Redemption (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 3) (10 page)

Star was the name on the black envelopes. "Star Goodall?" Burgess asked.

"That's it. She's somewhere down near Portland. But Reggie probably didn't have anything to do with her. Like I said, she went all weird, back, maybe ten, twelve years ago, got this notion in her head that Reggie'd molested her. Went to one of them shrinks that helps people with their memories? Shrink convinced her that me and Reggie'd done something. You know the type, ones who'd say anything to get some poor fool to pay 'em some money."

Clay shook his head. "Like we would, right—our own cousin, more like a sister the way we were raised? There's some that are like that, trailer trash maybe, but not us Libbys. But logic had no effect on Cindy. She come after me screaming and hollering and saying how I should go to the shrink with her and help her work this through. I figured since we were kids together and she was family that I'd go down there, see if I could set her straight. Only there was no fixing it."

Clay tipped up his glass and drained it. "Shrink was just as looney as she was. Whatever I said, they'd twist it up into something sick and wrong. Then she starts talking about how because I done this I owed her... well, they weren't listening to me anyway, so I just got up and walked out. Cindy... Star, as she now is... she sent me some letters." He looked at Burgess, as if asking could the detective believe this. "Black envelopes. Black writing paper. After the first one, we didn't even read 'em. Mary threw them away; said we didn't need that nonsense."

He refilled their glasses. "She's real sensible, my Mary. Awful torn up about Reggie. She wanted to know should she come right home. I told her maybe she should give me some time."

"So you don't know if she was in touch with Reggie. Star, I mean?"

"Nope. But if she was doing this to get some money for herself, there'd be no sense in bothering Reggie, would there?"

But she had been bothering Reggie. Burgess wondered why. Figured he'd have to pay a call on Ms. Star Goodall, who had conveniently left her address on the envelopes. "Doesn't Reggie still have some land up here?"

"Nice piece of waterfront." Clay said. "It's about eighty acres on a lake. Mostly farm land. There's an old farmhouse, not much of a place. Land's leased to a young couple doing organic farming." After a silence, Clay said, "Land's all in trust, so Reggie can't sell it. So his creditors can't get it. As if Reggie had creditors. Reggie didn't have jack shit. He ever did get himself anything, he'd give it away."

He had that right. Reggie had been kind of a damaged saint, walking the streets with his grocery cart, taking cans and bottles to the redemption center for a little money, then using that money trying to look after people worse off than himself. He'd get abused, robbed or beaten for his troubles. Then something would stir up those demons, he'd fall in some black hole, have to be pieced back together again.

The country going into Iraq had really done it. One night Burgess had found him sitting in his room, surrounded by newspaper photos of soldiers in Iraq. Reggie had grabbed a handful and held them out. "Look at this, Joe. These kids are us. Goddamned president is doing it all over again, government fucking over another generation of kids. You watch. They'll come back damaged and the VA will shrug and put 'em on some goddamned waiting list for two, three years. When they do see someone, doc'll just shove 'em a fistful of pills and send 'em home. No one to listen or help with the shit inside their heads."

Reggie had that right. Bunch of old neocons and a dry drunk president with daddy issues who didn't even want the public to see the boys and girls coming home maimed or in boxes. Let the broken ones fester in rat-and roach-infested hospitals or drowned them in paperwork. But it didn't help Reggie to say he agreed. He'd gotten Reggie to promise to throw the pictures out and go talk to someone at the VA. And for a while, Reggie seemed better.

Clay was still explaining about the land. "It's in a trust... goes to the boy when Reggie dies... the rotten little prick. Joey, I mean. As if those two had ever given Reggie the time of day. They treated him like scum."

Clay looked away, silent for a long time. "I haven't called mama yet. She's awful frail for this kind of news. I can't say what it might do to her. She's still praying every day for a miracle. I didn't call Joey, either. He's still living at home with Claire."

