Tortoise Soup Read online

  Three

  It took three attempts before I was able to call Metro Police and speak coherently. Two hours later, a squad car pulled up to the ranch. By that time I was thoroughly sunburned, unable to bring myself to venture back inside Annie’s.

  “Hey, there. You got something ripe for us?”

  Ted Brady struggled out of the squad car. Though only twenty-eight years old, he already had the receding hairline of a middle-aged man, coupled with a paunch that pushed against the shiny brass buttons of his uniform. A light blond mustache stained his baby-fat face like a smudge that hadn’t been wiped away.

  I’d never met the man who swung out of the passenger side of the car. Tall, with a mop of white hair and a walrus mustache to match, he raised his arm above his eyes, squinting at me, before striding over to where I sat on the ground.

  “Henry Lanahan. Forensics. Thought I’d join Ted for the ride,” he said in way of introduction.

  Lanahan shook my hand, then I felt myself being pulled to my feet. “Why don’t we go in and see what we’ve got?” he added. His fingers rested lightly on the inside of my wrist, and I felt faintly suspicious that he was taking my pulse.

  Brady stood with his thumbs tucked into his gun belt. “You up for that, Porter? You look like you could use a rest in my squad car. It’s air-conditioned, you know.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was go back into Annie’s house, and I would have killed for a shot of air-conditioning. But the smirk on Brady’s face brought me to my senses.

  “I’m fine, Brady. I had plenty of time for my daily siesta, waiting for you to get here,” I smartly retorted. Willing my feet to move, I led the way inside.

  By the time we’d reached the bathroom, Brady had a handkerchief pressed to his mouth. Lanahan was encased in a thick cloud of smoke, puffing on a cigar that smelled almost as foul as the room itself.

  Brady took one look at the scene and the blood drained from his face. “Jesus Christ. What the hell?”

  Turning on his heels, he ran back out the front door, and the sound of retching wafted toward us on dense waves of heat. It was almost enough to make me feel better.

  “Well, this is something I’ve never seen before.” Lanahan walked over to the tub and bent down close. “Extraordinary! Just look at this!”

  I sneaked a peek as Henry studied the scene.

  “You see, to a fly, the human corpse is the same as an animal. Free food and plenty of it.” He prodded a cluster of the parasites with the tip of his nail. “They lay their eggs on the skin, and when the little buggers hatch, the maggots scoop in the grub with this tiny clawlike apparatus that’s attached to their mouths. I like to call it a maggot’s version of The Last Supper.”

  My empty stomach turned.

  Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, Lanahan lifted Annie’s skeleton up by the hair as maggots tumbled off. “I’d say they did a pretty good job, wouldn’t you?” he chuckled.

  Forensics humor—I’d never get used to it.

  Henry clamped the cigar between his teeth and carefully stuck a finger through the bullet hole lodged smack in her skull. The tip of his finger wriggled in the air like a puppy dog’s tail.

  “Looks like a .38 slug to the front of the head,” he attested.

  Annie’s skeleton grimaced in horrified silence as Henry lowered it back down. Then he directed his attention to the wall directly behind her. Closing his eyes, he ran his fingers over the hole there like a pianist playing a riff, probing for unseen clues.

  “Yep. I’d say the bullet lodged right in here,” he stated.

  “How long has she been dead?” I was curious to know how much time it took to descend to this state.

  Henry shrugged. “Maybe a month. Hard to say right now. Give me a few days, and I’ll know more.”

  I looked at Annie’s corpse and felt exonerated for my junk food diet. If this was the way I could end up, I didn’t see the sense in torturing myself with wholesome food and exercise.

  Henry turned to face me. “Now let’s check the pooch.”

  A halo of dried blood enshrined a skull picked nearly as clean as Annie’s.

  “Same thing here. A .38 right between the eyes. Nice shot!” Henry turned the head in my direction. “By the way, if you want to take a gander, you can get a good look at those maggots chomping away at what little flesh is left.”

