In Plain View Page 16

  Pat the fireman was twitching his way toward the exit, saying his good-byes. He was full of nervous tension, glancing around, checking his watch. Donna Curzon tried to slow him down, gesturing toward Nicky and I. Pat shook his head and took a backward step.

  “I heard Jost was getting a lot of grief back at the firehouse.”

  “Guess we both got our share.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  Donna crossed her arms and watched Pat head down the driveway. Her husband slipped up behind her. His face said, let him go.

  Obviously, Curzon’s mother was a politician as well. If Nicky was getting shit from the men at the firehouse, who better to make peace than Tom’s pal?

  Nicky laughed. “Why? You gonna go beat him up for me?”

  “You don’t think I can?” We were easing out of it now, using the jokes to back away from something that was still pretty raw. “I’d like to see you try,” Nicky said. “Especially in those shoes.”

  We both took a moment to admire my sandals. Not the kind of footwear that inspires fear in your enemy. Or maybe it was the pedicure. Jenny had insisted on helping me feel better by polishing my toes with bubble-gum-pink-and-extra-glitter after the emergency-room staff held me down for the stitches. I had some fine painkillers on board by then.

  Nicky ceased with the admiration when we noticed cousin Jack headed our way. “You must be tougher than you look, if Jack’s interested.”

  “He’s not interested in me. I’m a useful irritant.”

  “Don’t tell Nana. This is the first peace he’s had from the nagging since Sharon left.”

  “Sharon? The ‘She-bitch’?”

  “Shh,” he whispered. “Family pet-name Jack never appreciated.”

  Right about then, the sheriff himself came striding into the conversation with all the tact of a cop breaking up a house party. “You’re done. Dad wants you inside.”

  “Guess I’m done.” Nicky flashed me a grin but asked his cousin seriously, “Trouble?”

  Curzon shrugged, noncommittal.

  Nicky crossed the patio in a hurry, his voice drifting as he closed the french door behind him, “Whaa-at?”

  I shot Curzon a look and he was smiling, too.

  “Family.”

  He nodded. “The food’s ready. Brats are done.” He pronounced it like a good midwesterner. Brahtzs. Sausages. “Dad promised him first pick since he lost the ball game.”

  “Doesn’t the winner get first pick?”

  “Of dessert.”

  I laughed. What was it about being gathered in a family unit that made people revert to their prehistoric patterns? Big man. Little man. Boss lady. She-bitch. I looked over at Jenny and my momentary bubble of equilibrium popped. Who was I to her?

  Somehow, Curzon managed to slip a question into that breach. Then another, and another. Questions about how long the drive had taken us, and how long I’d been working out, and how long I’d been away from Chicago Land. I knew he was pumping me. At first, I answered with the thought, give a little, get a little. Maybe I’d get a little something about Tom Jost out of him. Much later along the way, I realized I was giving more than I could reasonably expect to get, but the conversation continued. I told him things about work, about me, that I hadn’t told anyone.

  “Holy shit,” Curzon marveled. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “That was about the worst.”

  Some of the things I’d turned into pictures haunted me. Most of them weren’t frightening exactly. The danger had passed.

  They were only bones. Bones can’t hurt you. Even rows and rows of bones. Human skeletons. And me, picking my way across the ground, stepping oh, so carefully. In dreams, it always ended the same. I choose a skull and turn it in my hand, considering the best angle for my camera’s eye. I am trying to find a way to get the light to shine inside behind the empty sockets. No matter how I twist it, nothing ever works. The skull stares back at me, eyes so black they give me vertigo.

  That’s the dream that wakes me in a sweat. Curzon took a long drag on his Anchor Steam beer. “The shit people do to one another,” he said philosophically.

  “And to themselves,” I added, thinking of Tom Jost.

  The kids were organizing a game on the lawn. Ainsley put up a token resistance to being dragged in to play, pulling Jenny along with him. Their voices crossed the space in little sound bites of high-note happiness.

  We watched them play as Curzon talked about the things a cop sees.

