Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest
16.
Thursday afternoon, Leda Foley and Niki Nelson met their new detective friend not far from Castaways—in a bar that used to be a mortuary and now had barstools pulled up to the nooks and crannies where cremated remains once were housed. For the umpteenth time, Leda groused, “I don’t understand why this bar isn’t gothier. It feels like it should have black curtains, silver crosses, and more candles.”
Grady shrugged. “I see plenty of candles.”
“They’re tea lights!” she argued. “And there’s all these cutesy little martinis with cutesy little stirring sticks and umbrellas, and weird chunks of fruit on skewers.”
Niki leaned forward, to talk around Leda’s head. “She does this literally every damn time we even walk past this place.” Then, imitating her friend’s voice, she said, “I want to see vampires! Ghosts! Bats! I want to fear for my life every time I order a drink!”
“I never said that.”
“Sure you did. More than once. So where is this woman?” Niki asked. “I thought she was meeting us here.”
“She is.” The detective glanced at his phone, sitting on the small, round table between them all. “She’ll be here any minute. She works out of an office a block away.”
“I thought she was rich? Why does she still go to work?” Niki’s eyes scanned the scene below, where there weren’t many customers yet. The floors were stone, and the ceilings were high. Every click of a woman’s heels, every drop of a plate, clink of silverware, shake of a martini in progress, and friendly toast bounced off every surface.
“I don’t know that she’s rich,” Grady said. “There’s money, and then there’s money. Maybe she doesn’t have enough money to stay rich if she doesn’t work. Or maybe she just likes having a job. Some people get bored, left to their own devices.”
Leda asked, “What does she do?”
“She’s a financial consultant with a big firm, but I think she only has a few clients. Big-name ones.”
“Money,” Leda said, nodding to herself. “Must be nice.”
Over the echoes of early happy hour, all three heard the distinctive sound of hard-heeled footsteps on stairs. They collectively swiveled their heads, and soon there appeared a tall, attractive white woman in her fifties. Janette Gilman wore a gray lady-suit with a midi skirt and heels that were just a hair too high to call sensible. Her hair was auburn—a very good, expensive dye job in Leda’s estimation. She’d been hiding her own baby grays with a box from Walgreens for years. It probably showed, but she didn’t care too much and didn’t have too much to hide.
Grady stood, like a proper goddamn gentleman, and then Leda hastily did likewise in order to participate in the round of handshakes that opened the conversation. Janette Gilman’s hands were soft of skin, smooth of grip, and nicely manicured. But they didn’t trigger any interesting insights.
“Oh, no,” Janette said to Niki—who was still trying to stand, with the plastic boot stuck beneath the table. “Please, stay there. I don’t want to make any trouble for you.” She shook her hand, then claimed the last free seat at the table and crossed her legs tidily at the shins.
Janette told them, “Before I came upstairs, I put in an order for a pitcher of sangria, fully expecting to share. I hope you won’t make me drink it all alone. I could, but what’s the fun in that?”
Brightly, Leda declared, “I never say no to sangria!”
Niki smirked. “Or anything else with a detectable alcohol content.”
“Excellent!” their guest said with a quick clap of her hands. “It’ll be up here shortly, or so I’ve been assured. Now. What can I help you with today, Detective Merritt? It’s been a while since I saw you last.”
“More than a minute, ma’am. But these things take time, as I’m sure you understand.”
She nodded and reclined prettily in the stylish seat. One arm stretched out along the back, one she left casually in her lap. “I know the wheels of justice may turn slowly, but sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever know what happened to Kevin and Christopher.”
Something about the way she phrased it stuck in Leda’s head. Her stepson’s name first, not her husband’s. “Well,” Leda said with more cheer than the subject required, “as you can see, we’re still on the case!”
Grady gave her a look that could’ve rusted a bumper.
Janette Gilman smiled politely and said, “Now, what do you do again, dear? I caught your name and only that you were a consultant.”
