Morgan hesitated, then said, “This may be an unpolicewoman-like thing to say, but I’m sure she had good reasons.”
“I don’t see why you’re so upset. You solved the case. I’d think you’d be happy.”
Morgan assured herself that this was real, and she’d have to make an arrest. But how the hell could she do that? Those women had been friends of her mother. She trusted and respected them. Prison would probably kill them. She would have no joy in making this arrest. But when she looked up at Henry she saw that she didn’t have to say more. He’d gotten it.
“So you have one that you’d rather not have.”
Morgan nodded without looking at him. “Plus, they just bought a motor home. Probably going to do some traveling.”
“You have anything that isn’t circumstantial?”
“My gut.”
“Besides that? What about the casing or the bullet from the round she set off?”
“High-powered rifle, the slug could be three blocks away. Unless…” She looked away.
“Unless it hit a tree or a house. Remember Ingram? CSI found the slug in the refrigerator door. I don’t think you have enough for an arrest until the rifle is processed.”
On the other side of the room the jukebox came to life and a chipmunk Christmas song blared from the speakers. Morgan turned in time to see the waitress’s thin, tired face in the glow from the machine.
Henry said something she couldn’t understand.
“What?”
He leaned toward her and spoke louder. “So what happened to the rifle?”
“I confiscated it. I mean, how could she object?”
She could barely hear Henry over the music. “You didn’t take it to the lab? A positive ballistics test would be hard evidence.”
Morgan shook her head. “Still in my car. Parked in back.” The music stopped and she realized that she’d been braced against it—silly music. Christmas was over. Why hadn’t they taken down the yellowing Santa’s faces taped on the walls and strung together with a dusty plastic rope of holly? She checked her watch. It was going on seven. She suddenly felt ridiculous for coming to Henry. What could he do? Sadness washed over her as she realized she didn’t have anywhere to turn. Henry was her only real friend.
She’d been so busy with her mother the past few years that everything and everyone else had sort of slipped away. She hadn’t had time for another relationship—except, of course, the one she’d already screwed up. She hadn’t planned to be single all these years. It just happened. Maybe she should be thankful to have at least one friend—even if he couldn’t help her.
She’d seen people at the Prairie Flower who didn’t even have that. They’d sat alone one long day after another. They’d eaten and bathed and slept with the assistance of tired and overworked people who often didn’t treat them well. Maybe the problem was that Lois and Sophie had come over after her mother’s death. Maybe she’d been counting them as friends even though they were her mother’s friends—not really hers. The table wobbled, then Henry touched her arm.
“There’s this old lady down the street from me who drives a Buick. She has this silver bumper sticker that says, What Would Jesus Do?”
“What would Jesus do?” Morgan repeated. “You think I should consider that?”
Henry grimaced. “I think you should ask yourself what Kate Delafield would do.”
“Who’s Kate Delafield?”
“A lesbian police detective in a series of books. I thought you’d know.”
Morgan studied him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I read some. Murder at the Nightwood Bar. Nightwood, that’s from an earlier writer named Djuna Barnes.”
“When did you start reading lesbian mysteries?”
“As soon as I realized you were a lesbian. I wanted to find out about it. I thought if you were one, it couldn’t be as bad as I always believed. To be honest, I got hooked on the things.”
Morgan was indignant. “And when did you figure out I was a lesbian?”
“Three, four years ago. I always thought you walked like one. But remember that really short haircut you got? You said you were butch.”
Morgan raised her voice. “I said I was butchered!”
“You mean you aren’t lesbian?”
“Well.” Morgan hesitated. “I guess I am. But for God’s sake, I just found it out. If you knew, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I kept waiting for you to tell me. Then I thought you might be, you know, closeted.”
“So what would she do?”
“Who?”
“The lesbian detective.”
“Kate Delafield? Well, sir, I think she’d take the high road. It might bother her, but she’d take that old woman in.”
“Is that what you think I should do?”
Henry shook his head. “I don’t know. Do what you can live with and let me know if I can help.”
Morgan finished the last of her beer and the table wobbled. Henry was standing next to her.
He said, “Need to go. I’m meeting a friend. Why don’t you relax a little while? Get another beer.”
“A friend?”
“Oh, I met this woman on the Internet. She seems nice.”
She watched him speechlessly as he pulled his coat on and patted her shoulder.
“Listen,” he said. “I got a whole box of those lesbian mysteries. When I ran out of Delafield, I moved on to Jane Lawless, and that Mickey Knight from the Big Easy—she’s a pip. Anyway, if you want to read them, just let me know.”
She smiled up at him and said, “Thanks.” She wanted to plead with him to stay. When the hell had Henry started dating? He was the one person she knew who was more isolated than she was.
Then the damn jukebox started up again. Elvis Presley. “Blue Christmas.” Good grief
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Morgan sat at her desk next to an open cardboard box from the Prairie Flower Nursing Home. Inside were only a few things. Beneath two worn-out nightgowns was a framed eight-by-ten photo of her father in his police uniform. Secured beneath the edge of the tarnished frame was a faded color photograph of Morgan and her mother sitting at a card table in the living room. A Christmas tree stood in the background. They were both studying the chess set in front of them.
