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Chapter 1
Benjamin Charteret
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Whence the Mockingbird
to her after he met her at some kind of luncheon. The loose black
dress she wore looked expensive, hung to just above her knees
and got me thinking she should have worn something more
conservative. Her large blue eyes demanded attention. The rest of
her face complimented them in a way that guaranteed that the
viewer would not ignore her.
“This is for you,” she told me, dug an envelope from her
shoulder bag, and held it out like an offering.
Reluctant to accept the large brown manila package, I did
after I saw my name in Alan’s hand printed on the front. The
envelope was heavy enough to tell me that what he’d put inside
was more than a single page letter.
“Thanks,” I said and wondered why I had since it felt so
inappropriate, and watched Patti as she walked to her car,
climbed behind the wheel, and drove off without lifting her hand
in a wave.
When seated in my Honda, I ripped open the envelope and
discovered the deed to his cabin in Western North Carolina, a
letter from his attorney explaining the transfer of ownership and
title, and a note from Alan.
In the note, he wrote, "This is yours when I’m dead. Take it
and shut the hell up about it. You deserve ownership since you’ve
been the only person who was always there for me. The only
person I've ever trusted.
“If it’s at all possible, I’ll return in my next life to drive you
to drink.
“Best wishes, Alan.”
Who besides you wants another life? I'd thought and stared
out the car window at the workers covering his grave with wet
earth.
Built like a football center, Alan Paltrow would not have been
a man I expected to be easily overcome by anything less than
three assailants. He worked out regularly, and razzed me
constantly about not doing the same. Most women seemed to
think he was attractive. He had dark brown brooding eyes and
kept his brown hair trimmed short. He face was long but
symmetrical. His five foot ten inch frame, broad shoulders and
barrel chest, made him a man to respect. However, he was one of
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those bears with a warm heart, and would stop the car to allow a
squirrel right of way, or risk getting run down by jumping out
and racing into traffic to rescue a slow moving turtle.
Two days after reading his letter, I arrived at his cabin and
had concluded that I would move there permanently, which I did
the next week after closing out my life in Coastal South Carolina.
I was sick of tourists anyway.
The following day, the Mockingbird appeared to welcome
dawn with a herald-like barrage of bird songs.
Okay, it’s weird to believe a bird might prove to be a
reincarnated friend, but I began to wonder as time progressed.
Whenever I went out, he sat there watching. He allowed me
to approach until I would reach about ten feet from where he
perched, and then with what could be misconstrued as a shrug,
flew off to put distance between us.
After three days of this, I decided to follow him. We played a
game of tag-like hide-and-seek constantly moving uphill deeper
and deeper into the heavy forest behind the cabin.
Most of the morning and early afternoon passed and then his
behavior changed radically. The bird landed on a small mound of
leaves and pine needles and let me get close enough to touch him.
His small dark eyes showed remarkable intelligence while he
stared at me. Then he looked down and pecked the ground as if
hunting a bug for a snack. He kicked at the forest debris until
bare earth showed, and then flew into the nearest tree as if to
await my reaction.
Curiosity burned a hole into my thoughts. I dropped onto my
knees, brushed the leaves and needles aside, and found a small
bronze plaque. On it was the inscription “Here it is.”
An iced feeling of dread ran down my spine. All I could do at
that moment was to place my hand on the cool bronze surface as
I wondered at the sequence of events that had transpired to lead
me to that particular place, starting with Alan's brutal murder.
I sat and looked for the Mockingbird. When I found him, he
went into his herald’s birdsong repertoire.
The voice in my head warned me to forget about what
happened, sell the cabin, return to the coast, and get on with my
life.
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Whence the Mockingbird
memories.
“I have a secret,” Alan said one night between drinks. We
were halfway to smashed, which was the moment of the night
when either of us might decide he wanted to share something
outrageous.
“I’m not surprised to hear it,” I had replied as I lifted my half-
empty glass as I prepared to drain it.
Alan put his down, and lifted his briefcase from the floor
alongside his chair. He snapped the latches open and lifted out a
legal looking document. He placed it on the table after wiping the
surface with a napkin he snatched from the booth behind us.
