Death Before Facebook (17 page)

Rountree looked as if she’d died and gone to heaven.

It was all Skip could do not to wince. Was she ever that green?

Rejoining Lenore, Skip was surprised to find her seated near a small oval swimming pool.

Skip said, “I didn’t expect that.”

“It was the original reason I rented the house—otherwise it’s pretty run-down. But then Caitlin came along and it got to be a big safety hazard. Now I have to keep it filled up even in the winter—” It did have water in it, and lots of grunge. “I mean, if she falls in water, at least she’s got a chance, right? She’s already had swimming lessons, and in the summer we do have fun.” Her eyes moved to the little girl and she slipped into baby talk. “Isn’t that right? Isn’t that right, Petunia?” She picked the baby up. “Caitlin’s really tired. I’ll hold her and maybe she’ll go to sleep.”

There were a few plastic chairs on an old patio near the pool, some nice palm trees, and a banana or two. Someone had once cared about the yard.

“Good thing there’s sun today.” Lenore pulled Caitlin onto her lap, and Skip noticed for the first time that it was a very lovely day indeed. A day that might have been manufactured in September and saved for a couple of months, till it had reached full golden mellowness.

She sat in one of the chairs. “Tell me about you and Geoff. How did you meet?’

“Oh, we’ve known each other forever—since we were kids. But we met again on the TOWN. It’s wild—just about everybody who’s on it here got on it through somebody else—I mean they all knew each other and that’s how they got on. But I started taking computer classes at UNO and got interested that way. When I saw Geoff was on it, I started flirting with him.”

“You started it?’

“Well, I don’t really remember, but anyway—”

“What?”

“I’d almost forgotten it started that way. I think people thought I was his girlfriend—his family and everything.”

“You weren’t?”

“Not really. I was kind of lonely at first, so—well, maybe a little then. But neither of us was really interested. What we wanted was a best friend.”

“I thought Layne was Geoff’s best friend.”

“Is that what he says?”

“It’s not true?’

She looked vaguely around the garden. “I don’t know. I guess they were kind of close.”

While her eyes wandered and her baby cuddled, Skip hit her with the thing she really wanted to know. “How’d you get Geoff’s autopsy report?”

If she’d expected a big reaction, she had to be satisfied with a shrug. “I know someone in the coroner’s office.”

“Who?”

“Tom Renault.”

“And how do you know him?”

“Through a group I belong to.”

“A group.” Skip let it sit there. Skulls, black hoods, coroner’s deputies—did these things go together?

“Parents Without Partners,” said Lenore.

“Come on, Lenore. Tom Renault’s gay.”

“Well, he hasn’t always been. His ex-wife’s a hopeless alcoholic; and his lover died, poor man.” Skip didn’t ask for details. She could check it easily enough.

“Tell me something else—did Geoff tell you any secrets?”

“What kind of secrets?”

“Anything to do with what he remembered. Anything at all you think might be important.”

Lenore shut her eyes, thinking. But she came back shaking her head. “I can’t remember anything.” Her eyes wandered again and when they returned to Skip, they were watery. “When we were kids, we just played together—it wasn’t a big deal. But his grandmother was my music teacher. I only took from her a year, but I’ll never forget it.”

“Why not?”

“Because she was just about the only adult who ever was nice to me. It was so awful to see her yesterday. She’s lost it, did you see?”

Skip thought Lenore knew very well that she had seen—that Lenore had seen her watching, and noted it for reasons of her own. She said, “You must know Neetsie and Suby too.”

“A little, sure. But not through Geoff especially, through the TOWN. Neetsie’s dad got her on it, the same as he got Geoff on. And then Geoff got Suby on.”

Time to ask her about Kathryne Brazil? Something told Skip to wait.

She certainly wasn’t ready to ask about the skull and robes.

Lenore said: “God, I miss Geoff! But I’m doing a little better. I’m handling it, I think.” She blew her nose.

When the crime lab and Rountree had gone, Skip asked Lenore to go through the house.

“Would you mind going with me?”

“Okay.”

And without asking, she handed the baby to Skip.

Skip wondered if she’d have done that with a male cop.

