Free Dearly Departed by David Housewright Page B

or in any area where the suspect had access, the CA will go for a murder indictment even if he can’t establish corpus delicti. If not, I don’t know. Without Alison’s body, without corroborative physical evidence, he’ll have a helluva time proving that a homicide was even committed. The defense could argue that Alison decided to become a blackjack dealer in Vegas—”
    Or take a trip to Bermuda , my inner voice whispered so softly that I barely heard it.
    “—and you know juries; they like to see a dead body in a murder case.”
    “Still, if he pushes it, Brown might cop a plea, go for manslaughter,” I suggested.
    “Depends on her attorney.”
    “Or Fleck might open up.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Let me know?”
    Anne sighed deeply. “How ’bout I buy you lunch tomorrow. W. A. Frost.”
    “Annie, my gosh.”
    “Yeah, well, you did a nice job.”
    “Thanks, Annie. But like you said, she spent the past seven months teetering on the edge, waiting for someone to shove her over.”
    “Probably, but you’re the one who nudged her, not us. Make it eleven-thirty?”
    “See you then.”
    I turned off the phone, collapsed the antenna, and set it on the coffee table. Cynthia was watching me from a wing chair, smiling.
    “All right, I’m waiting,” she said.
    “Waiting?”
    “For the self-congratulations.”
    “Cynthia, you wound me.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    I locked my fingers behind my head and leaned back. She continued to watch me, continued to smile.
    “The other day you asked why men enjoy sports,” I reminded her. “It’s for the same reason I enjoyed being a cop, the same reason I like being a private investigator now. Yeah, there’s plenty of greed and fraud and ignorance and stupidity and corruption, and sometimes you wonder why you’re wasting your time. But if you stay with it, occasionally you’ll be rewarded with moments of pure joy, like when Kirby Puckett hit a home run to win the sixth game of the 1991 World Series or when Black Jack Morris pitched a ten-inning shutout to win game seven—”
    “Or when Holland Taylor solved a seven-month-old murder before lunch,” she added.
    I grinned. “God, I’m good.”

nine
     
    I was late to my office the next morning. It was such a beautiful day, I stopped at the University of Minnesota driving range on Larpenteur to hit a bucket of golf balls. It took me over an hour. I would have finished sooner except that I took time to admire the female golfer who was hitting seven irons from the tee next to mine. Absolutely gorgeous form. Her swing wasn’t bad, either. Unfortunately, my ogling came with a price that I was forced to pay when I called my answering service.
    “It is un-ac-cept-able ,” the operator told me, sounding a bit like Anne Scalasi in a bad mood. “We will not tolerate that kind of behavior from our clients. If there are any further incidents, we will terminate our relationship.”
    Gulp.
    I tried to explain to the woman that it wasn’t I who had called four times between eight and nine A.M., making angry references to various parts of the operator’s anatomy when I wasn’t there to answer the phone. However, she didn’t see it that way, and I was forced to promise that I would “speak” with Mr. Truman. Either that or dig my old answering machine out of the closet.
    But first I fortified myself with a cup of Blue Mountain Jamaican coffee—I grind my own beans—and sorted through my mail. Except for a large brown envelope from Publishers Clearing House, nothing excited me. I turned my attention to my newspapers. I get both the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune . Most people read newspapers starting with the front page and work in. I always start with the agate type listing the transactions in the sports section and work out. No particular reason; it’s just how I do things. I noticed immediately that the Oakland As had brought up a middle-relief pitcher just in time for their series with the Minnesota