Dying in Style (15 page)

Does a hangover count? Right. Be sure and tell the examiner you got drunk and passed out last night. That will really help your case. The police will say I murdered Danessa in an alcoholic blackout.

Why was he even asking? Couldn’t the examiner see her pale skin and straggly hair? She looked like she’d crawled out of a train wreck. Or did everyone look like her when facing the polygraph Grand Inquisitor?

“I’m fine,” Josie lied.

“You’ll know the questions before the actual test,” the examiner said cheerfully. “In fact, I’ve written them out. You read them over and think about them. Take your time. I have to make a phone call. I’ll be back.”

He put the clipboard in front of Josie, and she saw a healthy clump of whitish hair in his ears, like a ghostly shrub. Josie wondered if it could be successfully transplanted to his pink scalp. No, it was too wild and wiry. It would look like crabgrass in a zoysia lawn.

A lightning strike of pain hit her head, and Josie tried to gather her scattered thoughts. What was wrong with her? Why was she worried about the guy’s ears? She needed to concentrate on this test.

She studied the clipboard with the questions. Some were no-brainers, even today, when she didn’t have any functioning gray cells: “Is your name Josie Marcus? Were you born in St. Louis?”

Others were fairly straightforward: “Did you touch a red snakeskin belt worth twenty-seven hundred dollars?”

Some frightened her just reading them: “Did you kill Danessa Celedine? Did you strangle Danessa Celedine with the belt?”

What if she answered honestly but the machine thought she was lying? Her stomach did a barrel roll.

Josie looked up. There was a window-sized mirror with an odd silvery glaze on the wall across from her chair. A two-way mirror. She saw a lot of them in the discount stores that she mystery-shopped.

That jolly old liar. The examiner wasn’t making a phone call. He was watching her while she read the questionnaire. She was sure Detectives Yawney and Waxley were back there, too. Josie wondered if her reaction to the clipboard questionnaire was the real test. She was tempted to stick out her tongue at the mirror, but in her current state it might flop out and not go back in.

She tried to read the questions again, but another lightning bolt of pain burned her brain. Josie put her head down on the desk. Should she tell the examiner she was too sick to take the test? Then she’d have to come back here again. She’d probably be sick and sweaty even without a hangover. She wanted to get the test over with.

The examiner came back in the room, smiling and rubbing his hands. “Any questions about the questions? Anything you don’t understand about the test? I want to make sure that you understand everything I’ll be asking you.”

“I understand,” Josie said.

“Good. Let me do a little pretest question, just to show you how it works. I want you to lie to me.”

“What?” Josie’s pounding brain had trouble taking in his words. “You want me to lie on purpose?”

“Riiiight!” The examiner was unbearably chipper. If Josie murdered anyone, it would be this man, right now, for willful and persistent cheerfulness. “Just answer yes or no, but make it a deliberate lie.

“Is your name Josie Marcus?” he asked.

“No,” Josie said. She couldn’t see the results on the examiner’s computer screen, but she heard a printer clack and whir. The examiner handed her a chart with a huge spike sticking up from an almost flat line. Damn! she thought. The thing really leaps up when I lie.

The sweat poured off her in waterfalls now. The hair at her neck was wet. Her hands were slippery. Her head was going to split open any second.

They’re going to catch me, she thought. I can’t escape.
But I haven’t done anything wrong
. She almost shouted it out loud. She had to keep reminding herself.

Josie forgot that hangovers made her feel like a Kafka creature, overwhelmed by doom and guilt. She was a bad mom, a bad daughter, a slacker and a sinner.

“Uh, Josie—I can call you Josie, right?” The examiner gave his guileless smile, but he couldn’t make those hard eyes twinkle.

“I wanted to ask you some pre-interview questions. We want to make sure you don’t give us any false positives for information that has nothing to do with this case. We want to eliminate these now so we don’t get a false positive when the test starts. I don’t have the polygraph going. These questions and answers won’t be on your polygraph test.

“Have you ever murdered anyone besides Danessa Celedine?”

A trick question. “I didn’t murder Ms. Celedine or anyone else. Ever,” Josie said.

“Do you know for sure that you have stolen anything valued in excess of one hundred dollars?”

“No,” Josie said. “I mean yes. I mean I haven’t stolen anything valuable. Sometimes when I sign credit-card receipts, the pens wind up in my purse. But I don’t take them on purpose and they’re mostly giveaways anyway.”