“Don’t read this,” he said. “I want you to trust me and just
sign the line at the bottom.” Then, mysteriously, he covered the
rest of it with a manila folder and handed me an ink pen.
“I trust you,” I said. I was drunk enough not to care if it was a
prank, and signed my named, and then asked, “So to whom did I
just give all of my assets?”
He added mystery to mystery. “One day you’ll understand,
but until then you’ll have to continue to endure and trust me.”
“Is this about your secret?”
He nodded without speaking as if he did not intend to explain
more of the details.
“Okay,” I said. “Am I now in danger?”
Alan glanced at me as he slipped the sheet of paper into the
folder, put that in his briefcase, and snapped it shut.
With a broad disarming smile, he chuckled and said, “Not as
long as I’m still alive.”
With the key in hand, I suspected what I had signed was a
form to give me access to the box that I would need the key to
open.
I filled in the hole, replaced the bronze plaque, covered it
with leaves and pine needles, and returned to the cabin in time for
nightfall. When I washed my hands, I smelled the loamy earth.
Not once had I seen the Mockingbird that day.
After a shower, I began searching through the draws in the
bedroom, kitchen, and small office until I located a stack of bank
statements from a local bank. The total in the accounts was
minimal, but that was irrelevant.
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emasculated.
You think?
"Alan told me he planned to give the cabin to you and I
agreed. I thought it was best under the circumstances." She lifted
her mug.
"And you just thought you'd drive for six or seven hours to
tell me that face to face? Come on, Patti, you think I'm stupid or
what?"
"No, I don't and no I didn't drive up here to tell you that. It's
just that you're making me so nervous. Can't we have a
conversation like acquaintances at least?" She placed her mug on
the table without taking another sip and stared out the window.
"I think I know who killed Alan, but not why." She spoke
very softly.
She had my attention. "Who?"
"A guy named Steuern, Thomas Steuern. He used to be a
psychiatrist back home. The bastard developed an emotional
harem of married women, and several unmarried ones, of
course." Patti placed her folded hands on the table. She appeared
serious, but who knew with her?
"What did this shrink have to do with killing Alan?"
She shook her head. "Nothing directly, but I believe he hired
someone to do it."
"A Board Certified psychiatrist? You are joking right? I mean
how much does the bastard make for his feel good gibberish?"
She shrugged as if helpless to explain the man's motives to
another man. "I paid him $250.00 an hour."
"You saw him? For how long if I might ask."
"About six months." She appeared uncomfortable, and I
considered dropping it, but not if Steuern had a hand in Alan's
death. Hell, law enforcement had yet to punish anyone for the
crime. Someone needed to eat shit for it soon.
"None of this makes much sense to me, Patti. I think you
need some evidence to at least make it plausible, don't you?"
"If I was planning to go to the police, I would, but that's why
I didn't go to the police. They wouldn't've believed me with what
little I know. Besides, Steuern knows everyone who is important
on the island. Especially the women in his emotional harem.
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There're a lot of them." She leaned back, a button at the top of her
blouse popped loose, which, since the two above were opened
previously, exposed the tops of her breasts. Well, a guy notices
these things.
When she did nothing to cover herself, or button her blouse, I
thought, Now, what is this about? Distraction or accidental?
Hell, she was never shy about her physical attributes as Alan
found out one night a local club.
He went out with a couple friends he worked with, and after
several rounds, they decided to try the newest strip joint, which is
where he found his wife dancing in a string thong, nothing on
top, with a pole between her legs. Oh, I forgot, she was upside
down and humping the pole as if she wanted to reach climax with
an audience of drooling men from every walk of life who threw
fistfuls of cash her way.
Alan never told me if she succeeded, or how he reacted when
his friends asked him what she was doing there and did he know
about her dancing? Is that why he brought them to that club? He
confronted her still on stage, but by then without the thong.
Hell of a thing, I thought at the time, seeing your wife nude
and filmed in sweat before a crowd of men who would use the
memory of the occasion when they arrived home.
