Randy White - Dead of Night

“She played the role, huh? The big boss in charge.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m not surprised. The cops tell me she’s a pompous ass. Even before she got elected constable, they say she was a pompous ass. Do you know what the vote was? Four to three. Only seven island voters. She’d cooked up the constable idea herself. A title, some power. I hear she comes from big money.”

“Acting like a pompous ass is one of the stages most of us go through, isn’t it, Ms. Graves?”

“I’m not so sure. Are you including yourself?”

“Sure. I’ve got lots of experience. Not just the pompous ass stage, either. On a regular basis, I invent all kinds of ways to behave like an ass. Thoughtless ass. Clumsy ass. Dumb ass. Myopic ass. Name one.”

She was grinning as I added, “The kind of guilt Melinda’s starting to feel could become permanent. The kind too heavy even for us experienced asses to deal with. She told me she’s only twenty. A small lie of kindness might help.”

Graves thought about it for a moment, letting me see that her professional side was uneasy with the idea, before she said, “From what I was told, Applebee was still alive at a little after nine when you telephoned 911. Slightly more than an hour later, you called to say that he was dead. What time did the girl arrive on scene?”

“Nine-forty. That’s what Melinda told me. I showed up about twenty minutes later.”

The woman was shaking her head. “The window’s too small. We can’t pinpoint the time of death that closely.”

“I’ve read there’s a way by measuring the body’s core temperature-”

“Yes, I’ve already done that, but not with any…” She paused to organize her explanation. “Let me put it this way. After somatic death-that’s when the body as a whole stops functioning-a corpse’s core temperature can remain normal for one, even two, hours afterward, depending on conditions. Then it drops by one to one and a half degrees per hour. That’s what you’re talking about. I did my preliminary examination at eleven-thirty. Applebee’s temp was thirty-five Celsius, which is only two degrees below norm. See what I mean?”

Intentionally ignoring the point, I said, “Then he could have died half an hour or so before the girl came on scene. What a relief if Melinda heard that. It might spare her one hell of a lot of emotional turmoil down the road.”

Ms. Graves began to chuckle, her tone saying, Okay, you win.

I said, “It’s a good cause.”

“You’ve never met the girl before, Ford?”

“Nope. But she needs help.”

“Are you always so persuasive? If the motivation wasn’t so noble, I might be offended. Instead, I might let you persuade me to have a cup of coffee after we’re done. There’re a couple of all-night places near Kissimmee. But we can’t stay long. I’ve got an early call.”

I said, “I’d like that. I really would. But there’s another detective coming to talk with me, and it’s already close to midnight.”

The woman was nodding, looking at me, stroking her brown cheek, amused. She waited for a while, letting me see that she knew something I didn’t, before asking, “Why can’t men just come out and say that they’re already involved with a woman? Is it because they want to leave their options open? Or is it because they’re embarrassed?”

“Embarrassed?”

“Embarrassed to be in love.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“Not until I asked you out for coffee. That expression on your face. Talk about panic. For a second, I thought you might run away and hide.”

“For the record, Ms. Graves, the answer would have been yes. Under different circumstances.”

“Rona.”

“Rona.”

It was true. I’ve met enough decent, interesting women over the years to wish that we lived lives proportionate in number to the number of strangers we’d like to get to know better.

The woman gave me a fraternal pat on the shoulder. “You really are a persuasive one. The professor type, but with charm. I’ll speak with the girl. You’re right. It could be a good and healthy thing for me to do. If Her Highness the constable reads the official report, though-well, there’s no way to control that.”

My cell phone began to ring as I thanked her. Watched her walk across the lawn toward Applebee’s brightly lighted house.

With the phone to my ear, from across eleven hundred miles of America, I listened to my old workout pal, my lover, and the expectant mother of our unborn child say, “Ford, what bullshit excuse do you have this time? Have I told you lately what a gigantic pain in the ass you are? If I haven’t, let me say it again just to be sure you’ve pulled your head out of your butt long enough to listen.”

I waited until she’d repeated herself before I replied with affection, “Hello to you, too, dear Dewey Nye. You expect to kiss an infant with that sailor’s mouth of yours?”

“You’d give a week’s pay to get a wet one from me.”

“More.”

“Really. Then I may start charging.”

She could. Dewey is a very kissable woman: Blond, fit, five-ten, and 160 pounds or so of raging, self-reliant pregnant female. She was once ranked among the top-ten tennis players in the world, and plays mostly golf now, beach volleyball, and some racquetball. Still competitive and outspoken. It’s hard to tell from her locker-room vocabulary, but she’s also intuitive and sometimes overly sensitive.

“How much would you pay?”

It was fun talking with her. Nice not to be locked inside my own brain, launching from a ski ramp over and over, seeing Applebee in the closet, so I played along. “Money is so awkward between friends. I was thinking more of a barter system. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. So to speak.”

“Oh sure. Take it out in trade. Trouble is, it’s tough to remember what you look like. I see you so seldom. Or even hear from you.”

I thought, Uh-oh. She wasn’t playing anymore.

“I’m serious, Doc. I got a bellyful of baby, and I can’t carry the load alone.”

“Dewey, I tried to call twice this morning, got that damn recorder. And my evening has been-unbelievable.”

“Bite me, Thoreau. So what’s your excuse? It’s ten o’clock in farm country, which is beddie-bye time, sport, for those of us ladies who happen to be knocked up.”

She was calling from the little farm she’d inherited outside Davenport, Iowa. It’s a house and barn on two hundred acres where the Mississippi River flows west, then turns sharply southward toward Missouri. Cornfields, rolling hills, white two-story houses, red barns, hickory and oak, narrow gravel roads. Because she was pregnant, Dewey had decided the family farm was the right place to be.

“A good luck sorta deal,” she explained it. “Something I can feel, but can’t explain.”

It was one of those instinctual judgments that I’m incapable of understanding, so take pains not to contest. Why risk offending someone you care about?

So I’d been commuting to Iowa when my schedule, and my lab work allowed-not often enough, obviously. Flying back and forth between the west coast of Florida and Quad City International Airport, Moline, Illinois, at least once a month. When I wasn’t visiting, I telephoned often, and always, always just before bed.

I apologized again, adding, “Trust me, you’ll understand when I explain. Not now, though, Dew. Tomorrow, if that’s okay.”

She didn’t want to let it go, but at least sounded playful again. “Tomorrow, huh? Why don’t you let me guess? You probably had those Coke bottle glasses of yours glued to some test tube. Or maybe you discovered some kind of insect that’s new to science. If that’s what it is, I hope the thing crawls out of the jar and bites you on the ass. Or on something that’s a lot more delicate.”