The Last Clinic (14 page)

“Did he ever try to make contact with them? Try to pay for their wares? Do anything illegal that we can tell?” asked Shelby.

“Not that we can tell,” said Darla. “Uther is going back over the telephone records from his BlackBerry.”

“I don’t know what in blazes for. All this sounds like the standard issue smut and perversion most of us indulge in at one time or another in our lives, or if we hadn’t, we probably wish we had. Those of us that ain’t hooked watching secondhand movies on Netflix.”

“We’re looking for a connection to the money,” she said. “We don’t know where the three thousand dollars came from, and we don’t know what Reverend Aldridge was planning on doing with it. Neither does anybody else. Money, murder, sex. They’re almost always related.”

“What are you saying? This is like Clue and we’re getting ready to solve the murder? That it was Colonel Mustard, in the whorehouse, with a roll of quarters?” said Shelby.

Uther, taking a swallow of Lazy Magnolia, spit it out laughing.

“Nice to see you have a sense of humor there, Uther. But see here, come the end of the week, the mayor will be on air, telling the citizenry how disappointed he is that the Hinds County Sheriff hasn’t come up with an arrest yet. Then he’s going to insist I give a progress report, of which there won’t be anything to report. I can’t tell the voting public that like everybody else I suspect the abortion doctor on the hill, which I don’t. ‘Cause like the two of you keep saying, it’s just too damn easy, which leaves me no course but to tell the mayor about the mystery money and Reverend Jimmy’s interest in young black women. This is bound to make me look like I’ve been wasting taxpayer dollars trying to besmirch the reputation of a man of God.”

“Don’t pick on Uther,” said Darla. “He was following my orders.”

“This is true, Sheriff. However, I do believe there’s a pattern to Reverend Aldridge’s sexual voyeurism,” said Uther.

“Pattern this and pattern that. You go back to the FUSION Center and diddle with your computer all you want. But you listen up here, both of you. I don’t want either of you telling what you found out to the mayor or Josh Klein or Oprah or your grandma. If it looks like I let you go off on some sort of crusade against Reverend Jimmy, everybody’s favorite law man—that would be me—is likely to see his hopes for a political future in Mississippi dashed to veritable smithereens.”

Uther stood, wiped his hands on his bib, buttoned the middle button of his dark pinstriped suit and snapped a salute to Shelby. “Yes, Sheriff Mitchell.”

“No need to salute me unless we’re both in uniform. But you need to take the bib off before you leave. Otherwise, you’ll look like a twerp. Anybody sees you, it’ll reflect bad on the department.”

“My apologies,” said Uther for the third time, yanking his bib off, stepping out from behind the picnic table, and taking a couple of backward steps before he turned and left.

“He’s a piece of work, old Uther, but he is polite, even when I’m messing with him.”

“I need a few more days Shelby. Uther and I are on to something. I think we are. Plus, I need to talk to Reverend Aldridge’s daughter, Beth. She and her father had some issues. I know it looks like nothing, but it could lead somewhere.”

“Two days is all I’m going to be able to give you before I have to go on air and make some kind of progress report. Your friend Tommy still hasn’t been able to place Dr. Nicoletti at the scene of the crime, but the twenty-five thousand dollars reward money Reverend Jimmy’s people are putting up is going to produce some leads. You know it will. Plus the populace will commence to screaming for an arrest, even if ultimately it won’t hold. And you know what? Once we make an arrest, I’m going on vacation. Take the Misses down to Seaside before the really hot weather sets in. I’ll let you and Tommy fight over what to do with the mystery money, wherever it come from.”

He removed his bib, dunked his fingers in a glass of lemon water, and wiped them on his napkin.

“The lemon helps get rid of the red color and the smell. Mind if I dip?”

Without waiting for her answer, he took a pouch of tobacco from his hip pocket, opened it, pulled off a small wad and popped it into his jaw.

“Does your wife let you do this at home?”

“This one does. Although I’ll admit, dipping, along with one or two other of my filthy personal habits, played a vital role in collapse of a previous marriage.”

“Charming,” said Darla, as he began working the dip against his gums.

