Again Megan shook her head. ‘Nothing can be worse than this.’
Alicia sighed. ‘Maybe I don’t want to know,’ she said softly.
‘But maybe you should know,’ Bess said. ‘Megan, just tell it. It’s best not to keep secrets. They just cause all sorts of problems.’
Megan sighed. ‘Last week – when I went to the movies with the twins?’ Both of her sisters nodded their heads. ‘I saw Graham there. And he wasn’t alone.’
‘Who was he with?’ Bess asked.
‘Lotta,’ Megan said, lowering her head.
‘Lotta Esparza?’ Alicia half-whispered. ‘His old girlfriend?’
The other girls didn’t answer. They felt no reply was needed. There was only one Lotta Esparza in their world, and it was definitely Graham’s ex-girlfriend.
‘What were they doing?’ Alicia said, her voice getting strident.
Megan didn’t look up, nor did she answer.
‘Megan!’ Alicia said. ‘What were they doing?’
Finally Megan looked up, but not at Alicia – she looked at Bess instead. ‘Making out,’ she told her sister.
‘Oh my God!’ Bess said, but Alicia said nothing. Instead she headed for the stairs. ‘Where are you going?’ Bess asked. ‘We’ve got to get to school.’
‘I’m taking a sick day,’ Alicia said.
I got to the door of Diamond Lovesy’s room before either the chief or my husband. I grabbed the knob and turned, but before I could push the door open, I felt something on my wrist. Looking down I saw that the chief had slipped one half of a set of handcuffs onto my right wrist.
‘What the hell?’ I said, trying to pull away. He grabbed my left wrist and finished the process, cuffing me, thankfully in front not in back. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I shouted.
‘Keeping you from interferin’ in an ongoing investigation. Or, maybe I’m keeping you from tampering with evidence. Or possibly even keeping you from destroying evidence, if maybe you’re the one who’s done the deed!’ he said, pulling me away from the door.
‘Now you think I’m a suspect?’ I shouted. ‘God, you are desperate!’
‘Eeg,’ Willis said, touching my shoulder. ‘Calm down—’
I whirled on him. ‘You! You— Don’t touch me!’ I was livid. Possibly as mad as I’ve ever been. At least since the day I found Bess’s birth family. That was horror that turned into great sadness that finally morphed into the most intense anger I’ve ever known. This wasn’t even a close second, but it beat the third by a long shot.
‘Chief, I know you don’t think E.J. had—’
‘If your wife was involved with this, Mr Pugh,’ the chief said, ‘then I think it’s safe to say you were too—’
‘Now just a goddamn minute!’ It was Willis’s turn to shout.
‘I think it best if both of you go downstairs and wait in the living room while I check out Miz Lovesy’s room. Or you think I oughta call Officer Mays in to hold the two of you?’
I turned on my heels and headed for the staircase. I would have surely taken a header to the landing if Willis hadn’t grabbed my cuffed hands to steady me at that first step. Even that wasn’t enough to get him out of my doghouse.
We sat in the living room and waited. Fifteen minutes later, the chief came downstairs. ‘Well, now, looks like back in 2005 Miz Lovesy lived in a town called Bellaire, but that’s when her driver’s license expired, so it’s possible she moved since then. I’ll call this Bellaire town and have it checked out.’
‘Bellaire is a city within the Houston city limits. There are two, actually. Bellaire and West University Place. Both surrounded by Houston.’
‘Got their own PD?’
‘Hum. I know West University does, because my family lived there when I was little, but I’m not sure about Bellaire.’
‘Guess I gotta call Houston then and find out.’
I held up my wrists. ‘They’re chafing,’ I said.
He came toward me with a key and unlocked the cuffs. ‘Sorry about that, but no way were you getting in there first. Little lady, you need to show some restraint.’
I stood and rubbed my wrists. ‘I am showing restraint, Chief. I haven’t hurt you for calling me “little lady” again.’
He grinned at me. ‘You wouldn’t be threatening a peace officer now would you, Miz Pugh?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, and smiled back – although I don’t think mine was as genuine as his. He seemed to be getting quite a kick out of making my life miserable. ‘I was just explaining how I was already showing extreme restraint.’