He slapped his palms onto his thighs. "I gotta tell ya, Joe. I'm not one to shirk my duty. But calling Claire and Joey... the two of 'em so goddamned bitter, done Reggie so much harm... I'm just not up to it. Can't bring myself to go through that first burst of anger just so's I can tell her something she doesn't care about anyway."

Clay's shoulders had a dejected slump. He was a simple man who believed in doing the right thing. Couldn't understand people who spent a lifetime bearing grudges.

"Never mind explaining to them about the land. It don't even belong to him yet," Clay said, "and that boy's already had surveyors up, thinking about how it could be developed. I wouldn't have known, only the couple that's leasing it—they're four years into a ten-year lease, no sense in putting in the work to make it into a decent organic farm unless they've got some security, see—they called up to see why someone was on the property surveying. So I drive over and there's Joey and this surveyor and Joey's all excited, telling me he's got a buyer wants to put in a bunch of houses."

Clay's slumped shoulders rose and fell. "He wouldn't even listen when I told him it was under lease for farming. He said that didn't matter and wasn't binding on him. We had words, not that anything I said seemed to penetrate. Joey just shrugged me off, said his mother would take care of it. So you can see why I'm not keen on talking with them." Clay emptied his glass. "I swear that little bastard couldn't wait for Reggie to die and Claire ain't no better. She was on the phone that very afternoon, wanting copies of the documents."

He poured a slow stream of bourbon into his glass, shaking his head. "I just listened and hung up. I can't see where she's got any rights. Joey's an adult. Based on his birthday anyways."

Burgess knew dealings with Reggie's ex-wife had always baffled Clay. A few years after their return from Nam, Claire Fontaine, smart, young, and pretty, working on a masters degree in social work, had married Reggie as her personal social work project. When her charm and textbook platitudes failed to cure Reggie of night terrors, his inability to sleep or concentrate, and all the rest of the web of sorrow so many vets carried, she'd left in a huff, taking their young son with her. She'd never relinquished a drop of the bitterness she hadn't legitimately earned. Had raised the boy to despise his father.

"It's not like she didn't know who he was when she married him," Clay said. "Reggie was in a bad way when he got back, as you well know. She was just a prissy little do-gooder thought she'd reform him and turn him into a perfect house pet. Then she finds out she can't and it's like it's all Reggie's fault. I used to think, maybe, he got himself the right woman, it might make a difference. But probably, like so many things with Reggie, that was just another pipe dream. Maura might be crazy as a bedbug, but bless her soul, she loved Reggie as best as she could."

"Does the land automatically go to Joey if Reggie's dead? It's a sure thing?"

"When he's thirty-five. Dunno about before that. Lawyer who did the trust would know if Reggie's death changes things, but I don't think so. I'm trustee. I make sure the rent gets collected and the taxes get paid, keep a tenant there so the land's cared for and people aren't dumping used cars and their trash out there. That's what trustee means to me. It's all legal gobbledygook anyway."

"Know the lawyer's name?"

"I'll give you the damned thing. You can make a copy and send it back." He scratched his head. "Actually, this is a copy. Original's at the bank. I figured it was safer that way."

It was getting dark in the kitchen, the slant of the light getting steeper, days in October as short as days in March. Neither of them moved to put on a light, though. It seemed right to sit in growing darkness. Clay splashed more bourbon into Burgess's glass, then lifted his. "Here's hoping he's finally at peace."

"At peace." Burgess clinked and drank. "I'll tell Claire and Joey if you want."

"I want."

They sat silent. A clock ticked. Something in the cellar whirred. A gust of passing wind stirred some chimes. "Reggie made those," Clay said. "So good with his hands, if only he could have stuck to something."

"I've got a set, too," Burgess said. "Listening to them in the wind last night, I kept wondering if Reggie was trying to tell me something."

"That noise there?" Clay wore a gentle, faraway look. "That was him complaining that we're drinking without him." Then, as the sound of the chimes faded, he said. "You seriously don't think this was an accident?"

