Identical (8 page)

But she was starting to lose faith in the myth or the legend or the fairy tale, whatever you called it, by which she’d been operating, the belief that Heather would ‘calm down,’ as Evon put it to herself, and love Evon as she wanted to be loved. Life was much too cruel to go through it alone. So she was here. And tomorrow when she awoke she’d believe it all again. But for now, the last glass of champagne had made her feel like a seer or an oracle who looked through the smoke called the future unable to make out any comforting shapes.

Tim saw the first of Hal’s ads about Paul and the murder Monday afternoon, when he put aside his book of myths and turned on the early news at 5 p.m. He’d given up on the local TV journalism years ago-it was all about Chihuahuas hunting lobsters, or Jesus appearing on a grilled cheese sandwich-but he was excited to find himself with a role in current events. At his age, he was accustomed to feeling irrelevant.

Paul’s lawsuit had made headlines for a couple of days, and now Hal was hitting back. Tim watched the commercial in amazement. A piece of paper that could have just as easily been obliterated by the seepage in his basement was now made to look like holy writ. The camera zoomed in sideways on the police report, then jumped first to the header that read “Greenwood County Sheriff’s Police,” then the date and finally “Paul Gianis” in the box for “Witness.” The words attributed to Paul blackened to boldface and then rose off the page, all while some unseen woman with a scolding voice asked if we wanted a liar for mayor. Tonight the commercial was shown again a minute later as part of the news. Tim turned away from the screen with a small turmoil in his gut. Not a word in the ad was untrue. But he still didn’t feel quite right about it.

Tim was reconsidering all of this as he looked between the little leaded darts of stained glass in his bayed front window, already bundled in his woolen overcoat and wearing a felt hat. The BMW pulled up to the curb and he locked up and lumbered out.

“All of four blocks,” he told Evon, putting on his seat belt, “but the newcomers don’t shovel their front walks. I’m too damn old for mountain climbing.” There had been a serious snow last week, the first in a couple of years. When Tim grew up here, it got to twenty below for days in the winter and snowed like hell whenever it warmed up. No more. Right after the flakes stopped falling, young Dorie Sherman across the street had been out with her little guy, showing him the drifts, which he’d never seen.

Evon asked for more detail on the woman they were going to see.

“Not a lot to say,” Tim answered. “Georgia Lazopoulos. Georgia Cleon now. Paul’s girlfriend back then. Her dad was the priest at St. D’s.”

“The Greek priests marry?”

“Orthodox, right. But only before they’re ordained. Sometimes makes for a slow course through the seminary.”

“Where I came from, the ministers’ kids were mostly crazy.”

“She was a nice girl, so far as I remember. Sincere. You read the report I sent?”

“I tried. But it was hard to make out much on the fax.”

“She talked her head off on the initial canvass. Said Dita and Paul seemed to have words the day she was killed. That’s the kind of stuff you wanted me to dig up, right?”

“Exactly. Did she tell the cop that because it seemed odd?”

“Not hardly. Cop said to tell him everything she remembered and she did, even how many pastries she ate. But I thought may as well talk to her. Given I’m billing hourly and trying to work off that retainer.”

Evon slapped his hand, and Tim laughed.

“Turn here,” he told her. Georgia was in the same little bungalow she’d bought with her ex-husband, Jimmy Cleon. Jimmy had been her rebound after Paul, glib and good-looking, but he’d been on drugs all along and she didn’t know it until the wedding silver disappeared, not much after the honeymoon. At least that was the story. Since Georgia was the priest’s daughter, everybody talked about her.

When her father had been pushed out at St. D’s, he’d lost the parish house and moved in with her. Father Nik had gone odd. Brain tumor, as Tim remembered. The surgery had saved him, but he was never quite the same, and he’d had a stroke by now, too. Georgia’s mom had passed while she was in high school, so it was just her and her loopy old dad, exactly the fate Tim was still hoping to save his daughters from, who were always on him to move out to Seattle where they were.

