Unsightly Bulges Read online

  “And you began seeing each other immediately?”

  “Basically. We met for coffee a couple of times, before we...” He broke off and gave Dale a hesitant look. “He was still engaged to Desiree, and we agreed that it wouldn’t be right to take the friendship any further without ending that first.” He shrugged. “What can I say? He was a very honorable guy. I loved that about him, even though it kind of made me crazy, too.”

  “Do you know if he had ever been in a relationship with a man before?”

  Dale gave her a dark look. “I fail to see how that’s pertinent.”

  “If he was in a relationship that ended in contention, but was unknown to the people closest to him, there could be possible suspects the police will never know about. If you were close –”

  “We were close.” Marky’s eyes blazed.

  “Then he might have felt a freedom with you that he wouldn’t have felt with anyone else. He might have trusted you with information he could not share with anyone else.”

  Marky was silent for a moment. “I know I was not his first gay partner. I also know that he said he’d never shared the same kind of relationship with anyone that he had with me. He didn’t give me names or details, but from the way he spoke, there was no one important before me. No one worth mentioning specifically.”

  Stump snored loudly.

  Everyone in the room was suddenly looking at her. I shrugged apologetically. “She’s a delicate flower,” I said.

  Marky blinked, then he smothered a smile. “She’s cute,” he said.

  Well, there you go, I thought. Clearly not a murderer.

  Viv gave me and Stump an irritated look, then turned back to Marky. “He never said anything about being fearful of anyone from his past?”

  Marky shook his head. “Look, I don’t know this for sure, this is just a hunch. But I think as long as CJ was close to home, anywhere near all the people who knew him, knew his family, he played the role he needed to play. I think he went far, far from home to do anything that could...attract attention.”

  “What do you mean? Like vacations, conferences or something like that?”

  Marky shrugged. “Sure. Like I said, I don’t have any specific information, but to be perfectly honest, it doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, there’s no way this is related to some fling CJ had while he was at a medical convention in Costa Rica or something. This past week was a nightmare for him. One day he was on top of the world, doing work he believed in and was passionate about, the next day he was getting death threats and seriously questioning his ability to continue practicing medicine. And then he’s dead. For someone to show up from months ago, right in the middle of all this...” He raked a hand through his hair. “That’s a bit too coincidental, don’t you think?”

  Viv and I looked at each other, and she gave the tiniest shrug. She took a breath and leaned forward.

  “This past week has been very busy, to say the least.” Viv said. “How was Dr. Hardin’s demeanor throughout the week?”

  “It started out good enough. He was a little stressed, but nothing out of the ordinary, given the things he had to juggle. He had a lot on his mind, and basically he acted like it – like a guy who had a lot on his mind but was optimistic that it would all go well. He was always an upbeat kind of guy, you know.”

  “But then things went south?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you remember when?”

  He widened his eyes, as if he could barely keep from rolling his eyes at her. “Wednesday night. When we first heard that the story we thought was going to showcase Friends of Joshua was actually a witch-hunt hatchet job.”

  “And how did you hear about that?”

  Marky sat with his jaw clenched for a few seconds. “His ex-girlfriend called him. She still had his number.”

  Stump snorted and shifted on me, her feet digging into my lap. She fell back to sleep and began snoring again, but a shade more delicately this time.

  “How did she know about it?” Viv asked, pointedly ignoring Stump.

  He grimaced. “Look, this place is pretty inbred, if you haven’t noticed. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. Somebody had seen a clip and told her. She wanted to warn CJ, to see if he could talk them into revising the story.”

  “Did he? Did he try?”

  “Of course he tried. He didn’t want that. He wanted people to know the facts, know the numbers. Maybe even see some of the people behind those numbers.” He stopped and clenched his lips again, shaking his head. I thought he was going to say something else, and he opened his mouth, but then he closed it again.

  I was beginning to feel kind of guilty, intruding on this guy’s personal life.

