Not Dead Enough Page 5

  “What’s that smell?” she said as she got out of the car.

  “Your nose,” I replied.

  “No, it’s not. It doesn’t smell good.”

  “Oh, the fried chicken place down the block. They might need to change their grease.”

  “Oh.” Then, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Remember, I’ve been here before.”

  The officer was already walking to the door, and we had to hurry to catch up with him.

  Karen didn’t look like she believed me about the chicken. I wasn’t sure I believed myself. Tart cherry cola lip balm didn’t seem like it would help the mix.

  We were led in, then down the long (it seemed to me) hallway. Ten feet in, Karen gripped my hand tight enough to cut off circulation. The woman did work out at the gym.

  “It’ll be quick,” I whispered, a promise to both of us.

  Needless to say, it wasn’t. We had gotten here too quickly—in my opinion. They had to take time to retrieve her body and set up the viewing. We were left in the long hallway trying to convince ourselves the smells were only rancid fried chicken overlaid with bleach and disinfectant. Almost enough to make me wish I’d gone ahead with the tart cherry cola.

  Just as I was hoping they’d tell us to go away, the patrol officer tapped me on the shoulder. I never did get his name—a mumbled Derrick or Dwayne, but I wasn’t sure enough of which to call him by it.

  We were led into the room. Karen gripped my forearm with her other hand, two places my circulation was now cut off. Her whole body shook as she took a deep breath.

  The attendant folded back the sheet.

  Was it the woman I had seen? The last time, the clothes and jewelry had influenced me; they were the same, so she had to be the same. But now? With whatever game this was, the clothes could have been switched. I stared at her, the slack muscles, flesh now a dull faded pink, sliding into gray. She ticked off the boxes, same approximate age, hair color, facial features.

  But…something felt off. Me? Knowing what I know now? Or just the wide chasm between animated life and silent death?

  A small mole under her right ear. I closed my eyes and pictured the woman in my office, attempting to freeze on her face. I didn’t see the mole. But was it a trick of memory? Wanting to see a difference and finding this tiny discrepancy?

  Karen made a sound from the back of her throat that would have signaled hairball in a cat. “I need to get out of here,” she said, her words battling to get out over what else wanted to get out.

  “Let’s go, we’ve seen enough.” I turned and, still attached by her double-handed grip, pulled Karen with me.

  The hallway seemed even longer, Karen huffing air to quell her nausea.

  The last few steps turned into a trot to get outside. I needed Karen to get enough fresh air to be able to let go of me; otherwise I was far too close.

  She let go of my forearm as she gasped for breath but held on to my hand. I tried to subtly shift to be as far from the vomit range as possible. Laundry is one of my least favorite chores.

  After about a minute of gasping, she wheezed out, “I never thought fried chicken would smell so good.” She was still taking deeper than usual breaths.

  I considered cracking that it was the crematorium but realized my stomach wasn’t its usual happy camper, on the line between unsettled and roiled. If Karen threw up, I’d likely join her, and I couldn’t move far enough away from myself to keep my clothes clean.

  “Yes, it does. And some fresh air. It’s over and done. You did pretty well.”

  She managed a weak, wavering smile. Then took another huffing breath.

  “Did you recognize her?” I asked.

  Karen took another breath. “Yes, I think so. It—she—looked like her. But…”

  “Did she have a small mole under her right ear?”

  Karen frowned, as if thinking, finally saying, “I don’t know…maybe.”

  “Picture the woman in your office. Can you see it?”

  She looked off, held still for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. She had long hair she kept flipping out of her face.”

  “Picture her in that moment, the hair off her face. Can you see a mole?”

  Karen was again silent, her eyes on the ground. “No…maybe…I don’t know.” Then vehemently, “I can’t think about her anymore. I keep seeing…that body, that face. I need to think of something else. Quickly.” She sucked in air.

  “Okay, let’s move on. Um…seen any good movies lately?”

  She looked at me. So it wasn’t the best change of subject.

  I tried again. “There’s a disturbance in the Atlantic.”

