Sandy Gingras - Lola Polenta 01 - Swamped (6 page)

I get my new file cabinet and my new printer from my car, and take them out of their crisp new boxes. I sit on my file cabinet and open a file that my uncle gave me. It’s a woman who suspects her husband is cheating on her. There’s a sticky note on it from my uncle. It says, “Ask Squirt what to do.”

I’m not asking Squirt for anything. There’s no place like home, my ass. She didn’t live in my home.

I get claustrophobic just thinking about it.

When I first got married to Ed, I thought his hobby of collecting marbles was kind of cute and childlike-quirky. Ed looked a lot like George Clooney so I was eager to make allowances. At first, we had glasses filled with marbles and wooden bowls displaying them on the coffee table. But it turned into an obsession. Soon, we had fish tanks filled with them all over the house. Ed got so that he spent hours on Ebay every night poring over pictures and bidding enormous sums on tiny marbles. Then he started collecting rubber band balls, then fishing sinkers, then Scooby Doo paraphernalia. It was when he showed me his album displaying his collection of the ID stickers that they put on fruit a couple months ago that I started thinking about leaving. By then, there was almost no room in the house for me anyway. I’d been buried years ago by the collections.

I call up the woman from the file that Paulie gave me. She wants to meet with me in my office as soon as possible. I make an appointment with her for tomorrow morning bright and early. My stomach quakes. I don’t even have a real office yet. “It’ll just be a conversation,” I tell myself. Fake strong, I tell myself. I straighten up my shoulders. I’m good at being determined, although some might call it stubbornness. It’s the one quality I can count on in myself.

The second file is an insurance claim investigation. My uncle put a sticky note on it that says, “I followed this guy for six days, nothing happened. You give it a try. It’ll be good practice.” I don’t get to surveillance techniques until Lesson 4. “I’m screwed,” I say to myself.

I turn on my computer to Lesson Two of the Online Detective Training Institute. The first lesson was “Introduction to the Profession,” which I breezed through. Lesson Two is “Interviewing Techniques and Successful Communication Models.” I’m an English teacher; I know something about getting teenagers to express themselves, something about reading their body language when they make excuses for themselves or lie. This should be a snap.

I scroll ahead. Lesson Three is “Basic Principles of Investigation” which starts to get into the nitty gritty of things. When I jump ahead looking at chapter headings like “Litigator Support” and “GPS Tracking” and “Computer Forensics” is when I start to feel a little faint.

My cell phone rings. It’s Joe. “The cops found out about Ernie trying to blackmail me and I’ve been getting grilled all morning. They’ve named me a “person of interest.”

“How did they find out?”

“Everybody knows everything around here,” he says.

How could the cops grill an old guy like him? A nice old guy like him?

“Maybe you just need a lawyer,” I say. “I have the name of one.”

“I don’t need a lawyer. Yet. Let’s find out who did this,” he tells me.

“Me?”

“I’ll help you. We can be a team.”

“Listen,” I say, “I’m only on Lesson…”

“Two,” he tells me. “I know.”

“Why are you getting involved?”

“There’s no GETTING about it. I AM involved, and so are you. You have no choice,” he tells me.

“I can’t take your money,” I say. “I don’t know enough about anything to justify it. But, I would like to help you,” I add. The truth is, I’m itching to help him. And help myself A murder, right under my nose (so to speak). Talk about a sign!

“So, don’t take my money. Just take the case.”

I go out to the waiting room. “Did you hear that?” I ask Squirt.

“What?” she says.

“Some guy just hired me to find out who killed the guy at Alligator Estates. Well, not really hired. Engaged me, kind of.”

Her typing stalls momentarily, then surges on. “Does your father know about this?”

“My father’s gone,” I tell her.

She glances up.

“So, maybe you could help me out?”

She gives me a look.

“Or just show me how to use some of the office’s search engines?” I say.

Her whole face seems to furrow, but she puts her typing aside. “Pull up a chair,” she tells me. “I can give you fifteen minutes.” She starts hitting the keyboard. I take fast notes.

Then I go back to my office.

I don’t know what to do about this. I don’t even have any suspects, any names of anyone Ernie knew.