“Does she know I’m coming?” Evon asked when they parked. He’d motioned her into a space down the street, where they could maneuver over the black ruts driven into the snow. In this neighborhood, parking in the winter could be a perilous act. The city plows never got to these small streets and homeowners spent hours shoveling their spaces, protecting them with lawn chairs or those orange cones filched from road crews. The last fistfight Tim had gotten into, more than forty years ago, was when some joker pulled into his space as soon as he went to put away his shovel. But it was 3:30 and there was still a fair amount of parking here while most people were at work.

“Yeah. Said we were working for Hal. She didn’t sound pleased, but then again, she didn’t say no. Seemed to remember me.”

“Who could forget you?” Evon asked. “Tall, dark and handsome.”

He laughed. He was liking this Evon a good deal.

The woman who greeted them at the door was barely recognizable to Tim. Age had been unkind to her, had coarsened her skin and stolen the life from it, and like many of the girls in this neighborhood, she’d put on an awful lot of weight. She had been pretty, as Tim recalled, very pretty, and looking close you could see the remnants of that cheerful appealing face within a pudding of flesh. Maria had gotten pretty hefty, too, truth be told, not that he had ever thought much about that. In a long marriage, the present matters less, at least it did to him. Every day they’d been together was there in both of them, good days mostly. But he could only see Georgia as she was, and her appearance seemed to say she’d lost all connection with the girl she’d been. There was just this person who looked much shorter now, in a droopy shirt and leaving you to wonder what illusions made her put on stretch pants.

Tim reintroduced himself, mentioning neighbors he thought Georgia might recall, then asked how her father was doing. She made a face.

“You’ll see,” she said. “He wanders around here like he’s on a treasure hunt. My biggest problem is to keep him from picking up the phone. He gets on with these solicitors from like the Police Benevolent Fund and talks for an hour and promises them thousands. I finally just had to give him a pad of checks from a closed account. He loves to write checks. The big shot.”

She waved them into the dark living room. There were several beautiful icons on the wall, with their elongated flat look, and a lot of photos of Greece-the royal blue water and arid mountains-apparently taken on a family trip. Maria had wanted to go when the girls were young, but it was one more thing that got sucked under in the riptide after Katy’s death.

After his own wife died, Father Nik was overwhelmed by all the work of the parish and had needed Georgia to stay nearby. He hadn’t thought much of a girl going off to college anyway. She’d gotten a year of bookkeeping training and still worked in the headquarters of the big bank where she’d started at nineteen, which was now owned by an even bigger bank. She was the chief teller, counting other people’s money from 7 to 3 every day.

She brought them each a glass of water from the tap, then settled heavily on the print sofa. Evon sat beside her while Tim took an armchair. The TV was on and Georgia for a second couldn’t look away from some account of the latest goings-on with Britney Spears, who’d been hospitalized after locking herself in a room with her son.

“What a runny mess she’s turning into,” Georgia said, “and with everything she’s got.” She continued to gaze, enthralled. Her attitude was just like the Greeks with their gods, Tim decided, looking in on the life that was bigger than life, these grand figures whose triumphs were the stuff of dreams and whose hubris led to destruction so complete it made you happy to be living small. When the show went to commercial, Georgia clicked it off. But she pointed at the TV, an old walnut console, with the remote.

“I’ve been watching Hal’s ads,” she said, and her mouth soured. “I’m sure he sent you out here, thinking I’m the bitter old witch who’ll just crap on the guy who dumped her, but it’s not going to happen. I’ll tell you right now, I don’t believe Paul had anything to do with Dita’s murder.” The wide figure on the sofa tightened with these declarations, gripping her arms close to her body.

“Can’t say I’m surprised to hear that,” Tim answered. “You wouldn’t have spent all that time with somebody you figured for a murderer, right? But now and then people have another side nobody sees. Hal’s got his opinions and Paul decided to sue him for speaking his mind, so here we are. None of us was there when Dita was murdered. We just want to know what you remember. No desire for you to make anything up.”

Her brows were thick and she squinted at Tim a little, trying to figure out whether to believe him. He could see what had happened with her. Georgia was a little like a dog that had been beaten too much. She still had no idea what she’d done to bring all these troubles on herself, so she’d learned to distrust everyone.