  “Coming this way?”

  “Too soon to tell. A depression, medium chance of development into a tropical storm, but the track is still too far out to sea to know if it’ll come into the Gulf.”

  One worry replaced with another. Discussing possible storm tracks got us through long enough for the patrol officer to rejoin us, seeming to finally remember he was our ride out of here.

  Even so, Karen continued mouth breathing all the way back to Joanne’s office. But the Fates were with us. She was out, had left a message for us to call her with our information.

  We were again in the sunshine and fresh air—hot and saturated with humidity as it was. Still better than the chill of the morgue. Karen followed me.

  As we got to my car, I said, “Where do you want me to drop you?”

  “We need to go back to your place.”

  “Look, I’m pretty busy—”

  “My car. That’s where my car is.”

  Damn, I had done that to myself, hadn’t I? I motioned her to get in, hoping her nausea had truly passed. Cars are even harder to clean than clothes.

  I was searching for a safe topic—not too clearly idle chatter like movies, but not our current situation, as that might produce more nausea. I was saved by her phone ringing.

  Karen looked at the screen, then quickly answered. “Hi, Holly! I’m so glad you called. I’ve had a rotten day. I had to go to—”

  I only got her side of the conversation, with enough long pauses to indicate Holly was a talker more than a listener. Karen answered with a series of, “Yes, I understand,” “Yeah, I get it,” “You’re right,” and a few strings of, “Yeah,” “Uh-huh,” and “Yes.”

  Finally, Karen, “Yes, I understand. I know you do important work. Why don’t we go out someplace nice? You can tell me about your day and I’ll tell you about mine? Would that be okay? Or maybe tomorrow or the next few days if that doesn’t work?” Her tone was tentative; a supplicant asking for what she feared would be refused. Not a tone I often heard from Karen.

  A long pause, then Karen said, “Yes, that would be great! Around seven? I can pick you up?”

  Again a pause, then Karen said, “I’m not sure. I’ll see where I can get reservations. Yes, I’ll let you know.” She said good-bye, made a few kissy sounds, then put the phone away with a look of satisfaction. I could almost hear her thoughts—I have a serious girlfriend and look at me. I pretended not to hear what her expression was saying.

  “Sorry about that,” she said to me as she put her phone away.

  “Girlfriend?” I guessed. I was curious—not about Karen’s girlfriends; she was rich and good-looking; she always had a bevy of them—but mostly Karen had seemed the dominant partner, the one with the looks and the money and therefore the control. She would tell, not ask.

  “Yes, and I know what you’re thinking, but Holly is different. She’s a social worker. Works for a food pantry down in Chalmette. She isn’t impressed by my money.”

  “Just going out to a nice place to sort your day?” Oh, wait, I said I’d be nicer to Karen. Oh, well.

  “We don’t do it every night,” Karen said defensively. “But she’s such a good person; she deserves an occasional night out.”

  I didn’t say what I was thinking—and it was none of my business—but from the admittedly one-sided
phone call, it sounded like girlfriend Holly wasn’t willing to listen to Karen’s morgue trauma unless she got taken out to an upscale restaurant. And Karen was too love (lust?) blind to see through her do-gooder façade to the manipulation beneath. But that was merely my cynical viewpoint on it, and I was hardly in a position to judge other people’s relationships. Not that it stopped me. But my vow to be kinder did keep me from saying it. “What’s her name? I know a lot of social workers.”

  “Holly Farmer,” Karen answered.

  “That’s her real name?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s sort of like Wendy Beach, April May, or Rose Gardener. Did she grow up on a holly farm?”

  “I don’t think holly is farmed,” Karen answered. “And no, she grew up in a small town in Georgia. Her mother was a teacher and her father the local doctor.”

  “Wow, you’ve met her parents already?”

  “No, she’s told me about them. Tragically they died in a car accident when Holly was eighteen. She’s been on her own ever since.”

  “How long have you known her?” Did I really care? No, but we were almost back to my place, and another question or two would fill the time.

