Chapter Five:
It would be three days until Donna Winters funeral. Three long, tormenting days. It was a strange time. Alexandria and Gina were now full fledged occupants of my house and their was enough darkness surrounding me to blind a night goggled owl. I wasn’t taking Donna’s death well and I wasn’t even doing a modest job of hiding it.
Alexandria confronted me about why I was so weighted to the ground with mourning. And she confronted me more than once. In fact, it became a part of the daily routine, like making coffee, ignoring the neighbors, or cursing out a suicidal driver who almost killed you because he or she couldn’t wait a few seconds for the light to change
Alexandria just couldn’t figure out why I was taking the death so hard. She couldn’t understand the excesses of my grief. To her, Donna Winters was merely another on our client list. She knew I was acting as if Donna were merely a former client. I was acting as if----, as if----, as if this was deeply personal. My level of sorrow was too high and too intense to be a strictly professional loss. Hell, I was supposed to have met her a couple of times in my life. You don’t come apart at the hinges over someone you barely knew.
Alexandria probably pushed me harder on the subject if she hadn’t been distracted by a plague of personal problems herself. As for Gina Wilson, I don’t know what she made of my darkened mood concerning her sisters death. I wondering if she knew something about Donna and my real past relationship and was keeping it to herself. I also wondered if she’d already read at least some of Donna’s diaries.
Gina and I said little to each other over these three days. I didn’t like the way she kept looking at me with fiercely judgmental eyes. Twice during that three day span, I heard her creeping around upstairs while all of us were supposed to be sleeping. It was odd, unexplainable behavior for someone claiming to have a rigid, unbending sense of right and wrong. Gina wasn’t the only one exhibiting odd behavior. I was guilty of more than my fair share myself. I went to the funeral home that was handling Donna’s services. Well, that isn’t the strange part. The strange part was when I went to the funeral home. I went there when no one else was there. Excuse me, I should’ve said when no one else alive was there. I, you see, wanted a private viewing.
I used lock picks to get in. To a burglar, lock picks are essential tools of the trade.
For me, they weren’t an essential tool, but I owned them anyway. I’ve had them a long time. Even when I was a cop. I’ve never made breaking the law a matter of easily alibied convenience. Breaking into a funeral home shouldn’t have been one of those rare occasions, but at the time I made myself believe that there could be no more special occasion than this.
I wanted to see Donna one more time. Alone. Completely alone. I had to. I just had to. And how else was I going to accomplish it if I didn’t break in. I couldn’t have gone through the regular services with all those and all that chatter. Even I could’ve gone through it, how could I have explained my presence there? No, it was either see Donna this way or not see her at all. Not seeing her wasn’t an option.
Have I said before how much I hate funeral home directors. Stinking, filthy, goddamn rich. And for what? So the deceased can stretch out and relax in a luxurious, three thousand dollar bed. The most comfortable sleeping accommodations you’ll ever have and you have to die to get it.
Just how nonsensical is our culture anyway. Thousands of dollars just to say goodbye someone. Burial plots with a view. For who? It’s absurd. From beginning to middle to end. It’s another modern world racket that everyone accepts without question.
Nod and move along, nod and move along. That’s all you’re ever supposed to do. Questioning things is frowned upon. It’s a real career killer. I ought to know.
As for the cursed investigation, Alex and I were at each other about when to go to Sonny’s house to interview everyone. She wanted to wait until a day or two after the funeral. I wanted to be a real bastard about it and go the same day. Well, eventually Alex had her way and we waited.
We weren’t exactly sitting around doing nothing during those three days. We concentrated on information gathering. Donna’s family background to be precise. This type of work is always a trudge. (Going over old certificates, records, newspapers, etc. is a migraine inducing, back bending endeavor.) My personal emotional past with Donna made this work painful in other ways too.
Every piece of information we dug up made a case for Donna’s death being a suicide. A grandmother and an uncle had committed suicide. A couple of other relatives with serious psychiatric problems. Then, there was Donna herself. She had a case history with psychiatrists that had enough information to fill a book. She’d been treated and medicated for depression. She’d been treated and medicated for alcoholism.
