Deaths of Jocasta (12 page)

But desire could not long remain absent. I put my arms around her, pulling her tightly to me, wanting the taut edge of passion to blunt my thoughts. Joanne responded to my need, her kisses no longer gentle, but heavy, fierce. She pushed me back so that I lay across the stump, feeling its rough ridges as her weight pressed down on me.

She opened my shirt, exposing my breasts to the morning light and the touch of her hands. Leaving my mouth wet and open, she moved her lips to my nipples, tonguing them as her hands undid my pants.

I felt the pressure of her hand cover me, first over the cotton of my underwear, then flesh on flesh, her fingers twining in my hair. Her other hand pulled my pants down, pinning me between the cool roughness of the stump and the warm smoothness of her hand spreading my lips. Her mouth was on my stomach, moving down. Then her tongue went between my lips, her hands pushing on my thighs, spreading my legs open.

I gasped at her probings, the suck and tickle of her lips, the breeze that pulled at the wet spots her movement left open to it. I shuddered, then unbidden, through the relaxation of sensual pleasure, the stark image of the woman eaten and flayed by the creatures of the night struck me, catching and jerking my thoughts away from the present morning to the past night.

I lay still, trying to push the macabre image aside, to immerse myself in the merely physical. But I couldn’t. The harder I tried to thrust her memory aside, the more insistent the image became. Until I sat halfway up, to tell Joanne to stop.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just don’t seem able to…” I trailed off. Stop thinking of a dead woman.

“Want me to try something different?” she offered.

“No, that’s okay.”

“Is it something I did?”

“No,” I answered quickly, not wanting her to think it was her failure, when it was mine alone. “No, you’re great. It’s me. I can’t help thinking…about the scene in the woods.”

“I see,” she replied. “Try something for me?”

“Sure, if you want. But you really don’t need to waste—”

“I’m not wasting anything,” Joanne cut me off. “Lie back down.” I did. “Watch the trees, the light through the branches. Now, the only thing you can think of is what I do between your legs. I want you to concentrate on that. Understand?”

“Yes,” I replied.

I felt Joanne’s mouth cover me, warming where the breeze had threatened to cool. Then her tongue, a hard spot in the midst of her warmth. I closed my eyes, feeling only what she was doing to me, the pure carnal pleasure of her long strokes moving against me. Up again and away, until all I knew were a few inches of flesh and the rising heat from her friction. Then she touched me, held me, sent a bolt of sensation through me, a feeling that was pleasure, but more than that, release, a powerful relinquishing of tension, holding me until I had to jerk up and roll away from her, having nothing more to let go of.

I lay motionless, gradually becoming aware of the call and cry of morning birds, and Joanne beside me, holding me.

“Thank you,” I finally said.

“I like you, Micky,” she replied. It was the best thing she could have said. Then she pulled a handkerchief out of one of her pockets and gently wiped me off. She stood up. “Time to head back. The others will be looking for us before they leave.”

“What about you?” I asked as I sat up.

“You owe me.”

“Of course I do. But aren’t you…?” I asked.

“A bit. Alex and I made love earlier. She knows to expect it whenever I have to go look at dead people.”

“Oh,” I said, nonplused at her admission. “I feel like I took advantage of you,” I finally said.

“Hardly. Remember, I offered.”

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t.”

“Micky, needs and emotions are such a tangle, particularly sex, at times, it’s impossible to say who’s right or wrong. Do you feel used?”

“No, I don’t. I feel a hell of a lot better than I did an hour ago.”

“So do I. Why don’t we leave it at that?”

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I think Danny’s going to hang around for a while. But I know Alex and Nina want to get out of here as soon as they can,” she said as we started walking back to the house.

“Poor Nina,” I said, remembering the abject terror on her face as she stumbled from the woods. “Nothing like walking into the scene of a horror movie.”

We were back on the lawn. I could see Danny and Elly over near their car. Then Cordelia, Alex, and Nina appeared from around the house carrying suitcases. We walked up to the cars, Joanne’s parked next to Danny’s, Cordelia’s several yards away.

Danny eyed the bottle of Scotch that I was carrying back with me. I put it in her trunk.

“Here, you look like you need this more than I do,” I said.

She picked up the bottle, examined it, then shrugged her shoulders and put it back in the trunk.

“Have you had any sleep at all?” Cordelia asked, coming up behind me.

“No. I couldn’t sleep. It’s okay. I’m used to these kinds of hours,” I joked to hide my discomfort at her presence, sure it was obvious I just had sex with Joanne.

“You look tired,” she said.

“So do you,” I replied, glancing at her. Her hair was wet and brushed back from a recent shower, but her eyes were bloodshot and circled.

“I am. I thought I would catch up on my sleep this weekend.”

“Go home and take a nap,” I advised. I didn’t like to see her so tired, no glint in her blue eyes.

“You heading back?”

“No, I’m going to stay out here and help Emma. Clean up and stuff.”

“Come on, C.J., time to blow this joint,” Alex called to her.

“Take care, Micky,” she said.

“You, too,” I answered, then half-turned, pretending it was perfectly okay for Cordelia to leave, that our good-bye wasn’t important. Too late, I saw her start to lift her arms to hug me, then quickly drop back, when I moved away. She went back to her car.

“Get home safely,” Elly said as she got in. Nina joined her in the back seat.

Alex hugged Joanne good-bye. Then, with an indecipherable glance at me, she said, “See you back in town, Micky. Don’t get into any trouble. So long, Danny.” Then she got into Cordelia’s car.

It doesn’t count, Alex, I silently said to the disappearing car. This morning doesn’t count. It wasn’t a rough act of passion, adultery, if you will. It was the only way to stop my hands from shaking.