  “We’ve been together only three months. She moved here shortly before then and was new in town. We were jogging together on the levee, got to talking, and I offered to show her around. The rest is history,” Karen finished with a smile. Then she had to add, “Cordelia even approves of her.”

  Cordelia, her cousin. My ex.

  I pulled up beside her car. “Enjoy your dinner tonight.” Then I looked at my watch.

  Karen got out, still smiling.

  I gave her a bare second to clear the door, then drove away, although only a few yards, parking on the other side of the street. This was my office, after all, and I had work to do. I stared down at my phone while Karen got in her car, as if I had important messages that needed to be answered immediately. I waited until she had turned the corner and was out of sight before getting out. The phone had only told me what I already knew, it was hot, would stay hot, and the humidity required swimming lessons.

  In the twenty feet to my door, sweat was again dripping down my nose. As I entered, I was hit with a heavy chai tea smell. Must be the special of the day. Not a chai or tea person, I hastened up the stairs to get above the smell, arriving at my third-floor office door out of breath and sweating even more.

  I made a pot of coffee, more wanting the aroma and the caffeine than the heat. I managed to scrape up enough ice cubes from the old office fridge to pretend it was iced coffee. And even remembered to refill the ice trays so next time (and in New Orleans summers, there would be many next times) I would have enough ice to not have to pretend.

  Then I sat at my desk watching the ice cubes rapidly melt as I huffed the coffee aroma to get all the other smells of the day out of my nose and brain.

  I needed to call Joanne, but I hesitated. Could I truly remember the mole or not? If she wasn’t the woman who had been in my office, who was she? Was it possible there was an innocent explanation? Or not one as messy as it looked? Woman getting away from an abusive spouse? Hired me to see if she could be traced here, but had to use her real name for real estate? Gone far enough along with both before the spouse/ex tracked her here and killed her?

  But why put my name on Karen’s real estate papers?

  It made no sense.

  My phone rang. Caller ID said it was Joanne. Reluctantly I picked it up.

  “How was your trip to the morgue?”

  “Karen didn’t throw up in my car. Best news of the day.” I left enough silence to force Joanne to ask what she wanted to know. Not playing nice today.

  “Was it the same woman?”

  “Yes, no, maybe. Was it the woman in my office? Probably. Could be a sister? Maybe. Or one of those improbable coincidences of people who look amazingly alike.”

  “Don’t go all soap opera on me. Was she the same woman Karen saw?”

  “Again, yes, no, maybe. I got Karen to not upchuck, trying to get details through nausea was hard. Yes, she looked like her, but again it could be someone who resembled her a lot.”

  “Any clue if she was the same woman?”

  “Yes—”

  “No, maybe,” Joanne finished for me.

  “The corpse—the woman in the morgue had a small mole behind her right ear. I’ve been trying to picture the woman in my office, trying to call up that patch of skin in memory—to not add it. But…memory is stubborn. I can’t be sure. I asked Karen as well and she wasn’t sure. Couldn’t press because of that nausea thing. You can question her further when it’s your carpet at risk.”

  “Thanks, maybe I should go to her house for the follow-up.”

  “Let the maid clean it up?”

  “You are in a pissy mood.”

  “Going to the morgue—again—with Karen Holloway crushing my arm in a death grip and threatening to throw up in my car for the entire trip back isn’t a mood booster.”

  Joanne grunted, as close as I was likely to get to acknowledgment that I had a point. “Okay, thanks, I’ll catch up with Karen later.”

  “She may not be in; she’s going somewhere ‘nice’ with her girlfriend.”

  “That’s a bit more buddy-buddy than just nausea in your car.”

  “Not really. Girlfriend called while we were driving, and I got to hear the whole conversation. Karen was happy to babble on until we got back to her car, luckily before we got to their favorite sexual positions.”

  “Don’t be too snarky. Holly seems okay, maybe even good for Karen.”

