Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

I paid for his coffee and sent him on his way. Then I emptied the carafe into my cup, waved away the waitress’s offer for a refill or a menu, and spent a minute spinning a fantasy about the English grad student next door. Maybe she’d killed Lea in a fit of jealousy? She was a spurned lover who’d taken her revenge. But it didn’t hold water. The girl said she hadn’t been home and since she was the nearest neighbor, the cops would have checked her story. I was out of suspects and options.

I picked up my check and left a three-dollar tip. Then I headed for the Refugee Lounge.

I’d finished two beers and a shot of bourbon before Cheryl managed to get a break. When she did she headed my way.

“So?” she asked.

“Let me buy you a drink and I’ll tell you what I know.”

She climbed onto the stool and met my eyes. I tried not to wince but didn’t quite succeed. Her face was puffy, her eyes bloodshot. She looked as if she’d had her last good night’s sleep about the time they were counting hanging chads in south Florida.

When I finished lying, she snubbed her cigarette into a tin ashtray, took a deep breath, and let it out with a shudder. “That’s it.”

“That’s it.”

She blew her bangs from her eyes. “A frigging chemical imbalance?”

“That’s what the M.E. told me off the record. A biological problem. Maybe her period came early and made it worse or maybe it was related to her diet, but that’s what he thinks. A chemical imbalance led her to do what she did. Listen, he’s the best doctor I know of in the South, and he said she might have been feeling fine and then her chemicals bottomed out. She couldn’t control what she did. He said it was more common than you think.”

I held my breath, told myself I was an idiot and this was the silliest lie anyone had told since Bill Clinton claimed he hadn’t had sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. But I had hope, hope that her desire to believe would stop her from asking questions and would blot out her judgment. Everyone says they want the truth, but no one does, not really, not when the truth is as ugly as it usually is.

“Like a disease,” she said. “Like Lea had been born with a weak blood vessel or a bad heart.”

“That’s right.”

She smiled but the smile turned into a grimace. Then the crying began. But that was okay. She needed to cry. She’d been so scared, confused, and guilty that she hadn’t taken the time to grieve for her daughter. I held her a moment. Then I kissed the top of her head and left her to her grieving.

Three days later, five one-hundred-dollar bills came in the mail. I threw away Cheryl’s note and stuffed the cash into my wallet. Money spends no matter where it comes from or how much grief is involved in its making.

But I couldn’t sleep. I spent my days chasing bail skips, working security at a couple of car shows, and following cheating spouses, wasted my nights drinking in places where I was a stranger or pacing my apartment while ESPN droned in the background. Then three weeks and two days after I’d paid my last visit to the Refugee, I woke early and skimmed the Commercial Appeal while I sipped my coffee. I snapped awake when I reached the Metro section. LaRae Rose, a twenty-year-old education major at the University of Memphis, had stuck a .22 automatic in her mouth and pulled the trigger. She hadn’t left a note, but police were certain it was a suicide because she’d been suffering from depression and had made a last, desperate call to a local suicide hotline. I made a phone call of my own and got a couple of answers. Then I left my apartment, telling myself that it had to be Freddy McFarland and that when I did more checking, the sick hunch I felt in my gut would be proved wrong.

I was waiting in her apartment when she got home. She closed the door behind her, spotted my form in her living room rocking chair, her Siamese cat in my lap, and squealed in surprise. Then her eyes adjusted to the shadows. She dropped her keys on a table by the door and gave me a shaky smile.

“I think I said call if you want, not break into my apartment.”

I shoved the cat from my lap, stood up, and crossed to the window. “You have a beautiful view,” I said. “That’s the Pyramid over there isn’t it?”

“Jesus, Charlie. You almost gave me a heart attack and you want to talk about my view?”

I turned to face her. “I want you to tell me.”

“Tell you?”

“What it was you said to Lea Washburn to make sure she committed suicide. Was it the same thing you said to the girl who shot herself last night?”

She wiped her lips on the back of her hand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I spent the day at the library. I tracked twenty-three suicides in the last two years. Twenty-one of them called your hotline.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“I borrowed a Memphis Light, Gas, and Water uniform and ID from a friend and stopped by the Foundation while you were out. It took me awhile to find the fuse box. Then I looked in your private bathroom.”

“And?”