But the little girl cuddled sweetly, so she could hardly be mad.

It was a funny thing. Skip had read somewhere that most police officers, queried as to why they’d chosen their jobs, said they “wanted to help.” How often, she thought, do you really get that opportunity? It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t busting scumbags, but there was something satisfying about following Lenore from room to room, holding little Caitlin.

Lenore went through her jewelry box; her underwear drawer, where she’d stashed a wad of cash; her medicine cabinet, where she had what she called “prescription drugs”; and her living room, where her TV and VCR reposed.

Skip noticed that some of the candles from the other night were still in place. “You must like candles.”

“Ummf.”

The altar had been dismantled, but some of its accoutrements were scattered about the room, including the pentacle plate. “How unusual!” Skip said, picking it up as if to admire it. “What’s it for, exactly?”

“It’s my lucky star.” Lenore gave her a warm smile. “A friend gave it to me.”

So much for innocently teasing out cult information. Yet Lenore didn’t seem particularly rattled. She gave Skip a puzzled look, absently holding her arms for Caitlin. “It looks as if everything’s here.”

“Did Geoff give you anything to keep? A book, perhaps?”

“No, why?”

“You must think this has something to do with his death—you asked to speak to me.”

Lenore took a moment to answer. “I don’t know. Maybe I do. It’s funny, I didn’t think about it. I just saw you at Geoff’s funeral and I thought of you.” She paused, turning the idea over in her head. “You’re the only cop I know.”

That was New Orleans—you talked to whom you knew, and you just about always knew someone.

Lenore genuinely seemed to like her. And she had asked for Skip—like a good little citizen—when she discovered her burglary. Could it all be an act?

Easily,
she thought. “So me a favor, okay?” she said. “Don’t post about this on the TOWN.”

The girl actually looked puzzled. “Really? Why not?”

* * *

I had imagined him dead so many hundreds of times, and yet I could not have conceived of the horror of it. I must have seen two hundred dead bodies by that time, but when it is someone you know, no matter how much you may have hated him—and for good reason—no matter how much he may have hurt someone you love deeply, you love life more. It is a fact of biology, of our DNA, and is perhaps as simple and basic, as ignoble in the end, as the urge to rut.

Whatever my mind told me—my good, rational, U. Va., white male mind— I was ill at the sight of him, would have given anything to pluck out the bullet and repair the torn flesh.

I believe Marguerite felt the same. She cried torrents, as if he had not made every moment of her waking life a living hell. She was beautiful in her grief, her despair not for Leighton, but for the same thing for which I grieved—for the rawness of life itself. And perhaps for her child; I cannot say that I will ever really know what went on in Marguerite’s mind, only that she is a force of nature.

She was magnificent today. I believe if I had seen her for the first time in that church, in her severely chic widow’s weeds, instead of so many years ago in the Dream Palace, she would have had the same effect. Cole Terry, on the other hand, is rather a horse’s ass.

PEARCE HAD WRITTEN a little bit of “Regrets,” the thing he cared about, as a sort of warm-up to working on the story about the murder. He really did need to get started on that.

Because this was the story that was going to resurrect his entire career. And his life. He knew how to do it now.

He could scrap the damn stupid screenplay he was working on—about the eighteenth story in as many years—and turn this one into a movie. And it would sell too, because it would make national news and maybe People Magazine, which everyone knew was the bible of every producer in Hollywood.

The plan was simple. He could hardly believe he’d been so brilliant as to think of it—it really did kill quite a few birds with one stone.

(“If you’ll excuse the expression,” he said to himself, stroking his mustache devilishly.)

Who first?
he thought.

But there was really no competition.

Without even calling first, he drove to Lenore’s. She had decided late last night, at the TOWN dinner, to call in sick again today.

“Pearce!” she squealed. “I was okay last night, wasn’t I?” She seemed surprised to see him. “I mean, I know I was weepy, but under the circumstances—”

He took her hand. “I was worried about you, that’s all.”

“You’re such a sweetheart. Honestly, I think Kit’s wrong about the TOWN. All my best friends are on it—I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

He had to get her talking, get her loose. “I thought you might want to take a walk.”