  Work stories. War stories. Everybody has them. I’ve probably got it easier than the sheriff in one respect. My stories might be on a bigger scale but they originated far, far away; his hit closer to home. Maybe it was calculated to charm me. Maybe.

  If so, it was working.

  “Right. That’s enough, you two clams. Come join the party.” Donna Curzon came with a tray full of glasses, filled with an iced yellow liquid topped by two inches of white froth. “Maddy, you have to try this. It’s lemonade beer. Really nummy.”

  “What the hell have you done to that perfectly good beer, Mom?” Curzon said. “Ice and lemonade? I’m going to have to issue you a warning for indecent mixing.”

  She gave me the long-suffering look but otherwise ignored her son. “Go ahead, Maddy. Have a taste.”

  “I’m not much of a drinker.”

  “That’s not much of a drink,” Curzon said.

  “Your father likes it.”

  I accepted a glass to keep peace with the hostess. She smiled at me and wandered off to sell the rest to other guests. I took a sip. “Your dad must be a politician, too.”

  “Only when it comes to my mother,” Curzon answered. “My job would drive him crazy. He’s all cop. Married to the same woman, living in the same place, going to the same barbershop over thirty years. Drives a Crown Vic. Always has a hundred dollar bill in his wallet for emergencies. Upright guy.”

  Nicky came out of the house carrying a plate piled with enough food to feed Jenny and me for a week. Curzon noticed he was headed our way and pointed out across the lawn. “You want to walk?”

  “Sure.”

  He stopped in a quiet spot beside the half-wall that banked steps leading down to the cellar. We could still see the touch football game, but the rest of the gang was out of our line of sight-or we were out of their’s. “Except for politics, you and your dad sound like two of a kind to me.”

  “No way.” He sucked back a swallow of beer. “My wife left before we’d marked a nickel. My car’s foreign and I got nothing in my wallet but plastic.”

  That’s the problem with sharing war stories. It brings you down. If there’s one thing I dread, it’s decent guys flaying themselves for an audience. Time to change the subject.

  “Any word on that police report you promised me?”

  He looked the other way, irritated with himself. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  He made an effort to laugh. “Cause of death, gross displacement of spinal cord and cervical vertebra-”

  “Translate.”

  “Broken neck. Time of death was approximately nine o’clock-”

  “No shit, nine a.m.?”

  “Guy died about a half hour before we got there.” He sounded matter of fact, but I could see him questioning my reaction. I waved it off.

  “How’d you hear about it?” I asked.

  “Phone tip. Somebody saw him setting up, I guess. We ran the plate and knew it was Jost by the time we sent guys to the scene.”

  “Phone tip called in the license plate?”

  “Yeah.”

  That seemed weird to me, given the off-road nature of Jost’s parking job. His little car had been parked parallel to the road in the ditch. The person who called it in would have to have driven right by the car.

  “Coroner thinks Jost must have been out there a while, setting himself up. There was a lot of foot traffic between his car and the site.” Curzon shifted back to a recline, against the patio wall.
Sipped his beer. Nothing like a little shop-talk to make you forget your troubles. “He used rope from the ambulance rig. Stacked the boxes he had in his trunk to get the lift he needed, kicked the top box out from under him…or it slipped.”

  “Does the coroner have an opinion?”

  Curzon hesitated. “Off the record?”

  “Why not? Everyone else is.” I took a sip of lemonade beer to wash the bitter out of my voice. On the fourth sip, I decided Mrs. Curzon was right. It was nummy.

  “Evidence is contradictory. I assume you saw what was inside those boxes?” he asked.

  “Porno magazines.”

  “Yeah. Same ones found in the trunk of his car the night he was brought in.” He said it as if it might not mean a thing, but the silence that followed said otherwise.

  Figuring people was a skill that improved with experience. Tracking people, tracking behavior, the more you knew of the possibilities the more likely you could imagine a solution to a scenario. Things fit or they didn’t. I figured Curzon was one of the lucky few who could keep up with me when it came to tracking someone into the dark of uncharted, unhappy possibilities.