Over the years, Donna had been a patient of several different psychiatrists. Seven to be exact. There were two that she’d been to more than the others. A Dr. Stanley Wyman and a Dr. Rebecca Allen. Both were reluctant to talk to us at first, but time and a little persuasion slowly brought them around. After all, there was no client to protect anymore, right? Donna was dead and the information we received would never be seen by anyone other than us. Once the doctors were convinced of our sincerity in the matter, they gave us the information we wanted.
Even though Donna had never actually attempted suicide, both doctors said she’d talked about it often. The case for suicide was mountainous by this point. The information all ran counter to my desires. I wanted the case to be a homicide. And I wanted that prick Sonny to be the guilty bastard who did it. Last of all, I wanted to be the person responsible for proving his guilt. But there was nothing to back my desires up. Not so far. And this only made my darkened mood even darker.
Alex had two officially inside contacts she could call on for help. One was a cop who worked in the records department. He wants to remain anonymous, so he will. The other is a close personal friend of Alex’s. Her name is Simone Eldritch and she works in city’s coroners’ office. The had met initially when Alex was a cop and they quickly struck up a friendship.
Even though Alex’s time as a cop didn’t last, the friendship did. Despite the fact that they don’t see each other half as much as they’d like to, they remain close personal friends. They talk often to find out how the other is doing and share a laugh or two. Alex called Simone and asked her for any private information on the death of Donna Winters. Simone called back within a day with some interesting news.
Not only had there been no autopsy done, there hadn’t even been a preliminary examination. Donna’ body had been taken directly from her car to the coroner’s office, but was never examined. Simone tried some subtle, gentle probing for pieces of information from Dr. Stephens, the head coroner. All she received in response to that was a curt reply to mind her own damn business.
Simone wanted to get a look at Donna’s body herself, but never had the means and opportunity to do so. Donna’s body remained at coroner’s office, covered and untouched, until 10 a.m. the next morning, where it was taken directly to the funeral home. Strings had been pulled. But by whom? And for what reason? The whom, without a doubt, would have the surname Winters attached to it. The why insinuated something other than suicide was the cause of death.
I wish Alex and I could’ve gotten some help from the local media in our investigation. But that was like wishing Dracula was going to be a donor for a drive at the Community Blood Bank. It just isn’t going to happen. The local media here in Wannabe suffers from the same disease as most of the national news media. Cranius insertia corpus anus.(Loose Translation: Heads Inserted in Corporate Ass). They would be no help to the investigation. The reason is obvious. They do no investigating. It’s all just another brand of entertainment now.
The day of Donna’s funeral arrived. I went. Why? Self-mortification is the only reason I can think. What other reason could there be? I wanted to punish myself some more. And in the process, I got more than I bargained for. The ceremony at the cemetery was a real show. I’ll never forget the impressive list of Wannabes’ who’s who. Businessmen, politicians, lawyers, police officials, etc. Then there was the orchestra, the fireworks, and the doves. What a show. What a show.
I stood far off in the distance and watched this three ring extravaganza. Somewhere between a rock and a hard place. Well, actually I stood behind a five foot high headstone and watched the service through a small pair of binoculars. I should’ve stayed home. I should’ve, but I didn’t. Alex and Gina didn’t go. Gina had gone to the Mass right before though.
I was having a hard getting a true read on Gina. Something in me believed she was working a separate, deeper agenda than the one she was playing out to Alex and I. Gina’s grief was real. There was no doubt about that at all. Alex and I both saw it close up from the morning she showed up at my house. But grief alone is no sign of innocence. Guilty people can have grief too.
I wanted to keep a close eye on Gina during the days following the funeral. The obvious person for the job was Alex. The two of them weren’t great friends or anything, but they did keep reasonable company together. That was more than I could say about Gina and I. We kept no company at all. Gina didn’t like me and she made no pretense about showing it. If she was going to tip anything off, it wouldn’t be with me around. It had to be Alex, drinking and all.