So, just for practice, I do a search on my father. See what I can find out. He’s gotten a bunch of awards for public service. He’s on the board for a local hospital. He played in the Bill Kelly memorial golf tournament for Bill, who died in the twin towers. He solved a high profile kidnapping case that baffled the cops. He found a teenage girl who’d been stolen by some creepy religious guy who had her chained in his basement. There’s a picture of my father standing next to this girl. He’s looking at her, and she’s looking at him smiling shyly. She’s thin and scared-looking. I stare at their faces for a long time.

It’s after 4 o’clock. I need to check on Dreamer. She’s been chewing on her paws ever since we left New Jersey. She loses it when I leave her alone.

I go home to my sinking house. I realize that I forgot to buy a level today. But I did buy sheets and two pillows. Who knew you could buy bedding in Staples? Maybe a lot of people live in their offices?

I take Dreamer for a walk. She ripped all the fur off her right front paw. “Aw,” I tell her. “You’re making me feel like a bad mother.”

George is washing his car again. “Do you do this every day?” I ask him as we walk by.

“The salt,” he explains. “Hey, dreamy girl,” he pats Dreamer on the head with his soapy hand. “My mom’s tired of me just hanging around. If I stop cleaning, I get all crazy. I have to distract myself.”

I’ve seen his mother. I think I’d want distraction from her too. She’s this big spongy looking woman who wears muumuus. They’re not the happy kind of muumuus either. I think her name is something that keeps reminding me of muumuus too—Mimi? Mimsy? Mean Muumuu? Something like that. And his father looks like a ramrod. I haven’t actually spoken to them. I’ve just seen them getting in and out of their car. “There’s not much to do here,” George says.

“Golf?”

“Nope.”

“Why don’t you get a job?”

“I don’t know if I’m going to be around much longer. I’m kind of in-between.”

I know what that’s like.

“What about Ernie’s job? Mow the lawn and clean the pool or whatever he did. You’re certainly good at neatness.”

He looks up. “That’s not a bad idea. Just a part time thing…”

“You know Sal, right?”

“Sure. Sal,” he says.

I give him a big thumbs-up.

He gives me one back. His looks like a prune.

“You smell like soap.” I say to Dreamer as we walk away. She turns her wet face to me.

Joe’s outside his trailer putting some red liquid in a glass bottle that hangs from a tree. His yard is neat but lush with colorful bushes and potted plants. “I like to garden,” he tells me. “I like it when the hummingbirds come.”

“There’s too much nature around here for me,” I say.

“Is that right?” he says. “That detective and some other cops were around all day asking questions.”

“Door to door?”

He nods.

“So, what did you tell them?”

“Nothing. I didn’t see anything. They don’t believe me when I say I was just in the maintenance shed to see if everything was okay. They don’t believe I would go investigate an open door. They’ve obviously never been retired. When you’re retired, you have nothing but time to wonder about things. And to notice when things are out of place.”

“What do you have against being retired anyway?”

“My wife died last year,” he tells me.

“I’m sorry.”

“That changed everything,” he says. “Did you make any headway on the case?”

“I was hoping you’d forget about it.”

He winks at me. “Not a chance. You get to Lesson Three yet?”

“Nope.”

“I should have been a cop,” he says. “I would have liked that.”

“Why don’t you sign up for the Online Detective thing?” I say smiling.

“Good idea.”

“I didn’t really mean it.”

“I did,” he says.

“Listen… I really don’t even know where to begin.” But I know I’m yielding to the idea. I think of my father. He’s gonna kill me. Thank God, he’s gone.

“Everybody starts from scratch, right?” Joe says.

I roll my eyes.

He ignores me. “Wait,” he says. He goes inside and comes out with a biscuit for Dreamer. She takes it in her mouth.

“I bet she’ll carry it around through the whole walk and eat it when we get home,” I tell him. “That’s nice of you.”

“I went shopping today,” he says.

“And you bought dog biscuits?” I ask surprised.

“Well…,” he says. “And I invited a couple people over tomorrow for happy hour. Can you make it? It’s a welcome to the neighborhood party for you.”

“What? You don’t have to go to any trouble for me.”

“No trouble,” he says. “It’s a good excuse to get out the Chinese lanterns.”

“Lanterns?” I say.

“I do a mean bean dip. And I bought some of those mini hotdogs.”

“I love mini hotdogs. But what can I bring?” I ask.

