Miss Nancy leaned forward like she was going to pat my hand again, then stopped and sat back in her chair. “I’ve worried over you since you were six years old. It’s not like I can stop now.”
“I know, Miss Nancy,” I leaned over and took her hand in mine. “And I love you for it, and I worry about you, too, you know.”
She nodded, her eyes bright. “But...”
“But... it seems sometimes that everyone’s gotten used to seeing me a certain way, but it’s not the way I am, if you see what I mean?”
“You’re not our baby anymore. I know that. But you being all grown up, I don’t feel like you need me now.”
“Oh, Miss Nancy. I’ll always need you. You’re the wisest person I know and I don’t know what I’d do without your advice and your hugs. So we can worry about each other, and look out for each other. But I also need everyone to understand that I’m not foolhardy or taking dangerous chances.”
Don didn’t look convinced, but at least he didn’t say anything.
“Right.” Miss Nancy nodded once and set her mug back on the table. “So now maybe you’ll tell me what on earth you boys were doing going to a strip club.”
“Hmm...”
“Something foolhardy,” Don said.
He seemed completely unfazed by the dirty look I sent him.
“You remember the woman I was dreaming about the other day?”
Miss Nancy nodded.
“She’s... she’s the woman who was found in the bayou after the latest rains.”
“Oh my lord!”
“Yeah. And she worked at this club, so I went there to see... I’m not sure. But I wanted to see where she worked and the people she worked with.”
“Oh, that poor girl! Did you learn anything?”
“I’m not sure. But I’m meeting with her roommate again tomorrow.”
“Okay, you’ve lost me now. What’s this about a roommate and why are you meeting her? Again?”
“She’s a personal trainer,” Don told her. “I set Jake up with her so he could pump her for information, but I don’t think it would hurt for him to get a bit of exercise, too.”
“Probably not.”
“Guys... you’re doing it again.”
Facts and Feelings
I guess it wasn’t so bad. I met Dani on the bayou trail near my apartment. Mostly she just made me walk and talk at the same time. Although, when she did ask me which direction I preferred, I pointed west, since east would have taken us past where I’d found Clarence Wilton’s body a few months before.
Walking and talking I can do for hours. Or that’s what I thought, anyway. Dani was sneaky, and before I knew it we were going up what passed for hills in Houston at a faster and faster pace and I was panting.
“Okay, okay, I give up!” I said, stopping to put my hands on my knees and catch my breath.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Hah! Like you don’t know. I admit it, okay? I’m maybe a bit out of shape.”
“Maybe. A bit.”
“So what’s it going to take?”
She pointed to a bench a little farther up the path and I staggered towards it, collapsing with a sigh.
By the time we’d finished our heart-to-heart I had signed up for three months of her services. Walking, jogging, body weight exercises, even gym workouts with – gasp – weights. I told her my budget didn’t really run to a gym membership on top of everything else, but I could use the wellness center at school at no charge, so she said she’d figure something out, but I’d better promise to do what she said even if she wasn’t there to keep an eye on me.
Jennifer was right. Dani was tough, and I hadn’t even really started yet.
I was trying to think of a way to bring up Lana without sounding like some kind of creeper, but then she made it almost too easy.
We were still sitting on the bench, looking over the bayou towards the highway, and she sighed.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Sorry,” she shook her head, “just thinking about Lana. My roommate.”
“Oh. Are you... were you close? I know sometimes roommates aren’t.”
“Pretty close. We went to high school together, but didn’t really become friends until college. When she bought a house, she needed a roommate, so she asked me since she didn’t want to share with a stranger.”
“That makes sense. I wouldn’t want to, either. I imagine for a woman it’s even more so.”
“Yeah. And in her line of work, well, she was nervous about who might come around or follow her home or whatever.”
“Her line of work?” Look at me, playing it cool.
“She worked at a gentleman’s club, as an entertainer.” She looked at me, waiting for me to say something before she said more. Waiting to see if I was going to be judgy, probably.
“I can see why she might be worried – like, maybe an obsessive admirer or something?”
“Right. And she didn’t want to be alone because, well, there was a lot about her life that was just plain shitty.”
“She had you, though, right?”
“Except I wasn’t there when she needed me, was I? She didn’t want to be alone, and then something happened and I wasn’t there. I should have been there.”
She looked out across the bayou, her lips pressed in a thin line and her jaw thrust forward. I could barely see it shaking.
“But if you’d been there – wherever – you might have been killed, too. You might not have been able to stop whatever happened, and I bet she would have hated that.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute, and then nodded. “Yeah,” she said, her voice tight. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“It happens sometimes.”
She shifted on the bench to look at me. “Jennifer was right about you.”
“What do you mean? What did Jennifer say? Why did she say anything?”
“Geez, chill. I just asked her about you, since you said you knew her. A girl can’t be too careful.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” I thought about Lana.
