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"Good evening," caroled the honey-exuding voice in my ear. "Is this the lady of the house?" "And good evening to you, too. And no, this is not the lady of the house; in fact, there is no lady of the house. And if there was, she wouldn't want to speak to you, either. Good evening." Click. What particular demon from hell created these people? Part of me waxes empathetic at the plight of those forced to spend their every working hour pouring on the sweetness and light, trying their level best to convince some harried hausfrau of the merits of a particular telephone service over any other, why her house really cries out for fifty-year vinyl siding, or that anyone's life would be forever brightened by just answering this teensy little list of survey questions that honestly won't take up too much of her time and will win her a valuable prize -- guaranteed! On the other hand, however, it's best not to get too sympathetic with the woes and tribulations of the telephone solicitor, such misplaced sympathy causing one to fall victim to the fallacy that one can simply say, "No, thank you," or "Sorry, not interested." Such politeness seldom fails to open wide the floodgates of unwelcome blather. After hanging up the phone -- gently, to be sure -- in the ear of the latest of three such callers this evening, I turned to friend husband, deeply immersed in the pages of the newspaper, and asked him his opinion of this blight on an otherwise useful instrument, Alexander Graham Bell's baby. He grunted, knowing my question was rhetorical and an actual response was not warranted or even expected. He did, however, have a question of his own. "What did the doctor say?" Before I could answer, he asked another. "Were you planning on telling me?" He was still behind the newsprint, and I waited until he finally poked one eye over the edge before I responded. "I'm not, and yes, in that order." "How do you feel about that?" George said, dropping the paper into his lap. "I guess I'm glad about it, but I'm not too sure." Two or three long seconds passed, then, "Of course, I know it's all for the best. I am a bit long in the tooth here to start such a project, you know. And I have my work which I just couldn't do under such circumstances." George just sat there, listening to me, watching me, waiting for me to get it said. Then to my astonishment, I discovered unexpected tears were flooding my eyes and voice, and I creaked to a halt, disgusted with myself after planning to be so cool and calm about being informed today I was not, regrettably -- the gynecologist's very word -- pregnant after all. The next few angst-ridden moments were spent with George's arm around my shoulders, his free hand dabbing away at the flood which simply wouldn't stop, and six pounds of Chihuahua, Fuzz, nervously shifting his weight from one foreleg to the other in my lap, all big-eyed and troubled over why his private person was blubbering and hiccoughing like she was. Eventually, the farce aspect to this whole miserable display made me laugh -- a shaky one, but nevertheless, a laugh. "Can you just see yourself changing diapers at your age, George?" "Yeah, I can; but I admit, it wouldn't be something I'd anticipate with the same enthusiasm as winning the lottery," he answered, still warm and comforting beside me. "And can you imagine how this little widget would react to sticky, clutching fingers after his booty day and night?" Fuzz cocked his head and twitched his tail once or twice in an effort to join in the conversation. "Poor little devil would probably move out," George laughed. "Can't say but what I'd go with him." I looked up at him, frowning, for a moment wondering if he was serious, if what I'd suspected had actually been so, he would have been that much displeased. He grinned back at me, shaking his head, and then said softly, "No, sweetheart, I was just making a feeble effort at being clever -- sorry. Honestly, I can't imagine anything nicer than to have two Sheila Caseys cavorting around our house. I would have adored her, just as I do you." Nice man, that. "Afraid I'm not going to be able to oblige, masterful one," I said. "That's all right. One of you is probably all I can handle, for that matter." "Probably so -- probably so." At that point, the phone rang again, this time a welcome distraction from all the tension I was under. "Sheila," said the familiar voice of my old friend and onetime-partner, Lieutenant Whitey Morales, "I hate to call so late, but I thought you'd want to know this." "No problem, Whitey. What's up?" "I thought you should hear as soon as possible that Verna Gray's body was found in a dumpster between Blake and Market this morning. It took a while for the M.E. to make the identification, and I didn't hear who it was until I got back from Colorado Springs this afternoon." I was stunned, considering I'd only talked to her for the first time in many years just earlier in the week. Verna Dennison and I had literally grown up together -- both playing In Berkeley Park in North Denver, riding our bicycles down the steep grades of Willis Case Golf Course at dusk to the yelling rage of late golfers, swapping lies about the boys in the neighborhood, giving each other disastrous