  My stomach catapulted into a series of somersaults. Averting my eyes, I noticed the neon-green imprint of a tortoise on the wall near the sink. Stepping over bugs and past Lanahan, I moved in for a better view. It appeared to be identical to the one I had spotted at the Center.

  I hated to admit it, but Holmes might have been onto something, after all. Maybe there was a group of eco-nuts practicing their own form of vigilante law. Still, I’d found no sign of reptiles being kept on Annie’s premises. Adding it up, the shooting of an old woman who lived in a shack with nothing of value just didn’t make sense.

  “Looks like we’ve got the gun over here,” Henry called to me over his shoulder.

  I skirted the dog, joining Henry and his cigar on the floor, where we stared at the .38 Smith & Wesson revolver nestled beneath the claw-foot tub.

  I shuddered as a bug skittered by. “How do you suppose the gun ended up all the way under there?”

  Lanahan pulled on the nub of his cigar. “Good question. I suppose we could ask old Annie, but it don’t look like she’s gonna do much talking.” Henry chortled and gave me a wink. He was turning into both a comedian and his own best audience.

  At this point, Brady dragged his body back into the room. An unnatural pallor had replaced his normal ruddy complexion. I couldn’t help the twinge of a smile as I caught him mopping the endless stream of sweat that had begun to pour off the top of his head.

  Brady caught my eye and glared. “Don’t start with me, Porter,” he warned.

  Propping himself against the doorjamb, Brady listened as Lanahan filled him in on what we had found so far.

  “Sounds like a suicide to me,” Brady proclaimed.

  I stared at him in amazement as he wrung his handkerchief out onto the floor. “You’re going to write it off as a suicide? You can’t do that!” I exclaimed.

  “What the hell would you call it?” he challenged.

  I would have called it shoddy police work but kept that opinion to myself for now. “Murder is good for a start.”

  I quickly gave Lanahan and Brady a thumbnail sketch of the theft of the tortoises and then pointed out the hand-stenciled imprint that had also been found at the Center.

  “It can’t be a coincidence. There has to be some sort of a tie-in here,” I insisted.

  But Brady was looking to keep it simple and clean. “Maybe they’re all tortoise fans who are into graffiti. Who the hell cares?”

  His florid complexion was back, along with his cocky self-pride. “Look, Porter. This is the way it went down. What we’re dealing with is a crazy old hermit who was looking to strike the mother lode. Suddenly, she wakes up one day and realizes it ain’t never happened, ain’t never gonna happen. Gets out her gun, plugs her dog, plugs herself. Zippo. The end. You want to claim the dog was murdered? That’s your area of expertise, Kemo Sabe.” Brady’s lip curled up in a sneer. “Be my guest. But for chrissake, who wouldn’t be depressed living here? Jesus, just look at this place. I’d kill myself, too.”

  Maybe it was the heat, but my fingers twitched to reach for my own gun and pull the trigger. “Let me get this straight, Brady. Your explanation of the events as they occurred is as follows. First set the table for dinner. Then climb into a bathtub. Next decide to shoot your only companion between the eyes. Then shoot yourself in the forehead. And to top it off, throw the revolver under the tub when you’re done.”

  Brady picked his nose and wiped his finger on his pants. “The dog must have kicked it there.”

  “That ought to look good in your report,” I retorted.

  I stepped back, then realized I was in a cluster of bugs and s
hot forward, almost knocking Henry head first into the tub. He managed to catch himself in time, but his cigar was another matter. The stogie flew out of his mouth, landing in the brown sludge of body fluid that had collected at the bottom of the drain.

  “Careful! I’m working here,” Henry reprimanded me as he scooped up maggots. He methodically placed the parasites inside a plastic container.

  Brady took one look and blanched once again. “What the hell are you doing, Lanahan?”

  Henry chuckled as he ladled up another batch of the grubs. “If it was suicide, Ms. McCarthy might have decided to ingest some barbiturates first. We’ll find that out by putting these little fellas into a blender, making ourselves a maggot milk shake, and testing the results.”

