“What the hell have you done to that perfectly good beer, Mom?” Curzon said. “Ice and lemonade? I’m going to have to issue you a warning for indecent mixing.”
She gave me the long-suffering look but otherwise ignored her son. “Go ahead, Maddy. Have a taste.”
“I’m not much of a drinker.”
“That’s not much of a drink,” Curzon said.
“Your father likes it.”
I accepted a glass to keep peace with the hostess. She smiled at me and wandered off to sell the rest to other guests. I took a sip. “Your dad must be a politician, too.”
“Only when it comes to my mother,” Curzon answered. “My job would drive him crazy. He’s all cop. Married to the same woman, living in the same place, going to the same barbershop over thirty years. Drives a Crown Vic. Always has a hundred dollar bill in his wallet for emergencies. Upright guy.”
Nicky came out of the house carrying a plate piled with enough food to feed Jenny and me for a week. Curzon noticed he was headed our way and pointed out across the lawn. “You want to walk?”
“Sure.”
He stopped in a quiet spot beside the half-wall that banked steps leading down to the cellar. We could still see the touch football game, but the rest of the gang was out of our line of sight-or we were out of their’s. “Except for politics, you and your dad sound like two of a kind to me.”
“No way.” He sucked back a swallow of beer. “My wife left before we’d marked a nickel. My car’s foreign and I got nothing in my wallet but plastic.”
That’s the problem with sharing war stories. It brings you down. If there’s one thing I dread, it’s decent guys flaying themselves for an audience. Time to change the subject.
“Any word on that police report you promised me?”
He looked the other way, irritated with himself. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
He made an effort to laugh. “Cause of death, gross displacement of spinal cord and cervical vertebra-”
“Translate.”
“Broken neck. Time of death was approximately nine o’clock-”
“No shit, nine a.m.?”
“Guy died about a half hour before we got there.” He sounded matter of fact, but I could see him questioning my reaction. I waved it off.
“How’d you hear about it?” I asked.
“Phone tip. Somebody saw him setting up, I guess. We ran the plate and knew it was Jost by the time we sent guys to the scene.”
“Phone tip called in the license plate?”
“Yeah.”
That seemed weird to me, given the off-road nature of Jost’s parking job. His little car had been parked parallel to the road in the ditch. The person who called it in would have to have driven right by the car.
“Coroner thinks Jost must have been out there a while, setting himself up. There was a lot of foot traffic between his car and the site.” Curzon shifted back to a recline, against the patio wall. Sipped his beer. Nothing like a little shop-talk to make you forget your troubles. “He used rope from the ambulance rig. Stacked the boxes he had in his trunk to get the lift he needed, kicked the top box out from under him…or it slipped.”
“Does the coroner have an opinion?”
Curzon hesitated. “Off the record?”
“Why not? Everyone else is.” I took a sip of lemonade beer to wash the bitter out of my voice. On the fourth sip, I decided Mrs. Curzon was right. It was nummy.
“Evidence is contradictory. I assume you saw what was inside those boxes?” he asked.
“Porno magazines.”
“Yeah. Same ones found in the trunk of his car the night he was brought in.” He said it as if it might not mean a thing, but the silence that followed said otherwise.
Figuring people was a skill that improved with experience. Tracking people, tracking behavior, the more you knew of the possibilities the more likely you could imagine a solution to a scenario. Things fit or they didn’t. I figured Curzon was one of the lucky few who could keep up with me when it came to tracking someone into the dark of uncharted, unhappy possibilities.
I threw out a suggestion. “Everybody already knew about the mags, so why bother to take them out of the car?”
Curzon crooked one of those black eyebrows in disbelief. Didn’t sound right to me either. A guy like Jost wouldn’t leave them in his car once they’d been discovered. He’d have the guys at work asking to see what he had in his trunk every damn day.
“He used the same magazines that got him busted to hang himself. Could be remorse. Self-punishment.” I sipped my lemonade. “What’s ‘contradictory’ about the evidence?”
“The magazines suggest a sexual-” Curzon finally settled on, “-intent. But there’s no other evidence to support that assumption. No pertinent body fluids. Guy had his clothes on. In fact, those clothes he was wearing? The pants don’t even have a fly.”
“How…awkward for him.”
Curzon acknowledged this with a tip of his beer. “Exactly. On the other hand, judging by the time of death, and the mud on the sides of the box, he had to have been standing out there a while. Probably standing up on the boxes for a while. Looking at pictures, maybe? We don’t know.” He shook his head.
Weirdness.
“Trying to get up his courage?” Was courage what it took to face that moment?
“Possibly,” Curzon answered vaguely. “Guy was no Boy Scout. Maybe he couldn’t figure out how to tie the knot.” That thought generated a frown and shrug. “On the other hand-how many hands is that now?-there was no note.”
Another indication of autoerotic asphyxiation, according to Dr. Graham.
I shook my head. “Contradictory evidence.”
“You got it.” Curzon sounded stoical, in a pissed-off sort of way.
“Any other witnesses,” I asked as casually as I could manage, “besides the phone tip?”
“No.” He turned to face me and consider the possibilities my question suggested. “None.”
I nodded, ah.
“You’d report any pertinent information to the proper authorities, wouldn’t you, Maddy O’Hara?”
The use of my whole name-a sure sign of trouble.
“Of course I would, Sheriff Curzon.”
He smiled and the glow in those eyes understood exactly how little we really knew of each other. “I see you brought your boy along today.” He wasn’t looking at Ainsley; he was looking at me.
Ainsley was thick into the game of touch football with the underage Curzons. The females seemed to be tackling him whether he had the ball or not.
“I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Not at all,” he assured me. Eyes still trained on the game, he added, “I’m glad.”
“Gives the kids someone to play with?”
Curzon smiled as a gang of mostly girls brought Ainsley down again. The boy stood up and shook himself off when Marcus Wilt called out a hello. Ainsley ran a couple of loping steps that direction and shook hello, all charm. PK-politician’s kid-probably knew three quarters of the people in town. Beside me, Curzon tensed.
The kids called Ainsley back to the game.
“I’d say the fact you brought your escort looks good for me.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Sheriff.”
“Jack,” he said.
“What?”
“Jack Curzon. It’s my name. You’re a guest in my father’s house, eating my mother’s food. Drinking her-” he curled his lip and pointed at my glass, “-drink. You ought to be calling me Jack…”
“How about I call you jack-”
“…not to mention the fact, I’m about to get familiar with you.”
Without so much as a glance in my direction, I felt his hand shift from my elbow, to my waist, to the small of my back. The cold of the wall behind me was suddenly replaced with the heat of his palm.