  I threw out a suggestion. “Everybody already knew about the mags, so why bother to take them out of the car?”

  Curzon crooked one of those black eyebrows in disbelief. Didn’t sound right to me either. A guy like Jost wouldn’t leave them in his car once they’d been discovered. He’d have the guys at work asking to see what he had in his trunk every damn day.

  “He used the same magazines that got him busted to hang himself. Could be remorse. Self-punishment.” I sipped my lemonade. “What’s ‘contradictory’ about the evidence?”

  “The magazines suggest a sexual-” Curzon finally settled on, “-intent. But there’s no other evidence to support that assumption. No pertinent body fluids. Guy had his clothes on. In fact, those clothes he was wearing? The pants don’t even have a fly.”

  “How…awkward for him.”

  Curzon acknowledged this with a tip of his beer. “Exactly. On the other hand, judging by the time of death, and the mud on the sides of the box, he had to have been standing out there a while. Probably standing up on the boxes for a while. Looking at pictures, maybe? We don’t know.” He shook his head.

  Weirdness.

  “Trying to get up his courage?” Was courage what it took to face that moment?

  “Possibly,” Curzon answered vaguely. “Guy was no Boy Scout. Maybe he couldn’t figure out how to tie the knot.” That thought generated a frown and shrug. “On the other hand-how many hands is that now?-there was no note.”

  Another indication of autoerotic asphyxiation, according to Dr. Graham.

  I shook my head. “Contradictory evidence.”

  “You got it.” Curzon sounded stoical, in a pissed-off sort of way.

  “Any other witnesses,” I asked as casually as I could manage, “besides the phone tip?”

  “No.” He turned to face me and consider the possibilities my question suggested. “None.”

  I nodded, ah.

  “You’d report any pertinent information to the proper authorities, wouldn’t you, Maddy O’Hara?”

  The use of my whole name-a sure sign of trouble.

  “Of course I would, Sheriff Curzon.”

  He smiled and the glow in those eyes understood exactly how little we really knew of each other. “I see you brought your boy along today.” He wasn’t looking at Ainsley; he was looking at me.

  Ainsley was thick into the game of touch football with the underage Curzons. The females seemed to be tackling him whether he had the ball or not.

  “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “Not at all,” he assured me. Eyes still trained on the game, he added, “I’m glad.”

  “Gives the kids someone to play with?”

  Curzon smiled as a gang of mostly girls brought Ainsley down again. The boy stood up and shook himself off when Marcus Wilt called out a hello. Ainsley ran a couple of loping steps that direction and shook hello, all charm. PK-politician’s kid-probably knew three quarters of the people in town. Beside me, Curzon tensed.

  The kids called Ainsley back to the game.

  “I’d say the fact you brought your escort looks good for me.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, Sheriff.”

  “Jack,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Jack Curzon. It’s my name. You’re a guest in my father’s house, eating my mother’s food. Drinking her-” he curled his lip and pointed at my glass, “-drink. You ought to be calling me Jack…”

  “How about I call you jack-”

  “…not to mention the fact, I’m about to get familiar with you.”

  Without so much as a glance in my direction, I felt his hand shift from my elbow, to my waist, to the small of my back. The cold of the wall behind me was suddenly replaced with the heat of his palm.

  Jenny squealed with laughter as she went down under a pig-pile of ballplayers.

  All those painkillers on board, I should have had no trouble staying cool. Numb, even. “Uh,” was the best I could do.

  Lame. Maybe lemonade beer was stronger than I thought.

  That spot of warmth quickly slipped lower, tucking under the hem of my blouse. Skin to skin at the small of my back, warm became hot. All the blood left my head.

  I hissed, side-stepped away from him with my bad leg, and sang a stinging little song of the profane.

  Curzon grabbed my arm when I bobbled. “Whoa. What’s the problem?”

  “Your town’s full of crazy-fucking drivers is what.” I backed out of his grip and boosted my butt up onto the concrete wall. Gingerly, I swung my leg up in front of me and hiked up the split cuff of my capris. The white patch of bandage sported a brown stain that I hoped was peroxide. I decided not to peel it back and check.