“And she said you were cool, but that I’d better be careful or I’d wind up telling you my life story before I even realized it. She said you’re, like, a magical listening machine.”
“Something like that. I prefer to think of myself as friendly and approachable.”
“That, too.”
“So, if the house was Lana’s, will you have to move? What will you do?”
“I don’t know. Look for an apartment, I guess. I don’t know what will happen or if there’s a will or what. The only family she has left is her father, and if the house goes to him, I want to get out before he turns up.”
“Bad news, is he?”
“The worst. I had heard stuff about him when I was in high school. Rumors and stuff. But the day after she graduated, he kicked Lana out. Told her she had her free ride to college and he was done with her.”
“Jeez.” I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like. I made a mental note to call my parents when I got home and tell them they were awesome. Even though my dad would be insufferable for a week, it was worth it.
“Yeah. He’s a racist asshole. She was glad to oblige and get the hell out, even though she struggled to make ends meet. She had a scholarship, but it didn’t cover everything so she had to get work, and that’s how she wound up as a, well, a mermaid.”
“A mermaid? At a gentleman’s club?”
“Yeah, they have a, like, nautical theme or something. She swam around in a big tank in a mermaid outfit. She liked it, though, because it paid well and she didn’t have to have much direct contact with the customers. Also,” Dani chuckled a bit, “she said it was better than dancing because when she was in the water her boobs defied gravity.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed too. “That’s awesome. She sounds great.”
“She was. She was strong, too. She was a good friend.”
“And Ruby? Will you keep her? Or will her fat
her want to take her? That poor dog.”
“I don’t care what he wants, I’m keeping her. I doubt he’ll want her, though. He hated that dog and the feeling was mutual, apparently. She’s practically the only thing he let Lana take when she left home. Just the dog, the clothes on her back, and the beater car she had bought herself with money she’d saved from her part time job. She worked hard for everything she had. Harder than she should have had to.”
❧
“She doesn’t sound like someone anyone would want to kill,” Don said later when I told him about my conversation with Dani.
“No. She sounds like someone I would have liked. But she worked hard and stood up for herself, and sometimes that pisses people off.”
“The more I think about it, the more I think the key is that phone call. That whatever got her killed had nothing to do with her specifically –”
“But it was more about something she knew, or it was about the person she was talking to.”
“Yeah.”
I was distracted by a tapping at the window and looked over to see Raymond scratching at the glass.
“Oh, great,” Don muttered. I ignored him and went to grab a handful of sunflower seeds from the kitchen.
“Raymond!” I said, raising the sash. “We’ve been worried about you!”
Don made a rude noise.
“Well, I have, anyway.” I sprinkled the seeds onto the sill and crouched down so we were at eye level. “All that rain and everything. I’m glad you’re safe, buddy.”
Raymond picked up a seed and started going at it with his little teeth. I didn’t sense any vibes coming from him that would suggest he was hurt or upset or in any way discombobulated by the storms the last few days, so I left him to his snack and went back to the kitchen to poke around in the refrigerator.
“Did Dani give you a grocery list? Or an eating plan?”
“Geez, are you going to follow me around Kroger and monitor everything I put in my cart?”
“Do I need to?”
“Look, I only started this thing with Dani to dig for information. I’m not seriously planning to go through with it.”
I really wanted a peanut butter sandwich, but I didn’t want to make one with Don hovering around judging my choices. It’s not that I felt guilty or anything.
“Then why did you sign up for a three month plan? I thought you were just going to do one month.”
“She’s a really good salesperson. Also, I felt bad for her, what with losing her friend and maybe her home.” I wasn’t going to add that the forced march Dani led me on had left me winded and feeling like an old man.
“Yeah, right, whatever. Still, it wouldn’t hurt you to eat a salad now and then.”
I made a peanut butter sandwich, in protest, and polished it off with the last marranito.
❧
My defiant lunch was still feeling heavy in my belly when Petreski showed up that night. He came alone, which was a good thing because I had worked myself up for a conversation I didn’t want Perez overhearing. He probably had a few choice words for me, considering we hadn’t spoken since my Slippery When Wet adventure, but I was ready when I heard the soft scratching at my door.
“We need to talk about Perez,” I said as he trotted past me on the way to the bathroom. “Did she talk to you? About me?”
I could hear water running and then he stepped out looking human and delicious and I steeled my spine, reminding myself that this was Serious with a capital ‘S’.
“Of course,” he said, his tone dry. “We obviously have nothing more pressing to discuss.”
“Well, you’re not talking about the case, because she’s not on the case. And she said she was going to talk to you about me, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that at some point in the last thirty-six hours, the subject may have come up.”
“Geez,” Petreski ran his fingers through his hair and turned to go to the kitchen. “Don was right. Wait... what the?”
“What?” I followed him into the kitchen and saw him standing in front of the refrigerator, a frown on his face.
