Sandy Gingras - Lola Polenta 01 - Swamped Page 2

  When I wake up, it’s dark, and I feel like I’m falling, but it’s just the tipping motion of the cot. Dreamer is nudging my elbow. She needs to go out.

  It smells murky outside like flowers and swamp. “I gotta get a flashlight,” I tell Dreamer. Night in New Jersey is more of a glowing grayness from all the lights and houses, but this is dark dark.

  I don’t want to walk toward the swamp, so we go down the dirt lane. There are a few solar lights like blue mushrooms in someone’s yard. A spotlight shines up against a palm tree. A line of trailers rumble with air conditioning. TV lights flicker. I get a whiff of what might be chicken parmesan. My stomach growls. I should start eating real meals, I tell myself, with vegetables.

  There’s a little clearing next to a shed. “Pee here, “ I tell Dreamer, but she trots over to the shed. I can make out that the door is half open, and it’s pitch black inside. Dreamer growls low in her throat.

  “What is it?” I say.

  There’s a darker something or other in the doorway propping open the door. Before I know it, Dreamer goes into the shed. “Where are you going?” I say. She moves fast like she’s on the scent of something. She doesn’t listen to me. I do my attempt at a whistle.

  “Dreamer?” I edge my way over to the shed’s door. I can’t see anything, and it smells weird.

  I take one step inside the door and I trip on something, which is typical. As I’m falling I get this flashback to first grade when I had to take occupational therapy before school every day because I kept falling out of my chair in class. I had to sit on a little low square of a scooter and wheel around the halls before anyone else came to school. I had balance issues, they said. I was klutzy. And it didn’t get any better with age.

  Now, I land on what’s just inside the door. And one of my hands lands on the cement floor which is wet. The rest of me lands on something which turns out to be cold and bloody and slippery. And, I think, dead.

  Chapter 4

  I hope I don’t throw up.

  As I’m starting to run back toward my trailer and my phone, I realize there’s a guy standing next to me right outside the shed.

  “Help,” I say. My breath is ragged and shallow and my heart is pounding.

  “I already dialed 911,” he tells me. His voice is calm.

  “Is it a dead person?’

  “I’m afraid so. Come with me,” the guy says. He points toward a trailer next door, and leads me over to a deck chair holding my elbow. The air is suddenly full of sirens.

  He goes inside the trailer, and comes out with some warm damp paper towels and a blanket that he puts around my shoulders. He sits down next to me. “Take some deep breaths,” he tells me.

  I rub my hands on the towels. It’s no good. There’s too much blood. The towels are already red. I want to throw myself into a scalding hot shower and stand there for days.

  “Are you a doctor?” I ask him. He’s wearing green medical scrubs.

  “Retired G.P.”

  The ambulance comes up the road and the guy stands up and points them to the shed. There are two cop cars right behind it. The old guy says a few words to the cops, then comes back.

  “That was quick, “I say.

  “There’s a hospital right down the road,” the guy tells me. “Rt. 41 is retirement alley. We’re surrounded by medical facilities.”

  “I’ll buy you a new blanket,” I tell the guy. I’m sure it’s ruined. I pull it closer.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He’s got thick black glasses that give his eyes a kind of swimmy look. He’s a skinny old guy, no hair but lots of strong bones in his craggy face, and there’s a kindliness that you just can’t fake in the lines of his face.

  “I just moved in,” I tell him. “Lola Polenta.” I decided to start using my old name again, and I’m not used to it. I was Lola Wood for five years. Now it sounds like I’m using my tongue too much when I say my name. All those L’s are really something. LaLaLa. It gives the conversation an oddly festive feel. In spite of the blood.

  He must think so too because he smiles. “Joe Setzer.”

  “I’d shake your hand,” I say.

  “No need,” he says.

  “Do you know what happened?” I say.

  “Looks like Ernie finally went and got himself killed,” he says.

  “Ernie?”

  “The handyman.”

  “Oh, him,” I say.

  “He was asking for it.”

