Paul Levine - To speak for the dead

"A great piece of luck," he said again, "especially with Corrigan dead two years. In Florida the ground is so damp, the tissues break down fast. I hate to tell you what corpses look like when you dig them up, mold on the outside, parasites and larvae on the inside. Mausoleum tombs are so rare these days, so expensive. But I guess he could afford it."

"Judging from his house, the tomb will have a wine cellar, an elevator, and a butler," I said.

"Just so it's airtight, that's the ticket."

Riggs was nearly smacking his lips at the prospect of popping the top on Philip Corrigan's last resting place. I had pulled the funeral bills from the case file. In a wrongful death case the estate recovers funeral expenses, and I remembered a fifty-thousand-dollar number. Sure enough, there it was, a bill from Eternal Memories Mortuary and Mausoleum. When the first Mrs. Corrigan had died, her husband bought the choicest acre plot and ordered a mausoleum built for two, and not the compact efficiency model either. The perfect touch from the loving husband, a promise that his bones would one day rest beside hers. Just not so soon, Philip Corrigan would have hoped.

Eighty-five thousand for construction and services related to Mrs. Corrigan. Another fifty grand two years later for finishing Philip Corrigan's crypt put the whole shebang into six figures for the condo-like mausoleum. According to the specifications on the bill, it had a sitting room with a concrete bench so mourners could be shielded from the midday sun, a main room with matching concrete crypts on raised platforms of coral rock, and a foyer with the inscription, "Death Pays All Debts," a fitting eulogy for a guy who leveraged construction loans into his fortune.

Charlie Riggs and I were in my Olds 442, which sported a new headlight and pounded-out hood, and responded with a happy roar coming east on Tamiami Trail. I had told Riggs about the conversation with Melanie Corrigan, leaving out the details of the slinky body and lingering kiss. Her allegations against Salisbury fascinated him.

"Fits a little too nicely," he said, chewing on a cold pipe. His forehead was furrowed in thought, and the lights were on behind his straw-colored eyes.

"How's that?"

"First the daughter tells you the doctor used the drug to kill Corrigan. Then the widow tells you the doctor wanted her to do it with the drug. You don't even know if the liquid the daughter showed you is succinylcholine."

"What are you saying?"

"That the two women could be framing the good doctor."

"I can't buy it. Every crime needs a motive, as you constantly remind me. Melanie Corrigan might have one, just to get rid of Salisbury. He's a pest to her. But Susan Corrigan, what could she have against Salisbury?"

Riggs tried to light his pipe, no easy task with the top down and the 442 howling at seventy-five. "Maybe nothing, except they needed a fall guy for the murder of Philip Corrigan."

"What?" I nearly lost control, swerving to avoid a dead armadillo.

"How was the estate split?"

"Melanie got the house, the yacht, and thirty percent of the gross assets. Susan got the rest after estate taxes. Neither one's going hungry."

"So they each had a motive, hypothetically at least, for wanting Philip Corrigan dead."

"Hey Doc, we're talking about a girl and her father."

"As Plautus said, lupus est homo homini. Man is a wolf to man. It applies to women, too. Inhumanity is often at its worst inside the family. Men beat their wives or commit incest. Wives kill their husbands, sometimes in the most bizarre manner. And daughters sometimes kill their fathers."

"That's sick, Charlie."

"So it is," he said, giving up on the pipe and blinking into the wind.

We followed the stone path around the house and founc Susan Corrigan just getting out of the saltwater pool. She wore a dark blue, no-nonsense Lycra competition suit. It clung to every curve and crevice of her athletic body. She put on her tortoiseshell glasses, which immediately steamec up.

"Finished with two hundred yards of butterfly," she said pufling a little. "Gets the blood flowing."

I introduced her to Charlie Riggs, and she gave him respectful hello and asked why the distinguished former cor oner would hang around with a second-string ex-jock turnec shyster. On the off chance that was a joke, I laughed like good sport. Then I handed her a towel, but she neglected to ask me to dry her back so I didn't. Plowing common ground I said I had read her game story from LA. The Dolphin receivers dropped everything but their paychecks Sunday.

"Eight dropped passes," she said, "two in the end zone they lose by three points. And the defense played great. Die you see Tyrone Washington? Four sacks."

Charlie Riggs cleared his throat. Small talk was not his forte. "Miss Corrigan, you know what we want to do."

"Yes," she said. "Jake told me on the phone. Did you bring the papers?"

"I prepared an affidavit," I said, "but it's not going to be much good. I asked Melanie to sign it, too, to get permission from both of you, but she refused."

Susan flung the towel onto the wet pool deck. Her eyes blazed. "You did what! She killed Dad or at least helped Salisbury do it. Why would you ask her?"

"As the surviving wife and the personal representative of the estate, she technically has the right to say yes or no," I said. "And you might be wrong about her." I recounted my meeting with the widow, again leaving out the snuggling stuff.

"So," I said, "both of you accuse Roger Salisbury of poisoning your father. But she won't give permission to exhume the body. Says to let it go, she doesn't want to be involved."

"And don't you find that suspicious?" Susan asked as if I were a simpleton.

"Maybe if she hadn't tipped me to Roger in the first place, it would be suspicious. But now, I don't know."

She fastened me with an angry look I was coming to know too well. "I tipped you to Roger Salisbury. And now I authorize you to do the autopsy. If you won't do it, I'll go to the state attorney. He can get a warrant or something, right?"

"Right," I said. "A court order. But then you lose control of the investigation. The coroner will do it. You and Charlie and I will be out in the cold. In fact, if you tell them that you've got the succinylcholine and traces are found in the body, you'll be suspect number one."

Her eyes were flaming behind the tortoiseshell glasses. "Then what do you propose we do?"

I looked at Charlie Riggs and he looked at me. We both were thinking the same thing. We looked at Susan Corrigan, whose short black hair was dripping little puddles onto the patio. We didn't say a word but she caught on.

Great minds think alike. But maybe slightly addled ones, too.

"There are some things we'll need," I said.

"I have everything back in the Glades," Charlie Riggs said.

"Tonight?" Susan Corrigan asked.

Charlie and I both nodded.

I went home to change. A charcoal suit with burgundy pinstripes is fine for lawyering, but it wouldn't do at all for my new avocation.

The saw made a frightful noise. Powered by a small gas motor, it was biting through the concrete seam of the crypt, tossing dust everywhere and making a racket that jack-hammered off the marble walls. Susan Corrigan stood guard outside the mausoleum, keeping an eye out for the night watchman.

I had second thoughts about bringing Susan on such a grisly assignment, but she was the only one who could bring us right where we needed to be. Charlie and I shouldn't be stumbling over gravestones after midnight looking for the right tomb. That was Susan's argument, anyway. Now that we were here, I saw it would have been hard to miss. Built on the top of a small knoll, the Corrigan mausoleum commanded an impressive view of a lake and the Palmetto Expressway in the sprawling southwest suburbs. I should have figured it. Even in death, Philip Corrigan adhered to the three rules of real estate: location, location, location.