Now to the matter of the visit to the Winters’ waterfront house. The house was oversized and overpriced. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Showing off to the world. Look what I have and you’ll never have. The house was part of a five acre estate and was a stunning combination of classic ostentation and modern greed. It was big, bricked, two storied, and had more windows than any four houses on my block. The place was monstrously wide too with as much girth as I’ve ever seen on a single structure home.
The area the house was built on used to be a wilderness home for squirrels, raccoons, deer, and other forms of natural wildlife. Then along came a gang of moneymaker real estate developers and voila’ the wilderness and its inhabitants are gone.
Now you have structures here, structures there, structures everywhere. Public buildings, private buildings, condos, hotels, and homes. And on and on and on. Money spent by the few, for the few, and of the few. Beauty must have a price, you see, a price as high as an elephants’ eye. And the price is monetary of course. It just couldn’t be any other way.
We knew Sonny Winters was a have, but we didn’t realized how much of a have until we pulled into the long arcing driveway that led to the house. The gray shores of Wannabe Bay were within sight from the back of the house. The view, to put it mildly, was panoramic and must be seductively picturesque during those nights of warm, red summer sunsets.
There was no chance of a like that on the day Alex, Gina, and I were there. No, no, no. There was no chance of that. The day we were there, the air was cold and the sky was a beaten down black and blue. The whipping winds were bitter and cut through everything in its path. Including clothing, flesh, and bone.
As the three of us approached the house, my often wandering eyes picked up movement at a second story window. A curtain parted, enough for me to see an inquisitive head and nothing more. Then, a second curtain appeared and another inquisitive head appeared. Being in one of mu many strange moods, I stopped, looked up, and waved first to the head on the left, then to the head on the right. The head on the left waved back, the head on the right disappeared back behind the curtains.
Alex, Gina, and I were quite a sight standing there at the Winters’ front door. Me, with my sleep deficient eyes and ratty, unshaven face. Alex, with her chaotic, unwashed hair, dark sunglasses, and wearing my clothes. Gina, well, she was just being Gina. Large, intimidating, and heavily muscled.
I pounded the thick, solid gold door knocker five times in a slow, syncopated rhythm. A minute passed. Then two more. Finally, the door opened and a tall, rigid humorless man appeared in front of us. His skin was ashen gray, his eyes plain brown and even set. He was short, flaccid, and bald. He was younger than he looked, mid-fifties I’d say. He’d been at this job for a long time, by the look of him, too long. Whatever he’d been as a man before he worked here, this job had taken it out of him.
“Must you knock so hard, sir? he said. “The house is in mourning. There’s been a death in the family.”
“We need to speak with Mr. Winters,” I answered. “Urgent business.”
“Which Mr. Winters, sir?”
“There’s more than one?”
“There is William and there is George, father and son.”
“George, George is here.”
“Do you know him, sir?”
“No.”
“Then why did you act as if you did?”
“I was trying to be funny?”
“You failed,” Alexandria said. “Look, Mr. -----”
“Winslow,” the bald man replied.
“Mr. Winslow, we’re private detectives. We understand this is a bad time, but we need to come in and talk to Mr. Winters. We also need to talk to anyone else who’s here too, I guess.”
“May I ask what’s this in reference to?”
“The death of Donna Winters,” Gina said speaking for the first time in hours.
“Your names please,” Winslow said.
Alexandria answered for the three of us.
“Alexandria Montarros, Neal Caterski, and Gina Wilson.”
“Wait here.”
“Can’t we wait inside?,” I asked. “It’s colder than a virgin’s tit out here.”
“No sir,” Winslow answered, ignoring my colorful reference. “No one is allowed in the house until they receive permission to do so. You are going to have to wait here.” With that little piece of disappointing news, Winslow the bald butler went away.
As soon as he left, Alex and I started right in on each other.
“As cold as a virgin’s tit? When was the last time you had your hands on a virgin’s tit.?”
“It’s a saying. An old wintry expression.”
“The expression is ‘As cold as a witches’ tit’”
“Maybe the witch was a virgin. Did you ever think of that?”
