Dead Folks' blues

coffin. It was a profoundly uncomfortable moment.

“We just came by to pay our respects,” Al Zitin said. “We’ve got to get back to the hospital in a bit.”

“Yes,” Jane Collingswood agreed. “I’m sorry we can’t stay too long.”

“When is the service?” Zitin asked.

“Tomorrow at three. I didn’t see any reason to delay. This has been bad enough for all of us without dragging it out.”

Jane Collingswood looked at Rachel for a second, then said, “I think you’re being very brave. I don’t know how I’d hold up if I were in your shoes.”

I did. Jane Collingswood could survive the sinking of the Titanic. Her eyes were deep, intelligent, determined. And, by the way, incredibly lovely.

“Don’t let all this fool you,” Rachel said. “I’ve had my bad moments. But I know that Connie would have wanted me to hold up. He had such high standards, for himself and everyone else.”

There went that twitch again in Zitin’s eye. “Yes, he certainly did. He was a tough taskmaster.”

“But no tougher on anyone else than he was on himself,” Jane added.

“We’ll all miss him,” Zitin concluded.

“Yes, we’ll all miss him.”

“Thank you,” Rachel said, taking both their hands in hers. “Connie’s work meant a lot to him. People meant a lot to him. He would have appreciated your coming by today.”

Amidst Rachel’s incredible graciousness, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that people were starting to file into the visitation room in some number now. James Hughes, wearing a crumpled green sport coat over a white shirt that he might have slept in, wandered in with four other obvious medical students. I didn’t recognize any of the others.

I turned my attention back to Rachel.

“Thank you so much for coming by,” she said, finishing her speech.

“We were glad to do it,” Jane Collingswood said, unwrapping her hand from Rachel’s and extending it toward me. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Denton.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, taking her hand. There was something solid, slightly cold, in her grip. Jane Collingswood was an unreadable woman, reserved, cards held close to her chest. Could she kill a man? I asked myself. “I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

Zitin extended his hand to me as well. I shook it. His palms were wet, his grip slightly unsure. “Maybe we’ll get to see you again, sometime,” he said.

“I hope so.” Zitin didn’t impress me as the kind of guy who’d have the nerve to kill someone in cold blood. Then again, he’s a doctor. He’d know what he was doing.

Rachel looked over Zitin’s shoulder at the crowd milling in, then disengaged herself politely to take care of her other guests. How do people get through these ordeals? I wondered. I watched Zitin and Collingswood as they meandered toward the door, pausing to speak to a couple of colleagues, shaking hands with a student, making more small talk. People shook their heads sadly, as if wondering how anything this horrible could disorder their safe professional world.

I watched them until they left the room, then shifted through the crowd as quickly as possible and followed them. Their pace inside the room had been slow, respectful, dignified. But once they got out into the hallway, their heels clicked away like a mechanic’s ratchet. I picked up my pace to stay ten feet or so after them, then watched as they went through the double doors into the same back parking lot where I’d left my car.

This was one of those times when I really had to wing it. I wanted to talk to them, to ask the kind of questions that would provide some indication of whether they might really be involved in this mess. But what questions? How could I feel them out without putting them so on guard they’d lock down completely?

Damn, man, I’m going to have to take some lessons in this one of these days. But then I remembered something I learned a long time ago as a newspaper reporter, something that helped me get past the suspicions and distrust that people naturally seem to attribute to reporters: when all else fails, tell the truth.

I shuffled up behind them just as Zitin was fumbling with the key to his 300Z. He crossed around in back of the car to the passenger’s door, then opened it and held it for Jane.

“Excuse me,” I said, “you guys got a minute?”

They turned to me. Jane, I noticed, was cool, subdued. Zitin flicked his eyes over to me, then back at her, then back and forth a few times. Nervous already.

I walked up to the deep-blue sports car, wondering just what surgical residents make to afford this kind of wheels. Maybe he came from money, I thought.

“Yes, Mr.…” she said, “Denton, was it?”

“Yeah, Harry Denton.” I hesitated a moment, then plunged in. “What Mrs. Fletcher said in there is true. I’m an old family friend. I’ve known Rachel and Connie since we were undergraduates together. But I’m also a private investigator, and I’ve been retained by Rachel to look into Conrad’s death.”

Okay, so I wasn’t being entirely truthful. I’d actually been retained by Rachel to get Connie out of trouble with his bookie. But all things being relative, this truth was close enough to the real truth, and would serve for now.

Zitin flushed visibly. The doctor was about as smooth as a fourteen-year-old caught locked in a bathroom with last month’s Playboy. Jane narrowed her eyes and looked at me. I thought she was being somewhere between suspicious and sexy, then I realized the sun was coming over my shoulder and blinding her. I grinned on the inside, remembering what my father told me about his World War II flying days: always come at your enemy out of the sun.

“Private investigator,” she commented. “I thought I’d heard your name before. You were the detective who found Dr. Fletcher’s body.”

“Yeah, that’s more or less how it happened.”

“I should think you’d be more worried about the police investigating you,” she said coolly.

“Let’s just say I’ve had a talk or two with them.”

“I’ll bet. And what do you want from us?”

Zitin, I noticed, was nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. I’m no expert on body language, but I know anxiety when I see it.

“I’m trying to get a portrait of Dr. Fletcher’s relationships with his colleagues at the hospital, the med school. I understand that you and Dr. Fletcher didn’t necessarily get along that well. I just wondered if you’d be willing to tell me about it.”

Zitin pursed his lips, seemingly irritated now, as if he had somewhere he needed to be and I was keeping him from getting there. Which was probably true.

“Now’s not particularly convenient,” Jane said. “We both have commitments.”

“Can I drop by the hospital sometime?”

“We’re awfully busy there,” Zitin shot back.

“I won’t take up much of your time.”

“I don’t know-” he said.

Jane interrupted him. “I suppose if we don’t talk to you, then you’re going to be suspicious of us. Right?”

I smiled at her. “Probably.”

“Then I’ll make time to talk to you. Check in at the switchboard. They’ll page me. That all right with you, Albert?”

Zitin scowled, not wanting to have anything to do with this, but not wanting to buck her either. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

Jane Collingswood started to slide past the door Zitin held open for her. “There is one thing,” she said.

I turned back. “Yes?”

“Most of us came down here primarily to make sure he was really dead.”

“Jane!” Zitin said. He practically tripped over himself helping her into the car. Then he scrambled to the driver’s side. He peeled out of the parking lot, jerking into traffic without stopping. I stood there in the hot sun, grinning.