Even so, she used her final five minutes of preparation time to shave her legs.
By 9:44, she was ready. In fact, her heart was pounding like a jackhammer as Terry’s car pulled up in front of the house, right on time.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Terry commented as he came inside, waving a large manila envelope in the air. He gave the living room the once over, then flashed one of his crooked grins. In his white T-shirt, nubby jacket, and jeans, he looked like someone off the cover of GQ. “Mind if I take a look around?”
“Not at all,” Jessica returned. She was nervous, still unable to stop feeling as if she were on a first date. And that was one of her least favorite situations of all time, preceded on the Horror Scale only by filing income tax, going to the dentist for gum treatments, and shopping for a new bathing suit.
“Yeah, this is great.” Totally deadpan, he added, “And I love what you’ve done with it. What do you call this decorating style?”
“Early potential. Potential—see, that’s the key word. It gets used a lot in real estate.’’
“So, Jess,” he said, turning to face her, “what made you change your mind, anyway? About helping me out with this, I mean.”
That was a question she wasn’t particularly anxious to answer, either for his enlightenment or her own.
“Actually, it’s kind of a long story. Listen, how about some coffee? I just made a fresh pot. Come on into the kitchen.”
In addition to Waldbaum’s finest mocha Java, Jessica had picked up an Entenmann’s coffee cake, not quite certain of the proper etiquette for hosting an inquest. That was one topic that she was pretty certain that neither Emily Post nor Dear Abby had ever been called upon to address. She had hoped this impromptu brunch would make Terry forget the question he had asked, but she had apparently put too much stock in the promise of coffee and a hunk of one of the few cakes deemed appropriate for consumption before noon.
“I was really surprised by your phone call the other night,” he went on as he followed her into the kitchen. “I mean, I was hoping you’d come around, but I didn’t expect you to change your mind so fast. What happened?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ve just been feeling a little bored lately.” She shrugged, meanwhile keeping her eyes fixed on the coffee she was pouring. “How do you take it?”
“Black is fine. Bored, huh? So you thought I’d provide a good distraction, did you?”
Jessica peeked up at him.
“I suppose one could say that you possess a certain . . . shall we say, amusing quality,” she said.
In a more serious tone of voice, she added, “Besides, I’m just as anxious as anybody to find out who killed your brother. After all, I live in this town. I don’t like the feeling that there’s a murderer running around somewhere in Sea Cliff.”
“Actually,” Terry said, sitting back in his kitchen chair, making himself right at home, “I understand that eighty percent of murders are committed by someone who knows the victim.”
“Small consolation, if you ask me. Maybe the murderer, whoever he is, knows me, too.’’
He chuckled. “Interesting way of looking at it.” After helping himself to the biggest piece of coffee cake, he said, “So, Jess, tell me more about yourself. I mean, we are going to be working together.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. What do you do besides . . . ?” He waved his arm in a sweeping motion, vaguely indicating the obvious appointments of her life. The house, the garden, the toys, the Volvo.
“I guess what I’m really wondering,” he went on, “is how someone like you—you know, a high-powered corporate executive—makes a switch like this. You know, giving it all up to become a full-time wife and mother.’’
“Well, I. . .” Jessica began adjusting her sweater nervously, tucking imaginary strands of hair behind her ear.
This was the moment of truth. It was time to switch over to the defensive, a tactic at which Jessica was by now a pro. She had her spiel all worked out. After all, she’d been through it a million times. Speech Number 302, Section A, “Why I Abandoned the Corporate Life to Bask in the Joys of Motherhood.”
It included all the stock phrases, the almost reverent discourse on how being there for her child during his early years was so much more fulfilling than working in an office could ever be.
But somehow, today she just wasn’t in the mood.
“Basically, I just felt it was time to take a little time off to be with the baby I was about to have,” she said vaguely. “David and I agreed that it would be best, at least for a while.’’
Immediately she regretted having brought her husband into the conversation. Here she and Terry had been enjoying a nice, intimate little kaffee klatsch, and she had to go and interject some cold reality into it.
Recognizing she felt that way, however, was cause for another hasty mental scolding. Was she turning into a Jezebel, needing to remind herself constantly that she wasn’t dating Terry Nolan? Or was it all the fault of those blue eyes of his that twinkled like a bowlful of jelly, or however that phrase went, that grin of his that was guaranteed to make any woman born in this century feel like melting into the kitchen linoleum?
Or perhaps it was something else. Perhaps it was simply the fact that he looked at her as if she mattered. The way he listened to her as if he wanted to absorb everything she was saying. The obvious fact that he was talking to her not because he felt he was supposed to but because he sincerely wanted to.
“It seemed to make the most sense,” Jessica went on, after pausing to sip her coffee. “I’d wanted to have a baby for a while, and suddenly it seemed like a good time.” She chuckled. “I guess I should mention that I also happened to get pregnant around that time. We’d been trying, of course. ...”