‘And I do appreciate that,’ he said, his Cheshire grin still in place. ‘But I’m gonna have to buckle under and ask you to come take a look at Miz Lovesy’s room with me. Don’t know if it’s a lady thing or a big city thing, but there’s stuff up there I don’t know diddly-squat about.’
‘I’d be happy to help,’ I said, in what I felt was an appropriately warm and inviting manner.
‘Well, you could be a little nicer about it!’ he said, and headed up the stairs.
I looked at my husband. ‘What?’ I mouthed.
‘You were a trifle patronizing and condescending,’ he said out loud.
‘A trifle?’ said the chief from halfway up the staircase. He shrugged. ‘Maybe a little more than a trifle.’
He continued on and Willis and I followed him. Diamond Lovesy’s room wasn’t as big a mess as her partner Humphrey Hammerschultz’s room had been, but it certainly wasn’t neat. I’m not sure if this was Diamond’s fault, or if it had been caused by the chief’s fifteen-minute search.
It was a well-appointed room, as were all the rooms I’d seen thus far at the Bishop’s Inn. An antique four-poster bed dominated, with turn of the century (nineteenth to twentieth, not twentieth to twenty-first) matching night stands, a six-drawer chest and a dressing table from the thirties, I believe, in a slightly lighter wood with a large round mirror and rounded edges to the table itself. It was in perfect condition. The comforter on the bed was white and covered in wild roses with a bed skirt of cotton eyelet and pillows with cotton eyelet edgings. The bed had been hastily made and there were items of clothing strewn across it, the stuffed chair in the corner (also covered in wild roses), and even some on the floor. Strangely enough, there were plenty of hang-ups in the closet and three of the six drawers of the chest were filled with clothing. It was as if Diamond Lovesy had planned to stay a while in Peaceful. And maybe she had. I had to wonder how she and Humphrey had found out about the ‘hauntings’ at the Bishop’s Inn and what their real intention was in coming here. I was beginning to doubt their story of the phone call from a stranger. Did they plan on becoming so indispensable to Miss Hutchins that they’d be able to just move in? Or was there something more sinister involved? How long had they actually been in Peaceful? Could they have heard about what happened to Miss Hutchins’ mother all those years ago and have somehow managed to stage what had been going on of late? But how?
I shook my head. There were too many questions that were too unanswerable at the moment.
‘So what is it you have questions about?’ I asked the chief.
He pointed to the dressing table. ‘All this crap here. Is it all just lady stuff or what?’
There were jars and tubes and bottles piled on top of the marble center of the dressing table. I sat down on the stool in front of the table and looked at it all. ‘Can I touch this stuff?’ I asked the chief.
He shrugged. ‘If we need to print it I’ll just take your prints for elimination,’ he said.
I glanced at Willis, one eyebrow raised. He imitated the chief with a shrug. I wasn’t sure I was all that happy with Chief Cotton having my fingerprints on file. And if they were on file here, where else would they go? Then I remembered the two or three (OK, make that four) times I’d been jailed in Codderville. I knew that on at least one of those occasions I’d been fingerprinted. The other times were just Luna’s way of getting my attention.
S
o I picked up a bottle. The lettering on it claimed it was vanilla-scented body spray. I sprayed it – yep, smelled like cookies. There was a jar of night cream, a tube of eye cream, a bottle of shampoo and one of conditioner, a bottle of body wash and a box containing make-up. I rifled through that and discovered Diamond had preferred blue eyeshadow and black eyeliner, but I already knew that just by looking at her. There was mascara – black – and an eyelash curler, three tubes of different shades of very red lipstick, and a black eyebrow pencil. There were two side drawers. One was filled with nail paraphernalia – bottles of polish in varying shades of blues, greens and purples; a dozen or so emery boards; nail clippers and scissors; polish remover and a big bag of cotton balls. In the other drawer were papers: bank statements, unpaid bills, cancellation notices from a cell phone provider, and a plastic sleeve with pictures. My first instinct was to check the address on the bank statements and unpaid bills, but that proved to be a P.O. Box in Houston. I showed these to the chief.
‘Yeah, saw that. Between the Bellaire police and the Houston post office, I might find an address for her,’ he said.
