Two days of togetherness had been two days too many.
As the car wound through the cemetery, my brother began complaining about something our mother had said that morning. I murmured a one-word response. That was another thing about me now, how I seemed to speak with the volume off, my words only loud in my own head. Everything that mattered seemed to take place between my ears, and even the reality of death was just a bump in the feedback loop.
We reached my grandparents’ house. It was low-slung and pink, hugging the corner of Vendôme and de Maisonneuve. Anyone who’s seen Jacob Two-two Meets the Hooded Fang would recognize it; it’s where Jacob lived. Filmed in 1978, my grandfather still talked about the thousand dollars he’d made renting out the house for the shoot.
When we got inside, the house smelled like a gas fire and economy catering. Covered in plastic wrap on the dining room table were egg salad sandwiches, interspersed with a few smoked salmon rounds and some sad-looking crudités.
“Your grandfather wouldn’t want us to spend any money on a reception,” my father had said before my grandfather’s body went cold, trying, but not succeeding, at hiding his naked desire to start perusing the bank statements.
It was a good thing there weren’t very many people coming.
In the elastic band of time, it seemed only a minute before the doorbell rang. My brother’s wife’s parents entered along with the next-door neighbors. The living room was small, and soon the noise felt unbearable.
I needed to flee. So I did.
I stole up the stairs and crept along the dark hall to my grandfather’s bedroom. It smelled like his coat, which had hung in the closet until earlier that day, when I’d stopped by to retrieve it.
He and my grandmother enjoyed sleeping in separate rooms, he had told me without embarrassment years before. Her room was down the hall — this was his private domain.
I sat on the edge of my grandfather’s bed. His bedside table was littered with his last haul from the library: a new Robert B. Parker novel, an old Dorothy L. Sayers book, and Agatha Christie’s Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. He was the one who introduced me to mysteries as a child, and was largely why I worked as a private investigator now.
The September rain spat at the window. I pulled an envelope from my pocket — it was a birthday card from my grandfather I hadn’t opened yet. He’d written the address poorly, one of the 0s looking like a 6. My neighbor received the card, and handed it to me two weeks after my thirty-eighth birthday. I’d put off reading it, as if he wouldn’t really be gone if I didn’t consume his last words to me.
But the earth had already covered him over and that wasn’t going to change.
I kicked off my high-heeled shoes, which I thought were a good idea to wear for the occasion. They went with the coat, you see, along with the black sheath dress I felt poured into. Bright red lips completed the look.
Fake it till you make it.
My feet felt like they’d been dipped in ice after an hour by the graveside. I wrapped them in my grandfather’s afghan, which sat folded at the end of the bed. I peeled open the envelope and pulled out a card with a faded bouquet of flowers across the front — not a birthday card, just one of those generic ones you get on sale once the holidays are over. I smiled through the lump in my throat as I turned the cover to read what was inside.
I did not die of natural causes.
II
Last Rites
I spent another compressed night turning those words over in my mind. Was my grandfather trying to tell me that he’d been murdered? If so, who murders someone in their nineties? How would he know it was coming? And if he knew it was coming, why wouldn’t he tell me more directly, or go to the police, do something to stop it? What was I supposed to do with this information? Why had he sent me this card?
For a few dark minutes I thought about ending my own life unnaturally.
If you’re thinking about suicide, you’re supposed to go to the hospital immediately. That’s what the Internet told me when I googled thoughts of suicide. Google didn’t say how many other people had searched this, but I felt some small comfort in knowing that I wasn’t the first.
My problem was this: how do you know if you’re really thinking about killing yourself? Is it the first moment it enters your mind, even if only for a minute? Does it have to take root, live there for a while? Does the method have to be worked out in detail?
I didn’t know the answers to these questions. I only knew that I thought about it for four minutes and thirty-seven seconds after I read the bit online about the hospital, then put that thought away.
In the clear light of day, I was certain I didn’t want to go through with it. But my grandfather’s card lingered in my mind, so going to see a doctor seemed like a good idea.
My grandfather didn’t have an autopsy. There were no suspicious signs surrounding his passing, just an incredibly old man dying in his sleep. Our family doctor had confirmed the death when my grandmother called him to the house. The house call was unusual, but he’d been my grandfather’s doctor for the last thirty years, and so he came.
Dr. Wheelbarrow’s practice was in a suite of offices in Westmount Square. I showed up without an appointment, but I knew from experience that if you were willing to sit there long enough, he’d generally fit you in. After two hours of playing SimCity on my iPhone, I was called into his office.
The doctor greeted me and told me to disrobe.
“Oh, I’m not here for me,” I said, clutching the edges of my sweater. “I wanted to know if there was anything suspicious about my grandfather’s death.”
“He died from natural causes.”
“I know, but I thought maybe... Are you sure there wasn’t anything unusual?”
He sat back in his chair, tapping his finger against his lip. “What are you getting at?”
“Can I confide something in you?”
“Of course.”
“I have reason to believe my grandfather didn’t die naturally.”
“And what reason is that?”
I realized how silly it might sound, but forged ahead: “He told me.”
“He told you?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He wrote me a letter. A card. For my birthday.” I described what the card said. How I’d gotten it after he’d died.
“So he knew he was going to be murdered before it happened?”
“Well, he was suspicious, obviously.”
“My dear girl.”
“Okay, I know. It sounds ridiculous. But why else would he have written that to me?”
“I can’t answer that for you, my dear.” He glanced at his watch. “I have patients to see.”
“I’ll go, but if something occurs to you, will you please let me know?”
“I’ll think on it.”
III
A Solution, Perhaps
I spent a fruitless day at the office catching up on paperwork from my last case — a missing dog, a hundred-dollar fee; does anyone dream of this for a living? But really I was turning over my grandfather’s puzzle. It’s a joke; it’s for real; he was losing it. All of these seemed equally plausible, and I felt dumb with the weight of it all.