Divorce was imminent and happened uncontested three-
months later.
Alan had been grateful they did not have children, but I
always believed there was something more he felt that he would
never reveal even to me. Like, I said, everyone has secrets.
Patti had been talking and I missed every word of it due to
distraction.
"You still work at the club?" I blurted unexpectedly as a
connection between her, Alan, and the bullshit doctor formed in
my head.
"Alan told you about that?" she asked without sounding
offended by my question, but colored slightly.
I nodded and watched her again.
She grinned and raised an eyebrow as she shrugged.
"Weekends the pay is real good. I make six hundred a night. If
there's a convention in town I might earn a grand for pole
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dancing."
Naked pole dancing, I thought. Wow.
"How does this come into play with the shrink and Alan's
death?" I asked as calmly as possible.
"I was seeing Steuern for therapy when we started clubbing,
and asked him if he thought I should try out as a dancer. He said I
should and that I also needed to put some distance between me
and Alan."
"Tell me about his emotional harem. What did you mean by
that?"
"Well, you know most psychiatric patients come to love their
doctor, or develop strong bonds that are more dependency than
healthy. Usually, the psychiatrist sets up boundaries. Steuern
exploited the bonds instead. Many of his married patients are
divorced because of his recommendations. I know for a fact that
he's slept with several."
"And you know that because?"
"After I started working at the club, before Alan caught me,
Steuern came to watch my performance. The next time I had an
appointment, he told me I needed to strip for him, and that it
would be exactly the kind of therapy I needed to move beyond
the constraints of an overbearing husband and failing marriage.
"I trusted him and did it. Afterwards, he had me stay naked
and before I knew it, we were having sex. I didn't mind because I
trusted him, and to be honest, some part of me loved him. He'd
helped me free my inner self and I became stronger. The next
day, I realized what he had done was seduce me emotionally into
allowing him to have me. It felt like emotional rape."
"And Alan?"
"Alan never knew, but I began talking to other patients.
Several were close friends. All of them acted as if Steuern was
God on earth, or a secret lover. One friend's daughter asked her
mother if she had been sleeping with Steuern, which she denied
of course, but she had been and wanted to continue it as part of
her therapy to improve her sex life.
"I recorded all of my conversations and turned the bastard in.
He lost his license, was sued by several former and current
patients, and ended up ruined."
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she said?
"You can let yourself out," I told her in an expressionless
monotone, and quietly left the kitchen.
"But wait--"
"No, Patti. There's nothing to wait for." I had reached the hall
when she called out.
"If you don't mind, I really don't like driving around up here
in the dark. I would get lost and drive off the road. Can I use your
guest room?"
I turned to deny her, and found myself three feet away from
her. She had slipped off her shoes, followed me, and almost
stopped my heart. I despise being startled.
My instant reaction was to shake my head, but I squeezed my
hands into fists. "Sure, Patti. There're towels and linens in the
closet at the end of the hall. See you tomorrow."
This time, I made it into the bedroom, shut the door, and sat
on the edge of my bed. My heart still raced and sweat beaded my
brow more from the effort to control my reaction than her
unexpected presence. Usually, I get a feeling when someone is
close, but this time my inner warning system had failed.
Moreover, I hated being angry, which was something Alan
always found to be a source of personal entertainment. He often
pushed me to the limit and then stood back to watch me spiral out
of control. The memory made me grin.
"Damn woman," I muttered and shut off the light, but twenty
minutes later, she knocked on my door.
I rolled out of bed, slipped a robe over my shoulders, belted
it, and opened the door. Beyond her, the lights were off, but
enough moonlight seeped into the cabin for her silhouette to be
clearly visible. She had a towel around her torso. The terry cloth
ended high on her thighs. Her bare legs looked better than I had
pictured them a few times, years back. Patti might have carried a
few extra pounds on her hips, but not on her legs. They seemed
athletically trim and she smelled like soap and clean female.
"Do you need something else?" I asked, pleased my voice
sounded a bit groggy as if she'd awakened me, and not as if I'd
taken inventory of her body.
"I didn't bring any clothing with me except what I wore and I
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