Perri O'Shaughnessy - Presumption Of Death

The front seat remained invisible. The car seemed covered with a fine, oily wet layer of skin, as thick as a seal’s. A gust of warm wind lifted her housecoat.

Why did she bother, she groused inwardly. Still, a horde of caterwauling cats of all shapes and sizes clustered around the car. Some moved toward her, sidling up to her ankles, purred, and began to nudge her.

Enough! she thought. She pounded on the driver’s-side door. When there was no response, she tried the handle.

The door, unlocked, fell open, and Ruthie, who never did anyone any harm, fell down out of her seat onto the hot asphalt.

Oh, Jolene thought. Oh, you poor thing. Ruthie looked so little and helpless. Her skin was bright red and her mouth hung open and she wasn’t moving at all.

Was this what death looked like?

Because Ruthie, eyes closed, otherwise looked peaceful. As if she had just fallen asleep.

Nina and Paul had been home from Cachagua and the Bucket for half an hour, and Nina was still in the shower, when Ben Cervantes called with the news. “I thought you’d want to know,” he said. “I heard it from Tory, who just got the call from Jolene. She found Ruthie’s body this morning.”

By the time Paul and Nina arrived, the police had photographed, dusted, and examined for hours. Ruthie still lay on the asphalt after all this time, cordoned off and harshly lit, while the ambulance stood by, waiting for the body to be released.

Gawkers continued to come and stare, to act as witnesses to the ritual of death. Nina recognized Darryl and Tory Eubanks. Tory was carrying her youngest. Some of the neighborhood kids ran back and forth across the street, yelling with excitement as though they were at the circus.

“Find anything?” Paul asked the detective in charge. With a weary look, the detective told Paul to back off, and in the interests of good relations, Paul did that. They waited in the Mustang while the ambulance drove off and the detectives called it a day.

Then they went back over to the parking lot. Ruth Frost’s battered Cutlass was surrounded by yellow caution tape. A deputy had been posted, but, distracted by a pile of questions from Nina, he was rendered innocuous long enough for Paul to take one good look at the car.

“Crab and langoustine ravioli,” Nina said to the waiter at the Terrace Grill. The Terrace Grill was an adjunct to the La Playa Hotel, a lovely old place that had been a fixture for many years in Carmel. They had chosen a table outside. It was nine-thirty at night and Nina’s stomach was as empty as a crater on the moon. She had already started on the bread and butter.

Tonight the fog spared them. The warm air settled over them as softly as a veil. Birds shook the trees and flower garden nearby, settling in for the night, and the few streaks of cloud above the waterline were stained cherry.

“We’d like to start with crab cakes,” Paul said, “then I’ll have the prawns.” He studied the wine list for another moment, then ordered a Gewürztraminer, very cold.

Nina reached across the table and took his large hand in hers. Hard, craggy, experienced, she thought, and smiled. “I feel guilty.”

“Here we sit, playing violins, figuratively speaking,” Paul said, “while Carmel Valley burns. People are dying. But we have to eat.”

“The party goes on,” Nina said.

“So it does. What’s bothering you? I mean aside from Wish’s problems, Ruthie’s death, your hangover today from the party, and being tired and hungry from this whole long day.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Is it about Bob’s call?”

“No… it’s nothing.”

“Not true.”

“He’s okay.”

“So you’re not ready to talk about it?”

“I’m thinking it’ll blow over, Paul. I don’t want to talk about it, as a matter of fact.”

“Why not?” Paul demanded, as peremptorily as if she were a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay withholding vital information.

“It’s none of your cotton-picking business,” Nina said, her back up. Again.

“You won’t tell me?”

“I will soon.” When I have a solution, she thought.

Paul tolerated Bob, but children, in the generic, he did not like. He would not want Bob in the second bedroom he used as an office. Of course not. Fair enough.

One bathroom. Bob’s forty-minute showers. Paul’s lips would get as tight as an abalone shell at low tide.

Why couldn’t Bob follow the plan? It had been so tidy. He had insisted on going to Sweden. Let him stay and build character.

But.

He was overwhelmed. He needed to come home. Home in quotation marks. Home in the abstract. Alas, in truth, there existed no home for Bob to come home to at the moment.

“It’s Nikki, isn’t it? Nikki’s older,” Paul said. “She does things she shouldn’t and that makes her attractive to Bob. What else is new?”

Oh, not much, Bob wants to come home, Nina thought. “Nikki’s cooling off toward Bob.”

“Ah. And what’s his response?”

She decided she would go no further in this direction, especially given the interest she saw rising in his greeny-yellow eyes. Which, in spite of the glass of wine he had just downed, remained sharp. “So, Paul,” she said, licking the tip of her already-shiny spoon, “what did you think happened to Ruthie?”

He cocked his head, but let it go. “I have a few ideas,” he said. “Ruth Frost’s car was old, so I can’t be sure.”

“But…” she offered.

“Right. But…”

“Something struck you?”

“You know how when you have a hunch?”

“You never buy my hunches.”

“But I buy my own.”

“What hunch?”

“The police think because it was a cold night, she left her motor and heat running.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I think she’d run it for a while, then turn it off.”

“Because?”

“Because she was slightly cockeyed, yes; stupid, no. Have you ever noticed that if you’re an outsider, people will believe you’re capable of all sorts of unreasonableness?”

“Maybe she felt running the motor outside would be harmless. She didn’t know she would die. Probably thought the outside air would dissipate any carbon monoxide. Maybe she passed out before she could turn off the car.”

Paul said, “Witnesses say she hasn’t had a back seat in years. That she often left the motor running to get heat, when she needed it. Not smart, with leaks in the exhaust system, but she knew that and didn’t do it for long.”

“Does anyone say she threatened to kill herself?”

“No.”

“So what do you suspect? The police seem satisfied our Cat Lady died a natural death, out feeding her beloved animals in the night, trying to stay warm in her ruin of a car.”

“I guess if I was looking at the situation from the point of view that she was living a risky existence and had a bad accident, I’d be satisfied too. But there were those marks on the exhaust pipe,” Paul said.

Nina stopped eating. “Marks?”

“Maybe natural aging, maybe not. I took a few photographs and looked at them before we came here, but they don’t really prove anything. Those marks could have happened a lot of ways. And it doesn’t look like the forensics people are planning to figure this one out for us. The authorities seem pretty set on natural death.”

“You pointed out what you saw?”

“They saw what I saw. They took photographs too, but, you know, strange way to kill someone.”

“Are you sure what’s been happening around here isn’t inspiring your imagination?”

“Maybe. But maybe somebody rigged a hose into the car to help out the fumes in the back. She went out there to take care of the animals. She ran the motor and fell asleep. Someone ran a hose from the pipe into the car.”