Joanne, Danny, and I looked at each other. A cop, a lawyer, and a P. I. We could be a TV series. Except none of us looked plastic enough.

“Get to bed, Mick,” Danny said. “No one wants to see your face around here.”

“Good morning to you, too, dear Danno,” I answered.

“Anything going on?” Joanne asked, with a nod of her head in the direction of the thicket where the dead woman lay.

“They carted her away almost an hour ago,” Danny said. “The police are combing the woods. Looks like some mother’s going to know for sure what happened to her daughter.”

Joanne nodded somberly.

“Not much really for us to do. Emma Auerbach can handle these guys,” Danny continued.

Joanne and Danny didn’t need to stay. I knew they were doing it out of friendship.

“Let’s see if we can find some coffee,” I said, leading the way to the kitchen. I left Joanne and Danny there while I went to change my clothes. That would make it less obvious that I had been up all night. After scrubbing my face and brushing my teeth, I headed back to the kitchen. More people were there, some of the policemen, most of the college kids. Rachel was fixing coffee.

Conversation was tired and inconsequential. No one wanted to talk about why we were gathered in the kitchen. The guests that hadn’t left last night were going now.

The aftermath of death can be so banal. Coffee, food, getting home, the weather. Or perhaps it is death that makes the details that follow seem so minor.

Most of the police left sometime late in the morning. Joanne and Danny soon followed them. I spent the day working with the college kids, cleaning up the remains of the aborted party. None of us went near the woods.

At around five, Rachel told me to go see Emma in her study. When I got there, she was tearing a check out of her checkbook and handing it to one of the college students. She motioned for me to sit while she finished paying the last two of them.

I suddenly realized how tired I was as I sat waiting for her. I looked around the room, attempting to keep myself from nodding too obviously. Then I noticed a check on Emma’s desk with a signature I recognized. Cordelia James, it said. The check was made out to the pro-choice group that Emma worked with. According to Rachel, Emma’s mother had known Margaret Sanger. Working for reproduction rights was a family tradition. Of course Cordelia would be donating to pro-choice with her clinic picketed as it was. She could afford it.

Rhett startled me by saying good-bye. I shook his hand and mumbled some appropriate farewell (I hope).

The students left, leaving me with Emma. Her head was bent over her checkbook, writing what I presumed to be my check.

She looked up, tearing out and handing the check to me in one swift motion. I put it away without looking at it.

“Did you get any sleep last night?” she asked.

“A little,” I hedged.

“Do you want a ride back? Rachel and I decided that we would leave today. No one feels like staying here. I could get one of the students to drive your car back.”

“No, that’s okay. I’m fine,” I lied. I didn’t want Emma to know how tired I was. I stood up to go, before my nodding head betrayed me.

“Micky,” she called as I started to leave. “Thank you for all you’ve done.”

“It wasn’t much.”

“Still…I do wish we had gotten a chance to talk.”

“Yes, so do I,” I said. “I’ll see you in the city, sometime,” I added as my farewell.

“I’d like that.” Emma’s voice trailed me into the hallway.

I went to my room, moving quickly to keep my weariness at bay. I threw my clothes into a suitcase and without even a final glance around, I went out, stopping only for a hasty good-bye to Rachel.

Then I was in my car and heading back to the city. I don’t know how I managed to stay awake driving over the Causeway. The only thing I distinctly recall was driving on Elysian Fields and being struck with the incongruity of the name, with a dead body so close in my memory. Was there a paradise waiting for her? And how had she ended up so close to where I had stood only a few hours before? What had I almost seen?

I was too tired to think about it.

The image of the dead woman continued to haunt me. I had stayed with her too long on that night to let go of her easily. I needed something to distract me. Bars and casual sex came to mind, but I talked myself out of it, wanting to be sober when Joanne called to tell me what had happened to the young woman.

On Thursday I got my distraction. A phone call from Cordelia. Rather a message on my machine, asking me to call her. Her work number, I assumed, since I didn’t recognize it. I had stared at her home number, unable to call, so many times that I had it memorized. Even though it was evening, I called the number she had left. I let it ring ten times before giving up.

I wasted a considerable amount of time trying to decide whether or not to call her at home. I finally, after chastising myself for being an indecisive wimp, convinced myself to wait until tomorrow and call her at the number she had left.

I called the next morning, at what I hoped was early enough to be professional, but not so early as to seem anxious.

Dr. James was with a patient. I left my name and number. Then I debated as to whether I should stay around my apartment or deliberately not be there for her call. If this was love, maybe I was fortunate to have avoided it for so long.

The phone rang. I started to grab it, then stopped and let it ring three full rings before I picked it up.

“M. Knight, P.I.,” I answered, trying to sound cool and businesslike.

“Hi, Micky. Cordelia.”

“Hi, how are you?”

“I’m—” Then she broke off, talking to someone in the background. It sounded like a discussion about medication.

“Busy, I gather,” I said when I heard her back on the line.

“Yes.” Then there was an awkward pause. She continued, “I need a private investigator.”

I almost said, “And you’re hiring me?” What I did say was, “Why?”

“Can we meet? I’d prefer not to discuss some things over the phone.”

“All right. When and where?” I was hoping she would say tonight, my place.

“How about Monday? Here at the clinic?”

“Is that what this is about?”

“More or less,” she answered. “I’ll fill you in on Monday. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” I replied. There was nothing else to say. We set a time for Monday and she gave me directions. And that was that.

I stared at the receiver and wondered what Cordelia wanted me for and how to pass the time until I found out. Monday. I put the receiver down.