This was getting a bit too personal. Whenever people talked about “trying to get pregnant,” she envisioned them running around in their lives in a constant state of sexual desire. She couldn’t help picturing them desperately going for a quickie at the most unlikely times, like while waiting for the microwave to heat up the Stouffer’s pot pies.
But Terry’s expression remained unchanged. There was communication going on here, Jessica realized with a jolt, without the slightest hint of judgment. Talking to him reminded her of talking to Nikki. And that comparison, she knew, was the highest compliment there was.
“Anyway,” she continued, “it all seemed to make sense at the time. I was ready to take a break; I was about to have a baby ... so I took a leave of absence.”
Guiltily, she added, “It was originally supposed to be for six months. Just until I got the hang of this motherhood thing.”
“Hey, raising kids is a hell of a job,” Terry said, a bit too heartily. “Listen, I admire anybody tough enough to do it. My own mother raised three of us. I could see for myself how hard it was. And we kids sure didn’t do very much to make it easier.”
Jessica folded her hands on the table in front of her. Somberly, she said, “Maybe we should get on with talking about your brother.”
“Good idea.” Terry was suddenly all business as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small spiral notebook. “I forgot that you probably don’t have that much time.”
I do, I do! Jessica was tempted to reassure him. I have plenty of time for sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking and enjoying myself. It’s the vacuuming I never have enough time for. Calling the insurance company to clear up their error. Sorting through the cartons of junk that I still haven’t unpacked from the move. Those are the things that invariably fall by the wayside.
But she didn’t want to sound desperate. Instead, she just nodded.
“Okay, here’s what I’ve got so far. I’ve already talked to the police. They’ve been surprisingly cooperative. What they told me is that the medical examiner’s office did the usual hair and fiber analysis, and what they found out was—”
“They did a what?”
Terry looked at her w
ith surprise. “A hair and fiber analysis. You know, an analysis of the fibers found at the scene of the crime.’’ He paused, then added, “You don’t read many mystery novels, do you?”
Jessica rolled her eyes. “Honestly, do I strike you as a woman who has time to read mystery novels?”
After considering her question seriously for a few seconds, Terry replied, “To be perfectly honest, Jessica, what you strike me as is a woman who owes it to herself to find time for something she enjoys. To do the things that are important to her.”
From the intent way he was looking at her, Jessica got the feeling he wasn’t only talking about reading.
“Okay,” she said, speaking too quickly, “so they did that fiber analysis thing. What exactly did they find out from it?”
“Not much, I’m afraid.” Terry frowned. “Apparently people were in and out of Lloyd Nolan’s real estate office all the time. They found the usual: hair, clothing fibers, carpet and fabric fibers from people’s homes . . . and animal hair, too, of course. Souvenirs of Rover and Kitty tracked in by people in search of a dream house. The problem is they found too much for it to mean anything.”
“That makes sense. Of course there were all kinds of clients in there.” Jessica sipped her coffee, thinking as hard as she could. “Nothing at all unusual showed up? Not one thing?”
“Nope. It’s too bad, too. Apparently you can tell quite a bit about people by the hairs they leave behind. Especially if they’ve been pulled out forcibly, instead of falling out by themselves. The person’s sex, race, whether their hair is dyed . . . even their blood type, from the small amount of tissue attached to the end.”
Jessica raised her eyebrows. “Boy, I’m impressed.”
“Yeah, the technology is pretty advanced.”
“No, I mean by you. You seem to know an awful lot about this.”
Terry shrugged. “I’ve been making it my business to know. Talking to the police as much as I can, pumping them with questions until they tell me everything they know.
“Besides,” he added, leaning forward, “I happen to like reading mysteries, and I always make time for the stuff that’s important to me.”
Jessica could feel her cheeks reddening, one of her less favorite Scarlett O’Hara traits.
“Anyway, the hair and fiber analysis didn’t pan out because there were so many that it wasn’t possible to link any of them to the murderer.”
“You’ve got it.” Terry sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “So since nobody could get any hard evidence, what we—they—are trying to do is piece together some of the details of Lloyd’s life. They’re looking for someone who might have had a good reason for wanting Lloyd out of the picture. Somebody who had something to gain by bumping him off.”
“Or else somebody who wanted revenge.” Jessica sighed deeply. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I’m sure you know a lot more about him than I do. I mean, you are his brother. In fact, I suspect that you probably know more about him than anybody else in this town.”
“No, not quite. There seems to be at least one person around here who knows more than I do.”
Jessica remained silent for a few seconds, no easy matter, given the way all the caffeine she was ingesting was combining with her anxiety to wind her up past chop, past grate, past blend, all the way up to puree.
“Maybe it would help if you told me a little bit more about Lloyd. Was he married?”
“Divorced. Twice. I think he liked the institution of marriage, but he couldn’t quite get the hang of it.”
“It sounds that way.”
Just as Jessica was puzzling over what might be an easy way of asking Terry if his success rate with institutionalized mating were any higher than his brother’s, he answered the question for her.
“Now I, on the other hand, have yet to find even one woman I think is right for me, much less two.”
