I turned the conversation to Violeta Bell. “So, what did you think when all that icky stuff came out about Violeta’s sex change? You didn’t say anything about it that day at lunch.”
He licked the sauce off his fingers. Tucked his arm inside mine. “What’s there to say?”
“You weren’t surprised?”
“Everybody was.”
I was making him nervous. I kept going. “I figured a man might pick up on something like that. Quicker than a woman would, I mean.”
“You think so?”
And going. “Was she, you know, feminine?”
“Yes. Sure.”
And going. “Sexy?”
“She was no Maddy Sprowls.”
And going. “Be serious. Was she the kind of woman that men, well, respond to?”
He found an opportunity to laugh. “She was of a certain age, you know.”
“I’d be offended if I didn’t know how you men are.”
He playfully removed his arm from mine. Folded both arms across his chest. “Now I’m offended.”
“Men like younger women. It’s nature.”
Back went his arm. “Men like women, period.”
“That’s better.”
Ike and I stayed at the party until nine. Until the mosquitoes started biting and the bats from the woods starting buzzing the dessert table. When we got to my house, we took James for a late night walk. I held the leash. Ike held me. At one in the morning I slipped out of bed and went to the basement. For years now the paper has been computerizing the morgue’s files. Little by little all those wonderful old clippings are being thrown out. I lug them to my car and bring them home. The wonderful old filing cabinets, too. I’ve set up my personal morgue right there in my basement. One hundred and thirty years of Hannawa history.
I went to the M cabinets. I looked up MCPHEE, P. There was a nice fat envelope of clippings on him. I sat down at the folding table by my washer and dryer. I clicked on my gooseneck lamp and read.
I found one item from 1951. It was a story on six local National Guardsmen getting married en masse at City Hall before they shipped out to Korea. Phil McPhee, age twenty-three, was one of them. Accompanying the story was a smudgy old photo showing Phil and his new bride saying their I-dos. Read the caption:
“I TAKE THEE to be my lawfully wedded wife,” says Pvt. Philip McPhee to high school sweetheart Lois Palansky. The McPhees were one of six happy Hannawa couples married Tuesday at City Hall by Mayor Dutch Schneider.
Another story was from 1959. It was from the business section. Phil McPhee, with the help of a government loan, was opening a new exterminating business in the blighted German Hill neighborhood east of downtown. The accompanying photo showed Phil and the city’s new mayor cutting the ribbon with a big pair of cardboard scissors. Read that caption:
BUGS BETTER BEWARE: Mayor Merle D. Blackburn helps local exterminator Phil McPhee open his new headquarters on East Apple Street. McPhee’s wife, Elaine, proudly looks on.
I stuffed everything back in the envelope. I clicked off the lamp and sat in the dark. “Two previous wives,” I yawned. “Why am I not surprised?”
21
Monday, August 28
I took my mug to the cafeteria. I gave it a good washing in the sink, something I do every Monday morning. My goals for the day were modest. Mark up the weekend papers. Stop itching the mosquito bites on my ankles. Have Eric find Phil McPhee’s first two wives.
Phil McPhee was clearly a ladies’ man. He was more than likely a life-long philanderer. Just possibly he was the mystery man Detective Grant was looking for, the one who went bonkers and killed Violeta Bell when he discovered she’d once been a he.
While the water for my tea was coming to a boil, I read the crap stapled on the employee bulletin board. I was yawning like the MGM lion. Saturday and Sunday had both been sleep-over nights for Ike. So I was exhausted- from staying awake so he couldn’t catch me snoring.
There was a letter on the board from Reporters’ Guild President Will Canterbury on the upcoming contract talks with management. Given the paper’s falling circulation and advertising revenues, those talks were going to be brutal. There was also a cute little poster with dancing hotdogs, inviting “friend and foe alike” to Dee Dee Killbuck’s annual Labor Day patio party. An equally brutal prospect.
I made my tea and headed back to the morgue. Every few steps I stopped, closed my sleepy eyes and took a nourishing sip. I hear that Eric does a hilarious imitation of me doing that, by the way, although I’ve never seen it myself. Anyway, I was half way across the sports department when I opened my eyes and over the steaming rim of my mug saw Prince Anton Clopotar standing in front of my desk with a long white box cradled in his arms.
I gasped. Spilled tea all over the front of my beloved Tweetie Bird tee shirt. The prince saw me, too. He hurried toward me. I retreated. My first thought was to take refuge in the ladies’ room. Which would have been stupid. The man comes all the way from Wolfe Island to kill me and the social impropriety of going into a woman’s toilet was going to stop him? Instead I trotted back to the cafeteria, where the only escape would be to dive through a fourth-story window.
“Mrs. Sprowls, please!” the prince called out. “I want to see you!”
The cafeteria was empty. I backed against the counter where I’d just made my tea. I reached into the utensil drawer and felt for a weapon.
The prince stuck his head through the open doorway. “Making me tea, are you?”
“I figured you’d want some.”
He came in, smiling like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. He was wearing his blazer with the emblem on the pocket. His polka dot bowtie. A pair of beautiful gray slacks with a razorsharp crease. Goofy tan-and-white saddle shoes. I wrapped my shaking fingers around a plastic butter knife. It was either that or a packet of McDonald’s catsup.
He held out the box. “Friends?”
I let go of the fork. Took the box. “Not a dead fish, is it?”
“Roses, actually.”
I removed the lid. It was roses. Yellow roses. A dozen of them.
“Friends,” he said again.
I took the roses from the box. I was no longer afraid of being murdered. That crazy notion was gone. Replaced with embarrassment. “If I smell them will my nose explode?”
“I hope not,” said the prince. “I’ve grown quite fond of that meddling proboscis of yours.”
I smelled the flowers. I put them back in the box and put the box on the counter. I refilled the kettle to make him some tea. “Darjeeling?”
“Is there any other kind?” He sat at one of the empty tables. He leaned on his forearms while I washed out a mug for him. “Why would you ever think I meant you harm?”
“My letter! Stealing your spoon and your pipe! Involving you in a murder!”
He smiled at me. Not like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Like Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy. “You found my brother for me. Or should I say my sister?”
“Does that matter to you? Petru having that operation, I mean?”
He frowned and rubbed his knuckles. “It is a hard thing to understand. But if it made him happier than he was, well, who can quibble with that?”
I poured the boiling water over the teabag in the mug I’d chosen for him. A big yellow one. I took it to him. Went back to the counter for the sugar and Coffeemate. “So you really thought he’d drowned himself in the river?” I asked.
