Sonora took a sip of coffee and ducked inside. The woman was unwrapping sticks of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum. She gave one stick to her husband and unwrapped another, looked up and caught sight of Sonora.
“Are you the secretary, miss?”
The woman would be short when she stood up, Sonora thought. Five two at the most. Still taller than Sonora herself, but a good deal heavier. She wore a lavender blouse that looked more like real silk than rayon, and looped in a big bow across the collar that had been buttoned tightly around her neck. The ends of the bow fluttered across what she would undoubtedly call her bosom, and dipped below the high waistband of the navy skirt that flared and folded, the hemline midcalf. Her shoes, under the table, looked sensible and new, the toes squared, the heels chunky. The oval lenses of her glasses magnified her eyes.
“I’m Police Specialist Blair. I’m a detective.”
“Gum?” the man said, chewing discreetly.
Detectives merited gum, Sonora noted. “No thanks.” She shook both of their hands and sat down. The woman set her purse on her lap.
Sonora gave them a smile that was likely more preoccupied than friendly, threaded a reel of tape into the old warhorse of a tape recorder, and asked them both to state their names.
“Barbara Henderson Miller,” the woman said, eyes big and alert behind the thick lenses of her glasses. “And this is my husband—”
“Alford C. Miller,” he said, leaning toward the recorder.
“What’s the C stand for,” Sonora asked, thinking maybe Crabby.
“Carl,” he said. And blinked.
Sonora rubbed the back of her neck. “As I understand, one of you, both of you—”
“Both,” Mrs. Miller said. Alford nodded.
Sonora was not surprised that they had not needed to hear the question. These people would know the answer before you decided what to ask.
“Both of you attended this small business conference at the Orchard Suites?”
Mrs. Miller’s purse slid sideways and a checkbook, flowered glasses case, and roll of butterscotch Lifesavers spilled out. The Lifesavers hit the floor and rolled under Alford’s chair. Mrs. Miller caught the checkbook and glasses case, pressing them into the folds of her thick polyester skirt.
“You didn’t close it, Barbie.” Alford leaned sideways to pick up the butterscotch Lifesavers.
“I did close it, I heard it snap. Didn’t you hear the snap?” She looked at Sonora.
“I wasn’t paying attention. Are the two of you local? You live in Cincinnati?”
“We live in Union,” Alford said.
“So you didn’t stay at the hotel?”
Mrs. Miller took a tight grip on her purse. “Oh yes we did. We like staying in hotels. You get breakfast.”
“It comes with the room,” Alford explained.
Sonora took a breath, let it out slowly. “Mr. and Mrs. Miller. Did either of you see or talk to Julia Winchell during this conference?”
“Well, how could we not, it wasn’t that big a conference,” Mrs. Miller said.
Alford thumbed his ear. “You mean that black-headed girl Detective Sam showed us? In the picture?”
“Yes.”
“He play football in school?”
“He was on the badminton team,” Sonora said. She did not want to get into Sam’s glorious football history.
Alford was still working the thumb. “That can’t be right. UC doesn’t have a badminton team. Do they?”
“He went to school in Kentucky,” Sonora said.
“We certainly did notice Mrs. Winchell,” Mrs. Miller said.
“Pretty little girl,” Alford said absently. “She seemed very nice at first.” He gave his wife a dark look and both of them nodded.
“At first?” Sonora said. With these two it might be best just to let them talk, provided she could keep them on the subject.
Mrs. Miller leaned forward, mouth going tight. “She seemed nice at first, maybe a little offish, keeping herself to herself some.”
“Shy,” Alford said.
“Reserved. With some people, not with everyone. For instance, Mr. Jeff Barber certainly seemed to be a particular friend.”
Sonora made a note. Alford leaned forward and cut his eyes sideways. Sonora was tempted to print GO TO HELL on the notepad, but she couldn’t pay attention and write upside down at the same time.
“I take it Mr. Barber was enrolled in these courses too?”
