Reading
Charlie and I gave our statements to Detective Stone and a stenographer. Walt stayed home to finish closing up the apartment ahead of our week in Reading. When we told everything we had to tell, I asked Charlie to wait in the lobby while I had a word with Stone. He left without hesitation.
Once he and the stenographer were gone, I asked my questions. “Is there an active investigation on this case?”
“Not really. It’s labeled a suicide pending the results of the autopsy. Neither me nor Beyer has any reason to think there was foul play. Once the autopsy confirms, we’ll close the case. Why do you ask?”
“I’m a licensed private investigator. I haven’t been active for years, but I kept my license up. Charlie wants to know why she killed herself. I agreed to try to find out. Will I be stepping on your toes if I go up to Scranton and ask around?”
He took a filter cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket and lit up with a paper match from a plain white book. “I can’t give or deny permission for you to do anything as long as you remain within the limits of the law. Your actions, especially those which take place outside of the jurisdiction of this department, are not under the purview of this office. I can tell you this case is technically open, but I anticipate its closure any day. Autopsies are running two-or-three days tops. We’ll likely get the report tomorrow or the next day. If you leave your telephone number, I’ll call when the case is closed.”
I wrote the number to the Reading house on a nearby scratch pad and slid it towards him. “Has the family been notified?”
“The mother has. She’s a widow; that’s what she says anyway. I telephoned myself. It was about two in the afternoon and she was hammered drunk.” He tore the number I’d written from the scratch pad. “Either that or she has a severe speech impediment.”
“How’d she take the news?”
He shook his head. “She barely reacted at all. She pulled the tab from a beer can while we were talking.”
“Is she going to claim the body?”
He shook his head again. “She says she’s been out of work and doesn’t have the cash to bury her daughter. We’re sending a form for her to release the body for the city to bury.”
I heaved a breath and blew it at the ceiling. I couldn’t believe the callousness. I hadn’t liked Judy very much, but I knew her and that meant I had to do something. I took the scratch pad and wrote my home number down. Stone already had it in his file, but I wanted him to have a separate copy to make it easy to find. “I knew the girl; not well, but well enough to be upset about what happened. When you get the form from her mother, call me. I’ll see that she gets buried with dignity.”
He folded the number carefully away and stood from the table to offer his hand. I rose to accept. “We see so much ugliness in this job, Mister Edwards. I guess you remember that from your time on the force. Every once in a while, we get to see some kindness. Thanks for being kind.” He held up the number to the Reading house. “You say I can reach you here for about a week, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll ring you as soon as the autopsy comes back. I hope you can find out what happened. It won’t change anything, but stuff like this gets a little easier to deal with when someone gives a damn.”
I thanked him and promised to keep in touch with whatever I uncovered. None of it would be official, but he wanted to know for his own piece of mind. I had one more question before I left. “What’s the mother’s name?”
“Agnes Diamond.” He dropped his cigarette in the tray and snatched up the file from the table to flip through it. “I can’t tell you that her address is 616 Lentz Place in Scranton.” I wrote the address on the scratch pad. He said he couldn’t spell the street name for me, then said it was L-E-N-T-Z. Once I folded the paper away, he said a little more. “I also can’t tell you that I did a little checking to satisfy my own curiosity. The widow has a record; mostly drunk and disorderly and a little petty larceny. She’s also thirty-five years old.”
“Thirty-five! Judy was what, eighteen?”
“Nineteen, three months ago.”
I did some math on my fingers. “Mama was only sixteen, huh? That explains a few things. Thanks for the information you didn’t give me.”
He nodded and wished me luck as I took my overcoat from the back of the chair. I slipped it on and went to the lobby to catch up with Charlie.
We went out to the parking lot, and I offered him the keys to the station wagon. He was excited at the opportunity to drive the car, but apprehensive about driving in the city. I encouraged him to try. “You can’t do any worse than me. I never liked to drive. Now that I’m slowing down, I do it as little of it as possible.”
“It’s a new car. What if I fuck it up?”
I shrugged. “We’ll tell Walt I was driving.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You can’t fuck up but so bad. We won’t be going very fast. It’s impossible to speed in the city. If you want, you can drive us up to Reading. You seem to like the car. The drive up there will put us on the freeway. You can ‘open her up’ or whatever the hell car guys say.”
He took the keys and unlocked the passenger side for me to get in. He ran around the car and jumped in the driver’s seat. He started the engine and explained his excitement as he let it warm up. “1970 Ford LTD Country Squire station wagon with a 429 cubic inch V-8 and a four-barrel carb. This is the same engine they put in the Mach I Mustangs. Even in the station wagon, it’s got 345 horsepower and 500 foot-pounds of torque.”
I set the heater on high and shook my head at his gibberish. “Doesn’t mean a thing to me. All I know is it gets lousy gas mileage and we’ve got to run premium. I wanted a Maverick, or maybe that mid-size thing. I think they said it was a Torino. Walt wanted the biggest and the best, so we’re stuck with this monstrosity.”