Jessica remained silent, picking the almonds off the remaining three-quarters of the coffee cake and popping them into her mouth. It was not the most polite thing to be doing, she knew, but it did serve the purpose of keeping her from offering to set Terry up with one of her single friends. Selfish, maybe, but the better she got to know him, the less anxious she was to share him.
“So where does that leave us?’’ she asked. “Are we at a dead end even before we got on the road?’’
“Not quite.” Triumphantly Terry picked up the manila envelope he had brought in with him. “Here, check this out.”
He pulled out a folder stuffed with papers, an odd assortment of typed pages and handwritten notes.
“Voila. Lloyd Nolan in a nut shell.”
“Where’d you get all this stuff?’’
“Lloyd’s secretary. Sandy. She’s been really helpful.”
She gestured toward the pile of papers with her chin. “What is all this?”
“Names, mostly. These are the records of the people Lloyd was dealing with, the people he knew. The police are certain the killer had to be someone he knew.”
“How can they be so sure?”
“Whenever Lloyd was alone in the office, working on weekends or late at night, he always kept his door locked. The place was robbed once about five years ago, and that made him extra-cautious. Sandy was the one who told the police about this particular habit of his. Anyway, there was no sign of forced entry, so assuming that the door was locked as usual, we can conclude that Lloyd opened the door to someone he recognized.”
“I see. So these are his clients?”
“Mostly. People he sold homes to, people he rented commercial office space to ... just about everyone he dealt with over the past three years.’’
“I guess he was doing all right. It looks like he had quite a business going.” Suddenly Jessica stopped her casual perusal of the documents that summarized Lloyd Nolan’s life. “Wait a second. What’s this?”
Terry glanced over her shoulder, then frowned. “Oh. At first I wasn’t sure why he saved that. But the progressive dinner helped enlighten me. It opens up another whole can of worms.’’
Jessica read through the letter. It was printed on stationery with the heading. Save Our Seas. There was nothing unusual about it; it was a Xerox copy, a plea to join one of the anti-incinerator rallies that the organization was sponsoring. This flyer had probably been mailed out to everyone in Sea Cliff the summer before.
What was interesting about it was that in the left margin the names of the members of the organizing committee were printed, and the list had been circled in black ink. Among the dozen or so names there was one that Jessica recognized.
“Are these people suspects?” she asked.
Terry shrugged. “Just about everybody in Sea Cliff is a suspect. That’s how little the police had to go on, and why they’re not pursuing the investigation. Why? Do you know any of them?”
“I know this one. Dr. Donald Ditzler. And I can tell you that he’s no more likely to have killed Lloyd than . . . than my son Sammy.”
“Well, we have to start somewhere.” Terry sounded tired. “The police just don’t have the manpower to talk to everyone whose name is in this file. That’s where I was hoping you’d come in.”
Jessica glanced at him warily.
“You mean it’s time for me to play homicide detective for a day?”
Terry laughed. “That’s right. It’s your big chance to win a refrigerator freezer.’’
Growing somber, he added, “Or at least to help me find out who hated my brother enough to want him dead.”
“Okay. Where do we start, then?”
Terry flashed her a grateful smile. Any last-minute doubts she may have been experiencing vanished.
“We start right here.’’
He shuffled through the file until he found the letter he was looking for. It was typed, but an old or poor-quality typewriter had been used. Some of the letters were unevenly spaced, and the “o’s” were all filled in.
“What is this?”
>
“Read it. It’s a letter from an irate customer. Well, not quite a customer. Apparently the owner of the Anastos Hair Salon was less than satisfied. He had a major disagreement with Lloyd a couple of weeks before the murder. The police said they’d follow up on it, but they didn’t seem to think much of it. I’m not so sure, though. See what you think.’’
Jessica skimmed the letter. Apparently Constantine Anastos had tried to negotiate a more favorable commission rate with the real estate agent who was helping him find a new location for his hairdressing business. According to the letter, Lloyd had at first implied that he was willing to be flexible. In the end, however, he had refused to budge.
“He sounds angry,” Jessica commented as she reached the final sentence of the letter, the one that read, “I will do everything I can to let the people in this town know that you are not a man who keeps his word.”
“Yes, but mad enough to kill?”
Jessica put the letter back in the folder and closed it. “I guess I’ll just have to try to find out,” she said matter-of-factly. “Besides, I’m about due for a haircut.”
It wasn’t until she had closed the door after Terry and watched him drive away that she realized what she had just agreed to do. She was about to go undercover, to interview a man who may have had much, much more than cutting hair in his past.
A chill ran over her just then, causing her to shudder. And Jessica knew full well it was only partly due to the cracks between the Sheet-rock and the unframed windows.
* * * *
Terry had been out the door less than ten minutes when the telephone rang. Jessica half expected it to be David, who somehow sensed that while he was out slaying dragons with his slide rule, she was at home acting like a hussy, engaging in flippant repartee and merrily munching brunch foods with another man. As she picked up the receiver, her palms were sweating and her heart was pounding so hard it was as if she had been hooked up to a caffeine IV.
So she was actually almost glad to discover it was Lorraine Denholm calling.
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