Sometimes it was a pain in the butt. He managed with cussing and little self-reminding notes about having to hang on long enough to collect the pension he had been getting ripped off for all these years.
"Bad day?" Annie guessed.
"The worst." He explained. She had a good head. Interested in his work. He told her what he could. But she was a little drifty about it. She was a mystery buff. Any given time there would be ten to fifteen paperbacks scattered round the house. She came up with some weird suggestions.
"He wasn't dumped? There's that drug war on the North Side."
"No. The doctor says not. The scene agrees. With the snow and everything, they got it pinned. He died where they found him when there was an inch of snow on the ground. He was barely cold when they spotted him. This fish isn't bad. What'd you do?"
"No tire tracks or anything?" Her quick little mind was cataloging possibilities from mysteries read. She had the memory of the proverbial elephant, though it was as cluttered as a scrapyard.
"Not even tracks for him past three steps. They claim they went over that alley with everything. It's like he stepped out of thin air, walked a few steps, then croaked.”
"Kaspar Hauser," she mumbled. "How about a fall?"
"Nope. Nothing he could've fallen from. No bruises or anything, either. Just some passion scratches on his back." Her eyebrows arched. "That's what John thinks."
"There goes my helicopter idea. Eat your broccoli."
Ech, he thought. Especially broccoli. But cauliflower was worse and he would get that tomorrow if he didn't eat up today. He was the only baby she had now.
"Matthew called," she said, and was off with the latest from their youngest, who was at UMC and costing more than some of Uncle Sam's earlier wars. His major was Criminal Science. He wanted to follow in his father's footsteps, he said. Cash was not sure why, did not understand, but was pleased. Most kids weren't interested in their old man's work. Especially cops' kids. They all wanted to make a new world and a million bucks. Cash wasn't against doing either. It was just that the youngsters apparently believed in witchcraft, that somewhere, maybe in Washington, there was a magic button. If you were to push it, all the bad guys would get good, all the poor people would get rich, and all the starving would be fed. But the Powers had hidden it, because for some obscure reason that was to their advantage.
Talking about Matthew inevitably led to their other son, Michael. Obliquely, Annie asked, "When are you going to have John and Carrie over again?"
John Harald and Michael had grown up together, gone to college together, and had been in the war together. Vietnam. That had been "The War" to them. To Cash it was that nearly forgotten playground squabble with the Madman of Berlin. To each generation its own, he thought.
Michael Cash had not come home from his. He was still technically MIA. It was a thing between John and Cash that sometimes made them uncomfortable with one another, though they had few differences over the war itself.
"Did you hear me, Norman?"
"Sorry. It's the case."
"I asked what block."
"Eh? Oh. Forty-two hundred. Four or five places west of where you used to live."
"Ech. Good place for it. Right behind old spooky Groloch's. Is she still there? Did you meet her?"
"Yeah. Nice old lady. Reminded me of Auntie Gertie."
"We thought she was a witch when I was little. Took a dare to get us to go past on her side of the street."
"She's been there that long?"
"Was I born in the Dark Ages? Just because little Mike thinks I polished cannonballs for George Washington…"
"You know what I mean. Nobody stays around over there. She's probably the only one on the block that was there five years ago."
"Another murder mystery at Miss Groloch's," Annie mused. "What do you want to watch tonight? There's a Tony Curtis movie on Channel Five. An original, one of those pilot things. Or 'Hawaii Five-O'?"
"Cop shows, cop shows, that's all you get on Tuesday. Let's watch the movie. What do you mean, another murder mystery?"
"Oh, a long time ago, before I was born, they tried to get Miss Groloch for murdering her… lover, I guess. Only they never found the body."
"Warm up the time machine. I'll send them mine. Then we'll all be happy."
"That's not fair. I think she was innocent. He probably ran off with her money. He was a rat."
"If you weren't even born…"
"Mom told me about him. Even if she was guilty, she should've gotten a medal. When I was a kid, people still talked about how rotten Jack O'Brien was. Most of them did think she killed him, but they were on her side. They said he was a liar, a thief, a cheat, that he never worked a day. And that the only reason he would've hung around an older woman was to use her somehow. But nobody ever figured how she could've done it. That's how come we were scared."
"How old is she, anyway?"
"I don't know. At least eighty-five. That was in nineteen twenty-one…"
"Twenty-one?" Cash echoed, startled.
"Yes. So?"
"This guy… he had a pocketful of old coins. A twenty-one dime was the newest."
They stared at one another.
"A practical joke?"
"Annie, people don't kill people for a joke. But I'll check it out. See if anybody's got it in for her, or if there's any bodies missing…"
"You never did say. You think it's murder?"
"I don't know, hon. When we get bodies in alleys, we have to dig. He could've escaped from a funeral parlor."
"You said he died there."
"Yeah. So let's do the dishes and watch the movie, or something. Before it drives me crazy."
Next morning, before beginning the rounds of the coin shops, Cash cornered Railsback. "Hank, you ever heard of a Lieutenant Carstairs?"
"On the force?"
"Yeah."
"Can't say that I have."
"He'd go back a ways."
"I can ask the old man. Is it important?"
Old Man Railsback had retired in 1960, but still hung around the station more than home. He lived with his son, which Cash felt was explanation enough.