“I’ll also need to expectorate after a minute or two. You can look the other way if it bothers you.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“How’d your meeting with Dr. Nic go? I figured you two might have a lot in common.”

“Meaning we’re both Yankees?

“As I have explained to you many times, to the Mississippi general populace, anyone not from the South is viewed as a Yankee. Anyplace else but the South and you’re a Yankee. That is if you’re white. If you’re black, you’re just plain old black, no matter where you are from. Unless you’re a black person talking to a white person from Mississippi and you happen to be from the same hometown. Then you’re still black, but in a more familial way.”

“Slave to master?”

“What did President Reagan say? ‘There you go again.’”

“What about the Asians who live here, or the people from India? What are they?”

“Foreigners. But the rednecks lump them in with the Yankees. And of course, that same element also thinks all you Yankees are Jews.”

“I was raised Catholic.”

“Doesn’t matter. If you’re from the North, you’re a Jew. A New York Jew. Like all the other Yankees. In general, all Yankees are Jews, and all Jews are from New York.”

“So the Kennedys, they were Jews?”

“Oh Lord, yes. Jews. New York Jews.”

“But the Kennedy’s were Boston Irish Catholic.”

“They all went to that Yankee Jew School, Harvard. Jew U they call it down here”

“What about the Jews from Mississippi?”

“The rednecks don’t look at them as Jews. They’re just fellow Southerners. The fact that they’re not Christians, they kinda of cut ‘em some slack on that. Anyway, you and the doc have yourselves a politically correct chitchat?”

“I tried to get him to tell me the Italian phrase for asshole, but he wouldn’t do it.”

“I heard he was a gentleman.”

“He also claimed he was seeing a patient out in Madison at the time of the murder, but wouldn’t name the patient.”

“I can just see him up on the stand, the DA saying, ‘Now Doctor Nic O’letie, please tell the jury what you were doing out in Madison on the morning of the murder? Cutting a child out of woman’s body, taking its life?’ He’s gonna make a great witness, that boy. By the way, out of curiosity, did he ask you out on a date? My spies say he’s quite the lady’s man.”

“I’m not dating,” she said, her voice sarcastic, like it was a joke she was playing along with. She had, of course, thought about it. How Dr. Nicoletti might ask. The words he would use. Saw herself turning him down, but with her and Dr. Nicoletti both knowing she’d be available if the circumstances were different. If he wasn’t a suspect, or worse, a murderer.

“He’s the sensitive type, ain’t he? That’s what I’ve heard.”

“I suppose you could say that.”

“That don’t mean he didn’t murder Reverend Jimmy. You’re a good enough police officer to know that, right?”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“You want me to say anything to Tommy about what you found? Give him anything specific? Some of that filth Uther came up with? Technically speaking, the King of Rock and Roll is still your partner.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I’ll have to tell him something, or expect a call from his uncle the mayor.

She thought about it for a second. “Tell Tommy he ain’t never caught a rabbit, and he ain’t no friend of mine.”

“That’s from
Hound Dog
. You been doing your homework.”

“Carl Perkins recorded it before Elvis.”

“You are getting to be a regular Southerner. You stand up when they play “Dixie” at the Ole Miss football games?”

“I sing along with the crowd when I go, which isn’t very often. But I don’t shout ‘The South will rise again’ at the end.”

“We’ll look past that for now.”

He sucked his cheek once or twice, turned slightly, and shot a line of tobacco juice in the direction of the parking lot.

“You ever consider using spitless moist tobacco?” she asked. “Church tobacco, I think they call it. Not that I’m a churchgoer.”

“What use would I have for that? Listen woman, spitting is the best part of dipping.” He spit one more time in the same direction, the juice going a little further, but when she was leaving he stood up all the way out of his seat and tipped his hat.“Too bad money can’t talk. I have to admit I would like to know where all those fives and tens and twenties came from,” he said.

15

I Told You Never to Call Me Here.

Darla left the restaurant thinking about what Shelby had said—how it was too bad money couldn’t talk. But maybe it could.

