The Hearse You Came in On by Tim Cockey Read Free Book Online

in a section of the city known as Charles Village, so named for Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a wealthy Baltimore landowner and New World aristocrat and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Carolyn James had lived on Calvert Street (Lord Calvert, a buddy of Chuck’s), midway between Hopkins University and the now vacant Memorial Stadium. Mr. Castlebaum buzzed me in.
    “So, an undertaker who makes house calls. Should I be concerned?”
    Cute. “Yes. I thought I’d swing by and measure you.”
    He invited me into his apartment and offered me a cup of tea. “It’s just tea,” he told me as I eyeballed his ancient furniture. “None of this fancy crap. It’s just tea.”
    I chose a buxom armchair. “Just tea is just fine,” I assured him.
    As Mr. Castlebaum puttered about in the kitchen, he called out to me in the living room.
    “So let me guess. You want to know more about my neighbor. You’re upset that such a young woman would take her own life like that and it’s been bothering you ever since the funeral. It just doesn’t make sense. Am I right so far?”
    Basically he was and I told him so. I spotted a large black cat with army green eyes staring at me from a windowsill. It didn’t seem to particularly care for me. A second cat came into view on the couch. Then two more over by the radiator. The room began to purr ominously. Mr. Castlebaum was moving about in the kitchen gathering the tea paraphernalia.
    “So you can’t get her out of your mind and now you think you’re falling in love with her. You are becoming obsessed. Am I still right?”
    I respected his imagination but I thought I had better cut him off there.
    “Actually, Mr. Castlebaum, I was sort of curious to learn more about her relationship with Guy Fellows.”
    I could hear the disappointment in his voice. “Oh. The bum.”
    “Yes. The bum.”
    Mr. Castlebaum poked his head in from the kitchen.
    “Sugar? Lemon? I take a little rum and honey with my tea when I get a cold. You feeling sick?”
    “Sugar’s fine,” I said. “And milk.” The black cat shifted, eyeing me suspiciously. I was invading his dairy cache.
    Mr. Castlebaum came back into the room with a tray, which he set down atop a pile of old
Look
magazines on the coffee table.
    The tea was sour.
    “He’s a bad man,” Mr. Castlebaum said, settling onto his couch. “I heard him a lot, you know. Yelling. He was bad to her. He came and he went at all hours of the day and night. He slammed the doors, he didn’t care that there are other people living in the building. And he hit her.”
    “He hit her?”
    “That’s what I said. I would see her sometimes in the hallway or out walking on the street. I could see the bruises. And sometimes she is wearing sunglasses on the days when there is no sun. You tell me what that means. I’ll tell you it doesn’t mean she was a movie star. It means that her eyes are black. You saw him. You saw how he behaved at her funeral. He hit me.”
    “He hit me too.”
    The old man’s arms went into the air. “He hits everyone. He thinks he is Joe Louis. He’s a bully, that’s all. And he killed her.”
    “What do you mean when you say that, Mr. Castle-baum? You don’t mean that he literally killed her?”
    “What’s the difference? So he didn’t hand her the keys to the car. But she was a sad young woman and he did nothing but give her more reason to be sad. A person needs hope, don’t they? You can’t have hope when somebody comes by at three in the morning and takes a swing at you. Would that give you hope?”
    I assured him that it wouldn’t. He eyed my teacup.
    “So drink. It’s getting cold.”
    So I drank.
    I asked him a few more questions about Guy Fellows. He exercised his invective but didn’t really tell me anything new. Then I turned the earth.
    “Mr. Castlebaum, do you ever recall seeing a woman visit next door? On the tall side? Black hair?”
    His head bobbed up and down. “I saw her.”
    “You