Burgess shrugged. "I was ready to let it go. Get on with missing him and hoping he's in a better place, but the ME has doubts. Some things that don't look right. So I've got to treat this like an investigation until I'm told otherwise." No sense mentioning he'd already been told otherwise by Cote.

Clay lifted his glass, holding it so the light coming through the window gave the liquid a golden glow. "So what do you do now?"

"Talk to people who knew him. Get a handle on his life."

"
He
never could."

They listened to the clock tick, so much left unsaid. Burgess had spent uncountable hours, probably years of his life, on uncomfortable kitchen chairs, slowly gleaning the bits and pieces that let him put stories together. "What do you know about Reggie's job?" he asked.

"Not much. Some guy hired him to clean up at his business. Reggie never said what kind of business. Something to do with manufacturing. Reggie did the usual—swept the floors, cleaned the offices and the bathrooms. Cleaned materials and got 'em ready for the next day's work. Sometimes he cleaned the machines. Coupla times he said he even fixed some of the machines, got right inside and replaced parts and stuff. He liked that."

"How did he get to and from work?"

"Someone would pick him up. Sometimes someone would drive him back or he'd call a taxi to get home."

"You know if he worked days or nights?"

"Afternoons and evenings, I think. Not sure, though. I dunno if it was regular."

"I didn't find any pay stubs in Reggie's room."

"You wouldn't. It was all under the table. Reggie's not supposed to be working anyway, with the disability. Only he'd rather work, when he could. Reggie didn't like just sitting around. That's why he did the cans. It wasn't just the money. It got him out and around. Kept the city clean. Poor crazy bastard. He could have been such a fine man."

Clay made a tent with his hands, tapped the fingers lightly together, then left them tented on the table in front of him. A gesture Burgess had seen him make before, but today, with his eyes closed and his head bowed, Reggie's brother looked like he was praying. Burgess realized he didn't know if Clay was a religious man.

Without opening his eyes, Clay said, "So you looked through his room. Did you find the money?"

"About a hundred bucks in a pants pocket."

Clay's eyes opened. He dropped his hands into fists and leaned toward Burgess. "Should have been a lot more than that. Reggie was getting at least four hundred a week for that cleaning job. He wasn't drinking and his expenses are small. He's been working, let's see." He looked at a calendar on the wall. "Maybe four, five weeks. He should have had over a thousand bucks."

"Maybe he's got it in a bank somewhere. I can check."

"You do that, Joe," Clay said, a hard edge in his voice. "Because if he doesn't have it in a bank—and Reggie wasn't much for banks—then someone's taken it." He swung his eyes to Burgess's face. Despite the redness, they were sharp. A piercing light greenish-blue with very dark rims around the irises. Reggie's had been just the same. Shark eyes, someone in Nam had called them. Reggie had liked that. Reggie had been a gentle man but those eyes had made him look dangerous. Now, looking into Clay's eyes, Burgess saw there was a lot of anger behind the sadness. He hadn't read it clearly enough, a few minutes ago, when Clay had been talking about Reggie's ex-family. When he'd been thinking like a friend instead of a cop.

"You don't think someone would kill Reggie for a lousy thousand bucks, do you?" Clay asked.

Burgess wished he could say no, but in his experience, people killed for many reasons the ordinary citizen would find astonishing. He countered the question with one of his own.

"Who was Reggie close to? Who might have known he was working or that he had some money?"

"Any of those guys Reggie hung out with, they'd know because Reggie wasn't hanging around with them. People who lived in that dump. Or Maura. She'd never mean Reggie any harm, but there's no telling what she'd say or who she'd say it to. She knew he had a stash, she might blab about that. Lady's not the sharpest tool in the shed."

"The guy across the hall evidently had a key to Reggie's room." Burgess got out his notebook, flipped through until he found the name. "Kevin Dugan? You know him?" Clay shook his head. "Reggie ever mention him?"

"Not that I recall."

"Maura and this guy, Dugan, both said that Reggie hadn't been feeling well. He'd been seeing a doctor. He say anything about that?"