I was afraid that Eddie was going to latch onto us for the entire party. Instead he excused himself. “Sis will kill me if I don’t spread my countenance about,” he said. He headed off to the bar.
Ike and I strolled across the lawn, nibbling the best we could. It was a beautiful evening with just enough sun. We chatted with Kay Hausenfelter for a while. With Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy. With the Reverend James W. Bobbs. With Bob and Tippy Averill. With somebody named Penelope. With somebody Penelope introduced us to, whose name I never did catch. Then I saw Gloria McPhee’s husband, Phil, strolling along the lake with his plate, by himself. “There’s just the man I want to talk to,” I told Ike.
“Alone, I gather?”
“I’m a one-man-at-a-time girl,” I said. I headed for the lake.
I’d only seen Phil McPhee once before. At lunch, after my garage-sale juggernaut with the Queens of Never Dull. He’d cooked for us. He’d told way too many jokes.
I was half way down the lawn when Phil spotted me. I waved at him, hoping I didn’t look too eager. I’m sure he wasn’t thrilled to see me coming-he obviously wanted to be alone for some reason or the other-but he stopped and waited for me. He was sucking on a barbecued rib. He had sauce on his chin. On his white linen pants, too. “Feeding the fish?”
He smiled. “Don’t tell me you abandoned that good-looking man up there to keep me company.”
“He’s not that good looking up close.”
“Even if he’s ugly I’m flattered.”
Phil was quite the flirt. And that’s exactly why I wanted to talk to him. At lunch that day he’d seemed a little too charming. A little too comfortable around women. “I think it’s just terrific the way your wife and the others stood by Eddie throughout this mess,” I said.
He went Groucho on me. Wiggled his eyebrows. “And Eddie is a hard guy to stand next to.”
I pretended to like his joke. Then I got serious. “Then again, they spent a lot of time with Eddie over the years. I guess when you know someone that well, you know if they’re capable of murder or not.”
This time, no joke. “That seems to be the case.”
“Seems?”
He tossed his rib bone in the lake. Lowered his eyebrows and smirked devilishly. “You didn’t see that,” he whispered, as if somebody was close enough to hear him.
He was testing me. Seeing if I was seducible. “I did see that.” “Do you want me to jump in and get it before the fish do?”
“Whatever your conscience will bear.”
He laughed loudly. Sucked on a fresh rib. “I’m sure the girls are right about Eddie,” he said. “The police seem to agree.”
“But you don’t?”
“I’m an exterminator,” he said. “I know my wiggly little creatures.”
He started walking along the bank again. I followed him. “I meet my share of those in my work, too,” I said.
He finished sucking the meat off his rib. Made sure I saw him put the bone back on his plate. “You’re a funny lady.”
“And you’re a funny man.”
He grinned at me. Winked. Coming to the mistaken conclusion, I hoped, that I was indeed seducible. To improve the odds, I pointed out that he’d splattered more barbecue sauce on his pants. “And look there,” I said. “You’ve got cat fur all over the place.” I reached down and pulled a couple of the hairs off his knee.
“Gloria’s cats have the run of the house.”
“I noticed that day I was there.”
“Well-I’ve learned to live with it.”
I turned the conversation to Violeta Bell. “So, what did you think when all that icky stuff came out about Violeta’s sex change? You didn’t say anything about it that day at lunch.”
He licked the sauce off his fingers. Tucked his arm inside mine. “What’s there to say?”
“You weren’t surprised?”
“Everybody was.”
I was making him nervous. I kept going. “I figured a man might pick up on something like that. Quicker than a woman would, I mean.”
“You think so?”
And going. “Was she, you know, feminine?”
“Yes. Sure.”
And going. “Sexy?”
“She was no Maddy Sprowls.”
And going. “Be serious. Was she the kind of woman that men, well, respond to?”
He found an opportunity to laugh. “She was of a certain age, you know.”
“I’d be offended if I didn’t know how you men are.”
He playfully removed his arm from mine. Folded both arms across his chest. “Now I’m offended.”
“Men like younger women. It’s nature.”
Back went his arm. “Men like women, period.”
“That’s better.”
Ike and I stayed at the party until nine. Until the mosquitoes started biting and the bats from the woods starting buzzing the dessert table. When we got to my house, we took James for a late night walk. I held the leash. Ike held me. At one in the morning I slipped out of bed and went to the basement. For years now the paper has been computerizing the morgue’s files. Little by little all those wonderful old clippings are being thrown out. I lug them to my car and bring them home. The wonderful old filing cabinets, too. I’ve set up my personal morgue right there in my basement. One hundred and thirty years of Hannawa history.
I went to the M cabinets. I looked up MCPHEE, P. There was a nice fat envelope of clippings on him. I sat down at the folding table by my washer and dryer. I clicked on my gooseneck lamp and read.
I found one item from 1951. It was a story on six local National Guardsmen getting married en masse at City Hall before they shipped out to Korea. Phil McPhee, age twenty-three, was one of them. Accompanying the story was a smudgy old photo showing Phil and his new bride saying their I-dos. Read the caption:
“I TAKE THEE to be my lawfully wedded wife,” says Pvt. Philip McPhee to high school sweetheart Lois Palansky. The McPhees were one of six happy Hannawa couples married Tuesday at City Hall by Mayor Dutch Schneider.
Another story was from 1959. It was from the business section. Phil McPhee, with the help of a government loan, was opening a new exterminating business in the blighted German Hill neighborhood east of downtown. The accompanying photo showed Phil and the city’s new mayor cutting the ribbon with a big pair of cardboard scissors. Read that caption:
BUGS BETTER BEWARE: Mayor Merle D. Blackburn helps local exterminator Phil McPhee open his new headquarters on East Apple Street. McPhee’s wife, Elaine, proudly looks on.
I stuffed everything back in the envelope. I clicked off the lamp and sat in the dark. “Two previous wives,” I yawned. “Why am I not surprised?”
21
Monday, August 28
I took my mug to the cafeteria. I gave it a good washing in the sink, something I do every Monday morning. My goals for the day were modest. Mark up the weekend papers. Stop itching the mosquito bites on my ankles. Have Eric find Phil McPhee’s first two wives.
Phil McPhee was clearly a ladies’ man. He was more than likely a life-long philanderer. Just possibly he was the mystery man Detective Grant was looking for, the one who went bonkers and killed Violeta Bell when he discovered she’d once been a he.
While the water for my tea was coming to a boil, I read the crap stapled on the employee bulletin board. I was yawning like the MGM lion. Saturday and Sunday had both been sleep-over nights for Ike. So I was exhausted-from staying awake so he couldn’t catch me snoring.
There was a letter on the board from Reporters’ Guild President Will Canterbury on the upcoming contract talks with management. Given the paper’s falling circulation and advertising revenues, those talks were going to be brutal. There was also a cute little poster with dancing hotdogs, inviting “friend and foe alike” to Dee Dee Killbuck’s annual Labor Day patio party. An equally brutal prospect.
I made my tea and headed back to the morgue. Every few steps I stopped, closed my sleepy eyes and took a nourishing sip. I hear that Eric does a hilarious imitation of me doing that, by the way, although I’ve never seen it myself. Anyway, I was half way across the sports department when I opened my eyes and over the steaming rim of my mug saw Prince Anton Clopotar standing in front of my desk with a long white box cradled in his arms.