The Pink Flamingo Murders (29 page)

I hung around the area, talking to people as they arrived for the memorial service, hoping to learn something new. The only thing I picked up was Dale and Kathy’s latest rehabbing disaster. They’d successfully woodstripped all the wallpaper off the flowered bathtub and finished the molding in the living room, Kathy told me.

“I have time to work on it, now that I’m out of a job,” she said cheerfully. “And we don’t have quite the money pressure we thought we would.”

Now that Caroline was dead, I thought, and no longer around to blackmail you into an expensive rehab on your porch.

“When I finished the living room molding, I was so relieved,” Kathy said. “I leaned against the wall with one hand, looked around, and said, ‘You know, Dale, I think we’re finally getting somewhere.’ And with that, my arm went through the wall up to the elbow.”

“Good lord,” I said. “What happened?”

“The previous owner had patched the holes in the plaster with cardboard, then wallpapered over it,” Dale said. “It looked fine, but when Kathy leaned on the
papered-over cardboard, she caved in a four-by-six-foot hole in the wall. We started sounding the other walls throughout the house. That was the biggest hole, but there are others. But we’ll get them.” He kissed her lightly on the nose. Kathy smiled at him and kissed him back. I felt achingly lonely. Lyle and I used to look at each other like that. Dale and Kathy were so wrapped up in each other, they didn’t notice when I moved away. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. Tears would have been out of place at this memorial service. It was more like a cross between a cocktail party and a neighborhood meeting. I was surprised by how many people were there, from old Mrs. Meyer in a dark-blue house dress to a cleaned-up Ron the Rehabber, plus city officials and neighborhood activists. The chairs had filled up, and now people were standing.

I was also surprised at who didn’t show. Caroline’s ex-husband, James Graftan, wasn’t there. There was no sign of the elusive Sally. I didn’t expect her former boyfriend, Darryl, to be at the memorial service, and I wasn’t disappointed. Mayhew was not there, either, and he usually showed up at funerals. Maybe he didn’t know about this one. Well, that put me ahead of him. Whatever I learned today was my exclusive information. Too bad it was nothing, so far.

The memorial service started about ten-ten. Margie had had time to dry her damp hair and put on a dark-brown pant suit. Dina, in a navy suit and beige blouse, served as master of ceremonies. She looked out on the crowd of maybe sixty people, some standing, some sitting uncomfortably on the leaning and sagging chairs, and thanked everyone for being there. All signs of fluffy, cat-loving Dina were gone. This woman was a smooth politician with a firm, clear speaking voice. “Caroline worked tirelessly to improve North Dakota Place,” she said. “She was literally on the job night and day. I saw Caroline with her wheelbarrow at six in the
morning, and at six at night. I even saw her working at three
A.M
. She was unstoppable.”

Patricia began sniffling when Dina said that. She continued, “Caroline never thought of anything but the welfare of North Dakota Place.”

Well, no one would argue with that.

“Now you see the results all around you. Caroline’s good work has taken root, and it will continue to grow into a beautiful memorial for her.”

That was tactful, I thought. Dina told the truth but put a nice spin on it. No wonder she did so well at City Hall. Patricia was next. As she walked to the microphone, I saw how awful the woman looked. Her hair was dirty, and her washed-out blue eyes were hidden behind an ugly pair of brown-rimmed glasses. She had gone from slender to gaunt. Her chest, which was always a billboard for some cause, looked naked with only a plain white blouse.

“Caroline did a lot for this neighborhood,” Patricia said. “She made so many changes. . ..” Then Patricia started sobbing so hard, she couldn’t go on. Dina had to lead her away from the microphone and back to her chair. Poor Patricia. I thought those were probably the only tears anyone would shed for Caroline, and I felt a howling loneliness.

Next Margie stepped up to the microphone. There was a little dissatisfied murmuring, but she quickly quelled it when she said, “As you know, Caroline and I had our differences.” There was a long pause. “Caroline had differences with nearly everyone on North Dakota Place. She was hot-tempered. She’d do anything to make a buck. And she acted like she owned the whole street, instead of every other house on it. But however she got her results, I think there’s one thing none of us can argue: Caroline did an outstanding job of bringing North Dakota Place back to life. Now it is up to us to make sure Caroline’s work doesn’t die with
her. She gave us something, and now we can give it back to her.”

