All But a Pleasure: An Alternate-History Role-Playing Romance Murder Mystery. Phyllis Ann Karr
her head behind the white nurse’s cap, green eyes with just the merest suggestion of epicanthic folds and Butterscotch skin to match, straight nose, luscious red lips, long neck…
“Smooth or rough, Handsome Detective?” Nurse Julie Whitcomb teased him as he took his seat on the folding chair and rolled up his sleeve. “You don’t look like a man who’s afraid of needles.”
“I’m not. But make it smooth, anyway.”
The time he got studying her bosom while she bent over his arm, imagining what lay beneath that neat nurse’s collar and smooth white tunic, was all too brief. “Finished,” she announced.
“You were smooth! I never felt a thing.”
“Comes with long practice. How about a Bugs Bunny bandage?”
“Hey, what happened to ‘Handsome’? Now you think I look like a Bugs Bunny type?”
“Oh, in features you’re more a Cary Grant type. But with that mischievous twinkle in your eye…” She flicked her tongue out between those fleshy red lips just long enough for him to appreciate its pinkness. “Whoops!” she went on. “All out of Bugs Bunny. Take a Dizzy Duck instead.” She slapped one on his arm and told him, “Now roll down your sleeve and head on out, Handsome Detective. Other people are waiting.”
“The name’s Dave. David Clayton. You in the phone book?”
“How else can I make myself available?” She gave him a wink and a shove on the back. “Ciao, Detective Dave Clayton.”
He thought it was a joke. He was sure it had to have been just a joke. Nurses didn’t have to take any extra work on the side. And even if one did, she surely wouldn’t broadcast it to a pollydeck? Would she? It had to have been just flirtatious banter.
He was going to phone her tonight. Make good and sure.
Maybe that was what she wanted to make sure he’d do.
Nice thought.
* * * *
Moonlighting with local yearbooks, night Desk Officer Holly Davenport had come up with thirty-six possible matches for the corpse’s face. Even thirty-six was an impressive job of weeding down, and might easily have missed the one they needed. His character, his psychomystique, the millions of big and little things that had made him unique in the world when he was alive—all had vanished after death into a corpse that could have belonged to almost any one of a quarter of the young male population in the country. Age probably between twenty and thirty, medium build, black hair, hazel eyes, probably good-looking in a generic kind of way when he was animated and happy, teeth distinctive only to the dental records.
Dentists. That was the place they’d start this morning, as soon as Clayton got in. Meanwhile, Sergeant Lestrade set Officers Little Bird and Vergucchi, reassigned to this case full time, at work with the telephone directory, phoning every family they could find for the young men on Officer Davenport’s list. Then Lestrade sat down to make her own list: the dentists in town.
Little Bird and Vergucchi had found a dozen families and crossed them all off—either the young men were safely accounted for or else they had moved out of state some time ago—by the time Clayton strolled in humming.
Lestrade tapped her fingernail against the bowl of her cherrywood pipe. Like three-fourths of the floaters who used to carry pipes a dozen years ago when it was the big craze, Lestrade’s had never known tobacco. Of all the substitute flavors that were still available, she preferred anise.
“Well, Detective,” she greeted him sourly. “Finding murder something to hum about these days?”
He blanked his face at once. “No, Sergeant, sorry. It wasn’t the case I was humming about. It was the nurse who just gave me the smoothest flu shot a floater could ask for.”
“And you made it to work anyway, a mere —” She glanced at the clock—“seven minutes late. Impressive. I don’t even want to know,” she added, cutting him off with a wave of her pipe stem. “You like this one that much, save her for when you get off duty. And I had my flu shot a week ago.” She stood up, pocketing her list. “Don’t bother sitting down, either. We’re out to pick up some dentists for body identification.”
Holy martyred Silverstairs! Lestrade hated getting people in to identify dead bodies. Whether it was a mere formality or, like now, a necessity.
With the third dentist, they struck paydirt. Dr. Marvella O’Connor stood there a good hundred and twenty seconds, staring down at the face Lotus Blossom Lee had arranged with the expertise of her former life as a mortician’s assistant, once Doc Grumeister was through with his so-called examination. “I’m not sure…” the dentist said at last. “It could be… They look so different, don’t they? When they’re dead.”
Even when it had been a peaceful, natural death. Both detectives nodded sympathetically.
“And then, if it is…You understand, I would’ve known him only as a patient…” Dr. O’Connor stretched her hands out toward the mouth, hesitated, glanced first at Lestrade and then at Clayton. “Do you mind, Detectives? That is, I wouldn’t be…corrupting the evidence, or anything?”
“Whatever you need to help us identify him, Doctor,” Lestrade replied.
The dentist touched the lips, jerked her hands back from the shock of dead flesh, reached again and, using just her fingertips, eased the mouth open for a look inside. “Ahh!” she breathed. She turned her head to look from a slightly different angle. “Ahh! Yes…yes, I’ve worked on these teeth. I remember the gap between his upper left lateral incisor and cuspid—tiny, but distinctive. And I put that big filling in the lower right second molar just a few weeks ago. Thought…I thought it’d last him for years. I remember the day he got it, he was talking about maybe getting a real tattoo, if he could figure out a design that’d work for both his Hallowe’en costume this year and the rest of his…life…afterwards. Yes…what was—is?—was?—his name? Sorry, I’ve got so many patients…Jack… No, Harry…Harry Jackson…Harry Carter Jackson! Oh, dammit to hell, Harry Jackson!”
“Thank you, Dr. O’Connor,” Lestrade told her gently. “We’ll have to check your dental records for our official books. But when we catch whoever did this, it’ll be largely thanks to you. If they still watch us from…whatever name you give it…Harry must be cheering for you now.”
“Sergeant Lestrade… They said on the news…it was torture? Not just murder, but…”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Lestrade replied, swearing the news media out in her mind. “Long as his body lay leaching out in the water, all those marks could just as well have been made post-mortem.”
Thank the Lady the damn media had at least cooperated far enough to keep that tattoo out of the news. A secret Lestrade refused to break now. Not even to draw back the white sheet and get the dentist’s opinion whether or not it could have been the one the late M. Jackson had talked about maybe getting.
Somehow, she didn’t think it was.
* * * *
The body definitely identified, next thing Lestrade did was make a call to Chris Grunewald back in Chicago. Chris was out of town. Some kind of forensic examiners’ conference in Denver, followed by a few vacation days to visit a brother in Chillicothe. Try again Thursday.
All right. Body into coldest possible storage for a little longer before it could be released for burial. Another unwelcome job for the family. Who had to be told right now. The “formality” identification.
Of everything Lestrade hated about her workline, this part was the worst. She’d cheated a little by trying to sneak in her call to Chris first. No more excuses to put off notifying the family.
They had a nice house in the Joliet Park area. Turned out the late M. Harry Jackson had been re-alighting at his old home nest while he sent out feelers for a position that could use his brand new Ph.D. in Astrophysics.