  “What about the money? The last we heard, it hadn’t been found.”

  Marky shook his head. “They never found it.”

  “Do you have any idea how much was there?”

  He shrugged and scrubbed his hands through his hair. “No idea. CJ counted it all and then he was going to make the deposit.”

  “Did he go straight to the bank?”

  “No, he was – he was kind of emotional, you know. Coming out in such a big way, all the crap that had gone on during the week. He was drained, and he said he really wanted to just go home and take a shower, get his head together. I think he was kind of worried there would be more cameras, more questions.”

  “So he went home?”

  Marky nodded. “He went to his place, and...” He cleared his throat. “And I never saw him again.”

  “How did he react to being outed in the news?”

  “He freaked out. He had come out to his family just a couple of weeks before, and to that girlfriend. But he had hoped they’d have time to deal with it before it became public knowledge.” He swallowed again and chewed on his lower lip. “He was pretty freaked out, yeah. He just about wore a hole in the carpet, pacing back and forth. He kept—he just kept putting his hands up to his head like – ”

  He put his own hands up to his head, just above his ears. “Like this. Like he was trying to...trying to keep it all together in his head. Keep it from all flying apart.” His voice dropped to a whisper toward the end and he let the sentence die out.

  For once, Viv seemed to sense that she was treading on very sensitive ground, and acted accordingly. “I’m sorry. I know this has to be very difficult for you. We just need to know about his final days to see if there are any clues to what might have happened. Aside from the obvious conflict he felt about coming out – did he seem worried? Did he mention feeling threatened or unsafe?”

  This time it was Viv who got the you’re-not-that-bright look. “He was getting death threats. He was afraid he would have to resign his job at the hospital. He didn’t have a lot of experience letting people down.” Marky stopped and bit his lower lip. He said hoarsely, “Plus he was furious about Friends of Joshua.”

  “His fiancée did say he was very sad about the effect this was going to have on Friends of Joshua.”

  Marky gave me a steely look. “Ex-fiancee. And believe me, he was livid. I mean, it’s an outrage. For years this entire city has been behind him. He was the golden child. He came from the golden family, had the golden job, had the golden girlfriend. He could do no wrong. And the moment they found out that – oh my God! Some of our good hard-earned money is going to help people who are –gasp!—gay, the whole thing just falls apart. Those people don’t deserve four walls and a roof. Abominations! They can burn in hell! And CJ Hardin can go with them!”

  He rose from his chair, his thin frame bowed over as he paced back and forth as he’d just described CJ, agitated.

  “Well, you can’t blame them,” Dale said. “I mean, come on. He wasn’t exactly honest with everyone.”

  “Of course I can blame them!” Marky spun on his heel and jabbed a finger at Dale. “I can and do blame them! This is their fault! One of those white trash good ol’ boys killed him. Not one – probably an entire group of them. They probably got drunk and
ambushed him somewhere. Beat him. Humiliated him. Desecrated his body.”

  His voice broke and he dropped to his chair, his head bowed. Then he raised red eyes to Dale, his lips thin. “Is it any wonder he felt the need to be dishonest? This is what honesty can get you.”

  We were silent for a moment, and Viv cleared her throat. “I suppose you heard that they’re investigating this as a hate crime. We’ve heard rumors...”

  I realized where Viv was going, and I panicked. I could not let Marky hear the rumors about CJ’s body – not when he was so clearly destroyed by what little he did know.

  “Oh, my gosh, are you okay?!” I practically shouted, lifting Stump and pretending to study her intensely.

  All three looked at me with varying degrees of alarm.

  I held Stump by her front paws and peered into her eyes. She glared back at me and grunted. I breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Oh my gosh. I’m sorry. She just...she made a noise and I thought she was choking on something.”

  Stump blinked stonily and tried to tug her legs out of my grip. Her back legs dug into my thighs.

