. We can listen on my phone.”

  “You got your phone on you, Lily?” Liz asked as I usually left it in the car so I wouldn’t lose it on a job site.

  “Yeah, for once!” I grinned as I groped for it in my pocket. “Okay, go!” I sent her around the corner, nervously watching as she worked her way down the back side of the building.

  She clipped her way up to the area where the two men sat, keeping her back to them; as I had anticipated, they paid no attention. She started working away on the juniper, slowly clipping around to where the Barry Correda and the other guy were in deep conversation. It seemed to be taking too long, and I hoped she wouldn’t overdo it with the clipping, and have them notice her.

  But then she stepped right behind them, and I saw her stoop down as if to pick up a twig, and stand back up, not losing a stride. She kept walking and turned at the far side of the juniper and then turned back, the tall juniper between her and the men. Liz Burzachiello had a huge grin on her face and gave me a half-masted thumbs up. She did a little walk-run back towards the corner I was crouching behind, pretending to clip here, clip there. Not a bad acting job. Barry Correda had looked up once to take a pull on his cigarette and glanced at her, and then looked back down at his cell phone where he was flipping through a queue, still in conversation with the other guy.

  It worked. I could hear them talking as soon as Liz placed the phone underneath them. Not all of the words could be heard clearly and sometimes static blurred the sound, but I could hear something about a hockey team party they had attended, and they seemed to be boasting about their female conquests there. So much for Barry Correda being devoted to Shannon, I thought.

  Then Mystery Man’s voice whined, “Dammit, we should be partyin’ in Vegas right now, man! Not with some skank ass ‘hoes in Greeley!”

  Barry Correda sneered, “Mother of god! Be patient and shut the fuck up! If we just sit tight, things should be clear.”

  “That fuckin’ Daryl, god damn son of a bitch, if he hadn’t—”

  “Daryl?” snarled Barry, “Let’s put the blame where it needs to go here, asshole. You should have found it yourself! Her stuff was in that trunk, and you should of kept an eye on it. I never saw the fuckin’ thing. That was your job, shithead.” Barry Correda loudly hacked out a wad of phlegm. Liz and I both cringed at the sound, and stared wide-eyed at each other at what we were overhearing.

  “Yeah, but I sent him over there to git it as soon as he got his bike fixed!”

  “It was your brilliant idea to send that asscracker over there on his pussy cycle? No wonder he couldn’t bring the fuckin’ thing back.”

  “His truck was real broke, man—his Yamaha was all he had! Anyway, how was I supposed to know he’d fuck it up? That cocksucker! He didn’t find nothin’, though. No fuckin’ book of numbers! Fuck, it’s not my fault! How was I supposed to know? That cunt didn’t say nothin’ about no fuckin’ trunk to me!”

  Liz Burzachiello put her hand on my arm to stop me from starting around the corner at the cretin. That “C” word was so gratingly insulting that I instinctively wanted to take the guy out. But I nodded at Liz to let her know I would contain myself, and not be stupid. I wasn’t that brave, anyway.

  We listened as Barry Correda continued his malicious tirade. “Look, asswipe, maybe she didn’t put a fuckin’ book in that trunk. Or if there was a fuckin’ book in the first place! Maybe she was just dickin’ with you. You know she couldn’t stand you, you son of a bitch. It was just her telling a shithead like you she kept a book of numbers somewhere? That hasn’t been found, and we’re getting the fuckin’ trunk back in a couple of days anyway.”

  “But—”

  “Would you shut the fuck up? We’re lucky Daryl’s fuckin’ ass stupidity didn’t bring nobody looking for us. I say we stay low, don’t bring no attention to ourselves. When I get it back, I’ll check for the fuckin’ book because you dickheads are fuckin’ idiots! If I find nothin’, then no one else knows a god damn thing, either, and we’re money. Nobody else pays any more attention to it, or us. I have everything under control.”

  “Maybe Daryl—”

  “Forget fuckin’ Daryl! He fucked up, and he’s your boy, so I consider it that you fucked up! You better fix it. You better be worried if she was fuckin’ with you or not, because if she was, well, you don’t know shit, and then nobody’s going to be happy. Anyway, that old biddy who has the trunk now believed everything I said, don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry about me—”

  “You better worry about yourself, fuck face! I have this thing under control now, no thanks to you. Old-what’s-her-name was all googly eyes at me, anyway—you know how those stupid old hags are. All she cared about was getting it off her hands. She was dumber than—”

  I didn’t get to find out how dumb I was because Liz quietly hissed at me from her post at the corner. “They’re standing up!” I peeked around the corner. Barry Correda had thrown down his cigarette and started putting on his suit jacket.

  He gestured at the other guy and said in a menacing tone that I could just hear, “You keep your fuckin’ mouth shut! Don’t talk to nobody else about nothing. Now get the hell out of here before the car gets here,” he said, looking at a black limo pulling into the far corner of the lot. “I don’t want him seein’ you.” The guy in the hat walked across the lane to a dull beige pickup, got in, and drove off.

  The limo pulled up and disgorged at curbside two men, Cowboy and Phillip Binder. Phillip I recognized from seeing him pass me going into Barry’s office during my visit. Barry Correda was standing there waiting for them, and I could see him fawning over the old man’s handshake, bowing, and scraping. Cowboy Binder didn’t seem to pay much attention and instead seemed in a discussion with his son. The two Binders walked up the steps together and went through the door held open by the chauffer. Barry Correda trailed behind.

  CHAPTER EIGHT