“I consult,” Leda said simply. Somewhat desperately, she wanted to keep talking—to assure Ms. Gilman that she was a competent adult professional—but something about the withering look in Grady’s eye and the death grip Niki had on her thigh convinced her to restrain herself.
Quickly, Grady jumped in. “Ms. Foley is a victim’s rights advocate,” he offered smoothly. “She’s also doing research on a graduate degree in criminology. We’re trying to talk her into joining the force in something of a social work capacity. Ms. Nelson,” he said, gesturing at Niki, “is a forensic accountant who we’ve recently added to the task force.”
Leda gazed at him a little too adoringly, she suspected, but she’d always been a little too impressed with people who could lie on the fly. She aspired to be so effortless, so casual. In anything, really.
“That sounds fascinating,” Janette Gilman said.
Then a server arrived at the top of the stairs, bearing a tray upon which was balanced a big pitcher of sangria and four glasses. Leda very much wanted to ask how she’d known to ask for the right number, but maybe the server had told her how many people were waiting upstairs. Or there was always the chance that four was the number of glasses everybody got.
When all the glasses were full, Grady reached one hand for his ever-present notebook, lying on the table beside a condensation-moistened coaster. He flipped the book open and scanned a page or two of wholly indecipherable handwriting. “I know we went over the case together a time or two, and in great depth, Ms. Gilman, but—”
“Copeland.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Copeland,” she said again. “I’ve returned to my maiden name. I wanted to put the past behind me.”
Leda frowned. “You put the past behind you by going back to your original name? From all the way back in the past?”
Janette flipped her hand dismissively. “Oh, you know what I mean. I needed a fresh start. The Gilman name was never any good, to me or anyone else. If Christopher hadn’t been murdered, we would’ve likely divorced within a year, and I would’ve gotten rid of the name then, at any rate.”
“Really?” Niki asked. “I know a lot of divorcées, and not all of them ditch the married name.”
Leda asked her friend, “Why is that, do you think?”
The older woman answered for her. “It’s a great deal of paperwork, that’s why. Also, some women have children, and they want the whole family to match. I don’t have children, I don’t mind paperwork, and I don’t have much nostalgia regarding Christopher.”
Grady asked, “What about Kevin?”
She hesitated, just a little. “I did like Kevin. He must have favored his mother, I don’t know—she died when he was young. He really wasn’t anything at all like Christopher. Such an upstanding young fellow. Always trying to do the right thing, be the right person, make the right call.” She let out a small, rueful laugh. “I used to call him the Boy Scout, which he hated. But he was always too good-natured to bicker about it.” She took a long drink, nearly emptying the glass. The bottommost cubes of ice tinkled together. “He was the closest thing to a son I ever had, even though I only knew him for a handful of years. I am truly sorry that he’s gone. The world is a darker place for his loss.”
Grady took over again. “Then you don’t think Kevin was the target?”
She frowned. “Oh, are we back on that again? No, I don’t think that—and I never have. I told you then, and I’ll tell you now: Kevin wouldn’t hurt a fly, and he didn’t have any enemies. There’s always a chance that he caught his father doing something untoward and made a stink in front of the wrong person. But whatever happened, you can rest assured that it was Christopher’s fault.”
Leda’s hand tightened on her drink. Her eyelids fluttered, but otherwise, she did not move.
Niki noticed and gave her leg a gentle squeeze.
Grady didn’t notice. He nodded down at his notebook. “You mentioned last year that you suspected Christopher was embroiled in illegal activities, but you were never terribly specific.”
“I didn’t say I suspected, I said that I’d bet my life on it—but I couldn’t prove anything, and my suspicions were vague. The man was so crooked; literally nothing he was mixed up in would surprise me. Why do you ask? Have you turned up anything new?”
Behind Leda’s eyes, fireworks were flashing. Weird, disjoined fireworks with only one word coming through clearly. She blurted it out. “Blackmail.”
Everyone stared at her.
