A Place Beyond Greed (Part 5)
Worn down and defeated, the detective returns the missing item to Lottie's house and delivers a final goodbye.
Don’t get spoiled! Read Part 1 first!
I knocked on Lottie’s door the next morning. A cry came from the rear of the house, followed by a splash. Someone laughed. The scent of frying meat hung in the air. I knocked on her door a little harder. Under my arm was the gold statue, cradled in a neat box which was wrapped with a bow, all paid for with my own dollar. I even polished the surface. Even though it was evidence of burglary, after my meddling, it was inadmissible in court. If it belonged to anyone, it was Lottie. I knocked once more. The door opened after a second and Lottie, smiling, told someone over her shoulder that she’d be just a minute. Her smile disappeared when she saw me blocking her sunlight.
“You didn’t call,” she said.
“I’m not here on official business.” I handed her the box. “Eddie confessed. I won’t be bothering you anymore.”
“I see. What’s this?”
“Something that didn’t belong to me.”
Lottie sighed and undid the bow. She took off the lid, then turned an inexplicable stare on me. “Where did you get this?”
“I picked it up at the store.”
Her eyes blackened, then they ran away and hid. “Alright,” she said. “Thank you.”
I half-nodded and almost turned, but curiosity kept me on the stoop. She was gripping the box in her hands awfully tight. I decided to stay for a little longer.
“Can I ask you something?” I said. “How come you didn’t call the police after Eddie threatened you?”
“When he…?—oh! Well, I was frightened. You don’t know what a man like that can do. He may have cartel connections. I thought it best to just do what he told me.”
“Eddie’s a tough customer,” I said.
“He is,” she said agreeably. “He really is.”
Silence passed. I started to realize that something wasn’t right. Lottie was uncomfortable beyond what I considered normal. She was eager for me to leave. I had a feeling like a threaded deck of cards, bent to the point of making the bridge curve like a rainbow. One more push and the cards would fly free and scatter across the floor. But handle them just right and they’d all riffle together. Someone laughed in Lottie’s backyard; I took it a little personally.
“I don’t think he deserved it,” I said.
“Eddie?” Lottie said. “He confessed, didn’t he?”
“He did and I believe him. It just seemed wrong. He wasn’t like the usual guilty parties I know. It was like he was sorry about the whole thing.”
“Sorry? The man killed my father. I for one am glad he’s where he deserves to be.”
And just like that, the cards riffled together—two Aces stacked on the bottom and off-pair junk mangled together on top. One look at Lottie to collect my thoughts. I wished for a stick of gum.
“Eddie is tough, alright,” I said. “But I know he didn’t threaten you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I just said. He didn’t threaten you. He didn’t even visit you. Everything I said before was all wrong.” My breathing was getting hard to control. Trouble was brewing behind my teeth. He did it, alright. But he wasn’t half the criminal standing in front of me. “You’re a real piece of work,” I growled.
“Excuse me?” Lottie said, half in fear, and half in confrontation.
“You know what Frank said on his 911 call? He said, ‘I think someone is here to kill me. I can’t tell what they’re saying.’ Not they, like an unknown person, but they, as in two persons. Two people were in the house that night.”
I turned around as the epiphany hit me, then I whirled back and said, “You know, I grilled him hard enough to leave burn marks. He took it without a peep. He didn’t even whine. Oh, you did such a damn good job. You must have offered him enough to set his family up for life. Why else would he stay quiet even when I had him by the guts? But the money you offered him to knock off your old man wasn’t enough. Eddie wanted assurance. He agreed to kill Frank on the condition you’d get a little skin in the game yourself. You staged the burglary. It was smart to trick Eddie into opening the safe himself. But you realized you were loaded with evidence with no way to shake it off. Then suddenly here comes a detective with a nose that’s just a little too big for his face. You realize you can still get out with everything. You don’t have to pay Eddie and you don’t have to take the fall for him, so long as he believes you’ll give his family what he earned. So you pawn that sorry detective off on your scapegoat to buy yourself some time. You call in a guy who agrees to plant the money and the jewelry in Eddie’s garden for a small fee. But why not plant the statue? Why not that too?”
Lottie’s face was as empty as the winter sky, but there were no brakes on my train. The tracks were greased and the conductor had snapped off the throttle and chucked it into the engine.
“Because Frank loved that statue to death,” I said. “And Frank just wouldn’t give up and die. Here you are in your seventies browsing pamphlets for the memorial gardens, but it’s not just for him anymore. It’s for you, too. It’s for your husband. And Frank just won’t die! He keeps on living. He even gets an award for it. How is that fair? After all, you’ve worked hard all your life. Why should you get shafted right at the end? So you took it all for yourself. But it wasn’t enough to steal his house and his money. You wanted that trophy so you could know personally it was gone. So you could have one final laugh of triumph. This is for you, dad, for making me wait all this time to get what I deserve. And you just couldn’t wait because in ten years, he might still be kicking, and you might not. Now Eddie is behind bars and you’re out here flipping burgers without a care in the world.”
Lottie absorbed all my venom in total silence. She breathed in. “Do you have any evidence for all that crock?” she said.
“I’ve got suspicion.”
“In this country, that’s not evidence of a crime. You’ve told me Eddie shot my father and I believe you.” Lottie tossed the box and the statue somewhere behind her. “Now, you’ve said a lot of brazen and uncomfortable things to me. In light of the circumstances, I won’t be pressing charges.”
“Press ‘em,” I said. “Make my day.”
“No,” she said. Her face tried to look annoyed, but she was reveling in it. She loved watching me writhe like a snake under a boot. “I’ve suffered enough for one week. I’m going to close the door in a moment and not open it for you ever again. My father is dead. You’re going to let me mourn his passing in peace.”
Just then, someone cried out and a splash echoed over the fence. I nodded in that direction. “Interesting way to mourn, throwing a barbecue.”
“A celebration of life is still mourning.”
“Eddie has six kids. They’ve all lost a father because of you.”
“I didn’t shoot him. You said so yourself.”
“You took advantage of Eddie,” I protested, desperate for her to see reason. “You knew he needed help and you knew killing Frank would get you that damn house and all the money that came with it, because that’s what it’s always about: money. Don’t you have enough? You have this big house, this nice life. Instead you murder your father, and a desperate, hard-working man goes to jail to cover for you because as long as he thinks you’ll give even a penny to his family, he’ll keep quiet. You could set up a trust fund for his kids or a scholarship or something, but you won’t. You’ll keep it all for yourself.”
“Well,” Lottie said, “it is my money, after all. Goodbye, detective.”
She closed the door and set the deadbolt. It took all my strength not to put my fist through the wood.
I went to holding, but Eddie refused to see me. His lawyer arrived after an hour of me trying to shove my way past the guards, and they bounced me to the street. In my vision swam light from sunrooms and little peace lilies sprayed with blood. I saw an old man sitting in his chair watching his daughter tell his caretaker to take the shot. The old man didn’t plead. It wouldn’t do him any good. He was watching from a place beyond greed, a place he could look out from forever and watch the sun rise every morning, just him and that easychair, unafraid and content.
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