Start Reading #7
Good question. Some jobs don’t allow you to retire.
Like, who am I if I decide to retire from being a PI?
Lenny’s in his eighties, and he’s still solving cases at the assisted living facility—this one’s missing cat, that one’s stolen insurance check.
I always wondered what my father was doing out here alone in the woods.
It’s clear to me now that he had quite a bit going on.
“He told me he intended to try bird-watching. Seems that he was day-trading,” I answer, which is true.
That’s how he made so much money, from what I’ve gleaned.
He retired with a decent amount and then invested, taking some big risks in tech that I guess paid off.
Anyway, that’s how I thought he was making money.
I haven’t done any digging into banking records and such.
I imagine there would be a few surprises in a forensic accounting investigation.
“Okay,” says the detective, drawing out the first syllable. “And that’s it?”
I offer a shrug. “Like I say. We were estranged.”
A slow nod, eyes moving around the kitchen. There’s not much to see. The only personal flourish is a magnetic notepad on the fridge, on which nothing is written.
“So—and again, sorry for your loss—your father’s death is consistent with the effects of amatoxin.
Often hard to detect in the blood by the time the worst of it sets in, but recognizable in its impact to organs.
This toxin is derived from the death cap mushroom, which is fatal in very small amounts.
There are more accidental deaths related to this than you might imagine, especially among people who forage for food. ”
Silence is often the best response. In this silence, I try to imagine my father hunting through the woods for mushrooms. No.
The closest my father would get to foraging for food was the McDonald’s drive-through.
There wasn’t a single fruit or vegetable in the house.
There was a bottle of vodka in the freezer, the legion of take-out containers and fast-food bags in the fridge.
When I say nothing, the detective continues. “However, this is the third case of poisoning in a month in this town. Which is a statistical anomaly. Another anomaly—the two other victims were also retired law enforcement.”
Now that is interesting. The wheels start turning. But again, I stay quiet, try to keep my poker face.
“It seems that the other victims were acquainted with your father. Apparently the three men met weekly.”
Something about that rings a bell. At some point, he mentioned getting together with a couple of old dogs from the job, telling their tall tales, talking about politics, the news, their theories on unsolved cases.
These men, whoever they were, were probably the closest thing my father had to friends.
I cast about my memory for their names, but nothing surfaces.
“Doug Johnson, retired from the CIA, died last week,” the detective offers. “And Brian ‘Buster’ Chappell, whose role with the government is classified, remains in a coma. Doctors are cautiously optimistic.”
For some reason I can’t stop thinking about that cigarette butt in the basement, that red, red lipstick.
Detective Crowe slips a photograph from a folder and hands it to me.
My father with two men, but I don’t recognize either one.
They’re in some kind of sports bar, my father in the middle, arms around their shoulders, wearing a rare smile and his eternal plaid flannel shirt.
They all have that look about them: old government men who have seen too much bad and can’t see good anymore—narrowed eyes, rimmed with purple fatigue, and deep lines etched in perpetually furrowed brows.
Both men are balding, with big paunches, button-down shirts—one Black, clean cut; one whitest white with rheumy blue eyes and snow-white wisps of hair.
I look at it a moment longer than I should in front of the detective, indicating knowledge or too much curiosity.
Also, the image of my dad, smiling, happiest I’ve seen him, makes my heart hurt a little.
I imagine him spending time with these men, laughing, swapping stories.
I’m jealous of them, the time that I didn’t get.
Dad, what were you up to with these guys?
Finally, I slide it back. “I’ve never seen those other two men.”
He nods, keeping his eyes on me.
“The hospice nurse, Patty, said there was someone there with him,” says the detective. “A woman.”
“She mentioned it.”
“Any idea who she might have been? Friend, girlfriend?”
I shake my head. How many times can I tell this guy I didn’t know anything about my father’s life?
That we were estranged? And, wow, I wish it had been different.
But it wasn’t. Maybe it was his fault, and maybe it was mine.
But who even knows now? Who was to blame for what, and how much of it was just bad chemistry?
He nods as if I’ve said those things, and I realize he’s probably good at his job, one of those cops who hears the things you don’t share.