“Why bring it up at all, for Christ’s sake. Every second you wasted talking is another second we have to stand outside.”
“Quit bitching Ms. Montarros. Where in the seven hells did that name come from?”
“Montarros is my family name.”
“You mean your maiden name?”
“No, my family name. I’m no maiden. Do I look like a maiden to you?”
“I want to know why y introduced yourself as Alexandria Montarros. Montarros hasn’t been your name since----.”
The front door opened and we were escorted inside by Winslow .
“Mr. Winters will see you in the library,” he said.
We were led straight back, then to the left down a long narrow hallway. The walls were bare except for lighting fixtures. Because each of the three fixtures contained a single low bulb, the hall couldn’t help but to create a strange ancient world atmosphere. As if Alex, Gina, and I were being led to a secret meeting with a rival king
The library was at the farthest end of the hall and you had to pass three other rooms before coming to it. The first of these three rooms was a game room. And in the game room were pool tables. Alex had a passion for pool and the sight of the tables through a partly open door and the temptation to go in was too strong for her to conquer it. She went in. Surprisingly, so did Gina. Why, I didn’t know. All I did know was when the time came to talk to Sonny Winters, I would be alone.
If Winslow was surprised that Alex and Gina had disappeared, it didn’t show on his face. Hell, nothing showed on his face. He just opened the door to the library, waited for me to go in, then closed the door and left.
The first thing to catch my attention were clouds of headache inducing smoke. Cigar smoke. My malfunctioning sense of smell prevented me from breathing in the foul odors emanating in the room. Still, the cigar still had the power to do nasty things to head and stomach. This time would be no different.
I hate cigars. Have I failed to make that clear to you? I hate them. To me, they look like tightly rolled turds. Even though I could no longer smell them, the memory of the smell was enough to bring a show of disgust to my face. As for Sonny Winters, he brought a show of disgust to my face too. I just didn’t let him see it.
Sonny is a man of average height and weight. He has no distinguishing facial features, no long, jagged scar, no small beady eyes, and no wide, hellborn smile. Nor did he have a pitchfork, pointy horns, or a tail. At the age of forty five, Sonny was by all physical accounts an extraordinarily ordinary looking man.
“Pull up a chair, pull up a chair,” he said with overdone cordiality. “It’s Caterski, right? Your name I mean.”
“Yeah, Caterski.”
My eyes did a slow, methodical scan of the library. The room was rectangular with ceiling to floor shelves of books occupying the eastern and western walls. The room’s only window and a marble encrusted fireplace took up most of the northern wall. The inner core of the room was stuffed with vases, two sculptures, an antique rocking chair, two moderate sized Persian rugs, four antique reading lamps(two of which were lit), a large heavy bodied mahogany desk, a matching chair, a specially crafted dark colored settee, and a matching coffee table.
“Is this room always laid out this way?, I asked. “Or did you do this just for me?”
“Just for you?,” he answered. “How could I have done this just for you? I didn’t even know you were coming.” Somehow, he didn’t sound convincing.
“Just joking Mr. Winters.“ I didn’t sound too convincing myself.
“Sit down Mr. Caterski and tell me why you’re here.”
“Didn’t your man Winslow tell you?”
“Yes, but I wanted to hear it from you. Make it as short as painless as possible.”
“Fine, but I’ll stand if you don’t mind. We’ll talk and I’ll scan through your wall to wall book collection.”
“A book man, huh?”
“A book whore, actually.”
“Whore? That’s a strange way of putting it.”
“Yes, it is. I hope you don’t object, but I have to record this conversation for professional purposes. My memory isn’t what it used to be and I can’t write fast without missing a lot of detail.
A long silence followed. I stood in close proximity of Winters and tried to casually eyeball him. His entire face was masked a thick cloud of protective cigar smoke.
“Run your recorder,” he said. “What’s the point? What is this all about?”
I put the recorder down on the desk, turned it on, then walked away to peruse some books.
“We’re here,” I said, “because we’ve been hired to pursue a case.”
“A case against who?”
“Not against someone, for someone.”
“For who, then?”