That year, Morgan and her father had picked out the Bobby Fischer chess set with the smooth wooden pieces for her mother. It was the same set she kept with her at the Prairie Flower—the same set she’d played with that last game. The leather case, which had acquired a nursing-home odor, was on Morgan’s desk. She turned the black queen over in her hand, stroking the smooth wooden surface.
A noise startled her. She turned to see Redick standing behind her.
“Didn’t mean to sneak up,” he said. “Those your mother’s things?”
Morgan returned the queen to its place and closed the leather case. “I picked them up a couple of hours ago.”
He nodded and shifted his weight and said, “So. Have you seen the paper?”
“The Lauren Webber thing?”
Redick tossed the folded paper on his desk. “The kid’s mother talked to the press.”
Morgan nodded. “Well, it’s a good story. A real human-interest thing. Missing child returned home. Sick fuck dead in the town dump.”
“They called here.”
“The press? I’m not surprised. Did you talk to them?”
“Not much, but someone did. They asked for confirmation that Lauren Webber wasn’t the first kid that Curry snatched.”
“What did you say to that?” Morgan asked evenly.
“The evidence doesn’t exist.”
“Good.” They’d found newspaper clippings about other missing children in his apartment. Curry was apparently interested in them, but there was nothing to prove more. With his death, they’d probably never know.
Redick sat down at his desk. He sounded weary. “My gut says he did.”
She swiveled her chai
r around to face him and immediately saw that something was wrong. His neat and clean ex-marine façade had taken a blow. He had two, maybe three, days of stubble, and the whites of his eyes looked like a road map of Texas. He stared at photocopies of the newspaper clippings scattered in front of him. Morgan said, “You look a little rough this morning.”
“Didn’t sleep well.”
Morgan ducked her head to meet his reddened eyes. “This the Don Johnson look?”
He rubbed his chin whiskers. “Maybe.”
“You should clean up soon. I can see your true hairline.”
To that he smiled. Then he changed the subject. “How you doing? I mean with your mother’s things and all?”
She lowered her voice and said, “I feel lost.”
“Lost?”
“Mom took a lot of my time and energy. Now I look around me, and all these years have passed, and the only thing I have to show for it is a box of nightgowns and a Bobby Fischer chess set.”
Redick swept his arm outward. “You have all this.”
“Yes. I have my job. But in this business, we don’t meet the greatest people. Not the type I’d want to hang out with.”
“You’ll have time for a personal life now.”
“Actually, I’m going to a birthday party tomorrow night.”
“Whose?”
“A guy I met.”
“See. You’ve started a new life already.”
“Well, I’m trying.”
They were silent for a minute. Finally Redick said, “I got a call early this morning. There’s been another shooting over on South Wellesley.”
“So that’s why you look a little rough. Those middle-of-the-night calls will age you fast.”
“The victim is the shooter we were looking for on the last drive-by. Somebody got to him before we did.”
“Gangs.”
Redick nodded. “We need to bring some of these guys in before we end up with another St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
“I’ve got a list of names around here somewhere,” Morgan said, but she didn’t move to find it. She was thinking about Lori Webber’s small back crisscrossed with welts so deep her skin had been broken and scars had formed. She forced herself to think of something else and said, “You know. I saw that first Miami Vice episode on TV the other night.”
“The pilot episode?”
“I think so. Phil Collins song. Hot Miami night. Black Porsche.”
“That’s the one.”
“Here’s the deal,” Morgan said. “When we talked about it, you told me that Sonny Crockett let his soft and vulnerable side show when he stopped to call Caroline and ask if what they had was real. But I don’t see it that way.”
“Listen. If we’re going to talk about Miami Vice, at least you can start calling me Red.”
“No more Detective Redick?”
Redick flushed. “It was my first day on the job. I wanted the promotion, but I didn’t know you. Being an ex-marine, I thought I knew a lot more about killing than you.”
“Frankly, I didn’t see how I could work with someone who had perfect posture.”
Redick laughed. “Okay. What’s your idea about Sonny’s call to Caroline?”
“It was about trust. He’d just found out his best friend had been selling information to the drug king, Calderone. There’s a lot in the show about police corruption. Crockett didn’t know who he could trust. So he wanted to check with Caroline, the woman that, despite everything, he still loved. In a way, he was checking to see if he could trust himself. His perceptions.”
“Could be,” Redick said. “They arrested Calderone that night and a crooked judge let him go.”
“There were things at work far beyond Crockett and Tubbs’s control.”
Redick pushed the papers around on his desk again. He shook his head then and said, “This is what passes for justice.”
Morgan picked up a copy of Curry’s clipping about the oldest missing kid. The case was twelve years old—a Katherine Moore. The bodies of the other children might turn up, or they might not. Lauren Webber might have joined them if someone hadn’t killed Ben Curry. “We don’t get to choose which victims are worth our attention. That’s way over our pay grade.”
*
Morgan didn’t like walking into a place among a bunch of strangers—especially since, according to Chelsea, most of them knew of her adventure with Vic. But in the end, she made herself go.
