Death Notes

short little fingers twisted like bloated worms in her lap. I felt sorry for her.
    ‘Match wasn’t big on the fine points,’ she said, ‘like who he owed money to or who owns what. Proprietary - that’s what he called it. He said he just wasn’t proprietary.’
    I thought about what she was asking. It sounded simple enough. Post couldn’t say I was homing in and it’d only take me a couple of hours to do it, max. But why didn’t she just talk to them herself? I could have asked, but for private investigators there’s a fine line between asking enough and asking too much. With clients like her, I preferred to err on the side of ignorance. Ignorance of the law won’t get you off the hook, but ignorance of a client’s motives might. As far as I was concerned, it was her dime and her show.
     

8
     
    I spent the next hour working out the plans for the burglar alarm and setting up the place for installation while Sharon polished off half a bottle of Scotch and haggled over the phone with recording companies. Hearing her ‘honey’ and wheedle and whine at them made me wonder how I ever could have felt sorry for her.
    My pal, Toby, down at Electronic Systems, was glad for the business but griped about the short notice.
    ‘I gotta pull four guys off a job in the Sunset to do this, Ron. That’s gonna cost. And this shit you’re asking me to bring - hell, it ain’t cheap.’
    I ended up short, with just two months’ rent instead of six, but that was okay. Toby’d be doing the bulk of the installation anyway.
    They showed up forty-five minutes later, an army of six, carrying everything I’d asked for and more. I found out Toby’d promised them double time if they worked through their lunch hours in between their other jobs. And that’s all it took. We were done by one fifteen.
    ‘Is it finished?’ Sharon glanced at the retreating back of Toby and his workers.
    ‘All done.’ I led her back up the walk and inside to show her the numbered digital keypad we’d installed just inside the front door.
    ‘This is where you turn the system off when you come home,’ I told her. ‘You punch the code in. Here, like this. You’ve got four seconds after you unlock the door to get inside and shut off the system before the alarm kicks in. Think four seconds is enough time? We can make it longer if you’d like.’
    ‘No, no, honey. That’s fine.’
    ‘It’s a great system.’ I was proud of it. ‘It’s a central alarm. That means it’s wired over your phone line into the security office over on O’Shaughnessy. If anything happens, they’ll know it as soon as you do. A guard can be here in a matter of minutes. Guaranteed. If anybody cuts the phone line, the alarm goes off. If your power goes out, there’s a backup that’ll kick in. Nothing’s completely foolproof, but this one’s close.’
    ‘What about the police, honey? Will they come?’
    ‘Do you want them to? We can set it up to notify the local station simultaneously if you’d like.’
    ‘No, honey. Don’t bother. Leave it the way it is.’
    She smiled. I tried to remember if she’d smiled any time before, but couldn’t.
    ‘What a load off,’ she said, then invited me into the living room so she could write me and Toby the final check.
    ‘How’s the police investigation going?’ I asked as we trudged down the hall. I’d been wanting to ask her since I’d arrived.
    ‘Lieutenant Post called this morning, honey, with more questions. But I’ll be honest with you, nothing’s changed since Saturday night.’
    Not surprising given he had about three hundred suspects to slog through. Not too comforting, either. She sat down at the roll-top and flipped open her checkbook.
    ‘What about your assistant? Does he want a separate check?’
    ‘One’s fine.’
    Sharon filled in the amount, stood, then held on to the check. She was sweating: tiny beads of moisture covered her upper lip and forehead.
    ‘The funeral home called a minute ago, honey. I need to pick up the remains.’
    ‘The police released the body already?’
    I knew from other cases that Post always kept his homicide victims’ bodies at least five days.
    Sharon just shrugged.
    ‘Did Philly Post okay the release?’
    ‘Please don’t make this harder than it is, honey. I had to make the choice to cremate and that was tough enough.’
    ‘Did they do an autopsy?’
    ‘Sure, honey. How hard can it be? He died from being stabbed.’ She had a point. Still clutching the