“Have you ever shoplifted anything?”

“No.” Josie could answer that one with confidence. It was a mystery shopper’s biggest temptation, and the fastest way to end a career. She’d never taken so much as a candy bar.

“Have you ever brandished a weapon or otherwise threatened a person with bodily harm?”

“No,” Josie said firmly.

“Have you ever committed any vandalism or other acts of revenge, no matter how minor?”

“No, never.”

“Ever set any fires?”

Josie started to smile. “The only fire I ever set was at Mrs. Mueller’s house. She’s our nosy neighbor. She snitched me out to Mom. Said I was smoking behind the garage when I was fifteen. I found some really nasty dog doo, put it in a paper bag and set the bag on fire on her front porch. Then I rang her doorbell. When Mrs. Mueller saw the smoldering fire, she put her foot right into the big smelly pile. I got grounded for a month with no TV or phone, but it was worth it.”

Josie thought the examiner’s smile might have reached his eyes that time.

It was ten o’clock before they were ready to start the actual lie detector test. Josie had been sitting there for two hours, sick, scared and sweating like a road worker in August. She knew she wasn’t thinking well. Even the easy polygraph questions were difficult to answer.

“Is your name Josie Marcus?” the examiner asked.

She nodded yes. Her head felt like a bowling ball.

“Please answer yes or no.”

“Yes,” Josie said.

“Is your hair brown?”

Was it? Lately, she’d been getting some gray. Josie used a L’Oreal rinse. But her hair was brown, even if it was touched up, wasn’t it? Why hadn’t she thought of that when she’d looked over the questions? Because she couldn’t think.

She looked at her brown hair in the two-way mirror and said, “Yes.” She was screwing this up. She knew it. Josie’s palms were slick with sweat.

“Were you at Plaza Venetia on Wednesday, September sixteenth?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see Danessa Celedine in the store on that day?”

“No.”

“Did you see a salesperson named Marina?”

“Yes.”

“Did you touch a red snakeskin belt worth twenty-seven hundred dollars?”

“Yes.”

Here it comes, Josie thought. Here comes the question that decides everything. She remembered it from the list. Her stomach clenched.

“Did you kill Danessa Celedine?” the examiner asked.

“NO!” Josie shouted. Her head throbbed.

“Did you strangle Danessa Celedine with the belt?”

“No.” She felt calmer this time.

“Do you know for sure who killed Danessa Celedine?”

“No.”

“Did you have Danessa Celedine killed?”

“No.” Josie almost laughed. She couldn’t afford a lawyer, much less a hit man.

“Have you been completely truthful with the detectives as to your knowledge of how Danessa Celedine died?”

“Yes,” Josie said. It was over. She sighed with relief.

“Thank you, Josie. I’d like to ask you those questions again.”

The examiner asked them twice more. Each time he came to the crucial questions, Josie’s heart pounded and her stomach squeezed into a tight ball.

After the third time, the examiner said, “That’s it, Josie. Thank you.” His smile was stillborn. His eyes were steel.

Josie knew she’d failed the polygraph.

She didn’t know what signal the examiner gave to the two-way mirror, but Detectives Yawney and Waxley walked into the polygraph room together. Once again, they looked like a before-and-after photo: The balding Waxley was rumpled as an unmade bed. The handsome Yawney was model-sleek.

They sat down beside her, one on each side of her chair. The examiner stayed at his desk, blocking any run she might make for the door. She was trapped.

“You failed your polygraph,” Detective Yawney said. His jaw was square and manly. He could be an actor playing a homicide detective. Josie wished he was. She wished none of this was real.

“We’d like to read you your rights again and have you sign this Miranda statement. You have the right to remain—”

Josie didn’t let him finish. “I want my lawyer,” she said.

Chapter 15

Josie decided if she ever met the devil, he’d look like Michael Yawney. The detective was darkly elegant. His powers of persuasion were impressive. But what made the man so dangerous was that he appeared to agree with her while twisting her words.

Detective Waxley sat silently at his side, an untidy imp.

“Of course you want a lawyer, Josie,” Detective Yawney said. “That’s your right. We know what happened to Danessa wasn’t planned. If you talk to us now, without a lawyer, we can get you help.”

Detective Waxley nodded.

“I want my lawyer,” Josie said.