He ran his hand reverently around the woodgrain steering wheel. “I’d like to be stuck with it, even if it is a wagon.”
“I didn’t know you were a car guy.”
“I don’t get much of a chance to be one. The stuff around the farm is all boring. Most of the cars and trucks have straight sixes and little one-barrel carbs. They’re fine for doing the work, but they don’t make your heart race. Engines like this…” He blipped the throttle to make the engine bark. “Did you feel that? The torque made the whole car rock. This thing could pull a house right off its foundation and drag it down the street.”
I waved for him to get going. “Enjoy it.”
* * * *
Walt was dubious about letting Charlie drive us to Reading, but he gave in when I pressed him. He even let me sit up front in deference to my arthritic knees. Charlie was nervous on his way through the city but started to relax when we got near the freeway.
I remembered the little speech he gave about how much horsepower and other stuff the car had. As we were coming down the ramp onto the Schuylkill Expressway, I baited him. “Hit it. Let’s see what this fancy new car can do.”
Walt tried to voice an objection from the back seat, but it was too late. Charlie smashed the gas pedal into the floorboard and held it. The engine roared and the front of the car lifted as it lunged forward. My head was shoved back against the headrest as we flew down the on-ramp onto the main road. Charlie accelerated to the speed limit and backed out of the gas. The road wasn’t busy, so I challenged him again. “Don’t be a pussy! Let’s go!”
He opened the throttle a second time. The car downshifted and lunged forward again. Walt complained. “It’s a new car! What about the break in period?”
I was having fun and Charlie had the first smile on his face since the previous morning. “Fuck the break in!” I urged Charlie on. “See if she’ll do a hundred.”
He passed a slowpoke on the right and nodded. “She’ll do a hundred all right!”
He stayed on the gas and let the engine scream. The automatic transmission shifted up, and the car leapt forward again. It built speed quickly for as big as it was. I watched the speed needle. It rose to a hundred miles an hour and kept going! Charlie didn’t back out of the gas until it reached the top of the range, which was one hundred and twenty. By then, he was dodging around other cars and passing like they were standing still.
He let the car coast down to regular highway speed and remained in the fast lane to make time. The smile stayed plastered across his face. He patted the steering wheel gratefully like the car had done him a service. “GOD, this thing is fun! I’d love to have this engine in a Mustang. Those things probably weigh half of what this does. You can get a four speed in a Mustang; no slushy automatic to waste horsepower. Yes, sir! Did you feel the torque? She wracked the whole frame. The front fender popped up like a groundhog in a field. What a machine!”
I left him alone for a second to check on Walt. He frowned like the quick burst of speed had taken years of life away from his beloved station wagon. I got his attention, pointed at Charlie and pointed to a big smile on my face. I was trying to show that our young friend was enjoying himself. Walt rolled his eyes, then thought better of his sulking and nodded in agreement.
Charlie checked the rearview to speak to Walt. “I’m sorry about the car. I know it’s new, but I don’t think we did any harm. These modern engines really don’t need much break in like the old ones did.”
Walt set his upset aside. “Never mind all that. It’s fine. I’m glad you had fun. Besides, I followed the dealer’s instructions to the letter on our last car, and we only got six years out of it.”
I grumbled about the shyster dealer. “I think that was a scam. We kept that car immaculate and it barely had fifty thousand miles on it. Just because it wasn’t shifting the way it was supposed to, they talked us into a new car. I don’t know why we couldn’t get a standard shift. Our old Mercury never had transmission problems.”
Walt tried to reason with me. “This is a luxury car. You wouldn’t get a standard shift in a luxury car. This is the pinnacle of modern technology.”
“Oh, yeah? They said the same thing about the last one and it only lasted six years. We got seven out of the Mercury and eight from our Ranch Wagon. For the money we spent on this thing, I want to be buried in it.”
He smiled at my complaining. “Don’t be so stingy. What else do we have to spend our money on? I like this car. I wanted a new one, so we bought it. We’re making good money on the restaurant and everything we own is paid for. It’s not like we can take it with us.”
I blew out a sigh. “Fair enough, Love. Besides, Charlie likes it and I’ve never felt anything accelerate like this. I can’t believe we were doing a hundred and twenty miles an hour.”
Walt gasped. “One-twenty!”
Charlie confirmed. “Every bit of it. She was still pulling hard too. I bet she’ll do one-thirty at least!”
Walt sank back in the seat. “Let’s not find out.”
I laughed. “But it’s the pinnacle of modern technology!”
He glared at me. “Ha ha.”
* * * *
We got to the Reading house and opened it up. Charlie built a big fire to bake the chill out of the ancient stonework. Walt and I unpacked in the master bedroom and Charlie moved into Walt’s childhood bedroom. We had an early lunch of sandwiches that Walt packed from home, then he went to the market to shop for dinner. I took Charlie for a walk to meet the man he was named after.
