Death Before Facebook (Skip Langdon #4) (Skip Langdon Mystery) (The Skip Langdon Series)

by Julie Smith

  “He’s an alcoholic then.”

  “Oh, didn’t I mention that? It’s the main thing, I guess.”

  “I could see that.”

  “It’s why I dumped him.” She wrinkled her nose again. “Well, that and the fact that I couldn’t stand the man after I found out who he really was. You know how people can pretend to be something they’re not?”

  Skip nodded.

  “Men, I mean—when they’re trying to get your attention.”

  “What did he pretend to be?”

  “Oh, someone nice. Caring, as they say nowadays. Sweet and generous. Considerate. Who wouldn’t fall for that?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  It sounds like Steve, except he’s real.

  I hope.

  Honey shrugged. “He married me for my money, of course. He always paid a lot more attention to Marguerite—that should have been a clue.”

  “Marguerite? Geoff’s mother?”

  “I just thought he was one of those guys who always flirts with the wife’s friends—you know what I mean? New Orleans is full of them. But, honestly, looking back on it, I really think he was about half in love with Marguerite.”

  Why is she telling me this?

  “I’ve been thinking about her lately, wondering what’s become of her.”

  “She married a man named Coleman Terry.”

  “Have you seen her?” Something hovered in her eyes.

  “Yes.”

  Honey was quiet for a moment, coming to a decision. Dignity didn’t win out. “Well?” she said. “How does she look?”

  “Like someone whose son has just died, I guess.” Skip tried to keep judgment out of the words.

  “God! I’m so tacky I can’t believe it. Well, I can’t help it, I’ve always wondered about it. Marguerite and Pearce, I mean. Because after Leighton died, I don’t know what happened—my friendship with Marguerite just deteriorated, and so did my marriage.”

  “I had the idea your husband met Marguerite when he went to cover the murder.”

  “Oh, no. The three of us used to hang out together all the time. Leighton wasn’t exactly the type to go boogie at Las Casas. God, Pearce was fun then!” She paused. “But then I guess I was too—that was before I became a do-gooder. I had a great pair of old-lady shoes that I sprayed gold.”

  “Hair down to your waist, I guess.”

  “All that stuff. A drink in one hand, a joint in the other.”

  “I wish I’d been around in the sixties.”

  “Oh, my dear, forget it. If you had been, you wouldn’t be young now.”

  “How did you meet Marguerite?”

  “Well, let me think.” In a moment, she said, “We went to hear her sing—at the Dream Palace, I think. Pearce knew her and took me—that was it. He was impressing me.”

  “And you two hit it off.”

  “Oh, God, yes. Marguerite was wild. I envied her desperately.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because every man’s head turned when she walked into a room.”

  “Oh, come on, you’re not so bad yourself.”

  “And because she’d do anything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I don’t know that I actually saw her do anything off the wall—maybe she just talked a good game. Or maybe it was because she had this weird cop of a husband—no offense. Do you know about Leighton? What a straight arrow. Hair shorter than mine is now. Anyway, she had Leighton and a little kid and she still hung out every night. And she sang! Everybody loves an artist.”

  “What happened after Leighton died?”

  “She just—I don’t know—never wanted to get together anymore. I thought she was depressed. But maybe there was something I didn’t know about.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AND MAYBE THERE’S a lot she didn’t tell me, Skip thought as she pulled up in front of Bigeasy’s building. It was above a laundry, one fine old room with fourteen-foot ceilings, where Pearce worked, and a tiny bedroom, both jammed with ancient books and manuscripts, some on shelves, some merely piled. There were two tall windows that opened from the floor, but for some reason Pearce had them covered so that the place was dark. That would have been depressing enough, but the stink of the mildew that permeated the books and papers mingled with that of alcohol—somewhere, Pearce had left the dregs of a drink.

  He wasn’t a bad-looking man, she thought, about average height and average build, with hair that had turned white and looked good on him. He was slightly doughy around the middle, and his face was a little florid, with a few broken blood vessels, but it wasn’t a bad face, not bad at all. He wore khakis and a faded-out polo shirt. His shoulders were a little stooped.

  Your typical aging Deke, she thought—a very specific New Orleans type. But he wasn’t that, probably wasn’t even from New Orleans.

  An aging reporter was probably much the same. As she thought it, she realized that Honey was right—the man looked sixty, not fifty; she’d never have thought to use the word aging with Honey herself.

  He said, “I was wondering when you’d drop by.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t have people looking out their windows, monitoring my progress.”

  “You overestimate us. There are probably only about eight TOWNspeople in the whole city.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “It just seems like a lot because they’re all such busy-bodies.” He held out a hand, inviting her to sit in a beat-up rocking chair whose caned seat was rapidly coming unwoven. She perched gingerly.

  “They?”

  He smiled, accepting the jibe graciously. “All of us, I guess.”

  “It’s your first murder, I hear.”

  “But not our first death. Somebody committed suicide once, after making a lot of depressed posts and finally erasing everything he’d ever written.”

