There seemed to be movement in the house. The other officers, a couple of plainclothesmen, were stomping all over the crime scene. They were inside, examining the body, examining the wounds, dusting for fingerprints, and so on, I figured. I don’t like that stuff. That’s one of the reasons I’m a private detective. There are many reasons, actually. That’s definitely one, though. I hate all that bullshit. Regardless. No one had seen me and the uniformed officer didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with Elaine, so I decided it was time for me to make my presence known.
‘Good evening, Mrs. Andrews,’ I said, then, ‘Good evening, officer.’
‘Mr. James,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’ve made it.’
‘Is this a friend of yours, ma’am?’ asked the officer.
‘He’s a private detective I’ve asked for assistance.’
Just then a police detective, Detective Michael O’Meara, a man I’m familiar with, came out the front door and joined us on the front porch.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Rick, to what do we owe the pleasure?’
‘Mrs. Andrews called me and asked for my services.’
‘You don’t have faith in the police, Mrs. Andrews?’
‘With all due respect, Detective O’Meara, my husband’s just been murdered and I’m anxious that we get to the bottom of this as soon as possible. And, yes,’ she said, like a pro, ‘I have faith in the police but realize that you are underfunded and understaffed and thought that you’d appreciate all the help you can get. Besides, Mr. James has a very good reputation. Can we really say the same about the police department, Detective O’Meara?’
He stood speechless, as did the uniformed officer, who didn’t write anything in his notepad, and I blushed from the compliment. O’Meara’s a pain in the ass, if the truth be known, and deserved to be put in his place.
‘If we’re through for now, officers,’ Mrs. Andrews continued, ‘I’d like to talk to Mr. James in private. So if you’ll please excuse us. Thank you for your help.’
‘We can’t leave the scene yet, Mrs. Andrews,’ said O’Meara.
‘Yes, though I can — can’t I?’
‘I don’t see why not. We have your cell number.’
‘Thank you, officers. Mr. James,’ she said, ‘let’s go someplace else.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But I don’t have a car.’
‘That’s all right. I do.’
‘Have we searched her car yet?’ said O’Meara to the uniformed officer.
‘Yessir.’
‘Then we’re done for now,’ said Mrs. Andrews. She turned to me and said, ‘Let’s go.’
‘First, if you don’t mind, I’d like to inspect the body.’
‘You’re not going in there, Rick,’ said O’Meara. ‘My men are working right now.’
‘Right, so you’re not going to let me see the body.’
‘That’s right, Rick.’
‘Let’s just leave,’ said Mrs. Andrews.
‘Listen to the lady, Rick — beat it.’
‘All right, O’Meara. This is low, though.’
‘Bye, Rick.’
I sat shotgun beside Elaine Andrews as she drove her black bmw fast. The dashboard looked like it belonged in the cockpit of an airplane. The seats were black leather. They were comfortable, the car was comfortable. For a moment I wondered why I don’t drive. Is it because my mind wanders? Is it because I know that if I drove that’s how I’d die, behind the wheel of a car? This car, though, made me rethink my driver’s licence, or rather my lack thereof. The night was dark. It was a little after midnight. The bare tree branches, too, were darker than the night. They hung over the road and looked like they were going to sweep the windshield like the brushes at the carwash, I thought, while we drove fast along the dark road to a destination unknown. I hadn’t asked where we were going. It didn’t seem to matter, as she drove her bmw fast along the dark road with the black branches. Mrs. Andrews looked at me, then back at the road ahead. She was younger than forty, I thought, though it didn’t matter. She might even be younger than thirty. What I knew for certain was that Gerald Andrews was older than her, significantly older — sixty, at least, I thought — and very wealthy, and I could tell that simply by their possessions, what little of them that I’d seen, and by the way they lived in generaclass="underline" the house, the cars, the furniture, the front porch. The voice on the phone, when she first called, though altered by tears, still didn’t match the person sitting beside me, not hysterically crying but driving. The voice, the woman, they didn’t match up, I thought, though I’d hardly heard her talk, except for over the phone. She broke the silence.
