Howard Engel: Dead and Buried

Irma Dowden looked over my office. She took in the convenient downtown location, the active business files scattered in front of me and the framed licence behind my desk. Furtively she gave the cotton-draped mannequins in the corner a rapid scrutiny. Their breasts were peeking out from under the cloth again. I cleared my throat before she formed a question. “My father closed out his ladies’ ready-to-wear business downstairs,” I explained. “I’m temporarily minding some of his things. You may speak quite freely in front of them.”

She nodded like she knew already. Come to think of it, the mannequins had been around for a few years now. Even without their wigs and wearing a dusty remnant of factory cotton, the trio had become indispensable for second to fourth opinions. As company, they still made me nervous. But Mrs. Dowden didn’t want to know about that. She sat there, cheeks daubed with half-hearted rouge, straight as a post, with her black purse in her lap.

“How can I help you, Mrs. Dowden?” I pushed the files to one side. I didn’t want to discourage her by suggesting that I had other business on hold while we shot the unprofitable breeze. I sat there, giving her all my attention and trying to look affordable. That little black purse could buy my time for a few days at least.

Irma Dowden hadn’t just walked in my door that Tuesday in early October; she’d phoned first for an appointment. I was impressed. I’d cleaned things up a little and cursed the dirty windows which didn’t give my place of business the cachet I was trying to inspire. But in Grantham there’s only one reliable man for windows and I hadn’t seen him in months. Waiting for Mrs. Dowden to keep her three o’clock appointment had made me nervous. I had even thought of getting up and opening the door for her, but the last time I did that it was a patient of Frank Bushmill’s, the chiropodist who shares the running toilet, the rent and the second floor overlooking St. Andrew Street with me. I realized I was rambling in my thoughts, so I asked my question a second time.

“Did you read in the paper about Jack?” she asked, her eyes like two black currants rolling in my direction. I told her I’d not read anything about Jack, whoever Jack might be, but I was prepared to be sympathetic. She pulled a clipping from her purse and handed it to me. A pencil scrawl in the white space on one side of a heading said: 16 July. That was nearly three months ago. I recognized the type as belonging to the local paper, the Beacon. It was a small item, insignificant enough so that I was now no longer guilt-ridden for missing it in the first place. The heading read: LOCAL MAN CRUSHED BY TRUCK. The story described the death of Jack Dowden on the 13th at the yard of Kinross Disposals. The truck had apparently slipped off the brake and pinned Dowden against a cement brick wall. I read the details and handed the clipping back to Irma, who was now looking like she was Jack’s widow.

“I’m sorry,” I said. She nodded her head in sympathy with mine. She looked small and insubstantial sitting there. The falseness of the rouge was standing out on her velveteen cheeks in the greying light coming in through my venetian blinds. I went back to my opening question for the third time: “How can I help you, Mrs. Dowden?”

She leaned closer to my desk and tried to find the words that would convince me to take her case. “Mr. Cooperman, I want you to look into Jack’s death. I think they murdered him, the bastards, I do!” That made me blink and I smiled to encourage her to go on. At the same time, my heart was joining the Titanic on the bottom of the North Atlantic. Rule number one for private investigators: you’ll never make a nickel competing with the cops. I asked Mrs. Dowden to continue. She moistened her narrow lips and tried to find the place where she’d left off.

“Jack wasn’t the sort to get himself killed in an accident like that,” she said. “I’ve lived with the man these eighteen years and I know the things he’ll do and the things he won’t. If they told me he’d run off with the payroll, I wouldn’t have liked it, but it would have been like him. Jack could do a daft thing like spending his wages on a pine cupboard, anything made of wood, but walk in front of his truck, no sir. When it comes to machines, Jack was as careful as an airline pilot. You see, his friend Charlie Bowman was killed that way ten years ago.”

“Was there an inquest into your husband’s death, Mrs. Dowden?”

“Oh, yes. They held one of those. Company doctor told how he came on the scene and there was nothing he could do. A company director told how there were signs posted everywhere warning the drivers to be careful. Another driver said that Jack hadn’t been keeping his mind on the work the last few weeks. Well, that’s a plain lie and Brian O’Mara knows that, Mr. Cooperman.”

“O’Mara’s the other driver, right?” She nodded. “Who’s the company doctor?”

“Name’s Carswell. Imagine him just happening to be there!” I wrote down the names on a pad of paper that so far only held the name of my client.

“Why do you say O’Mara lied at the inquest?”

“I don’t know why he lied, unless he was paid off, but I know for a fact that Jack was talking about the job all the time. He never shut up about it. He was more involved in his work than before, not less.”

“I see,” I said, drumming my ballpoint pen on the desk and trying to look intelligent. “What do you think was on Jack’s mind?”

“He was worried about the stuff he was hauling, that’s what. I’ll admit he was worried, but he wasn’t ever careless with his truck.”

“And you think they murdered him? Who exactly is they, Mrs. Dowden?”

“Why, Kinross, of course. All of them. They just roll over little people like us!” She looked at her knuckles for a minute before going on. They looked cold. “I want you to see if Jack was killed to hush up something he found out about. I know he was murdered. I’m not looking for another whitewashing inquest. I want you to find out what Kinross wanted covered up.”

“You don’t want much, do you?” She looked back at me with a set jaw and steady eyes.

“I want you to get the goods on Kinross. You’ll do us all a favour if you put them out of business.”

“Look, Mrs. Dowden, that’s not really my sort of thing. You know I used to do mostly divorce work. I look into small fraud cases and some family law. I don’t usually get involved with outfits as big as Kinross. And I don’t dig up dirt just to make things look bad, not even to please a lady.” She was looking over my shoulder to the wall where my licence was hanging in its Woolworth’s frame. She didn’t rush her answer.

“Mr. Cooperman, I’m not asking for you to be making things up about Kinross. I didn’t say it right. I know the dirt’s there. But I don’t expect you to be convinced just because I say so. I tried speaking to the police about Jack’s death. They don’t want to get involved.”

“They didn’t say that, Mrs. Dowden.”

“No, but they thought the inquest was very convincing. It was tidy, all tied up at the end like a movie. If Jack wasn’t my husband, I’d have been taken in by it too. But he is-was-so I could see through it. They appeared to be so concerned for my welfare, so broken up about their spoiled safety record, so solemn about everything. They sent me a big cheque. If it had been smaller, I would have been less suspicious. It seemed to say ‘keep your mouth shut and nobody’ll get into trouble.’” By now she was daubing at her eyes with a small piece of blue tissue. I pushed the box of Kleenex across to her side of the desk.