“I can’t tell you. Client, detective privilege. You do understand the concept of privilege, don’t you?”
“I’m familiar with it. Who’s this we you mentioned earlier? So far, all I’ve seen is you.”
“Alexandria, Gina, and me. Gina you know. She is your big, wide, very judgemental sister-in-law. Alexandria is my partner in a detective agency.”
“Is Gina the one who hired you?”
“Would I be so stupidly obvious as to bring her here if she was the one.”
“I don’t know you well enough to judge the level of your stupidity.”
Brushing my hands across a series of books, I stopped suddenly and removed one from the shelves. An old hardbound copy of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’(Not an autographed edition)
“This is an impressive library,” I said. “Do you read them or is it just for show?”
“Both.”
‘Odyssey’ went back on the shelf and I began scanning more books as I steadily moved west along the wall. A dozen or so steps later, I stopped again. Another book had caught my eye. I pulled it out and opened it somewhere near the beginning.
“Well,” Winters said, “are you going to start asking me questions about Donna’s death? Or are you just going to stand there reading---.”
“Crime and Punishment by----.”
“I know who wrote it.”
“It’s about this guy who----.”
“I know what it’s about.”
“Imagine my pulling this book out. It’s funny when you think about it. Funny in a dark, ironic sort of way.”
“Funny? My wife is dead. Do you consider that funny.?”
“No.”
There was a lot of emotion invoked into the air then. All of it by me. What had I done? With one word, one small simple everyday word, I’d given too much of myself away.
I knew Winters had heard in my voice too because he stood up and waved the wall of smoke away that separated us. When the smoke cleared, I saw him staring at me through the corners of his eyes. I saw fire and suspicion there. And something else I wasn’t quite sure of.
“I’m ready to start asking questions now,” I said in a notably questionable voice.
“Go ahead Caterski. The sooner you ask them, the sooner you’ll leave.”
“What kind of a relationship did you and your wife have?”
“Not a good one, I’m afraid.”
“Why?”
“A lot of reasons.”
“Name a few of them.”
“I expected things she couldn’t give; she expected things I couldn’t give.”
“What kind of things?”
“Big things, little things.”
“Such as?”
“She wanted---.”
“To be treated decently once in a while.”
“I wanted----.”
“A brainless toady slave.”
“You’re interrupting me.”
“Sorry. It wasn’t a good marriage; it wasn’t even a bad marriage. Why not just get a divorce and put an end to the misery?”
The question raised both his eyebrows and his ire. For a man who prided himself of being in control of his emotions, Sonny Winters suddenly found himself struggling against the urge to lose control and take a big, fat swing at me. His voice was tinged with the struggle that was going on inside of him.
“We don’t get divorces,” he said.
“We?,” I replied.
“The Winters family.”
“Oh, that we.“
“You’re smirking at me, aren’t you, you snide Polish fuck.”
“When you said ‘we’ a second ago, are you sure you didn’t mean you?”
“Check the record, detective.”
“We’ve already done some checking on you.”
This revelation didn’t surprise him at all. He didn’t cough, clear his throat, or make any movements in his chair. If he made any gestures, they were silent ones. I had wanted to lead this discussion and I had wanted to do so from beginning to end. I was supposed to take him where I wanted to go, not the other way around. It was he who was supposed to be off balance, to sidestep, and to retreat. He and he alone. It wasn’t going that way though. We were going to take turns leading, pushing the other into a direction he didn’t want to go. It was a matter of two stubborn wills and who’s will, in the end, would prevail. Or would either of them prevail?
“What is really about?,” Winters asked. .
“Death,” I answered solemnly.
“Really? I thought maybe you‘re fighting a class war here.”
“A rich man puts his foot to the poor man and it’s called free market enterprise. A poor man puts his foot to the rich man and it’s called class warfare.”
“You do have a way with words.”
Winters circled back around his desk and sat down. He slowly lit up another air clogging cigar and began puffing away until he was completely encased in smoke.
“Do you know what I have on my desk?, he said. “Short, but informative profiles of you and your partner.”