  “How’d that happen?”

  I grumbled out the short version of my brush with the SUV.

  “You report it?” he asked in the work voice.

  “No. Are you kidding? Not that big a deal. Besides, the emergency room ate up my free time. I had to get to this swell party.”

  “Come in tomorrow and fill out a complaint.” It wasn’t an order; orders presuppose a future compliant will. This was more like old news. A done deal.

  “Why bother?” I snapped. “You people couldn’t catch the guy when the victim was all the way dead.”

  Oops. Where did that come from?

  “And how is that conflict of interest going?” he replied smoothly.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. “That came out rougher than I meant. Blame the Vicodin.”

  Both his eyebrows lifted. He was working to manage no smile. God help me, if he laughed.

  “Legal, totally legal,” I said. “Twelve stitches under there.”

  Curzon had that cop way with his hands, momentum held in check that could suddenly turn physical. He took hold of my calf, and before I could think to stop him, he’d carefully extended the knee for closer inspection. “Hmm. Looks like what you need is somebody to kiss it better.”

  His hands were a good five degrees warmer than my leg. When he leaned forward, the air around us moved and I caught a clear whiff of him, all boy and healthy sweat.

  Perched on top of the wall where I was, it was obvious the rest of the Curzon clan had a good view of this exchange.

  I know everybody has more than one reason for doing anything. But sometimes the best way to get along is to concentrate on one motive at a time. Maybe this little show was nothing personal. Maybe Jack Curzon was laying down a cover of suitable female interest. He might not wiggle all the way off the hook, but his nana would quit harassing him about his post-divorce solitude as long as he was busy elsewhere.

  On those grounds, I could play along.

  “Yeah, sure,” I agreed. “In fact, why don’t you start by sucking that foot clean? I had a little trouble reaching down so far in the shower this morning.”

  It was my favorite
type of man-eater reply, perfectly suited to discouraging barely legal soldier boys who hadn’t even learned to appreciate the taste of vegetables.

  Curzon’s leer made it obvious real quick; I’d miscalculated. He skewered me with a look that offered a peek in his bedroom window. Toe sucking was only one of the activities on his menu.

  It had been a long time since I’d had to deal with a guy like this. Out of practice and out of ammo, I faked a cough to cover the blood rushing to my face.

  “Another time maybe,” he replied after due consideration. One hand slid up and down the underside of my calf. “Come to the station tomorrow. File a complaint.”

  “Mmm.”

  He let go. I sat up, jerked my pant leg back in place and picked up my near-empty glass of lemonade beer. He took a sip of his drink. I took a sip of mine. Just a couple of calm, collected characters having a polite discussion of probabilities.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting?” Marcus Wilt smiled at me. No teeth, plenty of eyebrow.

  “Marc. Have you met Maddy O’Hara?”

  “I haven’t. Yet.”

  Wilt’s hand came out and I shook it, even though it was awkward the way I was perched on the wall. He was the kind of good-looking man who puts a lot of effort into the first two and a half seconds he meets a woman: yes or no?

  He read my no, loud and clear, and shifted his attention immediately to Curzon. “Heard you had to reprimand Nicky.”

  There was a long silence.

  Wilt leaned against the wall beside me, hands in his pockets. He wore beautifully tailored linen slacks, a dusty-blue silk shirt and Italian woven loafers without socks. Probably had the lifetime subscription to Esquire magazine. If Curzon was the basketball gladiator, Wilt was doing his best to rank as garden-party senator.

  “Too bad about the suicide,” he said seriously. “Re-opens that whole can of worms, doesn’t it?”

  Generations of controversy had time to be considered before Curzon finally answered, “No.”

  Wilt nodded as if he’d heard paragraphs of rationale. “Hope you’re right,” he replied sincerely. Donna Curzon was waving frantically from across the patio. Wilt pushed off from the wall. “I’m being summoned. Nice meeting you, Ms. O’Hara.”