Sandy lived in a bungalow near the new high school. Morgan didn’t see many cars on the street when she pulled up, a little early. The pit of her stomach told her she wouldn’t be able to eat, but she took a deep breath, grabbed the bottle of wine and a birthday card, and opened her car door. By six thirty this time of the year, the sky was growing dark. Sandy’s sidewalk and drive had been cleaned. Salt crunched under her heels as she mounted the steps.
Sandy swung the door open. “Got dogs,” he said. “They go nuts when the doorbell rings.”
Morgan wiped her feet on the mat and entered. The house included rich shining wood floors and trim, and the walls were coated with lush shades of mauve and sea green. From the front door, Morgan could see the dining-room table already set with ten places. The crystal, china, and silver shone under an opulent chandelier.
“You have a beautiful place,” Morgan said.
“Thank you.”
As Morgan handed Sandy the bottle of wine, two white teacup poodles appeared. They yapped a few times, then wagged their tails and sniffed at Morgan’s feet.
“Meet Karma and Chance,” Sandy said. “They won’t bite, and if you give them any attention, they’ll aggravate you to death.”
“How do you tell them apart?”
Sandy laughed. “Chance is male.”
Morgan unbuttoned her coat. “What can I do to help?”
“First, put your coat in on my bed.” He pointed to a door off the dining room. “In there. Then come on out to the kitchen. Lots to do yet.”
When Morgan tossed her coat on the bed, she saw only two other coats and wondered if one belonged to Chelsea. She discovered a full-length mirror on the closet door. Candles on the dresser created a soft flickering light behind her.
She’d found the courage to weigh herself that morning and discovered that, despite a diet of chocolate cake, she’d lost seven pounds over the past few weeks. She wasn’t ready to sell the diet to People Magazine or anything because the cake had been metabolized by means of pain, and who would want that? Turning, she looked over her shoulder and admired the way her jeans hugged her hips. Then, mustering her courage, she left the bedroom and entered the small kitchen, where she found Sandy with two women she didn’t know. No Chelsea, yet.
The room was quite warm and smelled of pot roast.
Sandy introduced them with sweeping gestures. “This is Ruthie and Kris.” They were different heights and weights, but their clothes were similar—jeans and flannel shirts. Morgan felt a little overdressed in her black turtleneck.
Ruthie, who was peeling carrots, motioned to Morgan. “I’m working on the salad. Come help me chop these vegetables.”
Morgan picked up the knife and found a cutting board.
“So how do you know Sandy?”
“The shop.” Once again Morgan wanted to say more but couldn’t. Her forehead beaded with sweat. She grabbed a paper towel and pressed it to her face and throat.
Ruthie said, “You’re so lucky.”
“What?”
“Lucky. You have an efficient cooling system. When I was in basic training, I watched women faint from the heat time after time because they couldn’t sweat. I mean, they did sweat a little, but not enough and not in time.”
Morgan was embarrassed. “So this damp hair, bra, back, underarms, and underpants is a good thing?”
Ruthie chuckled. “I suppose it has its disadvantages.”
“What’s so funny?” The voice came from behind them.
Morgan knew it was Chelsea. She felt her stare burnin
g into the back of her neck.
Over her shoulder, Ruthie said, “Won’t sound funny secondhand. You had to be here.”
Morgan didn’t turn. She thought she might never be able to turn and would have to stand at the sink to eat her dinner. She heard Kris say, “I made a place for the cake over there on the counter.”
Ruthie turned away from the sink and touched Morgan’s arm, encouraging her to move. Morgan did. Ruthie said, “Morgan Holiday, this is Chelsea Brown.”
Morgan stood with her mouth open.
Finally, Chelsea said, “We’ve met.”
Morgan’s heart was racing, but she managed to ask, “How have you been?”
“Fine, and you?” But before Morgan could answer, Chelsea slid the cake onto the counter and left the room.
Ruthie asked, “Who put a burr under her saddle?”
Kris said, “Probably some woman.”
Then they both looked at Morgan standing there with sweat dripping off her chin.
Ruthie said, “Just how well do you know Chelsea?”
“Well enough to have screwed things up already,” Morgan said. “Sandy told me I needed to show her I have some substance—that I’m not going away.”
“You aren’t the woman that Vic nailed in the DJ’s room the other night?” Kris asked.
Ruthie put her hands on her hips. “Where did you get that idea? That woman was a blonde.”
“Did you see her?”
“No. And neither did you.”
The vegetable knife slid from Morgan’s moist and trembling hand. It clattered as she dropped it on the counter. “I think I should go.”
Then she had a flannel-shirted lesbian on either side of her. “You’ll do no such thing,” Ruthie said.
“Yeah,” Kris said. “We got your back.”
The doorbell rang, and the dogs started yapping.
*
Four chairs were situated along each side of the table. Chelsea was at the end nearest the kitchen, and Sandy was at the other end near Morgan. Chelsea and two guys, whose names Morgan already couldn’t remember, brought the meal into the dining room one matching serving bowl at a time. When everyone was seated and had quickly toasted Sandy—happy birthday and many more—they started to pass the plates. The conversations were lively. Morgan ate and listened.
Retirement Plan Page 29