Alford shook his head. “Not courses. It was a one-week conference. Lectures, panel discussions, workshops. Really, it should have been a two-week thing. That would have been more effective.”
“But double the fee,” Mrs. Miller said.
“Maybe, maybe not. With economies of scale—”
She was losing them, Sonora thought. “Can I get either of you a soda, cup of coffee?”
Their heads swiveled as one, their eyes bright, as they allowed that a soda would be a welcome thing.
“Let’s clear up this Barber thing before I run out to the machine.” Sonora had kids. She knew how to do this. “When you said they were good friends. Did either of you get the feeling they knew each other before?”
“They said not,” Alford said.
“You asked?” Sonora looked at him.
He nodded.
“They certainly got very chummy very fast.” Mrs. Miller gave Sonora a significant look.
“For instance?”
“Oh, but I don’t like to say.”
“Mrs. Miller, I’ll remind you that Julia Winchell has been missing for over fifteen days, and she has two young children waiting at home. You need to answer all of my questions to the very best of your ability.”
Alford made the kind of clucking noise you would make to a horse. “That just makes it that much worse, when an irresponsible young mother can’t behave.”
Mrs. Miller leaned forward. “Does her husband know anything about all this?”
Sonora closed her eyes, shutting the two of them out for three precious seconds. “About all what?”
“About the way she was carrying on!” Mrs. Miller let go of the purse and it hit the floor, spilling contents that Sonora was now able to inventory with her eyes closed. Mrs. Miller looked at Alford, heading him off. “I did snap it shut, the catch is broken. And I’ve only had this purse a few months. I think the store should take it back. Don’t you think?” She looked at Sonora.
Alford was on his hands and knees, picking up the butterscotch Lifesavers. “Did you keep the receipt?”
“No, she didn’t keep the receipt.” Sonora leaned back in her chair, placed both hands flat on the table. “You said that Julia Winchell and Jeff Barber were”—she looked at her notepad—“in your words, ‘carrying on.’ Tell me exactly what you mean.”
“They weren’t the only ones.” Alford. Off on a tangent.
His wife nodded. “You must mean that MacMillan woman. Sylvie.”
Alford leaned forward. “First of all, they sat together. Every single class.”
“Saved each other seats,” Mrs. Miller said.
The two of them slid their chairs in closer to the table.
“Anything else?” Sonora asked.
“They laughed. A lot. She had this little way of turning her head sideways when he talked.”
“Very cute,” Alford said.
“Coquettish. And one day, at a workshop, she came in late and he wouldn’t let us start till she got there.”
Sonora wondered how to spell coquettish. She wrote down flirty.
“Don’t forget that Friday,” Alford said.
Mrs. Miller patted the table. “That’s right. We went to Montgomery Inn. We can’t have the ribs. We have to order the chicken for our digestive systems, but we like eating down on the river. So we gave ourselves a little treat and went there for dinner.”
“Which he called supper, I heard him!”
Mrs. Miller nodded. “And they were already there. Just the two of them, in one of those half
-circle little booths, sitting very close together.”
“And?” Sonora asked.
“They seemed very happy,” Mrs. Miller said.
Alford nodded. “They were having the ribs.”
9
Sonora left the Millers pining over ribs. She peered into the two-way of Interview One, saw Valerie Gibson waving an arm in the air, and Sam cringing. She went in quietly.
Gibson was holding forth. “One of the best conferences we’ve ever had. A very congenial group, with a palpable esprit de corps.”
Sonora decided that any woman who used palpable and esprit de corps in one sentence deserved to be interrupted.
“Sam, can I see you just for one minute?”
Gibson swiveled sideways and raised one eyebrow. “That is the secretary who took my coffee cup.”
“I’m just a temp,” Sonora said.
Sam made soothing noises at Gibson and followed her out. He shut the door and leaned against the wall. Gave Sonora a look.
“Get anything out of her?” Sonora asked.