She said it again. “Blackmail.” Then she added, “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to interrupt. But do you think he was involved in any blackmailing? Of anyone? In any way?”
Janette Gilman née Copeland leaned forward thoughtfully. She took the pitcher of sangria and topped off her own glass, using most of what was left. “It’s funny you should say that. I know for a fact that he wasn’t above blackmail. He blackmailed casually all the time—but you wouldn’t necessarily call it that.” She took a sip and held her glass close to her chest, rubbing her thumb up and down its length, smearing the condensation. “He liked to collect useful people who owed him favors, let’s put it that way. I know he thought of it as leverage, really—and maybe that’s all it was, most of the time. I’d say his idea of ‘blackmail’ was closer to other people’s ideas of insider trading, except that he once… well, it’s funny. It’s definitely funny.” The thoughtful look on her face suggested something less “funny” than “strange.”
“Funny how?” Grady asked.
“I haven’t thought of this in ages, and I don’t think I mentioned it during your early investigations. Only a couple of months before Christopher was killed, he was feeling very pleased with himself about something, and I asked about it. Christopher being pleased with himself was never a good thing. He was never happy about anything that wasn’t dirty or mean.”
“He sounds like a real peach,” Niki observed.
“He surely was. He could hide his true nature well, for periods of time. But it was like clenching a muscle, do you know what I mean? Even when he was in full masquerade mode—that’s what I’d call it, when he was being pleasant and charming—the performance would sometimes slip. After a while, he’d have to quit pretending. Sometimes ‘a while’ was a few days or a few weeks. Sometimes it was even longer, but it was never perfect.” To herself, she murmured, “No, it was never perfect.”
Grady pressed on. “Was he blackmailing someone at the time of his death? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I guess so? I asked him what had put such a smile on his face, and he’d had enough to drink that he filled me in. He said he’d caught somebody at the company skimming. I was ready to raise hell about it,” she amended quickly. “But he waved away any concerns of mine. Now he had leverage. He could get this person to do whatever he wanted, all he had to do was snap his fingers. That man, I swear. He treated the real world like his own personal RPG. Role-playing game, I mean. We used to play together. I don’t have many fond memories of our time together, but that’s one of them.”
Grady leaned back, leaving his barely touched drink on the table. “That leaves us with a big question: Who was this skimmer?”
“Two questions,” Leda piped up. “What did Christopher blackmail the skimmer into doing?”
The detective pointed his pen at her. “Good point. Two big questions. Can you help us with them, Ms. Copeland?”
“Not as much as I’d like to,” she admitted. “I don’t know who the employee was; I’m not even sure if it was a man or a woman. But he referred to them as ‘kid’ once or twice, so at the time, I thought it might be one of the underlings. But then I thought it might be Kim. I’d assumed he was sleeping with her, and that’s why she was so fast to step and fetch at his command.”
“Kim… Cowen.” Grady found the name in his notebook. “His assistant.”
“Assistant, sidepiece, whatever. Now, she’s the one you really ought to talk to. She knew every little thing, about every little thing he did.”
Leda nodded enthusiastically. “She’s definitely on our list.”
“Good, good. She can probably be of more help to you than I can.”
Niki asked, “Really? You were the one who was married to him.”
“Trust me, she saw more of him than I did. And in the end, that was fine with me.” She finished more of her drink and eyed the empty pitcher. “God, my life would be so much easier right now if I’d just divorced him.”
“Easier than him dying, and leaving everything to you?”
She laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh, or a pretty one. “Honey, he didn’t leave anything to anyone. It turns out, the selfish dick didn’t have a will. Every time I think I’m just about done with probate court, there’s some new wrinkle, some new piece of paper they want… I don’t know.” She sounded tired of the whole thing. “It took a few months for me to close the company. It never really made any money, and I couldn’t even sell it off for parts. Christopher had some money, but he also owed some taxes—so until that’s sorted, I can’t touch a dime of it. Thank God I have my own.”
Leda opened her mouth to ask but hesitated.