‘I don’t know, Chief,’ I said, looking at all the crap in the room, and at the bills piled in the drawer. ‘I have a feeling this was now Diamond’s home. I’d venture to say wherever she lived in Houston is empty now.’
I picked up the sleeve of pictures. Thumbing through them, I saw only Diamond and Humphrey, and sometimes an older woman who had Humphrey’s arm around her shoulder. I decided this must be Humphrey’s mother, the one Diamond had mentioned. I wondered if she’d ever had the chance to notify the woman of Humphrey’s death. And then there was a photo of Diamond with a very handsome man. They were arm in arm and smiling at the camera.
I heard an intake of breath behind me. Turning, I saw Miss Hutchins standing there. ‘Why is Diamond in that picture with Daddy?’ she asked.
1952
Edgar made his way to Savannah, Georgia – a good town, he’d heard, for a gambler. And that’s what he now considered himself: a professional gambler. But Savannah had real gamblers, real pros, and Edgar was just a midnight snack for them. Within a month he’d lost all his money and was into a shark for over a thousand, with no way of paying it back. He heard of a high-stakes game going on in the rich part of town and, wearing one of his best zoot suits from Biloxi, headed that way. But the buy-in was much more than he had on him – or ever had the hopes of having on him – and they teased him about his clothes. The biggest teaser was a guy named Walker, an arrogant SOB barely out of his teens. He called Edgar a ‘white nigger,’ and shoved him. To Edgar this was the last straw – his dead brother’s straight-razor was out and he sliced the boy named Walker long and deep.
In all truth, the Walker boy would have made it if any of his friends had stayed around to call the authorities, but none did. And neither did Edgar, who ran back to his fleabag hotel only to find part of his belongings out on the street – and not the good stuff either. So there was an altercation with the hotel manager, the straight-razor was brandished again, and the police were called. Once they had him in the jail, it didn’t take long for the truth about the Walker boy to come out. As the only son of a district judge, the boy’s death was considered a major crime and, with no attorney at his side, Edgar took a plea bargain and was sent to prison for twenty years.
FOURTEEN
BACK HOME
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Bess asked as Megan drove the minivan to school that Monday morning. Alicia was conspicuously absent.
‘Tell you what?’ Megan asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Bess said sarcastically, ‘like maybe seeing Graham sucking face with Lotta, for God’s sake!’
‘Because I figured it would just upset you. Like I knew it would upset Alicia.’
‘Well duh. Her boyfriend making out with his old girlfriend? I guess so!’ Bess said. She couldn’t help wondering if Megan seeing them together had been the first time Graham had snuck out with Lotta. Somehow she didn’t think so. Lotta had been the love of his life. And he the love of hers, until that guy Ramon had come along. He was some professional Latino muckraker and started out chastising Lotta for being with a gringo – namely Graham. He’d already turned her cousins and uncles into rebels for his cause, and it didn’t take all that long to turn Lotta. She’d broken up with Graham, announcing she could no longer tolerate his white man ways. As far as Graham had known, he didn’t have any ‘white man ways,’ so it crushed him on many levels when she walked out on him. At the time Bess had wondered if he might not give up his happy home and beg to be adopted by a Latino family. Thankfully, he hadn’t.
And then there was the whole kidnapping ordeal that Alicia had gone through, and the two of them falling into each other’s arms. That line from Speed sure seemed to be resonating now.
‘You know this is killing her, don’t you?’ Bess said.
Megan glared at her sister. ‘I didn’t want to tell her! You made me!’
Bess sighed. ‘I know I did. This is just so …’
‘Fucked up?’ Megan suggested.
Bess nodded. ‘For want of a better word, yes.’
‘What are we gonna do? She can’t just skip school. We’ve got finals coming up,’ Megan said.
‘Let’s give her the day,’ Bess said.
Megan shrugged. ‘Yeah. Well, should we tell the office, or is she gonna call in or what?’
‘I don’t know!’ Bess said, aggravated at the thought of the bureaucracy involved. She sighed and picked up the phone, hitting the button for their home number. No one answered. ‘Either she’s gone or she’s not picking up,’ she told Megan.
‘Where would she go?’