  Skip said nothing, trying to figure out what Pearce was getting at.

  “Thereby committing virtual suicide first.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  He shrugged. “That’s what people thought.”

  “Doesn’t anybody on the TOWN have a life?”

  “A lot of them don’t, though they’d say they do. It’s just that it consists of parking their butts in the same chair and staring at the same square foot every day all day. The TOWN selects for heavy mental artillery and poor social adjustment. Great verbal skills, not much else. We even joke about it. Did you ever see that New Yorker cartoon of the pooch at the computer terminal? The caption says, ‘On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.’ ”

  “I was wondering about that. But so far most of the people I’ve met seem fairly normal.”

  “You should have met Geoff.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sweet kid. Really sweet. But painfully shy; no idea how to talk to girls—or anybody for that matter. Just not social.”

  “He had a girlfriend.”

  “Yes. Lenore. I wonder if they met online. No, I think they knew each other before. Most of the local TOWNspeople did—that is, they talked each other into getting online. By the way, that suicide wasn’t our only drama. We had a threatened one once. Somebody broke up with a boyfriend—you know, I do believe it was Lenore; maybe she and Geoff did meet on the TOWN, because she had another guy at some point. He unexpectedly dumped her and she turned the TOWN into the Ashland Shakespeare Festival.

  “People from all over the country were sending her virtual chicken soup and giving her strokes and offering to fly out to keep her company—and I don’t mean just guys, either. All kinds of people—” He turned his palms up. “Out of kindness, it would seem.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “Oh, I do. I just think it’s a little odd—don’t you? I doubt any of them had ever seen her or talked to her.”

  “Yes.” Skip sat back in her chair.

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, I think it’s extremely odd.” That didn’t begin to describe what she really thought
of it. “Who was the boyfriend?” she said.

  “Lenore’s? I don’t know if she ever said.”

  “It could have been Geoff, then.”

  He considered. “I suppose. But I really didn’t get that impression.”

  “Or it could have been someone else on the TOWN.”

  He grinned at her. “You’ve got a real talent for small-town, gossip. You’d fit right in.”

  “Actually, it’s my job.” Annoyed at the concept she kept running into—that of TOWN as entire world—she made her voice crisply professional, slightly icy. “Did you know Geoff well?”

  “I guess. The local folk get together now and then.”

  “You’re sort of their guru, I hear.”

  He grinned. “Modesty forbids comment.”

  “I was wondering if Geoff talked to you—about any of his problems, for instance.”

  “He did now and then. Why?”

  “Did he talk about this memory he was trying to retrieve? The murder?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Where were you the morning he was killed?”

  “What is this? I thought you came to ask me about the TOWN.”

  “Oh, I did. And you think somebody on the TOWN murdered Geoff Kavanagh, don’t you?”

  “Young lady, I don’t think I like your tone.”

  “I wonder if you’d answer the question.” She owed him no apology, but she didn’t like her own tone. She had no idea why she was being so rude—it was something about the man’s arrogance, a coldness she sensed, a failure to connect with Geoff and maybe others that was getting to her.

  “I can’t say where I was.”

  “Why not?” Don’t you remember? she wanted to add.

  “It could compromise someone.”

  Skip frowned, but forebore to say anything. Let him stew.

  “I’m really surprised you’re taking this line of questioning.”

  “I have to ask everyone the same thing. But you know more than most people. For instance, you knew Geoff as a little boy. What was he like?”

  “You’re mistaken. I didn’t know him then.”

  “Wasn’t he there when you covered Leighton’s murder? He couldn’t have had a memory of it if he wasn’t.”

  “I see. You know about that, do you?” His brows knit together and his own voice grew cold. “Of course he was there. But he was just a baby, clinging to his mother’s skirts. I didn’t have any impression of him.”

  “You were Marguerite’s friend. Weren’t you an odd choice to cover that story?”

  “Not at all. I’d covered Leighton Kavanagh before—that is, I tried. I worked on a story about police corruption that didn’t pan out.”

  “Marguerite didn’t know about it?”

  “Oh, she knew. She certainly knew. But she didn’t seem to care a lot. I don’t know much about that, to tell you the truth. She never talked about it.”

  “What did she talk about?”

  “Music. Politics. The war and Lyndon Johnson. In those days”—he looked at her like she was a pet dog—“we had a lot of angst.”

  “So she was angst-ridden.”

  “Marguerite?” He seemed surprised. “Maybe she was. I just thought we all were, but thinking back on it, she had a certain—I don’t know—preoccupation about her. Almost a melancholy, like she was perennially worried.” He paused, apparently unsure whether to say what was on his mind.

  Skip waited.

  “Maybe that’s what made her so attractive.”

  “Why would that make a woman attractive?” It wasn’t on the point, but she had to know.

  “You think you could make her happy.”

  “Leighton wasn’t doing that?”