“I think what you mean is did I get anything useful. The answer to which is not much. Anything out of your couple?”
“Unmitigated joy.” She leaned her back against the wall, lowered her voice. “It does look like our girl was—” She paused, picturing Julia Winchell’s haunted face in the photograph, her two children. Remembered how unhappily she herself had been married way back when. She had been about to say “doing the nasty,” but changed it to “stepping out.”
Sam cracked a smile. “As in stepping out or stepping out?”
“Shut up, Sam. She was getting close to this Jeff Barber guy at the conference, just like we figured.”
“Close, Sonora? That Victoria’s Secret special looked very close.”
“Yeah, have it your way, Sam. She was fucking Jeff Barber. Any luck yet tracking him down?”
“Been trying to catch him since first thing this morning. Want me to give him another call?”
“Now would be good.” She followed him into the bullpen. Waved at Sanders, who was at her desk, on the phone.
Sanders had a high wattage glow that made Sonora decide the call was definitely personal.
Young love.
She thought of Keaton, and pushed his image out of her head. When a relationship went bad it was always better to sever the connection, and not do the back-and-forth agony dance. Better, but hard. He would always hold her peculiarly responsible for the death of his estranged wife, even though she’d saved his neck. It was not fair, but it was real life.
Sometimes it seemed the whole world was paired off except her. She was getting tired of lying to people about what she did Friday nights.
“Sonora?” Sam tucked a wad of tobacco into one cheek.
“What you got, Sam?”
“Jeff Barber runs a photography studio in a strip mall out on College. I talked to his wife—”
Sonora raised an eyebrow. “So there is a wife.”
“Yeah, I’m shocked. Wife said he’ll be working in the dark-room all day. Probably be home late tonight, maybe around ten.”
“So he didn’t run away. I bet he’d rather talk at the studio.”
Sam moved his shirt off his wrist, looked at his watch. “Let’s wrap this thing up here, and go out together.”
Sonora smiled. She was not going back into that room with that couple. “Why don’t you hold the fort here, Sam? I think I better jump on this Barber thing while I can. See you later.”
She put her coffee mug down, then picked it back up. Better take it along to be safe.
10
The strip mall, out exit seven in Montgomery, was dying the slow tortured death of buckled asphalt, grass sprouting through the cracks, broken concrete headstones for parking spaces. A blue mail-drop box showed four pick-up times, the latest at 6 P.M.
Most of the storefronts were dark. Barber’s studio was next door to a pet store, Animal House, front door propped open with a brick. A condenser dripped rusty water onto the worn concrete sidewalk. Sonora heard the squawk of a parrot and the shrill sweet chatter of parakeets. According to a hand-lettered sign in the front glass partition, they were running a special on Animal Science Diet. Sonora thought of Clampett, content to eat whatever was on special. He was getting on in years. Would he live longer if she put him on an Animal Science Diet? She wondered what an animal science diet was.
The humidity was making her hair curly. Frizzy, actually. The F word. She straightened her tie, and pushed the door open to Barber Studio Internationale, thinking he could call it Internationale till the cows came home, but tomorrow this would still be Cincinnati.
There were yellowed wedding pictures in the window—a bride gazing happily into a bouquet of white roses that were too beautiful to be real. Another shot showed a pregnant woman in a white flowing robe holding a pink rose to one cheek in a soft camera focus that said Madonna, Madonna, Madonna. A heavy silver cross hung around her neck.
Sonora gave the picture a second look, thinking that it would be more realistic to have the woman bending over a toilet tossing her cookies. She wondered how that would look in soft focus.
Little brass bells tinged as she entered the studio, but the man inside was singing along with Roy Orbison in a duet of “Crying,” and didn’t hear her come in.
Sonora put her hands in her pockets and rocked back and forth on her heels. She had on new Reeboks, white high-topped Freestyle, with REEBOK stitched in shimmery silver on the sides. Sonora liked her tennies new and unscuffed. She admired them for a moment, then looked around the studio.