‘I don’t know! How would I know?’ Bess demanded.
‘Because she was your best friend before she came to live with us. That’s why!’
‘She still is one of my best friends,’ Bess said quietly. ‘Right next to you.’
Megan slammed on the break, almost getting rear-ended by a teenager heading for the school only a block away. He honked his horn a little more insistently than necessary as he swerved around the minivan.
‘How dare you call me your best friend!’ Megan yelled.
Bess’s eyes got big. She’d never seen Megan this angry. She hunkered in the corner, trying to make herself an even smaller target than she already was. ‘I’m sorry! I thought you knew!’
Megan slammed the heel of her hand on the steering wheel. ‘That’s just so … so …’
‘So what?’ Bess asked tentatively.
‘So sweet!’ she said and broke into sobs. As she reached for her sister, Bess drew back, but found herself in a bear hug that was causing heart palpitations and an inability to breathe.
She patted Megan on the back and got out the words, ‘I can’t breathe!’
Megan lightened up her grip on her sister. ‘Sorry,’ she said as she wiped her eyes on the hem of her T-shirt. Then she sighed. ‘I don’t think anybody’s going to school today, huh?’
‘It’s probably a good idea to stay at home,’ Bess said. Then remembered her ‘date’ with Logan to go see Harper Benton’s mother at the Denny’s where she worked. ‘But I’ll need the minivan around noon. I’ve got someplace I need to be.’
‘What?’ I said, staring at Miss Hutchins.
She was still pointing at the photo. ‘That’s my daddy,’ she said. ‘But that can’t be …’ She frowned, her pointed finger gone, her hands at her sides. Then she brightened. ‘But maybe Miss Lovesy really did channel Daddy and somehow got this picture!’
I looked around the room. In the photo Diamond was wearing an intricately patterned silk kimono. I checked the closet and the clothes strewn about the room. The kimono was not there. ‘This was taken before Diamond came here,’ I said to one and all. The chief had grabbed the photo from my hand as I stood up to search the room, and now he, Willis, and Miss Hutchins were studying it. ‘See that kimono she’s wearing?’ I asked the three of them. ‘It’s
not here. She certainly wasn’t wearing it when she was killed. So that picture wasn’t taken here.’
‘It’s outdoors, though,’ Willis said, his head bent toward the snapshot. ‘Can you see anything to ID the location?’
The chief shook his head. ‘Don’t look like Peaceful to me. Don’t got any sidewalk cafes in Peaceful,’ he said.
It was my turn to snatch back the photo. They certainly were standing in front of a sidewalk cafe. Behind them were several occupied tables with umbrellas and behind that a plate glass window with a few words and letters visible: ‘G-A-N-I-C,’ ‘A NATURAL,’ ‘BELINNIS,’ ‘G-R-K,’ and ‘S-U-N’. I found a piece of paper and pen and sat down at the dressing table, pushing aside some of the paraphernalia on top. I wrote down the letters as the three others gathered around.
Willis pointed at the first set: ‘G-A-N-I-C’. ‘Organic!’ he said triumphantly.
I fist-bumped him. ‘All natural,’ Miss Hutchins said of the next. So I fist-bumped her.
‘Don’t know what that next one could be,’ the chief said.
‘Just what it says,’ I told him. ‘Belinnis. It’s an Italian sandwich.’
‘G-R-K,’ Willis read. ‘G-R-K?’
‘Greek!’ I all but shouted.
He put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed. With all the tension that had built up over the last few days, I would have been quite happy to have him continue doing that for another hour or so.
‘S-U-N?’ I asked, looking up at my husband.
Willis shrugged and stopped kneading my shoulders.
‘Sundried tomatoes?’ Miss Hutchins asked.
‘Is there enough room for that?’ We all bent over the photo again. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Maybe they sell sundaes?’ the chief suggested.
I shrugged and Willis said, ‘See how much bigger that S-U-N is than the rest of this?’ He pointed at the plate glass window in the photo. ‘Maybe it’s the name of the place.’
‘Good point!’ I said. Turning to the chief, I asked, ‘You ever heard of a place in or around Peaceful with S-U-N in the name?’
Dead to the World Page 18