  “You think somebody killed him?” I’ve never been around a dead person before. I can’t really see anything happening at the shed, just a bunch of cops clustered around, an ambulance waiting with its doors open. I can see into the ambulance, and it looks really empty.

  Dreamer lies down on Joe’s slippers. “There you go; keep my feet warm,” he tells her.

  “You mean murder?” I raise my eyebrows. I learned this from Lesson 1 in my P.I. course, the section titled: “Winning friends through body language.” When you raise your eyebrows they make arches that invite people in. You become a kind of garden path and people want to stroll among your roses.

  “I doubt he bashed himself in the head,” Joe says.

  “Maybe he fell?”

  Joe looks down and shakes his head. “How did you find him?” I ask.

  “I saw the door open. Ernie’s never there at night. I just went over with my flashlight to check. Ernie ran that place like an operating room. There was never anything out of place, and it just seemed odd. I didn’t see his body at first. Then, when I did, I called 911, then you came. It all happened very quickly,” he says.

  “You think there’s some sort of homicidal lunatic serial killer loose?” I ask. I glance behind me at the black looming swamp. I always think over-blown. My fears can take my imagination from zero to sixty in two seconds flat.

  “My guess is that somebody just got fed up with Ernie.”

  “Do you think it was a mafia hit?” I ask Joe. Sometimes I think I watch too much HBO.

  “He stares at me.

  “Do you think it was a drug addict on methamphetamines?”

  “What do I look like?” he asks me.

  “I was hoping you would know something.”

  He looks down. “Ernie Stank was crazy,” Joe tells me.

  People in pj’s and robes are pouring from their trailers, gathering in the dirt road. “What happened?” a woman asks Joe. “What happened?” somebody else asks her. A man points at me.

  The night seems to be vibrating. A camera flashes. Yellow police tape flutters between the palm trees. Crime Scene people, dressed up in puffy white jumpsuits, are moving around as carefully as spacemen.

  Joe nods toward where a big cop is talking to a woman. We both stand up to see better. We walk toward the police tape. I feel like a zombie. Dreamer follows. People are staring at me and whispering. I try to ignore them.

  “That’s Ernie’s sister, Marie,” Joe says to me, “They share a trailer—the one with all the whirligigs.”

  I’ve only been here a couple hours, but the place is a landmark. To get to my trailer, you turn in at the clubhouse, left at the whirligigs. There have to be fifteen in their front yard. Most of them are some sort of elaborate contraption where the wind turns the fan which makes the man row the boat which then makes the whale rise out of the water. Like that.

  Marie is talking loudly. Joe and I lean forward to hear, but she’s talking about what Ernie ate for lunch. Macaroni and cheese, evidently. Except Marie calls it macaronis and cheese. She’s got a shower cap on over some curlers and an orange robe. The robe is quilted and shiny. “She looks like a road work cone,” I tell Joe.

  Joe looks at me askance.

  I get glib when I’m nervous. I should just shut up.

  Marie is speaking in circles; “I didn’t know where he was at,” she’s saying, “I had the meatloaf cooking then I turned it down. I had the mash potato because Ernie he likes his mash potato. But he doesn’t like them sticky. So I set the oven at 250 just to war
m, you know, and I turned on Wheel of Fortune…”

  I’ve been an English teacher for ten years: Harding High School, Freshmen and Sophomores. I taught your basic essay form, your topic sentence, your body of supporting evidence. This is a lost art. People these days are all over the place. It gets to me how you can have entire conversations without a topic sentence making itself known. And most people are stumped when you ask them what the heck they’re talking about.

  This happens to Marie. The cop stops her, and asks her again when she last saw Ernie. Marie says, “Ernie is always on time. He likes his schedule. You could set your watch by him. If you asked him what time it was, he says 12:31 not 12:30. Do you know what I mean?”

  The cop has out his little book with his pen poised over it. He’s not writing anything. Not a word. I feel for him.

  He takes Marie by the elbow and leads her to the stretcher by the side of the road where they already have Ernie’s body. When she looks up, her silence is so pronounced that she looks like a different person.