  This was way more than I wanted to know. I left Brady and Lanahan to their own devices and wandered back outside.

  The powder-blue Studebaker had taken on a lustrous sheen under the sun, and I wondered what would happen to it now. Walking over to the car, I found the driver’s side was unlocked. I opened the door and slid in. The blanket thrown over the seat was warm, but it kept the seat from burning me. I peered underneath and was surprised to find that the leather had been maintained in flawless condition, without a gash or tear. I brought my foot to the pedal. The seat was adjusted just right for my height. I could still smell the scent of Annie’s dog and I wondered what her life had been like, living all alone. Well, not altogether alone. She at least had a dog. I didn’t even own a hamster.

  Leaning over, I opened the glove compartment and poked around inside. Empty candy wrappers filled the compact space. Annie had obviously been my kind of woman. I closed it and turned my attention to the visor above me, pulling it down. Instead of finding a vanity mirror, as I had expected, a set of keys fell into my lap. The master key fit the ignition, but it seemed inappropriate to turn the car on. I sat still for a moment, the second key burning in the palm of my hand. Then, sliding off the seat, I walked around to the rear and unlatched the trunk, which opened without a sound.

  Inside lay a tire iron, a wrench, and a navy duffel bag. For a moment, I wondered if I had discovered Annie’s secret stash of reptiles, no doubt baked to a crisp by now. Bracing myself for the worst, I slowly unzipped the sack, ready to leap back at the first sound of a rattle or sight of a spider’s hairy leg. But no mini-monsters were to be found. The bag was filled with letters, all of which were addressed to Anna Bell McCarthy in Buda, Texas. The postmarks were dated from 1938 to 1942. Without thinking about why, I zipped the bag up and lifted it out of the trunk. Glancing furtively around, I stashed the remnants of Annie’s life inside my Blazer.

  “You still here, Porter?” Brady asked, slowly tottering outside.

  Lanahan followed with a grin on his face as I closed the door to my car.

  “If you like this place so much, I have a feeling you can get it dirt cheap,” Brady suggested facetiously.

  I’d caught a quick view of Brady’s bachelor pad once. It was a place that even New York roaches would have refused to call home. In comparison, Annie’s house didn’t look half bad.

  He opened the cooler in the trunk of his squad car and threw me a beer. I popped the tab and took a sip.

  “What happens now?” It would pay to know Brady’s next move while I planned out my own.

  “Now we clean up the mess.” Brady wrapped an ice cube in his handkerchief and laid it against the back of his neck. “After that I file the report as a suicide. Case closed. Then tonight I get stinking drunk and try to forget what takes place when you kick the bucket.”

  He could have been describing my own plans for the evening. “You sure you don’t want more time to rethink this case, Brady?” I asked, giving the man one last chance.

  Brady swirled a swig of beer in his mouth and then spat it out, just missing Lanahan’s shoe. “You wanna join the police force, feel free to come over anytime and fill out an application, and we’ll see if we can’t find you something to do. Otherwise, you stick to your work, Porter, and I’ll stick to mine.”

  “There you go again Brady, assuming that what you do can be called police work.”

  Lanahan stepped between us like a referee at a boxing bout. “Why don’t you give me a call in a few days, Rachel? Nobody will be signing off on anything until I’ve finished my testing. Then we’ll take it from there. What do you say, old buddy?” Henry put his arm around Brady, holding the container of maggots close to his face.

  Brady took a look at the maggots and pulled away, gagging at the sight. Lanahan winked at me, and I realized his sense of humor wasn’t so bad after all.

  Living in Las Vegas wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. At least, it wasn’t for me. There was no glamour in my life, no wild parties, no men banging down my door to show me a hot night on the town. Stopping by Taco Bell on my way home, I picked up a couple of burritos with a bag of chips as my vegetable.

