I Love You More: A Novel (20 page)

But I think what I miss the most is looking at Daddy. Mama always said he was handsome, and I guess he was, but I never really thought about him that way. He was just my daddy. The longer he’s gone, the harder it is for me to remember what he looked like. That bothers me a lot. Mama threw out most of his pictures, but I hid a few. Sometimes I just stare at the pictures, try to memorize his face and recall its different smiles. I try to remember the way his hair moved in the breeze, what he
felt
like, or what he smelled like. I try to drown the Daddy dying memories by making movie memories. I pretend I’m watching a movie in my mind, and as if I’m holding an imaginary remote, I push the Pause button to freeze Daddy in time.

In one of my movie memories, I’ve gone on a picnic with Mama and Daddy to a park very much like Rainy Cove Park. We’re playing hide-and-go-seek. While Daddy counts, I run from tree to tree, bush to bush, looking for the perfect hiding place. He is almost to ten when I find the perfect bush. I duck behind it and hold my breath. It seems like it’s taking forever for him to find me. I hear him calling his usual variations of my name. One time, he gets very close. I fixate on the toe of his hunting boot. The dull brown leather is cracked in places; a hole has worn through. I remember thinking those boots
were
Daddy, just like the Red Sox baseball cap he wore whenever he didn’t feel like taking a shower or dressing nice.

“Hey, Pip-squeak (one that is small or insignificant),” he says. “I know you’re here somewhere.”

His shoes disappear from my view. I hear them crunching the leaves near me. Stop. Crunching again. Moving away. I wait a little while, then another little while, just to be sure he is far enough away, and jump from the bush.

“Olly olly oxen free,” I cry as I run. I’m out of breath by the time I get to the tree we designated as the safety zone, but I manage to add, “You didn’t catch me, so I won.”

Daddy laughs. “You sure did.” He comes to me, hikes me up onto his shoulders, and holding my ankles against his chest, runs and runs.

I hit the Pause button.

My favorite dictionary says that happiness is a feeling or showing of pleasure or contentment. By this definition, happiness is
banal
(so lacking in originality as to be obvious or boring). That day, as I sat on my daddy’s shoulders, felt his neck between my thighs, his hands on my ankles, and cupped his sweaty forehead in my palms, I was beyond happy. I was ecstatic.

Sometimes one of those other memories pops into my head. Like there’s this one still life of a couple of old paint cans, a rusty hammer, and a beat-up kid’s sand pail, green with a yellow handle
that randomly appears. When it shows up, instead of being ecstatic it’s there, or even happy, I feel scared and very sad. I try to get rid of it by shaking my head, but instead of finding its way out, the paint cans, hammer, and pail jump out of the still life and bang against my brain over and over, and all I can do to settle them down is turn off the lights in my room, close the curtains, crawl under my covers, curl into a ball, and lie there in the dark very, very still until the image, like Daddy, disappears. And right before I go to sleep, I lie to myself.

“I’ll be just fine,” I say.

THREE
Deception

(The Events Following the Murder)

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

—
L. FRANK BAUM

Beautiful, lucky, sorry, gun, motive, liar, dumb ass
.

Those last two words were directed solely at me. Bottom line: I had fallen for Diana Lane. Hard. What the fuck was wrong with me? Hell, no one in their right mind would go looking for love or dead bodies on Cooper’s Island, and yet there I was, not even back two years and I had walked head-on into both.

Ironically, the Outer Banks used to be called “The Land of Beginnings” (prophetic?) because it was the place where England first attempted to colonize the Americas. These days, the chamber of commerce boasts of two main attractions: our lighthouses and the Wright brothers. In fact, we’re so proud of these boys that even our license plates bear the slogan “First in Flight.” But like most places we’ve chosen to forget our humbler roots. Cooper’s, for instance, was once a fisherman’s village, and it’s still the least inhabited of the barrier islands. A majority of folks on the island at any given time are tourists, there for a week or two, but in the off-season we’re left with a small, insular group of folks who rarely if ever nod to you on the street. But don’t be fooled; they know your name, people, and entire sordid history. For the most part, single residents fall into three categories: men, women over sixty-five, and children under eighteen. Most women
worth a second glance are either married or not interested in the opposite sex. We actually have a decent gay and lesbian population. What’s left is a hodgepodge of folks, some who never left (Mack and his wife fall into this grouping), some who missed the place (Klide) even though they’d never admit it, and some who chose the place for personal reasons, misfits and outcasts looking to be left alone.

Instead, I met Diana Lane.