  “Well, they seemed to have precious little in common. I didn’t know Marguerite well, you understand—we saw each other in clubs, and now and then for lunch. Well, for lunch once or twice when we first met.” He smiled ruefully. “But that didn’t go anywhere. When I met Honey—the woman I married—I took her along to hear Marguerite sing, and they got to be friends; then they had lunch together. But we never had Marguerite over to dinner or anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’d have had to have Leighton, of course.”

  “It sounds as if you had a crush on Marguerite.”

  “Oh, God, a bad one. She was the most beautiful, quicksilver, compelling woman I ever saw in my life.” He moved his shoulders heavily, shrugging off his regret. “But she was married, and besides that she wasn’t interested.”

  “Meaning she was interested in someone.”

  “Marguerite was… well, she was a flirt.”

  “Was she having an affair?’

  “With Mike Kavanagh, you mean?’ His voice had a sudden nasty edge. “Not that I know of. I barely knew the man existed until she married him.”

  “Even though you investigated Leighton.”

  “Mike was clean. At least his name never came up in the kickback stories.”

  “Do you see Marguerite now?”

  “Oh, God, no! The last time I saw her was probably the night Leighton died. She leaned on me that night—cried on me like I was her daddy. And after that she never returned any of Honey’s calls, or mine. Honey said it must be because she was depressed.” He looked depressed himself.

  “When Geoff showed up on the TOWN, it must have been quite a shock.”

  “It’s pretty hard to shock somebody as old as I am.”

  “When he started posting about his memories, why didn’t you mention you’d been there that night?”

  “Because it’s nobody’s business but Geoff’s. I E-mailed him, of course.”

  “So you had a private correspondence with him.”

  “I had that long before the Confession topic ever came up. You’ve got to remember, we’re all pretty close on the TOWN.”

  Now it’s “we,” thought Skip. When it suits him, it’s “they.”

  “Would you mind showing me?”

  “Your own letters aren’t in your file—they just get sent as if they were on paper. And I never save my mail, so I don’t have the stuff he sent me.”

  “Did he confide anything to you—anything that might help me?”

  Pearce, whose eyes had strayed to his neglected computer screen, snapped back to her, suddenly alert, “I think he did. Do you know about the stolen items?”

  “Yes. Leighton’s revolver and a ring. Citrine, I think.”

  “Marguerite has the ring.”

  “Wait a minute—you mean she lied when she reported it stolen?”

  “Now that I couldn’t tell you. But it would seem not from what Geoff said—which is that it simply arrived in the mail one day a few years ago.”

  “How many years ago?”

  “He just said when he was a kid.”

  “But how could he possibly know it was that ring?”

  “All I know is that he was there when she opened it and that she turned pale and started crying. I guess he figured out later what it must have been.”

  Skip raised an eyebrow. “I guess I’d better not take up any more of your time.” She stood up. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “That was fast. I guess I know where you’re going next.”

  “I appreciate your help,” she said, more or less trying to make peace. She was so grateful for the tidbit she was suddenly feeling downright benevolent toward him.

  He nodded. “You really should come to the funeral tomorrow. You can get a gander at our little community.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Wait a minute! I’ve got a better idea—a much better idea. I mean, you can come to the funeral too, but we’re all having dinner tomorrow night—a ‘Geoff would have wanted it that way’ kind of thing. Why don’t you join us?”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “The local TOWNspeople. It’s a perfect opportunity to meet everybody at once. We’d love to have you.”

  I’ll just bet. I’d be the main course.
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br />   “Look, the murder’s bound to be Topic A. Basically, what you’ve got is all the suspects gathered together. Someone might confess.”

  “Right. If this were an Agatha Christie novel.”

  “Seven-thirty at R&O’s. We’ll save you a place.”

  A blast of cold wind hit her as she went outside. She turned her collar up, swearing. She’d learned she got the best results when she steeped herself in her cases. It was grotesque, but she knew she had to go to the damn dinner. It was an easy way to talk to them without making them suspicious.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “HOW ABOUT SOMETHING like this?” Marguerite held up a simple black dress, nipped in at the waist, plain straight skirt.

  “I don’t think so, Mom.”

  “What on earth is wrong with it? It’s about as simple as you can get.”

  Her daughter, Neetsie, barely kept the sneer out of her voice. “It’s the wrong length.”

  “It’s knee-length. What’s the problem?”

  “Short’s good; long’s good. Just not knee-length. Why don’t you get it?”

  “Me? It’s not my style.”

  Why was she even worried about a thing like that? Marguerite wondered. It was for her son’s funeral; Neetsie’s brother’s funeral. Why did she care?

  I don’t care.

  But they had already been to three stores and rejected everything. How hard could it be to pick out a couple of dresses for a funeral? She sensed Neetsie getting impatient. Her daughter didn’t want a dress anyway. She kept insisting she’d wear her black wool skirt, which was ankle-length, with a black sweater. And she’d look lovely in it, Marguerite thought (Except of course, for the holes). Dramatic, yet comfortable with herself.

  That was okay, that was fine, to wear the old outfit; but Marguerite wanted to give her something. Neetsie was the only child she had left, and she wanted her to have something special, something Marguerite had given her.