  Once again I was renting a place to live. I seem to have trouble when it comes to settling down. It’s the thought of permanency that makes me nervous. Once that happens, you sink into the reality that this is your life. You buy furniture and dishes and hang bric-a-brac on your wall. Then you grow old, and before you’re ready, you die. I figured the magic elixir of youth was staying mobile, and with the places I lived in, that had yet to pose a problem.

  Along with my move to Vegas, I had decided to take the bold step of renting a house rather than the usual apartment. Well, not a house, exactly. A small bungalow, to be precise. A bungalow situated in a row of identical bungalows. Most people would have been appalled at units that sat practically on top of each other. It suited me just fine.

  Just as in New Orleans, my new abode was decorated à la thrift shop specials. But the landlord had added a distinct touch of his own. The carpeting throughout was a shag that looked as if it had fallen into a humongous vat of Pepto-Bismol. The way I figured, it was a make-or-break factor. Either I’d like my life in Las Vegas enough to consider putting down roots, or the carpet alone would be enough to send me packing back home.

  I threw my bag down on a table that the Salvation Army would have refused, and headed for the bedroom and my answering machine. The lack of flashing red lights confirmed that my personal life was comatose. I stripped off my clothes and turned on a Bonnie Raitt tape. Pouring a tequila in honor of my Mexican meal, I settled into a bubble bath with my burritos and part of Annie’s stash of letters within reach.

  I opened envelope after envelope, only to discover that what I had stumbled on were old love letters. They had been sent by a man who at one time had been her fiancé. Posted from Nevada, each letter told of a fortune in gold just around the bend, screaming out to be discovered. He would come home to her then. I wondered how long Annie had waited before giving up hope. And what had finally caused her to head for Nevada. I was beginning to discover that everyone has their own reason for deciding to live in the desert. It’s a place where you can find yourself if you’re looking or lose yourself if you choose. Then there are those who are running from something as fast as they can. Annie fell into one of those categories. So did I. I was still trying to figure out which was the perfect fit.

  Visions of Annie in her tub flitted across my mind and I shivered, sliding further down into my blanket of bubbles as I poured another drink. Gut instinct told me that she had been murdered. I also knew I’d never convince Brady to keep the case open. My one hope was Lanahan and what he might find.

  I concede that it’s time to get out of the tub when my fingers reach the consistency of prunes. I opened my medicine cabinet and poked around for any remnants of lotion to slather on my skin, and was confronted by a bottle of Mylanta and memories of Santou. He practically lived on the stuff. In my twisted state of mind, I kept it in order to feel close to him. A pang of homesickness squeezed at my heart in a surprise attack.

  To hell with pride. Picking up the phone, I dialed Santou’s number. I had asked him for space and time. I guess I should also have asked for more fr
equent phone calls. I listened to the phone ring for a while and finally hung up. It was one in the morning, New Orleans time. I didn’t even want to think about where he could be. I thought about him enough as it was. Every morning, noon, and night, not counting my dreams.

  Terri had warned me that I would be lonely. His advice had been to get a bird. “You don’t have to walk them, and they’ll never break your heart.”

  He was wrong about that. I’d had a parakeet as a kid. It had escaped one day through an open window to perch on a tree. I had begged the bird to come back inside. Instead it had flown away. I should have taken that as a sign then and there that either birds weren’t meant to be caged or I had about as much luck with them as I would in my future relationships with men.

  That night, though I left the lights blazing bright, my demons hit in full force. A mass of maggots swam into my dreams. Emerging from a Pepto-pink milk shake, they crawled up into my bed to swarm on my body, covering me from head to toe. It wasn’t until hours later, as my demons were finally leaving and deep sleep had begun to set in, that I wondered about Annie’s closest neighbors.

  Four

  Dawn was just creeping up as I started out the next morning. The sunrise, a crimson streak against the sky, stretched like an animal come to life. I barreled down the road serenaded by the demented yammer of coyotes ending their partying for the night. A kit fox loped over a rocky outcrop on his way home.