  Now the other cops are pushing people back from the police tape, trying to disperse everyone. Dreamer stands up obediently, takes a few steps back. She’s such a little goody two shoes about authority. I don’t know where she gets it.

  Then the big cop walks over to me. “Detective Johansen,” he introduces himself and nods to both of us. “I need to speak with both of you,” he tells us.

  The crowd all turns and stares at us. Here I am covered in blood. “Who is she?” I hear someone say.

  I point down the lane to my trailer. “I live right there,” I tell him.

  “You wait right here sir, I’ll be back. Let’s go,” he says to me.

  I turn to Joe. “Thank you,” I say. “I’ll wash your blanket.”

  The detective turns to talk a moment with the crime scene guys. Then he walks me through the muttering crowd, one arm hovering kind of near my elbow. Now that I’m standing next to him, I feel like a dwarf. He’s got to be 6’3” and he’s got these thick Popeye arms. He reminds me of a tree, a sturdy New Jersey tree, not one of these swaying Florida trees.

  “Go to bed.” He’s waving at the crowd. His voice is deep and rumbling. “Go get some sleep.”

  Suddenly, I want to lean against him and collapse. It’s like all the resolve that’s been sustaining me vanishes.

  Suddenly, I want to go home… as if I knew where that was anymore.

  Chapter 5

  For breakfast, I make toast on my George Foreman grill. It works. Kind of. Instead of the usually blurry beige toasty look, I get that parallel-lined, just-grilled look. More char-broiled perhaps than toasted, but tasty. I have a jelly assortment that I took from my motel lobby’s continental breakfast buffet—those gold peel-off pockets with the picture of the fruit on the top. I eat two pieces of “toast” on a paper towel standing up at my card table, grape on one piece and orange marmalade on the other.

  Dreamer gets the crusts.

  She had a rough night in her new location, besides the murder. Every time the air conditioner came on, she’d jump up and start barking at the floor vent. The AC is a bit explosive. It starts out of nowhere with a huge belchy sound and then the air rushes out of the grill like a little hurricane. “Maybe we’ll get used to it,” I tell Dreamer. Both of us are bleary-eyed. Although I took a long shower last night, I couldn’t get the smell of blood out of my head.

  We go out for a walk. Dreamer pants dramatically. “This sun is wicked,” I say. I’m wearing my jammies and some old cowboy boots I slipped on. I know I look lame. “I’m going to have to get some tropical clothes,” I tell her. Her tail wags agreeably.

  I look around. A weird bird is screeching in the trees. There’s a haze simmering over the swamp. It’s kind of like summer vacation, kind of like a horror movie.

  The police tape is still up around the maintenance shed. I look around. Nobody. I’m curious to see what it looks like in there. I slip under the tape. I try the door. It’s locked, so I peek in the windows. Everything is in its place, each tool hanging on its own hook. It doesn’t look like anything’s been disturbed. I get on tiptoe. I swallow. There’s the blood stain on the cement floor. It’s very large. I wonder if Ernie was killed here. There isn’t anything that looks like a drag mark.

  I call my dad’s cell phone when we get back to the trailer. It’s only 7:30 but I know he’s already at work. I know he’s probably on his second cup of coffee. His desk is already clean. He’s ready for action.

  “Polenta’s,” he answers.

  “Dad,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “I got your message.” He called my cell phone last night after he heard about the murder. He listens to the police scanner all day, all night. While he sleeps, he listens. That’s how restive he is. “I didn’t call you back,” I tell him, although he already knows this much. I didn’t have the oompf to deal with him.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “The handyman got murdered!” I exclaim.

  “I know that,” he says exasperated. “I already talked to Sal.”

  “I fell on the body.”

  “I know that too.”

  “What did Sal say?”

  “Somebody hit the poor bastard over the head with a putter.”

  “A golf club?” I say astonished. Although now that I think about it, I seem to remember feeling something metal when I fell.

  “A putter.”

  I’ve never heard of anyone being killed by a golf club. “Can that happen?” I ask, trying to picture it.