Maybe it was an odd thing to say at a memorial service, reminding everyone of the deceased’s faults. If she had asked me ahead of time, I would have tried to talk Margie out of that speech. But it was exactly right for this ceremony. It was what everyone was thinking. I saw many North Dakota Place residents nodding their approval, and a few even applauded, then stopped, embarrassed, as if applause didn’t belong at a memorial service.

After Margie, the alderman put out his cigar and stepped up for the final ceremonies. He planted the last impatiens and then unveiled a plaque dedicating the angel fountain to Caroline. He gave a short talk about cooperation being the key to the city’s revival but stopped short of a campaign speech. Dina thanked everyone and invited them back to her house for refreshments.

As a memorial service, it was better than nothing, but it left me curiously unsatisfied. I would have preferred that Caroline be sent off with candles and incense and music. Nothing beats the Catholics, my old church, for pure ritual. Then I saw Caroline’s sturdy no-nonsense figure in my mind and realized she probably wouldn’t have enjoyed that kind of funeral fuss. She’d want exactly the good-bye she’d had, as long as no one hurt her grass. Still, I felt vaguely depressed as I headed toward Dina’s house. But this was a funeral, of sorts, so I was supposed to feel depressed. I was also hungry. Funerals did that to me.

Dina’s house looked a lot like Margie’s, except it was a little smaller and a lot better furnished. Stan the cat was nowhere to be seen. Dina met us at the door. I told her what a great job she did organizing the service. She thanked me and waved me toward the dining room before the next group arrived.

Dina had her dining room table covered with a real St. Louis spread: half a spiral-sliced ham, a platter of sliced turkey, cold cuts and cheeses, a basket of rye bread, white bread, and dollar rolls. There was another basket of warm corn bread, cranberry bread, and walnut bread, undoubtedly baked by Dale and Kathy. Little ornamental dishes that had to be somebody’s wedding presents were filled with homemade relishes and pickles, jams and jellies, mustard, mayonnaise and ketchup. There was Sterno burning under a huge pot of mostaccioli, the all-purpose St. Louis noodle dish that feeds the multitudes cheap. If Christ were a South Sider, he would have skipped the loaves and fishes and brought out a big bowl of mostaccioli. There was three-bean salad, marinated mushroom salad, rice salad, corn salad, and a couple of other salads I couldn’t identify. The air was perfumed by stainless steel urns of coffee, decaf and regular. There were jugs of cold white wine and tubs of iced beer. On the mahogany sideboard were cakes of every description: chocolate layer, coffee cake, split-lemon cake, and homemade carrot cake on an old-fashioned fancy flowered plate.

I fixed myself a ham sandwich, piled on the mostaccioli, skipped the salads, and cut a huge slab of carrot cake, so I’d get my vegetables. I made polite conversation with various people and then went looking for Patricia, so I could talk to her about the recycling section. I found her standing in the living room, staring straight ahead, with a nearly empty glass of white wine in one hand. The flush on her face and the unfocused look in her eyes indicated this wasn’t the first glass of wine she’d downed, and it didn’t look like she’d eaten anything. I’d better start sobering her up, if I was going to get any information out of her. I fixed her a plate of food, loading up on mostaccioli and bread, then added a turkey sandwich. Patricia wolfed it all down,
as if she hadn’t eaten in days. From the gaunt look of her, maybe she hadn’t. After she cleaned up her plate, her eyes seemed a little clearer. I brought her some coffee. Then I cut her a slice of chocolate cake and carrot cake, too. She was thin enough to eat both.

“I made that,” she said, taking a forkful of carrot cake. “It’s not too bad,” she decided.

“It was delicious,” I said. I’d already cleaned up my piece, and if people hadn’t been looking, I’d have cut myself another. But after the initial rush at her food, Patricia picked at the rest of the carrot cake and didn’t eat any of the chocolate. She’d lost interest in food.

But she had plenty of interest in the recycling section. Patricia was eager to talk about it. Her eyes lit up with the fire of a fanatic about to make a conversion. “Let’s go to my house right now,” she said. “I can’t wait to start. There’s so much to talk about. I’ll show you what can be done by the individual, then I’ll give you some phone numbers of people who will have more information.”

Fine with me. If Patricia wanted to do my work for me, I’d let her. I found Dina, said my good-byes and thank-yous, and went out the front door with Patricia. A taxicab was pulling up at Sally’s house, and I saw a lumpy forty-something brown-haired woman in a beige suit get out. “Is that Sally?”