We crossed the churchyard and picked our careful way among the ancient stones until we got to the top of the little rise where the oak tree grew. We stood to the side as not to stand directly on top of my old friend. Charlie read the headstone. “’Charlie Drake, born 1906, died 1947; aged forty-one years.’ That’s funny.” He shook his head. “I don’t mean it’s funny. I’ve never seen a headstone that didn’t use someone’s proper first name.”
“I picked it. No one ever called him Charles. I knew him as Charlie, so that’s what I had put on the stone.”
“He wasn’t that old. What happened?”
“He drank himself to death. I don’t know why. I suppose he was sad, but I don’t know what demons haunted his days or disturbed his nights. I never asked. I had my own demons at the time and didn’t have the capacity to care about his. I berated myself for years for not doing something to help him, but I could barely help myself back then. Walt had to lift me out of my self-destructive misery. I was too late to save his life, but I did what I could for him after he died.
“I don’t look forward to the end of my life, but I hope I’ll get to see him again in the great beyond. He was a wonderful man and it’s a sin the way he lived at the end. It’s a sin that he died alone and sad with no one around to give a damn.”
Charlie cleared his throat. “He was like Judy.”
I agreed. “I guess he was. His suicide took longer, but he killed himself just like she did.”
He looked at his hands. “I wish I had a fuckin’ cigarette.”
“No, you don’t.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I guess I don’t.”
I pointed to the ground next to Charlie’s grave. “Walt and I will rest there. We already made all the arrangements.” I gestured to an open spot on the other side. “What would you think if we laid Judy there?”
He was shocked by my question. “What are you talking about? Why would you have any say?”
I explained as gently as I could. “Detective Stone said that Judy’s mother can’t afford to bury her. She’s going to sign away her rights to the body. I won’t let her go to the potter’s field the city owns. Like Walt said in the car, ‘what else do I have to spend my money on?’ We’ll have a funeral with a mass, and we’ll set out a simple monument. We’ll see she gets buried with dignity.”
He shook his head in silent horror. “But how will her mother visit? Doesn’t she live in Scranton? If she’s poor, it’ll be hard for her to travel.”
I told the full truth as I knew it. “She doesn’t care. She was drunk in the middle of the afternoon when Stone called to give her the news. She opened a beer during the phone call. Stone says she was only sixteen when she had Judy. Likely someone got her in trouble and left her flat. That’s not a recipe for a loving mother / daughter relationship.
“It’s better if we look after her now. She needs someone to do it and I’m in a position to help. We’ll lay her to rest right here. Walt and I will visit and there’s an active church community. The congregation will pray for her soul. Plus, it’s pretty here. When the weather is nice, the oak tree shades the graves and the view is excellent. She’ll like it.”
He sniffed and tried not to cry. “It’s like you said, isn’t it? You said the situation she left was no better than the one she was in. You said that. How did you know?”
I lifted my shoulders in a helpless shrug. “I’ve seen a lot of human misery. I struggled a lot myself. These things follow a pattern. People tend to react in predictable ways to poverty, addiction, and misery. I don’t know exactly what Judy’s home life was like. We’ll pay a visit and find out. People get drunk in the afternoon sometimes. Tragedy tends to come in threes. Maybe the mother was at another funeral or something and was drinking the hurt away.”
He sniffed again and scowled. “You don’t believe that, do you? You already know what we’ll find, don’t you?”
“I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure. I could be wrong. I hope I am. If there’s a loving home in Scranton and a pretty churchyard nearby, I’ll have her laid to rest in it. If not, I want your permission to bury her here.”
He sniffed again and a few tears slid down his face. He looked down the hill. “It is pretty. She liked pretty things. She said the city was too grey. Have her buried here. I’ll pay for it.”
“I’ll pay for it, Charlie. I know you want to help and I appreciate it. I’m sure she does too. Let’s do our investigation, but once we have our answers, go with me to pick out the casket and headstone. That’ll be a way you can help. We’ll get her a nice new dress as well. You’re a young man starting out. You need your money. Me and Walt have more than we need.”
He tried to insist. “I can do it. Dad’s paying me real money now. He made me a partner with Eddie and Mitch. We’re a team. I get a salary and a bonus based on the harvest.”
“I’d rather you didn’t fight me on this. You’re doing well right this second, but you’ve got so much life ahead of you. Walt and me are old men with plenty of money to see us to the end. Let us do this.”
He reluctantly agreed. “Alright, thanks.”
I slapped my arms around my body and shivered. “You ready to go? I’m freezing.”
“Just a minute.” He knelt on the cold ground and put his left hand on Charlie’s headstone. He crossed himself and said a silent prayer. He crossed himself again and stood up. “I’m ready now.”
“Thanks for doing that, for praying for Charlie. He would’ve liked you. I think you would’ve liked him. He’d be proud to have a fine man like you named after him.”
He looked like he didn’t know what to say about my compliments, so he didn’t say anything. We went back to the house in silence.
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