Rosemary Remembered (3 page)

Rosemary. On her right side across the vinyl seat, face turned up, empty eyes open, glassy, sightlessly staring. A neat, smooth, black hole under her left cheekbone, the seat under her head rusty with dried blood, furry with flies. Dark blood, like red ink, spattered all over the passenger side of the cab, the dash, the windshield. Blood and bits of something. Bits of the inside of Rosemary's head.

I gagged and stepped back. The cicadas were a hundred buzzing rattlers, the heat a hard, sweaty hand pressing on my head. I grabbed the door to steady myself, then yanked my hand back, hoping I hadn't smudged whatever prints there were.

After a minute I forced myself to look again, but not at Rosemary. The keys were in the ignition, Rosemary's purse on the floor, the wallet visible. A plastic grocery sack beside the purse spilled bars of soap, a carton of milk, a head of cabbage, all polka-dotted with blood. A Handy Jack Dry Cleaners bag full of clothing hung from the hook over the passenger door, blood-spattered. In the back of the truck I could see a gray metal file cabinet and a chair. Groceries, the dry cleaning, used furniture. Ordinary artifacts of ordinary, everyday life.

But for Rosemary Robbins, there was no more ordinary life, no life at all. The brassy rattle of the cicadas was suddenly swallowed up in her stillness. A sour sickness curdled in my throat. I swallowed it down and leaned over her body, clad in expensive beige slacks, creamy silk blouse, paisley scarf, to feel for a pulse at her throat. Nothing. Her skin was cool, her stillness utter, complete, final.

I looked down, feeling her separateness, sensing the absolute distance between us. Who had she been, this woman I had admired but barely known? What had empowered her, brought her pain, brought her peace? What had brought her to this terrible end? And I knew with sad certainty that it was only here, only now, in this last, quiet moment, that Rosemary Robbins could be whatever woman she was. In a little while, she would be the coroner's corpse, the cops' homicide, the DA's murder victim, the media's crime of the hour. Each of us, the living, would dissect her, construct her, imagine her, compose her as it suited our purposes, our needs. It was only in this moment, her death just discovered and not yet acknowledged, that she could be simply and purely herself, whoever she had been. Here, on the sly verge of death, I wished I had known her better.

I stepped back and took a deep breath, coming back to myself. Then I turned away and left the body in peace for the time it took to find a neighbor at home and call 911. When the PSPD showed up, I was beside the truck again, waiting, pacing, collecting observations: the door had been unlatched, the window was rolled up, unbroken, her wallet was still in her purse, there was no sign of a weapon. Unless the gun was out of sight beneath her, she hadn't committed suicide. If she'd been murdered, the killer must have shot her through the open door while she was sitting behind the wheel—last night, probably, just as she got home with her furniture, the groceries, the dry cleaning. I wondered whether she'd known what was about to happen. And wondered
why,
in God's name. Why Rosemary? My eyes, of their own accord, went to the spattered blood, the bits of flesh. Why, why?

The first cop on the scene was a slight, nervous brown-skinned man with large spaniel-brown eyes and a name badge that identified him as Gomez, H. He took one look at the body and ran back to the car to radio for assistance. A few minutes later a second cop arrived, Walker, G., a broad-shouldered woman with a competent jaw, a gritty voice, and a look of twitchy impatience, like a second-string offensive tackle with something to prove — Grace Walker, promoted a couple of months ago from prisoner attendant at the jail to patrol officer. Grace's mother, Sadie Stumb, works at Cavette's Grocery, on the corner of Guadalupe and Green. "That girl," Sadie always tells me proudly, as she rings up my fresh produce, "that Grace, she's goin' far. Ever'body better git outta her way."

Grace looked at Rosemary, then back at me. "Friend of yours?" She turned once again to peer closer. "Sister?"

"Sister?" I was surprised. "What makes you say that?"

Grace raised her heavy eyebrows in a facial shrug. "You look kinda alike. Brown hair, square sorta face."

"Not a sister," I said. "A friend." But that wasn't true, either. Rosemary Robbins and I hadn't been close enough to be friends, except in the most superficial sense. "A business associate, actually," I amended.

