inside the house, she leaned against the closed door and rubbed the spot on her cheek. Thoughtfully, very thoughtfully.
What a bundle of contradictions he had grown up into!
What a bundle of dear, precious contradictions.
CHAPTER 2
Monday, September 18
On the salary of a junior police detective in a town of thirty-five thousand—even a police detective with a nice little legacy of lands and money, the latter going into making the former more livable—Dave Clayton cut corners where he could. This morning he was at the yearly health fair in the Friends’ Meeting House, where flu shots cost less than anywhere else. He was also running late for duty, thanks to uncooperative traffic lights.
“Hey!” he announced, marching in behind his identification card. “Police detective here.”
“Detective!” a neat, gray-haired lady in blue tunic and trousers greeted him. “Is there any trouble?”
“None at all, M.,” he answered, turning the volume down on his baritone voice. Why did people always jump to that assumption? “Just hoping I can get my flu shot and still make it to work on time.”
“Of course. Are you investigating that dreadful murder right here in Forest Green?”
“We’ve always got a lot on our plate, M. But, yes, that one’ll be taking precedence until we’ve got the killer in custody.” Which might be a lot sooner if the Old Woman wasn’t quite so tender about risking miscarriages of justice; but Dave kept that thought to himself. Solidarity before the public.
“Right this way, Detective.” The gray-haired lady led him straight to the head of the line, nodding out apologies on the way. “Here you are, Detective. Nurse Whitcomb, can you take this police detective next?”
The nurse giving out flu shots glanced up from patting an adhesive mini-bandage on the arm of a little girl about nine or ten. “Surely, M. Esteridge. Right away.” Handing the little girl a cookie, she shooed her off the chair and beckoned to Dave. “Next.”
Quite a beauty, Nurse Whitcomb—Nurse Julie Whitcomb, he saw by her name badge. Black hair braided up on top of her head behind the white nurse’s cap, green eyes with just the merest suggestion of epicanthic folds and Butterscotch skin to match, straight nose, luscious red lips, long neck…
“Smooth or rough, Handsome Detective?” Nurse Julie Whitcomb teased him as he took his seat on the folding chair and rolled up his sleeve. “You don’t look like a man who’s afraid of needles.”
“I’m not. But make it smooth, anyway.”
The time he got studying her bosom while she bent over his arm, imagining what lay beneath that neat nurse’s collar and smooth white tunic, was all too brief. “Finished,” she announced.
“You were smooth! I never felt a thing.”
“Comes with long practice. How about a Bugs Bunny bandage?”
“Hey, what happened to ‘Handsome’? Now you think I look like a Bugs Bunny type?”
“Oh, in features you’re more a Cary Grant type. But with that mischievous twinkle in your eye…” She flicked her tongue out between those fleshy red lips just long enough for him to appreciate its pinkness. “Whoops!” she went on. “All out of Bugs Bunny. Take a Dizzy Duck instead.” She slapped one on his arm and told him, “Now roll down your sleeve and head on out, Handsome Detective. Other people are waiting.”
“The name’s Dave. David Clayton. You in the phone book?”
“How else can I make myself available?” She gave him a wink and a shove on the back. “Ciao, Detective Dave Clayton.”
He thought it was a joke. He was sure it had to have been just a joke. Nurses didn’t have to take any extra work on the side. And even if one did, she surely wouldn’t broadcast it to a pollydeck? Would she? It had to have been just flirtatious banter.
He was going to phone her tonight. Make good and sure.
Maybe that was what she wanted to make sure he’d do.
Nice thought.
* * * *
Moonlighting with local yearbooks, night Desk Officer Holly Davenport had come up with thirty-six possible matches for the corpse’s face. Even thirty-six was an impressive job of weeding down, and might easily have missed the one they needed. His character, his psychomystique, the millions of big and little things that had made him unique in the world when he was alive—all had vanished after death into a corpse that could have belonged to almost any one of a quarter of the young male population in the country. Age probably between twenty and thirty, medium build, black hair, hazel eyes, probably good-looking in a generic kind of way when he was animated and happy, teeth distinctive only to the dental records.
Dentists. That was the place they’d start this morning, as soon as Clayton got in. Meanwhile, Sergeant Lestrade set Officers Little Bird and Vergucchi, reassigned to this case full time, at work with the telephone directory, phoning every family they could find for the young men on Officer Davenport’s list. Then Lestrade sat down to make her own list: the dentists in town.
Little Bird and Vergucchi had found a dozen families and crossed them all off—either the young men were safely accounted for or else they had moved out of state some time ago—by the time Clayton strolled in humming.
Lestrade tapped her fingernail against the bowl of her cherrywood pipe. Like three-fourths of the floaters who used to carry pipes a dozen years ago when it was the big craze, Lestrade’s had never known tobacco. Of all the substitute flavors that were still available, she preferred anise.
“Well, Detective,” she greeted him sourly. “Finding murder something to hum about these days?”
He blanked his face at once. “No, Sergeant, sorry. It wasn’t the case I was humming about. It was the nurse who just gave me the smoothest flu shot a floater could ask for.”
“And you made it to work anyway, a mere —” She glanced at the clock—“seven minutes late. Impressive. I don’t even want to know,” she added, cutting him off with a wave of her pipe stem. “You like this one that much, save her for when you get off duty. And I had my flu shot a week ago.” She stood up, pocketing her list. “Don’t bother sitting down, either. We’re out to pick up some dentists for body identification.”
Holy martyred Silverstairs! Lestrade hated getting people in to identify dead bodies. Whether it was a mere formality or, like now, a necessity.
With the third dentist, they struck paydirt. Dr. Marvella O’Connor stood there a good hundred and twenty seconds, staring down at the face Lotus Blossom Lee had arranged with the expertise of her former life as a mortician’s assistant, once Doc Grumeister was through with his so-called examination. “I’m not sure…” the dentist said at last. “It could be… They look so different, don’t they? When they’re dead.”
Even when it had been a peaceful, natural death. Both detectives nodded sympathetically.
“And then, if it is…You understand, I would’ve known him only as a patient…” Dr. O’Connor