  “Just one blow from behind, then he fell on the concrete floor, so that would make two blows to the head. The autopsy will tell what really did him in.”

  “Yuck,” I say, flashing back.

  “The head is more like an egg than most people would like to believe.”

  I’m a little woozy thinking about it again, and my brain feels like a wobbly yolk. I sit down on my cardboard chair. I don’t like to think about organs this early in the morning. Everything seems more fragile before 9 a.m. Truth be told, I’m a total wimp about death. Once, I fainted at a funeral. It was my Uncle Bookie’s service, and I was only fifteen, and I don’t think too many people noticed. Nonetheless, I was flat out in the pew of St. Matthew’s church, and my mother had to sprinkle holy water on my face to revive me.

  “Yuck,” I say again. I can’t help it.

  “It doesn’t sound like a real premeditated thing. Just maybe, you are making me very angry and I happen to see a golf club standing there and there you go.”

  “I wouldn’t trust myself to be able to hit someone accurately with a golf club,” I tell him.

  My father says. “Listen, I want you to move out of there.”

  “Move again?” I say. My father could have been Napoleon. He likes to command people around. And he has no neutral or reverse gear on him; it’s all action, action, action. No dilly-dallying around thinking about things. No such thing as inertia. He used to drive my mother crazy. When he moved down to Florida, I thought he might mellow out some. But that never happened.

  “I don’t want to move again,” I say. “I gave Sal a month’s rent.”

  My father says, “Sal won’t mind; he’ll give it back. He owes me. He’s hiring me to look into this thing.”

  “For what?” I ask. “Isn’t this a police thing? This is a real crime,” I say.

  “Private Investigators do investigate real crimes, you know.”

  Not me, I think. I just want to find out about people. I know how pathetic that sounds. But really, I don’t like violent crime. I’m not comfortable with it. I just want to help people fill in the gaps of their lives. That’s what I thought being a private investigator would be—a career like Mad Libs: Last night, your husband said he was

  ( )ing at the ( ) ,but he was really ( )ing ( )ly in the ( ).

  I don’t say that though. I look out my window at my view of the burbling swamp. “Why does Sal need to hire you anyway?” I ask.

&
nbsp; “Sal’s hired me before because he’s always getting sued when something happens. Someone backs out of a driveway at night into a palm tree and he gets sued for inadequate lighting. A woman hit an alligator with her golf cart last year and sued him for premise liability. She claimed he should have prevented the alligator from being on the property. They don’t win, but it’s a hassle for Sal. Those old people are sue-happy.”

  “Can you sue someone if a murder happens on their property?”

  “Sure. It happens all the time. Some places are more murder-prone, or murder-possible.”

  “You sent me to live in a murder-possible trailer camp?”

  “I told you to move out.”

  “What are you going to do to help Sal?”

  “I’ll spend a couple hours in the maintenance shed,” he tells me. “I’ll measure, take some pictures. I’ll write up a report on the lighting, the condition of the building, the access-ways. It will be helpful if Sal gets sued.”

  “But that’s so boring,” I tell him.

  “This job IS boring. Billable hours,” he says, “that’s what counts.”

  “Do you know what happened to Ernie?”

  “It looks like Ernie was putting the mower away,” he says. “He had parked it in the maintenance shed. Someone must’ve come in to talk to him and ended up hitting him over the head. It was probably very quick, in and out. Two minutes,” my father says.

  “Was the putter already in there?”

  “It’s hard to say. It was a cheap putter. Sal has a whole bin of extra clubs in that shed that people lost or abandoned over the years. He didn’t recognize the club, but he says he wouldn’t have. It probably was just the nearest thing at hand.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I found the body. That detective thinks that I murdered Ernie. He hates me. Last night he questioned me for a half hour about why I’m living in a retirement trailer park. He thinks I’m some sort of fugitive hiding out here. Plus, somebody told him that I had an argument with Ernie earlier in the day. These old people must spy on everything that happens here. He wants me to come down to the station this morning and get my fingerprints taken.”