“It’s a party for you. You bring yourself.”

He looks at me through his glasses.

“What?” he asks.

“It’s very nice,” I say looking off at the bougainvillea and the sky that might have a hummingbird in it.

He looks at me with his magnified eyes. “You got a real sad look about you,” he tells me.

I hate it when people notice things like that. I went through an entire marriage of nobody noticing anything. I’m used to not being found out. I scrunch my mouth up.

“It’s all right, you know,” he tells me. “It’ll be all right.” He goes back in his trailer.

“C’mon, Dreamer,” I say in a shaky voice. “Come on, dreamy girl.”

Chapter 11

The tilt in my trailer feels more tilty. I pull my cardboard chair over to the other side of the room as a counter-balance. That does nothing. Maybe I should get some sandbags.

I look out my window. The swamp is a livid green in the glare of the sun. Even over the roar of the air conditioner, I can hear insects humming and the whole swamp burbling and wheezing like it’s trying to suck me in.

I take the lawyer’s business card out of my pocket and put it on my table. I look at it. “Eileen Dunne,” it reads. I wonder what it would be like to go through life with a name like, “Dunne.” It has such a finished sound. No loose ends. “I bet her make-up is perfect,” I tell Dreamer. “I bet she’s like one of those scary women at the Clinique counter at Macy’s.” Dreamer cocks her head and looks at me.

I always envy people who have those straight-line kind of lives.

My life lately has turned into a kind of scavenger hunt with no map, just scattered clues—go here, no go there, no there.… Oh well. What else can I do but just keep on following the signs, hoping that one thing will lead to another and that, someday, I’ll finally get somewhere that makes sense.

“I’ll call her if I need to,” I tell Dreamer.

We get in the car and drive to Paulie’s for dinner. I see Sal coming out of the maintenance shed. I stop the car and lower the window, “Did they take the police tape down?”

“Yeah, there’s nothin’ in there. Just cleaning up. I don’t know what I thought. The police would send a cleaning crew? I gotta lot to learn about murder.

Sal is a wiry guy with slicked back gray hair. He talks with his hands and he runs his hands through his hair, usually slicking it back more. But now, he’s sent it in all sorts of irregular directions. “I had to tell the cops about what Ernie said to me about you. I didn’t have no choice. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Your father tells me I should shut up more.”

“He tells me that too.”

“Your father tell you that they found two cow hairs on Ernie’s body,” he tells me.

“Cow hairs? I thought it was dog hairs. The detective told me it was dog hairs.”

“I have cows,” he tells me.

“You have cows?”

“If you have a lot of property in Florida, you have cows. Beef cattle. They just roam around, eat the brush. You sell them off every once in a while…”

“I don’t understand. Cow hairs?”

“Yeah,” he says. “They found cow hairs. Now they suspect me too.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

He shakes his head.

My friend Joanie calls me as I’m driving away. She teaches math in my high school. She’s got twin five-year-old boys, a truck driver husband. This past year I’ve spent a lot of time at her house eating macaroni and cheese with her and her kids. Her husband is gone a lot, and my husband, well, my husband was gone essentially too. So we hung out together. She could always use help with the twins, and I just needed to get out of my house.

“How are you doing?” she asks me.

I tell her everything.

“You’re in Florida,” she says. “You’re supposed to be walking on a beach, drinking pina coladas, clearing your head. Not sinking into a swamp.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Why don’t you come back?”

“I’m not going backwards anymore. And I’m not standing still anymore. I don’t care if it’s crazy, I’m going forward.”

“Is this really forward?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“You’re really involved in a murder investigation?” She can’t believe it.

“I know. I know,” I say.

“Your moving to Florida isn’t about Johnny, is it? This isn’t about that phone call, is it?”

Two weeks ago, before my life went into destructo-mode, I got a phone call from my old fiancé—the guy who left at me at the altar six years ago, gardenias wilting in my hands, my relatives all sitting in a sweltering church frowning at me. I hadn’t heard from him since he called me that no-show wedding night from a diner in Pennsylvania to tell me he still had his tux on, that he didn’t know what happened, that he was just driving to the church, and he kept on going. I hung up on him then. I hung up on him when he called me two weeks ago too, but not before he told me he’d been thinking of me.