I put ‘Crime and Punishment’ back on the shelf and took my time walking over to the shelves on the opposite sides of the room. My head was swirling. Thoughts of Donna were attacking my brain. Pictures of here were assaulting my inner eye. The cigar smoke seemed to be following me, taunting me with its insidious presence. I could hear Donna’s voice in my head She was calling my name. My eyes closed, opened, then closed again. Slightly off balance, I staggered and bumped into something.
Donna’s whispers turn to screams. Screams of the dying. Begging, pleading, moaning for help. But there was none. She was alone. Her body trembled wildly, shaking in the midst of total abject fear. Barely on my feet, I reached for the shelves for support. Donna’s face, the gun, and her right hand. The hand clenches and the hammer starts back. Donna’s face again, the hammer moves to mid-stroke. The choice is still there to go either way. The hand could either preserve life or take it away.
Donna’s face for a third time. The gun hand shows one final show of force and strengthens its pull on the trigger. The hammer starts forward. Donna’s face for the final time. Bang! Now the scene takes a long withering fade to black. This wasn’t a psychic episode on my part. It was just a systematic, fictionalized reenactment. A reenactment of Donna’s irrational mindset and the haunting final moments of her life.
Death has done this sort of thing to me before, but not to this debilitating degree. What is in the mind when a foregone death is but seconds away? What trauma, what thoughts, what emotions triumph over all others? It scares me that I want to know these things. Yet, I seek them out anyway. Sometimes with a dark self-destructive brand of enthusiasm that can be described, at the very least, as troubling.
I came out of this episode leaning against the bookshelves with my full weight. Without the bookshelves, I feel as if I’d fall right to the floor. I leaned on them hard, not knowing when I’d be able to stand on my own again. Winters, for his part, knows something dark is at work within me, but he’s not sure what. But he knows I’m weaken and vulnerable.
“You’re twice divorced,” he said. “Your first wife hated you and played you for a fool. Your second wife abandoned you and took your only child with her. The child’s name is Shelley. She was so young at the time your wife took her away she probably has no memories of you. You’ve failed at every job you’ve had before you became a cop. Then you failed at being a cop. And now you’re failing at being a private detective“
A part of me just wanted to turn and get the hell out of there. Another part of me just wanted to kill Winters. In the end, I did neither. Hoping to bide myself a little time to
think, I moved down the east wall and around to the fireplace. The warmth of the fire against my face helped to clear my mind of its disorientation. But not enough. I needed something more. So, I went to the room’s only window and opened it.
I took in long, deep swallows of air. The cold rushes of air brushing my face was a welcomed relief. Like mild, therapeutic fingers that gently brought me back from the debilitating ill effects of the past few minutes. Retaliation came quickly.
“I expected more from you Winters,” I said. “But that has always been a problem of mine. I expect too much from everyone, including myself.”
“Caterski, what are you babbling about?”
“You know about us. Well, we know about you too. The real you. The private you. The you no one outside this house gets to see.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?”
The smoke had cleared from around Winters and his desk. For the first time since I’d arrived, he showed no interest in lighting up. His cigars and lighter were still within easy reach, but he made no moves to touch either one.
“The gun,” I said.
“What gun.?”
“The one your wife shot herself with.”
“What about it?”
“Where did she get it?”
‘Not from me.”
“Was it yours?”
“Didn’t I just say ’not from me’?”
“Pay attention. The second question was different from the first. The first refers to who gave her the gun. The second question refers to who owned the gun. Did the gun belong to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No. The police haven’t informed me who the gun belonged to.”
“They never asked?”
“No.”
“Did your wife ever own a gun?”
“I think you’ve seen too many Columbos, Caterski. You’ve pegged me as a murderer and now you’re going to dog me until I confess.”
“We don’t work that way. Once we leave here, you probably won’t see us again.
Unless, of course, something warrants us coming back here.”
Winters was ready for another cigar. He put one in his mouth and bit off the end. He bit off more than he should have, so he threw the cigar and brought another one to his lips. He then sat down in the chair, snuffed a small piece of the end, lit the cigar, and began puffing madly away As the air all around him filled up wi