“What is all this? Salad? Fruit? Is that... yoghurt?”
“I need to eat healthier, and don’t change the subject.”
“Beer?”
“Yes, please.” I took the beer he handed me and tried to twist the top off with my shirttail before remembering it needed an opener. Petreski handed me one and took a long pull of his beer while I opened mine.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll have your discussion, and then we’ll have mine.”
“Ugh. Okay. Perez – did she tell you she came by here that morning?”
“She did.”
“And she’s told you before that she thinks I smell weird.”
“Yeah, but I just ignored that because I figured it was a matter of body chemistry of personal taste or whatever. It never occurred to me that it might be related to you being... different.”
“Well, to be honest that might not be it. But it’s not very nice being told that you smell funny.”
“No, of course not.”
“But she was really pissed off and wanted to know if I could read her mind. Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. She probably thinks about doing horrible things to me.”
“She doesn’t. I swear. But she is very protective and she doesn’t trust you. Her instincts have been telling her that there’s something different about you, and since she didn’t know what it was she was on guard. Maybe now that she knows about you, about what you are, she’ll start to accept you.”
“Or she’ll hate me even more.”
Petreski shook his head. “She really doesn’t hate you. She just needs time to process. And now is not a good time, what with Standing being in town and involved in this case.”
I took another swallow of beer and turned to head to the couch. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“She’ll come around.”
I shrugged.
“But we do need to talk about what you’ve been up to the last couple of days.”
“You mean my perfectly innocent trip to have all-you-can-eat shrimp at a public place in broad daylight?”
“Something like that.”
“I just wanted to see what it was like, where she worked.”
“Yeah? And how was the shrimp?”
“Fine. Wait, aren’t you going to yell at me or tell me not to do it again and be careful?”
“I’ve said it enough. And, Josh Katz aside, you are careful. Would I rather you not poke your nose in? Of course. But I’ve figured out I can’t tell you not to do something. So, as long as you’re careful and stay in public and share anything you learn with me, I’m not going to give you grief over it.”
“Oh.” I had to admit I was surprised. I had expected an argument, or at least a scolding. But he was treating me like an adult, and then it really hit me that I was getting what I had asked for the day before, only without having to ask for it. I stretched over to where he was leaning in the corner of the sofa to give him a hug and a big smacking kiss on the cheek.
“What’s that for?”
“Because you deserve it.” That got me a kiss in return.
“Well, thank you. So...”
“So?”
“So, did you learn anything?”
“You... maybe.” I flopped back over to my end of the sofa. “I’m not sure.”
I told him everything I could remember – Gloria’s revelations about Lana’s swimming skills and my suspicion that Gloria and the owner either had a thing going or Gloria wanted them to. The swimming was no surprise to Petreski – of course he would know that already. He looked thoughtful when I mentioned Gloria’s crush on Miletti.
He was more interested in what I had learned from Dani, about Lana’s jerk-off father and how she’d struggled to make ends meet.
“Being a mermaid must pay more than I thought,” I said, after I finished telling him about my conversation with Dani.
“I don’t know. I can’t help wondering if she had another source of income.”
“Dani didn’t mention anything.”
“Something Dani may, or may not, have known about.”
“You mean something illegal? Maybe something that could have gotten her killed?”
“Maybe. Working in the industry she did,” Petreski shrugged, “there would have been a lot of opportunities.”
I didn’t like to think about Lana being involved in something like drugs or prostitution, but I had to admit that she was awfully young and seemingly underemployed to have purchased a house on her own, even with a roommate.
“What about her father?” I asked.
“What about him?”
“Has he turned up, or been contacted, or whatever?”
“No. We haven’t been able to reach anyone in her family. What we found at her place backs up what Dani said. No pictures or yearbooks or letters or anything pre-dating her move to Houston. She listed Dani as her emergency contact. We’re trying to get her phone contacts and call history now, but no luck yet. Her phone is missing.”
“Did she have a will, or any kind of insurance or anything?”
“Not that we’ve found yet. But she was young and single, so it’s unlikely those were priorities for her yet.”
“Yet?” I asked.
Petreski squeezed his eyes shut and leaned back. “Yeah. You’ve probably figured, since you saw us at the club, that it wasn’t bayou water in Lana’s lungs.”
“Yeah?”
“The autopsy turned up something else. She was pregnant.”
I was glad I hadn’t just taken a drink of my beer, because it’s a toss-up whether it would have gone down my windpipe or out my nose. “Oh, shit.”
Petreski grunted.
“Wait... was it, you know, Standing’s? Because that would be too much, what with Perez and all.”
“We don’t know yet. We’re waiting for DNA results.”
“That could explain the phone call, though.” I thought about how desperate she had sounded, how alone she must have felt.
“I don’t want to jump to conclusions. She wasn’t very far along. The M.E. said she may not have even known. Also...”
Not a Mermaid Page 7