perms -- she had been a close and loving chum during my childhood years. We only lost track of each other when she abruptly got married to the worst guy she could have found and moved within a month to the cultural backwater of Fruita, Colorado. The marriage only lasted long enough for her to produce three daughters before her sterling mate found someone younger, slimmer and dumber. To Verna's everlasting relief, the bastard ran away with his coltish lover, leaving my friend in relative peace. Verna kept the surname of Gorse for the sake of her daughters and the fact she loved their grandmother. Verna found a kindred spirit in her mother-in-law who was unfortunate in the same way as she was, married to a man cut from the same bolt of rough-spun, and decided to remain in Fruita for the time being. The "time being" turned into enough years to see her oldest two daughters out of high school, one married, one gone on to a university in Nebraska on a well-deserved scholarship to study animal husbandry. Over the years I'd considered all sorts of Freudian symbols in regard to that particular specialty of this serious and plain girl. When Verna's youngest girl was fourteen she ran off in the company of a thirty-nine-year-old sideshow barker with a carnival which came through town. Verna believed, and probably correctly, that her youngest was going to have a father, one way or another. This bastard was older by two years than her own father was, so she got her wish, I guess. After three years of searching and aging herself beyond all recognition, Verna gave in and resigned herself that Cyndy was long gone. At that point, Verna returned at long last to Denver to live. By this time I was gone, however, living as I did in Salt Lake City for several years. Over the years we traded cards at Christmas and birthdays, but that was about it. It wasn't until she called me at my office recently that I realized how very much I'd missed her all this time. When she said she wanted to come to see me, I told her to come right ahead -- anytime. She added that it was not just that she wanted to visit after all these years, but that she wanted to hire me to find out who had killed her husband. This was the first I had heard about a second husband. It turned out she had five years ago married a quite wealthy man she met, for pity's sake, on that same Willis Case Golf Course where we'd played as kids. He was a widower named -- just like the tea except the vowel -- Earl Gray. He spoiled her rotten -- and high time, too. They traveled all over the country and out of it, and she was happy for the first time in more years than she cared to think about. Then he committed suicide. That was the Coroner's verdict, anyway -- suicide. And as far as the police were concerned, there was not the slightest indication of foul play in his death. The fact that an autopsy revealed he had inoperable cancer and would soon suffer enormously from that merely solidified the official reasoning that he had met death by his own hand. But Verna knew better. And before she left my office that day, she had convinced me -- almost. "Sheila? You still there?" "Sorry, Whitey -- my mind just flopped around for a minute in what she was just telling me the other day. Sure coincidental, isn't it?" "Sure seems to be, amiga." "All right if I come down and poke around in the files on Gray's death tomorrow?" "Sure. Be sure to stick your head in before you leave and we'll compare notes. I'll tell them you're coming." "Thanks, Whitey." "Sorry for the lousy news, Sheila. I know you two had been friends for a long time." "Yeah, we were. I'm more sorry than ever that so much time went by when we were out of touch." "Always seems to happen that way." "Ain't that the truth? Appreciate the call, Whitey," and we rang off. I'd told Verna the day she came to see me that I wasn't sure what I could do that hadn't already been done. Although I knew the police would probably open up the case file on her husband now that someone had killed Verna, still I was going to do something as well. It didn't matter that Verna wasn't around to pay my fees and expenses, it only mattered that a friend had come to me for help and I hadn't been able to help her. At least not in time for her to die knowing she was right and was not simply overestimating herself as a good reason for him to live as long as he could. George was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher when I padded in on my bare feet, looking for a Diet Coke -- I'd given up the "real thing" when working on the forty pounds I'd finally succeeded in shedding, and I wasn't about to change now from zero calories to the one-hundred-sixty, or whatever it was, by going back to the classic stuff, much as I loved it. "Remember me telling you about my old friend's problem with the so-called suicide of her husband?" "Yeah, I do," he answered, swinging up the dishwasher door, locking it shut, and starting its cycling. "Thinking about helping her out after all?" "Well, I guess somebody should look into it. That was Whitey on the phone, and they found her body in a dumpster this morning." On that, old hard-hearted, steely Sheila Casey Halley, burst into tears for the second time in one night. I must be getting maudlin -- or old. Both? |