Page 115 of Whistle
“Glass of water would be nice,” he said.
June ran the tap until the water was cold, held a glass under it, and put it on the table in front of Harry, then poured two fingers of scotch into a tumbler. Harry had the sense it was not her first drink of the day.
“Carvers say there’s nothing they can do,” she said.
One of the two funeral homes in Lucknow. Carvers & Sons. Always had struck Harry as an unfortunate name for an undertaker.
“Closed casket,” she said. “There was nothing left of his face.”
She knocked back half the drink, her eye going back to the bottle on the counter. “His father’s not even coming, the son of a bitch. He’s over in Nigeria or Ghana or some other fucking place in Africa. He’s an engineer.”
“He’s away a lot?”
“Gone since January ninth, 1993, when he walked out that door and said he’d had enough, but you’d think the bastard would come back for the funeral of his own son.”
“Must be tough, dealing with all this yourself.”
“You think?”
“Tell me about Delbert.” Harry already had his own opinion of the man.
The woman’s eyes appeared to glaze over, as though trying to recall whom she’d just been asked about. “I know he had a run-in with you. He told me about that. You accusing him of hassling that man who runs the gas station. But he was a good boy. Always good to me. He’d have moved out a long time ago but didn’t want to leave me on my own like his son-of-a-bitch father did. Did you know he made me tea every morning?”
“I didn’t.”
“A boy who makes his mother tea in the morning has good in him, Chief.”
“You have any idea why Delbert did what he did?”
“What would makeanyonedo that?”
Harry had no answer.
“Did Delbert have friends?” he asked. “A girlfriend?”
“Not... really.”
“What’d he do in his off time? Interests? Hobbies?”
“I guess that car of his was the closest thing he had to a girlfriend. Always cleaning and polishing it. He watched a lot of movies. On his VCR downstairs.” She leaned in, lowered her voice to a whisper, even though there was no one else there. “He had a lot of, you know, sex tapes. He didn’t think I knew. So when he was down there, I didn’t disturb him, if you know what I mean.”
“Sure,” Harry said.
June downed the rest of her drink, pushed back her chair, and went for a refill. She was unsteady on her feet. “I need to sit down in the living room,” she said.
“Okay,” Harry said.
He led her out of the kitchen and settled her onto a sofa. She took a sip of her drink, set it on the coffee table, then rested the back of her head on the top of the cushion.
Harry said, “Would you mind if I looked around?”
Her eyes closed, she waved a hand and said, “Whatever.”
The basement seemed like a good place to start. There was a couch, a rowing machine, bookcases loaded with old sets of encyclopedias, a large TV, and the videocassette recorder June had mentioned. Atop the TV was a stack of VHS tapes. ThreeDie Hardmovies, some James Bond flicks, and a number of cassettes that had been used to tape programs. Labels taped to the side indicated, in marker, what shows had been recorded, includingBuffy the Vampire Slayer,The X Files, andBeverly Hills 90210. In a box tucked behind the set Harry found the porn stash.
No trains.
He came back upstairs, checked in on June, who was snoring, and went up to the second floor to find Delbert’s bedroom. There wasn’t much there Harry wouldn’t have expected to find. SomePenthousemagazines, a few paperback novels based onStar Trek, clothing, shoes, a stack of textbooks in the closet left over from high school days.