Although motive and opportunity, the two indicators we law enforcement types swear by, pointed in one solid direction, my cock pointed in another. Mack kept saying it was only a matter of time before we found that one fatal piece of evidence that would blow the case wide open. As it turned out, he was half right.

We were about four months into the investigation, and we weren’t any closer to catching our murderer. Diana Lane hadn’t tested positive for either blood splatter or gunshot residue, Julie Lane’s alibi appeared rock solid, and with the exception of a few untraceable cell numbers all their phone records were clean. The three of them had steadfastly stuck to their stories: They’d never met or even heard of one another; they had no idea their husband had other wives; they didn’t know anyone who’d want to hurt their husband. The only possible hole was Roberta Miles’s alibi. She said she was driving to a writing retreat at the time of the murder. The folks running the retreat verified that she arrived just before noon. Both a waitress and the cashier at the Woodlands confirmed that a woman fitting Roberta Miles’s description had been there for breakfast. Likewise, a waiter at the Little Switzerland Inn remembered serving her tea. She’d engaged him in a “delightful conversation about the lovely, smooth notes of our English breakfast tea, and how unfortunate it was that Americans seemed to prefer Earl Grey and its distasteful oil of bergamot.” She’d left a large tip at both establishments, but when pushed to verify the exact date or time she was there, neither could be absolutely
sure. Likewise, though her mother verified that she left the house around seven that morning, she later admitted to having been asleep when her daughter left the house.

Then we got a break. A witness came forward, said she’d seen the three of them together: the wives. Lindsay Middleton, a waitress and prelaw student at the University of North Carolina, had served them a late lunch at a restaurant on Franklin Street four months before the murder. She said she’d remembered Diana Lane as soon as she saw her picture on the news but didn’t think much of it until she happened upon photos of Julie Lane and Roberta Miles much later. It isn’t unusual for folks to come forward with so-called important information during a murder investigation, maybe they feel it’s their civic duty or maybe they’re just looking for their fifteen minutes of fame, but this witness appeared reliable. And here’s the kicker: The reservation was made under Julie Lane’s name.

Beautiful, lucky, sorry, gun, motive, liar, dumb ass, wives
.

Our Sunday-morning drive to Research Triangle Park, named for the three cities that anchor it (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill), took less than three hours. Like the weather that day, downtown Raleigh had the cold, gray look associated with most capital cities. Julie Lane lived with her twin boys in a WPA industrial brick building in one of those swanky revitalized neighborhoods on the city’s edges where units probably sold for more than a million dollars before the market crashed. We stood outside the security door and waited for an exiting tenant to provide us access.

A dog barked when we knocked on her door.

“Quiet, Frank,” a woman’s voice said. Light footsteps. A shadow across the peephole.

We flashed our badges. “Police, ma’am,” Mack said.

The turn of the deadbolt.

“Julie Lane?” I asked. “I’m Detective Kennedy and this is Detective
Jones, whom I believe you’ve already met. We’d like to ask you a few questions about your husband’s murder.”

The second Mrs. Lane was both surprised and irritated to see us. I’d encountered similar welcoming expressions from Diana Lane. She didn’t appear to recognize Mack, which wouldn’t be too surprising if she had in fact been distraught that first time they met. From a distance, one might mistake the second Mrs. Lane for the first and vice versa. There was the hair and they were both tall and slim, yet while attractive, the second Mrs. Lane was neither sultry nor damaged. This was a woman in total control of herself and her surroundings.

She invited us inside. “Place, Frank,” she said to a golden retriever. He hobbled over to a dog bed in the living room. From his labored walk, white-haired face, and brittle frame, I could tell he wasn’t long for this world. Poor guy.

Julie Lane didn’t offer us so much as a glass of water or a seat. Obviously she wasn’t from the South. I was struck by the way she moved inside her clothing. Woman and garments shared an ease characteristic of someone who is completely comfortable with her body. An athlete? She wore strappy high-heeled black sandals that exposed delicate feet and carefully painted red toenails. I guessed she wasn’t planning to head outdoors anytime soon. The white turtleneck sweater she sported was neither too tight nor too loose. It casually accented the mounds of her breasts—a little too small for my taste but nonetheless worth notice. Her gray slacks hugged the curve of her ass so perfectly they appeared to have been cut from its mold. It hadn’t dawned on me that Oliver Lane was an ass man. The condo itself was small but open, and tastefully decorated—chic brown leather sofa, chrome-and-glass coffee and end tables, wood floors, bearskin rug, large modern paintings. A fire burned in the gas fireplace. Frank, and a kitschy grouping of Barbie dolls that took up one entire shelf of the bookcase surrounding the fireplace, appeared to be the only blemishes in the otherwise stark, orderly environment.