  “She’s okay,” I said. I looked at Viv and tried to communicate telepathically for her to shut up, but all she did was look a little annoyed.

  “Sorry,” I said again. “False alarm. Anyway, as Viv was saying, we’ve heard rumors about the direction the police investigation might be going. Possibly looking at local hate groups, that kind of thing.”

  Marky gave a slight nod.

  “Have you heard of a group that goes by the initials PDDL, by chance?” I asked. I wasn’t even sure that was what Bobby had said, but it was something to get the conversation off the topic of CJ Hardin’s body.

  Marky studied the floor again, his brow furrowed. Then he shook his head. “No, not that I can remember. Is that one of the hate groups the police are investigating?”

  “We’re not sure,” I said. “Like I said, we’ve just heard rumors. But it’s a place to start, right?” I desperately wanted to give him some encouraging news. “Do you have any idea what those letters could stand for?”

  He shook his head again. “PDDL? No. If I had to guess, I’d say it was some kind of sanctimonious crap. Like, People in Defense of...something. Decency? Decent Living? Something like that. Hate loves to create big beautiful shields made of cast-iron self-righteousness.” His voice dripped with contempt.

  I nodded. “That’s good,” I said. As if I had any clue. “That gives us a place to start.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  The room fell into awkward silence. Viv and I exchanged a look. It was time for us to go.

  “We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us,” Viv said. “We know how difficult this must be for you.”

  We stood, and I turned around to see Dale staring slack-jawed at us. I jerked my head for him to get up.

  “Oh yeah,” he said. He stood and brushed off the back of his legs. “Well, I guess we’ll just be going then.” He stuck his hand out, then drew it back and stuck it in his pocket.

  If Marky noticed the snub, he didn’t acknowledge it. He took the card Viv handed him and promised to call if anything else helpful occurred to him.

  Stump looked blearily around the room, and Marky smiled a sad smile and reached out to scratch her gently behind the ears. “You’re a good girl,” he said.

  Stump closed her eyes and moaned a little – her ecstasy moan, as I’d come to recognize it – and tilted her head to lick him.

  I reached into my purse and took out a pen. I took the card from Viv and wrote on the back. “This is my work number and address,” I said as I handed the card back to him. “Please call if you think of anything.”

  We rode in silence for a while. I’m not sure what the other two were thinking, but I was torn. Bobby’s warning, mixed with the knowledge that someone had hated CJ Hardin – by all accounts, a really nice guy – enough to torture him and kill him. Maybe Bobby was right. Maybe I didn’t want to get mixed up in this.

  But oh, my gosh. Marky. Poor guy. A brush with death didn’t seem too high a price to make that awful look on his face go way.

  “I like him for this,” Dale said. “I mean, I don’t like him. But I like him for this.”

  “Why?” I asked, thinking, “Because you’re a big dumb doofus?” Marky liked Stump. He said she was a good girl. Stump had licked him. Clearly he was not our guy.

  Plus, he was devastated by CJ’s death.

  “I don’t know,” Dale said. “He just seems like the type.”

  “Well, we’re going to need a little more than that,” I said. “I don’t think Bobby’s going to arrest him because you say he seems like the type. And what about this PDDL thing?”

  “Yeah, what about that? Did you just pull that out of your hat?” Viv asked, eyeing me in the rearview mirror. The car swerved into the right lane.

  “Eyes on the road!” I said. “I overheard Bobby talking about it, with that patrolman who pulled us over.”

  “What did he say? Did he call them a hate group?”

  “No, he just said something like, Did they say anything about PDDL? Something like that.”

  Maybe it was just because I kept saying it over and over, but PDDL was starting to sound kind of familiar. Maybe I’d read about it in one of the stories or comments about CJ.

  “I think that group was mentioned in some of the articles I was reading last night about CJ Hardin and Hope for Home.”

  “I’ll bet that’s their big lead,” Viv said, smacking a bony hand against the steering wheel. “Sloan is trying to shut us out!”