There are more photographs. “I got a warrant for the security footage at the hospital in the days after your father was admitted.”
That’s the nice thing about being a cop. You don’t have to talk your way into getting the information you need. You provide a piece of paper, and they have to give it to you.
He spreads out four images.
A woman, lean and tall, emerges from a black pickup, wearing tight leather pants, a jean jacket, and pointy boots, her red hair pulled back tightly, a long ponytail down her back. She’s a stunner. Heads are turned in her direction.
In the next, she enters the hospital foyer, face impassive, skin flawless, alabaster. She’s ageless. Not as young as the hospice nurse implied, but certainly in good shape. Her cheekbones are, to channel Amelia, epic. Eyes a shocking blue. Mouth a valentine, neck graceful and white as a swan’s.
In the elevator, eyes lidded, she looks almost bored. But there’s something else there too. Anger? Malice? She might be the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen, radiating a kind of coldness, power. Is she . . . familiar? Do I know her?
The final image is from behind. I recognize the hallway outside my father’s hospice room.
What was she doing there? What did a woman like this have to do with my father—a dumpy old retired FBI agent?
Yeah, he had money. But surely they weren’t fucking.
I try to wipe all resulting images of this thought from my mind.
“Do you know her?” he asks.
The right answer is No, I’ve never seen her before. Who is she?
Instead, I say, “I don’t know.”
My middle-aged brain grapples. I’m time traveling again, back to my wild high school days.
Those rural parties. Shift and his drug-dealing family, his criminal uncles.
There was a place off the highway, a strip club.
Sometimes at those parties in the woods, the dancers would come, hang out with Shift and his uncles, all of us.
These women—made up, scantily dressed, high heeled—seemed impossibly cool to my teenage self.
Beautiful, distant, and in charge of their lives.
Of course, as an adult woman I know they were anything but in control.
But to young me, they seemed to have something I didn’t—a worldly sophistication, a knowing.
And maybe that was true; they knew the world was a very different place than I imagined it to be then.
Was she one of them? Was she one of Shift’s uncle’s girlfriends? How young must she have been if she’s this young now? Thirty-odd years later? The math is not pretty. She must have been a child, younger than I was.
“Who is she?” I ask.
More pictures. A mug shot, where she looks somewhat less put together, mascara tears and an openly hostile stare toward the camera.
Other photos that look like surveillance: shopping in a grocery store, talking to some rough-looking guys in the lot of what looks like an abandoned warehouse, walking into that strip club off the highway.
I remember the neon sign: The Blue Room.
Yes, that was it. Seedy and run down by the side of the road, a low concrete slab that looked abandoned by day and alive at night, lot filled with cars, music pulsing, blue sign flashing.
Look at that! An abomination! my mother never failed to say as we drove past. How did they ever get zoning for this?
Calm down, Eve, my father might put in. Words that have calmed no woman ever.
The final image is of the redhead standing in front of the prefab home I just visited.
She stands with a man who towers over her.
She has her arms wrapped around his neck; his hands rest tenderly on her narrow hips.
She stares up at him with such naked adoration it’s almost embarrassing.
And hard to fathom, because though he’s clearly built—broad through the shoulders, big arms—he is not her equal in looks.
His long blond hair is up in a man bun. I almost don’t recognize him, because now he’s sporting one of those Game of Thrones beards, and he’s put on at least fifty pounds since our youth—not that I’m throwing any stones.
But unmistakably, it’s Shift. All grown up. What was his real name?
I look at the detective, still waiting for his answer.
“Her name is Roxanne Shevchenko,” he says. “She and her husband, Borys, own the Blue Room.”
Borys Shevchenko. Shift.
“What’s that? Ukrainian?”
“That’s right,” he says. “If you grew up here, you may know that Borys and his family have a long history of criminal activity in this town.”
I nod.
“Drugs, prostitution, sex trafficking,” he continues.
The various pieces are in a jumble in my fatigued and grief-addled brain. How does this all fit together? I would give anything to have Lenny sitting next to me. Things are always clearer to him; he is always quicker to put the pieces of the puzzle in place.