She drove over to the Hinds County Sheriff’s office, arriving at about three in the afternoon. She retrieved the envelope and the money from the evidence room, signed, counted the money in front of the deputy to make sure it was all there, and put the envelope with the money in it in her purse. As she was leaving, the deputy cracked a joke about her not blowing the whole wad over in Vicksburg. She pretended as though she didn’t hear. He figured out what he’d just said—the reference to her husband’s gambling issues—and offered her his version of an apology.

“Don’t know if I ever told you, but I really admired ole Hugh. We all did.”

“Yeah, me too,” she said, and let it go at that.

Back at her house, her roommate was out until after dinner. It was Kendall’s afternoon with the kids. She’d be taking Jake to a soccer match and Molly to gymnastics, with pizza at Mel’s after. One day a week was all she got with them and no sleepovers, thanks to Bobby’s grip on the judiciary.

Darla removed the money from the envelope and spread it out on her dining room table, dividing the bills by denominations. She noted again that there were no singles, and nothing larger than a twenty. That said something right off, but what?

The stacks looked like this: two hundred fives, a hundred tens, and fifty twenties. Some of the bills were newer than others. None of the bills was brand new.

She looked through each stack, one bill at a time.

There it was again. The thing she’d seen the first time she went through the stack. Four of the bills—one ten and three twenties—had phone numbers written on the front, each one in a different hand. And next to each one, there was a different man’s name.

She’d worked vice in Philadelphia for a year and a half and had an idea where the money came from. But research, a phone survey, so to speak, could confirm her theory.

She looked at the ten. It was one of the newer bills and looked like it had only been folded a few times.
Denny
it said at the bottom of the bill. It was written in hand-drawn letters, the capital “D” with curlicues. Denny must have spent some time on his lettering, getting it just so. Maybe Denny fancied himself as the artistic type. Denny’s phone number followed his name.

She spent a few minutes trying to decide how she was going to frame the conversation—play it straight, a tough cop kind of call, or a more subtle approach. She decided on the subtle approach.

A man answered on the first ring.

“Hello.”

She heard laughter in the background. It sounded like kids yelling—a bunch of them—and some other kind of loud noises. Good time sounds.

“Is this Denny?”

“This is Denny.” A guy’s voice. Thirties maybe. He sounded like a happy-go-lucky sort.

She imagined Denny in plaid golf pants and a polo shirt, sincere and friendly. The kind of guy that used to stop Hugh and her on the street and ask if he could get his picture taken with #24. For my kids, he’d say, only they knew it was for him.  

“Who’s this?” Denny asked, a little surprised, a little wary. Maybe he didn’t get a lot of calls from women.

“Listen, Denny. I’m sitting here looking at a ten-dollar bill with your name and this number written on it. You have a real talent for calligraphy, Denny.”

“Pardon?” An instant later, he said, “Oh yeah. Good God.”

He might as well have been saying “holy shit.”

“You wanted me to call, right?”

The voice changed to something approaching a whisper. “Yes, yes I did. Hi. I mean, I’m glad you got back to me. It’s Tiffany, right?” Sounding interested.

“Right. Tiffany. Like the store, Denny. I’m flattered you remembered.” Darla grinning now, leaning back in her chair, feet propped up on the edge of the table, actually having fun.

“Of course I remembered. How could I forget?”

The background noise got louder, lots of laughing and yelling. A kid was saying something like “Come on, Dad.”

“Listen, Tiff, this is not really a good time. It’s my daughter’s birthday today.”

“Tell her I said happy birthday.”

“Right. That’s very funny. Wow. I guess I never thought you’d call. Ah, how about if I call you back at this number later? Maybe later tonight? Unless you’re working?”

“Actually I am kind of busy these days. This was just, how do I put it, just a courtesy call.”

“You sure? I thought we really connected.”

They all think that
, thought Darla.

“Did your wife do all the cooking for the party, Denny?”

“She’s great with stuff like that.”

“I have a suggestion, Denny.”

“Will I like it?” Denny trying to be cute.

“Why don’t you use the money you were going to spend on me, and you take your wife out to dinner.”

Denny was silent for a second. Then he said, “You’re not exactly what I expected.”

“To tell you the truth, I hear that a lot. Got to go. You be a good boy now Denny.”

“Thanks,” he said, sounding confused.