“Oh. Well, I kept Caitlin home today. She’s asleep.”

“Let’s have a beer then. I want you to relax.”

She came back with two beers, smiling for a change. That wasn’t especially like Lenore. He wondered if she’d dropped something. Maybe Prozac. The whole world was on Prozac these days. “You’re such a good friend to me,” she said.

She sat beside him on the sofa, rather than in one of the chairs. Did that mean what he thought it did? He put out a hand and let it rest on her neck for a millisecond. Gently, he began to massage her. “I was thinking last night how stressed out you must be.”

“Neetsie too. She lost a brother.”

“You lost your best friend. Maybe that’s worse.”

She settled into his working hand, adjusted her body to accommodate it. “I’ve been thinking about Geoff a lot.”

“We all have.”

“I was so mean about stuff.”

“Oh?”

“Sex, I mean. I never wanted to have sex with him.”

“Why don’t you put your head in my lap? I can’t get to your other shoulder.”

She complied.

“I mean, what would it have hurt? I can’t help it. I feel so guilty about it.”

“You and Geoff didn’t have sex?”

“Not very much.” She giggled. “Not if I could help it.”

“But you did something even more important.”

“What?” She lifted her head she was so surprised; the young were absurdly single-minded.

“You confided in each other.”

She lowered her head. “Oh. Well, yeah, we did.”

Lenore hadn’t realized he was such a big teddy bear—he was just Bigeasy, TOWN guru. But not really the uncle type.

She was glad she’d spent most of the afternoon cleaning up after the burglary. It was sweet of him to check up on her; she hadn’t really thought he was that good a friend. But she shouldn’t have doubted. The TOWN was the village and he was the village elder; it was natural he should call on her. It made her feel warm and fuzzy, almost as if she’d had to lose Geoff to find out she had other friends. Usually she was so busy with Caitlin she didn’t have much time left over.

I must take time
, she thought.
I have to start a new life.

Geoff had filled up a lot of holes for her. He had always been there when she wanted some oysters, wanted to go to a movie.

For now, the beer was really very relaxing. And it was nice of Pearce to rub her neck, something Geoff never did. He was really a very thoughtful man and there were so few thoughtful men in her life. In fact, no men at all unless she counted her father.

Lying on her stomach, she felt Pearce pat her upper back, almost like burping a baby. “You’ll get over it, Lenore. We’ve all lost somebody valuable but we’ll all get over it.”

She realized she was crying.

Astonished, she sat up. “I wasn’t crying for Geoff. I was crying for me.”

“Well, it’s only natural.”

“No, you don’t understand. I was feeling sorry for myself because I realized that without Geoff, days could go by and I’d never see another adult except the people at the store.”

“Young lady, you’re going to have to get out more.”

“What’ll I do? What do people do who’ve just lost someone close?”

“Let’s have another beer, shall we?”

She went to get a pair of them, debating whether to tell him about the burglary, but in the end deciding against it. She was so damned tired of always seeming the victim!

When Pearce had taken a healthy sip—in fact, slugged down about a third of the bottle—he said, “I’ll tell you what you can do. You can keep an old man company every now and then.”

“You’re not old.” She knew he was just being nice, that he didn’t need company and had no intention of hanging out with her.

“I’m old and I’m lonesome.”

Lonesome. Now that was something else. Did he find her attractive?

He must
, she thought with sudden interest.
Of course he does. Why wouldn’t he?

But put in that context, he was old. She couldn’t… no, she just couldn’t possibly… he was nice and everything, but he was her dad’s age.

“It’s sweet that you and Geoff could confide in each other. I envy you that.”

“You don’t… uh… have anybody…?”

“Come on. Who’d want to tell me their secrets?”

“Well, you’re a nice-looking man.”

“But do I have an honest face?”

“Sure.”

“Well, tell me something. Did you and Geoff talk much about the flashbacks he was having?”

“We talked about things a lot. Thoughts. Stuff on the TOWN.”

“Did he ever say anything to you about a journal he was keeping?”

Something clicked with Lenore; something Langdon had asked, about Geoff giving her something to keep. “He kept a journal? He never mentioned it, but… do
you
know something about it?”