“It’s easy to understand what happened. Danessa tried to take away your job. She was going to sue you.” Detective Yawney’s dark eyes were sincere and sympathetic. “Talk to us now, Josie, and I’ll—”

Josie cut him off. “I want my lawyer.”

“Once you get a lawyer, we can’t help you anymore, Josie.” He seemed sad now.

“I want my lawyer.” Josie raised her voice until it was almost a scream. “Get me a lawyer now or I’ll say you refused to despite the Miranda warning.”

“Okay, Josie. You can call your lawyer.”

That’s when Josie realized she didn’t have one.

She speed-dialed Alyce on her cellphone and prayed her friend would be home. For the only time that day, something good happened: Alyce answered her phone.

“Thank God you’re there. It’s Josie. I need a lawyer. Right now.”

“Josie, where are you?”

“At the Venetia Park police station. I flunked the lie detector test.”

“Omigod. What happened? Never mind. Don’t say another word to me or the police. I’ll get you a lawyer right away, I promise. Stay right there. Well, of course you’ll stay there. Hold on. I’ll help you.”

Alyce hung up. Josie could see her friend, blond hair flapping as she ran through the house gathering her purse and coat and giving instructions to her nanny.

There was nothing to do but wait, think and worry. In the dim room, soulless computer lights blinked like fiends’ eyes. Small demons beat her skull with hammers and ran through her stomach with hot iron shoes. Josie’s guilt tormented her with terrible visions of the future. She saw Amelia weeping as her mother was led off to jail. She saw cruel children at the Barrington School taunting her daughter. She saw Amelia growing up angry and alienated until she joined her mother in jail.

And Josie’s poor mother. Jane would never hold her head up again in Maplewood. Mrs. Mueller’s curtains would go into a twitching frenzy. Josie had brought this on the people she loved most.

It was nearly one o’clock when Josie heard voices outside the room and a woman in a navy pin-striped pantsuit strode through the door.

Josie’s jaw dropped. It was Alyce, except this woman looked nothing like her fluffy friend. Alyce’s floating hair was pulled into a severe chignon. She carried a black Dun-hill briefcase. Her crisp white shirt was impeccable. Supermom had morphed into the Warrior Woman Lawyer. Josie had no idea Alyce could be so commanding.

“I’d like to talk to my client a moment,” Alyce said.

Client? Josie thought.

“Certainly,” Detective Yawney said. He and Detective Waxley started to leave the polygraph room.

“I’d like to talk to my client in a room that doesn’t have a two-way mirror,” Alyce said.

“I don’t know if we—” Yawney said.

“You do,” Alyce said in a take-no-prisoners voice. Josie had heard her use that voice only once before, when a pediatrician’s assistant said the doctor couldn’t see a coughing baby Justin until next Wednesday. An appointment suddenly opened at three that same afternoon.

“That room we passed when I came here will do fine,” Alyce said. “I didn’t see any other exits or windows in there. You can wait outside the door.”

They were ushered into a small, windowless room painted institutional green. The two women sat at a scratched table bolted to the floor. After the door shut, Josie said in a frantic whisper, “Alyce, what are you doing here?”

“Representing you. All the lawyers I know, including my husband, are at some big conference for two days. You’ll have to make do with me.”

“But you told the police you’re an attorney. Isn’t that illegal?” Josie said.

“I didn’t say I was a lawyer. I said you were my client. They just assumed I was a lawyer. Don’t worry. I helped put Jake through law school. I took notes for his classes when he slept late. Crim Law was at seven thirty a.m., and he missed it two out of three days a week. I took the final exam for Jake, too. It was a huge class and I slipped in the back unnoticed. I got an A. Also, I watch a lot of crime movies.”

“I don’t—”

“My price is right. I won’t charge you. I did good in there, Josie, didn’t I? You would never guess I was a housewife.”

Josie smiled for the first time all day. “You did terrific. You were tough.”

“I’m serving on six volunteer boards. Two homicide detectives are nothing.”

“Where’d you get that bit about the two-way mirror?” Josie said.

“I saw it in a movie. Any dedicated shopper knows a two-way mirror when she sees one. Listen, Josie, we can’t waste time. You’ve got to follow my lead. Don’t volunteer anything. Don’t talk unless I say so. If I cut you off, stop immediately, even if you’re in the middle of a sentence. Got that?”