‘Will it affect your solving the case, not having seen the body?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It was terrible,’ she said.
‘Where are we going?’
‘For a drink. I need a drink.’
‘Okay, but where?’
‘A small bar, not far from here.’
The talking stopped.
The bar was small indeed, and long like a railway car, though it was wider. It was dark, too, except for a small yellow electric candle with a red plastic shade on the tabletop and dim white Christmas lights surrounding the bar. I ordered a double Scotch, neat, and Elaine said, ‘La même chose, s’il vous plaît,’ for the waitress was French. Elaine was truly beautiful, I thought, looking at Elaine. She looked like a film actress, one from the sixties, a brunette, though I couldn’t remember her name. We drank for a few minutes without saying anything, though Elaine didn’t seem uncomfortable. Elaine seemed okay — happy, most likely, to be out of her home, where her husband’s dead body still lay, I thought, or at least it was still there when we left her house. The Scotch was good and it was strong, not watered down in the slightest. No one gave any indication of recognizing Elaine Andrews but I suspected she frequented the bar. It seemed like she found this dark bar, with its few patrons, a relaxing atmosphere, which I found it to be, too. The music was soft and hard to make out but sounded good nonetheless. The drinks smelled strong and warm. Despite the fact that I was on the job, I was having a good time. It’d been a while, as long as I could remember, since I’d sat across from a beautiful woman, one who looked like a foreign film star from the sixties (she was foreign, the film star I was thinking of), drinking fine single malt Scotch neat. The drinks smelled good and the music was nice and Elaine looked radiant and it felt good to have company, for I hadn’t been on a case in a while, and I’d just been drinking, reading and working on my old case notes at home for weeks, maybe even months — for as long as I could remember. We were both hesitant to speak. Eventually, she spoke first.
She started by asking me questions, questions about detective work (how long had I been a detective? what makes someone choose that sort of career? et cetera), questions about my personal life (was I married? did I live alone? et cetera), and I answered her questions in an attempt to put her at ease, with the hope that she’d start talking, too. I told her that I lived alone and that I’d never been married. I told her that I’d taken an interest in detective work from a young age — from a young age I’d thought about my future detective work, my cases, my chronicling, my solving, when there was something to be solved. I talked mostly, while she asked the questions, and we drank a few more drinks. Slowly, I started slipping in questions, too: ‘When did you meet your husband?’ I asked. ‘Where did you meet him?’ I asked. ‘How long were you married?’ I asked. ‘What did he do for a living? That is to say, how did he come about his considerable wealth?’ She answered the questions as they came — some curtly, some extensively — but she kept asking me questions, too. She said she’d met her now-dead husband, Gerald, six years prior to his death, in a resort town out west, where she’d been working as a ski instructor for about two years. She gave him a lesson, she said, and he invited her out for a drink, after the lesson, and she said sure, she said, and they had a drink at the chalet and she said she found him charming, witty and self-assured. I sat up straighter when she said self-assured, then felt embarrassed. She said that he wasn’t aggressive, though she knew he wanted to sleep with her. She said, although she’d never dated a man his age, or even kissed a man his age, she felt curious about him, even though he was older. ‘Younger guys get boring,’ she said, and I simply nodded. ‘They’re selfish and often idiotic,’ she said. ‘They guard their time jealously, and then waste it on inanities.’ Much of what she said hit a nerve, or at least made me tense up a little. She said that it was nice to have a drink with someone who had his life together — or seemed to — and she was referring to the time she’d first met Gerald, when she had had drinks with him at the ski chalet, after his ski lesson, not to having drinks with me, in the narrowish bar, after her husband’s murder. If it was murder, which it of course most likely was. They were married quickly, about four months after they met, in a small chapel in the mountains, outside the resort town where she’d worked. She’d quit her job as soon as they got serious, she said, which was about two weeks after the initial ski lesson. At that time, she said, six years ago, Gerald had just acquired a company that made plastic bottles from recycled materials, a company he sold, shortly after they were married, for a substantial profit. That’s what Gerald did, she said: ‘He bought companies that were in trouble, he invested in them, then sold them for profit.’