  “You’ve met her?” Too late. Of course they had met. Joanne’s partner Alex had been friends with Cordelia since high school, and the two lesbian cousins often found themselves at the same social gatherings. I hastily continued, “Well, good luck. I’ll probe my memory and see if anything surfaces. I’ll call you if it does.”

  “Okay, Mick. Catch you later.”

  I stared at my phone. What the hell had I got myself tangled in? I had been fine living my single life, not thinking about Cordelia and how I’d messed that up—the past is stone, it will not change. Now it all came roaring back—I was single and Karen Holloway had a nice social worker girlfriend—my one-sided eavesdropping wasn’t a good standard to judge her by. It’s so easy to see what we want to see. The call had been during work hours, maybe Holly thought she had a moment, then ended up handling a crisis while talking to Karen to explain what I’d heard as her talking a lot. Joanne was a good judge of character—and had actually met her, unlike my overhearing a phone conversation where I had to guess at everything she said. The imp of perversity was sitting on my shoulder—back to judging Karen with standards that made sure I was better.

  Instead I got to be like the kid outside the closed—permanently closed to me—candy shop, being aware of all the things I was left out of, the awkward social dance my friends were doing. They were all still friends with her. And her new partner. Wife? Would I even know? I wasn’t going to be a big enough asshole to make them choose sides, especially since they weren’t likely to choose me. I realized I was the odd girl out, uncoupled, the single amongst all the settled pairs. Joanne and Alex, Danny and Elly, even Torbin and Andy, all had to decide which of us to invite, even for a casual meet-up after work for drinks.

  Maybe I should just call her up, say, “We need to meet, figure out how to be friends enough so our friends don’t need to dance around us. So Danny can send out a text to say meet at her place after work and not have to remember to leave out either my name or yours.”

  Yeah, right. Perhaps the best person I could be would be able to manage that. But I wasn’t the best person I could be at present, and I wasn’t even sure how to get there from here.

  I wasn’t going to call her. Maybe tomorrow. Next week.

  Next year.

  Besides, it was her choice to come back to New Orleans. If she’d stayed away, there wouldn’t be a problem. />
  Instead I did something entirely frivolous and borderline unethical, and searched for info on Holly Farmer.

  And found nothing. Okay, very little. Maybe I was slipping; this was what I was supposed to be good at, finding people. First Aimee Smyth and now Holly Farmer. Admittedly it wasn’t an “I’m being paid for this” search, more a whim, bored search. Someone named Holly Farmer lived in a house in the Irish Channel. She bought it three months ago. Maybe her dead parents had left her well off. Most of the social workers I knew were moving into the Holy Cross area, the Lower Ninth because it was what they could afford. The Irish Channel, close to the river and nicely uptown, had gentrified quickly after the disaster speculators had moved in, buying damaged property after Katrina and flipping it.

  Of course I have a house in Treme, now also a high-price area. But I moved here a long time ago, well before Katrina when it was considered an “are you sure you want to live there” neighborhood. I couldn’t afford it now.

  And this was all a waste of time. Maybe Holly Farmer (really, who names their kid that?) was the perfect girlfriend for Karen and they would live happily ever after.

  It didn’t affect me and I didn’t care.

  It was close enough to five o’clock to end this workday. Not that I had done much actual work.

  I headed home but only parked in front of my house before heading to my favorite watering hole, Riley and Finnegan’s, a down-at-heel bar, still holding to the scruffy Rampart Street feel even as the bright shiny streetcar, recently revived, rolled past. It was queer/punk/whatever. Even the name over the door had been lost to time. Now some called it Finnegan and Riley, which had changed to FAR, and that had morphed to Far Bar. Usually a younger crowd, but that was okay. I could chat with Mary Buchanan, the barkeep and wise counsel all around. Plus the best burgers in the Quarter, and we had all taken vows of silence to never tell a tourist that. It was a place you could talk if you wanted to talk or be quiet and nurse a drink. And, I had to admit, it was not the kind of place Joanne, Danny, or Cordelia would frequent—graffitied on the outside, a banged-up metal door as the grand (not) entrance, it looked like a dive bar’s dive bar.