I glanced at the still face once again. I hadn't even known Rosemary well enough to know who would be sad, now that she was dead. Who would find the world empty, now that she wasn't in it?

"What kinda business?"

"She was my accountant. She did my taxes, handled my business accounts, stuff like that." I could hear a siren in the distance. More police were on the way.

"Taxes, huh?" Grace moved her shoulder in an economical gesture, expressing understanding. "Maybe somebody didn't get what they thought they had comin', and they took it out on her. I read the other day that accountants are always gettin' threats from people who think they been ripped off. Like lawyers, you know? Lawyers are always gettin' theirselves killed. Somebody just busts into the office and starts shootin'." She sighed and lifted her cap off her head, wiping her sweaty forehead. "Doesn't hardly pay to get ahead, does it?"

The police car pulled up at the curb, and we both turned. If this had been Houston, the vehicle would have been a Mobile Crime Scene Unit, a large white van equipped with state-of-the-art portable forensic technology and manned by a half-dozen criminalists. But this wasn't Houston, and Police Chief Bubba Harris had brought only two uniforms with him. One of them began to loop yellow crime-scene tape across the drive while the other unpacked camera gear. Bubba (his real name is Earl, but not even his mother uses it) conferred with Gomez for a moment, then with Grace Walker, putting them to work. Then he turned to me.

Bubba is in his mid-fifties, with hair going grizzled and a paunch that sags over his hand-tooled Western belt as if the last dozen plates of barbecue are still settling. His gray shirt was wet under the arms, and his unlit cigar — I've never actually seen it lit—was clamped in one corner of his mouth. He growled around it.

"McQuaid's truck, ain't it?"

I wasn't surprised that Bubba recognized The Beast. He and McQuaid, cop and ex-cop, have a fraternal relationship.

"I came to pick it up," I said. "Rosemary borrowed it yesterday evening about six to move some furniture she'd bought—what you see in the back of the truck. McQuaid offered to give her a hand, but she said she could handle it by herself." Typical Rosemary. She was the sort of woman who handled everything by herself. She didn't ask for a thing.

Bubba's heavily jowled face was dark, thick brows pulled down. Like most cops, he doesn't much like lawyers, even ex-lawyers. On the other hand, he likes

McQuaid, and the fact that McQuaid likes me complicates the matter somewhat. Over the several years we have known one another, he has grown more tolerant of me.

"Any idea who might've done it?" he asked. "Assumin' she didn't do it to herself."

I shook my head. A flash flared as the photographer did his work. Grace Walker was hunkered down beside the door, dusting for prints. Gomez was beginning a search of the area around the truck. A fourth cop was motioning to a passing motorist who had stopped his car to gawk, directing him to drive on. Bubba turned to the truck and Grace straightened up and stepped aside. He felt rapidly and deftly under the body.

"Doesn't 'pear to be a gun," he said.

"Wouldn't hardly be, I don't reckon," Grace said dryly. "Wound on the left side and the angle the way it is, she'd almost have to hold it in her left hand. It'd be in her lap or on the floor, and it isn't."

Bubba did not seem pleased that a mere female had noticed these things, but he only grunted.

"Had her legs swung partway 'round like she was get-tin' out," Grace went on. She was about to say something else, but Bubba turned away. The EMS van had just pulled up at the curb, followed by another car, a green Oldsmobile. Maude Porterfield, Justice of the Peace, got out of the Olds, conferred with the EMS techs for a minute, then came up the drive toward us, leaning on a cane.

In Texas, the law requires that a JP rule on every suspicious death. This requirement sometimes gives law enforcement officials heartburn, but not when the JP is Judge Porterfield. At seventy-three, she has served the county for forty-two years. Her white hair may be a little thin, but her hearing and her right knee are the only things about her that don't work at an optimum level. In addition to being a JP, she teaches criminal procedure in the seminars conducted by the Texas Justice Court Training Center, headquartered in the Criminal Justice Department at CTSU. Judge Porterfield and I had met at one of the center's social functions and hit it off immediately. As we say in Texas, she don't take no bull.

