Max Collins - No Cure for Death

He came over and sat down at the table with us, changed his expression to one that was about as friendly as he could muster for me. Sort of a warm grimace.

He said, “I appreciate you letting me know about the circumstances surrounding that accident last night. I really do. I’m obliged to you for that much, don’t get me wrong.”

“Then tell me about the autopsy.”

He started to get mad all over again, then sighed in momentary defeat. “We’re trying to contact next of kin. After a reasonable attempt’s been made, we can go on ahead with it.”

John said, “What about the girl’s mother?”

Brennan shook his head. “Called the University Hospital just before I came up here. Old lady Ferris is out of the picture.”

“Who?” I said.

“The mother,” Brennan said. “Renata Ferris, age fifty-nine. She died around four this morning.”

John’s sister Lori and her husband and newborn child lived in a duplex on East Hill, just a few blocks from my trailer-the lower floor of a paint-peeling gothic two-story.

When John knocked, we heard “Come on in,” and did, finding Lori sitting on the couch, with her blouse unbuttoned, holding her baby to one beautiful, mostly exposed breast. She apologized for not rising. Lori is a pretty, shapely little thing, with long brown hair highlighted with red, and milky white skin freckled here and there. Her breasts, judging from the one that was showing, were pale ivory, and let me state now that watching a beautiful woman breast-feed a child is something I’ll never get used to, and not just because I was a bottle baby myself.

Lori and John had a lot to talk about, so I kept fairly quiet for the first half hour. They hadn’t seen each other since his emergency leave when their mother died, which had been just before he left for his second tour in Vietnam. John didn’t say much about his overseas duty, but he did have a few words to say, mostly bitter, about California and the wife he’d briefly had out there. Lori told John that her husband Frank wasn’t in a rock group anymore, but was playing four evenings a week in a local bar with a country-western band, which was helping to supplement the salary from his job at the alcohol plant. She was going to try to stay at home with the child, Jeff, and hoped she wouldn’t have to go back to secretarial work.

Finally I said, “Lori, I wonder if you’d mind if I butt in for a moment.”

Her brown eyes flashed sexily, an unsettling thing for a mother breast-feeding her child to do (unsettling for me, that is), and she said, “Not at all, Mal.”

“John told me this morning that you used to know a girl named Janet Ferris.”

Lori nodded. “I still do. I mean, we’re not real close, but I know her.”

John and I exchanged glances.

“And,” she said, “her name isn’t Ferris anymore. She got married to a guy named Phil Taber. They’re split up, but she’s still using the name.”

“Have you seen her lately?”

“Sure. Last week. She moved back to Port City several months ago.”

John said, “You better tell her, Mal.”

Lori shifted the child from one breast to the other. “Tell me what?”

I said, “Janet Taber was killed last night.”

“God, no! But… how? What happened?”

John said, “A car crash.”

“An accident?”

“That’s what it looks like,” I said. “But I think there’s a chance it was something else.”

“God,” Lori said. “And after all she’s been through.” She shook her head. “I wonder what’ll happen to her boy. That freaky husband of hers won’t take care of him. The kid’s in bad shape, you know. Very bad shape.”

“How bad?”

“Bad shape like in open heart surgery.”

John said, “The appearance of the accident was that Janet was drunk at the wheel and went over the side out at Colorado Hill.”

“That’s a load of bull,” Lori said. “Booze made Janet nauseous-she couldn’t stand the stuff! I’ve seen her smoke a joint now and then, but hard liquor? No way.”

“Well,” I said.

Lori eased her child away from her breast and rose up from the couch, saying, “Excuse me.” Several minutes later, having tucked the baby away in his crib, she came back, buttoning her white blouse.

“What’s your interest in Janet, Mal?” Lori said, sadly, sitting back down on the couch. “I didn’t realize Janet and I shared a mutual friend in you. She never mentioned you.”

I told her the story. I’d been through the bus station incident so many times I was beginning to feel prerecorded. Lori leaned forward, intent on my words, the intelligence sharp in her brown eyes. When I finished up, she said, “Wow,” and shook her head. “Some story.”

“And,” I said, “since I’m on Thanksgiving vacation…”

“Don’t mention the word Thanksgiving,” she said. “I’ve been wrestling with a turkey all morning. I’ll be glad when tomorrow’s out of the way. I’m having Brennan and John over and…”

John interrupted, “Mal’s not changing the subject to his holiday plans, sis. He’s really caught up in this Janet Taber thing. He wants to do something about it.”

“The only thing to do,” Lori said, “is fill Brennan in on it. He’s a little right-wing, I’ll grant you, but then Port County is the most Republican county in this Republican state. Brennan’s a good sheriff-don’t let his redneck attitude fool you.”

“I just came from talking to Brennan,” I said. “And I came away with the feeling he doesn’t really take this too seriously.”

“Why not?”

“Maybe because I’m involved. I don’t know.”

“So what are you gonna do? Play cop?”

“I was one once, you know.”

Lori smirked. “Yeah, you rode around in a squad car out in some California equivalent of Port City for what, a month and a half before you quit? Big deal.”

“Lori,” John said.

“Look, Mal,” she said, “I like you and all that, but I’m not in favor of helping out anybody who’s got in mind taking the law in his own hands. I’m an ex -radical these days, all settled down and married and a mother, and I’m for working through the system, not running over it.”

“Don’t pay any attention to her,” John told me. “She’s been a schizophrenic for years, trying to be a left-wing antiwar liberal on the one hand, and supporting that super-conservative stepfather sheriff of ours on the other.”

“Lori,” I said, “I just want to poke around a little bit and see if I can uncover some truth. Is there anything wrong with that?”

Her expression froze in an undecided half-smile, and she sat back and thought it over for a while. John started to coax her, but I waved at him to shut up.

Finally she sighed and started pouring out everything she knew about Janet Ferris Taber.

“Five years ago,” she said, “when I was a student at the community college, I had this summer job, a job I felt would be rewarding in more ways than just financial. The job was being a full-time secretary on the campaign team for U.S. Senate hopeful Richard Norman.”

“Norman, huh?”

“Yeah. Norman, our local wonder boy.”

Son of Port City’s resident eccentric millionaire, Sy Norman, young Norman had been a top honors man in college and a letter-winner in track to boot, and had gone on to be first in his class in the University law school. His next achievement was being the youngest man in the state’s history to be elected to the Iowa legislature. He served his district well (which included his home town, Port City, of course) for ten years, then began to mount his campaign to reach Washington.

“I was eager to help him,” she said. “I’d been vice-president of the Young Demos at the college and Norman was a Republican. But, he was a liberal Republican, and that was about as far to the left as this state could ever be expected to move, so I jumped in with both idealistic feet.