Back at my parents’ house, The Girls and Dixie were snoozing in the parlor. They’d found more of Dad’s peach wine and drained the bottle. Uncle Morty was nowhere to be found. He was probably out plotting revenge for me ditching him. I went up to the office to put the camera away and noticed the light on Dad’s answering machine blinking like mad, as usual. I sat down with my pen ready, and pressed the button. It was unlikely that Gavin would’ve left anything interesting on an answering machine, but you never knew.
The first four messages were from Dad’s stable of detectives. The business grew so much in the first ten years, he had three detectives working for him. Denny Elliot and Suzette Montag worked insurance fraud and various white-collar crimes. Stark Evans worked everything else, mostly domestics. None of them worked with or for Gavin, as far as I knew. I took down the information, and moved on to the rest of the calls. The next two were from clients, big industrial outfits asking about some background checks. Then I heard Gavin’s voice come through the recorder, tinny and thin. It was unlike his voice in person, but it was him.
“Tommy. Gavin. I have a situation. I’m driving back now. Call me on the second cell,” he said. Both Dad and Gavin carried several phones with them, in case of a problem.
“Tommy, where the hell are you? Call me ASAP. I’m four hours out.”
“It’s me again. God damn it. This is irritating. Don’t make me call Chuck. Meet me at the house if you get this.”
The first call came in at midnight, the second at two-thirty A.M. and the third at five. Gavin must’ve forgotten about the cruise. He never called Chuck or he’d probably still be alive. I sat down in Dad’s big chair, and kicked my feet up on the beast. I grabbed my pack and looked at his last calls, three to Dad, two to information, and the rest I didn’t recognize. Gavin called three numbers twice.
I dialed the first one and heard a voice say, “Rockville Church of Christ. Nancy speaking.”
“Hi. Did you say this was a church?” I said.
“Yes. This is the Rockville Church of Christ. How may I help you?”
“I’m not sure. What denomination are you?” I asked.
“We’re Protestant. Are you looking to join a congregation?”
I was so surprised I could only mutter, “I’m just doing a friend a favor. Thanks for your time.”
Gavin called a Protestant church? He was Episcopalian. It had to be a case, but I couldn’t exactly ask good old Nancy, “Hey, my friend was murdered. Can you help me out?” I’d have to call Nancy back and be a little more coherent.
I dialed the second number after forming a game plan. After all, Gavin could’ve been calling anyone, so I had to be less dufus and more Dad.
Like most of my game plans, it didn’t help. The phone rang forever and finally a familiar voice said, “Hello?”
“Hello, who is this?” I asked.
“Who is this?”
“I asked you first,” I said.
“Mercy?”
“Chuck?”
“How in the hell did you get this number?”
“Is this your cell?” I asked.
“You know it’s not,” he said.
“Whose is it?”
“First, tell me where you got this number.” Chuck was grinding his teeth. Not a pleasant sound on a phone.
“Fat chance.” I snorted.
“I’m not playing, Mercy. How did you get this number?”
“Got to go.”
I hung up before he could threaten me and dialed the third number.
“Good afternoon, Student Administration. This is Angela speaking.”
“Uh. I’m sorry, I’m not sure who exactly I’ve reached. Where are you?”
“This is Student Admin. Are you a student?” asked Angela.
“No. Is this a college?” I asked.
“This is the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Is there something I can help you with?”
“I hope so. Were you answering the phones last Friday?”
“No. I was out sick. Why?”
“If I knew I’d tell you,” I said.
I wouldn’t, but she didn’t know that. People like a little hopeless honesty.
“What’s wrong? What can I help you with?”
“I have a friend who called you on Friday and I’m trying to figure out who he talked to and why.”
“Well, like I said, I wasn’t here,” she said.
“Do you keep records of phone inquiries?”
“No.”
“Who would’ve been handling calls while you were gone?”
“I think they sent someone from personnel down.”
“You don’t know who,” I said.
“No,” she said.
“Could you find out?” I asked.
“I suppose so.” She didn’t sound too sure, so I decided to throw out some bait.
“I’m a private detective, and this is part of a very important investigation. I’d really appreciate your help.”
“Really? What’s the case?”
“That’s my client’s private information. I’m sure you understand,” I said.
“I do, I do, and I can’t give you any personal information either.”
“I understand completely. I just need to know why you were called in the first place.”
“OK. I can ask personnel who came up.” She was so excited she could hardly breathe.
“That would be great.” I gave her my name and cell number. Angela said she’d find out what she could.
I pushed my feet off the desk and let myself spin in Dad’s big chair. What did I know? Not much. For details, I’d have to rely on Dixie. She might know where Gavin was before he returned in such a lather, but, then again, she might not. Dixie wasn’t like my mother. She had nothing to do with the business, to the point that she didn’t answer the business line.
I wrote down my sad little list and doodled on it, drawing a pattern of paisley around the words and sentences. Gavin liked paisley. He wore paisley ties when he wore ties, which wasn’t often. He gave Dixie a paisley scarf for Christmas two years ago. I’d seen it knotted around her throat a hundred times. She’d had it on at our Easter brunch a few weeks before and Gavin unknotted it several times causing her to go to the bathroom and reassemble herself. He loved to pester her.