Grady went ahead with the rude follow-up. It was less rude coming from a cop, that’s what Leda figured. Better to let him do it. “Your own?”
“I got my money the old-fashioned way: I married it. My first husband was loaded, he was a cheater, and he died of a heart attack brought on by years of heavy smoking and drinking, combined with his habit of eating like Henry the Eighth. I loved him dearly; I really did. He broke my heart, and I left him shortly before he died. Of course, I took half of everything.” She laughed again, that same grim note. “I met Christopher while I was in the middle of my divorce proceedings, and he charmed me senseless. At first. Within a year, I wondered if he’d only married me for my money. I couldn’t decide if that was ironic or just plain sad.”
“But you still have a job,” Niki noted.
Leda glanced at Grady, but it looked like he’d given up on trying to keep either one of them quiet.
“Yes, I like to work. It gets me out of the house. I help large businesses decide how to allocate their charity funds—and even though those charity funds are usually laughably small, and they exist mostly for show, the money does some good. One of these days, I might ditch the big financial group for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, if they’ll have me. I don’t know.”
Grady made some thinking noises as he stared down at his notebook. He looked up at Janette Copeland again. “All right, then you don’t know for certain who the blackmailed employee was, but you think it might’ve been Kim Cowen. Do you know what he might’ve had on her—or anyone else?”
“Haven’t the foggiest. I didn’t touch the day-to-day operations, and I had nothing to do with hiring or firing. I didn’t exactly pore over everybody’s personnel files. Even if I did, you’ve had access to the same information. You’re as likely to guess from her background as I am.”
Leda wanted to know, “And you definitely don’t know what the employee in question was blackmailed into doing?” The light was sizzling around her left eye again, like another ocular migraine might be brewing. She closed her lids tight for a second and rubbed at her temple.
“Honestly couldn’t tell you. It was probably something gross, though. Christopher liked to set people up to take the fall for his own shortcomings or shady business dealings. God only knows how many people he torpedoed professionally, just to keep his own nose clean.”
“Excuse me,” Leda said, and stood up with a wobble.
“Are you all right?” Grady asked.
“Yeah, I just need some air. Some water. I need the ladies’ room; there’s air and water in there. Excuse me,” she said again.
“I’ll come with you,” Niki offered.
The women left, and Leda staggered down the stairs with Niki hobbling along in her wake, trying to keep the both of them from falling. The bathroom was on the first floor, almost under the stairs. There were two unisex rooms. Leda flung herself into the one that wasn’t occupied and almost shut the door in Niki’s face.
“Sorry,” she said, then moved out of the way and sat on the edge of the sink before she could fall over, facedown into the toilet.
“Don’t worry about it, babe.” Niki shut the door behind her and turned on the cold water faucet. She took a small stack of brown paper towels, soaked it, and patted Leda’s forehead with it. “Tell me what happened up there. What’d you see?”
“At first I thought it was another stupid ocular migraine. But then I caught something else,” she said. She was somewhat out of breath and didn’t know why. The stairs weren’t very steep or demanding, but she felt like she’d just run a couple of blocks to catch a bus.
“Care to share?”
“I saw Christopher, looking absolutely…” She fished for a word that would adequately convey the cruel disdain and amusement she’d seen for a split second. Barely a moment, but it’d shown her so much about the man. “Triumphant.” She let out a long sigh and squeezed the wet paper towels—then threw them away. She hopped down off the sink and faced it, elbows leaning on the cold porcelain. With a twist of the faucet, she shifted the water from cold to hot and let the steam hit her face. “He found somebody he could manipulate into doing his dirty work. But he didn’t know who he was dealing with, and it got him killed. I flashed on the killer. It must have been the killer,” she repeated quietly. “I saw him pushing a car, rolling it into the water.”
Niki wasn’t following. “So… we need to look for a car in the water?”
She shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again. “Nik, you’re not hearing me. We already know about the car in the water. I think that whoever killed the Gilmans… it’s the same person who killed Tod.”