“It sure is,” said Patricia. “She’s almost never home during the day. I wonder if Sally’s feeling bad?” I didn’t know why she was home, but I was certainly glad to see her. That woman was harder to find than Jimmy Hoffa. As Sally turned to pay the driver, I got a good look at her face. She had dark bruises around her eyes, big white bandages on the sides of her face, and an Ace bandage wrapped over her head and neck.

“Look at Sally!” Patricia said. “She looks like she was in a car accident.”

That was one possibility. Or she could have been
beaten up by her ex-boyfriend, Darryl. Whatever, she wasn’t going anywhere in her current condition. She could hardly walk to her front door. This was getting more and more interesting. I couldn’t wait to talk to Sally. Just as soon as I got this recycling interview out of the way, I’d knock on her door.

As I followed Patricia around to her backyard, she began tossing off little recycling facts. “Some of the things you can do to save energy are so simple,” she said. “Don’t leave the refrigerator door open when you pour yourself a glass of milk. That wastes enormous amounts of energy.”

“Sure does,” I said. “All those moms screaming at their kids to close the fridge door.”

Patricia’s look flash-froze my feeble joke. “Buy used whenever possible,” she said, as if this command was on stone tablets. “Almost everything I own is refinished, reused, or renewed.” When we passed the compost pile she said, “Did you know that composting can provide natural, nonchemical fertilizer and keep up to fifty percent of your household waste from using up valuable landfill space?”

“Amazing,” I said, trying to scribble notes and step over a rusty garden tool. I thought Patricia kept a neater yard than this. Tools were lying in the grass and weeds were clogging the organic garden.

Patricia kept spouting recycling facts. “Did you know that by installing low-flow shower heads, you can save more than six thousand gallons of water a year?”

“Do they work any better than low-flush toilets?” I said. “I can’t see how I save water when I flush three times instead of once.”

Her voice went absolutely flat. “That kind of obstructionist thinking is destroying the planet,” she said as she opened the back door to her beautiful kitchen. Except it didn’t look so beautiful. The place was a
mess. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink and all over the counter. Any space not covered with dishes was a jumble of food containers, crumbs, sticky knives, dirty spoons, and open jars. Milk had been spilled on the counter. It ran down the cabinet and onto the floor. The dishrag draped over the faucet was gray with dirt and smelled sour. I remembered that carrot cake I’d eaten so enthusiastically. It had been baked in this pigsty. I hoped the baking sterilized everything.

Patricia must be really depressed. Maybe I couldn’t cook, but I could clean. The woman obviously needed help. “Why don’t you sit down, Patricia, and I’ll clean up while we talk,” I said. “Do you have any paper towels?”

Wrong question. Patricia launched into an impassioned speech about how paper towels were environmentally destructive. It finally ended with “and besides that, paper towels take up valuable landfill space.”

Speaking of landfills, her kitchen was beginning to resemble one. At least I could get some of those dishes out of there. “Then let me load these dishes into the dishwasher,” I said. “Where is your dishwasher, by the way?”

Another mistake. Dishwashers were also environmentally incorrect. Patricia wouldn’t have one in the house. She hand-washed her dishes, and she was careful not to let the water run needlessly when she rinsed. I listened to another lecture on water and energy waste. “More than eighty percent of a dishwasher’s energy goes just to heat the water,” she finished. Patricia was growing more agitated, pacing back and forth in her filthy kitchen, talking about how laziness and insensitivity were ruining Mother Earth. Mom was doing fine here. Patricia had enough dirt on the floor to start a small organic farm. I found a mop behind the door, hoping to wipe up the sour milk. But when I rinsed out the mop, it smelled so bad, I figured using it
on the floor would only make the problem worse. I gave up on the idea of cleaning Patricia’s kitchen. She was still pacing. She needed something soothing to calm her down. Judging by the way she reacted to the white wine, booze was not the answer.

“Do you have any herbal tea?” I asked. Patricia said yes, and found a canister of chamomile tea. That should be very soothing. I put some water on to boil in the teakettle and then followed Patricia into the butler’s pantry. “There is no reason to throw out anything, ever,” she said. “It can all be recycled or reused if you know how.” I took notes while Patricia pointed out the proper storage and preparation for recyclables. She had quite an operation there—a can crusher, and shelves or bins for cardboard, newspapers, white paper, green and white glass, brown glass, and rags.