I couldn’t remember who said what or who ate what at Mom’s brunch, but we had a good time. Gavin smiled a lot. Dixie too. They held hands when they walked out the door. I watched them from the bay window, as they walked down the steps and through the gate. They turned left, got in their car and drove away. I would never see him alive again. I wished I’d known it at the time. I would’ve told him some things. How I liked his magic tricks and his barbecued ribs. I’d thank him for remembering that I only like dark chocolate with nuts. No one else ever did. Just little things, things that don’t matter much when people are alive, but become important when they’re not. I missed him, and I didn’t know if it would go away. Time heals all wounds they say, but I’d seen plenty of evidence that it didn’t. I didn’t think Dixie would heal. Hers wasn’t a flesh wound, and I hoped to God it wasn’t a mortal one either.
I dug out my cell phone and checked my messages. Sixty-eight. I hadn’t had sixty-eight messages in the last month. Heck. The last six months. On the upside, the first one was from Pete, the invisible doctor.
I called him and he actually answered. It might be a first.
“Hey. Where are you?” asked Pete.
“Mom and Dad’s. Where are you?” Like I needed to ask.
“Your apartment.”
“Wow. I thought you’d be at the hospital. I’m starting to think they have you on a choke chain.” I didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“It’s not that bad,” he said.
“Right.”
“Don’t be like that. I can take an hour at six. Let’s get some dinner.”
“Ooh, a whole hour.”
“What’s wrong?” Pete asked.
>
“Nothing,” I said.
“Don’t give me that. What’s wrong? And don’t say it’s my schedule because I know you don’t care.”
That wasn’t exactly true. I wanted to see him more, but I understood. Being a cop’s daughter taught me the value of independence. I lived my own life much as my mother had and fit Pete in whenever I could.
“It’s been a bad day.”
“The Siamese piss on the sofa again?”
“Not yet.” I hadn’t seen the cats. They were snots and had issues with being left in my care. They’d been known to pee on Mom’s favorite sofa to show their displeasure. Invisible cats weren’t a problem for me; as long as food disappeared from their bowls, I was happy.
“Well…”
“Gavin died.”
“MI?” Pete didn’t sound surprised. He was training to be a surgeon and people dropped dead around him all the time. I was the same way, but I knew Gavin and he didn’t.
“Sort of.”
“How do you have a sort of MI?”
“It wasn’t natural.”
“Define unnatural.”
“He was murdered.” I heard a gasp behind me. I turned and saw Dixie standing in the doorway with her hands over her mouth. Her eyes were round, and her knuckles were turning white.
“Oh, crap,” I said.
“What happened?” asked Pete.
“I’ll call you back,” I said, and hung up.
Dixie dropped her hands and yelled at me, “Shut up. You shut up. That’s not true. It’s not true, so you just shut your mouth.”
I couldn’t speak. Anything I might have said evaporated.
“You think you know. You think you know like your father, but you don’t. You don’t. He had a heart condition. So you don’t know and shut up.”
“Dixie, I’m so sorry,” I said.
“I said, shut up!” She brought her hands to her mouth, hard enough to knock her head back, and she screamed into them. She didn’t move. She stood in the doorway screaming and looking at me with rage. It overwhelmed me. I knew for the first time what it was like to be scared of someone you love. I stood up, and walked to her with my hands in front of me.
Before I reached her, Dixie’s eyes changed, her screaming stopped, and she walked out of the room. I followed her down the hall, trying to find the right apology inside of me. I wanted, no, I needed to say the right thing for the both of us. Instead, I followed her to my parents’ bedroom. She was drunk and unsteady on her feet. She lurched towards the stairs, over corrected, and before I reached her she bumped one of Mom’s framed needlepoint pictures. Mom had worked on the canvas for a year and it hung in a prime viewing spot. Tough luck for it because it fell off its hook and shattered at my feet. Dixie glanced at it and continued down the hall, slower and less sure with every step.
In the bedroom, she reached for the Ativan bottle I’d refilled in a fit of stupidity.
“That’s not a good idea, Dixie.” I took the bottle from her hand and put it in my pocket.
“What else am I supposed to do?” she asked.
“Just lay down for awhile.”
I pulled back the covers. She sat, and I took off her shoes. She lay back against the fluffy pillows. Mom’s small reading lamp lit the room and Dixie’s eyes shone wide and watery in its dim glow. In the near darkness, she looked as young as me; maybe younger because the unexpected had happened and no explanations were offered. Her eyes showed her confusion.
“Do you want the TV on?” I asked.
“What will happen?” she asked.
“With what?”
“Will they find out who did it?”
“Yes,” I said, confident in that, at least.
“Will you?”
“Yes, I will. I’ll do anything you want.”
“I think I want to sleep now,” she said, closing her eyes and turning her face from me.
I turned off the lamp and went downstairs. It was rare that I felt bad about anything. I mean really felt bad. Normally, I could negotiate with myself; tell myself it had to be done, things like that. But this was one of those rare occasions when I had done something with no excuse available. I needed chocolate and fast. There was only one place to go when I needed chocolate and comfort with no questions asked. Thank God Aunt Tennessee was always home.