A lot of vinyl in that state-park shade of brown used for signs and picnic tables. The carpet was indoor-outdoor, thin and reddish, and there was a green couch next to an old silver ashtray—the old, freestanding kind that opened in the middle to make a chasm for cigarette butts and ashes. It was the kind Sonora had liked to play with when she was a child. The kind her mother had told her to leave alone.
The vocals swelled, harmonizing with Roy’s, cry ee eye ee ing. A man pushed his way through a saloon-style swing door, caught sight of Sonora, and stopped dead.
“You’re among friends,” Sonora said. “I’m an Orbison fan.”
He watched her, like a startled mule deer that is making its mind up whether or not it will spook and run.
Where would he go? she wondered.
He was exactly what she had expected. Handlebar mustache, thick, black, and long enough to chew. Eyes deep-set and brown, shadowed by half-moons of fatigue. His lips were thick beneath the mustache and he needed a shave. His hair was longish, like he was overdue for a haircut, collar-length in the back, shorter on the sides, and parted to one side.
His shoulders were stooped, like an old man’s, though he looked to be no more than thirty-five or six.
“I sing ‘Blue Bayou’ in the shower, myself,” Sonora said. She wanted him off-guard and friendly. For starters.
He gave her a sad smile. In the dog world he would be a basset hound and would howl on the night of the full moon, and at ambulance sirens. He went over to the boom box and shut the CD off. Looked over his shoulder at Sonora. “My guess is you’re getting married, am I right? Second time around, and this time it’s going to work?”
She held out her ID. “You guess wrong. Police Specialist Blair, Cincinnati PD.”
His eyes took on a glaze of shock. He licked his lips. “What exactly is a police specialist?” His voice had gone down an octave.
“A detective. In my case, homicide.”
“Homicide,” he repeated.
“Forgive me, Mr. Barber, but you look like a man expecting bad news.”
“Would you … would you like to sit down?”
Sonora looked at the couch. She’d sat on worse. In her own living room. “Thanks.”
11
Of course he smoked. Generic brand, white packaging, cigarettes that smelled as bad as they looked. The air conditioner was laboring, and it gave off a sour musty smell.<
br />
A small picture of Barber, a woman, and two children was displayed in a frame on the coffee table. If Barber had taken the shot, it would go a long way toward explaining the lack of Saturday afternoon clientele.
“Nice family,” Sonora said, picking up the picture. The help-meet had curly brown hair, chin length, a full face, and glasses. The children were school age, first and second grade from the looks of them. One boy, one girl, standard issue, bowl haircuts.
“They were.”
Sonora checked his left hand. Saw the thick gold band. “Were?”
“Died, all three of them. Ran up under a tractor trailer truck on I-75. My wife and daughter went instantly. My son hung on a couple of days. Happened five years ago.”
Sonora looked into his face, saw that he was smiling the bland sheepish smile people plaster over a welter of grief. His demeanor was apologetic. He had not meant to bring tragedy into the room, it was just there ahead of them.
She told him how beautiful his children were, and that she was sorry.
“What were their names, your kids?” Sonora asked.
“Christy and Wesley. Christy for my sister. Wesley for Kathy’s dad. Kathy was my wife.”
The names came awkwardly on his tongue, and Sonora looked at his eyes and decided that he mentioned them almost never, and thought of them every day.
“You’ve remarried?” Sonora said.
He looked puzzled. “No.”
“We called your house. Talked to a Mrs. Barber—”
“Ms. My sister. She goes over and leaves me dinner every day.”
“That’s nice.”
“It would be if she could cook.”
Sonora gave him a half-smile in acknowledgment of the hit, but wondered why he didn’t let his sister off the hook, if he didn’t want the meals. She slid back on the couch. “Mr. Barber, how long have you known Julia Winchell?” She watched his face. “You do know her, don’t you?”
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