SUDDEN LIFE
Part 1
© W. Kirchmeir 2025
The sticky hot summer morning was turning into a sticky hot summer noon. I’d opened my office window in a failed attempt to catch a cooling breeze. Work in this kind of weather makes me cranky, but bills had to be paid and statements sent out, so I repeated a Zen mantra under my breath to calm myself.
I’d just finished a nice little missing jewels job for one of the idle rich. A feckless wife had hocked a few G’s worth of loving gifts from a doting husband. The husband hadn’t been so doting when I tracked down the pawned gewgaws and he’d had to pay for them again.
The wife must have managed to kiss and make up, for he’d left a message with my answering service to send him the bill, $50 a day plus expenses. I decided that the day he came to me with his domestic problems counted as day one, so that made for three days total work, plus about $20 in cab fares. Enough income to pay the office rent for the month and buy some week-end sustenance at the supermarkette around the corner from my walk-up apartment. A couple of minor jobs were good for about $80 each.
Summer in the city, some people like it, some don’t. I’m willing to be persuaded either way. The park across from my office offers shade any time of day. It’s a good place to sit and think. Watching the kids tossing forbidden bread crumbs to the ducks in the pond has a calming effect. Maybe it’s the stray thought that the kids are getting away breaking some rules. Maybe it’s their glee when the ducks shlurp up the crumbs. The parking lot where I store my car during the day does a good job of producing a four-wheeled broiler in the afternoon. Maybe the shade balances the broiling, maybe it doesn’t. You can see that in small matters like these, calculation is difficult.
I needed some more work, and soon. My expenses were rapidly closing in on the reserve fund despite the recent trickle of income. I’m a frugal guy, not given to more than one or two extravagances a week, and those the kind that provide sustenance for body or soul, preferably both, such as looking at pictures at the art gallery before enjoying pan-fried brook trout and new potatoes garnished with little peas, and accompanied by a tossed salad and a crisp white wine. If one of my friends accompanies me, we might share a peach or mango sherbet. I’m not fussy.
I was just tucking the last of the statements into a blue-lined envelope when a hand approached the glass in the half open office door and knocked. The hand had long slim fingers and bright red nails.
“Come in,” I invited, curious to see who would follow the hand.
She was dressed in a blue-on-white vaguely botanical print cotton dress under a white short-sleeved jacket framed in thin blue piping. She wore sleek nylons and medium-heel cream coloured pumps. Despite the sticky heat, she looked cool and crisp. But anxiety shadowed her gray-blue eyes.
“Mr McCann?” said the lady. Often a beautiful woman’s voice will disappoint you, but this one didn’t. I was instantly prepared to slay dragons and disembowel giants for her sake.
“This is he,” I said in my suavest accents and grammar. “Kindly be seated, and tell me your troubles.”
“It’s my husband,” said the vision. I belatedly noticed the ring on her left hand.
“Ah, yes. You wish me to demonstrate that he has perfidiously betrayed you with his secretary, or the waitress at his lunch-time dining establishment, perhaps?”
“Oh no. I mean, yes. No. I mean it’s not about his cheating on me.” I noted the impeccable use of the gerund with approval, and her confused explanation with puzzlement. These mixed emotions must have shown on my face, for she smiled apologetically and said, “I suppose I had better tell you straight out.” She paused.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“My husband Vern,” she began, “was killed in a motor vehicle accident three weeks ago. He was one of four people in a car which went off the road on Route 76 about 40 miles north of Elysium City.” She paused again.
“That can’t have been be easy for you,” I prompted.
“No, it wasn’t. He had his faults, but we were close, and he was kind. Very kind.”
She paused a moment, and I saw a glint of tears. She took a deep breath to steady herself.
“He called me this morning and said he wanted to see me. He said the situation has become awkward.”
I sat up. “Do you mean he’s alive?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. The phone connection was bad, so I couldn’t be certain it was his voice. I couldn’t be sure. But the way he said it sounded like him.”
“The way he said it?”
“Yes. He said, ‘Ruthie, I’m in a fix, and I got to see you to get me out of it.’ His grammar’s not very good, you see.”
“I see.” I pretended to think a moment. “Are you surprised that he contacted you after his untimely demise?”
“Yes, very much so. I saw his body in the morgue. I had to identify him. Even though he was burned, I could tell it was he. He had a tattoo on his left forearm, a mermaid cavorting with a dolphin.” She blushed. I surmised that ‘cavorting’ was a euphemism.
“He had worn a jacket, which protected his forearm from the fire, and he had rolled so his arm was underneath. The tattoo was very clear.”
“I presume that the tattoo was the means of identifying him? There was no use of dental records, for example?”
“No.” Another pause. “The police and pathologist felt I should not see the rest of him. The tattoo was definitive. I had no doubts.”
“So what we have is a phone call from a man who claims to be your deceased husband and requests an interview. He could be an impostor. In fact, very likely he is an impostor. His grammar may be characteristic of him, but it is not rare.”
“That’s what I think. But I have to know.” She smiled slightly. “It’s a bit of a shock changing one’s status from widow to married woman from one minute to the next.”
“I can see that. I’ll take your case, Mrs?”
“Doherty. Ruth Doherty.”
“Mrs Doherty. I take it you want to know whether the voice on the telephone was your husband or not.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“I never promise success, but I do promise to follow all leads wherever they go. The results may be neither what you want nor expect.”
“I want to know the truth.”
I took out a contract form and placed it on the desk in front of her.
“My fees are $50 a day plus reasonable expenses, such as travel, meals while travelling, telephone calls, and the like.” I paused, noting that her clothes, though they looked like a shop girl’s, were of a subtly more elegant cut. “I ask for a retainer of $300. If the case is solved quickly, and fees and expenses amount to less, I will refund the difference with the final statement. Is that satisfactory?”
Ruth Doherty was already filling in the contract form. “Quite satisfactory,” she said. She signed her name, opened her purse again, and took out a cheque book.
After giving me the cheque, she left. I slipped the notes and the contract in a folder, wrote DOHERTY on the tab, and filed it. I decided to take the afternoon off. First an hour or so working out at Len’s, who was teaching me karate and kick-boxing. Then a cool beer and a smoked salmon sandwich at Robbie’s.
Viewing the new show at the City Gallery would fill the rest of the afternoon. I had a dinner date with Walt and Adrienne at their home. They were trying to set me up with a new love interest. I figured Adrienne’s cooking was worth the almost certain romantic disappointment, and hoped the lady in question would feel the same.
And that was how it started.
