Slugfest

primping. Allegra stood there, not saying anything. She seemed genuinely distressed, and I couldn’t keep up my cold shoulder routine. I asked if her booth had survived the flood. She shook her head, close to tears.

“It’s all under water. It was the way I designed the garden. All the water collected in the middle and didn’t run off. It looks like a swamp.” I knew she wanted another cigarette and was grateful she didn’t light up again.

“Is there anything I can do? Is there anything you can borrow to fix it?”

“From whom? Everyone hates me. I know it. But it’s not easy to change when you’re as old as I am. What am I going to do—just start being nice at my advanced age? People will think I’ve gone senile. I’d rather have them hate me than pity me.”

“No one hates you. They may think you’re a little rigid, that’s all. About the rules.” God, how I could lie in the name of a good cause. I guess I had retained some skills from my former job. “C’mon, maybe I can help.” I pulled on her spindly arm and dragged her to her garden.

She was right. It was a disaster. The water hadn’t drained, and she had a large murky pond surrounded by a ring of bedraggled plants. With a little luck and a lot of hard work it could look as good as a toxic sinkhole. We had fifty minutes.

“All right. You have three choices: bog garden, amphibian pond, or a high-concept, first garden after the apocalypse, I Am Legend/The Road–type thing.” She just stared. “Scratch that,” I said. “Two choices: bogs or frogs. What think?” She went with the frogs.

In fifteen minutes we’d foraged two broken pieces of lattice; more than two dozen stone, ceramic, and metal frogs (they had not sold as well as the hummingbirds and the vendors were happy to part with them for the price of a mention); and three bruised but living water lilies. It was a start. I set her to work, while I went in search of other less obvious materials—an empty six-pack and a neon beer sign. I went to the gangsta garden display, which was in pristine condition.

Some were convinced that was due to the students themselves being the vandals, but I thought it was the wiring in the exhibit. Whoever had arranged for the downpour didn’t seem to want electrical items shorting out and potentially causing a real fire or a permanent blackout. They just wanted to screw things up temporarily. Stancik thought it was someone creating a diversion. I thought it was someone with an ax to grind, but a carefully wielded ax.

I was anxious to talk to Lauryn about Jamal, but that would have to come later, in a more private setting. Right then, I needed her help on a smaller but more time-sensitive matter.

“C’mon, Lauryn. This is one of those moments when you get to be the person your dog thinks you are. To be good to someone who’s been mean to you. Allegra Douglas.”

“I don’t have dogs, I have fish,” she said, arms folded but a slight curve to her lips. “I also eat fish.”

“Is that what y’all do in the suburbs?” one of her students asked. “Worry about what your pets think?” It earned the speaker a sharp, critical look from her teacher, who wasn’t really hesitating, just savoring the moment. And strategizing. I told her what I needed.

“Not just the suburbs. Trust me,” I said to the kids, “you’ll feel good about doing it. You’ll be making another garden. And this one has a television theme.”

I’d said the magic word. And Lauryn knew where I was going with the six-pack and the beer sign.

“Do we need to find someone with a football jersey?” she asked.

“Maybe you can bribe one of the workers?”

With that she and three of the students judiciously picked hardware and plant material from their own display and brought them over to Allegra’s booth. I left the kids practicing ribbit noises. The girl who had asked about pet habits in the suburbs was telling Allegra about Frogs, a cult classic B movie that carried the memorable tagline, “They’re not the ones who croak!” Someone went off in search of a jersey or a football and I headed back to Primo’s booth.

Amid the sounds of exhibitors, rushing to be ready when the doors opened to the public, and convention center staff, scrambling to put away floor fans and water extractors, Nikki’s gasp could barely be heard except by those closest to her, which included me, David, and John Stancik, who’d returned to see how I had fared.

She’d been trying to straighten the decorative grate on top of the sarcophagus when she noticed something colorful through the wrought iron of the grate. Fabric, with patches on it, bobbing in the water.

Fifty-three

John rushed to Nikki’s side, instructing her not to touch anything, which I thought an unnecessary precaution since her fingerprints were everywhere. Perhaps it was just cop talk. He left a message for Labidou, who was floating around the building. Stancik peered over the edge of the sarcophagus through the grate. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and slid the heavy makeshift tabletop a few inches to the right to see what had elicited Nikki’s reaction. She took a step back as if something were going to jump out of the stone tub; David put his arm out to catch her, just in case. She’d already cracked her skull once that weekend.

“Is it a body?” Nikki asked.

Perversely, I stepped closer to the sarcophagus for a better look. I saw a ripple of colors and thought I recognized a scrap of fabric with a familiar image on it, Delicate Arch, a common symbol for Arches National Park, one of the places Garland Bleimeister had visited and memorialized on his jacket. The jacket he’d given to Jamal Harrington.

“Oh, no.” The words escaped my lips like a low moan, and before I knew it I’d drawn even closer to the stone vessel. Whatever Jamal might have done, this was no way for a kid like him to end up.

“Stay back,” John said. It was spoken softly, a request, not an order, and I complied. “It’s not a body. Or a jacket.” Stancik used one of the vintage fireplace tools in Nikki’s booth and fished something out of the tub—Garland Bleimeister’s missing bag. He dumped it on top and we watched the water drain through the decorative grate. Just then someone joined us.

“What’s going on? I guess they have to keep it humid at these things, but this is ridiculous. No wonder everyone’s hair looks bad.”

“It’s not the humidity,” I said mechanically.

“It’s the heat?” she said. “Wait, that doesn’t sound right.” She threw her head back in a full-throated laugh, cracking herself up. “Love the sarcophagus. Saw one at the Gardner Museum, but I’d never be able to get it up the stairs.” Lucy Cavanaugh marched right up to it for a closer inspection.

“Oooh, that bag’s never going to be the same. I dropped a backpack in a canal in Amsterdam once. Smelled for days and all my lovely patches ran. To say nothing of the stuff inside. Thank goodness most of it was in plastic bags.” She snorted. “Wow, that was a long time ago.”

Lucy sucked on a Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee and handed me the one she’d brought for me. Skim milk, no sugar. It was just like her to jump right into an ongoing discussion and totally hijack it.

She looked around for an ally or an explanation. “What?” she asked. “What?”

“I don’t think the owner of this particular bag will object to its condition,” I said. Sometimes clueless but never slow, Lucy nearly gagged on her coffee.

“That’s the dead guy’s bag?” She gave it a closer look, including the patches, some of which had started to bleed at the edges. “At least he got to travel a bit, before, you know…” She trailed off, realizing she was getting into a line of conversation that might be considered in poor taste.

“Detective Stancik, are we going to see what’s inside?”

He hesitated before answering me.

“What’s the big deal?” I said. “Apparently it’s been here for days. I think I was even accused of not being curious enough when your partner asked me about it.”

He unzipped the main compartment. Inside, sopping wet but still neatly folded, was a change of clothing, slightly more formal than the T-shirt and jeans he was wearing when we met—black slacks, a button-down shirt, and black slip-on shoes. There was a small Dopp kit with travel-sized toiletries and a washcloth; three water-logged paperbacks; and Zagat New York Restaurants with Post-its fringing the pages. In the outside zippered pocket was a soggy deck of cards. What wasn’t there was even more telling.

“No wallet, no keys, no ID,” Stancik said.