“Well, I don’t really remember much after all this time,” Georgia said. “You know. The event stands out. How often are you with a girl and she turns up dead a few hours later, murdered no less? But who knows with the rest of it? What’s it been? Twenty-five years at least.”

“Of course,” said Tim. “But memory can be funny. Sometimes you can say to a gal, just an example, but years later, do you remember what dress you were wearing that day? And they do.”

“I do,” said Georgia instantly. She smiled for the first time since they’d come through the door. “It was a little blue gingham sundress. I looked good in it, too.” Her quick laughter drove her back into the sofa. She was, very briefly, pleased with herself.

“I’m sure,” Tim answered. Beside Georgia on the sofa, Evon had relegated herself to the role of taking notes. Most of the city homicide dicks she knew weren’t much on interviewing technique. They’d come in and ask a few questions with their faces turned to one side, waiting for the moment when they could say, ‘Don’t bullshit me, if you don’t tell the truth you’re going to jail.’ But Tim was earnest and kind. It was like talking to somebody’s grandfather who was in a rocking chair on his front porch.

“I’ll tell you something else I remember,” she said. “You may not care to hear it, but when I saw that commercial, saying Paul lied to the police, it pretty much came back to me. That was exactly what Paul told me that night. That he was going to meet Cass at Overlook? I can’t tell you if he did or he didn’t, but I remember his plans.”

Evon felt jolted.

“Any reason that stands out in your memory?” she asked.

Georgia turned to her, plainly feeling challenged. “Yeah, because I was really surprised. It was a Sunday night, and my dad always went off with the men’s club and that meant we had the run of the house. Guys being the way they are, Paul always liked to take advantage of that.” She nodded decisively, like she’d put Evon in her place, which she had.

Behind Georgia, leaning forward in an easy chair, Tim let his fair eyes rise to Evon. He didn’t want her breaking his rhythm, and eased back in.

“Did Paul say why he wanted to go out there?”

“I could guess. He needed to talk to Cass about Dita, I think. The two of them had an argument about her once a week. He was afraid Cass was going to marry her and tear his family apart.”

Evon rolled over the details. It wasn’t as bad as she’d first feared. Maybe Paul had met Cass at Overlook and hatched some kind of plan. But one of them, perhaps both, had left there soon and killed Dita.

“I don’t want you to think I’m taking Paul’s side,” Georgia said. “I’m not. He was a louse to me. You know, women say, ‘He took the best years of my life’? He really did. I was the girl from the neighborhood he was too good for as soon as he finished law school. And I could have had a ton of boys in those days. The way I looked? It still aggravates me. But I’ll tell you the truth. I vote for him. I probably will this time, too.” Georgia looked at her plump hands for a second, trying to discern the meaning of what she had just revealed.

People could get stuck in love, Evon realized, and then never recover. The best love of Evon’s life had come almost a decade ago, with Doreen. They’d had six good months before Doreen was diagnosed, and another year and a half with Evon helping her die. She’d been devastated afterward, in part because the normal times hadn’t lasted long enough to find out what the relationship might have been. She wondered now, if, like Georgia, she had never found her way back from mourning that lost possibility. People didn’t generally think that love could ruin a life. But perhaps. Evon felt her entire body pressed down by the sheer unhappy magnitude of the idea.

“So let’s go back to the day of that picnic,” Tim said to Georgia. “Anything stand out in your memory about Paul that day?”

She snorted. “Well, I remember he bumped into Sofia Michalis. I could just see by the way he was talking to her something was going on. When he broke up with me, he blamed it on this whole thing with Cass being a suspect. He said he was too mixed up with all that happening. But he was married to Sofia within six months. He wasn’t so confused then.”

“Do you recall anything about him and Dita?” Tim asked.

She shook her full face. It wasn’t clear, though, if that was a lack of memory or if she was distracted by the thought of Paul and Sofia.

“One of the officers who talked to you,” Tim told her, “he said that you recalled that Paul seemed to have had words with Dita.”

“Did I?”

Tim reached into his tweed jacket and pulled out the report casually, as if it were just another piece of paper an old fellow would have in his pockets, like a grocery list, or a note about calling his daughter. Georgia spidered her hands on her forehead as she read the highlighted part. Eventually, she started to nod.