"Mornin", Earl," she said. "Hot as a pistol." She straightened the shiny belt of her red watermelon-print dress and nodded at me. "Mornin', China. How you been?" Without waiting for my answer, she switched back to Bubba. "Got a problem here, 'pears like."

Bubba plucked his cigar out of his face and raised his voice two notches. The judge wears a hearing aid in her right ear. "Mornin', Judge Porterfield. A shootin's what it
is
.

The judge, who isn't much more than five feet high, rose on her tiptoes to peer through the open door of the truck. She made a tch-tch noise with her tongue against even white dentures. "Suicide?"

"Murder," Bubba said.

"Domestic violence?"

Bubba looked at me. "The gal was married?"

"Her name is Rosemary Robbins," I said. "She was divorced, or about to be." Rosemary had mentioned the divorce in passing, but hadn't elaborated. Our encounters, while pleasant, had been focused on business and rather hurried. She was always checking her watch, as if she had to get on to another business engagement. It was a restless habit that had reminded me of myself, in my former life. "She was married to Curtis Robbins," I added, offering up the last bit of personal information I had.

Judge Porterfield pulle
d her sparse white eyebrows to
gether. "Robbins? Manages Miller's Gun and Sporting Goods?"

Gomez came around the truck. "That's him," he said. "Too bad she didn't file a complaint when she had the chance."

"You been out here on a DV, Hector?" Bubba asked.

"Yeah. Back 'round Christmas. She phoned in a complaint, but by the time I got here, she'd decided not to press charges. Usual story."

The judge took a notebook out of her purse, which was red and shiny and shaped like a slice of watermelon. She looked at Gomez, obviously not accepting the "usual story" bit. "What did he say when you questioned him?"

Gomez colored. "He was gone, an' she didn't want me talkin' to him. Said she thought it might make him worse. She didn't want ever'body in town readin' in the paper 'bout her gettin' beat up."

Grace Walker shook her head gloomily. "Everybody'11 be readin' about her now."

The judge looked from Grace to me. "She and Robbins have any kids?"

"Not as far as I know," I said. "She had a business. She was a CPA."

"Woman with a business probably doesn't
want
any kids," Grace remarked sagely.

Bubba gave her a warning look. "This their place?" he asked me.

I shook my head. "I don't think so. I got the impression she lived here alone. Her office is in the back of the house." That much I knew, because we'd met there to go over my tax stuff.

"Mebbe we better take a look at the office, Yer Honor," Bubba said.

Judge Porterfield sighed. "Right, Earl. It'll get us out of this gol-durn heat." She and Bubba walked toward the house.

Gomez blinked. "Earl?"

"She used to teach the chief in Sunday School when he was a kid," Grace said. "Earl's his real name."

"Earl," Gomez mused. "How 'bout that."

Grace turned to me. "You wanta give me your statement now, Miz Bayles?"

When that was done, I promised to stop at the police station and leave my prints for elimination purposes, then got back in my furnace of a car. ABC Rentals would have to deliver those -extra tables to the hotel, and McQuaid would have to rent a car. It'd be a few days before Bubba turned The Blue Beast loose. She'd done a lot of things during the course of her long and checkered career, but I'd bet this was the first time she'd been a murder scene.

By two o'clock, the temperature was an infernal ninety-nine, and the buildings and trees were shimmering under the blazing sun. I'd plowed through two-thirds of my list of things to do for the herb conference. Next was The Springs Hotel, where I needed to check on last-minute details. That's where I was headed now, the sun visor pulled low against the glare of the aluminum sky and the air conditioner turned up to gale force. Jeff Clark owned and managed the hotel, which had been a family business for several generations. I needed to talk to him.

But my heart wasn't in the herb conference any longer. I was remembering Rosemary Robbins, sprawled on the seat of McQuaid's truck, an obscene hole in her smooth cheek, flies buzzing in her hair. It was oddly intimate, this meeting in death, in contrast to the impersonality of our meetings while she was alive.