  She bent to get her purse out of the floorboard. Horns honked all around us as she zoomed the Caddy into oncoming traffic.

  I lunged over the seat and grabbed the steering wheel, tilting us back into our lane. Dale screamed like a little girl.

  Viv returned to the wheel like nothing at all had happened. She fished in her purse and tossed her phone to Dale.

  “Do a search on PDDL.”

  Dale thumbed through Viv’s phone and I realized with burning fury that he already had her password. She probably gave it to him last night at bingo, I thought sourly.

  “Is this it?” Dale asked, holding the phone out to Viv.

  She leaned over, squinting, and buzzed a FedEx truck. The driver honked and yelled out his little open door at us.

  “Viv, pull over up here and look at the phone so we don’t become tonight’s lead story of a ten-car pileup on the Loop.” I pointed to a shopping center at the next intersection.

  Viv swung the Caddy into the parking lot, taking up three spaces, and I sat back and let the two of them haggle over what PDDL could stand for.

  “I’ll bet it’s something like People in Defense of Decent Living,” Dale said.

  “Why would that be a hate group?” Viv asked.

  “If my church is branded a hate group, then anyone who wants to promote anything decent is a hate group. Next they’re gonna be calling the Shriner’s in their little go-carts haters of big oil because their cars aren’t big enough or something.”

  I decided my best course of action at the moment would be to tune them out. I studied the shop windows near where we parked. A mannequin wearing a black dress caught my eye, and I opened the car door. “Stay with Stump, okay? I’m going to check out this dress.

  Dale and Viv kept up their arguing in the front seat.

  “Look at that,” I whispered to myself. I stepped close to the window. It was perfect. A black dress with a v-neck, pencil skirt, and ruching straight up the middle. There was a time I would have stopped traffic in that dress.

  I frowned and looked down. Those days said their goodbye when I said goodbye to alcohol and hello to eating basically anything I could fit in my mouth. But still, I had lost four pounds. Before Little Ling’s and inevitable water retention. Maybe, if I drank three gallons of water between now and then and took a couple of Midol...

  “You should get that for tomorrow night,” Viv said.


  I looked up to see her and Dale standing on either side of me. Dale was holding Stump, who did not look particularly thrilled at the experience. He wasn’t doing it right, holding her under her belly like she was a football. When I held her like that, there was a nice wide hip for her to rest on. With Dale, her legs dangled down.

  But she was just going to have to deal with it for a moment, because there was a dress. “I know, I should,” I said. “I need a dress. And that is a dress.”

  “Seriously?” Dale looked at the dress and looked me up and down. He frowned and cocked his head. “I’m not sure that’s the right dress for you.”

  “No?” I asked, fighting the urge to palm the back of his head and slam him into the store window. “What’s the right dress for me?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, something more along the lines of a tunic, you know.” He held his arms wide and made a straight up and down motion. “Like those tunics with the leggings and the ballet flats. I think that would be a good look for you.”

  “You sure know a lot about women’s clothes,” Viv said. “Did you learn that working at the convenience store or driving the garbage truck?”

  “I learned it from having three sisters,” Dale said.

  I stared at the dress and didn’t answer. For one thing, I was afraid that if I opened my mouth I would scream horrible obscenities at Dale, and for another, a tunic with leggings and ballet flats was exactly what I had been planning on.

  But this dress...it looked so soft and a little bit shimmery. It looked pretty. It had been a long time since I’d felt pretty. I was nervous about the banquet, and it would certainly improve my outlook if I could feel like I looked good. This dress with some black heels. I could maybe get a little mojo back with that.

  “I’m trying it on.” I left them standing on the sidewalk.

  It seemed a bit silly to pray that they had my size, but I did and they did. It seemed even sillier to pray that I would look good in it, but one prayer had already been answered so I figured I could possibly be in the flow of God’s grace and should take advantage of it.